Speaking to a
group of young professionals and interns at the Planning Commission a couple of
months ago, at the invitation of my old friend and colleague, Pawan Agarwal, I
realised that many of us are unaware of the background to the Right to
Education Act. Why indeed, did
Parliament find it necessary to consider making education a Fundamental Right,
much before it considered a Right to Food or a Right to Livelihood? Here’s the full story.
From the earliest times, education in India had always been exclusive; only the Brahmins and some very rich families had opportunities for their children to be educated. The rest managed by acquiring the skills they needed to earn their livelihood. It was only towards the end of the nineteenth century, as the Freedom Movement began to pick up momentum, that a demand for mass education began to be articulated. Among other things, leaders of the time realised that education was a tool that could be used to mobilise the masses, thereby increasing the pressure on the British to consider leaving. For instance, one of the earliest political steps initiated in Gujarat in the 1920s by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel involved taking over the management of local municipal schools.
The first formal
demand for compulsory primary education was raised in 1910 by Gopal Krishna
Gokhale, who introduced a Bill for the purpose in the Legislative Council,
based on Britain’s own Compulsory Education Act of 1870. Not surprisingly, it saw no progress. Mahatma Gandhi called for universal primary
education in the 1930s; an apocryphal tale says that he was told by the wise
men that primary education could only be universalised by imposing a cess on
liquor sales, thus forcing him to choose between two deeply held beliefs. Gandhi, being the man he was, is reported to
have retorted that if the only way to educate India’s children was through a
cess on liquor revenues, it was better for them to stay uneducated! His articulation of Nai Talim in 1937 was thus at least partially in response to
those who believed that education was not for the masses.
The debates in
the Constituent Assembly link the question of education intimately to the very
foundation of our democracy. When the
issue of suffrage was debated, one school of thought held that only educated
citizens should be allowed to vote.
Nehru, Ambedkar and others differed, holding that it would be
unacceptable to fritter away freedom hard won from the British by creating yet
another society that differentiated between its citizens. They believed, and said so forcefully, that
every citizen of the fledgling democracy then being fashioned should be treated
as an equal, such equality being translated into universal adult suffrage, or
the right of every citizen to participate in our democracy.
What a powerful vision of the future our founding fathers had, and what a leap of faith they took! To be so forward thinking in the late 1940s as to imagine a country in which everyone, high or low, rich or poor, educated or illiterate, could participate in was unbelievably hopeful. Remember that these were people who had themselves grown up in a country ruled by foreigners, and in a world order that took things like caste and social stratification for granted. The reach and scope of their forethought is almost dizzying in its audacity.
And yet, though
they wished to make education the bedrock of our democracy, sadly they were
unable to overcome the constraints of resources. Despite its best efforts, the sub-committee
set up by the Constituent Assembly reluctantly concluded that it would not be
possible for the newly independent India to fund universal primary education as
a Fundamental Right; as a compromise, the Assembly agreed to include reference
to free and compulsory education as a Directive Principle of State Policy in
Article 45[1]
of the new Constitution. And in a nod to
the importance of this provision, the Article was the only one that came with a
time frame of ten years for its implementation.
Unfortunately the
time frame of ten years was never respected, and even though an attempt was
made to articulate a vision for education through the National Policy on Education in
1968, it remained largely forgotten till the early eighties. The declaration of a new National Policy on Education in 1986
marked a revival of interest in the subject, and was accompanied by international
commitments made in the nineties (Education for All,
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,
etc), as well as greater civil society and governmental action.
The judiciary also
played an important role in steering the country towards a universal right to
education. In the case of Mohini Jain vs State of Karnataka
& Ors in 1992, the Supreme Court held that the right to education is
concomitant to the right to life, that every citizen had a right to education, and
significantly, that the very act of recognition by government of a privately
managed institution created an instrument of State that could be used to
deliver the obligations of the State. Reviewing
this decision in 1993, the Supreme Court, in the case of J P Unnikrishnan vs State of Andhra
Pradesh & Ors, held that the right to education is implicit in and
flows from the right to life guaranteed under Art 21, and that every child has
a right to free education until she completes the age of 14 years; thereafter her
right is circumscribed by the economic capacity of the State.
Both these judgments were significant in bringing about the right to education. It was as a result of the latter judgment that the Constitution was amended through the Constitution (86th Amendment) Act of 2002, which introduced a new Article 21A providing that “the State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years in such manner as the State may, by law, determine”.
The Amendment Act also modified the original Article 45, to now provide that “the State shall endeavour to provide early childhood care and education for all children until they complete the age of six years". And finally, it modified Article 51, to stipulate that it would be a Fundamental Duty of every parent/guardian to provide opportunities for the education of their children/wards.
Unlike other Fundamental Rights in the Constitution however, this one was worded in a manner that made the enactment of a specific legislation essential for its operationalisation (the critical words being “in such manner as the State may, by law, determine”). Thus it was that several versions of the Central law were drafted and discussed between 2003 and 2009, before the law was finally passed as The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.
So there you have it – the story of the Fundamental Right to Education guaranteed by our Constitution. A right that is deeply linked to our identity as citizens, and to the quality of our participation in the democracy that is India.
[1] “The State shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years
from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education
for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years.”
