In 1937, Gandhiji’s plea for adequate finances for universal education was met with a response that, if at all, the way out was to utilise revenues from liquor sales. He expressed his anguish plainly: “the cruelest irony of the new reforms lies in the fact that we are left with nothing but liquor revenue to fall back upon, in order to give our children education “. The political will to provide sufficient finances has remained dormant ever since.
In the landmark Unnikrishnan judgment of 1993, the Supreme Court ruled that the Right to Life, Article 21 of the Constitution, in conjunction with Article 45 of Directive Principles, already constituted a right to education for children up to age 14, the economic capacity of the state would come into consideration only after age fourteen.The response of the state came 10 years later, in 2002, when the 86th Constitutional amendment was passed, inserting Article 21A that made education a fundamental right for children in the age group 6-14 years, with the caveat that the right would be implemented through a law that the state may determine.
This, of course, took away a lot from the Supreme Court judgment. One, it removed the 0-6 age group from the right. Two, whereas the Supreme Court had maintained that the right already existed, the 86th amendment made it contingent on a law that the state was given a choice of bringing in.
No such law has been brought in since 2002. Worse, the 86th amendment has not even been notified. The Central Advisory Board for Education (CABE), constituted by the UPA government, did prepare a bill in August 2005, but it was referred to a High Level Group (HLG) by the prime minister, to examine its financial and other implications. Strangely, the HLG concluded that there was no case for the Centre to fund a central legislation; the states ought to do so. It, therefore, recommended asking the states to bring in their respective legislations based on a model bill.
Such a diluted bill was indeed circulated by the HRD ministry, with a covering letter asking the states to provide financial priority to elementary education second only to law and order. Most of the states responded negatively, some even asking the central government to heed its own advice and to provide such priority to education at the Centre. Since the ratio of combined state expenditure to central expenditure in school education was around 85:15 in 2006 (the central expenditure being inclusive of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan funds), the case for the Centre to invest more appears logical. Due to a combination of factors, including public pressure, at a specially convened HLG meeting presided over by the prime minister on February 14, 2008, a decision was finally taken to introduce a central legislation in the current session of Parliament. The CABE draft of August 2005 was resurrected. Since it had already received substantial responses from state governments and the public, these were incorporated in preparing a new draft bill by a working group constituted by the MHRD.
The CABE 2005 draft had been formulated with the aims of prescribing minimum quality, better delivery and inclusiveness. The working group recommended the retention of most of the essential features, such as: the compulsion’ to be on the state to provide for universal education of equitable quality; the minimum norms of a school – classrooms, pupil teacher ratio, library, toilet, playground, teacher qualifications – to be mandatory; each school to have a management committee where three-fourths are parents of children in the school, and the rest, panchayat members and teachers; the content and process to adhere to values enshrined in the Constitution; free’ education to imply that financial barriers do not prevent a child from attending school; no one to be allowed to prevent a child from attending school; the neighbourhood school concept to be invoked; no screening for admitting a child to a school; and the implementation of the legislation to be monitored by an independent commission that would report directly to the Parliament.
What about the financial burden that was used to silence Gandhiji 70 years ago? Calculations reveal that the total expenditure would not exceed six per cent of GDP for education, a promise of the UPA government. Which is not an impossible or wasteful expenditure considering the sad fact that 60 years after independence, of about 20 crore children in the 6-14 age group, nearly half are eliminated at the el ementary stage, as non-enrolled or drop outs.From among the ones who survive, the majority have abysmal achievement levels. They are thus out of contention for higher education even before age 14; more universities or reservations are not for them.
A simple yardstick for quality improvement in financial terms is provided by the government’s own double standards. The per learner cost for an average government school at the elementary stage is around Rs 2,000 , the comparable cost for the government run central schools being Rs 7,000. The difference in quality is palpable. In the first instance, the government must ensure that all its schools attain the central school quality norms.
One hopes that at this late stage of the UPA’s term, there are no major changes in the proposed draft that further delay the introduction of the bill in the Parliament or that once introduced the bill does not get stuck in select committees. It is equally important for our parliamentarians to cut across party lines so that the 70-year-old wrong done to our children is speedily righted.
The writer, an educationist, was a member of the CABE committee that drafted the 2005 Bill, and a member of the Working Group for the 2008 draft.
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