Pen is power
Reflections on 15 years of the Right to Education – part 1
I do not usually share photos of people in my articles, even if I have sought permission while taking them. Still, I will make an exception this time because I owe a lot to the efforts and thoughts of people like Valiben.
I first met Valiben in 2010, in a village in Kutch, Gujarat: a grandmother and a champion of girls’ education. In an area where many communities migrated seasonally for work, with some villages with less than 20% female literacy and communities staunchly sticky to their norm of girls studying till primary, i.e. grade 5 being more than enough, Valiben was a rare gem. I was developing a Maths workbook and often visited to test the content with children. In one meeting with Valiben, my colleagues from the area explained what I was doing and showed her some worksheets. One asked her, probably in jest, if she would like to try. Valiben said yes; I do not recall if it took much encouragement. I handed her my pen. She held it, looked up and said, “આ પહેલીવાર પેન પકડી રહ્યો છું. પેન માં શક્તિ છે.” (This is the first time I am holding a pen. The pen has power.)
I later understood that she had probably used pencils earlier but never a pen. She did not say ‘a pen is mightier than the sword’, but she referred to its 'power'- the power to be more in charge of our lives and change them for the better. But it is more than that. A pen is more official. A land document, a scholarship form, a migration card - significant changes to lives made with a simple pen.
I experienced many people sharing their wisdom and expressing the importance of education in their unique ways. After the Indian Parliament passed the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act in 2009 (popularly known as the Right to Education or RTE Act), many NGOs started awareness campaigns about the Act’s key provisions. However, some went back a step to educate communities about the importance of education. In one such meeting, a parent politely pointed out that people living in poverty understand this better than most and that we were able to give them "this gyan in our shirt-pant because of our education”. In another, a community social worker shared how his mother had not attended school and was the most educated person he knew, who taught him much more about values and skills than any classroom he attended. Such interactions helped me refine my understanding of education with quality and equity.
I started working in the education and non-profit space coincidentally in 2009. As we complete fifteen years of implementation of the RTE Act in April this year, it seems appropriate to pen down some experiences and reflections about the early efforts.
However, I will not write about Section 12(1)c, which provides for the admission of children from economically weaker sections (EWS) and disadvantaged groups; well, not after this article. One reason is that it garners disproportionate media attention; there are 38 more sections in the Act. The other more important reason is that I have not worked on this aspect, and some exemplary organizations have. The RTE Resource Centre (RTERC) at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, in collaboration with Accountability Initiative, Central Square Foundation and Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, would bring out a State of the Nation report on the implementation of Section 12(1)c, probably the only SOTN type report I have seen for a sub-section of an act. Indus Action has, over the years, championed the inclusion of children from the EWS category, and one can learn from the excellent insights in their Bright Spots report, among other studies.
But a lot remains to be done. In February 2024, the Government of Maharashtra issued a notification to exempt private schools from the 25% quota if they were within 1 km of a government school. The Mumbai High Court quashed it, and then the Supreme Court upheld that decision in August. In Assam, after much intervention from the Gauhati High Court, Samagra Shiksha Axom launched its portal for EWS admissions last month. At the time of writing, the new portal is undergoing scheduled maintenance. These instances show that despite good initiatives, challenges to children’s rights continue and working on this one issue is a mission in itself.
So, what will I write about over the next few months? Stories of people like Valiben who encouraged me to keep going; perspectives on other sections, like the responsibilities of the local authority (Section 9), no detention (Section 16), which was recently scrapped; School Management Committees (Section 21); aspects like seasonal migration; and stories of failures and successes.
I will end with a tribute to the Prime Minister who made this happen – the late Shri Dr. Manmohan Singh ji. In his address to the nation when RTE came into force on 1st April 2010, he shared his journey, which echoes the stories of millions of Indians -
“I was born to a family of modest means. In my childhood I had to walk a long distance to go to school. I read under the dim light of a kerosene lamp. I am what I am today because of education.”
References
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, Government of India
News article – Times of India, August 10, 2024 – Supreme Court dismisses plea exempting private schools from admitting EWS category students
News article – Sentinel Assam, December 17, 2024 - Web portal for free education to economically weak students operational
Samagra Shiksha Axom, Government of Assam – page with link to RTE portal
Sarin, Ankur and Kuhn, Sunaina and Singh, Bikkrama Daulet and Khanghta, Praveen and Dongre, Ambrish A. and Joshi, Ekta and Sengupta, Arghya and Rahman, Faiza, State of the Nation: RTE Section 12(1)(c) (July 30, 2015). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2637817
State of the Nation: RTE Section 12 (1) (C) 2015 Provisional
Dongre, Ambrish A. and Sarin, Ankur and Wad, Shrikant, State of the Nation: Rte Section 12(1)(C) 2017 (August 1, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3031777