Indholdsfortegnelse
Summaries
I: “India and Pakistan at 70”
- Graph 1
- Graph 2
- Graph 3
- Graph 4
- Graph 5
II: “India has made primary education universal, but not good”
III: “Child labor: The inconvenient truth behind India’s growth story”
IV: “Youth unemployment bucks India’s rapid growth”

Discussion of challenges
- Demographic challenges
- Youth unemployment
- Poor education

Discussion of solutions
- Possible solutions to uneven economic growth
- Possible solutions to demographic challenges
- Possible solutions to child labour
- Possible solutions to youth unemployment
- Possible solutions to poor education

Optimer dit sprog - Læs vores guide og scor topkarakter

Uddrag
“India and Pakistan at 70” is a video created by the Financial Times on the occasion of India and Pakistan celebrating 70 years since their independence from the British rule.

Apart from five graphs (described in detail below), the video also includes other socio-economic data about the two countries.

The video informs the viewer that when it became independent, India’s economic output represented only 15% of that of the US.

Now it represents around half. However, the economic output per person in India and Pakistan is only 10% of the of the US, while in Bangladesh it is about half of that.

According to projections, the urban population of Bangladesh and Pakistan will be bigger than the rural population by the late 2030s. However, India will only achieve this around 2050.

In about 20 years, Delhi’s (India) urban population will overtake Tokyo’s (Japan), which is currently the most populous urban area.

The UN projects that by 2030, the South Asian cities Lahore (Pakistan) and Dhaka (Bangladesh) will be among the world’s ten most populous urban areas, surpassing New York (US).

In 1947, life expectancy at birth in India was about 32 years. However, health care improvements have led to a life expectancy of 66 years in Pakistan, 68 years in India and 72 years in Bangladesh.

When India and Pakistan were separated in 1947, there were 84,000 phone lines per 350 million people in India and 14,000 per 75 million people in Pakistan. Today there are about 80 mobile lines per 100 people in India and Bangladesh, and close to 70 in Pakistan.

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The article “India has made primary education universal, but not good” was published in The Economist in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Letting 260m minds go to waste”, on 8th of June, 2017.

The article looks at education in India, arguing that while India has primary universal education, this education lacks quality.

Many children in India do not reach the expected standard for their age when it comes to education, with some having problems reading or doing simple calculations.

The article argues that this is because during the British rule and following India’s independence, education policy in this country was focused on higher university education rather than on schools.

However, between 2011 and 2015 government spending on school increased, which helped improve literacy rates.

The article notes that the biggest problems with education in India are poor teachers and too ambitious school curricula.

Many teachers are not qualified for their jobs, paid bribes to get them, and are often absent from classes. However, it is hard for the government to hold them accountable because they have strong unions.

In this context, parents choose to take their children to low-cost private schools which offer the same or better service. This has led to some public schools having almost no pupils, but teachers have refused to relocate to where they are needed.

Another problem is that the education policy is split between local and federal government. However, the authors argue that the government could do more to improve the quality of education.