People's Democracy

THE BJP is trying very hard to gain propaganda value from the 93^rd Constitutional Amendment Bill, concerning education as a fundamental right, that it is the only party committed to making education accessible to all people. The entire propaganda is a big hoax. The Bill is essentially a reflection and justification of the existing education scenario.

There is a need to not only look critically at the contents of this Bill, as the National Alliance of Fundamental Right to Education (NAFRE) have done, but also to link the Bill with the BJP government’s larger goals of privatisation and communalisation of education, which eminently suit the WTO-sponsored GATS regime.

The changes that the BJP-led government has brought about in the last three years work against making education accessible to all. The BJP government has presided over the largest dismantling exercise of the public educational infrastructure in history. We must be clear that access to education will, in the future, be far more restricted than ever before since independence, both as a result of the BJP’s governing philosophy of education and the determined withdrawal of the state from the field.

The government must be questioned not merely on the specific clauses of the Bill, including the omission of the commitment to a larger budget, but also on the grounds of actively conniving with the WTO demand of creating an ‘even playing field’ for private players, including foreign private players, by withdrawing subsidies on education even as it claims that education is being made a ‘fundamental right’.

When we are talking of making education a fundamental right we are not referring to children whose parents are willy-nilly sending them to school. We are talking of those who are not in school because they cannot be in school, for economic, social or other such reasons. In their case shifting the onus for their schooling on the ‘community’ (a very fashionable idea) or the individual (parent) amounts to the most blatant and ugly form of privatisation. It can only result in deprivation of education. More so, for the girl child, religious minorities and dalits.

Moreover, the major issue is not whether it will be the state or the parent who will be at fault if a child is not in school, although there must be a campaign to prevent poor parents from being victimised. The major issue is where are the schools to which every child is entitled? Should every child in this country decide to be in school there simply will be no place for them to go. Valid criticisms of the system should not be allowed to become factors in abandoning the system.

The government, in conjunction with certain NGOs, has concocted exciting phrases like ‘joy of learning’, ‘learning at one’s own pace’, the ‘school going to the child’ (rather than child going to school), flexibility of ‘seasons’ and time, etc, to cover its denial of elementary schooling to the disadvantaged sections of our society--as if the formal state school system necessarily precludes these elements by virtue of being state sponsored!

The National Literacy Mission, Education Guarantee Scheme, Operation Blackboard, Education for All, Joyful Learning Programme, Non-Formal Education, Mahila Samakhya, Shikshak Samakhya, Scope, Lok Jumbish, Bihar Education Project, Andhra Pradesh Education Programme, National Programme for Nutritional Project, etc, are just so many schemes that prevent children from being where they should be--in a school. They are but cheap alternatives, as Anil Sadgopal says, to cheat the poor out of education.

The Bill must include a provision of ‘equitable, quality education’, if it is not to become an instrument of pushing through the BJP’s ideological predilections. An education suited to each one’s needs essentially means, as even a cursory reading of the government sponsored National Curriculum Framework (NCF) will show, an unequal education geared to reinforcing the existing inequalities in our society. Vocational education for ‘women and scheduled castes and other disadvantaged sections’, as underlined in the NCF means status, birth and gender will continue to decide the kind of education one is entitled to, and the kind of institution one is entitled to. There is a huge gap between those state of the art information technology centres promised in the document and the non-formal centres so gushingly recommended as flexible alternatives for the poor, which will further widen given the rapid strides towards privatisation. The proposed Bill not just sanctions but promotes this trend in the name of right to education and making education a fundamental right

Legislation is an indication of the direction and goals that a nation sets for itself. Can we go so far against the spirit of freedom struggle and the stated goals in our Constitution to actually dilute the Constitution through an amendment that reverses the commitments of national liberation, anti imperialism and decolonisation? That is the issue at stake. The 93^rd Constitution Amendment Bill, in the form that it is being placed before the nation, is simply an instrument of the BJP to gain parliamentary sanction for its anti people and anti national education policy as formulated in the NCF.

The commitment in our Constitution is to compulsory, free universalisation of elementary education. This Bill does not define free education, nor address itself to the hurdles poor parents face in sending their children to schools. Free education should include fees, uniforms, books, stationery, games and transport. If the right is to have any meaning no child must drop out for lack of these, which often form the greater part of expenditure in relation to the simple tuition fee, as we all very well know. And there must be a continuing commitment to compulsory mid day meal scheme, which is the only way of realistically subsidising the child’s education, and best guarantee for attendance in poor families.

In Goa more than 50 primary schools were handed over, with all their assets and infrastructure, at the cost of a token one rupee to RSS linked private bodies. In the north east and various tribal regions government funds have been given to RSS sponsored NGOs for establishing schools, including the VHP ekal schools all over the country. The RSS is the biggest emerging private player in school education, and these deals entail both communalisation and privatisation of school education, and substitution of government infrastructure that can be held accountable by those that are discriminatory towards the minorities, women and the dalits.

Such privatised schools can comfortably co-exist with the foreign private players that come in with the lifting of barriers on trade in services such as education (GATS), as both cater to different sections of society, with the RSS replacing the government schools and the foreign corporates ‘competing’ with the government-aided schools, public schools and ‘convent’ schools. In such arrangement information technology becomes wedded to ‘Indian values’ and culture through globalisation and respect for so-called indigenism in their respective territories of operation and catchment areas. These issues remain invisible in the 93^rd Amendment Bill in its present form.

By specifying the age group alone, the state is not guaranteeing even the attainment of a minimum level (i.e., up to class VIII) of education. In our rural context, only if a learner is very lucky, can she or he hope to get a ‘middle pass’ title-that is provided she or he progresses non-stop, does not falter, fall sick or is too hungry to study. If she or he belongs to the category that has been pushed into the non-formal stream, there is absolutely no possibility of attaining class VIII level in the specified age group. Given the state of affairs in the nonformal stream, it would mean that the government is reducing education to literacy.

Everywhere those who can afford school join formal school at the age of four (if we discount the play schools, etc). Keeping those who cannot afford school on their own steam out of schools until six would further disadvantage their inherited disadvantaged status, accounting for their so called boredom in school later. We should not forget that dropouts generally are in the first two years. Poorer children would already be engaged in learning a trade or minding children. Delay in allowing for access to education is in effect denial of education in such a context.

Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) for children up to the age of six, which has been proved to be an important foundation towards the goal of universalisation of elementary education, must therefore be a necessary component of the right to education. It also ensures that women and older siblings do not have to stop work and drop out of school to look after babies.

The Amendment must also address children as defined in the Child Right Charter to which India is a signatory, which is up to 18 years, and not just 6 to 14, as this Bill does. In today’s context Middle school pass means little in terms of a learning and literate society. It would condemn a very large section of our people to the permanent status of unskilled or semi-skilled labour, forever in need for supplementary education, the cost of which will be too high for the learner. The country will also be falling into the perpetual ‘adult education’ trap.

There is no short cut to education, and expenditure on educational infrastructure. The per capita expenditure on education has been steadily declining, there have been massive retrenchments of teachers from schools amounting to many lakhs, appointments of ill-trained para-teachers to replace them at a fraction of the salary, closing down of government formal institutions and their replacement with non formal centres of various kinds, handing over of schools with all their assets to private bodies (notably the RSS), all of which contribute substantially to undermine the state funded system of formal schools.

Without the much-demanded increase in the budgetary allocation for education there can hardly be any meaningful right to education. Presently, the figure stands at 3. 8 per cent. The first education minister, Maulana Azad, had talked of 10 per cent. Narasimha Rao had promised 6 per cent as late as in 1993. Countries poorer than India spend more on education. This country is not short of competent educational planners and economists who will work out several ways to get of the present morass.