While answering a question about the primary education in India (education upto 10 year olds) in the upper house on Nov 26th , the Minister for Human Resource Development Dr.G.P.Pilania gave these facts.
1. National University of Education Planning and Administration has developed an index called Education Development Index which depends on access,infrastructure,teacher related indicators and elementary education outcome.
2. With this index the statewise (or union territory) figure are as follows
| State / UT | EDI | Rank |
| Kerala | 0.708 | 1 |
| Delhi | 0.707 | 2 |
| Tamil Nadu | 0.701 | 3 |
| Pondicherry | 0.7 | 4 |
| Chandigarh | 0.69 | 5 |
| Karnataka | 0.674 | 6 |
| Himachal Pradesh | 0.668 | 7 |
| Andhra Pradesh | 0.654 | 8 |
| Mizoram | 0.65 | 9 |
| Lakshadweep | 0.65 | 10 |
| Sikkim | 0.635 | 11 |
| Maharashtra | 0.635 | 12 |
| Gujarat | 0.63 | 13 |
| Punjab | 0.608 | 14 |
| Uttaranchal | 0.605 | 15 |
| Jammu & Kashmir | 0.597 | 16 |
| Daman & Diu | 0.592 | 17 |
| Goa | 0.586 | 18 |
| Rajasthan | 0.583 | 19 |
| A & N Islands | 0.566 | 20 |
| Manipur | 0.564 | 21 |
| Chhattisgarh | 0.559 | 22 |
| Haryana | 0.556 | 23 |
| Dadra & Nagar Haveli | 0.538 | 24 |
| Tripura | 0.535 | 25 |
| Meghalaya | 0.534 | 26 |
| Nagaland | 0.533 | 27 |
| Orissa | 0.512 | 28 |
| Madhya Pradesh | 0.512 | 29 |
| Assam | 0.49 | 30 |
| Uttar Pradesh | 0.482 | 31 |
| West Bengal | 0.467 | 32 |
| Arunachal Pradesh | 0.458 | 33 |
| Jharkhand | 0.435 | 34 |
| Bihar | 0.327 | 35 |
I could not find any data on the NUEPA site or anywhere else the actual factors and figures used for calculating EDI. But from the table it is worthwhile to note that southern states are performing much better than others while the eastern part and central part are the worst. Though Bihar and Jharkhand was as expected , the surprise entry in the bottom is West Bengal. I tried looking for an coverage in the local Indian magazines/newspapers for this revelation. But I could not find any. I guess they are busy blowing the trumpet about how well India is doing in the stock market and in the world ´s eyes. If highlighted I would expect that this fact would hurt the Bengalis ego enough for them to gear up. But any amount of coverage is not going to anything in Bihar or Jharkhand.
Inspite of being on the top of the list here, the south indian states seem to perform very poorly in the UPSC exams, IIT -JEE exams, IIM etc. But on the other hand GMAT,GRE the percentage of successful candidates are higher (though a lot lesser number attempt it ).Also after education the economic growth excluding farming sector the South Indian states maintain the same lead (except for Kerala…they tend to be less entrepreneur-oriented). So why do the other states (excluding the bottom states which are have no signs of improvement) perform better from primary education onwards? The answer is that they are coached to the indian style of examination based evaluation. The number of tutorial centers for various exams and the tuitions which are prevalent in other than southern states is the clue. In Tamilnadu somebody going for a special tuition apart from the class (could be to the same teacher or a different teacher) is considered humiliating and nobody reveals that they are attending such special classes. But in the other states this is the norm. So all teachers earn more money (except for the “inconsequential ones” like the language teachers) outside regular job and this also provides tax free earning for the teacher. Sometimes it is so lucratively that the teacher goes to school only to recruit new students for his or her special tuition. In the South, the bad performance of the student reflects on the teacher and most of the time the teacher take over the job of providing tuition free of cost or at very nominal costs just to save their own reputation to students who are very weak in their studies.
