Many of India’s Poor Turn to Private Schools
1st January 2012
In India, the choice to live outside the faltering grid of government services is usually reserved for the rich or middle class, who can afford private housing compounds, private hospitals and private schools. But as India’s economy has expanded during the past two decades, an increasing number of India’s poor parents are now scraping together money to send their children to low-cost private schools in hopes of helping them escape poverty.
The government’s response, of course, is inevitable: Regulate the competition out of existence.
Faced with sharp criticism of the woeful state of government schools, Indian policy makers have enacted a sweeping law intended to reverse their decline. But skeptics say the litany of new requirements could also wipe out many of the private schools now educating millions of students.
“It’s impossible to fulfill all these things,” said Mohammed Anwar, who runs a chain of private schools in Hyderabad and is trying to organize a nationwide lobbying campaign to alter the requirements. Referring to the law, he said, “If you follow the Right to Education, nobody can run a school.”
All in the name of ensuring that all these privately-educated kids get the same quality education as those who go to government schools, of course. The ironic result, of course, is that it doesn’t raise the quality of the private schools, but lowers it.
We’re working through the same situation in the United States – every kid has a ‘right’ to an education, but that education is provided through government-provided schools, which generally suck. Anybody who can afford to send his kids to private schools does so, and the School Voucher movement attempts to allow even those who can’t afford private schools to do so, diverting some of the vast sum that is currently wasted on government schools.
This is astonishing, when you consider that government schools are either free or provided at less than cost through taxpayer subsidy. What does it say about the quality of a free product when people are willing to pay (and sometimes sacrifice other aspects of their life in order to afford to pay) for an alternative?
… which leads to a larger question: Throughout history, goods provided by the government always and everywhere cost more (and suck more) than those provided by private enterprise; so why are people so eager to have stuff provided by the government?
January 1st, 2012 at 19:56
People are always eager for stuff to be provided by the government because they are under the mistaken impression that it’s “free” which trumps every other consideration for them.
January 2nd, 2012 at 13:05
Actually, they are eager for stuff to be provided by the government because: 1) private enterprise isn’t interested in providing some stuff, or is only interested in providing it in some markets but not in others; 2) some jobs are just too big for private enterprise to handle.
January 2nd, 2012 at 13:08
Oh, almost forgot: 3) people perceive that government is more even-handed and/or “neutral” in providing some stuff than would be private enterprise. We complain about ‘special interests’ influencing government, but should those areas be controlled by private enterprise the special interests could manipulate the situation directly instead of bribing or influencing third parties (politicians) to do it for them.
January 2nd, 2012 at 17:03
Vast claims, no details. In Texas we call that ‘all hat, no cattle’.
January 2nd, 2012 at 17:04
So popular perception is wrong — government is not, in fact, more even-handed or ‘neutral’ in providind stuff, it just wastes money doing so.
Yeah, there’s a really persuasive argument.