Nowhere in India has passage of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (aka RTE Act) been more celebrated than in the national capital, which hosts the Union ministry of human resource development. Yet ironically, the state government of Delhi and the national capital region (NCR) has taken almost two years to notify the Rules for implementation of the RTE Act.This laidback and indifferent attitude of the state government towards education is also evidenced by the Delhi Statistical Handbook (DSH) 2011, issued by its directorate of economics and statistics, and formally released by chief minister Sheila Dikshit on November 3, last year.
With education having been made a fundamental right by the RTE Act, an increase in the number of government schools in the national capital is a logical expectation. However, on the contrary in 2009-10, the number of government primary, middle and secondary schools declined by 112.
According to DSH 2011, not only did the number of government-run schools in Delhi-NCR decline, so did the number of students enroled. Student enrolment in class I declined by 4 percent compared to 2008-09. This despite continuous migration into Delhi-NCR of an estimated 200,000-300,000 people annually — the majority of whom are migrant labour whose children would benefit from neighbour-hood government schools.
With the shortage of classrooms nationwide estimated by D. Purand-eswari, Union minister of state of HRD, at 291,000 at the elementary level and 177,000 in secondary education, acad-emics and educationists are flummoxed by the phenomenon of the Delhi state government closing down government schools within its jurisdiction.
Ashok Agarwal, a Delhi-based lawyer and promoter of Social Jurist — an equal education opportunity advocacy NGO — discerns an anti-poor cons-piracy in this phenomenon. The decreasing number of state government and municipal corporation schools is because of encouragement given to the promotion of private schools. During the past three years, the government has closed down around 100 schools — in some cases allotting the land for swimming pools and parking spaces. The state is surreptitiously withdrawing from school education to the detriment of children from the very sections of society that the RTE Act claims to serve, says Agarwal.
On the other hand, Dr. Parth Shah, president of Centre for Civil Society — a Delhi-based think tank which has been aggressively propagating a school vouchers programme which will fund students, not schools — ascribes the incremental closure of government schools countrywide to appalling curriculum delivery and neglect of physical infrastructure which is turning parents away from them. The plain fact is that the state government finds it easier to shut down its schools than to improve teaching-learning conditions in them, says Shah.
Caught between political rhetoric and apathy, the heaviest price of the state governments clandestine closure of its schools is being paid by bottom-of-the-pyramid SC & ST (scheduled castes and scheduled tribes) children. Between 2006 and 2010, the number of SC & ST children enroled in Delhi-NCR schools has fallen from 220,522 to 183,027 — a massive decline of 17 percent. Likewise the enrolment of SC/ST students in class I has declined by 14 percent from 38,053 in 2008-09 to 32,915 in 2009-10.
With the RTE Act stipulating stiff infrastructure norms for low-fee private budget schools (under s.19) on pain of closure, and state and local authorities unable to raise teaching-learning standards in government schools, children from the countrys estimated 150 million non-middle class households are caught between the proverbial rock and hard place.
Somethings gotta give.
Payal Mahajan (Gurgaon)
Populism intrusion
Election bound Uttar Pradesh — Indias most populous state (200 million) — which goes to the polls next month together with four other states, has impacted education policy in a major way, at least for the moment. Through an executive order dated December 22, the Union government has notified a 4.5 percent reserved quota in higher education institutions and government jobs for minorities (major beneficiary: Indias 150 million-strong Muslim community) within the 27 percent quota for OBCs (other backward classes/castes), tagged on to the 22.5 percent quota for scheduled castes (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST) in the Constitution of India (Article 243D) by the late unlamented Union human resource development (HRD) minister Arjun Singh in 2006.
In effect, it will translate into an estimated 120 seats for minorities in the countrys 15 prestigious IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and Indian School of Mines, 42 seats in IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) and around 200 seats in 30 NITs (National Institutes of Technology) in addition to reserved quotas in 40 Central univer-sities and other government educational institutions.
Clearly devised to please UPs 30 million-strong Muslim community which could swing 120 seats in the assembly election scheduled for February 2012, the sub-quota decision has been criticised by the opposition BJP which opposes religion-based reservations as unconstitutional, as well as Muslim lobbyists, who regard the 4.5 percent sub-quota for all minorities as less than recommended by the Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission — 8.4 percent sub-quota for minorities (6 percent for Muslims and 2.4 percent for other minorities) within the 27 percent OBC quota.
The Rajendra Sachar and Ranganath Mishra committees appointed by the UPA-I and UPA-II governments, which highlighted the extreme socio-economic backwardness of the Muslim community, had recommended at least 10 percent reservation exclusively for Muslims, says Dr. Zafarul Islam Khan, working president of the All India Muslim Majlise Mushawarat (AIMMM) and editor/publisher of the Delhi-based Milli Gazette. According to Khan, Muslims were better off before this reservation order as Muslim OBCs were entitled to a 2.3 percent sub-quota within the 27 percent OBC quota. Now the 4.5 sub-quota will have to be shared with Christians, Sikhs and Parsis.
Earlier, during an election tour of UP, Congress party heir apparent Rahul Gandhi had assured the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board president, Maulana Rabe Hasan Nadvi, that madrassas will be exempted from the purview of Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, a major demand of about 10,000 Muslim seminaries.
This assurance has also sparked interest and debate. While Dr. Parth Shah of Centre for Civil Society, Delhi, regards the exemption of madrassas as a precursor to the survival of low-price budget schools, others argue that their exemption from the infrastructure and other norms stipulated by s.19 and 25 of the RTE Act will perpetuate the backwardness of Muslims as about 90 percent of children from the community are enroled in madrassas and receive poor quality education infused with theology and communal propaganda.
There is an imperative need to look afresh into the RTE Act, iron out its ambiguities and focus on outcomes rather than inputs to achieve the objective of providing compulsory primary education for all children in the six-14 age group, says a statement issued by the Centre for Civil Society which held its third conference on school choice on December 21.
Certainly, theres no dearth of inconsistencies in the much trumpeted RTE Act. The Gujarat government spends an average Rs.700-800 per month on a child in a government primary while low budget schools offering better learning outcomes levy tuition fees of Rs.100-300. The provi-sion in the RTE Act which makes it mandatory for private schools to admit 25 percent of class I strength from among poor neighbourhood children will prompt them to hike their tuition fees, says Sudhir Mankad, former chief secretary of the Gujarat government who runs Pratham — a chain of budget schools in Ahmedabad.
According to Dilip Modi, chairman of Spice Communications and former president of Assocham, venture capitalists are ready and willing to invest $500 million to $1billion (Rs.2,600-Rs.5,200 crore) in K-12 education. But the RTE Act is silent about the mechanism to implement the public-private partnership model, he says.
Quite clearly the incremental intrusion of political populism into Indian education is creating unforeseen complications and confusion. Instead of focusing attention on augmenting capacity and improving quality within the government schools system, the Union and state governments are smuggling the infamous licence-permit-quota regimen, which almost destroyed Indian industry in the period 1956-91, into the education sector. Thats a bad augury for the worlds largest child population.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)