Solutions to Change

Education Voucher - a policy statement NCERT Director, Prof. Krishna Kumar, has resolutely rebuked the voucher system of funding education on several grounds. He claims that vouchers may in fact be ‘sold’ for cash by needy parents. Firstly, vouchers do not involve cash transactions. The parent in whose child’s name the voucher has been issued deposits the voucher in her school of choice. The school’s bank debits the government for that amount on admission of the child. Eleven countries, so far, have adopted the voucher system in some form or the other. Many of those vouchers have catered to populations with similar demographics as India. Countries, however, have not faced a problem where the poor sell their vouchers for cash. To tackle malpractices, one would have to evolve mechanisms and implement them in a way that makes the system foolproof. Secondly, poor parents in India are realising the importance of good education to life. They are willing to impinge on their meagre resources ...

Employment exchanges spend Rs 20 crore to fill 902 vacancies Ila Patnaik NEW DELHI, MAY 2:Amid May Day celebrations, here’s a wake-up call from the government’s employment exchanges. A recent report on these exchanges in Delhi shows that in the last five years, only 902 of the 5 lakh candidates who registered have got jobs through them. The 902 placements were made at a total cost of Rs 20 crore—in other words, each placement cost the government Rs 2.3 lakh. The report on the State of Governance in Delhi, by the Centre for Civil Society, covers the 20 employment exchanges in Delhi from the period 2000 to 2004. The 250 government officials who work in these exchanges made 123 placements in 2000, followed by 48 in 2001. The number rose to 138 in 2002, but after a spike in 2003 to 426, placements fell to 167 in 2004. On an average, every staff member barely managed one placement a year. The blame, of course, doesn’t lie with the staff. In an era where government enterprises manage their...