New Delhi: Professor Amartya Sen will set up an institute in Santiniketan to find ways to improve the primary and secondary schools systems in India.

Professor Sen said Viswa-Bharati University was allotting five acres of land not far from his residence for the Centre for School Education. The institute will "study the management of schools" in the country and ways of "involving parents" to ensure that schools were better-run. It will be funded by him.

Professor Sen has spoken of the need for increasing social-sector expenditure to reduce illiteracy and also child-mortality. Today, he regretted that central expenditure (4.5 per cent of the Union budget expenditure last year was on human resource development and health) on the social sector was too meagre. And even when there was an increase in funds, it was usually to pay higher salaries to teachers. And sometimes, a hefty chunk of the allotment was not utilised.

Professor Sen’s institute would monitor the school-education system India India. "On an average day in Uttar Pradesh half the teachers are not in school," he said. He noted that even after his 1995 book Economic Development and Social Opportunity which called for increased government intervention in primary education and health care, there was no major shift in government policy.

"There has been some improvement and also, some regression, but no dramatic change," he said.

Speaking at a conference of editors, Professor Sen appeared skeptical about the drop in poverty levels, according to official figures and also unhappy with the Indian food policy. He said there wasn’t enough evidence to indicate that poverty has come down that drastically.

Also critical of the country’s food policy, he noted that a huge percentage of the Indian population consumed less than the minimum necessary while India has a "food surplus" of 45 million tonnes.

"We have to rethink our strategy of food production and distribution. Something has gone wrong in our food policy," he said.

For a large number of rural people, who didn’t produce enough food and had to buy food, this system leading to comparatively higher prices was a disadvantage. He felt there the really disadvantaged people were not organised enough.

"If I weren’t running a college (Trinity at Cambridge) I would have seen what I could do," he said.

Asked about the land-reform situation in West Bengal, he said that it had produced impressive results but had levelled off.
The movement, introduced by the Congress and implemented by the Left Front government, he said, had produced results and its benefits shouldn’t be underestimated. But the development of medical and educational facilities has to go much further, he said.

Professor Sen said the situation in terms of "human development" had improved considerably and there was near universal literacy along with a dramatic fall in fertility and child mortality rates.

On the other hand, he regretted the growth of "politically fanned intolerance" and called the demolition of the Babari Mosque one of the "blacker moments" of Indian history.