Great news, at last, for the millions of out-of-school children of India. Fifty years after independence and 37 years after the unmet Constitutional deadline for universal primary education, elementary schooling is to become a Fundamental Right! ``The Cabinet has accepted my proposal'', HRD Minister S. R. Bommai declared a few days ago, that ``the government will move a Constitutional amendment to implement the decision.''

No other country has done this. Not the capitalist USA, not the welfarist Sweden, not even the socialist Cuba. Some countries like China have made schooling compulsory, but a fundamental right, never. These and other countries which have achieved 100 per cent or near 100 per cent literacy simply set up the required number of schools and let individual, societal and economic good sense of the people do the rest.

This is true even of our own state of Kerala which has, without the benefit of any Constitutional imperative, achieved 90 per cent literacy in this country of over 500 million illiterates.

The national political leadership after independence had realised that education provides the foundation for real national progress. Consequently, they incorporated in the republican Constitution the directive that the State ``shall endeavour to provide for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years'', and that it must do this ``within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution.'' That was good sense, but good sense does not make for good politics in this blessed country. Hence the deplorable scenario of having more illiterates in the country today than the entire Indian population in 1950.

It is argued that this is so because of our high birth rate we are illiterate (and poor) because we are so many. The truth is that we are so many because we are illiterate (and poor). This is a proven fact, but it has never informed the approach to education (and to the problems of poverty as a whole) of the successive governments in this country. Going by Bommai's proposal, what has apparently come in the way of universalising primary education is the lack of a justiciable law in this regard.

And what would my fundamental right to primary education mean -- that I, a small farmer or landless labourer or one of the millions of destitutes, can go for redressal to the Supreme Court because there is no school in my village? Do you need this threat -- and a wholly imaginary threat at that to do what any sensible and sensitive government should do on its own? Will it repair the damage caused by the lack of honesty, determination and, above all, the necessary will that has characterised governmental effort in this matter all these long years?

Recall, for example, the grand New Education Policy of 1985-86 which Bommai's predecessor at the time promised would make ``mass education a reality and transform this country ... not in a decade but in a matter of a few years.'' Not a few years but a decade and a few years later, where are we? According to a UNDP report, there were 45 million children out of primary schools in 1995. According to an NCAER survey, however, the figure is 55 million.

Add to this the children in the 11-14 age group as well as those who enrol but drop out before reaching class V and the non-school child population comes close to 150 million.

And what of the 130 million children in the 6-14 age group who are said to be receiving primary education? According to the fifth all-India education survey conducted by the NCERT, these children go to schools barely 50 per cent of which have four walls and a roof; the rest ``study'' in sheds or tents or open spaces.

Another authoritative survey tells us that there are tens of thousands of schools which are not only without pucca buildings but without any teaching aids, without even blackboards, and many which have blackboards but no chalk. It also tells us that there are any number of schools without teachers or with teachers who have not studied even till Class X and any number of schools which, for lack of space and teachers, club all children in the 6-14 age group in one class.

Is it any wonder, as the survey found out, that these schools have children who at the end of two years of schooling cannot identify any letter in the alphabet, and at the end of three years cannot do simple addition and subtraction?

Not a word on this deplorable dispensation from Bommai. Instead, we have the promise of universal primary education by the end of the Ninth Plan when, according to the minister, every boy and girl upto 14 years will be in schools with ``buildings, laboratories and all kinds of infrastructure.''

All it allegedly needs is an outlay of Rs 40 crore over the Plan period. If this is all that is needed, why wait for anything, why bother about a Constitutional amendment? Why not just go ahead and fulfill this long eluding objective?

No, Bommai's statement is not supposed to be a joke but, yes, it is a bad joke. An annual expenditure of Rs 8 crore to set up every year an estimated 100,000 primary schools with all kinds of facilities? How Bommai arrived at this figure we don't know, but according to Abusaleh Shariff, NCAER's principal economist, getting the 50 million-odd children into school will cost the exchequer Rs 7,500 crore. Maybe Bommai inadvertently dropped a few zeroes, maybe the newspaper quoting him made that mistake.

Be that as it may, given Shariff's estimate, the question is, will the Finance Minister oblige? There is no mention of Bommai's proposal in the Budget. In fact, as far as primary education is concerned, the only dream Chidambaram dreamt in his dream Budget was the setting up of some schools for some girls in some districts.

We don't know if Bommai's proposal came as a bolt from the blue to Deve Gowda's successor and his new-old finance minister but they and the rest of the Cabinet did the politically (electorally?) correct thing by instantly approving it. One cannot but consign Bommai's scheme to the unending glossary of governmental gimmicks.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.