Rulers of India are no Ordinary Citizens of India
They live a life that is very much different from rest of the people in India. You see these people talking about GDP all the time as if GDP numbers would be zero if these people stopped working. GDP matters more to people who don’t care about HDI because they have already achieved high levels of HDI. There is not much room for improvement. On the other hand, there is no end to making money by being more “productive”. These people can’t understand what it means to be middle class or poor. They have made assets abroad and their children surely study abroad. If they fall sick, they get healthcare from abroad. Their HDI needs are fulfilled by foreign countries.
Think about it. If you are sick, poor or unskilled/uneducated, would you be worried about increasing your productivity or fixing your health or income? We all know answer to this question. Unlike them, if you are not upper class, you would be hard-pressed to focus on these matters that needs immediate attention. You can’t afford to get your HDI needs met by foreign countries.
HDI over GDP
HDI is necessary to live a happy life. HDI might not be sufficient, but it is necessary. Some monks can live a happy life with little to no income. But, this doesn’t apply to most people.
HDI consists of 3 things – Education, Healthcare and Income.
For the most part, freebies like 5 Guarantee Schemes in Karnataka are only addressing the Income part of HDI while increasingly ignoring the other 2 parts – Education and Healthcare. Education and Healthcare are more important than Income.
Why is public education a public good
Income is more or less private, But, Education and Healthcare are private as well as public. It is public not in the sense that the services are partly or fully funded by government, so that it is affordable and accessible to everyone. Being funded by government is the most popular sense of the word “public”. There is also another meaning.
It is public in the sense that people living in a community of state or country or even municipality for that matter should be well aware of fundamental rights and laws of the land, institutions working to enforce and upheld those laws and cultural norms of the mainstream. This only comes through education.
It is public in the sense the word “public” in public goods. Education can be a part of Public Goods.
Here is a passage from the Wikipedia Article on Public Goods listing some of the examples of public goods.
Public goods include knowledge, official statistics, national security, common languages, law enforcement, broadcast radio,[6] flood control systems, aids to navigation, and street lighting. Collective goods that are spread all over the face of the Earth may be referred to as global public goods. This includes physical book literature[dubious – discuss], but also media, pictures and videos. For instance, knowledge can be shared globally. Information about men’s, women’s and youth health awareness, environmental issues, and maintaining biodiversity is common knowledge that every individual in the society can get without necessarily preventing others access. Also, sharing and interpreting contemporary history with a cultural lexicon (particularly about protected cultural heritage sites and monuments) is another source of knowledge that the people can freely access.
What we can notice is that there are a lot of education goods that are public – knowledge, official statistics, common languages, media, pictures and videos, health awareness, environmental issues, and maintaining biodiversity.
Public Goods are easier to scale
Imagine a street lamp. It can be used by anyone and everyone passing through the street. One person using the street light does not diminish the value of the consumption of the service for another person.
Knowledge and internet works the same way. Of course, there is a cost associated with accessing them. However, the marginal cost for each new person to access them is not very much.
Conclusion
Unlike healthcare, education can be a public good and it can be made accessible to everyone parallely who wants to access it without hurting the quality of the education. A person getting admitted in hospital might take up a bed and some amount of valuable time of Doctors and Nurses. But, a person enrolling themselves online for a course doesn’t use up resource that neither diminishes the quality, nor prevents other person from enrolling themselves.
A good education also educates people about self-care, wellness and personal health. This serves more like a preventive healthcare helping individuals making good decisions towards keeping good health.
Ordinary citizens of India should focus more on a good public education than anything else. It not only improves their health and income but lets everyone have access to increasingly equal opportunities in life. Rulers are not interested in this because they can afford to be not an ordinary citizen of India.
