The Compiling and release of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2005 is a landmark event in the evolution of school education in India. Pratham, a reputed civil society organization conducted a nation-wide survey of school-going children in 485 rural districts. 776 small and big groups along with about 10,000 volunteers participated in this massive exercise, and assessed the elementary education outcomes on a large, randomly selected sample of nearly 400,000 children in 9521 villages.

dir="ltr">India's unique selling proposition propelling this growth and engendering optimism is the fact that we are home to one of the world's largest technical manpower pools. We have over 5 million scientists, engineers and technicians in India now. About 300,000 of them (6%) are engaged in research and development. We can boast of 450,000 allopathic physicians, 200,000 agricultural graduates and 40,000 veterinarians. The stock of other post graduate degree holders is about 4.5 million in liberal arts, and a million each in sciences and commerce.