Rural Educational Planning - An Analytical Hierarchy Process Approach (AHP)

Education is the backbone of development in any spectrum, be it in personal growth, in growth of the society and in a broader context of the country. Therefore, for a sustainable growth trajectory, not only the developing, but also the developed nations focus on the overall education. Under the millennium goal programme, India has also focused on providing education to all, and various schemes have been promoted towards this. The most popular one is “Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan”. Though informal learning starts at home and such learning keeps on continuing till the end of life, a formal education is the need and each child should have access to education. Hence, the importance of locating a school in rural villages becomes multi-fold and can make the difference with its impact. Towards this objective, in general, sectoral uni-parameter-based planning minimises consideration of other relevant parameters. This requires an integrated approach of maintaining cross-sectoral centralised dataset. Therefore, a multi-criteria-based approach helps in fulfilling the analysis of cross-sectoral database and also helps the decision makers to arrive at a logical decision.

This paper deliberates a novel approach for selection of best suitable village, where a school shall be planned using analytical hierarchy process, a multi-criteria-based decision-making approach.