T N Ninan: Law No. 3

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

The promise of guaranteed employment has become law. The right to information too has just become law. And the right to education will soon become law.

Three major enactments by a minority government, in less than a year-and-a-half, make for a cracking pace""especially when parliament is too busy most of the time to be doing any legislative work at all. As should also be obvious, these are big ticket issues. So whatever one may say about the UPA government's report card on economic reform, its rapid record on legislation for social and economic empowerment is perhaps unmatched. If what follows now are country-wide pension schemes and other social security measures, then Sonia Gandhi will have made history, for this is her agenda.

This record invites comparison with the Narasimha Rao government's initial blitz on economic reform in 1991-93, and Indira Gandhi's statist legislation in her 1969-71 phase: nationalisation of banks, general insurance, coal mining and much else.

As those comparisons make clear, the question is whether this is the history we want. Those in favour argue that these are enactments meant to remove blots on the contemporary India story, and an economy growing at 7 per cent a year can certainly afford such programmes.

The nay-sayers argue that the fiscal deficit is already bloated, and in any case nothing can justify spending money if much of it will go waste""as they say it will. Those in favour counter that the right to information will provide a safeguard against that.

The arguments are now familiar in the employment guarantee case, while the debate on education has barely begun""and could get just as fractious. It might be useful, therefore, to set the stage.

If you believe the government's statistics, all children in the 6-11 age group have been enrolled in primary schools for at least the last three years (it was only 81 per cent in 1990-91). And 72 per cent of those in the 11-14 age group are enrolled in middle school (up sharply from 42 per cent in 1990-91).

At that rate of progress, we should have complete enrolment in middle school too, in another decade. That may be slower than the goals set for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (universal middle school enrolment by 2010), but a milestone nevertheless. The problem, of course, is with the statistics.

For, if the drop-out rate in primary schools is 43 per cent, how can middle school enrolment be 72 per cent? In fact, the Abhiyan goal of universal primary school enrolment by 2007 (a goal already reached two years ago!) suggests that the government doesn't believe its own statistics.

Against this backdrop, the education bill asks among other things that all schools (including government ones) be handed over to school management committees comprising primarily parents; it also asks all schools (including private ones""both those that take government aid and those that don't) to reserve 25 per cent of their seats for underprivileged neighbourhood children, who must be educated free of charge in their mother-tongue.

These are doubtless meant to make under-performing government schools accountable to those with the greatest stake in education (i.e. parents), and also to break down walls of private privilege, for equality of opportunity is what every liberal society must deliver. The implicit assumption also is that private schools are better managed than government ones. That is only partly true, when one looks at the statistics on children passing school board exams.

The pass percentage of private schools is twice as good as for government schools, but then Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas do just as well if not better. And since the drop-out rate is negligible in states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, other states can learn from them.

Rajiv Gandhi had one answer to the problem: start Navodaya Vidyalayas to give poor children the education that the rich ones get.

Sonia Gandhi, typically, has a more ambitious goal: improve the general lot of government schools, and get into the private schools. The debate will be: whose is the better idea?