Education and Health Services in Punjab: Problems and Counter Actions

Health and education are the key elements of human development as well as national development. A huge amount of money is spent by the government of India in these sector and still India is far from achieving a well educated and healthy nation. So, an effort has been made in this paper to find out the utilization and problems of consumers related to educational and health services and the actions taking by them for solving their problems. The study was conducted in rural and urban areas of Ludhiana city in 2010. For rural sample, two villages were randomly selected from block one and for urban sample two localities were randomly selected from Ludhiana city. Sixty respondents each from rural and urban areas were taken, thus making the total sample size of 120. Data were collected through interview schedule. Result revealed that for educational services poor teacher to child ratio and poor sanitation were the major problems in both rural and urban areas while poor drug supply and poor care of patients were major problems related to health services. Although the government has created consumer courts but majority of the respondents were not taking any action for the redressal of their grievances.