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Vijayalakshmi Balakrishnan

With a little foresight, we can ensure that every child receives quality education, irrespective of parental income.

In July 2004, 57 boys in Chintavaram village of Nellore district in Andhra Pradesh were asked to leave their hostel. The reason: The Government had ordered district officials to set up a hostel for college girls from the backward classes. It had further directed that any under-utilised hostel could also be converted into the girls' hostel.

The district officials arbitrarily decided that the boys' hostel at Chintavaram was under-utilised. The boys, however, refused to leave. They agitated, held rallies, got support from the regional press, but with little impact. "Why make such a fuss over one hostel closing down? We can't disobey government orders. We have to run a hostel for girls and there is no other building in the village where we can accommodate the boys," an official from the Social Welfare Department told a visiting journalist. Today, all the children live on the streets and beg not just for food, but also for the right to continue their education.

November 2004: In Bangalore, students at a government elementary school stepped out for a drill. Minutes later, the roof and walls of Class IV and VII collapsed. No one was hurt, but the children now have no school to go to.

Between July and November 2004, Planning Commission members met with officials of the Education Department to discuss allocations for the 11th Plan. The department reiterated its demand for the promised 6 per cent of GDP. The Plan panel members, however, pointed to the under-utilisation of allocated funds. Now there is a stalemate in fresh allocation of funds. Unable to get the required funding and faced with a target of ensuring all children are in school — completing eight years of elementary education — by 2010, the Education Department has embarked on Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, a campaign to provide all children some education through `evolutionary schools'. The concept is not new, but its interpretation in recent times certainly is.

Despite having unspent money, the Government plans to establish more learning centres, non-formal schools, which are now positioned as the nucleus of a school — one that will be incrementally upgraded and brought on par with a regular school.

Such learning centres provide education to those most in need: first-generation learners, children from linguistic, ethnic and religious minority communities, and girls.

As even the architects of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan admit, the education provided at these centres is not on par even with a regular government school and these children possibly need more inputs, not less.

Recently over 5,000 people from eight States demonstrated in Delhi, demanding not just schools, but good quality education for their children, schooling of the same quality and with the same opportunities as those in fee-paying schools: That is, a common school system. However, these voices are not heard in the conference-workshop circuits, where means of achieving the 2010 target are discussed. The educational mainstream dismisses the demand for a common school system as the last gasp of a reactionary old order, but they do agree that there is a need for a new educational system.

Much of the discussion on school education today sounds achingly familiar to the dialogue surrounding higher scientific education soon after Independence. Then, as now, there were two schools of thought. While one believed that India could not afford to spend its limited resources on centres of international excellence, the other side, including the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, did not agree. The visionaries won, and the Sarkar Committee report recommending the creation of higher technical education institutes modelled on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was accepted.

The first Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) was set up in Kharagpur and the site chosen was the Hijli Detention Camp, where the erstwhile British rulers held political prisoners. The choice was no accident. In his convocation address at IIT Kharagpur in 1956, Nehru pointed out that the IITs "represent India's urges, India's future in the making ... symbolic of the changes that are coming." There was a clear understanding then that education was the crucible of a wider political agenda, to ensure that in India all Indians were equal and internationally, if possible, India and Indians would be first among equals.

It is such a vision that is lacking in education today. There are two paths that Indian school education can choose from. One would be a common school system that would ensure all students — not just those in fee-paying private schools — get good quality education, and the other would be the differentiated system that divides students according to the disposable income of their parents.

We are still some distance away from achieving the 2010 target on education; today, we have come to a fork in the road. The pity is the vast majority of our policymakers do not see the alternative, or may be they just don't want to.

(The author is General Manager - Policy and Research, CRY- Child Relief & You)

Picture by V. Ganesan

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