Regional variation in basic educational opportunity

India is a large country with a good amount of regional variation, not only in culture, lan-guage, caste or religious dynamics, but also in terms of educational development. While Kerala (a Southern state) with a 100% literacy rate stands as the best performing state

in India in terms of education, Bihar (an Eastern state) remain consistently underdevel-oped that still shows a literacy rate of below 50% even in the 2001 census (Ghosh 2006, Gourishankar & Sai Lokachari 2012). It is therefore worth a separate analysis, to see how differently the regions perform in terms of child access to elementary education. We use the most commonly used regional partition of India as -North,East,Central,North-East, South and West¹⁰.

For the survey years used for the present analysis, majority of the population is from Central, Eastern and Southern region, whereas North-East and North have the smallest share. All regions are majorly Hindu regions, but the non-Hindu population share is relatively higher for the North and the North-East. Caste composition is even more varying across regions. South has relatively more concentration of OBCs, while North-East is the tribal hub of India with the largest share of SC/STs who are mostly from rural sector. Proportion of female school goers are almost similar for all regions with a little higher share in South which is known for its phenomenal progress of female literacy. Mothers are always way less educated than fathers in all over India, but West has relatively more children with high educated fathers occupied in white collar type jobs. Since circumstance specific composition varies across regions, it is possible that a particular circumstance that is advantageous to one region may be a cause of hindrance to other. We nevertheless consider the same set of circumstances for comparability in our regional analysis as well.

However neither of the HOI and the D-index are sub-group consistent, in the sense that it is possible to have a non-increasing HOI for the nation even though most of the regions have an increasing HOI and others remain the same. An alternative is to use the geometric HOI that is calculated from the geometric mean of the circumstance specific coverage for each region. But geometric HOI may have a very low value in case of diverge and large number of circumstances, particularly if coverage of a specific circumstance is relatively low for one region (Dabalen et al. 2015). Also unlike HOI, the geometric HOI

10State wise composition: Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Uttarakhand -constitutesNorth; Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal - constitutesEast; Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh - constitutes Central; Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura - constitutes North-East; Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil-nadu, Pondichery, Kerala, Lakshadeep - constitutes South and Gujrat, Daman & Diu, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Maharashtra, Goa - constitutesWest.

is not amicable to intuitive graphical interpretation. For this reason we consider HOI for the regional analysis as well taking into account the same group of circumstances for each region. We therefore refrain from comparing the regional analysis to the national one and interpret the regional results strictly on their own, not in comparison with a national yardstick.

Figure 3.2 gives the HOI and the associated coverage for all outcomes associated to elementary education, namely, timely start of elementary schooling by the age of 6-7 years, timely finishing of the same by the age of 14-15 years and school attendance for different age cohorts (younger cohort of 6-10 years and older cohort of 11-15 years). The first two panel corresponds to the timely starting and completion of elementary schooling and the latter two panels are for school attendance at different age cohorts. In each diagram the vertical bar corresponds to the value of HOI and the dot represents the coverage of the outcome for that region¹¹. The gap between the dot and the bar is therefore the penalty for development due to the existing IOP in the society. So higher this gap larger is the degree of IOP for that outcome in that particular region. First of all notice that there exist IOP for almost all regions as the top of the bar is always below the dot. Secondly regional variation is less in case of school attendance than in case of timely start and finishing, which is a similar trend found in the Latin American and Sub-Saharan African countries as well.

Although both HOI and the coverage increases over time in all aspects of elementary education across all regions, Central and East are two of the worst performing region both before and after the implementation of the free education policy. Southern India on the other hand not only stands better in terms of timely beginning and completion of basic elementary education, IOP is minimum for South as well (as reflected by the minimum gap between the bar and the dot). As far as successful completion of basic elementary schooling is concerned, South and West were equally good in 2004-05 but the improvement over time is rather pronounced for the former region. Whereas East has the lowest HOI as well as the lowest coverage for starting elementary education at the right age that is closely followed by Central India. But it is the Central region that stands worst in terms of timely finishing of elementary education, indicating that the problem

11The figure is drawn from Table3.A.4in appendix 3.A.

Staring elementary schooling on time (6-7 yrs.)

(a) 2004-05 (b) 2011-12

Finishing elementary schooling on time (14-15 yrs.)

(c) 2004-05 (d) 2011-12

School attendance: younger cohort (6-10 yrs.)

(e) 2004-05 (f) 2011-12

School attendance: older cohort (11-15 yrs.)

(g) 2004-05 (h) 2011-12

Figure 3.2: Elementary education: Regional variation in HOI

of school drop-outs may be higher for this part of the country.

Figure 3.3 plots the value of IOP as represented by their respective D-indices for all outcomes and across every region. The upper panel plots the regional D-indices for timely starting and finishing of elementary schooling, whereas the lower panel plots the same for school attendance at different age cohorts¹². Each panel therefore plots two outcomes that are differentiated by the diamond and round headed points. While the vertical distance between the similar points represents the change inIOP over time within a specific region, the horizontal line connecting the point-heads trace out a relative ranking of the regions in terms of IOP within each survey years. Once again the regional variation in IOP is rather noticeable in the upper panel for the beginning and completion of elementary schooling on time and while South stands the best performing region overall, East and Central are the worst performing ones, also in terms of IOP.

East has the highest IOP in timely beginning of elementary schooling with relatively large differences as compared to the other regions and during 2004-05 it also stands out as a rather opportunity unequal region in terms of school attendance as well. But it is the same region that improves the most over time in almost all aspects of quality elementary education (as the vertical distance between similar point-heads are maximum for East mostly). Central part of India however did not improve as much as East and by 2011-12, it is the region for which IOP is maximum for most of the outcomes. South is the best performing region in terms ofIOP as well followed closely by West. Both of these regions were quite close in terms of school attendance at older cohort and timely completion of elementary schooling, although it is South that better equalizes educational opportunity over time as compared to the West. The upper panel of Figure 3.3 reflects that for either of the survey rounds IOP is considerably higher for the timely completion of elementary education than the beginning of it, for all regions. Except for North-East, the second panel shows that IOP in school attendance is higher as well for older school going children. Together these indicate that in almost all parts of India, while children from varying circumstances get a relatively more enthusiastic beginning by timely enrollment in schools, the differences in their social and family backgrounds started to impair the

12Notice that the scale ofIOP measures for the two panels are different. Hence the graphs within the panel and not across the panel, are immediately comparable. While comparing the visuals between the two panels one needs to mind the range of y-axis.

Quality of elementary education: staring and finishing on time

School attendance: younger and older cohort

Figure 3.3: Elementary education: Changes in IOP over time and regions

regular continuation of formal education as the children gets older.