When stagnation is likely to be permanent.

Every year a NGO Pratham brings out the Annual State of Education Report (ASER) of the level of learning in schools in India. An analysis for 2016 shows that, "Among children in standard III-V, an overwhelming majority from highly privileged families could read a standard I text while an overwhelming majority from underprivileged families could not," wrote Bansal and Bhattacharya. "Underprivileged children born to parents with a high school or college degree tend to do as well as highly privileged children born to parents with secondary schooling." Why the surprise? Children whose parents read to them and encourage them to learn other activities, like music, are much ahead in learning and earn more as adults. Richer parents have the means to invest in various activities for their children, including visiting museums, hobbies and music. Just talking to toddlers tends to make them smarter. A study in Britain showed that richer parents create a "glass floor" to help their children achieve higher status in life, compared to equally able children from lower income status. But, surely it is the duty of every parent to transfer their knowledge to their children and use the help of relatives and friends, without doing anything illegal? The good news is that levels of learning have improved in 2018, compared to 2012, but the bad news is that they are yet to reach the levels attained in 2008. Quality of education is extremely important to improve economic mobility across generations and a higher economic status improves education levels. "Thus, we see that 63% of the sons born in the 1980s to fathers in any of the three occupations  -- farmer, agricultural labourer or construction worker -- continued to remain in the same occupation," wrote T Kundu. For them, a job in a factory would be higher up the scale. India has practiced a system of discrimination in which 50% of government jobs and seats in institutes of higher education are reserved for people from lower castes, certain tribes and so-called other backward classes. Recently, the government announced 10% reservation for poorer sections of upper castes. India has fallen behind as "China's success owes much to emphasis on meritocracy. It's high-quality education system has driven relentlessly to catch up with the West, and now produces high class academic output", wrote SA Aiyar. Reservation of 10% for upper castes is like farm loan waiver because "both have a huge political appeal despite minuscule actual benefits", wrote R Kishore. We may dance about overtaking a tiny country like Britain but we have no hope of ever reaching China, let alone the US. Still, as long as politicians win elections.