Free Our Schools
August 19th, 2007
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In a column in The Times of India, Gurcharan Das calls for freeing schools in India from government control and regulations,
A dear friend of mine has grown weary. He runs five schools in the slums of Delhi, which provide a fine education to 13,500 poor children with 250 motivated teachers. But his idealism is frayed from fighting the ‘licence raj’ for 20 years. He has been unable to gain accreditation for his schools because he is unwilling to bribe. Instead, he is humiliated daily as he runs from one official to another. Ironically, ‘licence raj’ went away in industry in 1991 but it still thrives in education. You need 11 licences to run a school and each comes with a bribe. The most egregious one is an Essentiality Certificate by which a bureaucrat decides if your school is ‘essential’.
The answer to corruption is institutional reform — get rid of licences and Essentiality Certificates and create massive disincentives against corruption[link]
Apart from the licenses, the key issue in big cities is land which is tightly regulated and (hence) horribly expensive. This allows the government to allot land to favored parties cheaply. This not only encourages corruption but also makes schools who may not wish to use the government route for land uncompetitive. While the schools are supposed to reserve a certain % of seats for the poor, they routinely violate these laws. Despite the interventions of the Delhi High Court, the situation hasn’t changed. The reason is not far to seek. The same bureaucratic-politician network also runs most of the big schools. Take Delhi Public School as an example. Its Chairman is Congress politician, Salman Khursheed. Perhaps the most egregious example of government corruption was when crores were allotted to Sanskriti school, an elite school catering mainly to children of top bureaucrats.
The solution is fairly simple. Free schools of license requirements, let them buy land at market prices, and use that to fund poor students through a system of vouchers.
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One Response to “Free Our Schools”
Gaurav August 23rd, 2007 at 2:52 pm #
Gurcharan Das is the biggest flake even known to mankind. The guy only mouths intellectual gibberish which makes no sense and his book was mind numbing. Perfect example of a guy who’s made it or who’s been made without having got it.