Correcting a historical injustice - The Hindu

14th May 2014 - Link

This article provides the historical background to RTE Act much in news these days, and hence is important from essay point of view.

Present Condition

Election manifestoes over decades have rhetorically spoken of six per cent of GDP or more to education and this election has been no exception.
The actual spending on education is only around three per cent.
School infrastructure and teaching personnel are inadequate and of poor quality while the dropout rate is rampant even at the elementary school stage.
Why this condition?

During the framing of the Constitution, free and compulsory education, which was listed for inclusion as a justiciable fundamental right, was unceremoniously transferred to the list of non-justiciable fundamental rights — later termed as “Directive Principles of State Policy.”

K.T. Shah,Member of constituent assembly had warned that : “Once an unambiguous declaration of such a (justiciable) right is made, those responsible for it would have to find ways and means to give effect to it. If they had no such obligation placed upon them, they might be inclined to avail themselves of every excuse to justify their own inactivity in the matter, indifference or worse.”

Why was the right to education dropped from the list of justiciable fundamental rights?

Historical Background:

Plan for Post-War Education Development in India, 1944 (Sargent Plan):
The Sargent Plan had set forth a scheme for the universalisation of free and compulsory education by 1984.

Why wasn’t this adopted?

1.Huge estimates of cost and time.
2.Cripps proposals of 1942 : country’s impending fragmentation into several independent dominions or               states hence the centrally controlled plan was perceived to be a threat to the political and fiscal autonomy of the independent units via the subventions that would be needed for its operation. 

During framing of the constitution:

On the date on which the right to education was considered by the Constituent Assembly for retention as a fundamental right, the proposed autonomous units of the Indian Union offered by the Cabinet Mission Plan of May 16, were not substantially unlike those proposed by Cripps in 1942, nor was the right to education less costly.


BUT

On June 3, 1947, the Mountbatten Plan for two nations, India and Pakistan, was proposed, and within days accepted as inevitable, changing forever the dynamics of Centre-state relations, from that of the “weak Centre-powerful autonomous states” paradigm of the Cabinet Mission Plan of May 16, 1946, under which the Constituent Assembly had been set up, to one in which the Centre was strong, with residuary powers.


Since the Mountbatten Plan was accepted hence the right to education was not deleted. It was moved to the list now known as the “Directive Principles of State Policy,”

Result

The electoral promises of allocation of six per cent of GDP to education have remained as pious wishes. 

It remains to be seen whether education will be recognised even now as a paramount necessity, or whether fiscal apprehensions will continue to override the right of children to education.