Exploring the impact of physical infrastructure on universal attainment of primary education in India A comparative anlysis of West Bengal and Tamilnadu

One of the key components of the universalisation of elementary education in India is the universal provision of schooling facilities which shows widespread regional differentiation even after 10 years implementation of the Sarva Sikhshya Abhiyan (SSA). However, such discrepancy is more striking between the Southern states of the country and the Northern and Eastern parts, where it can be seen that in spite of same level of demand side constraints like poverty which often constrains household's ability to capture the benefit of schooling; the Southern states, especially Tamilnadu have shown a far better attainment of universal schooling than the others. Such a factor is primarily ascribed to the household's parental decisions to send their children to schools that are governed largely by the supply related variables like provision of physical infrastructure in primary schools. The present study attempts to check out this hypothesis by comparing the differential educational attainment in the states of West Bengal and Tamilnadu with the help of DISE data for the two periods, one is at the inception of the SSA, i.e. at 2002-’03 and other is at 2007-’08. An ‘Index of physical infrastructure’ has been created by applying the First Principal Component method in order to crosscheck the bivariate association between the infrastructure supplies and educational attainment in both the states. Results show the fact that the effective implementation of SSA programme in terms of enhancing the physical infrastructure provision in primary schools have shown a better progress in the case of Tamilnadu during the study period. Another significant finding is that the attainment of the correct age enrolment is much higher in Tamilnadu than its eastern counterpart, in most cases which is reflected by low drop-out rate and higher provisions of physical infrastructures in primary grades.