RIGHT TO EDUCATION: MYTH OR REALITY

4th August 2009 marked a breathtaking leap of Republic of India into the realms of a new and a promising world assuring its future generations a bright future. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act entitles every child in the age group of 6-14 irrespective of his/her means and background, an equal opportunity to access to elementary education. This Act sees the dream coming true, not only of the members of Constituent Assembly but also of all the forerunners of Indian Freedom Movement who wished to see India as a strong and prosperous nation and a development gateway.
Some of the salient features of this historical act include the responsibility of the state to bear all expenses that might be incurred in the implementation of the Act. Also the Act directs that no school shall deny admission to any child in the age group laid down for any reason, and even the children from weaker and poorer sections of society shall be imparted equal education in the vicinity of their elite counterparts. Also the Act lays down provisions to improve quality of school education in India and also increase the teacher to student ratio. This is an ambitious idea indeed and requires an impartial and honest effort by every citizen of India. But undoubtedly, the legislation paves a way for a better tomorrow before India.
RTE comes with numerous hopes to curb social evils like child labour and even abortions by parents unable to afford the bringing up of the child. An uneducated underclass is a source of chaos and threat to the middle class notion of order. However now we can hope a faster recovery from this practical incumbency of underprivileged remaining the losers. This is an excellent platform for reaching the unreached. The target bunch of this act is surely not the elite class but the dwellers of poor villages, slums and wards of labour class, who can be often seen polishing shoes, washing car screens, picking up empty bottles from municipality garbage bins or brining you tea in cheap restaurants in mighty cities of India. Their shabby appearance and untended ways can be repulsive, but they have very well proved their strong will to excel, by setting exemplars of succeeding in nation’s toughest competitive examinations of IAS, IITs and MBBS colleges. The infamous institution- Super Thirty in Patna is a self evident example of the fact, that given a single chance, these underdogs are in no way lagging behind.
But framing the Law is just not enough. The big question mark that lies ahead is how to bring this myth to a reality? And the bitter fact about reality is that the children one finds lurking around on roads and crossings, selling magazines, pirated books, showing around juggleries or circus stunts, or maybe even begging are not there out of choice, but out of needs. They need money to buy food, for themselves or for their families more desperately than education. If one ever spares a minute to ask them if they would like to study, one would find a blunt answer, “No, What would they get from education”. These children hardly find any motivation to miss their daily earnings of few bucks to go to study, which hardly would have any fruitful prospects to them in coming years. Even parents are not ready to send their children to schools because of same reason.
The second potential threat to RTE is the pathology of infrastructure in India. With 40 million new candidates to schooling under RTE, our schools don’t appear prepared at all for the implementation. It seems that the Act needs a gestation period of much more than three months that have elapsed since its commencement. Though government has directed private schools to have 25% quota for admissions under RTE, this just doesn’t seem to be working out. There is an utter need for finer details and more workable guidelines to be laid down for properly channelizing efforts towards implementation of the act. The government aided school which can prove instrumental in growth of suburban elementary education are not adequately equipped with infrastructure and faculty. The Act indiscriminately forces itself upon the private schools to admit every child has certainly brought the furore from the latter. The elite schools are unwilling to dilute their ‘culture’ by taking in children from the weaker sections of society in the same class rooms as their other high class students whom they look upon as the leaders of tomorrow who would bring laurels to their scoreboards. Moreover this poses a financial overburden on schools who charge tens of thousands of rupees as annual fees. Other random reasons also always become cases of intense concern. The recent denial of admission by a Mumbai school to a girl witness of Mumbai terror attack needs a lot of deliberation on the stakes of both the school and the girl child. India being already being in a phase of rapid economic development in every phase, really needs to keep the infrastructure development with high priority to fully enact RTE.
It has been a common notion and experience, that various relief packages, funds, and development budgets passed by government are hardly seen actually reaching the hands of needy. RTE might not seem very analogical here to the colossal and high profile construction contracts, or welfare schemes but certainly is very prone to fall to corrupt ends, since as described earlier, the targeted receivers under this act shall be the poor, who have no power and have been suppressed since ever. So it is very important for the government to be an alert watchdog in the implementation of various schemes of infrastructure development, faculty recruitment and distribution of funds till the grass root level. It’s important to impart a decent education or no education otherwise.
It is said that the real foundation of a student is laid at an early age. The RTE act emphasises on elementary education for the children of age 6-14. But it doesn’t aim at the pre-elementary foundation of students below age of 6 which is very important for settling the socially weak but mentally brilliant children in the mainstream. Though this expansion can be thought of at some later stages, but this is absolutely important to turn the basic idea behind RTE a reality.
In spite of all the facts above, we cannot give up here. Just because the present form of RTE is not a very close to its goals doesn’t mean that we give up on millions of children. The initiatives and endeavour taken by the centre in hand is undoubtedly praiseworthy. And we all can contribute in it by helping children around us to have access to education. Quoting from a newspaper; “Even if a fraction of poor children is able to get into schools which offer quality education, just imagine the social revolution that will gradually unfold.” This is a dream which has already transformed into an idea. An idea whose time has to come, and soon it will be transformed into actions and results and reality.

Effects and side effects of the Government’s decision to decontrol the prices of fuel

Introduction:
Government of India has always been striving for the betterment of India and its people, and has been taking various steps to take India to the genre of developed countries via its Planning Commission, Five Year Plans and its Annual Budget Policies. Taking in view nation’s need to develop its infrastructure, industries and agriculture, Govt. of India had been subsidizing the prices of fuel, i.e. petrol, diesel, kerosene and LPG, considering it an important entity for growth, and hence insulating it from the international fluctuations and high prices. This made fuel easily available at affordable rates to every Indian, from household use to agricultural demands of farmers and for transportation throughout the country.
However on the recommendations of Dr. Kirti Parikh Committee setup by Planning Commission, on June 25, 2010, Finance Ministry announced the slashing of subsidies on the prices of Petrol resulting in an increase of Rs. 3.7/l and also announced a price hike of Rs. 2/l on diesel and Rs. 35/cylinder for LPG. It is also speculated that the prices of diesel and LPG will also be decontrolled in near future.
This decision was taken with mixed opinions of likes and dislikes. We shall discuss in detail it various effects on people and various sectors of industry.

How did it used to work, and the inside glance:
The prices of crude petroleum are decided on the basis of international demand and supply charts and keep fluctuating. The prices have soared up to all time high of $146/barrel in recent pasts and currently are around $75/barrel for crude oil. This is equal to Rs 22/litre approximately. After refining costs and various taxes and levitation costs, the prices reach what they are in market. But Govt. of India puts a cap on the Base selling price for companies and also reduces various taxes to overall decrease the rates. This is done to provide a boost to various industries and agriculture. But as analyzed by Parikh committee, this led to high losses and under recoveries incurred by public sector companies summing up to more than Rs. 250 crore per day. Moreover under the shared subsidy arrangements, a large chunk of these losses were replenished from the coffers of Indian Government itself, thus causing an indirect loss of people via taxes.

Good news:
The first and foremost beneficiaries of this decision would be the National Oil refineries and Oil Trading companies, which will be able to recover their fiscal deficits due to rising gaps between international and domestic fuel prices. The decision will lead to decrease in the under-recoveries by almost Rs. 25000 crore per annum, which will boost the ability of oil firms for exploration of oil reserves in domestic fields and acquisition of international assets. Various private companies like Reliance, Essar and Shell will also be able to enter the market of Oil Trading hence increasing competition.
The decision will rein in the fiscal deficit of government by more than .6% of GDP, and the savings would be utilized in providing better facilities to people and various other development schemes. The fiscal deficit management will give a high stability to India economy in global markets.
Even the auto-industry hailed the decision of decontrolling prices. Increasing diesel prices will now discourage use of diesel cars, as the real reason behind subsidy was to facilitate transportation of various commodities and not personal and household usage. Even their will be a shift of freight movement from trucks to railways, which consume 4 times lesser fuel. It was studies that trucks and buses accounted for 49% of diesel consumption while only 12% was used for agriculture.
Another very important impact of this fuel price hike is an incentive to people to reduce their energy usage and switch to other non-conventional renewable resources of energy. This will be a major step in resolving the fuel crisis and would serve as a timely measure to adapt to the fast depleting fuel reserves on earth. This will serve as a wakeup call to all those who had taken the generosity of government and subsidies for granted. Using energy from wind, water and sun, and decreased number of small cars and increased use of public transport will solve a number of issues, like pollution, road traffic, energy crisis, and will also serve as a source of income to government and employment to people in public transport sector.
 

Criticism:
An immediate effect noted out of price hike announcement is the inflation. The finance ministry's chief economic adviser estimated that the deregulation would add 0.9 percent to inflation. At times when prices of even the most basic commodities for existence are at record high, this price hike has come as an unbearable burden to the middle class. Due to higher transportation costs, food price inflation has reached 12.83% and a cascade effect will cause increase in prices of other commodities as well. It is not hard to realise that practically everything being used by us in directly or related to diesel which accounts for 15% of the costs. With 40% Indian still below international poverty line, this untimely price hike will only lead to increasing ridge between the rich and the poor, given the upper strata of society will be meagrely affected by Rs 3.00 hike in its already very high expenditures.
Opposition has strongly opposed the fuel price hike calling the govt. claims as bogus that this decision was in taken keeping in account high pressures of International rates. It has recommended reducing the sales and custom taxes instead to make up for the PSUs losses, which were kept at 100% of the normal. It is highly unjust to make people pay for inefficiencies of PSUs, which can increase their profits in other petroleum products which are not controlled.
Moreover, it has been observed that the reduced government losses are hardly utilised in any development activity and the money is spent in the lavish budgets of ministers and high profile government officials.
Agriculture has recorded a negative growth and speculations are being made that fuel price hike might pose a danger to national food security. With increasingly erratic behaviour of rainfall and critical water situation, irrigation by using diesel pumps is all time saviour of Indian agriculture, which will be adversely effected by diesel’s increased prices.

Justifications and measures:
To some relief, government has already declared to reintroduce the price control if the international crude oil prices climb above $100/barrel. Concerned over inflation, government has already moved RBI to take sensible steps in its monetary policies to control inflation. Government has justified that petrol being an item of final consumption, hardly causes inflation and has promised to take adequate steps to check the rising prices.
Government shall also fix a minimum support price for major crops so that price hike does not affect farmers. To buffer the undesired effects, government should also try not to decontrol the prices of diesel and kerosene until out domestic market gets stable and inflation is controlled. It is agreeably necessary to match Indian fuel prices to the international ones but such steps taken slowly will give enough time to public to get comprehensive with the changes.
It should also strive to place an effective targeting system in the machinery to save BPL households from drowning under the burden of inflation, and should take steps to ensure that benefits of reduced deficits and increased income does reach the poor. The decision is a very remarkable one to take India at par with its major counterparts in International markets, but it should not be allowed to reap on the life of BPL and middle class people, who are not concerned with what happens in world of dollar, euro and rupee but just with their daily bread.
Government can also direct state governments to be vigilant that the subsidies are utilised only by those for whom they are meant, and should fine and tax the adversaries heavily. Encouragement should be provided to private sectors enthusiastic of introducing alternative technology to Oil, like Tata, Honda by extending best help possible for setting up such R&D laboratories and manufacturing plants, so that India can become capable of sustaining the inevitable energy crunch waiting for us in future.
 

Conclusion:
Critics shall always criticise any change brought forward, as this is what they are supposed to do. But they fail to recognise the far-ended vision behind this step, which had to be taken sooner later. One must appreciate Government for its politically bold step. On the other hand, it is our duty to instead work harder and grab numerous opportunities being provided by government and try to pull ourselves from the bondage of poverty, instead of just depending on subsidies and poverty schemes of government. Change is the law of nature and we must adopt a positive approach to change with the situation if we really wish to come out of this seemingly everlasting tag of a ‘developing nation’.