[Here is a letter send to the LS Speaker, PM, HR Minister and Others,
signed by a small team of educationists,teachers and student union
leaders who represented of four different Organizations]
To,
July 22, 2009
Ms. Meira Kumar,
Honorable Speaker,
Lok Sabha, Parliament of India,
New Delhi
Dear Madam,
Sub: ‘The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill,
2008’.
The National Seminar on Right to Education and Common School System
held at Hyderabad on 21st and 22nd June 2009 urged upon the Central
Government to replace the pending ‘Right of Children to Free and
Compulsory Education Bill, 2008’ with a Bill drafted in the framework
of Common School System based on Neighborhood Schools. It is our
considered view that this is the only framework which would ensure
education of equitable quality to all children in consonance with the
principles of equality before law (Article 14), guarantee against
discrimination by the State (Article 15-1) and equal opportunity in
public employment (Article 16) as enshrined in the Constitution. All
member-organizations of the All India Forum for Right to Education
(AIF-RTE) are opposing the Bill along with several other democratic
organizations around the country for logically sound reasons (see
below).
However, to our utter disappointment, the UPA Government did not heed
the democratic voices in the country. The appeal for wider public
debate on different provisions of the Bill has been repeatedly turned
down. The Parliamentary Standing Committee also ignored democratic
submissions. The Bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha on 20th July 2009
without any consideration to the objections raised by some learned
members of the House. The Union Government is rushing ahead with its
100-day neo-liberal agenda embedded in privatization and
commercialization of education.. As a last resort we appeal you and
the members of the Lok Sabha to seriously ponder over our objections
to the Bill before proceeding further with it. You would agree, we
believe, that such a Bill will affect a nation for generations and
petty political considerations must not be allowed to undermine it.
We bring to your notice that the Bill, instead of giving fundamental
right to children, deprives them of the fundamental right already
given to them by the Supreme Court through the Unnikrishnan Judgment
(1993). Indeed, this Bill amounts to being not only anti-
Constitutional, anti-educational and anti-child but also promoter of
unabashed privatization and commercialization of school education.
The Supreme Court, through its historic Unnikrishnan Judgment (1993),
declared ‘free and compulsory education’ a fundamental Right of all
children until they complete the age of fourteen years (including the
children below six years age) by reading Article 45 of Part IV of the
Constitution in conjunction with Article 21 (Right to Life) of Part
III. The pending Bill, if enacted, will result in (a) 17 crore
children below six years of age losing their fundamental right to
balanced nutrition, health care and preprimary education; and (b) the
government being assigned arbitrary powers to provide free and
compulsory education to the 19 crore children in the 6-14 year age
group “in such manner as the state may by law determine “, just as the
government has been doing for the past sixty years.
We hereby underline the following serious lacunae and contradictions
in the Bill.
This Bill,
•allows the authorities to dilute the meaning of Free Education in an
ad-hoc manner;
•distorts the concept of Neighborhood School recommended by the
Kothari Commission (1966) and resolved by the Parliament in the
National Policy on Education-1986 (as modified in 1992), thereby
authorizing the government to compel the poor children to study in
inferior quality schools;
•maintains Sarva Sikhsha Abhiyan’s discriminatory multi-layered
school system;
•permits the government to build schools of entirely unacceptable,
ambiguous and sub-standard norms and standards;
•continues with inferior quality education for almost three-fourths of
the children, particularly girls and disadvantaged;
•undermines the universally accepted pedagogic role of mother tongue
in acquiring knowledge and learning languages other than one’s mother
tongue, including English;
•discriminates between the children studying in government schools and
the private unaided schools in various ways. This is bound to lead to
further deterioration of the quality of education in the government
schools, making private schools, both aided and un-aided even more
expensive and inaccessible to a wide section of the society. The worst
sufferers of such discrimination will be the girls, thereby leading to
increased gender disparity;
•aims at demolishing the government school system under the pretext of
providing free education to the weaker sections on 25% of the seats in
private schools. On several grounds it is clear that this misconceived
provision would not give any benefit whatsoever to the deprived
children even in the short term;
•legitimizes, through the above-named provision of 25% reservation in
private schools, the ‘free market’ policy of school vouchers and
Public Private Partnership;
•refuses, by not including the financial estimates for implementation
of the Bill in the Financial Memorandum, to explicitly accept the full
obligations of the Bill and
•promotes unregulated privatization and commercialization of school
education.
The following three cynical objectives of the central government can
be identified in tabling such a misconceived Bill:
First, abdicating its Constitutional obligation for
providing free and compulsory education of equitable quality;
Second, demolishing the government school system, except the schools
of specified categories (Kendriya Vidyalayas, Navodaya Vidyalayas, XI
plan’s 6,000 model schools, and similar elite schools of the States/UT
governments); and
Third, increasing the pace of privatization and commercialization of
school education.
We have been for long urging upon the Union Government to,
1. replace the pending Bill with a new Bill drafted in the
framework of the Common School System based on neighborhood Schools in
consonance with the basic spirit and principles enshrined in the
Constitution;
2. review the 86th constitutional amendment Act (2002) with a
view to providing a fundamental right to free and compulsory education
of equitable quality to all children until the age of eighteen years
i.e. until class XII without any conditionality whatsoever;
3. incorporate a Constitutional guarantee within the Bill for
providing adequate funding for the entire school system. This is
precisely the implication of a fundamental right.
4. include in the Bill a provision to completely ban all forms of
privatization and commercialization of education, especially Public
Private Partnership, adoption of schools by private agencies and
voucher schools;
5. hold public hearings in all district headquarters of the
country in a democratic and transparent manner in the process of
drafting a new Bill.
As is submitted to you in the beginning, the Union Government is
neither heeding the democratic voices nor is not responding to the
widely articulated concerns. We, therefore, request you to either send
the Bill to a select committee or return the Bill to the Parliamentary
Standing Committee with directions to hold public hearings in all
district headquarters of the country in a democratic and transparent
manner in order to make essential changes in the present Bill or draft
a new Bill afresh in consonance with the basic spirit and the
fundamental principles enshrined in the Constitution and Supreme
Court’s Unnikrishnan Judgment.
With hope and trust for your urgent intervention,
Sincerely Yours,
Sd./-
Prof. Anil
Sadgopal
Prof. G. Haragopal
Bhopal, Madhya
Pradesh
Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh
Co-Presidents, All India Forum for Right to Education
Ravi Rai
Niraj
General Secretary, Convenor,
Delhi State
All India Students Association Vidyarthi Yuvjan
Sabha
Copies to:
1. Prime Minister of India
2. Minister of Human Resources Development
3. Leaders of Opposition Parties
4. Members of Lok Sabha
5. Chairperson, National Commission for Human Rights
6. Chairperson, National Commission for Protection of Child
Rights
On 5 Aug, 20:30, Sukla Sen <sukla....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Indian Parliament has unanimously passed the Right to Education bill on
> Tuesday.
> It will pave way for free and compulsory education for children in the age
> group of 6 to 14 years in India.
>
> Also look up for the history (till July 19 2006):
> <http://www.ilpnet.org/rte/>
> and another news item: <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/
> india/Education-is-now-a-right/articleshow/4858277.cms>.
>
> http://abclive.in/abclive_national/india_right_to_education_bill.html
>
> Indian Parliament Passes Right to Education Bill05 August, 2009
> 07:05:00Jatinder
> - Kaur <http://abclive.in/abclive_national/author/jatinder/>
>
> *New Delhi (ABC Live): Indian Parliament has unanimously passed the Right to
> Education bill on Tuesday.*
> New Delhi (ABC Live): Indian Parliament has unanimously passed the Right to
> Education bill on Tuesday.
>
> It will pave way for free and compulsory education for children in the age
> group of 6 to 14 years in India.
>
> Debate on the Bill was taken up in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, which passed
> the bill.
>
> Speaking about the Bill, Union Human Resources Development Minister Kapil
> Sibal said that it is responsibility of the state governments to implement
> the provisions of the Bill.
>
> He said as far as disabled clause is concerned, proper care has been taken
> in the Bill in this regard.
>
> He also said that availability of money for implementing the bill would not
> be a problem and the Centre and state governments would settle the matter.
>
> The HRD Minister also said that availability of money for implementing the
> bill would not be a problem and the Centre and state governments would
> settle the matter.
>
> Clarifying the doubts raised by members about absence of any mechanism to
> provide pre-school education to children before attaining the age of six
> years, Sibal said, "This Bill is drafted in accordance with the the
> constitutional amendment that provides for free and compulsory education for
> children between the age of 6 and 14 years."
> <http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=128224090688&h=HX1vb&u=Ocki...>
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