Access of Poor Households to Primary Education in Rural India

Ravindra H. Dholakia and Shreekant Iyengar

No WP2008-02-02, IIMA Working Papers from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department

Abstract: The Planning Commission’s premise that the growth in India has bypassed the weaker sections due to their ineffective access to the basic services like primary education needs to be tested against the evidence. Traditionally identified weaker section on social criteria (SC and ST population) seems to have a similar or relatively better access to the primary education. However, there is no direct evidence available for the weaker section on the economic criteria or the population living below poverty line (BPL). The present paper attempts to provide an empirical evidence for the premise of the Planning Commission from the household survey of BPL families in five states of India including the survey of primary schools for the same states and localities. Our findings suggest that there is a problem of access of the poor (BPL) households to the primary education services in rural areas. Primary enrolment ratios among the children of poor households are considerably lower than the respective state average and also the aggregate enrolment ratio of the country. Our findings also reveal that the incentives such as mid-day meals, free textbooks and cash subsidies given by government schools to the poor children do actually reach them. The problem of insufficient effective access of the poor to primary education still persists. It calls for a change in the policy level thinking. Qualitative aspects like school infrastructural deficiencies and functioning of teachers having a direct bearing on the quality and access of education in the rural areas need urgent attention.

Date: 2008-02-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.iima.ac.in/sites/default/files/rnpfiles/2008-02-02RDholakia.pdf English Version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iim:iimawp:wp02086

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IIMA Working Papers from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().