Professor Amartya Sen has advocated important reforms in the realms of primary education and primary health care. What are your suggestions to improve their status and performance? (Not more than 200 words)

Primary education and primary health care expand capabilities, reduce inter-generational deprivation and enable citizens to participate productively. Their improvement requires public provision that is accessible, accountable and sensitive to local needs.

Improving primary education

• Ensure functional schools, safe buildings, toilets, drinking water, electricity and adequate teacher availability.
• Prioritise foundational literacy and numeracy through age-appropriate pedagogy, local-language support and regular formative assessment.
• Strengthen teacher training, mentoring and attendance monitoring without reducing education to inspection or test scores.
• Address exclusion through nutrition, transport, disability access, gender-sensitive facilities and support for disadvantaged children.

Improving primary health care

• Make health and wellness centres genuinely functional with medicines, diagnostics, trained personnel and referral linkages.
• Emphasise immunisation, maternal and child care, nutrition, sanitation, prevention and health awareness.
• Use decentralised planning, community monitoring and reliable public financing; regulate private providers where they serve public schemes.
• Convergent action by education, health, water and local-government departments is essential for capability expansion.

Keywords: capabilities; foundational learning; primary health care; equity; community monitoring; human development.