The Supreme court’s support for the Right of children to Free and compulsory Education Act 2009, or Right to Education (RTE) was only to be expected. Our Tv anchors would have shrilly denounced anything else as elitist. The RTE Act and the verdict both mean well. But far from being revolutionary, the new dispensation isn’t even reformist. It’s a sop to the masses that also buys time.
If the government had been truly serious about child education it would have invested massively in primary (also secondary) schools throughout the country instead of squandering money on poor quality colleges that feed false notions of prestige. The need for meaningful elementary education is greatest in urban slums and remote rural areas, particularly India’s 180 Maoist-infested districts.
Not only should these disadvantaged areas be provided with schools, but these institutions must be properly housed, staffed, equipped with libraries, laboratories and playing facilities, and professionally administered with an adequate teacher to pupil ratio.
Singapore didn’t achieve virtually 100 per cent literacy by passing a law making it compulsory for children aged between 6 and 14 to attend school. Nor did it compel established schools to set aside 25 per cent of their intake for the poor.
Incidentally, that aspect of the RTE Act merely passes the buck to private institutions. Reservation can be justified only if it’s strictly on the basis of merit, not if it’s just another populist gimmick like the Mandal Commission.
Republic of Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s winning formula ignored such stratagems. He set about creating a society in which education alone is the key to success. And he saw to it that there were enough low cost or free neighbourhood schools for every child easily to attend one.
Readers will scream that numbers, finance and distances rule out in gigantic India what is possible in tiny Singapore. Quite so. But it’s the principle that counts. Both Jawaharlal Nehru and Lee derived their vision of free universal education from the welfare state clement Attlee’s Labour government created in Britain. But since Lee, unlike Nehru, actually lived in post-war Britain and saw it in operation, he was able to go beyond the ideal that both admired and examine implementation.
The difference in their attitudes may also have reflected the cultural difference between an upper class Brahmin visionary and a down-to-earth chinese pragmatist.
Lee found that making education compulsory in Britain meant employing teams of inspectors to check on attendance, pay house calls and question students and parents when a child didn’t show up in class. This involved adding expensive new vigilance sections to Britain’s municipal education departments; in Asia, it would mean additional scope for corruption.
Poorly paid or kind-hearted teachers can be persuaded to overlook absenteeism. Attendance registers can be fudged. A little cash can be slipped to inspectors to go away saying they found no one at home, and there are always doctors obliging enough to give medical certificates. We are all familiar with the “father/mother/husband/wife serious” telegram syndrome.
No rule or regulation can be enforced without, somewhere in the near distance, the fear of legal punishment. But what fear survives if more than 31 million cases are pending in our law courts? Justice v.v. Rao of the Andhra Pradesh high court says it will take 320 years to clear the backlog! Imagine adding the prosecution of parents because they failed in their statutory duty of sending their children to school.
The Supreme Court’s verdict has been exultantly welcomed for upholding the constitutional right of millions of out-of-school children. In theory, yes. But in practice? India has 12.6 million child workers. That’s the official figure. The unofficial estimate is 20 million. Will these admittedly exploited boys (there are fewer girls) abandon the houses or wayside dhabas, restaurants, hotels, motels and spas they work in, the firecracker, matchstick and carpet-weaving factories, embroidery and stitching shops? Will their parents and guardians who depend for a livelihood on the pittance these children bring back allow them to go to school instead?
Even the government hasn’t seriously attempted to enforce the notifications of 2006 to the 1986 child Labour Prohibition (and Regulation) Act forbidding children below 14 working as domestic servants and in the hospitality sector.
Violation supposedly incurs imprisonment of between three months and two years and fines from `10,000 to `20,000. I wonder how often these punishments have been imposed.
No one denies there have been some improvements, thanks to the efforts of organisations like Bachpan Bachao Andolan which lobbies legislators and undertook a 15,000-km march demanding that education be recognised as a fundamental right. School attendance is going up. But hazardous industries still employ some 12 million in the 5 to 14 age group despite being ordered not to more than 20 years ago.
India’s booming economy has boosted the demand for cheap labour. And what could be cheaper than children from the poorest homes?
Statistics are inconclusive but it’s suggested that though the number of children who don’t go to school has fallen from 30 million in 2000 to 21 million, it’s still more than in China. We now have thousands of colleges, (many of them sub-standard) and about 400 universities but the National Knowledge Commission estimates India needs 1,500. Perhaps it does.
But India needs primary schools even more. We must also prevent so many young people dropping out of secondary school.
Far more attention to primary and secondary education should be part of a concerted strategy to tackle the overall problem. compulsion alone will achieve little.
Nehru once said there were no orphans in India. They were all children of Mother India. It’s a nice thought, but even biological mothers can sometimes be thoughtless.

The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author