EDUCATION-INDIA: Elite Schools Getting Lessons in Equality

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, May 6 2004 (IPS) - Tripping along to her drab, run-down government school in the Okhla industrial suburb of India’s capital, Minu Tanwar dreams of the day she can shift to one of the posh schools here, patronised by the rich.

”My teacher said if I continue to do well I could get a chance go to a fine school with clean playgrounds and plenty of books,” said Minu, whose mother is a domestic worker.

Thanks to a Supreme Court order on Apr. 27 requiring the capital’s 260 privately-run schools to reserve 25 percent of seats for underprivileged children, Minu’s dream now has a fair chance of coming true.

India’s constitution guarantees equality and the country prides itself on being Asia’s most vibrant democracy.

But the vastly different conditions under which children in the capital city – and indeed other metropolises as well – attend primary school betrays a subtle but nevertheless rigid system of social apartheid that education experts say breeds and reinforces non-egalitarian attitudes.

Recent surveys conducted among the top 10 private schools in the capital show that they charge their wards monthly fees averaging 250 U.S. dollars in return for world-class ambience, music and dancing classes, riding lessons and airconditioning in classrooms and school buses.

In stark contrast, the 250-odd, ‘feature-less, teacher-less’ schools run by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) charge no fees and throw in free lunches of inedible swill as incentives. Many MCD schools lack toilets and some function from under canvas.

But the days of income-defined segregation are over. Not only did the apex court order the posh private schools to open their doors to poor children – it also required the powerful, well-endowed societies that run them to be financially accountable and prove that they are in-fact the non-profit institutions they claim to be.

Said Ashok Aggarwal, the lawyer who represented a group of citizens who petitioned the court for egalitarian schooling in the national capital: ” The idea was to promote better integration of the rich and poorer sections of society and emphasise that educational institutions have social responsibilities as well.”

Aggarwal, a member of Social Jurist, a rights organisation, said the Supreme Court ruling, though directed at schools in the capital, could now readily be extended to the rest of the country by provincial governments that are interested in curbing a steady trend toward the commercialisation of education and closure of government -run schools.

”There is evidence that the government has adopted a policy of letting the school system deteriorate,” Anil Sadgopal, professor of education at the Delhi University told IPS in an interview soon after the court order.

Sadgopal pointed to the example of Indore, the central Indian city known for its burgeoning industry and often held up as a showpiece for globalisation, where the government has shut down at least 30 of its schools. It has handed over the prime property on which they stood to private educational societies.

According to Sadgopal, an educationist of formidable repute, middle-class parents cannot afford to send their wards to private schools but are being compelled to do so because of the unstated but clearly palpable privatisation policy.

Since the mid-80s, government expenditure on education as percentage of GDP has hovered between three and four percent. This is considered far too low to effectively tackle grim statistics that say that there are 100 million out-of-school children in India.

”One-third of the world’s working children are in India and this means that 50 percent of the children in this country are being deprived of the right to childhood and end up as illiterate workers,” confirms Shanta Sinha, educationist and winner of the 2003 Ramon Magsaysay award for community leadership.

Sadgopal said the Supreme Court order is a wake-up call to authorities to take a second look at the school system. ”It is a reminder to policymakers that we have not been able to fulfill our obligation of equitable quality education for all children.”

Although the principals of the privately-run schools have welcomed the court order in public, many have been bold enough to express reservations and ask who would pay the fees and other expenses of children benefiting from the new quotas.

”Do we ask the parents of students who pay fees to undertake this burden?” said Jyoti Bose, principal of the Springdales school and chair of the National Progressive Schools Council (NPSC).

At the moment, the Delhi State’s department of education is looking at how to implement the court order. It is also examining suggestions that the government subsidise the beneficiaries.

Brushing aside the suggestion that successive governments have failed to do what the Supreme Court has now ordered, Delhi State’s Education Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely said he is committed to the spirit of the ruling.

”We have been working towards these (egalitarian schooling) issues and will continue to do so more vigorously from now on,” the minister said.

A press note on Thursday said the Delhi State government had taken steps to ensure that the private schools not only filled their quota of scholarships but also paid for them.

The note warned school managements against hiking fees or collecting money from paying students ”on the plea of granting freeships to students from the weaker sections of society”.