Hey parties, don’t leave those kids alone!

By M H Ahssan

It’s time politicians talked about spending on public education in their manifestos

While issues like physical security and economic well being are taken up in big way during elections, the issues of a young mind growing up in an increasingly demanding and challenging world, have often been left out. With the importance of education growing in the economy as well as in family aspirations and expenditure, child rights issues could be a differentiator in political manifestos.

“Child welfare has traditionally been seen as a responsibility of the family, rather than the state. That is why the state, for a brief period of time, even penalised parents whose children were not in school,” said Child, Rights and You (CRY) spokesperson P Krishnamoorthy. The first breakthrough came in the form of the right to education bill, which is yet to become an act.

Indian children contribute to 9% of the world’s child population, and form 40% of our population. While 56% of our children enroll in primary schools, only 48% of them complete 8th standard, and 10% complete higher education. However, there has been an increase in family expenditure on education, particularly among the lower classes, from 6% of household income to 20%.

“Now, there is parental expectation for the state to aid in the education of their children, particularly in south where the success rates of welfare programmes like the noon meal scheme have been higher,” said UNICEF education specialist Aruna Rathnam.

“However, to capitalise on this expectation, political parties need to have the will and the nuance to not only include the right kind of promises in the manifesto, but also to educate their vote banks on the importance of public education,” Ms Rathnam said. “It is even a political responsibility to do so as skill training and knowledge acquisition become even more important in times of slump in economy.”

CRY has come up with its election charter of demands, for all political parties, putting child welfare in the larger socio-economic context, rather than as a standalone. “We believe that the rapid appropriation of resources that we are engaged in now, is an injustice to the future generations, and directly affects the welfare of our children,” said Mr Krishnamoorthy. “Hence the need to include a demand to introspect our development paradigm in our charter.”

While the issue of land and livelihood has been well debated in discussions on rehabilitation of communities living in a to-be-industrialised space, the issue of displacement of their children has never been considered. “The cultural and social affectations on children uprooted from their ‘home’ are at times drastic,” Mr Krishnamoorthy said. “Children living in coastal areas are bewildered and unhappy about a shift to the hills; tribal children are attached to the forests that they live in.”

Based on the above, CRY seeks for rehabilitation and resettlement is sought to be child sensitive and child centric. “This includes providing an education and child-centric living infrastructure in the rehabilitated space, as well as empowering the community to take best care of its young population,” Mr Krishnamoorthy said. “The same demands hold for children displaced by migration or demise of their parents too. Adopting such children in welfare homes should come only as a last resort.”

On the education front, the organisation seeks a more stringent regulatory framework for private primary and school education institutions. “Each of the school education boards regulate tuition fees levied by the schools registered with them. But, there is no regulation on the rest of the fees, for uniform, books, building, transport etc,” Ms Rathnam said. CRY, despite placing the onus on public education, demands a over-arching central regulatory body as with any other sector.

“This brings us to our other demand — that of equity in education through a common school system,” Mr Krishnamoorthy said. “The TN government has responded with the proposal for a universal board of education.”

It seeks the inclusion of pre-primary and higher education in the right to education bill, which provides only for children aged 6 to 14. “For those aged above 14, but below 18, there is no guarantee of education and protection, and simultaneously no entitlement or empowerment to participate fully in political and economic processes,” Mr Krishnamoorthy said. “As the right to life is defined as living with dignity and protection, which can only be enabled through education and employment, it is important to guarantee education till the age of 18.”

“There have been fragmented populist attempts at fulfiling the guarantee, like the sarva siksha abhyan and activity based learning. But, on the whole, we require larger public participation in issues of child welfare, and not exclusivity through privatisation,” Mr Krishnamoorthy said. “To achieve that, we need an increase in government expenditure on education to 10% of GDP.” Whereas, it has actually reduced from 3.81% to 3.54% even as the last election target was 6%.

“It has been estimated that the state needs Rs 90,000 crore, 0.7% of GDP, to implement the right to education as it guarantees, and it collected Rs 9000 crore as education cess alone last year. It is not an unachievable target,” he added. The organisation applies the same arguments for regulation of private institutions to healthcare too. Figures on infant, child and infant mortality rates in India, are by now, popular. At 59, 74 and 39 deaths per 1000 respectively, they are only marginally better than their status in 1990 at 79, 109 and 49 deaths per 1000 respectively. 42.5% of Indian children are malnutritioned, compared to 7% in China, and more along the lines of sub-saharan Africa.