Politics & Governance / Public Policy / Education Policy

India’s $1.5 Billion Teacher Absence Crisis: The Fiscal Cost of Weak Governance

India spends billions on education, yet 1 in 4 teachers in rural public schools are absent on any given day. This video unpacks a landmark 2014 study by Karthik Muralidharan, Jishnu Das, Alaka Holla, and Aakash Mohpal that reveals the staggering fiscal cost of weak governance: $1.5 billion lost annually to teacher absenteeism. Using a decade-long panel dataset from 1,297 villages, the researchers show that pouring money into school infrastructure or teacher pay has little effect on attendance. Instead, the most cost-effective solution is simple: more frequent inspections. Discover why governance, not funding, is the real bottleneck in India’s education system, and what this means for global development policy.