Political Diary

New Delhi, 14 April 2012

Right To Education

WILL TWO + TWO MAKE FOUR?

By Poonam I Kaushish

A for apple, B for bat, C for cat…soon India’s future should be reciting this all over the country. No longer will children plan to spend their time playing gulli-danda. Nor will education make Jack a dull boy! It will make Ram an educated boy!

Thanks to a three-judge Bench Supreme Court majority verdict which upheld the Constitutional validity of the Right to Education Act, 2009, (RTE) which mandates 25 per cent free seats to the poor between 6 to 14 years in Government and private unaided schools except unaided private minority schools on Thursday last.

Undoubtedly, the Government has taken the first historical step in education. True, the objective of the RTE is laudable. There is need to strengthen our social fabric by providing equal opportunities to all. Certainly, it is the duty of the State to provide free and compulsory education to poor kids. The moot point: Does it know what constitutes education? Does writing one’s name make one literate? Will two plus two equal four?

Indeed, talk of each one, teach one sounds good but this has to translate into concrete action. The judgment not only underscores the collapse of the Government schooling system but also made it possible for the State to shrug-off its responsibility. Is it justified to ask unaided private schools to comply with the Government diktat? 

Pertinently, the RTE has eliminated the age group between zero and six years. The Government and the State run the risk of leaving the young innocents illiterate. For, by the time a child reaches age six without even rudimentary education in terms of sound, colour and pictorials, how will het show any inclination or aptitude? Early childhood care cannot be segregated from education. The UN chapter for Education 1992, to which India is a signatory, states that early childhood care education should be taken care of by the Government. Why the exclusion?

Just by sending poor kids to a private school does not necessarily ensure education or success. Where they come from, do they get enough sleep and food is important, apart from their academic preparedness. Think. Four in 10 children suffer chronic malnutrition before reaching school age impairing their brain development and learning ability. According to recent annual report, of rural schools fewer than half of class 5 children could read a textbook and do basic arithmetic sums for class 2 students.

With 25 per cent seats reserved for the poor where should those who get in on merit go for education? Better would have been for the Government to first provide schools and teachers instead of offloading and outsourcing its responsibility. Where are the schools? Teachers? And infrastructure? Worse, schools are over-crowded with classrooms boasting of at least 50 children. It’s like putting the cart before the horse.

What after age 14 where will these students go after class VIII? Who will pay for books, uniforms, field trips, activity material, examination fee etc? Can they afford them? Topping this there is an acute shortage of teachers, good teachers a far cry of whom 25 per cent are always absent resulting in abysmal quality of teaching and decreased school hours.

Alas, universal elementary education has remained basically a paper tiger and has not been realised properly. Given that all villages are not listed on India’s map? They are neither commutable nor connected. School buildings are non-existent and basic infrastructure like classrooms, black boards etc are missing.

The text books quality is pathetic, study material out-dated, English is full of grammatical errors wherein it’s a miracle to find a paragraph with no errors. Student enrollment is a huge problem and incentives like mid-day meals are given to enroll them. Worse, poor parents read their children as a pair of additional hands to work rather than educate. Thus, it would be extremely difficult to make parents appreciate the benefits of education which would, in the long run, yield higher productivity and higher incomes.

Moreover, RTE sounds great and is excellent vote bank politics. But it does not make good economic sense as the Government does not have enough money. It would need Rs 2.3 lakh crores to fund its initiative for 2010-14 with the Centre-State in a ration of 65-35.

Astonishingly, the RTE bill is almost 5 times India’s allocation for school education (Rs 48,781 crores for 2012-13), more than the total annual subsidies of Rs 1.9lakh crore and larger than the estimated income tax receipts of Rs 1.96 lakhs. Where and how will it generate these extra funds? What with a growing deficit and runaway inflation. With unemployment on the ascendance, who will generate income and money for ploughing it back in education?

Sadly, even after 64 years of Independence, our literacy rate is only 66 per cent. According to the World Education Report, India shares 32.3 per cent of the illiterates of the world. Now look at the public expenditure per student per capita of the Gross National Income. It is only 16.3 per cent in India while the world figure is 23.3 per cent.

Thus, with the state failing to provide the accompanying wherewithal and making it incumbent on the parents to wrest the initiative, quality education will remain a pipe dream. Instead, poor substandard second rate and skeletal programmes like the Education Guarantee Scheme will be fobbed off as education. Add to it the deadly potion of underpaid and under qualified teachers, one has a surefire recipe for disaster in the name of education.

Besides, a majority of middle class parents are thoroughly disillusioned with State schools. The peasantry and urban poor see no prospect of education becoming relevant for their children or the teacher showing warmth towards them. Bias against village life is so central to modern education and its curriculum that one cannot imagine how the high drop-out rate can be brought down without drastic alterations in perspective. In the midst of increasing social disparities and smugness of the urban elite and empowerment how will the Government implement is a puzzle.

Looking ahead, the shortcomings in India's education system threaten to convert a potential demographic dividend into a disaster. The country has one of the world's youngest population profiles, and is getting younger: by 2020, the median age will be 28. India needs to create around 12m new jobs a year for young people entering the labour market. Against this backdrop, how will the Government deliver what it promises?

The tragedy is that India is raised on slogans. Today RTE is a buzzword but if the Government is serious it should add the word “good” in the Right to Education. Along-with improving its delivery systems. Given that a school is a microcosm of the education challenges facing India.  All blueprints can be drawn up, buildings built, teachers hired. But till one has the will, two plus two will not make four. Elementary, isn’t it? ---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)