In more than 60 years after Independence, we have learned that the government is not a competent provider of education. In the last 20 years, a diverse array of private providers has sprung up, despite a hostile policy framework. It is not the rich who send their children to the bulk of these schools, the quality of a large number of which is highly suspect. Innumerable lower-middle-class and poor parents across rural and urban India, having lost hope due to the lack of teachers and the quality of teaching in government schools, send their children to these private schools in the belief that the child would learn a little reading, writing, arithmetic and English to enable him to get better jobs and get ahead in life.

The draft Right to Education Bill 2008 has a little understood provision: it proposes to effectively impose a 33 per cent tax on the children going to private schools. This bill would force all private schools to take in a quarter of their students at the instruction of government — but without reimbursing their full costs. Fee paying students who constitute 75 per cent of the children in the school in private schools would be required to pay for these non-paying 25 per cent. This is a dubious idea. The government should reimburse full costs of these students through vouchers and scholarships, or else it will be a blow to the only avenue for so many children to get a decent education and escape the trap of illiteracy and poverty.

... contd.