Nearly six years after the Parliament made free and compulsory education a fundamental right for all children, the government is still struggling to figure out the appropriate mechanism to make the right a reality. A senior government official told FE that the Right to Education Bill is being held up, as there are problems with the allocation of funds to states under the government?s flagship education programme, Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA). The Centre is expected to use the SSA mechanism to implement the right to education law.
While the original Bill, drafted in 2003 to enshrine the right by legislation, was rejected last year after a long-winding process, the Cabinet last Friday deferred taking a decision on a re-drafted version of the law and referred it to a group of ministers (GoM). Apart from reworking the arithmetic formulae for allocating funds to states, the GoM may also ask the 13th Finance Commission to come up with a mechanism to ensure that states refrain from diverting plan funds to non-plan expenses like salaries and wages.
Despite the pending issues, the Centre is hopeful that the GoM would be able to resolve the issues in a couple of meetings and the Bill would be introduced in the upcoming monsoon session of Parliament.
?The main issue is not availability of resources. Of course, it cannot be raised from Rs 13,000 crore to Rs 30,000 crore within one fiscal ? resources will be worked out gradually and increased every year. The real issue is proper allocation and distribution of funds so that the money reaches those who need it. The SSA lacks a proper framework to monitor the flow of funds,? an official involved in the process said.
Currently, under the SSA, a certain amount of money is allocated for all states irrespective of how much they want or if they want some money at all. ?What is the point of allocating the same amount of money for well managed states like Tamil Nadu or Gujarat and poor states like Bihar and Chhattisgarh?,? the official asked rhetorically, hinting that the lack of a strategy for allocating funds is the reason for the SSA not living upto its potential, four years after implementation.
Allocation should be such that states which have already managed to create some educational infrastructure get just as much as needed to maintain them, while the financially poor and weaker states get more funds so that they can move up. ?Once a state has built the school buildings, the Centre should trim the allocation to the state and focus on other states who need to develop the educational facilities,? the official said.
Further, the government should evolve a system that would gradually pass on the expenditure responsibility to the states because the scheme with Centre?s financial support cannot continue forever and the states would have to arrange for their own resources at some point of time.
The official stressed that there should be some eligibility criteria and the GoM should develop a funding method that would ensure that the poorer states get more money than the financially well-managed ones. A common trend among most well-managed states is their tendency to divert plan funds for non-plan expenditure. ?This happens in states with efficient administration ( Gujarat , Karnataka and Tamil Nadu) which already have the infrastructure in place and siphons off the money for other issues like wages,? the official said.
The SSA does not have perspective planning, which is why the programme has not been able to achieve what it envisages, the official said. The proper way for allocation of funds would be that states assess their needs and the Centre arranges for the funds accordingly. Also, the GoM should attempt at reviving the original regular line of educational department with the director and the school inspector and integrating this with the new system.
The GoM is also supposed to work out the norms for allocation of funds, where and on what the money is to be spent, how much will the states? share be and which are the states that need priority funding to implement the Act. While working out the finances, the Centre and the states would have to take into account the fact that the Centre also has to provide funds for secondary schools as well as the 6,000 model schools in the 600 districts across the country, as assured by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his Independence day speech last year.