“Education in India, & Education in BJP Manifesto”: Evidence from the Recent National Family Health Survey- (NFHS-5)

Hitesh Potdar | June 18, 2022 | Published Online

[This is a two-part series explaining and evaluating the current regime’s performance in terms of education in India, based on the latest National Family Health Survey Data] 

Part I

During the 2014 and 2019 general assembly elections, BJP’s manifesto had many ‘shining’ promises on education in India. In hindsight now, the central government and the BJP-ruled state governments have been persistent and did not disappoint in failing in most of them. 

The manifesto articulates the significance of education in “national integration, social cohesion, religious amity, national identity, and patriotism,” stating that education is the most potent tool for nation-building and growth. It, further, states that— “Instead of pursuing identity politics and tokenisms, we will focus on empowering the deprived sections of society. Steps will be taken to create an enabling ecosystem of equal opportunity – for education, health and livelihood.”^[1]

These promises, however, never could get materialised, instead, the advent of COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns worsened the situation of the status of education in India.^[2]

In this article, we evaluate the BJP’s performance in terms of keeping these so-called promises^[i]

We do so, using The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) 2019-20, which was released in March 2022, the report of which is prepared by the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) and ICF. This survey report covers multiple socio-economic characteristics of the Indian population and help to understand the current levels of the performance of various flagship programmes launched by the Government of India. It covers topics with a primary focus on health, and other parameters such as employment, nutrition, education, domestic violence etc. This survey, therefore, provides us with some important information to understand the current conditions of education in India, especially on educational attainments, schooling and women’s performance in education.  

The current analysis is aimed at the conditions of education across caste groups, classes, regions and religious groups with a special focus on the gendered aspects of educational attainment.

1. Overall Performance: How did School Education Fare? 

Prima facie, NFHS-5 indicates a decline in the number of the population having ‘no schooling’ and an increase in the overall participation in the education system. If we compare NFHS-4 (which was released in 2015-16, around seven years ago) with NFHS-5, we certainly could see some improvement in the educational conditions of India. However, this improvement seems marginal and insignificant than the previous reference period. The rate at which the improvement has happened from the year 2005-06 (i.e. the year of NFHS-3) to 2015-16 (NFHS-4), i.e. in ten years, was far more significant than that of for period between the last two surveys.

The proportion of the female population who never attended school (age six or over) was 40.6 per cent during NFHS-3, which decreased to 31 per cent during NFHS-4 which is about nine per cent basis point. The same proportion during NFHS-5 is found to be 28 per cent with just three basis point differences. A similar trend could be seen for the male who never attended school (See Table 1). For both females and males who have ever attended school the trend is similar with a marginal change of one basis point or two.

The numbers for both male and female who have completed 12 years or more of schooling does look promising though with a 3 per cent basis point change. The improvement is again not as satisfactory as compared to the period between NFHS- 3 and 4 (See table 2). 

 The change in the ‘median number of years of schooling completed’ is also very insignificant. The vast gap between males and females could be seen where females and males have 4.9 and 7.3 years respectively (See table 3). The class and caste character still have substantial influence over the educational attainment as the median number of years of schooling are very poor for the lowest wealth quintile, SCs, STs, OBCs and Muslims. The gap between rural and urban still persists and the change from 2015 to 2021 is quite marginal as compared to 2005-2015. There was no change in the percentage of females and males in having schooling in-between the age group of 6-10 in both rural and urban. If we assume that a child usually gets enrolled in a school at the age of 5 or 6, then the former argument suggests that no new child has been enrolled in the school in the last six years.

2. Caste-wise educational attainment:

The larger proportion of both females and males having no schooling was found among Scheduled Tribes with 38.5 per cent of females never went to school. Followed by Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes having larger share of people who had no schooling with 32.6 per cent for females and 16.5 per cent for males.

These numbers are approximately double the numbers of ‘no schooling’ persons from other caste categories.

BJP always have had the rhetorical promise and lip service of development for several tribal groups in their manifesto and this was present during earlier ruling regimes as well. The scheme of Van Bandhu Kalyan Yojana was envisaged to establish educational networks for Adivasis (i.e. Scheduled Tribes), it was marketed and celebrated like it would accomplish the full enrolment in tribal areas. However, the numbers from NFHS-5 show no significant progress through it. Adivasi students continue to face a variety of educational marginalisation. The deaths of students in Maharashtra’s ashram schools were the subject of several reports in 2016. Physical safety, nutrition, and fundamental health deficiencies have all been identified as contributing factors to school environments.^[3] The funding for the same scheme also witnessed noteworthy drops from 2015-16 to 2017-18.

BJP’s manifestos also have read “Universalisation of secondary school education and skills development shall be “seriously pursued with particular focus on rural, tribal and difficult areas”. But it also failed to provide any legal provision or even a plan for such universalisation. The “Transformation of Aspirational District Programme” which was launched by NITI Aayog in 2018 also failed miserably to achieve its own goals. The increase in seats of ‘Jawahar Navoday Vidyalayas’ by 5000 couldn’t get reflected in increase in actual numbers of admissions. There also had been an announcement of more Ekalavya Model Residential Schools which couldn’t find enough funds in the budgets to be materialised.^[4]

The adjoining chart shows the declining funds released by the states (BJP-ruled in comparison with non-BJP-ruled states) for the Post-Matric scholarship for Scheduled Tribes (ST) students. After 2018 Karnataka state witnessed a sharp decline in the funds for the same scheme along with Gujarat cutting on funds nearly to half in 2019-20 and then rose marginally in 2020-21. Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand which has significant numbers of scheduled tribe population, have underspent and also decreased the funds for the same. It is quite evident that various institutions, in particular TISS (Tata Institute for Social Sciences), across India witnessed protests over not getting the GOI-PMS scholarship in which Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand were pioneering to not disburse the same. On the other hand, states such as Kerala, Maharashtra and Telangana have increased the funds with the non-BJP-ruled state of Andhra Pradesh actually cutting down the funding.

2.1 Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan: Brief Evaluation

The scheme of Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan was expected to meet the goals in order to provide equal and guaranteed access of education to vulnerable and marginalised communities with the provision of “quality education and bridging social and gender gaps in school education; ensuring equity and inclusion at all levels of school education”. On the contrary, the scheme went through a consistent and drastic drop in state-wise budget and centre share on the scheme. The gap between the expenditure incurred for the scheme and actual spending also has risen in the last two years in BJP-ruled states like Gujrat, Madhya Pradesh, and Karnataka among others with Uttar Pradesh topping the chart. This also includes some non-BJP ruled states like Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Rajasthan.^[5]

3. Class-wise educational attainment:

Class is a dynamic and an outcome of a complex web of social and production relations in different regions of India. Here, we refer to a proxy of the wealth quintiles to understand the class dynamics. Around seventy per cent of poor people in India are still devoid of schooling.[6] Only 4.4 per cent of people in the lowest wealth quintile could attain 12 years or more years of schooling. The median years of schooling for the poor in India is around just 2 years. That means even those 4.4 per cent people in the lowest-quintile who getting schooling are on an average spend only 2 years in the school and then drop out. The dropping out reasons could be many on which NFHS does not talk about right from sky-rocketed fees, child labour, accessibility, deteriorating number of government-owned or funded schools and many among others.

The adjoining chart 3 shows how this trend is more skewed for women. The ‘no schooling’ percentage is unsurprisingly and unfortunately highest for women from the lowest wealth-quintile which is around 45.7 per cent. However, what is interesting is that the percentage of women having no schooling ever is also significant for the second-quintile. That also means that the educational deprivation of women is prevalent across all classes but the highest wealth-quintile.

The current BJP government’s submission to the market economy and pledge to neo-liberalism has been making the situation for the poor worse than ever. Since 2014, the country has witnessed a drastic shut down of government-owned/aided schools and a sudden upsurge of private schools. It is well established and known about the bourgeoning and unaffordable fees of private schools. Yet, there was a slight relief that even private schools had to admit some students under RTE quota under section (12)(1)(c) of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 in India. Nonetheless, the number of such students admitted to private schools under the act of 2009 has been on free fall. For example, private schools in Karnataka had an intake of 12,165 children under this act in 2018-19, the same number witnessed a sharp fall in 2020-21 to just 221. Similar is the case with states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. ^[7]

The number of government-aided schools in states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka are very less in proportion to the overall population in general and in proportion to poor, SC, ST people in particular. The other BJP-ruled states like Himachal Pradesh, Assam, and Haryana have 0, 1 and 1 government-aided schools respectively.^[8]

About Author

Hitesh Potdar is a research associate with the Indian Researcher

End Notes

^[1] BJP’s Record on Education Runs Afoul of Its Own Manifesto, by Shivali Tukdeo and Subhankar Chakraborty, The Wire, March 01,  2019 https://thewire.in/education/bjps-record-on-education-runs-afoul-of-its-own-manifesto

[2] ‘A Pandemic that ended Education for many’, A Study by Indian Researcher, August 2021. 

^[3] Ibid., 2.

^[4] BJP’s 2014 manifesto check: Has Modi government improved education and opportunities for children? Shreya Roy Chowdhary, Scroll.in, April 03, 2019, https://scroll.in/article/917731/bjps-2014-manifesto-check-has-modi-government-improved-education-and-opportunities-for-children

^[5] Source: Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 2125, dated on 02.08.2021 & Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 2872, dated on 21.03.2022

^[6] 32 million Indian children have never been to any school: How can we reform education for the underprivileged?, India Today, August 19, 2019, https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/featurephilia/story/32-million-indian-children-have-never-been-to-any-school-how-can-we-reform-education-for-the-underprivileged-1582293-2019-08-19

^[7] Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 2176, dated on 02.08.2021

^[8] Ministry of Education, Govt. of India (ON2938)

Some of the headlines would suggest, how the BJP claims came to the forefront: