Let quality prevail

The Central government has been clever enough not to tie itself in knots while granting children in the 6-14 age group the fundamental right to education under the Constitution (93rd) Amendment Bill, 2001. Children who are denied this right can now seek judicial remedy. But can they really do so when all that the government commits itself to is ‘‘provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age 6 to 14 in such manner as the state may, by law, determine’’? If the state is ever cornered on this, it can wriggle out of the situation by providing ‘‘free and compulsory’’ education through the open school system. Hence to view the Bill as a revolutionary step is to gloss over the reality. Nonetheless, it is not improper to see it as the fulfillment of a long-cherished dream of educationists and jurists.

The amendment makes sense only if it prompts the government to take a series of steps to make educational opportunities available to all the children in this particular age group. But can the state do so? Take the case of Delhi, where the density of population is high and facilities for education are far better than anywhere else in the country. According to an estimate, there are over a million children living in 1,100 slums in the Capital who have no access to school or education. Their growing demand can be met only by setting up over 2,000 new schools, which is beyond the means of the Delhi government. If this is the situation in the Capital, one can imagine the enormity of the task involved once the 93rd amendment comes through.

A couple of years ago, an expert group set up to study the financial implications of universalising elementary education worked out the cost at a whopping Rs 137,000 crore over a 10-year period. When the budgetary allocation for education still hovers around a pitiable 3.6 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) even when the ruling party has been promising to increase it to 6 per cent in successive election manifestoes, generating such resources is well nigh impossible. In other words, the government will have to depend on the non-governmental, voluntary sector to chip in with their resources to make a joint onslaught against illiteracy. It is no comfort that today India has the largest illiterate population in the world. But how does the government treat this sector? The situation in Delhi is similar to that in the rest of the country and it, therefore, warrants a close look.

The Delhi State Education Act and Rules passed by Parliament in 1973 govern school education in Delhi. Those were the glorious days of socialism when the government sought to nationalise every human activity. Many governments have come and gone since then but the Delhi Act has not been touched even with a barge pole. Though there is hardly any sector where liberalisation has not made a foray, the Delhi Act remains as pristine as it was when enacted 28 years ago. It is this Act that has been stifling educational opportunities for the needy children in the Capital.

Let’s begin at the beginning to understand how the Act is anti-education and anti-poor. Any voluntary agency wanting to set up a school has to, first, obtain an ‘‘essentiality certificate’’. This provision was incorporated to prevent proliferation of schools that would make the existing ones redundant. Incidentally, such certificates are not required to set up a tea shop or a grocery store or to start a newspaper. The market forces will decide whether a particular area can accommodate one more tea shop or grocery shop. In any case, ‘‘essentiality certificates’’ are an unnecessary bother for those who want to set up schools in slum areas where schools simply do not exist at all or are not in adequate number.

Having somehow obtained an ‘‘essentiality certificate’’, the voluntary agency has to comply with a host of infrastructural requirements. The rules of specification are stiff when it comes to the size of classrooms, laboratory, library, playground and other facilities. Needless to say, for those driven more by philanthropy than by abundant resources, the conditions are almost impossible to fulfill. However, allowance has to be made for the fact that no such rules are applicable to the government’s own schools, which may not even have a proper building, as is borne out by a report that as many as 30 municipal schools in Delhi are conducted in tents.

Even after these conditions are fulfilled, there is no guarantee that the school will get recognition. It will have to appoint a certain number of teaching and non-teaching staff who have to be paid government salary. There is not a single government school in Delhi that measures up to this standard as there are thousands of teaching and non-teaching vacancies in government schools. But no such laxity in the number of staff members is granted to the school seeking recognition. For starters, only students from recognised schools can appear for board examinations and pursue higher education. Also, only recognised schools can issue valid transfer certificates.

Take the case of a philanthropic agency which wanted to educate the poor and set up a modern school in a predominantly slum area. If it pays government salary, it will be forced to charge a fee of Rs 800 per month to run the school. How many parents in the slums can afford to pay such a fee? Thus, the very purpose of the slum school is defeated. Of course, the government says it can provide grants-in-aid to such schools. First of all, when the government does not have enough funds to meet the requirements of existing schools, how can it accept an additional burden? There is also a flip side to grant-in-aid. To be eligible for the grant, a school has to be a recognised one — a chicken and egg kind of situation.

If the rules are so strict, how are so many schools run in the Capital, many of them profitably? It is mostly by manipulating accounts, paying teachers less than what they sign for and by bribing the officials in the Directorate of Education. These are surely not activities one expects in the temples of learning. It is the odd philanthropic agency which does not bend the rules and which charges low fees from its students that becomes a victim.

In sharp contrast, there are schools in Delhi where all the classrooms are air-conditioned. Teachers in such schools should naturally be paid salary commensurate with the ‘‘standards’’ of the school but the socialistic Education Act overlooks this need while forcing poor students to cough up fees they simply cannot afford. If this imbalance is to end, there is an urgent need to introduce liberalisation in education and dump such anachronistic and corruption-inducing education Acts. When the licence raj is becoming a relic of history, why should the babus in the Directorate of Education decide the fate of millions of underprivileged children who have been denied access to quality education?

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