Column: India isn’t quite the open society some say it is, yet

(DNA 29/11/2006) Mumbai - How open is India’s economy? Many economists believe that India is quite open. But sociologists disagree. They believe that the openness of a society is best measured by other parameters like access to justice, education and statistical data.

Access to justice is very hard to quantify. Hence, even though this remains the most critical parameter, it may make sense to look at the other benchmarks first; which makes it necessary for us to take a harder and critical look at education.

Education, say sociologists, comes through two means - one through the formal schooling system, and the other through informal information systems like newspapers, radio, television, periodicals and even other well-informed people.

That is why the data presented before the world by an organisation called ‘Reporters without borders for Press Freedom’ become extremely relevant (). The website shows that even the US currently ranks 53rd in freedom of the press, far behind Panama, El Salvador, Chile and a number of former Soviet bloc countries. But, it is way ahead of India, which stands at a sad 105 of the 168 countries surveyed. Of course, India stands ahead of other countries like Thailand (122), Mexico (132), Sri Lanka (141), Singapore (146), Russia (147), and Pakistan (157).

That is why it may be necessary to look at formal education as well. And this is where alarm bells start ringing.

First, notwithstanding the government’s claims of having achieved over 65% literacy, it must be remembered that the government defines a person as being literate if he can read and write the alphabets of his (or her) own name. Thus, if Ram knows to read and write just the three alphabets of his name, he is considered literate. The definition is absurd. That is why many believe that actual literacy may be well below the 25% level.

Look at some more alarming data (table 1). In 1999, the total number of all graduates accounted for just around 2.43% of our population. This is far too small a number for any country to sustain a healthy economic rate of growth year after year. Unless this percentage goes up, India’s economic growth could falter. So is the government doing something about it?

The next set of data (table 2) is even more alarming: Clearly, while enrolment in higher education institutions has increased to 10.5 million, it has not kept pace with the growth in India’s population. Thus, while India’s population growth of 2% annually adds at least 22 million people each year, we manage to churn out just 10.5 million graduates.

What is worse, the quality of these graduates has been slipping alarmingly, causing the industry to reject at least half of them as being unemployable.

And yet, India’s ministers continue to talk about reservations on the one hand, and becoming a world power on the other! Something is horrifyingly wrong with our governance and planning. If some of these numbers do not change, India’s bid to become a world power might end of being just a joke.

By R N Bhaskar