Uttar Pradesh Fact of the Day

via Tom:

“...teachers constitute 20 percent of the assembly in the early 2000s, and former teachers another 20 percent.” 

From this: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1895224

 For a bit of perspective on why that matters, consider that

With a population of over 200 million people, [Uttar Pradesh] is India's most populous state, as well as the world's most populous sub-national entity. Were it a nation in its own right, Uttar Pradesh would be the world's fifth most populous country, ahead of Brazil

 and then consider that

“the most striking weakness of the schooling system in rural Uttar Pradesh is not so much the deficiency of physical infrastructure as the poor functioning of the existing facilities. The specific problem of endemic teacher absenteeism and shirking, which emerged again and again in the course of our investigation, plays a central part in that failure. This is by far the most important issue of education policy in Uttar Pradesh today”

(that last part is Dreze & Gazdar, quoted by Kingdon and Muzammil in "A political economy of education in India: The case of Uttar Pradesh", HT:Abhi).


This post is dedicated to @DavidTaylor85 and @OfficeGSBrown