Opinion An irrelevant intervention

This was a government school,he pointed out,so the question of donations did not arise

April 15, 2012 02:22 AM IST First published on: Apr 15, 2012 at 02:22 AM IST

By one of lifes mysterious coincidences it happens that even as the Supreme Court was ruling last week that it was constitutionally valid to force private schools to reserve 25 per cent of their seats for poor children,I was trying to exercise this right. This was on behalf of someone who is illiterate and poor and in desperate need to get his son into a Delhi school. He sought my help because the government school in his neighbourhood had promised to admit his son if he could make a donation of Rs 25,000. The story he told me was that the school official who asked him for this donation said he could bring it down to Rs 13,000 if he could not pay the full amount. When I heard about this bargaining,I got suspicious and offered to go to the school with him.

It was a large,fine looking school in the heart of the city filled with the din of children making merry during a midday break. Outside the Principals office,a small army of anxious parents waited but we managed to fight our way through and I was introduced to the man who had asked for the donation. He looked uneasy when I brought up the subject of the bargaining and said nervously that there had been some misunderstanding. This was a government school,he pointed out,so the question of donations did not arise. But,there was a long list of children waiting to be admitted so if there was still a vacancy in the middle of May,he would try and do something to help. No donation needed.

My reason for recounting this story is to make the point that the Supreme Courts endorsement of the right to education law will make absolutely no difference. Both government and private schools will find ways of admitting only those children whose parents can afford the donations that the law technically makes illegal. The children of the poor will continue to be deprived of a good education and it goes without saying that their parents will be too poor to go to court to fight long legal battles for their rights.

The Right to Education Act is a bad law. It was described by Lant Pritchett of Harvards Kennedy School as massively ill-conceived in an interview to this newspaper and Professor Pritchett was not exaggerating. The singular achievement of this law will be to increase the powers of petty officials to meddle in the handful of private schools that offer,albeit at a price,a relatively high standard of education. What we need is not more official meddling but less,except in government schools in which a great deal more meddling is needed to ensure that abysmal standards improve. But,the clever little officials who man the bastions of government in our sadly illiterate land confine their attentions to private schools for reasons that should be obvious.

So the Indian school system is defined by two characteristics that are probably unique to it. Private schools are constantly under siege from inspectors of the most needless kind who can often only be satisfied if a hefty bribe comes their way. And,government schools are left to provide standards of education so appalling that most children leave school without being able to read a book. I know this from empirical research as I make it a point on my travels to visit as many schools as I can.

The truth is that even if every private school in this country was diligent about filling its 25 per cent quota for destitute children,it will make no difference. The only way to bring about revolutionary changes in Indian education is if government schools improve in a revolutionary way. There is nothing in the RTE that provides for this to happen which is why I agree with Professor Pritchett when he describes the new law as massively ill-conceived.

We do not need a new law for the Indian education system to improve. We do not even need quotas in private schools for economically deprived children although it can do no harm for middle-class children to discover how privileged they are. What we need desperately is for government schools to ensure that teachers really teach,that classrooms do not fall to ruin because of bad maintenance,that toilets and drinking water are made available and that the funds for midday meals do not get eaten up by corrupt officials and teachers. None of these things will happen under the new Right to Education Act. The truth is that if it were torn up and flung into the nearest garbage bin it would not be missed. It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court of India endorsed this irrelevant and ill-conceived new law instead of intervening in a more meaningful way.

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