How can the poor get out of poverty? Economists favour education amongst all alternatives. Their so-called neoclassical model assumes that output requires inputs. All inputs can be produced, except workers. Workers can also be produced, but since present governments do not breed human beings for slavery, workers whom they govern are taken as unproduced. Workers are more productive if they have better tools and machines. These ancillary devices are also produced, but they have such a large effect on production that they have to be brought into the reckoning. So neoclassicals assume that things are produced by workers with the help of equipment, called capital. If an economist were asked how the poor can be made less poor, he would say: educate them, and equip them with tools and machinery.

Apart from this, education has a certain aura of holiness about it. It is supposed to make people cultured and make them capable of enjoying the good things of life. Educated people do not riot and kill — well, some do, but that is more often because of bad company than bad teachers. So education is heavily promoted by governments.

It has been an especial favourite of Indian governments because Indians are so much less educated than people from richer countries — and even of comparable poor countries. Some state governments have been more successful at giving education to their citizens than others.

By and large, southern states have managed to send a greater proportion of their children to school than northern states. If we divide the number of students by the number of children under 14 in 2001, the ratio was highest in Kerala — 89 per cent. Tamil Nadu followed next with 82 per cent; Maharashtra was not far behind with 79 per cent. Andhra Pradesh followed with 72 per cent. Then came motley states with percentages in the 60s including West Bengal. Assam was the second last with 59 per cent; Hindi-speaking states were the worst with 55 per cent. Since half the children spoke Hindi, their inability or unwillingness to go to school pulled down the average.

People of some states like Goa and Kerala have been sending most of their children to school for decades; for them, a high proportion of children in school is a past achievement, not a current effort. Which states have been making the greatest efforts to pull themselves out of illiteracy? The ratio of students to children under 14 gives us an idea of the current activity; the literacy level gives us an idea of past achievement. The ratio of the two gives us a rough index of the intensity of the efforts. The average ratio for India in 2001 was 116 per cent; in other words, if the level of enrolments remained at the 2001 level forever, literacy would eventually rise by 16 per cent — from 55 to 63.3 per cent. By this measure, the greatest effort was being made by Andhra Pradesh, which had a ratio of 152 per cent. With that level of effort, it could expect to become fully literate eventually — when all currently illiterate people died out or learnt to write. Next came Tamil Nadu, with an index of 126 per cent; it too could expect to become fully literate. Most of the other states had ratios between 110 and 120 per cent. The worst state was West Bengal, with a ratio of 108 per cent. With its 2001 effort, it could hope to raise literacy from 63 to 68 per cent. The next worst state was Gujarat, with a ratio of 109 per cent; it could expect to pull up literacy from 64 to 69 per cent. Even Hindi-speaking states would start catching up with these two; with a ratio of 17 per cent, they could expect to raise literacy from 55 to 65 per cent.

This is what the 2001 census tells us. Census figures are not very accurate. They are collected by schoolteachers forced to do census duty; some of them no doubt concoct figures rather than trudge around remote villages. The census definition of literacy is also pretty lax; anyone who can sign his name is taken to be literate.

How bad are census figures? An approximate answer to this question may be obtained by comparing the number of children by medium of instruction put out recently by the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration. The number of children in school would have gone up after 2001; so the percentage of the figures for 2005-06 to 2001 should exceed 100. It did not for any language group. For the whole of India, the percentage comes to 66 per cent; if the NUEPA figures were correct, the census figures must have been overstated by a third at least — even more in view of the rise in population between 2001 and 2005-06.

The percentage turns out to be high for Oriya (78 per cent), and low for Kannada, Malayalam and Marathi (51, 37 and 50 per cent respectively). Could the census enumerators in these states have been the worst, and Oriya enumerators the best? That does not look likely.

One reason why the test failed is that there are children who speak one language at home and get their education in another — chiefly English. The proportion of children being educated in English according to NUEPA was 4.3 per cent in 2003-04 and 6.3 per cent in 2005-06; their number rose from 5.5 to 9.5 million in two years. This increase is also implausible; but something like 5 per cent of the children are being educated in English.

Which are the mother-tongues from which children are fleeing fastest? I get a figure of 24 per cent of children going to English-medium schools in Andhra Pradesh; Tamil Nadu comes close with 22 per cent. Karnataka follows with 18 per cent; Kerala and Maharashtra have 11 and 10 per cent respectively. Then there are pockets with very high proportions of children studying in English medium. The proportion in Goa and Chandigarh exceeds 50 per cent, and is close to 100 per cent in the northeastern states. These are averages for states; within states there would be cities with much higher proportions of children studying in English.

The government allowed the country to be opened up to trade and investment after 1991. The impact of liberalization varied considerably between the North and the South. The software boom was concentrated in the South; manufacturing industry preferred the South; and the growth of international tourism was also greater in the South. All the ports were unavoidably on the coast; and industry tended to settle around them. As a result, development moved southwards, and India north of the Vindhyas was left behind. Now we see how this is affecting people’s aspirations and abilities. Slowly but inexorably, Hindi is becoming a regional language of the north; the southern states are getting ready to join the Anglophone sphere as they industrialize and get closer to the outside world. There are still some internationalists left in the cities of north and east India; but unless they hurry, they will be engulfed by the resurgence of the Indic civilization around them.