Within two weeks of taking charge as Union minister of human resource development (HRD) following a Cabinet reshuffle on July 5, Prakash Javadekar — former minister of environment, forest management and climate change in the BJP-NDA government which was swept to power in General Election 2014 — met with top leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the acknowledged ideological parent organisation of the BJP, and leaders of affiliated hindutva organisations such as Vidya Bharati, ABVP, Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal, Vigyan Bharati etc for a six-hour conclave in Delhi on July 29.

According to reliable HRD ministry sources, the RSS top brass is less than satisfied with the draft of the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2016 prepared by Javadekar’s controversial predecessor in office, Smriti Irani, who has been moved to the textiles ministry. Even Javadekar’s first public outing after assuming office was to an event organised by the Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal on NEP 2016. “We need views from all ideologies. We need each and every suggestion because I believe education is a national mission to take the country ahead,” said Javadekar, who announced extension of the deadline for public comment on NEP 2016 to August 15. The general expectation is that like his predecessor Irani, Javadekar will continue to be heavily influenced by the RSS while discharging his duties as Union HRD minister and NEP 2016 will have RSS fingerprints all over it.

This is bad news for Indian education because although Irani toed the RSS/sangh parivar line by appointing RSS nominees to highly-reputed higher education institutions, they failed to do the BJP’s reputation any good. The appointments of RSS nominees such as Prof. Y. Sudershan Rao as chairperson of the New Delhi-based Indian Council of Historical Research; Gajendra Chauhan as head of Film and Television Institute of India, Pune; former editor of RSS mouthpiece Panchajanya Baldev Sharma as chairman of the National Book Trust, invited a volley of criticism from academia and the media.

Nor during Irani’s two-year tenure in Shastri Bhavan, Delhi, which hosts the HRD ministry was the BJP/NDA government able to notch up any notable successes in education. Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2014, released in early 2015, revealed a declining trend in student learning outcomes countrywide. Institutions of higher education continue to experience a severe faculty crunch (30 percent of faculty positions are vacant countrywide). Only two of India’s 800 universities are ranked in the QS Top 200 World University Rankings 2015, and even the top-ranked, globally respected Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) weren’t spared Irani’s reckless interference with their administration and autonomy.

Unsurprisingly, civil society groups and academics aren’t particularly enthused by the change in leadership of the HRD ministry. “The new minister is unlikely to bring about the reform the education system needs. With the Centre’s expenditure on education slashed from Rs.82,771 crore in 2015-16 to Rs.72,394 crore this year, and casual approach towards implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, the damage has already been done. The RSS design is to infiltrate institutions of higher education to push its cultural agenda rather than improve learning outcomes. Expecting Javadekar to reverse this agenda and bring about positive change in Indian education would be quite naive,” says Ambarish Rai, national convenor of the Delhi-based RTE Forum, a network of 10,000 civil society groups working on effective implementation of the RTE Act.

With Javadekar’a four predecessors in Shastri Bhavan having proved dismal failures — the cost of which is borne by the world’s largest and most short-changed child population (see edit p.10) — these low expectations are not unwarranted. That’s the only factor in Javadekar’s favour.

Swati Roy (Delhi)

 

Cosmetic amendment

The child labour (prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Bill 2016 — passed by both houses of Parliament and awaiting presidential assent — has provoked a national outcry with child rights activists and lead editorials in Deccan Chronicle (July 28) and The Hindu (August 2) among other heavyweight English language dailies, severely criticising its provisions.

Although the Bill proposes several progressive amendments to the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 — complete prohibition of employment of children below 14 years and provides for a rehabilitation fund for the education and welfare of children rescued from workplaces — an amendment to s.3 which permits children to work to help their families or “family enterprises” or “as an artist in an audio-visual entertainment industry”, has aroused widespread indignation among civil society groups and educationists.

“This amendment is in contradiction with Article 32 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as it would put children at risk of sexual exploitation, long hours of work, and would effectively deny them a childhood as prescribed under the principles of human rights and children’s rights,” says a letter (July 26) written by several child rights activists including Ruchira Gupta, Harsh Mander, Malini Bhattacharya, Kirti Singh, Vimal Thorat, Mainoona Mollah, Colin Gonsalves among others to President Pranab Mukherjee urging him to withhold his assent to the Bill and send it back to Parliament for review. According to these child rights activists, given that 60 percent of households in the country are engaged in agriculture, management of tiny farms and agri businesses can be passed off as family enterprises.

The Bill’s proviso that children under 14 are permitted to help out with family businesses only after school hours is dismissed as unimplementable. They also argue that expecting children to attend school and also work is impractical and will increase the country’s already huge percentage (53 percent) of school dropouts.

The Amendment Bill also adds a new category of children in the 14-18 age group described as adolescents who are prohibited from being employed in hazardous industries such as mines and in hazardous process businesses. Moreover, the Amendment Bill decrees stringent punishment —  doubling jail terms for employers of children from six months to two years and fines of Rs.20,000-50,000 or both. In addition s.18 also prescribes penal punishment for parents or others facilitating child labour.

The infirmities of the Amendment Bill and particularly its premise that because of pervasive poverty, it’s the obligation of children to help family enterprises even at the cost of their childhood and education, has also outraged Kailash Satyarthi, India’s most strident child rights activist who was awarded — together with girl child rights champion Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan — the Nobel Peace Prize of 2014, for his sustained three-decades campaign to eradicate child labour. In an interview to Deccan Chronicle (July 30), Satyarthi expressed “shock about the poverty argument misused by parliamentarians” across all political parties. “This new amendment is regressive. There are major flaws. The definition of family enterprise has blurred a very natural course of engaging children to help parents,” says Satyarthi.

To enable children to avail their fundamental right to education as provided by the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, the obvious solution is to end the wretched poverty in bottom-of-the-pyramid households, which eke out miserable lives on less than Rs.32 per capita per day, the country’s shamefully low poverty line. It also requires the annual national outlay for education (Centre plus states), which has averaged 3.5 percent of GDP for the past half century, to be raised to at least 6 percent as recommended by the Kothari Commission in 1966, so government schools become an attractive daily destination for children and parents.

Failing this, passage of this or any other Bill to amend the Child Labour Act, 1986, will be of limited — if not ornamental — value.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)