KIRAN RAO BATNI writes: It’s the talk of the town these days: “right to education”.
From television channels to newspapers, websites to blogs, everyone is busy contemplating the consequences of the Right to Education bill.
The contemplation—be it about the intent of the bill or its implementation or its implications—is primarily centered around the poor versus rich question and the effective-implementation question which manifest themselves in questions such as: “Will the poor be really benefited by this?”, “Will the rich object to the poor flooding their children’s schools?”, “Can private schools which provide premium education at premium prices just remain out of this whole thing?”, “Can this bill actually improve the quality of education in India?”, etc.
However, much to the disappointment of anybody who upholds democracy and federalism, all the discussions about the bill have missed the single most important facet of this whole thing: the complete usurping of power by the central government and the complete neglect of state governments in the matter of education.
I haven’t seen a single voice raised against this decadence of India, and must do my part.
While the people of India are busy discussing trivial details of the bill, they’ve forgotten that it is none of the central government’s business to assume the exclusive ‘right to education’ (as in the right to the portfolio of education) in the first place.
Even in the centre-heavy Constitution of India, education is a concurrent-list subject, but this bill makes it clear that the central government would rather have it all for itself —be it however anti-federal, be it however anti-democracy.
While India discusses the bill in letter, it misses the spirit of the bill which is simply designed to help the central government at New Delhi move one stealthy step closer to becoming a total dictatorship, with state-governments being moved one stealthy step towards becoming dispatch clerks.
The bill delivers a deadly blow to the future of India as a truly federal polity.
State governments, which actually run most of the schools in India, are now being told to act as dry implementers of dubious (nay, outright fatal) diktat flowing in from New Delhi.
The power to decide the constitution of the education system, all research, and indeed everything related to the quality of education is now unilaterally assumed by the central government.
The states now have no say in what constitutes a good education of their people. They’re just being asked to be clerks who shell out money for programmes decided by Kapil Sibals sitting in New Delhi.
Who is Kapil Sibal, and what does he know about what constitutes a good education for Kannadigas, for Tamils, for Marathis, for Oriyas, for Malayalis, for Telugus? Can he even enumerate all these languages?
Any move which takes power away from the people is a move away from democracy. By moving the site of power from the states to the centre, India has demonstrated its preference of dictatorship over democracy, of government over people, of centralism over federalism.
The people of India have lost the power to have any say in the education of children around them. The real educationists and social reformers of India have suddenly become objects of neglect, and now have an infinite disincentive to advise the governmental machinery on matters of education – simply because they now have to travel to New Delhi to even look at that machinery. Earlier, it was at least to the state-capital.
I urge India to look at this bill from this perspective—the perspective that India is slowly moving towards a dictatorial form of government. And that is not good. Period.
Photograph: courtesy The Hindu
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Hahahahahahaha
Hilarious but couldn’t be further from reality.
For a start, it was Indira Gandhi who put “Education” in the concurrent list not the Framers of the Constitution. In all issues relating to the concurrent list, states can still make laws, but Parliamentary law will prevail over them. This has been the Constitutional position for some time.
That does not mean that States have no say in the whole situation. State Boards and State-run schools have not been abolished. The existence of the Central Board has not superseded all boards. Prescription of syllabus is not restricted under the Central Legislation.
In any case, the Act is under challenge in middle class India’s BFF, the Supreme Court of India. Expect the private schools and the middle class to mount a successful challenge against the provisions that they find egregious. Expect State Governments to whine and beg and plead and do everything to render the legislation a nullity.
Besides…
A true dictatorship requires a significant level of competence in the running of the State and in the managing of the affairs of State. The high level of incompetence in the Indian State (now more so than ever) has made successful dictatorship almost impossible. If anything, all that will mean is that the State will only become more brutal and mean towards the poor and deprived, and more of a laughingstock among the educated, the rich and the international media.
I hate it when people trying to put forth an argument on a tricky issue sum up the matter in 300 words with lot of adjectives and then declare a fancy thing like “India is moving towards dictatorship” and “Period”. How and exactly does it harm the cause of people living in the linguistic states is not elaborated. Only lament being reformists and educationist have to go to Delhi to understand it. Is that it? Then we should stop the practice of MPs going to Parliament as well. Surely it is possible to govern and meet over internet chat and teleconference.
Like everyone who is still gathering info to first understand the bill, I want to ask just one thing from the author, since she has already analysed what many have not been to, when she says: “Who is Kapil Sibal, and what does he know about what constitutes a good education for Kannadigas, for Tamils, for Marathis, for Oriyas, for Malayalis, for Telugus? Can he even enumerate all these languages?”
Question: Exactly then what is good education for Kannadiga and how is it different from good education for a Marathi and what is the difference and why the need in the first place?
Education has to enpower a man to make informed decisions about life and if it is different for a Oriya or a Malayali, I want to know how does that happen. Perhaps it will tell us why Shiv Sena insists on Marathi manoos for jobs in Maharashtra and limit the scope of growth for an individual to his/her own state.
this author clearly has no idea what he is talking about.
Adding “Right to Education” as a fundamental right is clearly the domain of the Parliament, which it did with the 86th Constitutional Amendment on 12th December 2002. It amends articles 45 and 51A and inserts article 21A.
“21A. The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years in such manner as the State may, by law, determine.”
http://indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/amend/amend86.htm
The congress enacted socialist entitlement scheme is again passed by Parliament. Manmohan Singh again has said, his govt will provide adequate ‘funding’ to the states.
Now central funding of education, is very much an enlargement of the central govt. But so is the centrally funded NREGA which is a much bigger waste of taste payers money and usurping of powers. On RTE, the state governments are still gonna write the curriculum and run nearly half the schools. Any conservative state govt can reject the funding given by the central govt and ask Manmohan Singh to take a hike. Some Republican governors refused to accept the Stimulus money doled out by Obama.
If the objection is on the amount of reservations, which the author hasn’t even mentioned, we must remember that legislation to legalize reservation is still passed by Parliament. But state govts have the power to decide the beneficiaries. Remember Tamilnadu’s 69 percent reservation still in the supreme court or the recent Andhara govt decision on Muslim quota?
So this author is using the wrong attack line on this issue.
If you wanna attack the Congress govt’s socialism on the Federal Union issue, use the following lines,
1. why do we have Governors appointed by President? why can’t Governors be elected by the state level electoral college?
2. why shud state governments beg the Union for yearly planned expenditure? why can’t we force the central govt to abolish any remaining Central Sales tax. why can’t we have State Income Tax?
3. how is central govt using its forces for combat operations in states without invoking article 355?
I concur with Balaji.
RTE is a good move.
When state govt.s have money to install statues, start university of dead languages, spend millions to save stray cows, celebrate lavishly a remembrance of enthronement of a monarch, lure people with free bicycles, so on and on, they crib about spending money for children education and blame the center govt.. This is how states waste money.
I don’t see any anti-democracy or anti-federal agenda in RTE.
The center govt. never stopped states from promoting native languages. Why cannot Karnataka start high education in Kannada? Why cannot it modernize Kannada to adapt new age? Why cannot it build infrastructure for quality, job-oriented, skill development in Kannada? Why cannot it start more job oriented educational institution for less fee? Why the fee for general merit seat is so high? What abt price rise of milk, water? etc etc etc……
Our state govt.s neither have skill nor the sincerity to work the real good. They just want more numbers on the paper and money to their pocket.
However, the center govt. is just a bigger version of state govt.s which pockets all of our income tax.
It looks like it. The way the Congress party is handling things we are at another play back of 1975. They seem to do every thing to take full control of India. Like reservation this is also another bill which will pull down top school to the bottom rather than taking the bottom schools to the top! They want votes to implement their objective. We may again be under a foreigner and we may get another Gandhi to free us! LOL!
Truckload of crap.
I shall not dignify Kiran Rao Batni’s article by commenting on it.
How is kannadiga different than marathi as far as education is concerned. Does it have different way to achieve knowledge than people from other linguistic background. totally useless article.
This type of article is expected from you. It is like burning the haystack to retrieve the imaginary needle (of suspicion).
Dictatorship or otherwise, I want capital punishment or LI for bribery, etc, etc, changes; can you help me under which list these fall?
After 60 long years, one useful piece of legislation was made and you want to find some imaginary warts in it.
I don’t mind a good dose of dictatorship, especially, if some states like TN are found not eager to implementing this act.
Wow! ha ha ha. This one really is hilarious.
Anarchism just got a whole new meaning.
To start with, if the state gets powers to implement this bill it will only result in bottlenecks and devious bureaucracy. The final money required to implement the bill will be collected duly by the huge chain of authority in the states. Therefore, corruption will loom large and the purpose of the bill will be lost.
haven’t we learnt that it is no more fanciful to dismiss English as a colonial evil and realize that the prospects of education can only be borne with quality standards of English? Why do we continuously fail to think of English as an evil language? The vernacular will anyways pass on by the family members and the surroundings. It is of high importance to learn English more than the vernacular in today’s world. I mean, lets get real and not beat around the bush.
If the state were given ample responsibility, apart from corruption the syllabus will be tweaked to favour the current ruling powers as introduction of the Bhagavadgeeta and other issues. The real issues will hardly be taken into consideration. Agenda setting has been all too familiar with governments and we know what happens when the state becomes responsible in fixing the syllabus.
The real intricacies of the bill such as the scope of NCTE, what happens after the child completes 14 years, higher education opportunities, curbing teacher-student truancy are all not discussed in the article.
This makes the article a very poor one that discredits churumuri and invites criticism. Hope the writer comes up with an improvised one or at least a reply to the above comments.
Kiran,
Stick to analytical articles which use data. Adithya above has given some good starting points on how to start off on an article related to this. If you have access to data and journals related to this, maybe you should do some research and write a more convincing article.
Hoping to see better articles from you.
Dear friends,
Expect another article on what kind of “freedom” the states actually get in the aftermath of the RTE.
Education in the different Indian languages requires linguistic innovations which can be made only by the states themselves. For example, the Kerala government simplified the Malayalam script in 1971 by removing hundreds of useless glyphs, thereby improving learnability. This innovation cannot stem from New Delhi. The way RTE is set up today, it is expected to stem from research teams in New Delhi, working under Kapil Sibal and bitten with the Hindi bug.
I agree that state governments are less competent than the central government as of today. But that need not be. Nor does it provide license to make India less federal or democratic. India itself is way incompetent and corrupt compared to say the US or Western Europe. That doesn’t provide the license for Indians to give up control of the Government of India.
I do not regard English as an “evil language”, or a colonial legacy to be gotten rid of.
I only submit that Indian languages be not regarded as “evil languages” and legacies of a past filled with underachievement to be gotten rid of — because even to this day, 93% of India is not fluent in English, because even to this day, more than 90% of India attends school in Indian languages.
The more we neglect Indian languages, the less care we exhibit towards Indians, the less democratic we are, the less federal we are, and the less accommodative of human diversity we are.
@Adithya
“It is of high importance to learn English more than the vernacular in today’s world”
We all know where you come from.
Kiran,
Excellent article. It is high time Education is brought back to the State List. Any way this amendment was done during emergency and all changes made during that period are questionable. Someone has to take initiative. If we do not give adequate emphasis to federalism in true spirit, the day is not far off India going the Soviet way. It is high to put brakes on people like Kapil Sibal who can neither properly pronounce nor correctly spell most of the Indian languages being the Union education minister.
Agree with Kiran on the point that the respective states are better placed to take decisions towards their people’s education.
Good one Kiran! You have raised a valid point here.
I guess states should be a better judge of this than central governments. No doubt at the end of day both are trying to rake in the moolah rather than educate.
@Murthy :
Sir, It is remarkable how you judge my geographical location based on a sentence. However, i can assure you that i am from India and have been in India for a long time.
@Adithya,
It’s not the geographical location which I pointed out. It’s about mental adhering.
For example Sita never took a tour of Sri Lanka and was always thinking about Rama . Hanumantha also never thought about Karnataka but was chanting Jai Shriram. This incidences took about a year from those respective locations from those legends seeking wisdom.
So, it’s about the racist stampede which performs on chromosomal strands.
Illusion just develops a cobweb which can only be broken by very strong mental preparedness to not assume but to explore!
Not your problem as a seeker of wisdom or may be curiosity.
The present day thinking of States is what makes many people that it cant be. Why cant people at the state do what people at the center are doing ? is something stopping people from the state to think that they cant provide quality education ? it’s utter nonsense to devalue state politics and that’s the problem with the people of India their mindset is fixed. It’s not that center it perfect afterall the people from the states go there right ? time that state has more powers why should the center just dictate everything. no empowerment of states no progress and people can aruge against this. USA is best example of how states can do well. stop getting fixed in views and learn to think outside the box.
@ Murthy :
Sir, does that mean my illusions are not allowing me to see the real truth? What is the real truth?
@Adithya,
“real truth” – see what illusions have played with you – a dirty game.
you have started dividing truth as real and unreal.
History belongs to time, but truth belongs to what is beyond time.
You’re missing the point of the bill, completely.
Although I’m against it, for the mere fact that there’ll be a hike of at least 75% in OUR fees (so, not only will we be PAYING for THEIR education, but also allowing the government to allow itself to get even more corrupted). India IS and always WILL be a democracy UNLESS there’s a REVOLUTION against the system! Which there WON’T be.
We talk of India being the next superpower.
Exactly how?
First, the QUOTA systems. The intention may be good, but India is compromising quantity with quality. I, for one, among MANY others think that it is unfair. In fact, we’re afraid to stay here, simply because the possibility stands that OUR seat goes away to someone else. And they more likely than not, don’t deserve it.
Then, women’s rights? Really? It breaches “equality” as a concept!
Now, the RTE.
God bless India.