Education and Rural Development: Some unintended consequences

I attended a very provocative seminar by Prof. Tripathi who has been with Allahabad University in their Organisational Behaviour Department. The seminar was based on the preliminary findings of a study conducted by him which assessed the educational impact on development indicators. The indicators were economic, social, health, gender parity and political.
The study was conducted in 12 villages in Mawana located at Meerut.The study divided the 12 villages into groups of 4 villages each-classified as low , medium and high educational levels.
The findings were very surprising.Some of them were as follows
1. Though there is positive correlation between educational level and income at the aggregate level, the SC and minorities fare much worse in high educational level villages than in the low educational level villages on the income parameters.
2.Women participation fell markedly in villages which had high educational levels.
3.Preference for male child was significantly higher in high educational level villages.
The point that Prof. Tripathi made was that the largely neo liberal policy making encouraged education for prosperity rather than education for social transformation.
It was an interesting talk, especially for those in my batch who would be joining ICICI Foundation's Centre for Elementary Education.