The latest Global Monitoring Report (GMR) 2009 of UNESCO released at the International Conference on Education (ICE) in Geneva last November has ruffled quite a few feathers in the Indian establishment. The report portrayed the Indian education sector in poor light and reportedly made several incorrect and distorted statements. The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) is learnt to have strongly objected to the use of incorrect data and has made its disappointment known at the highest possible level at UNESCO. Besides being miffed about the report putting India in the same bracket as Nigeria and Pakistan,the Indian establishment has also expressed shock over incorrect statements like the one that the Mid-Day Meal (MDM) or school-meal programme is in operation in some states only whereas MDM is a nationwide scheme. While Minister of State (MoS) for Higher Education D Purandeswari,who represented India at the ICE,objected to the usage of this data in Geneva itself,she also took up the matter with the Director General of UNESCO Koichiro Matsura and requested him to make corrections in the report. Indias permanent representative to UNESCO,Bhaswati Mukherjee,has also written a letter to the Education Secretary criticising the distorted data used in GMR 2009. How much impact Indias strong reservations have had is up for scrutiny though as UNESCO is said to have used the same data at the Education for All (EFA) High-Level Group meeting held in Oslo barely a fortnight after the Geneva conference. Ministry officials who attended the EFA conference from 16th to 18th December again took up the issue with UNESCO and protested against the use of defective data and figures and pointed out how the India report was highly self-contradictory. Former HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi was also quite incensed by the adverse UNESCO ratings in 2003 and the 2007 GMR report that pointed out how India,Pakistan and Nigeria accounted for 27 per cent of the worlds out-of-school children. While GMR 2009 starts on a positive note for India,commending Indias progress towards achievement of EFA goals,it uses a series of reports and studies in later sections that are quite negative and defective at places. GMR 2009 points out in its section on Early Childhood Care and Education that India accounts for one in three malnourished children in the world. It goes on to say that the experience of India is instructive and disconcerting in equal measure. The country has been in the fast lane of globalisation,registering one of the worlds highest growth rates. Yet this economic breakthrough has not translated into similar progress in tackling child nutrition,it says. GMR 2009 quotes data from the NGO Pratham to state that learning assessments in India point to low levels of literacy and numeracy. Prathams 2007 survey is said to have found that fewer than half the children in standard III could read a text designed for standard I students. The report also says one study in India finds that only 28 per cent of rural people have access to a private school in their village and that half of the schools are unrecognised. Mukherjee has pointed out in her letter that China had strongly criticised GMR 2008 for distorted references to China in the report based on the use of foreign sources of information. In this years report,GMR has started relying more and more on data provided by NGOs or on the works published by foreign experts. In case of India,a survey conducted by an NGO Pratham,founded by the Hewlett Foundation,has been cited to comment,unfortunately,about the learning assessment in India, Mukherjee has written.
