RTE Was Introduced In A Hurry By The UPA; Now It’s Time To Mend It: MP Sahasrabudde

The need for an institutional mechanism to achieve the ideals of the RTE was underlined by Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) leader Dr Vinay P Sahasrabudde, while highlighting the ‘deleterious impact of the ill-thought out piece of legislation that was ushered in by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in a hurry’.

His statement comes close on the heels of the introduction of a private member’s bill in Parliament to amend Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act by Member of Parliament (MP) from East Delhi Maheish Girri.

The law has largely proved to be hollow, said Sahasrabudde at a discussion on the amendments introduced to the RTE Act to provide a two-year window to around 11 lakh private and government teachers to secure prescribed minimum qualifications for appointment.

Sahasrabudde, who is also the party’s national vice-president, pointed out that provisions of the RTE Act were put to law without prior assessments and studies of the national condition. Criticising the simplicity of ‘rights based’ legislations and loopholes in the RTE Act of 2009, Sahasrabudde said that it had been neither passed without a proper assessment of needs at the national level, nor was it rooted to evidence. He also added that rights based legislations stand for nothing if governments don’t create the conditions necessary for their fulfillment.

In his speech, he said that India’s politics has been dictated by changing discourses over time. When Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was in power, the controlled economy of ‘Nehruvian Socialism’ was the norm, and thus our banks were nationalised. In the years following the prime ministership of Narasimha Rao, the narrative changed to liberalisation, and the country’s trade barriers were lowered to give the private sector leeway in key sectors. The UPA government’s narrative, however, brought forth the dawn of populism in appeasement politics. The ‘rights based approach’ was a key factor within this.

He cited a report by UNESCO on teacher vacancies, which found that India had ranked second out of 74 countries, following Nigeria. The nation, he said, is currently experiencing a huge shortage of teachers, and if the situation remains unaddressed, we will have a shortage of 30 lakh teachers by 2030.

He stressed on the importance of informal schools and the closures of 13,000 low budget schools, which highlights the need for proper discussion on the issue of school recognition. The lack of regulations pertaining to minority institutions, is another issue he spoke of, which is prompting many organisations to adopt that name tag to escape the vigilant eye.

Reiterating the importance of renewing the relationship between the ‘teacher and the taught’ with much needed vigour, he concluded by highlighting the importance of discussion, to create an institutional structure needed to achieve the ideals of the RTE.