Kolkata: Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz feels that government should play an important role in providing primary education as it enables the poor to have access to the educational facilities.

"Firstly when we have high levels of inequality, then the ability of the poor to get admitted to very good schools becomes limited. So it leads to a situation that those who are at the top (financially well off) get to good schools and those who are at the bottom (financially poor) get struck to poor schools," said Stiglitz while addressing a programme here.

"The second problem with the private sector in primary education is it often exploits or tends to exploit. Most of the state universities in US are non-profit universities," he said.

Stiglitz blamed the existing economic policies and political systems as the main reasons behind the economic instability.

He also expressed his surprise that it took so long for the protests to break out.

"The global economic crisis had occurred in 2008, but the protests had only broken out in 2011," he said.

Stiglitz also pointed out the "too big to fall" notion of the US banking sectors has worsened the financial crisis further.

"Over 300 banks went into bankruptcy. But the big banks like Citibank and Bank of America got tens of millions of dollars from the government as bailout package," he said. IANS