SCHOOL EDUCATION

Towards Budgetary Cuts And Elitism

Nalini Taneja

AN important development concretising and consolidating the BJP-led NDA government’s interventions on the education front are the continuing budgetary cuts and shifts in allocation of funds for education this year. The cuts and shifts are related and complementary developments, in keeping with the basic policy initiatives of the government, i e,  to absolve the state of its responsibility of promoting education, even while determining the content of education and controlling academic life through changes in syllabi.

As argued in a statement, titled Shocking Neglect of Education in the Budget, signed by 50 prominent members of parliament belonging to various opposition parties, given along with a letter to the deputy prime minister L K Advani, on March 15, the government has actually reduced the already grossly inadequate amount allotted to the department of education. The amount has been reduced from Rs 4,904.85 crore to Rs 4,904.63 crore.

FRAUD ON THE NATION

If one takes into account the fact that prior to this, in November 2001, the government had introduced and passed in a great hurry and in the same session the 93rd constitution amendment bill (now 86th constitution amendment) to provide free and compulsory education to all children up to the age of 14 years, this reduction amounts to playing fraud on the nation and is actually a criminal neglect of people’s welfare. The bill had been passed in the context of the coming elections to the four state assemblies of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Manipur and Uttaranchal. Yet, more than a year later, the constitution amendment, even with all its inadequacies, is still to be implemented. The cuts for education in the budget this year exposes the government’s lack of will and its real intentions, and that the government was not serious even about its watered down proposals in the bill passed. 

According to the statement, the budget has not allocated to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All scheme) for universalisation of elementary education an amount larger than last year. So how is this universalisation to be effected? On paper, it appears that there is an increase. However, this increase on paper, from Rs 1,512.00 crore to Rs 1,951.25 crore is fictitious, and has been obtained by cancelling other schemes such as Operation Black Board (Rs 58.50 crore), Central Plan for North East areas (Rs 388 crore) etc.

Operation Black Board was formulated by the National Education Policy 1986, as revised in 1992. There are very obvious criticisms that educationists and concerned citizens made of this policy/programme implementation. However, as resolves of the government go, it implied certain concrete commitments by the government. The allocations were clearly insufficient, but with all it drawbacks the policy on paper provided for proper class rooms, 8 year teaching, school library, at least 3 teachers for every school “the number increasing as early as possible to one teacher per class” (NEP, revised, para 5.7).  This government’s shift towards the Education Guarantee Scheme or “alternative” education, on the other hand, does not provide for either a school building or teaching material. It provides for only 2 or 3 year schooling, all the classes being taught together by one unqualified, untrained and underpaid para-teacher. (“Para-teachers in Primary Education,” published by DPEP, pp 47-49). As the statement emphasises, “such a sharp erosion of standards of government elementary education can hardly provide basic literacy and much less a meaningful education.”

Similarly, the cancellation of the plan making provision for elementary education and literacy in the North East can only have disastrous consequences for the country in the context of the problems of backwardness and alienation already there in the region.

TILT TOWARDS THE RICH

Needless to say, all this is a far cry from the recommendations of all previous educational commissions, including the Tapas Majumdar committee appointed by the government in 1999, which had assessed the additional requirement for universalisation of elementary education as Rs 13,700 crore per year; or the Kothari commission, which had stipulated that a minimum of 6 per cent of GDP should be spent on education.

Apart from the shifts from formal system of primary and elementary education to the non-formal stream that implies withdrawal of commitment to every child’s right to attend school and be a full time student and receive real education, there are indicators in the budget which show this government’s blatant tilt towards the rich and against the poor. In keeping with its formulations in the amendment bill on right to education passed and the national curriculum framework being implemented, the government is going about creating gross inequalities and increasing disparities within the public stream of education. There are 451 Navodaya Vidyalayas with a total of 1.25 lakh students on their rolls. The budget for Navodaya Vidyalayas is Rs 490 crore, i e almost 10 per cent of the total budget of the department of secondary and higher education. The union government expenditure for each student at Navodaya Vidyalayas is Rs 39,000 per year whilst for a student in an average school it is about Rs 241 and total expenditure (including contribution from the states) is about Rs 2,000 per student in an average school.

Apart from this, private schools in India can now provide foreign qualifications at school level itself without any regard for the national curriculum. This has been permitted by a circular from the ministry of human resource development dated January 14, 2002 (Statement of MPs), and several such schools in Delhi and elsewhere have already started providing such education on payment of fees of several lakh per year. The government, on its part, further aids this trend by providing to the affluent sections of society an exemption of income tax up to Rs 12,000 for education of each child. (How many parents in this country can afford to spend Rs 12,000 for education of each child every year?) The elitist bias within our system, and the already deep divide between the rich and the poor, is being exacerbated with a deliberate vengeance by this government, through its moves on the education front.  

PROMOTING WORLD BANK AGENDA

It is obvious that those worst hit by these moves would be those who are already the most disadvantaged, although the policy also hits at the lower middle class. And the middle class, which has found alternative private routes to education insofar as school education is concerned, would find its avenues to compete and get along in the globalised world quite circumscribed once it enters the world of higher education. But it is the children of tribals, Dalits, minorities and the girl children who would bear the brunt of these cuts as well as shifts to the non-formal stream, and the disparities being created within the public (government schools) system of education. Greater erosion of public welfare invariably leads to its cornering by the stronger rather than the weaker among those targeted, and scarce private resources within families — but natural in the days of liberalisation policies — even more invariably leads to cut in expenditure on the girl child. Educationists and social activists have already marked such trends.

Finally, the budget allocations belie and fully expose the government’s deliberately promoted argument on the contradiction between expenditure on elementary education (the needs of the masses) and higher education (need of the elite). Cuts in higher education are made by governments on the fraudulent ground that limited resources must be put into first attaining universal elementary education/literacy. Unfortunately a lot of well meaning social activists fall into this trap. The truth of the matter is that the third world countries today urgently need to expand their social base for higher education to promote initiatives and thinking which is in their own interest and not a euphemism for promoting World Bank ideologies.

Moreover, cuts in higher education are never matched anywhere by increases in allocations for school education. Governments that wish to withdraw from education and see the value of keeping people away from learning and meaningful education in order to preserve privileged social structures, are not likely to promote universal elementary education either. As we can see this all over south Asia, and certainly in our country, the cut and shifts in allocations for school education have been paralleled and matched by an overall decrease in the allocation for education in the budget for this financial year, and corresponding shifts between branches of study in higher education, which reflect not only this government’s communal agenda, but also its elitist agenda.