Letter from the Editor

This letter to the growing community of EducationWorld readers is being (belatedly) written shortly after the presentation on February 29, of the Union budget for 2008-09 to Parliament. Prima facie, Union finance minister P. Chidambaram seems to have done his best to serve the cause of rural development by giving 40 million small and marginal farmers a new start by writing off their debts aggregating a massive Rs.60,000 crore. Over the past half century, the great majority of Indiaƒšžs farmers have been beggared by neglect of rural infrastructure development and adverse terms of trade between town and country. Moreover perhaps responding to the pressure beginning to be exerted by readers of this publication, which for the past eight years has been clamouring for larger outlays for health and education, the Central governmentƒšžs allocation for the health sector has been hiked by 15 percent to Rs.16,534 crore, and for education by 20 percent to Rs.34,400 crore. But although the finance ministerƒšžs generous provision for rural India and larger outlays for healthcare and education are steps in the right direction, following decades of neglect the magnitude of the challenge in Indiaƒšžs health and education sectors is so huge, that the deceptively impressive higher allocations made for social welfare by the incremental budgeting system followed by the finance ministry, are pathetically inadequate. Indiaƒšžs massive human capital comprising 450 million children can be developed only if the finance ministry switches to a needs-based budgeting regime. But for more on Budget 2008-09 and its impact on child healthcare and education youƒšžll have to read the next issue of EducationWorld. Yet just how great are the healthcare and education needs of Indiaƒšžs children was recently highlighted by the United Nations Childrenƒšžs Fund (Unicef) which released its State of the Worldƒšžs Children 2008 report in New Delhi on January 22. A mine of information and a damning indictment of professedly socialist post-independence Indiaƒšžs child healthcare record, SWC 2008 inter alia discloses that one-third of the countryƒšžs 126 million children under age five are underweight, 43 percent suffer malnutrition and that an unbelievable 48 percent are moderately to severely stunted. This gross neglect of the countryƒšžs human capital is compounded by the pathetically inadequate infrastructure of government primary schools which enroll an estimated 174 million children at the commencement of every academic year. The huge wastage of Indiaƒšžs human capital is the subject matter of the cover story in this issue which also features a thought-provoking special report on student unionism filed by our Lucknow-based assistant editor Puja Awasthi.With publication of this issue, EducationWorld crosses an important milestone. This is the 100th issue of this sui generis magazine. And to mark the occasion ƒš‚ and in response to the requests of our loyal and valuable advertisers in particular ƒš‚ we have switched to better quality paper and printing, without raising prices. Moreover stand by for a state-of-the-art completely re-engineered website and a Hindi edition, both scheduled for launch in April. Even if belatedly, the EW bandwagon is on…