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THE 93RD AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION
A major initiative
By SWAMI AGNIVESH & REV. VALSON THAMPU
FOR the last fifty years since the promulgation of the Constitution, the mandate to provide education to all children up to the age of 14, as prescribed in the Directive Principles (Article 45 ) has been systematically slighted and neglected. This target was to be realized within ten years of our existence as a sovereign republic. Even as late as Census 2001, 35 per cent of our people remain illiterate. Through the 93rd Amendment, the government has notified its intention to make amends for this neglect and to launch a determined assault on illiteracy. The Amendment shifts the goal of universal education from the Directive Principles to the part relating to Fundamental Rights in the Constitution.
Free education
As per the Amendment, “The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of 6 to 14 years in such manner as the State may, by law, determine.” (Art. 21A). Article 45 of the Constitution now reads, “The State shall endeavour to provide early childhood care and education for all children until they complete the age of six years”. This is complemented, as it would seem, by inserting a clause on parental responsibility for the education of children in Article 51A (fundamental duties of citizens), which reads, “who is parent or guardian to provide opportunities for education to his child or, as the case may be, ward between the age of six and fourteen years”. (clause k)
On paper, these provisions are wholly commendable. Indeed they are long over-due. The sad thing is that it has taken us so long to address this crucial issue. As early as in his address to the nation on the eve of Independence, Pandit Nehru had identified the eradication of illiteracy as a fundamental challenge in nation-building. Successive reports on education, including the various Education Commission Reports, took pains to project education as the key determinant in development. Governments, one after the other, kept paying lip-service to the goal of universal education for children up to the age of 14. All these notwithstanding, a serious assault on illiteracy failed to take off for half a century!
It is necessary to reckon this stark reality, lest the 93rd Amendment too fails to deliver. It is neither because we did not know the value of education, nor because we lacked the resources for it really, that illiteracy has remained endemic especially in rural India. Even a cursory examination of the policies and priorities in education leaves us in no doubt that behind this prolonged neglect, there was a sinister intention. Omissions, not less than commissions, point to intentions. Literacy in rural India was neglected not because the ruling elite did not know how crucial education was to the empowerment of individuals and peoples groups, but precisely because they did know. The neglect of education has been a covert strategy for keeping the national cake out of reach for a sizeable chunk of our population. The illiterate can be quietly excluded from the fruits and opportunities of development. They can be then bludgeoned into silent resignation with the mallet of merit; for the illiterate have no claim to
merit at all. In a meritocracy, it seems just and fair that they are disinherited and excluded. Even more temptingly, those who are illiterate are an easy prey to political manipulation and electoral exploitation. The low level of awareness bred by illiteracy, besides, makes for spurious social stability by keeping people’s expectations and aspirations to a sub-human level. The pertinent question to ask here is if the 93rd Amendment denotes a change vis-a-vis this mindset. The whole nation waits in hope and anxiety for an answer. Mercifully, we may not have to wait too long. Yashwant Sinha's next budget will tell us all.
Poor track-record
There is a second area of concern. And that pertains to our poor track-record in implementation. It is disconcerting that the minimal prescriptions in the Directive Principles have suffered gross neglect over such a long period of time, as though the contents in this part are not meant to be taken seriously.
Victim of elitist bias
Are we now to hope that the goal in question, for long a victim of studied neglect and elitist bias, will fare better because it has been elevated to the imperiousness of fundamental rights? Was the goal in question neglected only because it was consigned to the Directive Principles? What attitude to the Constitution does this state of affairs betray? Does it mean that no goal identified in the Directive Principles has a chance, unless it is rescued therefrom? In that case, why not shift everything from this part of the Constitution to somewhere else? Leaving all these aside, let us hail the 93rd Amendment in good faith and hope that this signals a meaningful change in the national outlook on the education of all citizens. Even if it does not, let us still hope that the Amendment will pave the way for a genuine change of heart on the conspiratorial neglect of education for the rural masses over these many decades.
A third area of concern is that the practice of education lends itself, in this country, to a variety of interpretations and standards. As a result, rather than prove a socially levelling and empowering process, education has served as an instrument for perpetuating and aggravating inequalities and perpetuating socio-economic disabilities. It is this that explains, in a large measure, the triumphalism of English. The reason why even diehard deshbhakts have their children educated in exclusive public schools, where they cultivate English to the disparagement of their mother tongues, is that English continues to be the mainstay of social and economic elitism and the key to king-size privileges. Indeed, the market value of English continues to rise and it is poised to attain unprecedented heights under globalization. In addition to the yawning gulf between vernacular and English medium education, and related to it, there are other determinants of disparity: Government schools versus public schools, rural versus urban schools, different streams of schooling in the urban context itself, and so on.
Complicating all this, is the absence of an agreed minimum national standard for educational facilities, including staff and infrastructure. Consider the following examples. In the mid-70s, the government of Jammu and Kashmir floated a project for training village school teachers to serve also as barefoot doctors. An expert team was dispatched from Delhi to assess the feasibility of this project. It was found, in the course of the field visits, that many of these village schools had only one teacher to take care of standards one to seven! The teacher was to serve as a barefoot doctor in addition to this. This is an eloquent pointer to the value that the powers that be attach to rural education.
The present authors visited Manoharpur in the wake of the assassination of the Australian social worker, Graham Staines. It came to light then that this cluster of 14 villages, with a population of over 15,000 people, had only one school, with 21 students on its rolls, presumably taught by five teachers. These teachers, we were told, would make only monthly visits to the school around the beginning of each month. Their absenteeism was not felt or resented by the students, who themselves were averse to attending classes.
Only medium
The reason for their preference of home to school was that the teachers did not know Santhali, which was the only medium the children knew. As a rule, the authorities would appoint only Oriya-speaking teachers. The net result was that this school existed only on paper. If the 93rd Amendment is to effect a break-through, we need to ensure that the compulsory, universal education mandated under it becomes something more than a paper tiger.
(To be concluded)
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