-The Economic Times The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER 2012) by NGO Pratham shows that the number of Class V students who could not read a Class II level text or solve a simple arithmetic problem has increased. In 2010, 46.3% of kids in this category failed to make the cut and this shot up to 51.8% in 2011 and 53.2% in 2012. US President Barack Obama had warned that America's...
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Kids in rural MP show decline in Learning levels
-The Hindustan Times Bhopal: Year 2012 was designated as the year of mathematics in India. However, children in Madhya Pradesh have turned poor in basic arithmetic last year. In 2011, 44.7% children enrolled in Class 5 were able to solve simple two-digit subtraction problems. This proportion declined to one-third (34.1%) in 2012. These, and other similar findings, are the conclusion of Annual Status of Education Report (ASER 2012), facilitated by NGO...
More »Rural India’s reading, maths ability declines-Nitin Mahajan
-Deccan Chronicle The Annual Status of Education Report 2012 has revealed the standard of school education is not up to the mark in rural India, and claimed over half the children in these areas were at least three grade levels behind in reading and arithmetic abilities. The report, prepared by Unicef backed NGO Pratham, claimed of all Class V students only 46.8 per cent could read a Class II text. Though 2012...
More »The Case for Direct Cash Transfers to the Poor-Arvind Subramanian, Devesh Kapur and Partha Mukhopadhyay
The total expenditure on central schemes for the poor and on the major subsidies exceeds the states' share of central taxes. These schemes are chronic bad performers due to a culture of immunity in public administration and weakened local governments. Arguing that the poor should be trusted to use these resources better than the state, a radical redirection with substantial direct transfers to individuals and complementary decentralisation to local governments...
More »How to make cash transfers work-Guy Standing
Should they be targeted? Should they go to individuals or households? Are conditionalities necessary? Without a full consideration of these issues, cash transfers will remain an expensive gamble Having worked on cash transfers for over 25 years, and being an economist, I find recent criticisms of the idea shrill and ill-informed. Only a right-wing ideologue would call them a panacea or a cure-all. They would merely be a vast improvement on...
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