(a) "Instead of promoting equality in society, the present system of education itself has contributed to increased socio-economic…

(a) Education and inequality

The statement is largely borne out by how the system is organised, though education also opens real routes of mobility.

In support:

• Parallel tracks: government and private schools serve different classes. The NSO's Comprehensive Modular Survey: Education 2025 found average annual spending of about Rs 2,863 per student in government schools against Rs 25,002 in non-government schools, and about 27 per cent of students taking private coaching.
• Unequal learning: ASER 2024 found that 44.8 per cent of Std V children in government schools could read a Std II text, against 59.3 per cent in private schools.
• Reproduction: Bourdieu argues that schools reward the cultural capital that privileged children bring from home, and Bowles and Gintis's correspondence principle holds that schooling prepares children for unequal places in the labour hierarchy. English-medium schooling and coaching turn family income into credentials for selective institutions.
• Credentialism: as degrees multiply, the premium shifts to elite institutions and costly preparation that only affluent families can reach (Randall Collins, The Credential Society).
• Higher education: AISHE 2021–22 recorded a gross enrolment ratio of 28.4 per cent, but 25.9 per cent for Scheduled Castes and 21.2 per cent for Scheduled Tribes.

Against:

• Literacy rose from 18 per cent in 1951 to 74 per cent in 2011.
• Section 12(1)(c) of the RTE Act 2009 reserves 25 per cent of entry-level seats in private unaided schools for disadvantaged children, upheld by the Supreme Court in 2012; reservation in higher education and scholarships have created a first-generation educated middle class among Dalits and Adivasis.

Judgement: education has widened access, but because quality is stratified it mainly transmits inherited advantage. "Increased" disparities overstates the evidence; the system's failure to narrow them is well supported, and common standards in public schools are needed.

(b) Recent trends in the structure of migration

The structure of migration, meaning its direction, reasons, duration and the gender and class of migrants, is changing.

• Scale and stream: the PLFS migration survey (July 2020–June 2021) put the migration rate at 28.9 per cent (rural 26.5, urban 34.9). Rural-to-rural movement is the largest internal stream, about 55 per cent of internal migrants.
• Gender: the rate is 47.9 per cent for women against 10.7 per cent for men, but marriage explains 86.8 per cent of women's migration while men move mainly for work. In Census 2011, for every woman moving across states for work, business or education there were 7.4 men.
• Inter-state labour flows: Uttar Pradesh and Bihar supplied about 37 per cent of inter-state migrants (Census 2011), mostly towards Maharashtra, Delhi, Gujarat and Haryana; inter-state migrants grew 33 per cent in 2001–11, slower than in the previous decade.
• Circular migration: Deshingkar and Akter (2009) estimated about 100 million circular migrants in construction, brick kilns and agriculture, largely poor, Dalit and Adivasi households without social protection, whom Census-style counts of permanent moves miss.
• Crisis migration: during the 2020 lockdown the Centre told Parliament that over 1.04 crore migrants returned to their home states, exposing the precarity of informal migrant work.
• Mediation: caste and kin networks and labour contractors organise recruitment, channelling poorer migrants into low-paid informal jobs.
• International: remittances reached US$129 billion in 2024 (World Bank), making India the top recipient, with Gulf contract labour alongside skilled and student migration to the West.

Migration is thus increasingly temporary, circular and inter-state for the poor, while skilled and educated migrants more often move permanently or abroad.

(c) Deprivations associated with slums

Slums combine overlapping deprivations, which Amartya Sen's capability view treats as lost freedoms, not merely low income.

• Economic: informal, low-paid, hazardous work, no social security and dependence on informal credit.
• Housing and tenure: crowded, makeshift dwellings and insecure tenure under constant threat of eviction; Census 2011 counted about 6.5 crore slum dwellers, 17.4 per cent of the urban population.
• Services and health: poor water, sanitation and drainage, with about one-third of slum households lacking a latrine within the premises (NSS 69th round, 2012), which raises disease risk.
• Social: stigma and discrimination in jobs, schooling and housing, compounded for migrants, Dalits and minorities.
• Political: without documents or tenure, residents struggle to claim entitlements; Partha Chatterjee's "political society" describes how they bargain with parties and officials as populations to be managed rather than as rights-bearing citizens.

These deprivations reinforce one another, so housing, tenure and service policies such as PMAY-Urban must tackle them together.