Research has shown that almost 40 million people in India moved from one State to another during 1991 and 2001. Eighty per cent of all interstate migrants during 1991 and 2001 settled in Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Haryana. It is likely that a similarly large number of interstate migrants would have settled in Gujarat during 2001 and 2011. Can one attribute change in literacy rates in Gujarat to the domestic education policy or to the influx of interstate in-migrants? At the same time, it is quite possible that if the in-migrants were poorly educated, they contributed to lower than otherwise high literacy rates. In the absence of a more detailed analysis, cross sections of the data may not be sufficient to draw conclusions. Professor Bhagwati and his co-author claim that Gujarat may be the model for other developing countries. It may very well be. However, the devil is in the details. It may take a decade or more to determine if Gujarat is truly an economic miracle or just hype
Posted on: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 07:57:01 +0000