"Everyone has the right to education…directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms".

Article 26 Universal Declaration of Human Rights

With the President giving his assent to the Constitution (83rd Amendment) Bill, the right to education has been incorporated in the Constitution of India as a fundamental right. The Bill seeks to make the right to free and compulsory education for children from 6-14 years of age- a fundamental right. At the same time it also makes it a fundamental duty of the parents to provide opportunities for education to children belonging to this age group.

The Amendment supersedes Article 45, which provided for compulsory and free education of children up to 14 years of age as a Directive Principle of State Policy. It has now become obligatory to provide free and compulsory education to children in the age group of 6-14. The amended Act requires governments in the states and union territories to enact laws for the enforcement of this right within one year from the commencement of the Act.

The passage of the Bill, the outcome of long and sustained efforts over a number of years, has not come a day too soon. The Supreme Court in its judgement (Unnikrishnan JP Vs Andhra Pradesh, 1993), held that children up to the age of 14 had a fundamental right to free education. Likewise, the 1992 Education Policy envisaged free and compulsory elementary education of satisfactory quality to all children up to the age of 14 years before India entered the 21st century. This resolve generally remains unfulfilled.

Sincere implementation of the Bill would require the government to provide required facilities for education, for children not to be employed in a way that hinders education and parents to facilitate education of their children. The government must ensure compliance with the above conditions.

State of Education

More than fifty years have passed since the objective was set. Despite official efforts the situation remains far from satisfactory. The main obstacles have been rural poverty, lack of financial resources, mounting population and low official priority.

India is yet to notch up creditable achievements in various segments of education - literacy, universal enrolment, lowering the dropout rate, improving quality and making the system more relevant. Half the students in the Indian education system fail at the secondary level. They often do not continue with their studies. Only six per cent of the youth in the 18-23 years bracket go in for higher education in India. The quality of many primary schools is appallingly low. One in five children is over or under age, one in three children drops out before completing the primary cycle; and one in two children does not have clean drinking water at school. A recent study in rural India found that not a single grade 5 student had mastered grade 2 competencies in Hindi or mathematics.

Vulnerable groups are often deprived of educational opportunities. The literacy rate in India varies from 90 percent for rich urban males to a mere 17 per cent for the poor. The difference between the primary enrolment rate of landless peasant households and medium to large landowners is almost 20 percentage points.

The education profile of India varies considerably from state to state, with educational progress depending more on political commitment than economic resources. The best example is Kerala, which has a literacy rate of 90 percent but an income of around $ 1000, compared to Punjab which has a literacy rate of only 60 per cent despite an income of over $ 2000. At present, about three-quarters of children denied education live in six states - Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

The third anniversary issue of Outlook, 19 October 1998, Another India, looks at the condition of the majority of Indians who constitute the nation's rural poor. According to government statistics, more than half of rural India is unlettered. After leaving school, many relapse into illiteracy, but are listed literate. The harsh conditions of a village school teacher's life do not promoted rapport with the children or the community.

The difficulties in the way of implementing the resolve to make education a fundamental right can be seen from some of the following instances:

School children in hilly states like Himachal Pradesh continue to trudge long distances to reach school. Classes in tents or open air, without blackboards, are not uncommon in schools even in Delhi. They have to close down during monsoons.

The numbers involved are mind-boggling. Every third illiterate person in the world is an Indian. More than six crore children of 6-14 years do not go to school and many work as child labour. The number of girls not attending school in the 6-11 age group in 1995 was about 42 million; of every 10 illiterates, seven are women; 91 of every 100 women among the 70 million tribals cannot read or write. The dropout rate is the highest among the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students.

Nearly one lakh schools have no buildings. Launched with much fanfare in 1987, Operation Blackboard has as yet achieved only 50 per cent of its target of providing a two-room all-weather building for each primary school. In many states, there is a huge backlog of unspent funds for teaching and learning materials.

In this context, Prof. Amartya Sen says: "The elusive goal of providing free and compulsory education until the age of 14 within a few years has been regularly reiterated, without any effective steps being taken to reach it."

Literacy

India has the dubious distinction of having the largest adult illiterate population in the world. It also has the largest number of children out of primary school (over 20 per cent of the global total). In the report on Human Development in South Asia, 1998 Mahbub ul Haq had pointed out the long distance India had travelled since Independence: adult literacy rate nearly tripled from 18 per cent in 1951 to 52 percent in 1995, the number of schools went up from 2.30 to 7.44 lakh, the number of teachers from 6.24 to 28.36 lakh and school children from 1.92 to 14.94 crores. But all this was inadequate compared to the requirement.

In an analysis of the problems of literacy and education, India Today, Future Vision, January 31, 2000, says: "There is an increase in literacy rates but it is so slow that the absolute number of illiterates keeps rising every year. By international standards, India's performance is dismal. Even Sri Lanka has done a better job of educating the people. As for female literacy, sub-Saharan Africa fares better."

A report of the Ministry of the Human Resources Development in 1997 estimates that 63 million children in the age group of 6-14 years are at present not attending school. Nearly one third of those under the age of 16 were engaged in child labour - many in hazardous industries.

Some successes have been registered. Kerala has achieved total literacy. The Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP) has led the way in arousing mass enthusiasm for literacy by kalajathas (groups of performing artists). The National Literacy Mission, a government agency, recalls that Ernakulum, a district of Kerala, had become India's first totally literate district by creating a mass upsurge for literacy through publicity drives, posters, musical concerts, street plays and film shows.

The National Open School (NOS), an autonomous institution started by the Government of India ten years ago, provides an alternative channel to learning. The mandate of NOS is to take basic education to groups that would not have otherwise had access to it. Presently NOS is focussing on deprived groups that need educational facilities in the country: women, scheduled castes and tribes, rural people and urban poor, the unemployed, part-employed and those seeking better jobs. NOS, which offers educational opportunities in distance education and open learning has about 4,00,000 students on its rolls.

The community-centred initiative launched by the Madhya Pradesh government, the Education Guarantee Scheme, to universalise primary education, appears promising. Launched in 1997, the scheme promises the teacher's salary to village communities that provide school facilities. The scheme is supported by the European Commission and the World Bank Another scheme by the Union Government Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan strives to provide universal elementary education of satisfactory quality for all children by 2010 with the active participation of the local community.