Can corporates rise from drivers to enablers of India’s growth engine?

If someone asks me about a one word panacea for all evils inflicting the Indian society, my prompt answer would be ‘education’. Illiteracy or lack of proper education is at the root of the vicious cycle of unemployment, poverty, hunger/health issues, inequity and crime. With the exception of corruption, this cycle pretty much sums up all the evils prevalent in our Indian society. Even corruption or more precisely moral depravity can be addressed with proper and comprehensive moral education during the formative years of schooling. The current budget aptly envisages a 22% increase in funding for RTE-SSA and 29% increase in Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA).The Twelfth five year plan also proposes setting up of 6000 model schools at block level.
A critical analysis of the system reveals that all the government support has been directed at improving the quantitative aspects of education without any emphasis on qualitative aspects. This is why education has been able to address most of the problems listed in the vicious cycle to a limited extent with the sole exception of inequity. While the ostentatious purpose of education is to eradicate inequity, it is being seen as fostering inequity-the inequity among urban and rural masses-the inequity among urban rich and urban poor.
It is easy to refute the above statement by saying that all government efforts are directed at providing equal opportunity to all children and it has been successful in doing so by achieving commendable school enrolment rates and increase in mean years of schooling. But everything is not hunky dory when students pass out of the school and compete for an intermediate college or a professional course. How can a public school student educated in vernacular language without any access to good coaching or mentoring about opportunities compete with an u/’rban child who has complete and unbridles access to all facilities? How can a poor student using standard text books compete with someone using over priced reference books? Equality of opportunity without equality of condition is complete sham! All advocates of meritocracy should understand that admission to good higher secondary/professional colleges is highly competitive and requires the correct kind of coaching/mentoring. Without enough cash to spare, it is impossible for a poor rural student to compete with suave urban student. The reservation policy ensures that some rural SC/ST/OBC students get their due even if sufficient enabling conditions is not available but the general caste rural/poor students are left in the lurch. The society blames them for not being competitive/ capable enough and the poverty culture continues.
So, is there as way out? With the central govt. and most states govt. under tight fiscal constraints, government can’t be expected to bail out the underprivileged in this situation. The only beaconing light that is visible in this scenario is from private sector. All corporate have millions of rupees earmarked for CSR activities each year. Most corporate donate a large sum of money to NGO’s and for sponsoring college fests, events etc. With proper efforts these corporate could be coaxed to fund (including total operating expenses including cost of reference books and talented professionals) english medium schools cum coaching centres providing proper guidance for higher/professional courses. These institutes would also help in enhancing the confidence by guiding on spoken english and communication skills. Attracting professionals/faculties from cities to run these institutes would require a higher financial outlay and thus involvement of corporate as source of funding would be essential. This idea could be marketed to the corporates not only as a channel for CSR activity but as a potential marketing/promotional channel. As most FMCG companies are eying the rural market (with increase percentage of sales coming from rural areas), these companies can be allowed to use their merchandise/promotional offers/advertisement on/though text book covers, pencil boxes etc. They may also be allowed occasionally (in a quarter or so) to directly pitch to the students about their products. By doing so, they can not only influence a lot of parents , they can also get long term customers(the students themselves would grow up and would have higher proclivity for the company’s products).Currently many FMCG/consumer durable companies are involved in extensive marketing research to find innovative marketing programs to influence the rural market. The proposed idea would not only give them strong inroads into rural markets, the good will and media hype generated would also help in increasing their revenues in urban areas. It is a well know fact in marketing that public relations is the most powerful form of marketing compared to the conventional advertising and consumer promotions. So, rather than spending crores to pay celebrities and advertising agencies, companies can divert their funds for this ingenious idea to create immense media hype and demand for their products(thus increasing revenues) and also gain the satisfaction of contributing to drive the nations growth engine.
Some sociologists claim that present-time orientation of poor is responsible for their lack of academic success. Let’s disband this myth by providing an equality of condition and environment in terms of education.