Free education? or free to die?

Free and compulsory education
Renuka Bisht, Hindustan Times
The constitutional promise of free and compulsory education stands resoundingly broken. Not only are 65 million children not getting any schooling, the number of child labourers has increased from 11.6 to 12.7 million between 1991-2001. In the same period, the female-male ratio among children in the 0-6 age group has declined from 945 to 927 girls per 1,000 boys. India also has the highest number of maternal deaths every year.
In the run up to independence, a forward-looking Health Survey and Development Committee headed by Joseph Bhore had put forth a forward-looking universal healthcare plan covering the whole of India. Six decades later, with public expenditure on health dismally stuck at around one per cent of the GDP, large sections of our population continue to suffer because of poor medical access.
Preventable diseases continue to account for 50 per cent of reported illnesses. TB alone takes 400,000 lives each year, and is the leading cause of death in the 15-45 age group. Increasing HIV infections, which make people more susceptible to this disease, mean it will pose an increasingly serious health hazard. Meanwhile only 44 per cent of children aged 12-23 month receive all recommended vaccinations and, despite more than two decades of immunization, India still has the largest remaining pool of polio transmission in the world.
And we are still struggling against our oldest nemesis: hunger. It is astonishing, as Amartya Sen says, that even famine-stricken Africa manages to ensure a much higher level of regular nourishment than does India. Whether it is maternal undernourishment or the incidence of underweight babies or the frequency of cardiovascular diseases among adults who are poorly fed in the womb, India’s record is among the very worst in the world. (end)