A dismal report card By Chitta Behera

A dismal report card By Chitta Behera Around 17,282 habitations in India do not have a primary school within 1 km, 148,696 government schools still do not have a building, 165,742 have no drinking water, 455,561 schools have no toilets, and around 114,531 primary schools are single-teacher schools. Where does that leave the Right to Education, which has been notified by only 9 states 15 months on? If there is one law in the country that promised a lot only to belie it the next moment, it is the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, popularly called the Right to Education (RTE) Act. In terms of non-performance, it can be compared to the overambitious and inherently abortive Article 45 in the Directive Principles of the Constitution which read: "The state shall endeavour to provide, within a period of 10 years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of 14 years." However, there's a big difference between the straight talk of the erstwhile Article 45 and the indecisive construction of its counterpart. The newly-inserted Article 21 A (Right to Education) in the Fundamental Rights chapter reads: "The state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to 14 years in such manner as the state may, by law, determine." Several striking differences between the two stand out. The new dispensation, though embellished now as a Fundamental Right, enables the state to bypass not only a definite commitment in terms of time or manner of ensuring universalisation of elementary education but also its obligation towards early childhood education for children in the 0-6 age-group. In other words, whatever the Indian state does or refrains from doing on the elementary education front can be justified under "in such manner as the state may, by law, determine"! The Right to Education Act came into force on April 1, 2010, covering the entire country except Jammu and Kashmir, as per Central Gazette Notification dated February 19, 2010. Theoretically, this meant that all provisions under the Act, including norms and standards for would-be schools, should have been in place across the country on the day of its commencement. But everyone, including primary stakeholders in the new law -- education administrators, teachers, school managements, parents -- was caught unawares. Then came the notification of central rules, made on April 8, 2010, as required under Section 38 of the Act, applicable to concerned educational authorities of the Centre and union territories. It's worthwhile to mention here that no state came forward voluntarily, as required under the above section, to frame the necessary rules for operationalising provisions of the Act in their respective domains. Only after the draft Model Rules for the States was circulated in February 2010 by the Centre, along with a favourable hint at fund sharing between the Centre and the states, did some states begin to mull implementation of the Act, albeit with a lot of hesitation and doubts that persist to this day. More than a year on, implementation of the RTE Act across India presents as wretched a picture as existed at the moment of its commencement. According to the official release 'Status of Implementation of RTE Act, 2009, in States/UTs as on 15.3.2011' (http://ssa.nic.in/rte/8Status..RTE.pdf), only nine states out of 29 (Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Orissa, Rajasthan and Sikkim) have notified the rules, a statutory obligation under the Act. And only two of the six union territories (Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Chandigarh). Interestingly, according to the release, no data could be ascertained in this respect from Goa and the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli! Another mandatory provision -- the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR) that's supposed to be in place as the monitoring authority and highest appellate body for grievance redressal, according to Sections 31 and 32 of the Act -- has been complied with by only one-third of the states, says the release. That means only 11 in all, namely Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Mizoram, Orissa, Rajasthan and Sikkim. Broadly speaking therefore, two-thirds of India still remains outside RTE Act 2009 -- a fact that not only makes this particular law a joke but casts doubts on the law-framing calibre of Indians. Slow progress in compliance apart, the situation on the ground remains bleak. Even Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal, who appears to be fanatically committed to the RTE Act, had to admit to some stark realities afflicting the Act whilst releasing its first-year report card on April 1, 2011. Though he started off on a note of optimism, Sibal couldn't but put on record: "It's unfortunate that 81,50,619 children in the age-group six to 14 are still out of school...