Right to Education in India

Praveen Jha is Professor of Economics and Chairperson at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, and is Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Informal Sector and Labor Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is also honorary Visiting Professor at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, and the African Institute of Agrarian Studies, Harare, Zimbabwe. P. Geetha Rani is Associate Professor at the Department of Educational Finance at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi. She has contributed to the financial memorandum for the Right to Education Bill under the Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE), constituted by the Ministry of Human Resources Development.

• List of Tables List of Figures 1. Introduction: Setting the Context Praveen Jha and P. Geetha Rani 2. Shifting Terrain of Public Policy Discourses for Financing of Education: An Overview Praveen Jha, P. Geetha Rani, Satadru Sikdar and Pooja Parvati 3. Financing Elementary Education in Andhra Pradesh under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan: A Study on Fund Flow Pattern and Utilization of Resources B. Shiva Reddy and K. Anji Reddy 4. Financing Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) in Punjab: Inter-District Analysis Jaswinder Singh Brar and Sukhwinder Singh 5. Analyzing Fund Flows and Expenditure under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in Himachal Pradesh P. Geetha Rani and Bansi Lal Shukla 6. Do the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Funds Hit the Target? The Case of Kerala M. Lathika and C.E. Ajit Kumar 7. Bottlenecks in the Financial Provisioning for Elementary Education under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan: The Case of Lalitpur, Uttar Pradesh and Rajnandgaon, Chattisgarh Praveen Jha and Pooja Parvati 8. Pattern, Trend and Utilisation of Funds under SSA in Orissa: Performance Analysis of Districts Boudh and Ganjam Sailabala Debi and Surya. N. Mishra 9. Review of SSA Fund Flow Pattern: Case Studies from Mumbai and Raigad in Maharashtra Madhu Paranjape 10. Fund-flow Pattern under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in West Bengal: A Case Study of Bankura District Archita Pramanik 11. Fund Flows and Expenditure in Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan: A Case Study of School Based Grants at Nalanda District, Bihar Avani Kapoor and Anit N. Mukherjee 12. Implementing Right to Education in Uttarakhand: The Missing Links Siba Sankar Mohanty and Nilachala Acharya 13. Community Monitoring of Right to Education: a Case of Udaipur District, Rajasthan Nesar Ahmad, Mahendra Singh Rao, Hariom Soni 14. Financing Elementary Education for Achieving Universal Elementary Education in India: Does it Induce or Reduce Inter-state Disparity? P. Geetha Rani

Despite a substantial increase over the past decade, low levels of public spending and institutional bottlenecks have been both causes of and exacerbating factors in large inequities, poor quality, high dropout rates and sub-optimal learning outcomes that characterize elementary education in India. The refreshingly in-depth and analytical essays in this book identify various centre–state fiscal issues and financial constraints at different levels of government that limit the efficiency of public spending on elementary education. Assuring children the right to education will depend critically on how effectively education administrators across Indian states respond to and address the shortfalls and deficiencies in financing so aptly identified by the contributors to this book.— A. K. Shiva Kumar, Economist and policy advisor, New Delhi, India