[GreenYouth] Re: Right to Education Bill passed by the Lok Sabha Unanimously
[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
[GreenYouth] Re: Right to Education Bill passed by the Lok Sabha Unanimously
[All India Students Association's (AISA) document on the topic forwarded here]:- AISA's Preliminary Note on UPA's Education 'Reforms' The UPA, in its new avatar has promised us educational ‘reform’ as neoliberal economists declaim that Manmohan Singh should “set our campuses free”. However, the ‘reforms’ in education which the MHRD is advocating are nothing new. What however is new is the language packaging. They are but a ruse for the government to escape its responsibility towards education and deliver it entirely into private hands. More than a decade of anti-privatisation struggles by students have forced Governments to change their vocabulary; to ‘dress up’ their privatization-commercialisation agenda in a grand cloak of ‘reform’. One of the most trumpeted proposals by the Congress Govt. is to pass the ‘Right to Education’ bill. The Right to Education Bill (RTE) was tabled in the Rajya Sabha on July 20th 2009, and passed unanimously with no opposition whatsoever. Kapil Sibal and the UPA are predictably busy patting themselves on their back that this “historic” Bill is well on its way to becoming a legally mandated Act. However, what is most shocking is the manner in which the Bill was passed, which clearly revealed a near-consensus in the parliament to support the farce that the UPA is peddling in the name of “Right to Education”. To begin with, the Rajya Sabha was extremely poorly attended on July 20, the day when this crucial, “historic” bill was slated for discussion and voting: just 60 members (out of a total of 230) were present during the “debate” and only 54 voted. There was a near absence of discussion and debate on the problematic aspects of the RTE, far from any genuine opposition. The final results of the voting are extremely reveling: while there were just 25 members from the ruling UPA, the opposition constituted 29. Had the “opposition” really wanted to stall the Bill and force amendments, they could have done do with ease. Yet, the RTE was passed unanimously. How should ‘Right to Education’ be defined? The RTE however raises more a fundamental question: how exactly is right to education to be defined? In 1993, in its landmark Unnikrishnan judgement, the Supreme Court declared that from birth until the age of 14, children were entitled to free and compulsory education and this was accorded the status of a basic right. Children below the age of 6 were to be given adequate nutrition, healthcare, a safe childhood, and pre-primary education (KG, nursery). Children between the ages of 6 and 14 were granted the basic right to primary education for these eight years. This is the most widely accepted definition of the ‘Right to Education’: namely – the right of all children until the age of 14 to nutrition, healthcare, safety, and education of an equitable standard free of cost. Does the 86th Constitutional Amendment Act (2002), introduced by the BJP-led NDA Government, reflect the spirit of the Unnikrishnan verdict? The 86th Constitutional Amendment Act (2002) inserted a new Article (21A) in the Constitution, making the Unnikrishnan judgement redundant on two counts. Firstly it limited the fundamental right to the 6-14 age group, thereby disentitling 17 crore children below six years of their right. And secondly, it stated that even free and compulsory education shall be provided “in such manner as the State may, by law, determine.” Accordingly, the Government is allowed to define, according to its own whims what constitutes ‘free and compulsory education’ and is not bound by the terms of the Unnikrishnan verdict. No other fundamental right enshrined in the Constitution is left to the interpretation of Governments in this manner. What about the UPA Government’s Right to Education Bill in its present form? The UPA’s ‘Right to Education’ Bill in its present form is based on the 86th Amendment. It is, therefore, nothing but the next step in curbing the Unnikrishnan judgement’s mandate of genuine right to education and mischievously truncating the basic notion of constitutionally mandated “fundamental rights”. The real question before us is: will the RTE Bill help to change the discriminatory, multi-layered education system that currently prevails? Will it bring crores of poor children within the ambit of the education system? The answer to this question is an emphatic NO. This Bill does not aim to bring about any change in the education system that currently prevails. Rather than demolishing the wall of privatized, high cost schooling by bringing in government-funded quality schooling for all, it reinforces the wall! While leaving the rampant exploitative private schooling system untouched, and refusing to provide universally available government schools free from the profit impulse, it proposes ‘Private-Public Partnerships’ through which private profiteers are allowed entry into government-run schools! The RTE is its present form has several fundamental, structural problems and
[GreenYouth] Re: Right to Education Bill passed by the Lok Sabha Unanimously
Nothing is farcical than this Bill. Firstly, it states nothing about pre-schooling to prepare the child for the first standard thereby impliedly approving the multi-million dollar nursery school business. Apparently students in the govt. schools lack adequate skills than their peers in private schools; Secondly, When the 10th standard has the public exam and students who pass through it have a decent asic qualification to their credit, this Bill talks nothing about free education upto 10th standard; When minister Sibal says his govt. will focus on higher education, it plainly means the govt. would support the plunderers who run the private educational institutions and will even provide education loan to the students to join these criminal institutions who evade tax to the govt. in the name of running a CHARITABLE TRUST . Nothing prevents the govt. from passing a pro-people law rather than a PRO- PLUNDERER'S LAW like this. V.P.SARATHI 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=128224090688h=HX1vbu=Ocki... --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Green Youth Movement group. To post to this group, send email to greenyouth@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to greenyouth+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
[GreenYouth] Re: Right to Education Bill passed by the Lok Sabha Unanimously
The Bill falls significantly short of what it should have had been. In very many ways. No doubt about that. But it also marks a significant improvement over, at least opens up very real possibilities in that direction, the actual situation as obtains today. Hence, the struggle ahead should be twofold. One, close monitoring of the actual implementation of the Act at the ground level including enabling legislations by the concerned state governments. Two, fight for extending the present, and inadequate, ambit taking off from the legtimisation of the right to education through this enactment. Hysterical shrieks are hardly any substitute for a sound and well thought out strategy for taking the struggle to the next higher phase. In fact, these are obviously self-defeating tending to encourage disengagement from actual struggles. Sukla On 8/6/09, sarathi vpslawf...@gmail.com wrote: Nothing is farcical than this Bill. Firstly, it states nothing about pre-schooling to prepare the child for the first standard thereby impliedly approving the multi-million dollar nursery school business. Apparently students in the govt. schools lack adequate skills than their peers in private schools; Secondly, When the 10th standard has the public exam and students who pass through it have a decent asic qualification to their credit, this Bill talks nothing about free education upto 10th standard; When minister Sibal says his govt. will focus on higher education, it plainly means the govt. would support the plunderers who run the private educational institutions and will even provide education loan to the students to join these criminal institutions who evade tax to the govt. in the name of running a CHARITABLE TRUST . Nothing prevents the govt. from passing a pro-people law rather than a PRO- PLUNDERER'S LAW like this. V.P.SARATHI 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=128224090688h=HX1vbu=Ocki... --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Green Youth Movement group. To post to this group, send email to greenyouth@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to greenyouth+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
