At the time of independence, the creators of the Constitution of India wanted every child up to the age of 14 to enjoy the right to and have enrolment in education by the 1960?s. Yet this intent was passed as Article 45 under Directive Principles of State Policy, which ?are not enforceable by the courts?. The original Article 45 of the Constitution ?seeks to provide free and compulsory education for all children up to the age of 14?. Although the Constituent Assembly of India said we would be ?cheating the nation? by not providing education to all, 60 years down the road we yet are to accomplish this fundamental goal.
As Article 45 did not accomplish providing education to all children up to the age of 14, the year 1968 saw education again on the agenda with the formulation of the National Policy on Education of 1968 that laid out guidelines for ?status, emoluments, and education of teachers? and ?development of languages? and also ?equalisation of educational opportunity? etc. This policy too, while strong in intent, failed operationally.
Then in the mid eighties, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi set up a committee to review elementary education. This committee drafted the ?Challenge of Education: A Policy Perspective? which was the forerunner to the ?National Policy on Education 1986 (NPE)?. If this policy had been enacted in 1986, ?every child of 11 years in 1990 and of 14 years in 1995 would be in school?. The NPE had a detailed ?programme of action? for each clause in order to accomplish the goal of providing elementary education to every child.
However, a change of guard put a spanner on the NPE. In the early 1990?s then Prime Minister VP Singh set up a new committee under the chairmanship of Acharya Ram Murthy, which reviewed the 1986 NPE. This committee made cosmetic changes to the 1986 NPE but did ?extend the deadline of providing education to every child by the turn of the century.? This was not accomplished. India still has more than one crore children who are not in school. Next, BJP introduced the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, which said all children would complete eight years of schooling by 2010, but for that goal to be accomplished all children would have had to be enrolled by 2003. In 2002, BJP drafted the Right to Education Bill, 2002, which did not get passed in Parliament. Thereafter, during UPA I, a committee was set up to re-look into BJP?s version of the Bill. Current minister of MHRD who was then minister of science & technology was the chairman of this committee. The committee set up a sub-committee to look into what ?should and should not go into this bill?. The sub-committee made its proposal which was then routed through the MHRD to the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) for approval. After a long drawn review process a modified version was finally presented to the Rajya Sabha in December 2008. The concerns raised by the Rajya Sabha members were passed on to the Standing Committee.
Among many factors, stalling the proceedings of the Bill have been one, the insistence of some academics that the Bill is not ready to be passed because the quality of education being assured is not ?perfect to the T?. A concern of the government has been regarding the ?justice-ability? of the Bill. Along the way there have been changes in the Constitution. While the original Article 45 mandated compulsory education to all children up to the age of 14, the 86th amendment to the Constitution mandated compulsory education to children between the ages of 6-14. To protect the 0-6 age group, the early childhood care and education (ECCE) was established but only as a directive for states wherein they would ?endeavour to provide? pre-schooling to the 0-3 and the 3-6 age group.