Patna: Barely 6.47% out of the total 13.07 crore people in Bihar, are graduates, who include doctors and engineers, states the caste and economic survey that was laid on the floor of the state legislature recently.
The report said that around 22.67% people have studied up to primary classes- (from 1-5 class), 14.33% have read up to 6-8 classes, about 14.71% people have gone schools and studied in classes nine and ten. Of them, about 9.19% have cleared higher secondary and only 0.58% have done diploma or trained in industrial training institute (ITIs).
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As per the data, only 0.82% (or 10.76 lakh) have attained the post graduate degrees and a meagre 0.07% (95,398) have got the doctoral or chartered accountant (CA) degree in Bihar. A majority of them, around 31.16% of the people, have no formal education.
Around 14.54% of those hailing from the unreserved castes, including Brahmins, Bhuminar, Rajputs, Kayasthas (among Hindus), Shaikh, Syed and Pathan (among Muslims) are graduates (including general, engineering and medical graduates) while an equal percentage of people from other listed castes, which comprise 12 castes such as Bengali Kayasthya, Hindu Darzi, Rastogi and Bahelia, have attained graduation degree.
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Survey report says that about 9.14% of the people from backward classes (comprising 30 castes), 4.44% of the extremely backward castes (112 castes), 3.12% scheduled castes (22 castes) and 3.53% of the scheduled tribes (32 castes) are graduates.
Among the unreserved category, about 32.49% of Kayasthas are graduates, followed by 19.34% Bhumihars, 18.18% of Brahmins and 16.46% of Rajputs have attained the degrees. Kurmis have the highest percentage of graduates (10.44%) while about 5.69% of Yadavs have got their degree from various colleges. Christians, who are counted as the BCs, have the highest percentage of graduates (about 22.21%). However, their total population in Bihar has been assessed to be around 11,506.
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Awadhiya Banias and Patwas are among the EBCs, who have around 13.82% and 11% of their castemen as graduates. Dabgar community among the scheduled castes have around 8.69% people (total population 7,756) graduates.
Educationist and political observer Nawal Kishore Chaudhary said that it was unfortunate note that people of Bihar are lowly qualified. “Employability and productivity of the people of Bihar have further been eroded owing to ever declining quality of education. The absence of teachers and other infrastructure from primary to the higher education has also taken its toll on quality of education being imparted to the students,” said Chaudhary, while rejecting the reasons to doubt authenticity of the figures. “People may hide their income or property, but not education, which they like to boast as the status symbol,” he further added.
