Across the aisle: Celebrating gods, neglecting children – 2

There is another acclaimed report published every year. It is the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER). We have a new report (2017) on the status of education in rural India and it was published on January 16, 2018.

Written by P Chidambaram | Updated: January 21, 2018 9:39 am

Thanks to the Right to Education Act, the proportion of out-of school children has fallen to 3.1 per cent. (Express Photo by Gurmeet Singh)

Having the second largest standing army in the world or possessing nuclear weapons or putting satellites in orbit will not make a country a great power — or even a great people — if our children grow up into adults who are simply not equipped to build a great economy or a great nation.

On March 26, 2017, I had written a column titled ‘Celebrating Gods, Neglecting Children’. I had said “Our idea of human resource development is minus child development, minus child health and minus child nutrition’. My focus was on the state of nutrition of children and the data was based on the National Family Health Survey 2015-16. I should have added “minus child education and minus child skilling”.