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One often reads bits and pieces about the revolutionary education policy of the Congress-led UPA-2 government which was returned to power in the general election held last summer. But the media has yet to cotton on that fundamental reforms that could change the face of India in the next decade are in the process of implementation.
In 1992, I was appointed adviser to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) in India. At the time Unicef’s chief executive, Eimi Watanabe, told me that the country’s primary education system was a major problem, in terms of enrolment as well as dropouts. Therefore Unicef launched an advocacy campaign for universal primary education which reached far and wide. We looked for ways and means to influence politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and businessmen to push for free and compulsory primary education. Our argument was simple: India boasts that its technical and scientific prowess is recognised the world over, and yet it also harbours the world’s largest number of illiterates.
In our campaign we highlighted this paradox to promote universal primary education. We showed the contrast between poor enrolment and high dropout rates in primary schools and the huge demand for higher education. A powerful argument in our campaign was that this paradox of Indian education has created and perpetuates a class divide, with educated elite on one side and a vast illiterate underclass on the other. Primary education is a powerful equaliser, we said. In addition, the Unicef advocacy campaign demolished several excuses offered by policy experts, including the pernicious one that children of the rural poor are needed to help out as family farmhands.
Nearly three years of dogged advocacy paid off when on November 14, 1994 (Children’s Day), then prime minister P. V. Narasimha Rao and his senior cabinet colleagues made a public commitment to provide ‘Education for all’ by the year 2000. But nothing happened as India suffered a period of political instability, resulting in several wasted years of a BJP-led coalition government which was ousted in 2004.
Fifteen years later, in August 2009, Parliament passed the landmark Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2008. My good friend Kapil Sibal, who, as Union human resource development (HRD) minister, piloted the Bill, described it as the “harbinger of a new era”. For me, it is a vindication. In 1992, we faced severe opposition. But Eimi Watanabe — now a member of the World Bank’s inspection panel that works to ensure the bank’s activities don’t harm people — is the unsung heroine of this landmark legislation. Without her commitment to education for all in India, this Bill would never have become a reality.
It’s been just two months since the RTE Bill was passed by Parliament. But its impact will be felt over the next decade. Free primary education provides access to the poorest. Making it compulsory will gene-rate sustained demand that will eventually overcome the bugbears of enrolment, dropouts, absentee teachers and irrelevant curriculums. Kapil Sibal is indebted to Eimi, who placed this vital issue on the national agenda.
In secondary education, the minister has proposed a regime to reduce the stress suffered by children by opting for ongoing gradation in lieu of the final board exam. In doing this, he has won the support of middle class parents who live in dread of sudden death exams. Graduating from high school will no longer be a random outcome determined by nameless examiners. Soon, parents will start to question teachers about their children’s progress. As such, teachers will have to give up authoritarian ways and work with parents to ensure that students get the best from their educational experience.
In the event, creativity will triumph over conformism. Students will learn that asking questions is more important than rote learning. Already, the advent of the Cambridge International Examination and International Baccalaureate curriculums has proved a challenge to the moribund Indian school system. There’s been a steady migration of upper middle class students to these foreign examination board affiliated schools.
Finally, in the higher education sector, the Foreign Education Providers Bill is about to be passed by Parliament. The Bill focuses on improved access by increasing the budget for the establishment of new institutions nine fold. It promises equity without dilution of standards. More significantly, it will enhance quality of higher education by exposing India’s fossilised universities to foreign competition.
These changes in primary, secondary and higher education indicate that a revolution which will change the contours of India’s education system is well and truly underway. It will be transformed from an elite selection process into a knowledge system. We should all cheer. Kapil Sibal champions this radical change, and India will owe him a debt of gratitude for facilitating the transformation.
Some decades from now, we will have a Nobel Prize winner every year and this will continue through the century. Then we won’t have to put up with a curmudgeon like Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, the latest Nobel laureate of Indian origin who used the occasion to denigrate his roots.
(Rajiv Desai is president of Comma Consulting and a well-known Delhi-based columnist)