Pranjit Agarwala

The records of Indian Parliament are replete with well-meaning legislations that have been passed but have not been fully or properly implemented. Records of debates in the Constituent Assembly also reveal that our founding fathers had considered basic education a privilege that should be available to all citizens. That is why under Articles 29 and 30 of the Constitution, the Right to Education was included in the fundamental rights. Moreover, under Article 4 of the Directive Principles of State Policy, the state was bound to provide free and compulsory education up to the age of 14 years within ten years of the Constitution being adopted. Yet, 60 years later, despite its much-touted nine per cent growth rate, India has failed to provide basic schooling to a vast majority of its children — a privilege that should have been actually accorded to the present generation’s great grandfathers.
According to statistics, today one in every three Indian is illiterate. A staggering ten million children have never gone to school. Even though the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan saw a quantum jump in primary school enrolment, a high percentage of dropouts reduced the retention rates to dismally low levels. At present 8.2 million children in the country in the targeted age group of 6-14 years do not go to school and form a part of a child labour force that has become a blot on the image of  “India Shining”.
The Right to Education Act (RTE) 2009 aims to wipe out this blot by implementing a neighbourhood system of schooling within three years of the Act coming into effect — that is, April 1, 2013. Now, under the Act, for the first time parents and students are legally empowered to demand education from the state. But under the framework of rules they cannot directly prosecute for most violations and must complain to a local authority who can decide to seek prosecution. When RTE is a fundamental right, the aggrieved should also be able to seek redressal directly through the courts of law. However, at the same time it must be realized that a person who is hard-pressed to make a living will hardly have the money to go to court. Therefore, as the concept is about neighbourhood schooling, neighbourhood schooling committees should be formed and given the responsibility of redressing grievances.
Bringing private schools under the ambit is a significant and welcome step. Private schools will henceforth have to reserve 25 per cent of their seats for students from the neighbourhood belonging to the economically weaker sections and provide them with free education including books, uniform and essential stationaries. They will be compensated by the government. Schools are also barred from holding admission tests to select students, demanding birth and transfer certificates for granting admission, seeking donations and capitation fees, or failing a child up to Class VIII. The school management committees will be made up of 75 per cent members from the neighbourhood, including parents of students. All schools will have to undergo a quality scrutiny to continue. While the government is right to ensure that private schools also share the burden of educating the deprived child, it must also make a conscientious effort to improve the educational standards of government schools so that a uniform standard of education is available to all children.
In 2008, India had 13.96 lakh lower primary (LP), upper primary and secondary schools. Although this is a vast improvement from the figure of 2.24 lakh schools in 1950, to meet the norms of the new RTE Act of having an LP school every 1 km and upper primary school every 3 km, a lot many schools will have to be established. An additional 5 lakh teachers will be required countrywide to meet the student-teacher ratio set by the Act. Books and essential stationaries will have to be made easily and regularly available. At the same time effective measures will have to be taken to check the high percentage of dropouts.
The magnitude of the exercise and money involved can be understood from the fact that the Bihar Government alone will need Rs 27,000 crore to provide free education to the children in the targeted age group. Assam will need Rs 4,000 crore in the next five years, 40,000 additional classrooms, 30,500 girls’ toilets and 20,000 general toilets to reach the intended target. In States like Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand where the school density is low, huge investments will have to be made in developing basic educational infrastructure. Because of the education cess being levied by the Centre, funds for the project are not considered a problem. However, transparency and strict monitoring will be required so that the funds are properly utilized and are not siphoned off by a nexus of corrupt elements.
Another big challenge will be to change the mindset of the people, both the privileged and the underprivileged, towards the schooling of the deprived child. For the underprivileged, food and shelter, not education, are primary needs. Because of poverty, they prefer a child to earn rather than learn. For them, putting a child in school even free of cost would mean losing a source of income. To overcome this, instead of imposing fines, parents can be assured of a lumpsum fixed amount as monetary compensation for putting their child in school. But they should be eligible to receive the compensation only when the child clears the minimum stipulated level of schooling. This amount can also later on be used by the child to gain some vocational training for employment or self-employment.
Moreover, notwithstanding the hype, child labour is an accepted and common phenomenon in our society. In most better-off homes, children are employed as domestic servants. How many households will be willing to allow their domestic help to study by freeing them from their daily chores?
Children are also widely employed by commercial establishments and small-scale/cottage industries in the unorganized sector as they provide cheap labour. Here children are made to work long hours in unhygienic conditions for a pittance. Will the RTE Act be able to free these children from being exploited? Instead of imposing fine on the already destitute parents for not putting their children in school, why cannot the government penalize the commercial enterprises that are making profits by exploiting children? Indeed, if the underprivileged child is to learn, our perceptions must change, and along with the government, the society will also have to be equally diligent and committed.
While recognizing the fundamental right to primary education, the government must also appreciate that the child must be given the relevant inputs and training to prepare it for future employment. Training does not mean focusing only on high-end skills like information technology, biotechnology, management etc, but in this case, more relevantly, on skills of utility like plumbing, electrical, electronic and automobile repairing, nursing, tailoring, carpentry etc, which are of daily necessity and in shortage. Otherwise having a large literate population which is young and untrained will only add to the burgeoning unemployment. This will not only cause social unrest, but, as in the case of the Northeast and some tribal belts of other States, will also provide a fertile recruitment ground for insurgents. However, with the requisite skills, they can join the nation’s work force and channelize their energies into economically productive work.
Interestingly, Assam and thirteen other States and Union Territories already have compulsory education Acts which have not been fully implemented. In Assam, the government had passed the Assam Elementary Education (Provincialization) Act in 1974 under which during school hours it is illegal for a parent or any person to engage a child in work for pay or otherwise and keep him away from school. But this Act has never been enforced.
According to Plato, an ideal state must provide  basic education to all its citizens. By this yardstick, in this diamond jubilee year of our Constitution, is it then a failure of our system of governance that a large section of the Indian population remains illiterate? Or is it a manifestation of the degradation of our society and polity, steeped as they are in crass materialism and self-propagation which have subverted the noble ideals incorporated in our Constitution? Given the all-pervading rot in our social, political and administrative systems, the biggest challenge before the RTE Act 2009 is its proper implementation.