Daily Current Affairs

NITI Aayog report on improving India public schools (GS Paper 2, Education)

Why in news?

• To enhance the learning experience for students in government-run-and-aided schools across India, the NITI Aayog has recommended merging schools that have fewer students and optimising the allocation of teachers to fill up large-scale vacancies.

 

Details:

• The recommendations were made in an October report under project SATH-E (Sustainable Action for Transforming Human Capital — Education), an initiative started by the NITI Aayog in 2017 to help states improve the quality of education at local schools.
• While 16 states had responded to the NITI Aayog’s project proposal, Jharkhand, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh were eventually selected for the implementation of the project.
• The latest report builds on the outcomes observed in these three states to make recommendations for overall improvement in the quality of public school education across the country.

 

Structural Interventions:

School consolidation:

• The first suggestion made as part of structural intervention includes school consolidation, including the merger of sub-scale schools. The report goes on to explain that these are schools with less than 50 students and just one or two teachers.
• The challenges faced by these schools, the report adds, were lack of individual attention to students owing to multi-grade and multi-level teaching (one teacher teaching multiple classes), limited time for teaching and inadequate learning infrastructure.

 

Other suggestions:

• The suggestion pertains to the development of a subset of schools as exemplary or leader schools, with a set of disproportionate investments made toward those schools in order to create new momentum in the public education system. This would also involve drawing in students from other sub-scale public, as well as private schools, to these exemplary schools.
• The report also suggests focussing on building a high-performance organisation as part of the state education department that is well-staffed and has oversight over all academic and administrative matters, in order to manage the academic and administrative responsibilities.
• It also recommends optimising teacher allocation, to address the acute shortages of teachers in schools, especially at the secondary and higher secondary levels.

 

Academic Interventions:

• According to the report, the learning gap can be bridged by innovative in-class interventions and engaging students in activities.
• One of the ways to do this is through foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN), which involves skills and strategies focusing on reading, speaking, writing and interpreting a student’s thoughts and numeracy is the ability to reason and to apply simple numerical concepts.
• The report also suggests innovations in teacher assessment to improve instructional design. This includes certification of the teaching staff based on unbiased assessments and rewards and incentives to keep teachers motivated.

 

Governance and Accountability Interventions:

• The suggestions include building a strong management information system (MIS) for data-driven decision-making in schools and administrative offices.
• Jharkhand has been instrumental in developing a comprehensive integrated education MIS platform called e-Vidya Vahini, which incorporates all the multiple aspects of information gathering, processing, validation in the education department and facilitates data-backed decision-making at state, district, block, and school level.
• The report also suggests driving accountability to ensure systemic outcomes at state, district and block levels.

• It highlights strengthening school management committees (SMC) for improved service delivery.
• The drop-out rate in India, according to the report, stands at 16 percent at the secondary level, with transition rates from primary to upper primary being 93 percent and primary to secondary, 91 percent.
• The role of SMCs includes organising parent-teacher meetings, organising events such as annual day and creating SMC grievance cells.

 

PM Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups Development Mission

(GS Paper 2, Social Justice)

Why in news?

• Recently, the Prime Minister launched the ₹24,000-crore PM-PVTG Development Mission and a Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra focused on government scheme saturation to the last mile in tribal districts.
• He was on a two-day visit to Jharkhand and will launch the Pradhan Mantri PVTG Development Mission on the birth anniversary of tribal icon Birsa Munda.

Who are Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups?

• PVTGs are a more vulnerable group among tribal groups in India. These groups have primitive traits, geographical isolation, low literacy, zero to negative population growth rate and backwardness. Moreover, they are largely dependent upon hunting for food and a pre-agriculture level of technology.
• PVTGs also collect Non-Timber Forest Produce (NTFP) like honey, gum, bamboo and wax for consumption as well as sale. Due to their diet, these tribes often suffer diseases like anaemia, malaria, gastrointestinal disorders and skin infections.
• It is said that more developed tribal groups take advantage of the development funds, and thus, there is a need to direct more funds towards PVTGs.
• In 1973, the Dhebar Commission set up a separate category for Primitive Tribal Groups (PTGs). In 1975, the Centre identified 52 tribal groups as PTGs. In 1993, 23 more groups were added to the list. Later, in 2006, these groups were named PVTGs.
• Currently, there are 2.8 million PVTGs belonging to 75 tribes across 22,544 villages in 220 districts across 18 states and Union Territories in India.
• According to the 2011 Census, Odisha has the largest population of PVTGs at 866,000. It is followed by Madhya Pradesh at 609,000 and Andhra Pradesh (including Telangana) at 539,000.
• The largest PVTG is Odisha's Saura community, numbering 535,000.

 

What is the PM PVTG Development Mission?

• The Rs 24,000-crore project is aimed at the development of the PVTGs. As part of the mission, basic facilities such as road and telecom connectivity, electricity, safe housing, clean drinking water and sanitation, improved access to education, health and nutrition and sustainable livelihood opportunities will be provided to areas where these tribal groups live as these are mostly remote, scattered and inaccessible.
• Under the scheme, several ministries will work in tandem to implement development projects.
• The schemes include Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Gramin Awas Yojana, and Jal Jeevan Mission, among others.

 

Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra:

• Government of India is organizing Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra from 15th November, 2023 to 26th January, 2024 to raise awareness through outreach activities to achieve saturation of schemes.
• This will require concerted efforts across the board as well as active Jan Bhagidari to ensure that the last mile and the most vulnerable are reached effectively.

 

The objectives of the Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra are the following:

1. Reaching the unreached-reach out to the vulnerable who are eligible under various schemes but have not availed benefits so far.
2. Dissemination of information and generating awareness about schemes.
3. Learning from the citizens-interaction with beneficiaries of government schemes through personal stories/experience sharing
4. Enrolment of potential beneficiaries through details ascertained during the Yatra.

 

Phase I:

• Under the Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra, Department of Land Resources has planned for distribution of Abhinandan Patra/certificate to eligible villages and felicitation of Gram Panchayat/Village level functionaries like patwari/Lekhpal/Mandal etc. and Gram Panchayat functionaries like Sarpanch for achieving 99% or above in Digitization of Land Records as per schedule of Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra through the villages.
• A digital version of the approved certificate has been shared with the States to distribute for felicitation through communication by Secretary, DOLR to 11 States covering 103 districts to start with.
• In the first phase events relating to Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra and distribution of Abhinandan Patra were organized.

 

The price of persistent federal frictions

(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)

Context:

• Disputes between the Centre and States regarding economic policies have a long history in India.
• However, in recent years the frequency and intensity of such disputes have increased and assumed the character of ‘persistent frictions’ in the federal system.

 

Impact on the economy:

• The current context of economic relations between the Centre and States is very different from the 1980s and 1990s.
• Continuing economic reforms since 1991 has led to the relaxation of many controls on investments, giving some room to States, but the autonomy regarding public expenditure policies is not absolute as State governments depend on the Centre for their revenue receipts.
• Several States have recently pushed back as a result of which the ‘give and take’ equation between the Centre and the States has given way to a more hardened stand by both, leaving little room to negotiate.

 

Sites of conflict:

• Apart from issues around resource sharing, there are other areas that have emerged as sites of conflict. These include the homogenisation of social sector policies, functioning of regulatory institutions and the powers of central agencies.
• Ideally bulk of the policies in these spheres should be at the discretion of States, with an apex central body overseeing the process of resource allocation.
• However, the apex bodies have often attempted to increase their influence and push States in directions that are amenable to the Centre.

 

Economic consequences:

• The spread of the Centre’s span of activities leads to a situation where the Centre starts crowding out the States in terms of investments.

 

Case study of PM Gati Shakti:

• The Centre launched the PM Gati Shakti, a digital platform, to incorporate schemes of various Ministries and State governments to achieve integrated planning and coordinated implementation of infrastructure connectivity projects.
• All States and UTs had to prepare and operationalise a State master plan in line with the national master plan for seamless implementation. However, the flexibility of States in formulating their master plan is curtailed by the centralisation of planning and implementation of the national master plan.
• This leads to underinvestment by States as is evident from the fact that the combined capital expenditure (capex) of the 16 large States, which account for 80% of the country’s gross domestic product, on roads and bridges fell to 0.58% of the gross state domestic product.
• At the same time in absolute terms, the centre’s capex on roads increased at a compound annual growth rate of 32.3% since 2015-16, whereas the growth in States has just been 11.2%.
• Furthermore, spending has become more concentrated within the three largest States of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat, accounting for nearly half of the expenditure by 16 States between 2021-22 and 2023-24.
• Data for 25 States shows that a total of ₹7.49 lakh crore was budgeted for by these States but they spent only ₹5.71 lakh crore which is 76.2% of the total.

 

Fiscal competition between the Centre and States:

• In a federal system, fiscal competition manifests between different regions/States. However, in a scenario of frictions with the Centre, State governments will engage in competition with other States and with the Centre. Welfare provisioning is one such area.
• The Centre with enhanced fiscal space has more spending power, while States’ revenues, especially non-tax revenues, remain flat as possibilities of raising non-taxes are confined to a smaller sphere due to the direct provisioning of many utilities and services by the Centre.

 

Inefficiencies associated with ‘parallel policies’:

• Federal abrasions lead to either the Centre or the States duplicating the other’s policies. The case of pension reforms is one such example of parallel policies developed by the States.
• The National Pension System (NPS) changed the architecture of the pension system in India from a defined benefit scheme to a defined contribution scheme.
• The scheme, mandatory for all central government employees, enlarged its scope and coverage with most of the States joining at different points of time.
• Though States joined the NPS initially, some States have started to roll back to the old pension scheme as the fiscal cost of reverting would be visible only after 2034 when most of the newly joined employees retire.
• The emergence of such parallel schemes is mainly due to the trust deficit prevailing in the federal system, the fiscal costs of which have long run consequences on the economy.

 

Inevitable interdependence:

• For securing the implementation of many of its laws and policies, the Centre depends on the States, particularly in the concurrent spheres.
• The States also entrust their executive functions, with the consent of the Centre, to the government or agencies of the Centre (Article 258A). Such interdependence is inevitable, especially in a large, diverse, developing society and needs to be preserved.