For a vast majority of Indi ans, education continues to ` remain the last bastion of the shortage economy.

WHATEVER ELSE it may or may not have achieved, the recent parliamentary debate on the human resources development (HRD) ministry's demand for grants put a stop to wild speculation about the immediate future of Indian school education.

As HRD minister Kapil Sibal clarified, he had no plans to unilaterally dissolve all school education boards and replace them with one omnibus body.  Neither did he plan to abolish Class 10 examinations from the following year.

The rest of the debate was fairly anodyne. Everybody agreed that the Indian education system needed to be revitalised, but remained vague on specific, early action.  Much of the discussion was on higher education, with Mr Sibal advocating a greater role for foreign universities and assorted members of the Opposition counselling him to hasten slowly.

Indeed, with private investment in colleges/universities and the idea of foreign collaborations becoming newsy themes, little of the chatter around education is focusing on what needs to be done to schools.

There is even a denial here. After all, when US President Barack Obama advises Americans to adopt the education ethic of Indian schoolchildren, a number of people do wonder if there is anything intrinsically wrong with Indian schooling anyway. What is Mr Sibal so fussed about?
Actually, there are three issues here, dealing with both quality and quantity.

First, while many countries have more than one school education board, India's variety is bewildering.  According to the HRD ministry website, 23 state governments have their own school education boards. In addition, there are three allIndia boards.

The website does not, however, list school education boards of newer states such as Chhattisgarh.  It also does not mention global school-leaving certificates -- such as the International Baccalaureate (IB) -- that are offered as options in some elite institutions. In short, there are over 30 school education boards, examinations and benchmarks running parallel in India.

Marking systems are different, curricula are different, whole educational cultures are different. Many states -- West Bengal and Maharashtra are examples -- have colleges resorting to positive discrimination in favour of state boards, on the grounds that they are more niggardly with their marking than allIndia boards.

In theory, any Indian school graduate can go to college anywhere in the country. In practice, this cannot happen. That was the simple point Mr Sibal was attempting to make. His solution of one common school examination across the country may not be feasible, but his problem statement cannot be wished away.

Second, it is true that many of the state boards address regional needs and aspirations. As Neil O'Brien -- chairman of the Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), one of the allIndia boards -- puts it, "Multiplication does not necessarily lead to division." India is not the poorer for provincial boards and an education system that gives substantial autonomy to the states.

However, the fact is the state boards are spectacularly uneven. According to Selected Educational Statistics: 2005-06, a document released by the HRD ministry, in the year 2006, 5.02 million children appeared for Class 12 examinations under one or the other Indian board.

Overall, 72.71 per cent passed -- but the number ranged from a 94 per cent pass percentage at CISCE schools and 87 per cent at Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) schools to 59 per cent at Assam Higher Secondary Education Council Schools and 36 per cent at Jammu and Kashmir State Board of School Education schools.

Results were perhaps a reflection of the relative importance paid to education by a state government or of the institutional rigour of the individual board.
Obviously, the same history and literature texts cannot be used in Assam and in Jammu and Kashmir, but, as Mr Sibal has pointed out, teaching of science and mathematics can be standardised and made to conform to certain metrics.

Third, if Indian schooling is in such a mess that three of 10 Class 12 examination candidates are failing -and six of 10, if one considers Jammu and Kashmir alone -- then how come people like Mr Obama are praising this country's education system and hailing India as an intellectual superpower?

The truth is harsh: Mr Obama is comparing all of American schoolgoers with the cream of Indian society, children of which go to a small sliver of first-rate schools. He is pitting apples against oranges.

For a vast majority of Indians, education continues to remain the last bastion of the shortage economy.  A regulatory maze, controlled by rent-seeking bureaucrats who see permission to start a school or college as an extortion opportunity, has ensured that demand far outstrips supply.

This crisis is obvious when it comes to higher education. The reason the Class 10 examination is such an ogre is because failure to get good marks could result in a child not being allowed entry into a preuniversity course or, in some cases, even to Class 11 in his old school.

It is Darwinism at its most cruel. A sifting process starts that ends up in social trauma when it comes to undergraduate admissions two years later.

The shortage economy is doing even more damage at the school level. The government schools network is scarcely healthy in most Indian states and private schools cater to -- or are sometimes allowed to cater to -- only a tiny market.  Unless it rectifies the scarcities and infirmities of its school system, India could well reduce its socalled demographic dividend to a joke.

As a Heritage Foundation report (US-India Relations: Ensuring Indian Prosperity in the Coming Demographic Boom) pointed out in May, between 2009 and 2013, 90 million people are expected to join the Indian workforce.  However, an astonishing 58 million of them are likely to be secondary school dropouts.

This is not the India Barack Obama applauds.  But this is the India Mr Sibal must address. The state boards have to help him -- or should be made to. ASHOK MALIK can be contacted at malikashok@gmail.com