Vol. 7, Issue 1, Part B (2025)

Better and inclusive measurement of attainment in primary education requires disowning the narrow ‘availability and outcome based approach’ in favour of the broader ‘access approach’. Along with availability, focus needs to be given to ‘affordability of education’ for the users especially the weaker section, ‘acceptability’ of roles by providers and ‘adaptability’ of the users to treat education essential because of its intrinsic and use values. The paper fuses on these aspects to develop a comprehensive concept of access. Effort is made to compute composite multidimensional access index for different states of India using DISE data. The endeavour allows identifying the specific ‘dimension’ in which different regions trail and helps to decipher the reasons for relative success of leaders in respective areas. It is hoped that better understanding of the ‘dimension’ in which a region lags would help us to shun the blanket ‘create infrastructure policy’ and formulate a more effective ‘need-based intervention strategy’.