Myths of Privatopia
India’s education will not improve till our public education system improves. There is no other way out
There
is a land called Privatopia. There, Leviathan is but a distant memory,
of the beast that withered away. It’s a clean and healthy land. Children
grow up there with great education. Gleaming roads connect all places.
Transport works without a glitch. The water is sweet, germ-free,
delivered to every house. Sanitation works perfectly. High-tech
hospitals take care of the few who are ill. Peace in the land and its
security are maintained by the ever-alert forces. All this has been made
possible after the beast was helped to wither away by the dynamic
forces of competition and markets were encouraged to take over all these
services. The glorious day when other essential services like
legislative representation, justice and parenting will also be offered
by the efficient forces of markets, is not far away.
This caricature of a place without any public systems and services
resonates with the ideas of many of my friends on what can solve India’s
problems, till I get to the last few words.
Most
of us do live in our own Privatopia. The Indian upper middle class does
not get involved with public systems in any way, unless it’s completely
unavoidable. There are good reasons to avoid Indian public systems. The
simplest of which is that these systems do not deliver what they are
supposed to. In addition, their general wastefulness, corruption and
brazen disregard for basic human dignity is obvious.
So
the abandonment of public systems by those who have money and power is
quite understandable. However, this phenomenon is leading to something
deeply insidious to a good society and democracy. The well off and the
influential are not only abandoning public systems, but they are
abandoning the very idea of it.
A
lack of immediate personal stake in these systems, combined with a
strangely narrow understanding of economics, leads to hankering for
Privatopia. These ideas and their pursuit are hollowing out the
foundations of good society.
Even
those who understand well that market-oriented economic theory itself
suggests that certain goods and services have character which make them
non-deliverable by the market can’t bring themselves to accept that
India needs to fix its public systems. They (including senior government
officials) continue to think of privatization and competition as
solutions.
School
education, which is my area of work, is the frontline of this war.
India’s schooling system is more privatized than any other country in
the world, almost by a factor of two, and growing. Only failed states
have similar percentage of private schools; failed states by definition
have failed public systems and institutions.
Theory,
experience and evidence all point in the same direction: that good
public schools are the only route to good education at a systemic level.
I have earlier written about how well-researched evidence in India
busts the myth that private schools perform better than public schools.
Let me mention a few experiences from across the world. Diane Ravitch’s very readable book Reign of Error
gives a blow-by-blow account of this war on education and its insidious
effect in the US. The Swedish school system is showing worse results
and growing inequality after two decades of privatization. Not many
countries have tried this self-defeating strategy of introducing markets
in schools.
For a
comprehensive global view, let’s look at the Programme for
International Students Assessment (PISA). This is a cross-country study
of school education conducted periodically by the Organisation for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). PISA has been accused of
making facile international performance comparisons; but despite its
limitations, its characterization of country-wide systems is still
useful. PISA is unambiguous about the record of public systems. Let me
quote verbatim from the concluding chapter of PISA 2012, which sort of
addresses the implications of its research for policy: “…in contrast,
some features, most notably the prevalence of private schools and
competition for students, have no discernible relationship with student
performance, at least at the system level...thus, after socio-economic
status is accounted for, private schools do not perform better than
public schools…although individual parents may derive an advantage for
their child from the privileged socio-economic context—and attendant
resources—of private schools, school systems as a whole do not seem to
benefit from a greater prevalence of private schools or a higher degree
of competition among schools.” In simple terms, the comprehensive
evidence from 65 countries says that competition and market-based
mechanisms do not improve school systems; on the other hand, they
increase inequity.
India’s
education will not improve till our public education improves. There is
no way out. But forget about trying, the idea itself has been abandoned
by (most of) the Indian elite.
The
efforts to improve education in India are reflective of a deeper
struggle; the struggle to retrieve the idea of public systems, including
public education, and then to make them function. We may not be a
failed state because of our “vibrant” democracy, but will fail as a
society, if we let our public systems wither away.
Anurag Behar is CEO of Azim Premji Foundation and also leads sustainability initiatives for Wipro Ltd.
He writes every fortnight on issues of ecology and education. Comments are welcome at othersphere@livemint.com.
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