Traditional education system: its impact on socio-economic development in Mewat District, Haryana, India

Madarsa education is very common among the Muslims in India. Hundreds of thousands of Muslim children acquire their primary, and perhaps the only, formal education in these madarsas with a cursory knowledge of modern education. As a result they are lagging behind in science education and their representation and participation in the scientific activity of the country is woefully low. As such they are unable to earn sufficiently to lead a comfortable life and provide proper leadership to their community to face the challenges of the modern world. The purpose of the present study is to analyse whether madarsa education becomes a barrier in promoting modern and higher education and secondly how far these institutions helped improve socio-economic conditions of madarsa trained persons in the District of Mewat (Haryana). In the absence of secondary data, the present study is based on the primary data collected through both extensive and intensive field work. A total of 2,350 households were surveyed and information regarding demographic, socio-economic and environmental conditions of these households was collected. Such a varied nature of data was assigned weightage according to their importance and finally the composite score was calculated to find out the levels of the socio-economic conditions of madarsa trained persons.