Education

Business Standard says

A government-sponsored Public Report on Basic Education in India, for example, has disclosed that teaching goes on in only 53 per cent of government schools in the villages of MP, Bihar, UP and Rajasthan. Teachers were found absent in one-third of the schools; many were found to have brazenly closed their schools and were busy running shops. Yet, governments continue to be hostile to the idea of private institutions, of public-private partnership, and of a suitable incentive system to make the public education system work better. Some state governments in the southern cone have taken the attitude that private educational institutes should be liberally allowed; this explains the sharp increase in supply of engineers in the south, though all the privately-run institutions cannot lay claim to providing quality education. Indeed, some of them already face a shortage of students, but this situation has the virtue of being a problem of excess supply and therefore student choice. In most places, however, it is still a case of supply shortage.

I think the piece confuses between primary and higher education, but raises a valid point. Wonder why the government is reluctant even to try something like a voucher system, at least in a couple of districts, see how it works, and if it's satisfied expand it to more locations.