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the Textbook Bureau
Aditi Kavarana & H B Soumya
Administrators and associations
The New Delhi government/ administration has an unending list of
departments, autonomous organisations, directorates, and councils
and various other government bodies. One wonders why the governance
of a tiny state like Delhi is so complicated and intricate to require
this enormous number of offices and officials. Of course, complimentary
to it, is this convoluted system of checks and balances with levels
of hierarchy (or lack of them); responsibility and autonomy; government
funding and self generation; that has been contrived to keep it
all in "order". One explanation for this clutter of organisations
is that there seems to be a set formula for solving all problems
that come up: set up an advisory board or inquiry committee, wait
for the recommendations, and create an association/ organisation
to carry them out. Quite often, there may be much simpler and more
direct solutions to problems, but these are either ignored or never
considered. A very good example of this is the Delhi Textbook Bureau.
Education is a state subject. Every state must develop it's own
syllabus which is done by a state curriculum committee. In Delhi,
however, such a committee has not yet been formed, and hence National
Council for Education, Research, and Training (NCERT) books are
adapted and printed to meet our needs. This task of printing is
carried out both by the NCERT and the Delhi Textbook Bureau (DTB).
The Bureau was set up in May, 1970 under the Societies Act as an
autonomous government body supervised by the Directorate of Education,
Delhi. It’s stated aims were "to aid and promote the advancement
of primary and secondary education by producing high quality textbooks
and other material; to print, publish, stock and distribute textbooks;
and evaluate and conduct research for improvement of curricula,
books, and other material."
The DTB has a copyright over NCERT textbooks, which it reprints
in Hindi. These books are then sold to all government and government
aided schools: namely Sarvodaya Vidyalayas, MCD schools, government
secondary and senior secondary schools, Kendriya Vidyalayas and
government aided schools. Such schools must necessarily use textbooks
prescribed by the Directorate of Education. The DTB's method of
distributing books is two pronged: textbooks for MCD schools, Sarvodaya
Vidyalayas, and government secondary schools are bought by the MCD
and Directorate of Education respectively, and then distributed
to students free of cost. For them, the DTB prints textbooks on
an order basis. However, for government aided and government senior
secondary schools, students must buy textbooks, which are distributed
by the DTB through a network of 8 wholesale and 22 retail dealers.
A lot of aims, but achievements?
One of the stated aims of the DTB is the "evaluation and research
for improvement of curricula and books." However, till date, no
evidence has been seen of any "improvement of books" undertaken
by the DTB. In fact, any enhancement or innovation shown in the
field of textbook printing has been by private publishers such as
Orient Longman, Macmillan, and Frank Brothers. Private schools,
which have the freedom to choose textbooks for use in their classrooms
until class VIII, opt for books published by the private publishers
instead. This is a clear indicator of the poor quality of DTB textbooks.
As regards improvement of curricula, the DTB couldn't possibly take
any steps in this regard, since changes in curricula falls under
the purview of the Directorate of Education, and not the DTB.
The other two aims of the DTB relate to the printing and publishing
of textbooks. Two points can be made in this regard: first, the
printing of textbooks could in no way be thought of as an essential
activity, or core area, where the presence of a government body
is justifiable. Second, a government agency already works in this
field: namely the NCERT. It also prints and publishes school textbooks
as prescribed by the Directorate of Education in English and Hindi.
Its presence renders the DTB completely redundant and superfluous.
Of pricing and profits
The main stance of all DTB officials is that although they are
simply reproducing NCERT textbooks, their contribution to education
in Delhi lies in the fact that they print the same textbooks at
much lower prices. Since they provide textbooks to students of government
and government aided schools, where the students are from the poorer
sections of society, there is a need for producing books at more
affordable prices.
There is no argument against the fact that they do indeed produce
books at a considerably lower price than the NCERT. A few examples
of this are Bal Bharati: a textbook for class V, it is sold by the
NCERT for Rs. 25, while the DTB sells it for Rs. 15; Prachin Bharat
for students of class VI is sold by the NCERT for Rs. 23, and for
Rs. 12 by the DTB; and Aadhunik Bharat, which is sold by the NCERT
for Rs. 25, and by the DTB for Rs. 15.
However, the amazing aspect of this is that despite printing at
such low rates, the DTB is still able to make a profit. It must
be confessed that the actual amount of profits earned by the DTB
was not revealed to us. However, one can make an educated guess
based on the following facts. The DTB engages itself in certain
welfare activities which it finances out of it's own profits. It
distributes 5 sets of books to deserving students of classes VI-VIII
and school bags to all students of government and government aided
schools: in 2000-2001, it distributed 2.5 lakh books totally costing
Rs. 12 lakh. Besides, it distributed 1 lakh such bags, each costing
Rs. 60, bringing the total amount to Rs. 60 lakh. The Managing Director
of the DTB, Mr. Jain claimed that the total amount spent on welfare
activities was Rs. 75 lakh, so we may use this amount as a proxy
for the amount of profits accruing to the DTB.
Obviously, the question that arises is how the DTB is able to make
such large profits if they sell books at considerably lower prices.
The answer lies in the fact that although the DTB sells books at
a lower price, it also has lower costs, since when it buys paper,
it is exempt from paying the excise tax on paper. Considering the
fact that the current rate of excise is 16%, so the effective price
of paper is significantly less for the DTB.
But, the simple economic truth that the DTB hasn’t grasped is that
an excise exemption is an effective subsidy, and profits derived
from a subsidy are not profits: since, ultimately some arm of the
government is paying the price of such a subsidy.
The solution: textbook vouchers
The above account can be summed up as follows: the government feels
the need for cheaper textbooks for the poorer students; in order
to provide these, it sets up a new organisation: namely the DTB;
further, to enable them to print these cheaper textbooks, it gives
the DTB a subsidy in the form of an excise exemption. If, however
the ultimate aim of the government is simply to make textbooks cheaper
for the poor people, there are many much simpler ways to do this.
The government could allow schools to get the direct benefit of
such a subsidy by distributing textbook vouchers to the various
schools. This voucher could be a discount slip, which would enable
schools to buy books at a lower price: lower by the amount of the
slip. If schools must spend a lower part of their budget on textbooks,
the relative cost of textbooks is reduced. Hence the effect achieved
is the same as that gained by printing cheaper books.
Such a scheme scores over the present system in a number of ways.
The first and quite obvious advantage is that it completely removes
the bureaucracy, which translates into elimination of a large amount
of red-tapism, inefficiency, and corruption. Secondly, it brings
the market into play, by empowering the consumers directly, which
in turn increases the efficiency of the marketplace. In this case
when we speak of consumers, we mean the schools and not the students,
since the ultimate choice of which textbooks are to be used lies
with the schools.
Since the schools would have the power of choice, they would choose
textbooks that were most apt and best suited to their teaching style.
Different schools would rate textbooks differently depending on
what attributes they would value higher than others. A lot of variables
would come into play in a situation like this such as content of
textbooks; clarity; style of writing or language used; presentation;
the number of illustrations, boxes, diagrams etc. Another important
variable would be how up to date and recent are the statistics and
figures presented. The important thing here is that schools: even
government and government aided schools would have the freedom to
choose which textbooks they would like to use, and they would be
able to still provide them to students at affordable prices.
Such a system would be quite effective in curbing the spread of
propaganda through textbooks. If there is competition in the market
for textbooks, instead of a monopoly by the government, producers
would be anxious to produce books that would appeal to maximum number
of schools, i.e. the entire education system. They would certainly
not wish to alienate any part of the market by printing material
that would anger them. Furthermore, even if books would happen to
print such propaganda, schools which do not agree with the viewpoints
and postulates of the book could simply change tastes, and switch
to another textbook.
A voucher system would be more cost effective too since it would
eliminate all costs of running an organisation: administrative costs,
salary of employees, land costs, and various miscellaneous costs
that crop up on a day-to-day basis. Furthermore, it would give people
the power to choose and hence would be more democratic. And, such
power in the hands of the final consumers would guarantee that only
those books that are most demanded and truly considered to be a
contribution are produced, so weeding out waste and inefficient
use of resources.
We have already witnessed the closing down of 52 public sector
units since they are inefficient and are only a waste of resources.
There is a definite need to carry out a similar operation on government
departments and bureaux, and the Delhi Textbook Bureau is a perfect
place to start.
Sources
- Directory of Delhi Textbook Bureau, January 1997
- Jain, Managing Director, Delhi Textbook Bureau
- Nautiyal, Secretary, Delhi Textbook Bureau
- Gyanendra Srivastava, Director, Directorate of Education, Delhi
- Deepa Raghavan, Headmistress, DPS, R K Puram
- Aliamma Mathai, Principal, Kerala School
- Bhargava, Wholesale Paper Dealer
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