Professor Amartya Sen has advocated important reforms in the realms of primary education and primary health care. What are your suggestions to improve their status and performance?
Approach · directive: “suggest”
What it asks · Recall Sen's case that basic education and health build human capabilities, then suggest concrete reforms to improve schools and primary health care.
The question has 3 parts — answer each
- Recall Sen's case: why primary education and primary health care need reform, in his capability view
- Suggest: concrete measures to improve the status and performance of primary education
- Suggest: concrete measures to improve the status and performance of primary health care
Open with · Sen argues that basic education and health are both goals of development and means to growth, and that India has lagged in providing them.
Cover
- Teachers and accountability: fill vacancies, curb absenteeism through school management committees under the Right to Education Act 2009, and invest in training.
- Learning outcomes: focus on reading and arithmetic in early grades, assess learning rather than enrolment, and use mid-day meals to keep children in school.
- Spending and equity: raise public education spending towards the 6 per cent of GDP first proposed by the Kothari Commission and repeated in the National Education Policy 2020, with special support for girls and disadvantaged groups.
- Primary care: staffed sub-centres and health centres with doctors, nurses, medicines and diagnostics, backed by ASHA workers, immunisation and maternal and child care.
- Financing: raise public health spending and cut out-of-pocket costs; the National Health Policy 2017 aims to raise it from about 1.15 to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2025.
- Local accountability: give Panchayats and users a say, publish facility-level data and social audits, and reward performance.
Close with · Sen's case is that public investment in schools and clinics, made accountable to local people, delivers the largest and most lasting gains in human capabilities.
Add value (verified)
- Article 21A makes elementary education a fundamental right, which gives any reform of primary schooling a constitutional footing. The Constitution of India (as on 1 May 2024), Article 21A — Legislative Department ↗“The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years in such manner as the State may, by law, determine”
Question: UPSC's CS (Main) 2016, GS Paper II — paper ↗. Approach: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify) — UPSC publishes no model answers. ·
Model answer · 291 words (UPSC limit 200) · Minimalist IAS
Sen treats basic education and health as both ends of development and means to growth, and argues that India's neglect of both has held back its people and its economy.
Sen's diagnosis
- Schools that enrol but do not teach, absent teachers, and public clinics so weak that even the poor pay private providers.
- Low public spending and a public debate that ignores both; development is the expansion of capabilities, not income alone.
Primary education
- Teachers: fill vacancies, curb absenteeism through school management committees under the Right to Education Act 2009, and invest in continuous training.
- Learning, not enrolment: make early-grade reading and arithmetic the goal and measure them; use mid-day meals to keep children in school.
- Money and equity: raise public education spending towards the 6 per cent of GDP first proposed by the Kothari Commission (since then, restated in the National Education Policy 2020), with support targeted at girls and disadvantaged groups. Article 21A gives the effort constitutional footing.
Primary health care
- Facilities: staffed sub-centres and primary health centres with doctors, nurses, medicines and diagnostics, backed by ASHAs, immunisation and maternal and child care.
- Financing: raise public health spending from just over 1 per cent of GDP and cut out-of-pocket costs (since then, the National Health Policy 2017 set a target of 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2025).
- Prevention: sanitation, nutrition and safe water, public goods that markets undersupply and that Sen places at the centre of health.
Accountability
- Give Panchayats and users a say, publish facility-level data, run social audits, and reward schools and clinics that perform.
Sen's case is that public investment in schools and clinics, made answerable to the people who use them, yields the largest and most lasting gains in human capability, and in growth.
Written by Minimalist IAS from facts checked at source (how we verify) — a little fuller than exam length, so every part of the question is covered; in the hall, keep the structure and trim the detail. UPSC publishes no model answers: compare your structure and coverage with this, then write your own.