Is there a way of thinking about government programmes beyond outlays and expenditures? It is an outdated mode. Budget 2024 started several debates on allocations for education, health and defence, and other sectors—it was also an exercise in balancing demands from coalition partners for the government’s survival. This also raises the question, does budgetary support alone reflect government priorities?
For example, policies like ‘visa on arrival’ could significantly boost civil aviation and tourism, and wellness outcomes can be achieved through both corporate-led health insurance and public health infrastructure. The issue is whether market forces can be aligned with intended outcomes in key sectors like health, agriculture, and education. In agriculture, for instance, linking subsidies for seeds and planting materials to increased production could be more effective.
All of this calls for a shift in how reviews are conducted at all government levels—departmental, ministerial, and parliamentary. Currently, the focus is on budgetary outlays, procurement transparency, the physical status of delivered goods, and last but not least, satisfactory post-facto audits. For administrators, procedural compliance is as important as the outcome (if not more). They don’t want the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), or Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) to ever raise a doubt or question. It’s well known that a tryst with any of the three ‘Cs’ is a permanent professional handicap for civil servants.
Challenge for governance
The real challenge for governance professionals is to design systems that ensure transparency and fair play while delivering intended outcomes. Sometimes, like the mid-day meal scheme for schools, the alignment between outlay, objectives, and community needs is so clear that all stakeholders—educators, administrators, parents, and civil society—are eager to associate with the programme. Every school day, the PM Poshan scheme delivers 115 million cooked meals, with minimal failures, functioning with clockwise precision.
However, the same cannot be said about learning outcomes. As per the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) report of 2023, one-fourth of youth aged 14-18 still can’t fluently read a Grade 2-level text in their regional language, and more than half struggle with basic division. These growing gaps in education quality make it clear that access alone is insufficient. True progress requires meaningful learning, and it should prepare future generations for Viksit Bharat. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 rightly aims to bring ‘learning’ to the centre stage of school education.
It is not that the government did not attempt to address this issue. Starting in 2004, over 1,20,000 schools across India received Information and Communication Technology (ICT) equipment, but only 80,000 of them were able to establish a functional lab. The results were sub-optimal because ground-level preparations were not made, and expected outcomes were not clearly communicated in what was regarded as a ‘top-down intervention’.
Even where these labs were established, the performance was lacklustre because there was no proper assessment of their usage. For many schools, it became an ‘additional load’ for an already overworked staff. The vendors rushed to deliver their equipment without bothering to explain the basics, the block and district education offices merely ticked the number of schools that received the supplies, and the education directorate and the CM offices prematurely declared the mission a success. This was far from true. A World Bank review revealed the truth: poor maintenance, lack of interest, instructor vacancies, and minimal monitoring led to sparse usage, with computers in many schools remaining untouched in their boxes.
This ‘business-as-usual’ approach was challenged by the education secretaries of Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh, Naveen Jain and K Sandhya Rani. They understood that the real purpose of ICT in schools wasn’t just to introduce computers into the curriculum, but to improve learning outcomes across all subjects, particularly in Science, Technology, and Mathematics, as well as for remedial education. These states pioneering the use of an ‘ed-tech’ tool called Personalised Adaptive Learning (PAL), which focuses on measuring learning outcomes and leveraging the full potential of ICT infrastructure in schools.
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Digital learning in schools
Building on these examples, NITI Ayog has taken up a pilot project in four aspirational districts of UP— Fatehpur, Chandauli, Balarampur, and Sonbhadra. Per the new norms, ICT providers’ accountability shifts from merely installing labs to ensuring not just quality hardware but also its regular maintenance, and subject-specific educational content that increases students’ interest and engagement. This initiative has made some 2,500 teachers from grades 3 to 8 the principal stakeholders, reaching over 75,000 students.
Initial assessments show that students using these labs have experienced an increase of about 20 hours of usage per year compared to those who haven’t—a testament to the potential impact of results-based financing in education. With payments linked to the learning of students, providing regular support to teachers, on-time maintenance of ICT equipment and proactive sharing of usage data to schools became a norm, rather than an exception.
The true measure of success will not just lie in the number of smart classrooms or ICT labs established but in how effectively these labs get used and improve student learning. It is this transformation—one where technology, accountability, and education converge—that holds the key to fixing learning gaps in public school education in India. Another important change has been the shift from desktops to tablets for students in labs. Thus under the same budget, it was possible to procure fifty tablets as against 10 desktops, thus allowing for personalised usage of tablets by individual students.
What, then, are the key lessons here? As important (if not more) than outlays and routine expenditures is the willingness of those at the helm of programme design and implementation to engage with the ecosystem. This includes adopting best practices from both the government and the corporate sector, as well as communicating with stakeholders to empower and trust them. This is the only way in which the vast number of students in the government school system will become the torchbearers of Viksit Bharat.
Sanjeev Chopra is a former IAS officer and Festival Director of Valley of Words. Until recently, he was Director, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. He tweets @ChopraSanjeev. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)