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.

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

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.

The IIR 2009: Land - A Critical Resource for Infrastructure presents one of the most critical issues in recent times that has caught the attention of policymakers and the general public. The salient features of this Report are: 1. land management strategies, 2. Land rights and acquisition: policy and processes, 3. conceptual framework for land use: private and government, 4. resettlement and rehabilitation, 5. documentation of land administration and compensation practices, 6. conflict resolution. With the help of case studies of compensation practices in three countries, China, Ethiopia and Mozambique, and also from within India, IIR 2009 seeks to examine the reasons for land market distortions and explores ways to reduce them.

Infrastructure is essential for development. This report presents a snapshot of the current condition of developing Asia's infrastructure---defined here as transport, power, telecommunications, and water supply and sanitation. It examines how much the region has been investing in infrastructure and what will likely be needed through 2030. Finally, it analyzes the financial and institutional challenges that will shape future infrastructure investment and development.