State,Market and Social Inequalities: A Study of Primary Education in the Indian Punjab

I. Introduction

Inequality is the absence of equality, and the equality exits when X (e.g., income) is equally distributed across units, that is, when each unit possesses the same level of X (where the units could be individuals or groups etc.) (Firebaugh, 2003). As such, the inequality is a situation wherein some individuals or groups in a society have more opportunities, income, resources etc. than the other. Broadly speaking, there are two types of inequalities, viz. horizontal and vertical. While the former category is defined as the inequalities among culturally defined (or constructed) groups, in contrast to vertical inequalities, which are inequalities among households or individuals (Stewart & Langer, 2008). As such horizontal inequalities encompass those inequalities which surface across different sections of the society because of the groups they identify with (racial, ethnic, cultural, religious or gender, etc.), and by reason of which, some particular sections among them face prejudice, marginalization and discrimination. For example, if a particular group in a country has a systematically smaller amount of access to education vis-a-vis another, the children belonging to that group will not be able to attain the human development that the children of the equal merit from the other group are able to attain. Thus, while some form of vertical inequality always exists (depending on the variations in performance of different individuals), horizontal inequalities (which are also termed as social inequalities) wherever persist, are deleterious as they trap certain culturally defined groups, generation after generation, in a state of deprivation. It is, therefore, important to eradicate the phenomenon of social inequalities wherever it persists, albeit vertical inequalities also need to be addressed.

In this context, it needs to be underscored that the contribution of education to economic growth, poverty alleviation and reduction in inequalities is well recognized in economic literature (see Carnoy, 1993; Mincer, 1975; Psacharopoulos & Woodhall, 1985; Schultz, 1961). It is due to this reason that the education is widely perceived as a crucial vehicle for social and economic development of a country (Tilak, 2006). However, the education cannot lead to reduction of the inequalities, if there is a persistence of inequalities in education sector itself in terms of disparities in provisioning of education to different individuals or population groups. The educational inequalities, instead, result into perpetuation of all other inequalities. Furthermore, it also needs to be emphasized that out of the various levels and types of education, the primary education ¹ not only serves as a foundation for rest of the higher educational levels, and yields higher returns than secondary and higher educational levels (Tilak, 2005), it is also the starting point of dire inequalities which are impending to arise at the higher levels of education, as the inequalities, if exist at this level and once a child is not able to get equality of opportunity at primary education, he/she is expected to face the issue at higher levels also and rather in more intensified manner. It, therefore, becomes imperative for every country in this world to consider the objective of universalization of primary education (henceforth UPE) as one of the most crucial areas of development planning, and make concerted efforts not only to establish a highly developed system of primary education, but that the state, rather than the market, should act as major service provider. This is due to the reason that the undesirable outcome of decline in the role of the state and relying excessively on market in education, as cited by critics (see Schuetze & Mendiola, 2012), is the expansion of an unregulated and profit-pursuing private sector culminating into the commercialization of education. As such the concept of public good nature of education gets enfeebled and there is failure to achieve equality of opportunity in access to education (Altbach, 2005), which might result in the growing stratification of institutions and certain social groups might be restricted entry in some institutions, culminating into the rise of horizontal inequalities.

The South Asia region, accounting for about 3 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) and huge population (i.e., comprising one-fifth of the world’s population), has the largest concentration of poverty in the world, with human development indicators ranked among the lowest (Siddiqui, 2007). Insofar as the poor human development in the region is concerned, it is, inter alia, due to low priority given by this region to education sector (as South Asia has not provided adequate funds to education, as a proportion of gross national product [GNP] as well as on per capita and per student basis, particularly when paralleled with the high-income countries). And, of late, the South Asia has seen a substantial rise of private sector, and as such, this sector is emerging as an important service provider of educational services (and around one-third of primary schoolchildren in this region attend such schools; Dundar, Beteille, Riboud, & Deolalikar, 2014). Nevertheless, it is also imperative to note that all countries in this region do not have a uniform pattern of rise of market in education sector. And, even different states within these countries, depending the level of economic and educational development, have dissimilar levels of privatization of education as well as diverse patterns of educational inequalities. It is, therefore, essential to carry out an in-depth, not only country-specific, but state specific analysis pertaining to the rise of privatization and the incidence of educational inequalities, also keeping in view that there might be some sub-groups which might be facing multiple deprivations (in terms of horizontal inequalities).

Insofar as the provisioning of primary education in India (the largest country in South Asia) in the post-independence period is concerned, an active role of the state has been mandated by the Constitution of India for this purpose. As per Article 45 of the Indian Constitution ‘The State shall endeavor to provide within a period of 10 years from the commencement of the Constitution for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of 14 years’. Thereafter, in order to accomplish this constitutional objective of universalization of elementary education, several policies and procedures ² have been adopted. And, the policy interventions and schemes are known to have significantly improved the enrolments at elementary level and prevented the wide dropouts as well as enhanced retention capacity in the various states of India. However, the Government of India introduced new economic reforms (also referred to as neo-liberal economic or pro-market reforms) since 1991 which involve short-term stabilization and long-term structural adjustment policies (Tilak, 2002). These policies, no doubt, increased growth rate of the economy (Panagariya, 2004), but one of the most negative aspects of these new economic policies was that the budgetary resources for the education sector became frozen ³ and the role of the market started to increase in provisioning of education.

As far as the primary education sector in the state of Punjab (which is predominantly an agricultural state situated in the north-western region of India) is concerned, there have been observed remarkable accomplishments on the indicators pertaining to primary education in terms not only of the spatial distribution of availability of schools, ⁴ but nearly universal enrolment measured by gross enrolment ratio (henceforth GER) ⁵ and net enrolment ratio (henceforth NER). ⁵ However, it needs to be noted in this context that despite no one denies that the universal enrolment and the number of educational institutions are important issues, but these impressive indicators alone do not guarantee equal opportunities (Scaria, 2014) and therefore, these statistics might conceal some major exclusionary trends across the state’s diverse social groups particularly if the attainment of universalization of school education has come about by weakening the role of the state and rise of the market. It is, therefore, important to investigate an important question: Have these noteworthy attainments in primary educational indicators in Punjab also brought about the social equality. Insofar as the inequalities in education are concerned, they are normally examined by several characteristics, such as gender, caste, religion, economic conditions and between several regions. And, the social inequalities in education are examined by social groups—by caste (scheduled caste [SC], scheduled tribes [ST], other backward castes [OBCs] and non-scheduled/non-backward castes) and by religion (Hindus, Muslims, Christians and others) and by gender—between women and men (Tilak, 2015). The present study, however, focuses on two status hierarchies in the state of Punjab, viz. gender and caste (i.e., the vital millennium development goals). Moreover, it is also important to note, in this context, that the social inequalities in education in India per se deserve particular attention because traditional social disparities based on notions of pollution and impurity that governed caste relations are rapidly being transformed into class inequalities ⁶ through differential educational attainments (Desai & Thorat, 2012).

Given the above-mentioned background, it becomes important to examine the exact magnitude of the proliferation of private schools at the primary level of education in Punjab as a result of neo-liberal reforms at the national level, and its equity effects on the social inequalities, on which there is gap in literature. The present article, which is focused on examining these issues using the NSS data, is a humble attempt fill this gap in literature. It needs to be mentioned, in this context, that the NSS provides scores of in-depth data pertaining to the utilization of educational services and household costs thereof, disaggregated into the various levels of education, types of schools and by diverse population groups (viz. gender, caste, religion, region [rural–urban] and by household expenditure classes). The present study uses the NSS unit level data on education and is primarily based on the latest survey, that is, NSS 71st Round, 2014 (albeit data from the 52nd Round [1995–96] and the 64th Round [2007–08] have also been used to pinpoint the changing patterns in provisioning of primary education across the state and non-state providers).

The rest of the article has been divided into three parts. While Section II examines the privatization of primary education in Punjab and the social inequalities therein, Section III examines the household expenditure on primary education in government and private schools, and desegregations therein across social groups. The final section presents the summary and conclusions of the study.

II. Privatization of Primary Education and Social Inequalities

At the very outset, it is imperative to mention that the school education panorama in the state of Punjab can broadly, on the basis of management and funding criteria, be divided into three types of institutions, viz. (a) government schools (owned and run by government [central, state and local]); (b) private aided schools (privately owned and managed but grants-in-aid supported schools, falling in the public-private partnership [PPP] category); and (c) private unaided schools (not only privately owned and managed, but also financed by non-governmental sources). At the primary level, the private unaided schools can, based on legal status, further be divided into two categories, viz. recognized private schools and unrecognized private schools. While the former category of the private unaided schools comprises the schools which have been given recognition by government on the basis of certain specified criterion (e.g., minimum infrastructure), the latter category comprises the schools which failed to meet these criteria.

A number of forgoing research studies (e.g., Kingdon, 2007; Muralidharan & Kremer, 2009) have established that even though the government sector still dominates the schooling market in India, a noteworthy development during period of 1990s was a considerable growth of private schools in the country. Hence, it becomes highly important to pinpoint the exact magnitude of privatization of primary education in India per se and Punjab in particular. In this context, it needs to be noted that the extent of privatization of school education in Punjab is expected to be rather more vis-à-vis India. This is due to some specific developments in the state during last three decades. Since the mid-1980s due to the political turmoil, severe resource crunch, and non-responsive administration in the state of Punjab, on the one hand, and adoption of new economic policy, 1991 at the national level, on the other, public investment on social sectors has gradually been withdrawn (Gill, Singh & Brar, 2010). The public spending on education in Punjab, as a proportion of net state domestic product (NSDP), has declined from 3.29 per cent in the beginning of 1990s to 2.94 per cent by 2004–05 (triennium average), whereas it should have been increased to at least 6 per cent of NSDP of the state (Gill & Brar, 2011). Furthermore, a recent study by Gill (2016), which was focused on the north-western India, has noted that the private schools at the elementary level of education have flourished comparatively more in the plain area of Punjab vis-à-vis the hilly states (viz., Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir).

Table 1 strikingly demonstrates that the government schools used to dominate the primary school education market in Punjab in 1994–95 (with 70.41 per cent of total primary schoolchildren attending these schools). However, the wave of privatization of primary education since the 1990s has become so strong in Punjab that the relative share of state in the provisioning of primary education has steeply declined to 44.7 by 2007–08 and those of the NSPs increased tremendously (with the respective shares of private aided and private unaided sub-sectors to be 10.2 per cent and 43.1 per cent, respectively). Furthermore, the share of private unaided sub-sector in overall primary school market has further increased to 45.76 per cent by 2014. Thus, a noteworthy development of the neo-liberal economic reforms period is that the non-state providers (particularly the private unaided sub-sector) have captured the primary school education market in Punjab, which also shows that all accomplishments towards UPE in the state have happened through the market (on a demand-driven basis), instead of state provisioning. Furthermore, Table 1 also reports the corresponding scenario at India level. An examination of the data reveal that the state continues to be the predominant service provider in India during neo-liberal reforms period (albeit it’s relative share declined to 62.2 per cent in 2014 from 77.42 per cent in 1994–95) and the extent of privatization in the country as a whole, unlike the state of Punjab, is modest.

Furthermore, given the argument that education cannot be left to private sector as it is not only plagued by ‘market failures’ but it is also unjustified from the perspective of equity and rights (Jha, Das, Mohanty & Jha, 2008), it becomes imperative to analyse the extent to which this new development affect social equality in provisioning of primary education, that is, whether or not this substantial growth of private schools in the state caters to the pupils from the two genders and diverse social backgrounds in equal measure. Furthermore, also given the findings from other settings that periods of rapid educational expansion may not necessarily be accompanied by a narrowing of educational disparities by caste (Stash & Hannum, 2001), it can be anticipated that the state of Punjab, where much of the accomplishments in the area of primary education are attributed to the enormous magnitude of private sector, has huge inequalities by caste. Table 2 clearly reveals that while the most of the students (71.49 per cent) from the SC community in Punjab were attending the government schools at the primary level of education, a majority (55.55 per cent) of their counterparts from the OBC community and large majority (72.14 per cent) belonging to the other upper castes of Punjab were attending the private schools (aided and unaided) in 2014. In India, on the other hand, not only a large majority of the SCs were attending the government schools, the majority of the schoolchildren from the OBCs and other forward castes were also enrolled in government schools at the primary level of education in 2014. Moreover, a close perusal of the data from Table 3 shows the said scenario of caste-wise distributions across rural and urban Punjab and it comes to the fore that 82.74 per cent of the SC students pursuing primary education in rural areas of the state are enrolled in government schools, as against 28.97 per cent in the urban areas. Thus, the analysis unambiguously establishes that a surpassing increase in the role of market in provisioning of primary education in Punjab (unlike India per se) has serious implications in terms of strengthening the caste inequalities, and the rural SC students are particularly suffering from exclusion under the new dispensation.

Furthermore, it is also essential to note that that the private school proliferation in Punjab could have antagonistic outcome in terms of gender inequity, if households choose to send sons to the private schools and daughters to the government schools. The scenario of attendance according to gender across the government and private schools in the state therefore is supposed to provide further useful insights in this context. An analysis of the information from Table 2 further demonstrates that 46.56 per cent of the boys and 47.89 per cent of the girls studying at primary level of education in the state were attending government institutes in 2014 and rest of them were attending the private school. As such, there seems no gender discrimination in terms of private and government school attendance across the two genders. The corresponding data, on the other hand, for India show that there is an issue, to some extent, of pro-male gender discrimination in terms of preference of boys’ enrolments in private schools, vis-à-vis government schools. Furthermore, an examination of the data given in Table 3 shows that 55.43 per cent of the boys and 61.49 per cent of the girls were attending government schools at rural level in the state in 2014. Thus, the analysis clearly shows the prevalence of the issue of pro-male gender biasness in the rural Punjab (in terms of preference of enrolling boys in private schools over the girls and over-representation of the girls in the government schools). And the urban Punjab, on the other hand, comes out to be pro-female. Stash and Hannum (2001) have aptly explained the possible factors which might have led to this sort of phenomena at the rural level. According to this study in many societies, social traditions and financial incentives exert positive pressure on parents to invest in the long-term economic viability of sons over that of their daughters. This also seems true in the context of rural Punjab.

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Table 2.

Distribution of Primary Schoolchildren in Punjab by Gender, Caste and Type of School in Punjab vis-à-vis India (2014): A Comparative Perspective (Per Cent)

Gender	Type of School	Punjab				India
		SC (Including ST, If Any)	OBC	Others	Total	SC (Including ST, If Any)	OBC	Others	Total
Male	Government	71.20	50.79	23.91	46.56	75.23	52.14	52.89	59.90
	Private aided	1.60	9.52	10.87	5.56	6.77	7.43	8.44	7.97
	Private unaided	27.20	39.68	65.22	47.88	18.00	40.43	38.66	32.13
	Total	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00
Female	Government	71.82	37.04	32.26	47.89	77.58	59.72	54.75	64.71
	Private aided	2.73	12.96	15.32	9.18	7.23	8.76	10.64	8.24
	Private unaided	25.45	50.00	52.42	42.93	15.19	31.52	34.61	27.06
	Total	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00
Person	Government	71.49	44.44	27.86	47.04	76.33	55.82	53.70	62.20
	Private aided	2.13	11.11	12.98	7.20	6.99	8.08	9.40	8.13
	Private unaided	26.38	44.44	59.16	45.76	16.68	36.10	36.91	29.67
	Total	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00

Source: Author’s computations from NSS unit level data (71st Round, 2014).

Notes: 1. SC, ST and OBC stand for Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Castes, respectively.

2. The State of Punjab does not have any ST population as per Census of India, 2011. However, there exist some ST students in primary schools, as per the information provided by NSSO data. As their number is nearly negligible, they have been clubbed with the SC caste for the purpose of construction of this table.

It is also important to examine the persistence of gender inequalities across the social groups (Ramachandran, 2012) so as to ascertain the social group with highest level of gender discrimination in primary education particularly in the rural areas of the state under the new dispensation. Table 3 provides the across-cohorts information pertaining to public and private schools’ attendance at primary education in Punjab. It comes to the fore that a large majority of male as well as female children (i.e., 82.42 per cent and 83.12 per cent, respectively) from SC community at the rural level were attending government schools in 2014; and very less proportion of them were attending the private unaided schools. Moreover, in case of OBC community, the share of total attendance at primary level in government schools was much lower (i.e., 40.00 per cent in case of boys and 53.57 per cent for girls) and the rest of them were attending private schools. On the other hand, merely 23.81 per cent of the boys and 28.57 per cent of the girls from the other forward castes were enrolled in government primary schools. Thus, the type of school the households are able to choose for their wards at the primary level of education is largely contingent on their caste and gender of the student, which clearly shows that a new form of social inequality has emerged in rural Punjab as a result of privatization of primary education. This validates the observation made by Tilak (2002) that the unaided primary schools do provide some financial relief to the government, but at huge social and economic cost and result in the adverse effects like accentuating dualism, elitism and class inequalities.

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Table 3.

Distribution of Primary Schoolchildren in Punjab by Gender, Caste, Region and Type of School, 2014 (Per Cent)

Gender	Caste	Rural				Urban
		Govt	PA	PUA	Total	Govt.	PA	PUA	Total
Male	SC (including ST, if any)	82.42	1.10	16.48	100.00	50.00	8.33	41.67	100.00
	OBC	40.00	6.67	53.33	100.00	38.24	11.76	50.00	100.00
	Others	23.81	3.17	73.02	100.00	11.90	11.90	76.19	100.00
	Total	55.43	2.72	41.85	100.00	26.62	11.69	61.69	100.00
Female	SC (including ST, if any)	83.12	3.90	12.99	100.00	18.31	0.00	81.69	100.00
	OBC	53.57	0.00	46.43	100.00	19.23	26.92	53.85	100.00
	Others	28.57	10.71	60.71	100.00	9.72	19.44	70.83	100.00
	Total	61.49	5.59	32.92	100.00	19.23	16.15	64.62	100.00
Person	SC (including ST, if any)	82.74	2.38	14.88	100.00	28.97	2.80	68.22	100.00
	OBC	46.55	3.45	50.00	100.00	30.00	18.33	51.67	100.00
	Others	26.05	6.72	67.23	100.00	10.90	15.38	73.72	100.00
	Total	58.26	4.06	37.68	100.00	23.24	13.73	63.03	100.00

Source: Author’s computations from NSS unit level data (71st Round, 2014).

Notes: 1. SC, ST and OBC stand for Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Castes, respectively.

2. The State of Punjab does not have any ST population as per Census of India, 2011. However, there exist some ST students in primary schools, as per the information provided by NSSO data. As their number is nearly negligible, they have been clubbed with the SC caste for the purpose of construction of this table.

3. The acronyms Govt., PA and PUA stand for government, private aided and private unaided schools, respectively.

Given the aforesaid findings of social inequalities in access to government versus private schools, it becomes essential to investigate an important interrogation: Why is it important and more privileged to study in a private school in Punjab (vis-à-vis government school)? In this context, Desai et al. (2010) observed that the parental decisions to send children to private schools in India seem understandable given that the children in private schools have higher reading and arithmetic skills (than those in government schools) even among the poorest families or those with very low education levels. Moreover, another factor due to which the private schools in the state are the preferred choice is English medium education provided by these schools. The government primary schools, on the other hand, provide education in Punjabi medium only. In this context, Govinda (1995) pointed out that the new educational policy endorses learning in the initial classes through mother tongue, but this is insisted on only in government/local body-managed schools. The parents, however, want their wards to become fluent in English (which is a capability perceived to be important not only to access the jobs but also synonymous with higher social status in the present times).

With the above-said background, it becomes essential to look at the insights emerging from NSSO data in this regard. As per information provided by Table 4, the leading perceived reason for preference of private institutions by the households at the primary level of education in the state of Punjab was ‘better environment of learning’ ⁷ in such schools (as reported by 55.8 per cent of them). It was followed by ‘English as the medium of instruction’ (reported by 18.1 per cent of students) and ‘quality of education ⁷ in government schools is not satisfactory’ (as reported by 16.7 per cent). Furthermore, it also emerges from the gender-wise analysis across the rural and urban areas of the state that nearly same situation prevailed about the perceived causes of preference of private schools and ‘better environment of learning’ has been the most important perceived reason for preferring such schools at the primary level of education in the state, followed by ‘English as the medium of instruction’. These findings are in consonant with Singh, Monga and Kaur (2015), which established that better infrastructural facilities of the private schools, modern teaching aids, co-curriculum activities and English as a medium of instructions, turned out to be the most attractive factors promoting private education in the rural Punjab. Furthermore, a recent study by Kaur (2017) has also revealed that the academic performance of children studying in both government as well as private unrecognized schools in the rural area of district Mansa (Punjab) is dismal. Moreover, ASER survey (2015) also brought to the fore that the government elementary schools in the rural Punjab failed to meet even the basic RTE norms, for example, merely 60.5 per cent, 69.7 per cent, 64.8 per cent of the schools, respectively, were meeting pupil–teacher ratio norm, separate girls’ functional toilets, playgrounds etc.

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Table 4.

Distribution of Private Schoolchildren at Primary Level by Reason for Preferring Private Schools in Punjab, 2014 (Per Cent)

Reasons	Rural			Urban			Total
	Male	Female	Person	Male	Female	Person	Male	Female	Person
Government school is not available nearby	6.4	0	3.7	6.3	11.5	8.9	6.3	5.8	6.1
Better environment of learning	46.7	65.1	54.4	53.9	61.3	57.6	49.7	63.2	55.8
English is the medium of instruction	27.4	15.3	22.4	16	10.1	13	22.7	12.7	18.1
Quality of education in government schools is not satisfactory	15.3	19.6	17.1	16.7	16	16.4	15.9	17.8	16.7
Tried for government school but could not get admission	0	0	0	0.6	0	0.3	0.3	0	0.1
Can’t say	4.1	0	2.4	6.5	1.1	3.8	5.1	0.5	3
All	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100	100

Source: Author’s computations from NSS unit level data (71st Round, 2014).

Thus, given that the learning environment in the government schools is perceived to be of formidable concern and that they provide education in Punjabi medium only, and the biggest problem is that most of the SC students, particularly at the rural level, are attending these schools. Moreover, it also comes to the fore that the girls from the OBCs as well as the other forward castes in rural Punjab are also at a disadvantage. These findings are particularly important as they dispel some commonly held view that the picture of educational inequalities at primary education in Punjab is not bleak as the state has nearly accomplished UPE.

Given that affordability is an important consideration for the households to enrol their children in government or private schools (Jamil, Javaid & Rangaraju, 2012), it becomes important to make a comprehensive analysis of the patterns of household expenditure on primary education across the government and private schools in Punjab. This type of analysis is going to help us to analyse the equity implications of the largely proliferated private schools at the primary level in the state. Before proceeding to the cross-school comparisons, it is important to note that the household cost (or expenditure) of education is known to be a vital element of educational funding in Asia where parental aspirations are known to be high and the cost of education occupies a substantial part of household economy (Nishimura, 2006). And, the existing evidence in the context of India also points out that the household expenditures on education are highly substantial, and that even the poorest households are feeling the compulsion to spend sizable amounts of their meagre income on education (e.g., Tan, 1985; Tilak, 1985, 1996).

An analysis of the data in Table 5 clearly reveals that the households in Punjab, on an average, incur huge expenditures on acquiring primary education for their wards (₹10,014 per student per annum in 2014), which is considerably higher vis-à-vis India (where it is ₹5,624). In this context, it needs to be noted that since the household capacity to pay measured in terms of per capita income differs in magnitude across Punjab and India (which was estimated to be ₹92,638 and ₹74,380 in Punjab and India, as per the information provided by economic survey, 2014-15), the larger magnitude of household expenditure on primary education in Punjab in private schools (vis-à-vis India) could be due to higher paying capacity of the households in the state. Therefore, it is not appropriate to compare these expenditures across Punjab and India in absolute terms, rather the most suitable way of making comparisons of the prevailing situation in Punjab with India per se is to work out proportionate measures. Table 5 provides the information in proportionate terms also. A close perusal of the data clearly reveals that a student pursuing primary education in Punjab on an average spent 7.39 per cent of the annual household consumption expenditure in 2014 (which is still higher vis-à-vis India, where this proportionate figure is merely 4.49 per cent), which evidently establishes that the household costs of pursuing primary education in private schools in Punjab, even in relative terms, are considerably higher vis-à-vis India. As such, these schools seem almost entirely unregulated in the state.

Furthermore, on contrasting the magnitude of household expenditure on primary education in the government schools with the private schools, it comes to the fore that this expenditure in private aided and unaided schools in Punjab, on an average basis, is 13.65 and 12.79 times higher respectively vis-a-vis the government schools. Thus, in order to pursue primary education in private aided schools and purely private schools, the households in Punjab have to incur ₹18,541 and ₹17,366 per student per annum respectively in 2014 (i.e., 10.31 and 9.85 per cent of annual household consumption expenditure, respectively). On the other hand, a household correspondingly shells out ₹1358 per student per annum (merely 1.30 per cent of annual household consumption expenditure) if the child is in the government school. Thus, the household expenditure on primary education widely differs according to the type of school, and that the private schools are not only dominant in the primary school education market of Punjab, but that pursuing primary education in private schools in the state is really a costly affair (vis-à-vis government schools). Moreover, the analysis also establishes that the primary education even in the government schools is not being provided free of cost (as mandated by the Indian Constitution). The data further reveal that the household expenditure on primary education in India is merely 1.71 per cent, 7.95 per cent and 9.64 per cent of annual household consumption expenditure for government, private-aided and private-unaided schools, respectively, which implies that not only in terms of magnitude of privatization, but also in terms of costs of pursuing education in private schools, Punjab fare rather unfavourably (compared to India).

A further close perusal of the data in the table shows that pronounced pro-male gender discrimination persists in household expenditure on primary education across almost all schools. The households spend higher level of annual household consumption expenditure on primary education of their boys (i.e., 1.57 per cent) vis-à-vis their girl children (where the corresponding proportion is merely 1.00 per cent) in government schools. The corresponding figures for India were 1.78 per for boys and 1.63 per cent for girls, indicating that the pro-male gender discrimination in case of government schools is much higher in Punjab vis-à-vis India (where this discrimination is marginal). This is also true in case of private unaided schools, where households spend 10.07 per cent of annual consumption expenditure on boys and merely 9.09 per cent on girls. Moreover, the households at the urban level have to incur 1.72 times higher expenditures for the primary education of their wards vis-à-vis their rural counterparts. Moreover, it is higher in relative terms also, where the respective proportions were 8.59 and 6.17 for the urban and rural areas, respectively. Thus, there is an apparent rural–urban disparity in the state in household costs of primary schooling (both in absolute terms as well as in proportionate terms).

Given the aforesaid findings, it becomes important to examine the break-up of the overall household expenditure into various components (viz. course fee, books, stationery and uniform, transport, private coaching etc.) in private schools in Punjab so as to know which components significantly contribute to larger size of household expenditure on primary education in such schools. Table 6 brings out that the single biggest component, contributing to the overall household expenditure on primary education in private unaided schools in Punjab is course fee, that is, 54.20 per cent and 63.20 per cent of the overall household expenditure on primary education at rural and the urban levels, respectively. Furthermore, the second biggest cost component in rural areas is transport (even higher than urban Punjab). This is primarily due to the fact that the children have to travel longer distance to access the private unaided schools from the place of their residence. Furthermore, the data also reveal that the phenomenon of private coaching is also prevalent at this very basic level of education. And, almost similar is the scenario of the private aided schools.

Furthermore, given that in order to pursue primary education even in government schools, the children have to incur some expenditure (albeit of significantly smaller size vis-à-vis private schools), it becomes vital to examine which particular components are considerably contributing to such expenditures. Table 6 brings out that the books, stationery and uniform account for the major portion of expenditure (i.e., 63.85 per cent [at rural level] and 46.89 per cent [at urban level]) in government schools. This indicates that the free books/stationary/uniform provided in government schools are highly inadequate vis-à-vis the requirement. This is in consonant with the finding by PROBE (1999) that although tuition fee in public primary schools is negligible and almost completely subsidized, the overhead costs of books and uniforms can be quite high, discouraging poor families from sending their children to school. Similarly, Tilak (1996) observed that the material incentives (i.e., provision of text books and stationary) provided by government in India are found to be available only to a small fraction of the students.

Given the aforementioned observations, there are likely to be vast inter-caste variabilities (more particularly in rural Punjab) in household expenditure on primary education. This cross-cohort comparison has been presented in Table 7. While an SC household at the rural level spent merely ₹3,814 per student per annum and ₹2,537 per student per annum, respectively, on the primary schooling of its male and female child in 2014, such expenditure have been higher in case of other forward castes by 4.31 and 4.88 times, respectively. Moreover, the corresponding figures for the OBCs were also higher. The same is true for urban Punjab also. Likewise, the rural–urban difference in household expenditure on primary education across castes and genders are also marked and have been found to be the highest among the SC households per se and their girl children in particular.

Thus, some interesting patterns come to the fore from this analysis. First, there are huge inter-caste variabilities in household expenditure on primary education in Punjab, at both rural and urban levels, wherein the SCs fared worst, followed by OBCs when compared to the other forward castes. Second, there is pro-male gender discrimination in household expenditure on primary education across all the castes at the rural Punjab and it is at both rural as well urban levels in case of SCs. Thirdly, the SC girls at the rural level of the state stand at the bottommost level in terms of household spending on primary education. On the whole, it can be generalized that the most pernicious outcomes of the existence of the household expenditure on primary education is that it fosters social and gender inequalities.

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Table 6.

Components of Household Expenditure on Primary Education in Punjab, 2014 (₹; per Student per Annum)

Region	Type of School	Course Fee	Books, Stationery and Uniform	Transport	Private Coaching	Other Expenditure	Total Expenditure
Rural	Government	176 (14.10)	795 (63.85)	115 (9.24)	100 (8.01)	60 (4.80)	1,245 (100.00)
	Private aided	9850 (62.90)	2,464 (15.74)	2121 (13.55)	300 (1.92)	925 (5.91)	15,661 (100.00)
	Private unaided	9,354 (54.20)	3,155 (18.28)	3,333 (19.31)	788 (4.57)	599 (3.47)	17,258 (100.00)
	Total	4225 (51.47)	1,803 (21.96)	1478 (18.01)	382 (4.65)	310 (3.77)	8,209 (100.00)
Urban	Government	629 (37.17)	794 (46.89)	52 (3.04)	139 (8.23)	79 (4.66)	1,693 (100.00)
	Private aided	11727 (59.82)	3,158 (16.11)	2718 (13.87)	1103 (5.63)	843 (4.30)	19,602 (100.00)
	Private unaided	10994 (63.20)	3,220 (18.51)	2,534 (14.57)	958 (5.51)	507 (2.92)	17,396 (100.00)
	Total	8,683 (61.84)	2,648 (18.86)	1,982 (14.11)	787 (5.61)	453 (3.22)	14,042 (100.00)

Source: Author’s computations from NSS unit level data (71st Round, 2014).

Note: The figures in parentheses refer to the percentage share of the total.

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Table 7.

Household Expenditure on Primary Education in Punjab by Gender, Caste, Region and Type of School, 2014 (₹; per Student per Annum)

Region	Type of School	Male				Female
		SC (Including ST, If Any)	OBC	Others	Total	SC (Including ST, If Any)	OBC	Others	Total
Rural	Government	1,476.76 (1.27)	1,112 (0.94)	1,508.33 (1.09)	1,425 (1.31)	764 (0.79)	871 (0.83)	2,348 (1.72)	1,047 (0.99)
	Private aided	11,900 (4.96)	5,650 (18.85)	18,500 (14.01)	7,333 (6.04)	13,753 (12.72)	NA	18,441 (13.64)	16,878 (13.32)
	Private unaided	14,116 (14.26)	16,140 (10.32)	20,085 (11.28)	18,102 (11.47)	11,707 (10.00)	18,465 (9.11)	16,441 (8.58)	16,072 (8.97)
	Total	3,813.74 (3.41)	9,430 (7.67)	16,438 (9.73)	8,908 (6.78)	2,537 (2.53)	8,861 (5.92)	12,379 (7.29)	6,070 (5.31)
Urban	Government	1,783 (2.66)	1,578 (1.84)	3,443 (3.45)	2,123 (2.49)	772 (0.82)	548 (0.66)	1,703 (1.30)	988 (0.98)
	Private aided	14,076 (12.57)	10,335 (8.19)	19,910 (7.36)	16,628 (7.97)	NA	20,445 (14.54)	22,793 (10.51)	22,010 (11.50)
	Private unaided	12,960 (10.49)	14,935 (8.64)	21,346 (9.11)	18,900 (9.17)	11,393 (2.65)	14,407 (9.55)	17,623 (11.04)	15,678 (10.01)
	Total	7,464 (7.50)	9287 (6.93)	19,044 (8.56)	14,184 (8.14)	7,078 (5.59)	13,368 (10.02)	17,080 (10.17)	13,876 (9.20)

Source: Author’s computations from NSS unit level data (71st Round, 2014).

Notes: 1. SC, ST and OBC stand for Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Castes, respectively.

2. The State of Punjab does not have any ST population as per Census of India, 2011. However, there exist some ST students in primary schools, as per the information provided by NSSO data. As their number is nearly negligible, they have been clubbed with the SC caste for the purpose of construction of this table.

3. The figures in parentheses refer to the per student per annum household expenditure on primary education as a proportion of annual household consumption expenditure.

4. NA stands for not available.

On the basis on the aforesaid analysis, it becomes established that there has been a massive growth of private schools (particularly the private unaided sub-sector) in Punjab during the neo-liberal economic reforms period and, presently these schools, by replacing the government schools, have predominantly captured the primary school education market in the state. Moreover, it also turns out that the most of the accomplishments towards UPE in Punjab have happened though the market (on demand-driven basis), instead of through state provisioning. Furthermore, the government schools continue to be the predominant service providers at primary level of education in India per se. Besides, on contrasting the magnitude of household expenditure in the government schools with the private schools in the state, it comes to the fore that the average household expenditure to pursue primary education in private aided and unaided schools is 13.65 and 12.79 times higher respectively vis-a-vis the government schools. Accordingly, in order to pursue primary education in purely private schools, the households have to incur 9.85 per cent of their annual consumption expenditure (which is merely 1.30 per cent in case of government schools). As such, these schools seem almost entirely unregulated in the state and that the excessive privatization of primary education has led the state towards transformation of its primary education system into highly inegalitarian in character.

Given, on the other hand, that the learning environment in the government schools in the state is of formidable concern, and that these schools provide education only in Punjabi medium, the access to better learning environment as well as English medium education has become contingent on the households’ ability to pay, making education a tradable commodity during the era of neo-liberal economic reforms. In such circumstances, the private schools in the state do not cater to the pupils from the two genders and diverse castes in equal measure. As such, the pro-male gender discrimination in terms of preference of enrolling boys in private schools has come to the fore in the rural Punjab. Furthermore, the type of school (government or private) the households in the state are able to choose for their wards at the primary level of education has largely become contingent on their caste, which clearly shows that a new form of social inequality has emerged in Punjab. Thus, it becomes unambiguously established that a surpassing increase in the role of market in provisioning of primary education in Punjab has resulted in serious implications in terms of strengthening the gender and caste inequalities, viz. the privatization has proven to be advantageous to the upper castes and boys in the state and disadvantageous to the SCs, OBCs and girls. These findings are particularly important as they dispel some commonly held view that the picture of educational inequalities at primary education in Punjab is not bleak as the state has nearly accomplished UPE.

The social segmentation in the primary education system is unarguably feared to culminate into deepening of the social divisions in the state, and as such it has numerous repercussions, for example, it strengthens the preconceived notions and prejudices on the child’s mind, restricting its unobstructed and well-rounded development. Moreover, it also results in erection of inferiority complex in the minds of the underprivileged sections of the society. Furthermore, Education Commission (1966; popularly known as Kothari Commission) very aptly pointed out in this context

This is bad not only for the children of the poor but also for the children from the rich and privileged groups. It gives them a short term advantage insofar as it enables them to perpetuate and consolidate their position. But it must be realized that, in the long run, their self-interest lies in identifying themselves with the masses. By segregating their children, they prevent them from sharing the life and experiences of the children of the poor and coming into contact with the realities of life.

Thus, as long as the dichotomy of private schools with high household costs of sending a child coupled with less effective government schools continue to exist, the social inequality will continue to remain a challenge. Therefore, the government should encourage heterogeneity of the social mix of children in all schools recognizing this to be essential for quality education for all children, both rich and poor (CABE, 2005).

Furthermore, also given that the educational inequalities play an important role in creating disparities in earnings (Desai & Thorat, 2012), the social policy needs to reasonably react to the present newly constructed social exclusion in primary education in the state, and that the educational planners and policy makers must deal the large social differentials in access to better learning environment in primary schooling. In this context, it needs to be highlighted that the provisioning of basic education across the world is viewed as primarily a government responsibility and the private school may exist in parallel, but merely to supplement to the public systems of education (Bray & Bunly, 2005). Moreover, also given that the state, in egalitarian societies, operationalizes policies and programmes which help nurture all children in equal fashion (Govinda, 1995), it becomes essential for the state of Punjab not only to play a predominant role in provisioning of primary education, but also to ensure that the state-financed school education system functions properly, without which the market forces will continue to strengthen the social inequalities.