Solutions to Change

Scrap the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Bibek Debroy / New Delhi September 04, 2006 After talking of the need for accountability, the Draft Approach Paper ignores this. Let me begin with a quote from the Draft Approach Paper to the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-12). “The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and National Rural Health Mission are ambitious programmes for providing primary education and primary health services universally. All these programmes are meant to give a new deal to rural India.” In subsequent sections, the Draft mentions the 2 per cent education cess imposed in 2004-05, “earmarked for the SSA which aims at useful and relevant elementary education to all children in the age group 6-14 by 2010.” Whether the cess was earmarked for elementary education is a moot point, but the Planning Commission presumably knows best. We are told that “near 100 per cent” enrolment of 6-14 year olds is likely to be achieved by the end of the 10th Plan (2007), but that the dropout rate in primar...