Right to Education- A Reality or A Sham

Today a great thing happened for India. The much awaited Right to Education Bill has been passed by Union Cabinet. This bill promises free and compulsory education for children between 6 and 14 years of age. “The Bill has been considered at several levels by the Group of Ministers (GoM). The Cabinet has approved the text of the Bill,” Finance Minister P Chidambaram told. He further added that it would be legally enforcible duty of the Centre and the states to provide free and compulsory education.

The HRD Ministry would release the text of the Bill after consulting the Election Commission in view of the assembly polls in some states. Certainly, this bill is bound to give a major boost to education Industry. Also the futures of these littles appears to be more secured. However a deep scrutiny is needed on such a major issue.

There appear many dubious and ambiguous plans enclosed in this sweet bill.

• It requires 25% reservation in private schools for disadvantaged students in neighborhood. Private schools, already notorious for their nefarious donation schemes, are less likely to adhere to this humane law. Even if they do so due pressure of big brothers, the ultimate financial burden will be put on the heads of parents of those so called advantaged students
• Also this law seeks the removal of interviewing of students and demand of extra funds. Now, c’mmon , these schools nowadays don’t even exempt parents from those grueling interviews, how would they do so to students. And the second clause (the donation one), is even too funny to even talk about.
• Also this bill was passed in Dec, 2002. If it took it so long to even pass the Centre, one can imagine how long it will take to be implemented. Also the utter failure of Govt. in implementing the midday meal scheme shows no better future for this bill either. Also there is already a lacunae for huge numbers of teachers, so who is going to give this right to children?
• Why is this bill passed when the elections time is nearing? There are many other issues like considerations for federal type agencies for confronting terrorism. Clearly a feel good factor (why don’t they remember Advani before taking such steps   )

What these politicos doesn’t understand that for these destitute kids more important than the education is their daily bread which they have to earn for themselves. They can’t devote their 8-10 hours of schooling as they have to fend themselves and their families with the money they earn from daily labour. On the other hand, the present education infrastructure is not even capable of handling present student population. A better solution would have been vocational training. It would be better to train a better electrician or plumber out of those kids rather than white collared workers for whom already the jobs are shortening. It’s less likely that these ideas will come to mind of these politicians which are already so busy in preparing tactics for coming elections. Until then its “school bhejenge hum” .

More here…

i.e. dheerajsuthar.com