A New Approach to Improving Primary Education in India
By Venkateswar Jayanthy
India is richly endowed with the greatest asset that
every country dreams of having – human capital. Indians by their very nature
are intelligent, hardworking and enterprising. Many of the people from humble
backgrounds have made their mark in various fields through sheer personal
struggle. There are certainly many more in the rural areas who do not get an
opportunity to realise their full potential for want of basic educational
facilities at the grass-root level.
While we can boast of having many world-class seats
of leaning in higher education, high-quality technical and other institutes, we
cannot say the same thing about our primary education. Unless educational
infrastructure is created in a big way, India will take longer time to become a
truly developed country. Towards this objective, a conceptual framework is
presented here.
Weak Social Sector
Lack of good education facilities in many villages
has put our rural children to a great disadvantage. In many instances, children
have to walk long distances to commute to school. With their limited resources,
availability and affordability of transport facilities, having to walk long
distances everyday in all weather conditions to attend school certainly works
as a disincentive to join school, or induces dropouts.
Even though considerable progress has been made in many
sectors, the social sector has remained underdeveloped, more particularly in
primary education. It is therefore necessary to supplement the governmental
efforts to build schools in the rural areas by attracting private investment.
If corporate sector is incentivised to take an active part in improving educational infrastructure in rural areas, it will transform the social sector which will eventually benefit them in the long-run.
Private Investment in rural education
Government of India (GOI) may consider introducing a
Scheme to encourage private investment in rural educational infrastructure. Under
this Scheme, Corporate entities would undertake construction of Rural Schools (that
offer education up to Class VIII) in villages, beginning with large villages
and for clusters of villages and ultimately in all villages[1].
This school building would be a brick and mortar
structure located in an appropriate place in the village. The size and design
of the building would vary according to student-capacity that is planned and be
based on the terrain, traditions and customs using as much as possible locally
available resources. Other facilities such as toilets, black boards, benches,
tables, teaching material and playground and games-related facilities should
form part of the school infrastructure.
GOI would prepare a database of villages where it wants to build the Schools. The land required for the School should be provided free of cost to any Corporate for building the School. Open bidding through a process like e-auction on first-come-first-serve basis may be made available to facilitate Corporates to take up the work of building Schools.
Each successful Corporate-bidder would undertake to
a)
construct the School(s) in the village(s) it
successfully bid conforming to the specifications within the stipulated time
period and cost, and
b) run
the School(s) for a period not less than 5 years, free of cost to the parents
of children studying there.
The Incentive
Each Corporate that completes construction of the
school(s) within the stipulated time would be entitled to claim a Tax Credit.
This tax credit can be set off against the corporate tax payable by it.
GOI can vary the amount of tax credit as being equal to the cost of building the School or a multiple thereof. For example, the tax credit can be, say, 1, 1.25 or 1.5 times the cost of building the School. A Corporate may be allowed to avail the tax credit earned by it in a single year or in specified number of years at its discretion.
The Corporates should be allowed to enjoy similar tax credits for the recurring expenses too based on a pre-defined formula. In order to claim the tax credits for the recurring expenses, the Corporates have to recruit good quality teachers, and include them in their payrolls.
For a deeper involvement and commitment, Corporates may be allowed to name the Schools under an umbrella brand name ‘National Corporate School’ conjoined with the name of the sponsoring Corporate. For example, ABCD Corporate can name the School built by it as ‘ABCD National Corporate School’.
In addition, other schemes of GOI such as NREGA for building and running the Schools, Midday Meal scheme can be dovetailed into this Scheme to make it a comprehensive one.
The reimbursement to Corporates by way of tax credit
may be made out of the expenditure planned by the government for primary
education. Further, unlike BOT (used in infrastructure development), the Government
would reimburse the costs to the concessionaires through Tax Credit that too
only after the work is completed/ executed. It would be a cashless transaction,
clean and risk-free.
With appropriate checks and balances in the Scheme, concerns if any can be adequately addressed. For example, it can be made mandatory for all participating Corporates to remit the entire emoluments of teachers for each year upfront into a designated pool account with a bank. The Scheme would be attractive to the Corporates as it would help them earn tax credits as also discharge their corporate social responsibility.
If the Scheme can attract a good number of Corporates, sufficient momentum would be generated in about 5 years that would radically transform rural primary education scenario in India.
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[1] The most gruesome tragedy
that occurred in a Tamil Nadu school in 2004 killing 100 school children only
emphasises the need for good school buildings in semi-urban and urban areas
too.
