[Reader-list] A Note on the eve of Right to Education Bill in Lok Sabha

[Jeebesh]

 From Anil Sadgopal <anilsadgopal at yahoo.com>

29th July 2009

  Dear Friends,

  I write to you this personal note on the eve of a [non]-historic so- 
called Right to Education Bill, 2008 Bill being tabled in Lok Sabha.  
Through this Note, I would attempt to share with you my sense of deep  
anguish and concern for the future of our Republic in its sixtieth  
year. Although, this Note is limited to the issue of education as a  
Fundamental Right, the implications encompass all aspects and  
dimensions of our socio-economic life.

  Here is weblink to my article published in The Telegraph on 28th  
July 2009 (the original title of the article read as “The Bill That  
Denies Right to Education”):http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090728/jsp/opinion/story_11287996.jsp

  Tomorrow (i.e. 29 July 2009) the said Bill will be tabled in Lok  
Sabha, speeches made (“I rise to support the Bill but . . . . “) and  
passed expectedly by a unanimous vote after oral assurances (minus  
Constitutional guarantees) by the Minister of HRD that all will be  
well. This has been the history of this legislative process since 28th  
November 2001 when the 86th (then 93rd) Constitutional Amendment Bill  
was tabled in Lok Sabha, even as 40,000 people from several parts of  
India were holding a protest rally from Ramlila Grounds to Rajghat and  
back to Ramlila Grounds. Once this is done, we will wait for the  
President to sign the Bill.

The Presidential assent  will mark the full conversion of a  
Fundamental Right into an ordinary statutory right. Who said that?  
Believe it or not, this was stated by the HRD Minister Mr. Kapil Sibal  
in May 2002 in Rajya Sabha, of course then sitting in opposition as  
member of the Congress Party! Why did he say that? As an eminent  
judicial mind of the country, he knew that the Article 21A introduced  
by the 86th Amendment has the conditionality that free and compulsory  
education shall be provided “in such manner as the State may, by law,  
determine.” Such conditionality is not attached to any other  
Fundamental Right.. The State was determined to attach this  
conditionality in order to use it for enacting a law (now being tabled  
in Lok Sabha on 30th July 2009) whose central objective will be to  
legitimize all the dilution and distortion that the school education  
policy has undergone initially as part of World Bank’s DPEP in 1990s  
and later in SSA during the present decade. This was necessary in  
order to use the Constitution for putting a stamp of approval on the  
neo-liberal programme of privatization and commercialization of school  
education. Sibal’s 100-day agenda almost completes a critical phase of  
the neo-liberal agenda of which this Bill is an integral part.

On 20th July 2009, when the present Bill was tabled in Rajya Sabha,  
several members inquired why the children below six years of ago have  
been kept out of their existing Fundamental Right to balanced  
nutrition, health support and pre-primary education. Ironically, the  
same Mr. Sibal who criticized Article 21A more than seven years ago in  
Rajya Sabha had no qualms in stating that “the [present] legislation  
is in the context of [Article] 21A and that is why we have not dealt  
with 0-5 years.”

  This is why I have been consistently maintaining since November 2001  
that 86th Constitutional Amendment is a neo-liberal intervention in  
our Constitution and the consequential Right to Education Bill under  
Article 21A in Lok Sabha has to be viewed as a neo-liberal Bill. I  
wait for history to vindicate my stand.

  On 23rd July 2009, the All India Forum for Right to Education (AIF- 
RTE) organized a delegation to meet the Lok Sabha Speaker Ms. Meira  
Kumar (see attachment for the Memorandum with a detailed critique of  
the Bill). The delegation was led by Com. D. Raja, Natl. Secy of CPI  
and a Rajya Sabha member. Ms. Medha Patkar and Sh. Sandeep Pande  
joined the delegation and endorsed the AIF-RTE stand. We appealed to  
Ms. Meira Kumar to return the Bill to the Ministry’s Parliamentary  
Standing Committee (or a joint select committee) with directions to  
hold Public Hearings on the Bill around the country in a democratic  
and transparent manner. Why this demand at this late stage? To be  
sure, this demand is 4 years and 8 months old. Public Hearings on the  
Bill (as well as during its drafting process) have been demanded since  
CABE’s Kapil Sibal Committee began the process of drafting the present  
Bill in November 2004. However, not one Public Hearing has been held  
either by CABE or by the HRD Ministry – not even by the PM’s Office  
which sat over the various drafts – each one more diluted that the  
previous one – for almost 39 months from August 2005 onwards. Public  
Hearings were denied even by the Ministry’s Parliamentary Standing  
Committee which preferred to discuss the Bill with Ministry’s  
bureaucrats and official ‘educrats’ in closed chambers rather than  
with representatives of various education rights organizations or  
people’s movements, refusing to even accept submissions and Memoranda.  
Hence this demand to the Lok Sabha speaker.

  You may like to ask what happens to children’s Fundamental Right  
while the Public Hearings are held and the Bill amended or re-drafted  
on the basis of the public feedback. Would this not further delay the  
provision of the Fundamental Right which is about to be given after  
waiting for it for sixty years? NO, NOT ALL! This is so because the  
Fundamental Right to Education, without any conditionality whatsoever,  
is inherent in the Constitution, as declared by Supreme Court’s  
Unnikrishnan Judgment (1993). Various High Courts have been giving  
their judgments on education as a Fundamental Right under Unnikrishnan  
Judgment for the past several years. This Bill is designed only to  
dilute and distort the existing Fundamental Right.

  On 28th July, Shiksha Adhikar Manch, Bhopal organized a day-long  
peaceful dharna (with some members fasting) in front of Babasaheb  
Ambedkar’s statue in Bhopal and underlined three major violations of  
the Constitution by the Bill being tabled before Lok Sabha. In  
addition, the Manch urged upon the Lok Sabha members to “rise above  
their narrow party considerations, listen to the voice of their inner  
conscience and stand up against this anti-Constitutional, anti- 
education and anti-child Bill that denies Fundamental Right to almost  
45 crore children up to 18 years of age.” This is critical for  
protecting the Constitution and saving our education system from  
further deterioration and neo-liberal assaults which this Bill is  
going to institutionalize (see attachment for Manch’ Press Release in  
Hindi).

  On the eve of this farcical and neo-liberal Bill being tabled in Lok  
Sabha, AIF-RTE invites all fellow citizens and like-minded people’s  
organizations to join us in building a powerful long-term movement to  
challenge Sibal’s agenda to sell our education system to corporate  
houses and the global capital and, in the process also build people’s  
consciousness about the Constitution’s vision of Right to Education.  
Before closing, let me add that while what is focused upon in this  
Note constitutes reflections on the neo-liberal assault on Fundamental  
Right to Education, such an assault is taking place simultaneously on  
all sectors of the nation’s life. Drawing lessons from our sectoral  
concerns, we must learn to build a common political agenda to  
effectively resist this wide-ranging and multi-dimensional attack  
endangering the future of India as a sovereign nation and its survival  
as a democratic, egalitarian and secular society.

  ZINDABAAD!

  Sincerely,

  Anil Sadgopal

  Attachments

AIF-RTE Memorandum dated 23.07.2009 to Lok Sabha Speaker.
Shiksha Adhikar Manch’ Press Release dated 28.07.2009 regarding the  
dilution of the Constitution by the Bill and our call to the Lok sabha  
members.