Legislative Brief: Right to Education Bill

Legislative Brief: Right to Education Bill - 28 : "Right to Education Bill, 2005
The constitution now guarantees the right to education to all children between the ages of 6 and 14, but how is this to be upheld? This legislative brief by M R Madhavan and Ruchita Manghnani presents the many questions before Parliament, as it discusses the Right to Education Bill that will give effect to the guarantee. "

Some Excerpts:

Key Features

* Right of Every Child

Every child between the age of 6 and 14 years has the right to full-time free and compulsory education in a neighbourhood school.

Non-enrolled children of age group 7-9 years have the right to be admitted in an age-appropriate grade within one year of the commencement of the Act, and of age group 9-14 years have the right to be provided special programmes that will enable them to attend such grade within three years.

Children with severe or profound disability, who are unable to attend a neighbourhood school, have the right to be provided education in an appropriate environment.

A child cannot be held back in any grade or expelled from a school till Class VIII. Any expulsion requires an order of the School Management Committee (SMC), which will be given only after all other corrective measures have been exhausted, and parents/guardians have been heard. The local authority will take steps to enroll such a child in another neighbourhood school.
* Responsibility of the State

The State shall ensure availability of a neighbourhood school for every child within three years. In case of non-availability, free transport or free residential facilities shall be provided. The state/UT government shall determine every year the requirement of schools, facilities, and their locations; establish additional schools as required; deploy teachers and create facilities for their training.

The State shall develop a mechanism to monitor enrolment, participation and attainment status of every child, and take corrective steps wherever required. Information in this regard will be made available in the public domain, including on an on-line basis.
* School Admissions

State schools and fully aided schools shall provide free education to all admitted children. Partly aided schools shall provide free education to at least such proportion of admitted children to the extent that government funds its annual expenses, subject to a minimum of 25%. Unaided schools and special category schools shall provide free education to at least 25% students; the government shall reimburse the school to the extent of the per child expenditure in government schools or the school fee, whichever is lower.

No school can conduct any screening procedure of any child or parents at the time of admission. Children will be selected for admission in a random manner. Capitation fees are prohibited.
* School Management

All non-government schools have to be recognized by a Competent Authority or shut down. The Bill specifies certain norms (such as teacher-student ratio, physical infrastructure etc) to be fulfilled by all schools as a pre-requisite for being recognized.

All State and aided schools are required to form School Management Committees (SMCs) with at least 75% of the members being parents/guardians, and the other members representing teachers, the community and the local authority. SMCs will manage the school, including the sanction of leave and disbursal of salary to teachers. The SMC/local authority shall also have the power to assess teachers' performance and impose minor punishment.

Teachers of state schools will be appointed to a specific school, and teachers already serving will be assigned to a specific school within two years. They will not be transferred from the school so assigned.

The teacher has the duty to transact and complete the curriculum, regularly assess the learning level of each child, provide supplementary instruction if required, and apprise every parent/guardian about the progress of learning and development of the child.

Teachers are prohibited from giving private tuitions. Teachers shall not be deployed for any non-educational purpose other than census, election and disaster relief duties.

* Content and Process

Schools and academic authorities formulating curriculum shall conform to the values enshrined in the Constitution. Schools should operate in a child friendly and child centred manner.

No child shall be required to appear at a public examination before completing Grade VIII. No child shall be awarded physical punishment in any form in school.

* National Commission for Elementary Education (NCEE)

NCEE shall be appointed by the President on the recommendation of a committee comprising the Prime Minister, Speaker of Lok Sabha, Minister for Human Resources Development and Leaders of Opposition in the two Houses of Parliament.

NCEE shall monitor all aspects, including quality of education. It will act as Ombudsman for this Act.

* Other Major Provisions

No person shall prevent a child from participating in elementary education. No person shall employ or engage a child in a manner that renders her a working child.

It is the responsibility of every parent/guardian to enroll his child/ward who has attained the age of 6 years and above in a school and facilitate her completion of elementary education (till Grade VIII). If a parent/guardian persistently defaults in discharging this responsibility, the SMC may direct him to perform compulsory community service by way of child care in the school.

Any person who has a grievance about the establishment, provisioning and management of a school may submit a written representation to the SMC/ local authority, which shall take appropriate action and inform the applicant within 90 days. If the applicant is unsatisfied with such action, she may submit a representation to such authority as prescribed (by the state/UT/central government), which shall take appropriate action and inform the applicant within 90 days.

The state/UT government may form a State-level Regulatory Authority for inquiring into grievances which remain unredressed even after the steps mentioned above.

A child shall be admitted in Grade I only after attaining the age of five years and ten months before the beginning of the academic year.

The Bill specifies penalties for persons and schools contravening the provisions regarding capitation fees, screening tests, recognition and preventing children from participating in elementary education.

* Finances

The central government shall provide financial assistance to state governments in accordance with such formula regarding sharing of costs as determined in consultation with state governments. The state government shall provide financial assistance to local authorities.

Though the draft Bill does not specify cost implications, a paper by the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) committee indicates a tentative estimation of total additional costs between Rs 3,21,000 crore and Rs 4,36,000 crore over six years.

PART B: KEY ISSUES AND ANALYSIS

Objectives of the Bill

The Bill has a clear objective that every child between the age of 6 and 14 years has the right to elementary education that is (a) free, (b) compulsory, (c) of equitable quality, and (d) available in her neighbourhood. This education will be available between Grade I and VIII, and provided at a recognized school satisfying specified norms. The Bill implies that there will be no non-formal schools and teachers will have to possess qualifications as defined in the National Council for Teacher Education Act, 1993.

Another School Barrier for African Girls: No Toilet

The same problem is present in virtually every developing country. A good article which looks at the problem from sub-saharan girls perspective, but the same things apply to girls in India, South East Asia, other places.

BALIZENDA, Ethiopia - Fatimah Bamun dropped out of Balizenda Primary School in first grade, more than three years ago, when her father refused to buy her pencils and paper. Only after teachers convinced him that his daughter showed unusual promise did he relent. Today Fatimah, 14, tall and slender, studies math and Amharic, Ethiopia's official language, in a dirt-floored fourth-grade classroom.

Whether she will reach fifth grade is another matter. Fatimah is facing the onset of puberty, and with it the realities of menstruation in a school with no latrine, no water, no hope of privacy other than the shadow of a bush, and no girlfriends with whom to commiserate. Fatimah is the only girl of the 23 students in her class. In fact, in a school of 178 students, she is one of only three girls who has made it past third grade.

Even the women among the school's teachers say they have no choice but to use the thorny scrub, in plain sight of classrooms, as a toilet.

"It is really too difficult," said Azeb Beyene, who arrived here in September to teach fifth grade. Here and throughout sub-Saharan Africa, schoolgirls can only empathize. In a region where poverty, tradition and ignorance deprive an estimated 24 million girls even of an elementary school education, the lack of school toilets and water is one of many obstacles to girls' attendance, and until recently was considered unfit for discussion. In some rural communities in the region, menstruation itself is so taboo that girls are prohibited from cooking or even banished to the countryside during their periods.

Photos

But that impact is substantial. Researchers throughout sub-Saharan Africa have documented that lack of sanitary pads, a clean, girls-only latrine and water for washing hands drives a significant number of girls from school. The United Nations Children's Fund, for example, estimates that one in 10 school-age African girls either skips school during menstruation or drops out entirely because of lack of sanitation.

The average schoolgirl's struggle for privacy is emblematic of the uphill battle for public education in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly among girls. With slightly more than 6 in 10 eligible children enrolled in primary school, the region's enrollment rates are the lowest in the world.

Beyond that, enrollment among primary school-aged girls is 8 percent lower than among boys, according to the United Nations Children's Fund, Unicef. And of those girls who enroll, 9 percent more drop out before the end of sixth grade than boys.

African girls in poor, rural areas like Balizenda are even more likely to lose out. The World Bank estimated in 1999 that only one in four of them was enrolled in primary school.

The issue, advocates for children say, is not merely fairness. The World Bank contends that if women in sub-Saharan Africa had equal access to education, land, credit and other assets like fertilizer, the region's gross national product could increase by almost one additional percentage point annually. Mark Blackden, one of the bank's lead analysts, said Africa's progress was inextricably linked to the fate of girls.

"There is a connection between growth in Africa and gender equality," he said. "It is of great importance but still ignored by so many."

The pressure on girls to drop out peaks with the advent of puberty and the problems that accompany maturity, like sexual harassment by male teachers, ever growing responsibilities at home and parental pressure to marry. Female teachers who could act as role models are also in short supply in sub-Saharan Africa: they make up a quarter or less of the primary school teachers in 12 nations, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Florence Kanyike, the Uganda coordinator for the Forum of Women Educationalists, a Nairobi-based organization that lobbies for education for girls, said the harsh inconvenience of menstruation in schools without sanitation was just one more reason for girls to stay home.

WTO Hongkong - "Absymal" Failure?

Last week ended the WTO talks at Hong Kong - a part of the "Development Round" of talks. The write-up tries to cover in short what was achieved and what was lost - I will give a brief and people can dig into new stories for more detail. (I wont necessarily cover all the points & not to 100% accuracy as Trade is way too complicated).

Before that guess an answer to these questions (taken from BBC Quiz) and mail back to me:
1. How much of the price of a jar of instant coffee purchased in a supermarket goes to the coffee grower? Options A. 50% B. 20% C. 10% D.1%
2. How much do rich countries spend on subsidising their farmers everyday? Options A. $100m B. $500m C. $1 billion D. $3 billion
Goals:
Overall the goals of the "Doha" or "Development" round of talks was to focus on developing countries/their demands. The round overall has been not being going good after failures and deadlock at Seattle, Cancun, Singapore ...

Most of the goals focused on reducing/eliminating the "agricultural" subsidies in the developed world - US, Japan & Europe mainly. A quote african delegation gave after the talks was illustrative of the amount of subsidies given in the developed world - "The situation will remain that it would be better to be a cow in Japan, subsidised for $7 per day, than to be a human being living in Africa". These subsidies have a whole lot of tampering affects - lots which are too difficult to even imagine.

Hong Kong talks were meant to break deadlock on agricultural subsidies. Even before the talks started Europe was not ready to reduce these to a large extent - mainly France was opposing this. Though blame was given to Europe neither US or Japan wanted to cut subsidies sustantially. Infact US eliminated some subsides but through a back door created even more subsidies, saying technically they are not subsidies.

What Happened:

Almost everybody expected the talks to fail from starting. Europe came up with a new proposal to allow poorest countries (42 or so) to trade without any tarrifs. The proposal saw opposition from US and Japan as they wanted to protect Cotton & rice repectively for local market. It was passed with many exemptions to US/Japan. So its little help but not much. And guess who opposed this deal?. Some of the carrabiean and other poor countries - why? Figure out.

Europe agreed to end "export" subsides(which are only 3.5% of Europe total subsidies) by 2013. But most poor countries felt this was too less.

Some services & non-agricultural market were opened up in developing world. But not much. This was demand by the developed world. The poor countries opposed this but some fast developing countries like India/Brazil supported this.

Protests: There were strong protests outside WTO talks with around 10,000 people participating. Some groups which had protested previously were now inside the conference room as they were invited and their views also heard.

Going Forward:

WTO atleast hasnt become completely irrelevant - though lost most of it credibility. This is bad in my opinion. If WTO falters the poor & developing world loses a platform where they can negotiate hard with the developed world. Bilateral/Multi-lateral trade agreements like NAFTA/CAFTA/ASEAN etc will become more prominent. In these platforms poor countries have less power to bargain or ask for anything and rich countries get huge benefits.

This does not mean that poor/developing world should accept unfair agreements at WTO. But it means that they need to stand together and bargain harder and get agreements with developed world at this forum.

Articles:
http://www.oxfam.org/en/programs/campaigns/maketradefair/index.htm
Deal at WTO - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4539108.stm
In Depth Coverage - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/business/2004/world_trade/default.stm

There are many other articles all over the press - if you want anything specific and cant find ping me, I might be able to help.

Save Bandhyali School (Digantar, Jaipur)

The Bandhyali School (run by Digantar) offers path-breaking education to children from underprivileged families in the outskirts of the city Jaipur (in Rajasthan, India). On 2nd December 2005, the Jaipur Development Authority (JDA), has sent an eviction notice to the school to vacate the land in three days. This is an unjust action taken by government. Many people across countries are involved in an effort to convince the governement to not take this action.

Details of the Digantar which is one of Asha-Seattle's partners for past several years are here:

http://www.ashanet.org/projects/project-view.php?p=56

Details on Jaipur Development Association Action are here:
http://www.ashanet.org/projects-new/documents/56/JDAprefersprivateeducation.pdf
http://www.ashanet.org/projects-new/documents/56/CanwesaveBandhyaliSchool.pdf

Please read through the documents and if convinced please sign the petition located here:
http://www.petitiononline.com/Digantar/petition.html

In addition please call up/fax the petition to the numbers listed in the petition.

Blog tracking progress of this effort can be found here: http://digantar.blogspot.com/

If you have any questions please post them as comments and I will make sure I get answers for all of them.

The EPF Rate Debate

Quick Background: EPF (Employee Provident Fund) is a savings/investment instrument for retirment for the salaried class in India (organized sector). Govt Runs the scheme and gives fixed intrest rate which is declared each year by EPF Board. in some sense similar to 401-K) For more in-depth details visit: http://www.epfindia.com/Index.htm
Guide to what EPF is?

Every year there is a controvery (soap opera) on what the rate of interest should be for the scheme. This year the EPF Board has recommended rate to be decreased to 8.5% from 9.5%. The returns EPF Board gets are 8.0%, so they are paying out more than they are earning. EPF is one of the major contributors for retirment amount for employed.

I want people to comment on what they think about the rates. Left in India is opposing the rate cut. It surely doesnt make any economic sense but does it make social sense?

There are several opinions expressed by various people:

http://dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=9134

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=83560


I will comment later on my position. Lets discuss this - put your views as comments.

The 'other' food crisis

Below is the article from Down to Earth.
It highlights several things:
1. Number of rural problems India is unaware of.
2. Importance of Water
3. Common Property Resources & how they are to be managed.

The 'other' food crisis

=================================

There is so much about rural India that escapes notice that one more
area of neglect will not break the camel's back. I am talking about
the crisis of fodder for livestock. A grim silence surrounds it. 'Grim
', because in rural India, domestic animals aren't 'pets' but engines
that drive the economy. They provide resilience and wealth -- people
cope with adverse conditions because of their livestock. But no policy
exists on how to feed these 500 million or so animals. Rural India
today isn't fodder-secure, and the grim reality is that food security
in this country is not possible without fodder security.

Fodder insecurity begins with the question: where are these animals to
get their food from? In India, less land has been set aside for
domestic livestock than for 'flora and fauna': protected areas such as
sanctuaries and national parks sprawl over 15 million hectares (ha),
while land classified as 'permanent pastures' cover 11 million ha.
Moreover, over the years, these 'permanent pastures' have shrunk or
simply degraded.

In addition, there officially exists 13 million ha of land classified
as 'culturable wasteland'. Couldn't such land provide fodder? Yes, but
not country-wide: only two states, Rajasthan and Gujarat (both
livestock-dependent), account for roughly half such land. Also,
'culturable wastelands' are controlled by state revenue departments:
usually, the rich are allowed to encroach upon them, or politicians
distribute them as 'largesse' under so-called land reform programmes.
If these lands, critical for rural life-support, don't get gobbled up,
they remain neglected and degraded.

Animals survive by foraging on available land and on agricultural
residues. But the productivity of our common lands -- forest and
revenue land -- are pathetic; grass yields on these are mostly
illusionary. Sheer grazing pressure ensures animals literally nibble
away a pasture's productivity, suppressing regeneration of grasses and
tree fodder. Add to these the fact that agricultural production is
stagnating, or that farmers are shifting to crops that do not yield
fodder. The result? Crisis.

How serious is this crisis? We don't know, empirically. What we know
is that unlike most other neglected issues -- be it fuelwood to cook
food or water to drink or food to avert famine or malnutrition
deaths -- this is a crisis about many kinds of neglect. First, it
concerns the very poor that depend on livestock to survive another
tomorrow. Second, it relates to the country's most neglected lands:
common forests. Third, it is about neglected animals.

So it is that I say: we must know now, to find the ways ahead. Trying
to put together a fodder-scenario is literally like catching straws in
the wind. Every time I travel to villages in dry and drought-prone
areas, or forested areas, I enquire about fodder. Poor people, living
within what we would believe is a non-cash economy, tell me what they
spend on buying fodder. That in the dry months, of peak shortage, they
end up spending as much as Rs 6,000 - 7,000 of their household income,
buying fodder at Rs 500-800 per tonne.

Ghazala Shahabuddin and her colleagues, studying villages in and
around the Sariska Tiger Reserve, find similar trends. They report
that even in villages located within forests, pastoral households
spend 31 per cent of their household expenditure on buying fodder -
commercial and farm fodder. This is the single largest expenditure
after food. In times of fodder stress, it costs a livestock owner Rs
600 - 1,000 per month to feed a buffalo. When milk yields improve, and
the buffalo owner gets an average daily yield of two litres per
buffalo, then selling this milk at Rs 10 per litre provides Rs 3,000
per month. But such yield is seasonal, so this earning is temporary;
expenditure on fodder, on the other hand, remains constant year-round.

Couldn't the solution to the above problem be animals with higher
milk-yields? The problem is also that animals with higher milk
yields -- the crossbred cows our planners are fond of -- need better
quality fodder. These animals do not forage on degraded land; they
require stall-feeding. Improving the animal economy, then, demands
improving the quality and quantity of fodder available to livestock.
But this has simply not been planned for, or done.

The fact is that the fodder crisis is part of the larger land and
water crisis of rural India. Better agricultural productivity on
private lands is a sure-shot source of additional fodder. But this
productivity is limited by the non-availability of water to irrigate
crops. Every time I ask people why they persist in taking their
animals to graze in forestlands, I am told that part of the problem is
there is no water to grow crops, and so, no agricultural residues for
animals to eat. Water then becomes the first enabling tool. It is,
therefore, imperative that we link fodder security to water
security -- building water recharge structures for irrigation.

But this is still half the story. The other half relates to the
largest grazing lands -- the common lands -- degraded through sheer
pressure. It is understood these lands ought to be regenerated. But
what needs to be further understood is that such regeneration is not
possible without factoring in the animal economy. Building boundary
walls to keep grazing animals out will not succeed; the pressure is
too great. Planting non-browsable species will also not work. In the
past, this has always led to greater shortage of fodder and,
domino-like, to greater pressure on forestlands. It has always led to
an unproductive stalemate between the forester and the grazier. It is,
therefore, clear we also need to link fodder security with forest
security -- replanting and regenerating our vast common lands.

But all this is still not the real story. The real story is that this
is an 'other' food crisis, raging through a forgotten animal world.

-- Written by Sunita Narain

Getting to the top

Narendra Jadhav is one of India’s foremost and finest economists. He’s currently Principal Advisor and Chief Economist of the Reserve Bank of India. He’s also quite strongly against the old quasi-socialist system that prevailed in India till the mid nineties, and has lucidly pointed out how the closed economy of the past hurt India the most.

Jadhav is also a Dalit, and author of the book ”Untouchables : My Family's Triumphant Journey Out of the Caste System in Modern India”.

Here is an excellent interview of Jadhav by Subbu Vincent. Here he talks about currencies (and why the dollar vs. rupee exchange rate is the way it is), some effects of the Nehruvian era of protectionism, oil’s impact on the economy, and caste.

Some snippets:

A closed economy:
"…. But in 1991, we had a ridiculous situation where we were 15% of the world's population and 7% of the worlds land, and our share in the world's trade was one half of one percent. (Our share of exports plus imports as a proportion of total trade.) A lot of people in India believed that the imperialist powers and capitalist countries were cornering us. That was stupidity. If our share was 0.5% why would the countries with 99.5% of trade share come together to corner us? We were a closed economy.”

Oil and the economy:
"……. Okay. Now, look at it this way. When oil prices are going up, what options do we have? First option, pass on everything to consumers. And force them to adjust. Second, let the oil companies take the hit. And the third one is the government absorbs the difference in the budget. There is no fourth alternative. We can't say we won't let this happen and that happen.”

"………Do you realize how poor our performance in oil conservation is? In India we talk about oil conservation as if it was someone else's problem……………..What is the fuel efficiency we have achieved? That is the disadvantage/side effect of heavy subsidies. If you had passed on the prices to people, then they would be forced to conserve………So giving things under priced is also having side effects. So you have to weigh the pros and cons.”

Caste and reservations:

"……….Reservation for jobs is not like railway reservations…… Reservation, the need for it is coming from the inability of the system as a whole to be fair. It is to guard against that. What reservation means is that if you are a Dalit and I am biased man and therefore I will not give you the job, it is to prevent the kind of injustice which is there because of the psychological problems in non-Dalits towards Dalits; that is the genesis.

"……….I have seen, if there is an inefficient person and if his same is Phadke or Apte, these are all names of the high born, they will be looked upon as inefficient individuals. But if there is a Kamble who is inefficient, you know what is the immediate reaction? It is to the blame the caste and then say "inko tho reservation miltha hai na."

"……… Prejudices are there. They are difficult to erase. These are otherwise very capable people. But whether we hire someone or not should not depend on whether they are Dalit or Muslim or not. Whether they are fit for the job must be the factor.”


Read it all here. It’s well worth your time, and perhaps a way to counter your own prejudices. And people like Narendra Jadhav and the late K.R. Narayanan are just the kind of role models dalit society needs (and not Mayawati).

An Economy Driven By Debt

Appeared in counterpunch...

An Economy Driven By Debt
Don't Confuse the Jobs Hype with the Facts
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The November payrolls job report was announced Friday with the usual misleading hype. Spinmeisters made the most out of the 215,000 jobs. Looking beyond the glitter at the real facts, this is what we see. 21,000 of those jobs were government jobs supported by taxpayers. There were only 194,000 new jobs in the private sector.
Of those new jobs, 37,000 are in construction and only 11,000 are in manufacturing. The bulk of the new jobs--144,000--are in domestic services.

Wholesale and retail trade account for 20,000. Food services and drinking places (waitresses and bar tenders) account for 38,000.
Health care and social assistance account for 27,000. Professional and business services account for 29,000. Financial activities gained 13,000 jobs. Transportation and warehousing gained 8,000 jobs.

Very few of these jobs result in tradable services that can be exported or help to close the growing gap in the US balance of trade.

The 11,000 new factory jobs and the 15,000 of the previous month are a relief from the usual loss. However, these gains are more than offset by the job cuts recently announced by General Motors and Ford.

Despite the gain in jobs, total hours worked declined as the average workweek fell to 33.7 hours. The decline in the labor force participation rate, a consequence of the shrinkage in well-paying jobs, masks a higher rate of unemployment than the reported 5 percent. The ratio of employment to population fell again in November.

Average hourly earnings (up 3.2 percent over the last year) are not keeping up with the consumer price index (up 4.3 percent).
Consequently, real incomes are falling.

This is not the picture of a healthy economy in which growth in high productivity, high value-added jobs fuel the growth in consumer demand and provide savings to finance Washington's red ink. What we are looking at is an economy that is coming unglued from the loss of jobs that provide ladders of upward mobility and from massive trade and budget deficits that are resulting in unsustainable growth in indebtedness to foreigners.

The consumer price index measures inflation at 4.3 percent over the past year. Many people, experiencing household budgets severely impacted by fuel prices and grocery bills, find this figure unrealistically low. PNC Financial Services has a Christmas price index consisting of the gifts in the song, "The 12 Days of Christmas." The index reports that the cost of the collection of gifts has risen 6 percent since last Christmas. Some of the gifts have risen substantially in price. Gold rings are up 27.5 percent, and pear trees are up 15.4 percent. The cost of labor (drummers drumming, maids-a-milking) has remained the same.

Populations are hard pressed when the prices of goods rise relative to the price of labor, because this makes it impossible for the population to maintain its standard of living.

The US economy has been kept alive by low interest rates, which fueled a real estate boom. Consumers have kept growth alive by refinancing their home mortgages and spending the equity in their houses. Their indebtedness has risen.

Debt-fueled growth is qualitatively different from economic growth that results from an increase in high value-added jobs. Economists who look at the 3+ percent economic growth rate and conclude that things are fine are fooling themselves and the public. When the real estate boom ends, what will be the source of new spending power?