As I’ve joked before, The New York Times always seems to be pushing free market private sector solutions in South Asia. Many of India’s Poor Turn to Private Schools:
For more than two decades, M. A. Hakeem has arguably done the job of the Indian government. His private Holy Town High School has educated thousands of poor students, squeezing them into cramped classrooms where, when the electricity goes out, the children simply learn in the dark.
Parents in Holy Town’s low-income, predominantly Muslim neighborhood do not mind the bare-bones conditions. They like the modest tuition (as low as $2 per month), the English-language curriculum and the success rate on standardized tests. Indeed, low-cost schools like Holy Town are part of an ad hoc network that now dominates education in this south Indian city, where an estimated two-thirds of all students attend private institutions.
“The responsibility that the government should shoulder,” Mr. Hakeem said with both pride and contempt, “we are shouldering it.”
The issue seems to be that in terms of what it provides the masses India’s public sector is an unmitigated joke verging on disaster. What India needs is greater federalism, as it seems that coordination from the center is just not possible with all the special interests tugging at it.