This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, August 14th, 2007.

I'm Caleb Brown.

With India's economy growing rapidly, what's the best way to help the poor take part in that

prosperity?

Parth Shaw is the director of the Center for Civil Society in India.

He says the key is education for poor children children and education vouchers are a key

component of allowing children out of the public school system.

His school choice campaign aims to bring school choice ideas to a minimum 50%

of parents of public school children.

Dr Shaw visited the Cato Institute last week.

I was reading an analysis that your group had done on a piece of legislation from just a couple of years ago

and it seems like a lot of the problems in legislation in India sort of mirror

problems in the United States in per terms of education funding in the sense that there is this

incredible focus on the inputs associated with education that is the

dollars that go to the public schools and not so much on the outputs that is the quality of the education the bang for the buck if you will

Can you talk about the similarities between the the problems faced in trying to achieve school choice for the US in India?

Actually, you identified one of the most important problems in the Indian education system.

Most people, if you talk to either in the US or in India think that the lack of

spending is the biggest problem in the system. What we found out through our research is that in cities like Delhi and Bangalore and

Mumbai the government spends about 800 to 1200 rupees a month per child in

government schools.

When I say this number to most people who know about an education system,

...