The Unicef's studies and the OECD report present a grim picture on India's stark under-achievement on child and maternal health and education for the poor.
As India's growth story is the flavour of the season against the anaemic growth prospects for the world economy in the backdrop of the country's first quarter growth numbers estimated at 8.8 per cent, two international reports released on Tuesday from Paris and New York do hold contrasting lessons for India in terms of its traversing a long way to join the league of developed world.
Unicef's twin studies on “Narrowing the gaps to meet the goals and progress for children” and “Achieving the Millennium Development Goals with equity,” released in New York, do not gloss over the obvious distortions in India's development paradigm, particularly in the vital realm of progress for children. India might gloat over the demographic dividend it enjoys in the form of its agile youth power against the atrophying working population in the rich world due to the latter's ageing populace.
But the Unicef report bluntly puts that a child born in the poorest 20 per cent households in India is three times more likely to be underweight compared with a child born in the richest 20 per cent, thereby putting paid to the task of building the muscles of the nation either for farming operation or manufacturing activities.
According to Unicef, a mother belonging to the richest 20 per cent household in India is almost five times more likely to have a skilled attendant at delivery than a mother belonging to the poorest 20 per cent household. Again, the poorest 20 per cent of households are 36 times less likely to use improved sanitation facilities in comparison with the richest 20 per cent in India, the twin developments that overtly have an adverse bearing on the maternal health and the weal of the children in general.
Grim statistics
Against these grim figures on child development and maternal care on which the future is very much fastened for real progress, the Paris-based inter-governmental think tank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), also came out with a report “Education at a glance” in which it urged its rich member countries to go for world-class quality in their education systems to ensure long-term economic growth. This report also holds some revealing implications for India.
The OECD Secretary-General, Mr Angel Gurria, aptly told his rich members that “with the worldwide recession continuing to weigh on employment levels, education is an essential investment for responding to the changes in technology and demographics that are reshaping labour markets”. There is even an allusion in this 400-odd-page report that the largest numbers of international students in the OECD countries continue to be from China and India.
Educationists point out that if this were so in developed countries, the plight of developing economies such as India with lower skill development and poorer numerical strength of even secondary-education qualified among young people is too serious to be set aside as of no consequence.
They say that with the Indian economy currently cruising on its knowledge power in information technology and software segments could ill-afford to treat primary and secondary education or vocational education lightly because its aspirations to join the developed country league by 2020 would be in jeopardy if the fundamental literacy level does not improve vastly.
They also cite the postponement of the Education Tribunal Bill in the Rajya Sabha, designed to set up a machinery for disposal of education-related disputes at all levels, in the just concluded monsoon session of Parliament as yet another proof of the lackadaisical approach of the governing dispensation at the Centre in finding a durable solution to the many ills that plague the country's oldest educational system at all levels.
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