04 Myrdal’s advice on education – and our muddle kingdom response

Getting back to the thread of thought I started on Gunnar Myrdal’s magnum opus, Asian Drama (An Inquiry Into the Poverty of Nations), I just finished most of the 700-page Volume III, which deals with Health and Education. Myrdal’s well-intentioned advice on education in India, and the quite contrary policy actually followed by the Indian state, illustrate nicely the muddle kingdom tendency to act in pragmatic ways in the face of (seemingly) theoretically sound suggestions.

Myrdal cites various statistics of education and literacy levels in India and other Asian countries soon after independence and the mid-century, and it is apparent how low in the line-up India figures, especially for girls and women. A common-sense (or common?) response would obviously be to throw the maximum feasible resources into expanding education at all levels, so that more and more of the population is covered by elementary and secondary education, the gap in girls’ school enrolment is rapidly bridged, and so on. Myrdal, however, as usual among experts, goes for the ‘counter-intuitive’ strategy of improving quality first (of the existing school set-up) and postponing expansion to a later stage. He goes so far as to declare that “It would appear more justifiable to halt the increase in, or even to contract, enrolment in secondary and tertiary schools”, to set right the “enormous amount of miseducation at these levels… caused not only by the scarcity of properly trained teachers and generally low quality standards, but by the wrong orientation of schooling” (Myrdal, Vol.III, p. 1816, italics in original). Similarly, he advices that higher education should take a back seat to primary and secondary. His argument is that current expenditure on low-quality education is unproductive, and a drag on development, and the school system should change from general education to more vocational and handwork (an attitude endorsed by Gandhiji as well, see Myrdal, p.1737).

That experts think alike is shown by similar recommendations in the famed, and similarly voluminous, Kothari Commission report on education which was issued in 1966 (NCERT, 1966, reprint 1970), which are also quoted by Myrdal since the Commission report was published first. These included new priorities in educational development (transformation first, qualitative improvement next, expansion last), selective admissions at the higher secondary and university stages (as against the current presumably serve-all-who-come policy?),  selective improvement of major universities, schools, etc. The interesting fact is that such strategic policy recommendations were not found acceptable at all (Naik, 1997, p.117 et seq.; see also Myrdal’s lament on the “determined resistance on the part of students, parents, and, frequently, teachers” on p.1817 of Vol.III). To the chagrin of experts, neither the exhortations of the Kothari Commission, nor Myrdal’s advice, seem to have found much favour in muddle kingdom. The eminent educationist, and also Secretary of the Kothari Commission, J.P.Naik, notes in despair that the in the “unequal struggle between education and political economy”, the priority to transformation and quality improvement over expansion was not accepted (Naik, 1997, p. vii). The Committee of MPs “threw it out completely and said that it would like to place greater emphasis on expansion, especially at the school stage” (ibid., p.118); and “it is still this policy which finds the largest support among political and official circles, among the general public, and even among a section of the academics who, by and large, accord a higher priority to qualitative improvement” (ibid). The experts could not convince the sceptics that there was a right type of expansion and a wrong type: for instance, “when we  said that every effort should be made to bring the children of the poor into schools (which was the desired type of expansion) and that the enrolments in secondary and university education from the urban and middle classes (which was the wrong type of expansion) should be cut down, the reaction was even more hostile. We were in fact called fools who try to educate those who do not come to school and do  not want to learn while we refuse to educate those who voluntarily come to schools and want to learn” (Naik, p.119). Even the eminent economic advisor, the late Dr. D.R.Gadgil, did not support the recommendation: any steps to eliminate any major waste resulting from unchecked expansion “must be done as part of a positive policy of spreading and equalizing educational opportunity and not through adopting a restrictive and regressive one” (Gadgil, Convocation address to Poona University, 1966; quoted in Naik, op cit, p.120).

So despite all the persuasion, India went ahead with expansion of secondary education and higher education, along with of course widening the coverage of primary education. Expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP is reported to have increased from 3.3 % in 2004-05 to over 4% in 2011-12 (Planning Commission, 12^th Plan, Vol.III, p.47), State governments expenditure grew at 19.6% during the XI Plan, and Central spending at 25% per year. The breakup of total public expenditure on education is given as 43% for elementary, 25% for secondary, and 32% on higher education, but 50% of Central expenditure was on higher, 39% on elementary, and 12% on secondary, whereas 44% of State expenditure was on elementary and 30% on secondary school education,  (ibid.). Myrdal estimates that less than 50% of eligible children were enrolled in primary schools in India and Pakistan during 1960-61, against 90% in Malaya, 95% in Ceylon, 89% in the Philippines, 72% in Thailand; see Table 33-4 on p.1718, Vol.III of the Asian Drama). It isn’t till the 12^th Plan document, when almost 100% enrolment is registered in the elementary school levels (admittedly with a steep fall thereafter at secondary and tertiary levels), that attention is turned to quality improvement, increasing attendance, reducing dropouts, improving skill levels and learning outcomes, and so on. There is however no talk of curtailing expansion at higher levels; in fact the 12^th Plan aims at a Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) of 90% at the secondary level, and 65% at the Senior Secondary level.

In the intervening years, India produces large numbers of graduates (but still low compared to the population), and many of them head to the developed countries. Here is where intellectuals again missed the long-term mechanism, as we all blamed the ‘brain-drain’ for impoverishing India of its intellectual manpower. But we didn’t really have adequate employment for the outstanding technical personnel the system produced. The strength of the Indian diaspora is now coming home to register, if not roost, in our reformed economy. India has always been strong on highly developed brainpower, and with the ramification of information technology into every nook and corner of modern living, our brain power is getting its due leverage.

The problem with single-stranded (‘hard’) strategies like Myrdal’s is that it does not take into account the multiple levels at which different parts of Indian society function: as the saying goes, from the stone age to the space age. The common understanding, the Muddle Kingdom perception, is that the advanced sections cannot be held in storage or abeyance while the masses of less developed sections catch up. All levels have to be developed simultaneously, and different groups, communities, regions or states may advance at different speeds, some spurred by the demonstration effect, some pulled up by positive support, reservations, and so on. The modern, post-socialist, liberal economy now looks like what the country was waiting for, to realize its potential. With rising aspirations and rising numbers of young citizens, the demand for higher quality education institutions is only growing, which is seen in the setting up of ever more numbers of central institutes for advanced learning like the IITs and IIMs, which should be making Myrdal turn in his Olympian grave. Obviously India’s muddle kingdom leaders have still not learnt the lesson Myrdal tried to teach!

This is not to say that there are no problems with the present state of education, whether at the school or college levels. But it is to recognize the long-run reasonableness of the muddle kingdom approach to planning, eschewing single-stranded or single-minded strategies as suggested by Myrdal and other experts, whose sage advice sounds quite odd today, and luckily was seen as so outlandish that even our muddle kingdom politicians, with all their faults, felt it best to ignore.

References

Myrdal, Gunnar. 1968. Asian Drama. An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations. Twentieth Century Fund, Inc. Reissued 1982, reprinted 2004, by Kalyani Publishers, New Delhi.

Naik, J.P. 1979, 1997. The Education Commission and After. A.P.H. Publishing Corporation, New Delhi. 2^nd Edition, Indian Institute of Education, Pune, 1997. Accessed October 2015 at http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/JP-42.pdf

NCERT. 1966, 1970. Report of the Education Commission, 1964-66. National Council of Educational Research & Training. Ministry of Education, New Delhi. Reprint Edition, 1970. Accessed October 2015 at http://www.teindia.nic.in/files/reports/ccr/KC/KC_V1.pdf, …/KC_V2.pdf, …/KC_V3.pdf.

Planning Commission. 2012? Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-2017), Vol. III, Social Sectors. Government of India. New Delhi. Accessed October 2015 at http://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/document-reports/XIIFYP_SocialSector.pdf, also at http://planningcommission.gov.in/plans/planrel/12thplan/pdf/12fyp_vol1.pdf, …/12fyp_vol2.pdf, …/12fyp_vol3.pdf