Socio-economic goals for next decade

India’s backwardness in health, education and industrial competitiveness must assume centre-stage in policymaking

- RAHUL MAZUMDAR

The turn of this decade will not be like the previous two. India remained unscathed both by the Y2K bug in 2000 and to a lesser extent, by the contagion of the global financial crisis in 2010. In 2020, the world has definitely changed in all dimensions. While technology and communications have leapfrogged, the globe today is increasingly being engulfed in a binary polity, an enfeebled economy, and an uncertain trade environment, which perhaps has not been witnessed in recent times.

India is in many ways not immune to this phenomenon. As the country marches towards 2030, it still has the potential to orchestrate the agenda for global discourse, and could be effective here, provided it corrects some of the perennial idiosyncrasies. The aspirations of the working-age population will depend on how we address them.

Social challenges

As the incumbent government leads the country into a new decade, it is blessed with the largest majority in Parliament in the last 35 years, with the wherewithal to bring in changes which could shape India going forward.

A well-educated and informed society would have a profound influence on national outcomes. With more than 1.5 million schools and about 260 million students, India has the world’s second-largest school system after China, but quality remains a concern. India’s student-teacher ratio stands at 24:1, lower than its peers — Russia’s stands at 10:1, and for Brazil and China, it’s at 19:1. Besides this, the higher education sector faces a gap of five lakh teachers — a shortfall of 33 per cent in Central universities, 35 per cent in IITs and 38 per cent in State universities. Another aspect which requires consideration is introducing mandatory vocational education given the increasing skill gap.