One and a half years after the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009 became law on April 1, 2010, the Union government is set to roll out a massive national campaign to create public awareness about this historic legislation to enable its speedier implementation. The campaign will commence on November 11 — birthday of India’s first education minister, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad — which is officially designated as Education Day.
On the day, 1.25 million schools across the country will listen to an inspiring message from prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, read to over 200 million children by school principals in the presence of teachers, school development management committees and local government officials in 14 languages. The campaign will be symbolically launched from Nuh in Mewat (Haryana) — one of the country’s most educationally backward districts — by Union human resource development minister Kapil Sibal, who will read the PM’s message there.
The Union government’s shiksha haq (‘right to education’) campaign is a first-of-its-type and will rope in 200,000 volunteers and hundreds of community-based organisations to take the campaign door-to-door over the next year, with the objective of prompting all 1.25 million elementary schools countrywide to become RTE compliant by March 31, 2013.
With only 20 of India’s 35 states and Union territories having notified the mandatory Rules under the RTE Act and some of the most populous states, including Uttar Pradesh, throwing tantrums on funding and other issues, NGOs and civil society organisations have welcomed the government’s belated RTE awareness campaign. But they warn that it will fail unless preceded by systemic reforms needed to successfully implement the Act.
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“Our field surveys indicate that only 16 percent of the population has heard of the RTE Act, and over 5 million teachers are unaware of its details. To effectively implement the Act, one million primary school teachers need to be recruited within the next few months and over 500,000 schools — according to the Supreme Court — need to be equipped with toilets. These are some issues, which if unaddressed, can derail this historic legislation. More than the people, the onus is on the government machinery to be able to deliver,” says Ambrish Rai, convener of the Delhi-based RTE Forum, a coalition of civil society organisations comprising the Campaign against Child Labour, Save the Children, National Coalition for Education, Oxfam-India, UNICEF and NAFRE, among other NGOs working in the field of education.
Damodar Goyal, the Jaipur-based president of the National Federation of Unaided Schools, which filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court contesting the constitutional validity of s.12 (1) (c) of the RTE Act — which makes it mandatory for all private schools to reserve 25 percent of class I capacity for poor neighbourhood children — believes the government’s RTE awareness campaign will prove futile, unless the ground is prepared by upgrading the infrastructure and administration of government primaries. “Only when parents start pulling children out from private schools to enroll them in government schools can we say the campaign has attained some success. Government schools are under-utilised and the quality of educ-ation they dispense and accountability of their teachers are the real issues. They need to be seriously addressed if RTE is to be a success,” says Goyal.
With the flight of students from dysfunctional government schools continuing unabated — 1,600 public schools in Karnataka and 400 in Himachal Pradesh are on the verge of closure because teachers almost equal or outnumber students — systemic reform in the government schools sector is a precondition of successful implem-entation of the RTE Act. “Even government school teachers send their children to private schools. This is a dangerous development. Instead of disciplining their teachers and impro-ving learning outcomes, Central and state governments are resorting to PPPs (public-private partnerships). Eventually the private sector will dominate school education, which will adversely impact the RTE Act in the long run. We need to move towards a common school system by saving and strengthening government schools,” opines an HRD ministry official who preferred to remain anonymous.
Yet the desideratum of a common school system will remain an elusive dream unless state and local govern-ments begin to take public education seriously. And this won’t happen without the pressure of public opinion.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
Sky-high hopes
After a long wait and much hype, the world’s cheapest tablet computer — Aakash — was unveiled in New Delhi on October 5 by Kapil Sibal, who wears the dual hat of Union minister of human resource development and minister of communi-cations and information technology. Originally named Sakshat, the tablet has subsequently been branded Aakash (‘sky’). Speaking on the occasion, Sibal somewhat grandiosely announced: “The rich have access to the digital world, the poor and ordinary have been excluded. Aakash will end that digital divide.”
If observers detected a trace of desperation in Sibal’s proclamation, it’s because despite official claims of India having emerged as an IT (information technology) superpower, it is described as a country at “extreme risk” from lack of “digital inclusion”. According to a Digital Inclusion Index compiled by Maplecroft — a UK-based risk analysis firm — on a league table of 1-186 with one as the worst, India is ranked 39 in the same “extreme risk” category as Niger (No.1), Chad and Ethiopia.
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Little wonder that Sibal, who has been severely criticised for presenting “hastily drafted” education reform Bills (NCHER, Education Tribunals, Foreign Educational Institutions etc), has been quick to claim that the Aakash tablet is the outcome of the HRD ministry’s National Mission on Education through Information & Communications Techno-logy (NME-ICT). According to Sibal, the tablet project was commissioned by the ministry under NME-ICT to Data Wind Ltd, a UK-based developer of wireless web access products and services. The ministry has set itself a target of delivering 10 million tablets to post-secondary students across India in the coming months.
Originally expected to be priced at $35 (Rs.1,750) per unit, Aakash has been purchased by the Union govern-ment for Rs.2,250. “The government has asked us for special replacement warranty... those kind of costs add up,” explains Suneet Singh Tuli, the India-born and University of Toronto-educ-ated chief executive of Data Wind (estb.2000). Currently, the company is manufacturing the tablet indigenously in Hyderabad at 700-1,000 units per day, with the world’s cheapest tablet expected to be on the market this month under the brand name UbiSlate.
At a selling price of Rs.2,250, Aakash is undoubtedly a major technological breakthrough as the device offers Android 2.2 (Froyo) technology, a seven-inch touch screen, weighs a mere 350 gm with two-three hours of battery life at a stretch. Nevertheless — and perhaps inevitably — there’s consid-erable scepticism about the silver bullet properties of the Aakash tablet procl-aimed by Sibal. According to ICT (information and communications technology) experts, one of the major lacunae of the Aakash tablet is that while it can run without an adapter on the mains, its battery life is too short for a country in which prolonged power outages are the norm. Moreover, ICT experts express doubts about its “old technology” resistive screen, slow speed and durability.
ICT professionals also highlight that similar low-priced gadgets have failed to stir public enthusiasm. In 2002, a handheld computer, Simputer — the biggest story that came out of the Indian IT industry with grandiose plans to “give villagers access to computing power” — failed to make any impact. Again in 2005, Mobilis — a mobile computer priced at Rs.10,000 — which was declared by Sibal as “India’s leap into the future of PC technology”, also disappeared into oblivion, even as the digital divide continued to widen by leaps and bounds.
The technological specifications of Aakash apart, knowledgeable educati-onists warn against over-hyping technology as the panacea for deep-rooted deficiencies which are the consequence of decades of neglect and slap-dash experimentation within the education system. Eminent social scientist, Gandhinagar-based Dr. Shiv Visvanathan warns against confusing the potential of technology with usage. “Mr. Sibal has donned the mantle of a cyber Moses and the Aakash tablet is being projected as some kind of philosopher’s stone that will set right all that ails Indian education. Technology, cheap or expensive, cannot per se solve deep-rooted social, educational and environmental problems that plague Indian society. Even Steve Jobs didn’t over-exaggerate the importance of his gadgets as Mr. Sibal is doing,” says Vishwanathan.
Given the complexity of challenges Indian education is confronted with and the limited role technology has played within it thus far, the sociologist sounds more credible than the minister.
Payal Mahajan (Gurgaon)