Today, India’s education sector remains a victim of poor policies, restrictive regulations and orthodoxy. Despite being enrolled in schools, children are not learning adequately. Increasingly, parents are seeking alternatives through private inputs in school and tuition. Students are dropping out from secondary school in spite of high financial returns of secondary education, and those who do complete it have inferior conceptual knowledge. Higher education is over-regulated and under-governed, keeping away serious private providers and reputed global institutes. Graduates from high schools, colleges and universities are not readily employable, and few are willing to pay for skill development. Ironically, the Right to Education Act, if strictly enforced, will result in closure of thousands of non-state schools, and millions of poor children will be left without access to education. Eleventh in the series, India Infrastructure Report 2012 discusses challenges in the education sector — elementary, secondary, higher, and vocational — and explores strategies for constructive change and opportunities for the private sector. It suggests that immediate steps are required to reform the sector to reap the benefits from India’s ‘demographic dividend’ due to a rise in the working age population. Result of a collective effort led by the IDFC Foundation, this Report brings together a range of perspectives from academics, researchers and practitioners committed to enhancing educational practices. It will be an invaluable resource for policymakers, researchers and corporates.

Focuses On How Public Expenditure Allocation In The Context Of Infrastructural Services Has Been Made So Far As Who Is Accountable For Such Expenditure. The Report Is An Invaluable Resource For Those In Government, Academia, Business And Financial Circles.

This report focuses on regulation and industry structure and spells out an agenda of reform and privatization to improve the infrastructure's effectiveness, targetting, and efficiency.

Based on primary data collected through a nationwide survey, the report aims to resolve some of the contradictions that have stymied the expansion of infrastructure in rural India with the aim of encouraging balanced regional growth of rural infrastructure. It proposes - Forming public-private partnerships - Greater decentralisation of regulation and ownership - Greater reliance on user fees to recover costs - Greater use of microfinance This is a definitive report on the state of rural infrastructure in the four major sectors of power, telecommunications, roads and transport, and water and sanitation. Given that the solutions to rural infrastructure problems are necessarily going to be unique in rural areas, where people are already underserved, this study focusing on rural infrastructure is valuable in that it advocates for new financing methods; attracting new players to provide services; adopting new policies to support privatisation and decentralisation of infrastructure services. In sum, it outlines a financially sustainable and inventive new approach.

Report of the Expert Group on the Commercialisation of Infrastructure Projects.

An attempt to assess the progress, achievements, and short-comings of the economic reform process initiated by the Indian government in 1991 primarily in response to a foreign exchange crisis.