Equity in Education in India

Equity in Education in India
Equity is a simple sounding ideal in its meanings as evenhandedness, fairness, and impartiality at the hands of an individual, a family, a government, a society, a country or the whole world. But it is a very difficult concept to practice to achieve its intended goals and targets. So when Kapil Sibal, a lawyer by training, formulates India’s educational policy in his capacity as the Minister for Human Resources Development (HRD) most likely he has all those meanings of the concept in mind and perhaps even more as justice and justness of the education system of India. Since the minister did not elaborate on the meaning of equity let’s assume he means evenhandedness, fairness and impartiality.
Now comes the difficult task of practical use of the concept: Does equity mean spending education budget equally on education among all states; between primary, secondary and higher education; between arts, commerce and science; between third, second and first division and distinction students; between boys and girls; between poor, middle class and rich students; between IITS, IIMs, national and state universities; and between urban and rural universities and colleges? Is there a normative government policy on all these and other similar claimants including caste, religion, income and geography based variables to make the government spending on education equitable? Then there is the whole range of issues and criteria regarding the treatment of the private non-profit and profit sectors that are a significant part of the Indian education sector.
Since there are no criteria set out in policy to define equity, other than the admission quota systems and court ordered decisions, actual budget allocations for the expansion of the system envisaged by government gives some sense of what the policy implicitly considers evenhanded and fair education policy.
All one can hope for in the policy is that a large number of possible criteria mentioned above have been considered in arriving at a fair education policy for the ones for whom it is intended-namely, present and future students and the impact they will have on the future progress of the country and its prosperity across all segments.
Is creating a certain number of additional national universities, IITs and IIMs the best use of scarce but expanded budgetary resources for education from a national perspective or expanding and improving currently existing institutions a better policy choice for the country? Perhaps the education system can be expanded both in terms of new institutions and existing institutions taking into account the possible fairness criteria enumerated above.
As we have argued in the essay on access to education, expansion of the entire education system should be the most important policy goal as it directly addresses the equity issue as well by opening up opportunities for more students in each age group- primary, secondary and higher education, to be able to get education. So fairness or distributive justice in education is important to avoid extreme abundance of educational resources for a few and lack of adequate and reasonable educational facilities for most.
As we look for empirical evidence of successful knowledge-based societies, the ones that have done better and made more and faster progress generally have been built on a more equitable education system. Some of the examples are the United States, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, France, Japan, Russia, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Taiwan, South Korea and most recently Ireland. Great Britain followed an elitist policy and India inherited some of it even as it has expanded the education system since 1947. Britain opened up and expanded its education system from about the mid-1980s during the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and since then.
It is good that the government of Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh educated at Punjab University as well as at Cambridge and Oxford in Britain and his education minister Kapil Sibal educated in Delhi University and Harvard University in America are not only putting more budgetary resources into education but thinking of doing it in an equitable way.
It is a sound approach for a sustainable education system and a sustainable economy and society while avoiding the extremes of haves and have-nots in education and therefore in the sharing of the GDP and incomes generally for an overall distributive justice and a just society.