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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Dreams within reach by Mandira Moddie

While the landmark Right to Education Act takes the promise of primary education to more than eight million children, there are still many lacunae on the ground. But, as the Shiksha Adhikar Yatra, conducted by Dalit organisations in UP and Rajasthan showed, citizens now have the tools to demand and receive effective governance. 

The landmark right to information act has made a huge impact at the local level on the functioning of government services

The recently enacted Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, which guarantees free and universal elementary education, marks a momentous step in India's journey to fulfil the fundamental right to education. The Bill will ensure that more than eight million children and young people, most of them girls, between the ages of six and 14 will now get the opportunity to go to school. The passage of the Act signifies a huge step for accelerating India's progress on the Millennium Development Goals, especially its target to ensure that by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course in primary education.

In September 2010, the United Nations is holding a plenary session of the General Assembly to discuss the world's progress on the Millennium Development Goals. Countries across the world will be discussing their commitments and plans to accelerate progress on the goals in the last five years. The Right to Education Act joins other significant legislations that India has enacted in recent years such as the Right to Information Act and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act which have contributed to the country's development progress.

Necessary interventions

The Government of India's recently published MDG India Country Report 2009 measures India's progress on the Millennium Development Goals and highlights that progress on the goals has been most effective where targeted interventions have been initiated, and where increased funding and improved institutional mechanisms have stimulated better delivery of services to those in need. Especially in relation to the educational target of univeralisation of primary education, and achievement of gender parity in school education and literacy levels, India has made significant progress. The report shows that net primary school enrolment has increased from 75 per cent in 1990 to 96 per cent in 2008; yet, despite the positive trend, the children who are out of school in primary grades still are those who represent the most marginalised and vulnerable sections and therefore the most difficult section for schools to reach.

The report also acknowledges that though enrolment rates might be increasing, quality of education is still poor and there is overall a lack of qualified teachers across the country. And dropout rates are still high and the dropout rate for girls in some States is higher than the national rates due to basic issues such as lack of toilets, drinking water, or access to the mid-day meal scheme. The quality of education also remains poor due to lack of attendance of school teachers, poor quality of teachers and so on.

In 2009, the National Confederation of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR), supported by the United Nations in India, conducted a ‘Shiksha Adhikar Yatra', a massive mobilisation drive in more than 100 villages of Lalitpur, Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh, and Udaipur, Chittorgarh, in Rajasthan, to increase enrolments in schools. As the Yatra team proceeded from village to village, they highlighted the fundamental right to education for all through street theatre performances and wall paintings. Parents openly discussed the problems that their children faced, relating to access to and quality of education in the village and the quality of education in the village schools.

Yatra volunteers found that in many instances, children from most backward communities were discriminated against in school, if they were enrolled at all. They found that nutrition levels were poor, children did not know even the basics of reading or counting, school buildings were dilapidated, and many did not have any drinking water or basic sanitation facilities, let alone toilets. They also found active discrimination by upper caste teachers, or absenteeism of teachers. In many schools across the two States, the Yatra team found that children from backward castes were made to drink from a separate water jar, faced discrimination when availing of the mid-day meal scheme, and were made to sit separately in one side of the classroom. In all cases the Yatra volunteers took this issue to the village residents, who stormed the schools, demanding that their children not be discriminated against.

As a result of their complaints, the administration took action to ensure that these discriminatory practices were removed. In many villages, it was also found that the person in charge of the mid-day meal scheme was selling the provisions and the children were getting their meals only once or twice a week, which had contributed to many of them dropping out of school. The volunteers took this issue to the community, which complained to the village headman. A team of volunteers was formed from within the community which continued to monitor whether the mid-day meal was being served regularly. This constant vigilance, along with a cooperative and responsive headman, contributed to the improved functioning of the scheme.

The Yatra team also took these findings to the District Magistrates, village heads and other local government officials. In most cases the authorities took note of the findings of the Yatra team and took strict action against offenders.

Facilitating accountability

The landmark Right to Information Act has also been used successfully as a governance accountability tool and made a huge impact at the local level on the functioning of government services. The simple act of demanding information as a right has empowered thousands of ordinary people, including labourers, farmers, rickshaw pullers, students and housewives to demand basic services. Their empowerment and positive action has highlighted gaps in delivery of essential services and contributed to improved governance. In a recent article published in The Hindu, Vidya Subramaniam writes of the sea change in the attitudes of the bureaucracy after the RTI Act came into being and the ‘transfer of power taking place on the ground' with citizens becoming more and more empowered by this single tool of governance accountability.

During a Right to Information workshop conducted by Kabir, a Delhi-based organisation campaigning for increased use of the Right to Information Act, Panni and Sampat, two illiterate women from Bharthaul village in Chitrakoot, Uttar Pradesh, raised the complaint that their children were not receiving school uniforms and books, which was due to them under the entitlements of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. With help from the RTI campaign, 27 women of the village, led by Panni and Sampat, filed an RTI application. Within one month of the filing of the application, not only Bharthaul village, but students in all government primary schools in Chitrakoot had been allotted uniforms worth Rs. 1 crore and 9 lakhs and books worth Rs. 1 crore and 14 lakhs.

Actions such these are heartening examples of the significant role that empowered citizens can play in developing a transparent, efficient and accountable governance system.

The writer is with the UN Millennium Campaign, which supports citizens to hold their governments accountable for achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The views expressed in this article are personal.