The Vice-President of India Mr Jagdeep Dhankhar stirred a hornet’s nest by making a statement that Indian students going abroad were creating a hole in India’s foreign exchange reserves and decried the brain drain due to this on 19th October 2024.
A statement of this kind in a scenario where there is a terrible shortage of affordable, quality educational opportunities for students, and in an era when public spending on education is shrinking obviously raised hackles. The children of the rich and powerful have anyway been going abroad to study for over a century; so, it is ironic that such a statement should emanate from the highest levels of the ruling establishment. It is important to ask what the situation with education and youth in the country is and propose solutions for the problem.
Despite all the proclamations of the various governments in power at the Centre and the States over the last seven or eight decades, even good quality primary education is simply not available to all the children born in India. Whether a child has access to good quality schooling is largely dependent on the social status of its’ family, followed by the place where they live. Most rural areas offer far worse opportunities than urban areas. Why! Even the blight of illiteracy continues in the country to this day.
Within urban areas, the localities where financially better-off families live have better primary education facilities compared to those in which the poorer sections live. The primary education facilities provided by local authorities are quite inadequate in many places and hence, even the financially poorer sections of society are forced to pay through their noses in order that their children get satisfactory quality primary education. So, the “right to education” remains on paper for a vast majority of the people of our country. But the Hon. Vice President did not make any reference to this regretful breach of the right to education.
One reason why this situation continues even after almost eight decades of formal independence is the regressive feudal mindset which is ingrained in the ruling circles and the rich. Though a lot of noise is made about democracy and equality of opportunity, the fact is that the rich sections of society want a steady source of low-cost labour to carry out menial tasks such as household chores, farm work, cleaning of streets and latrines etc. Having a large pool of people who remain relatively uneducated due to the lack of opportunities suits this rich class very well. That is perhaps the reason why there is so much disparity between the rich and the poor even when it comes to basic primary education in our country. This is in contrast to some of the other countries where the struggles of people have led to somewhat more equitable education opportunities, along with basic health care and similar facilities. For instance, public schools in many of the European countries offer reasonably quality school education to almost all sections of society.
The situation in India gets worse when it comes to secondary and university education. Take medical education. Our country needs millions of good doctors. The governments at various levels and the public bodies like large municipalities had set up a few reputable institutions decades ago. But they have abdicated their responsibilities to set up more such institutions every year to cater to the needs of the people. Private institutions charge hefty fees and, in many cases, children from not-so-well-to-do families are forced to go to countries like Russia, Ukraine, the Philippines and so on where the costs of medical education are much lower than in private institutions in India. Most of them return to India and must pass stringent examinations of the Medical Council of India before they can practice in India. The recent fiasco with respect to the NEET examinations underscores the most callous attitude of the authorities towards students wishing to pursue medical studies in India. Yet the Hon. Vice President did not make any reference to the failures of his and previous governments and blamed only the students for going abroad for studies!
During its previous term the NDA Government unveiled what was called the National Education Policy (NEP) which had many features that have been the subject of hot discussion. It has been feared that teachers would lose their jobs and essentially teaching positions would also become subject to market forces with hire and fire being the modus operandi and inhuman workload on teachers. An increasing casualisation of education would take place and would render students passing through educational institutions are being less than eligible for higher education and for employment.
One of the aspects of the NEP is to provide large numbers of students who would have vocational training and become part of the workforce that does not require very high skills. This is in line with the idea that India must become a low-cost manufacturing hub for Indian and foreign capitalists. In any case, over the last couple of decades most universities have had declining numbers of faculty with retirements and lack of replacements and with many departments being shut. A situation is created where students have to approach expensive private educational institutions and pay backbreaking fees that would bankrupt families or drive students into debt to finance their education which they would take years to repay.
We must emphasise that the Right to Education is a fundamental right of all human beings. However, in India, the rich sections of society have ensured that this right is in fact denied to millions of people so that they can have a steady supply of poorly educated young people who can carry out menial tasks. These youth cannot aspire to progress in their life situation and would continue to work in unsanitary and back-breaking conditions throughout their shortened lives. Every year, quite a few young workers die while cleaning out septic tanks and the like. This is the cruel and heartless but inevitable result of the denial of the right to education.
Education is also left in the hands of profit-seeking individuals and corporations. Families and youth have to fend for themselves to get education because the authorities have abdicated their responsibility to provide education. This is one of the symptoms of a deep malaise that pervades Indian society. India is a deeply stratified society with few opportunities available for most of the population. The lack of education reinforces the existing situation where privileged classes continue with their privileges. Mental labour draws much higher incomes than physical or manual labour because of the availability of vast and inexhaustible amounts of labour with abysmally low wages. There seems to be no way in which poor people can acquire an education to pull themselves out of the pathetic situation. A lot of “undesirable” labour is carried out by those masses that are stuck in this morass.
The right to education has remained a paper tiger promised in the ‘directive principles’ of the Constitution with no enabling mechanism. Hence, it is necessary for the people of India to once again bring back the issue of the right to education to the centre stage and to combine it with the general process of fighting for rights, human and democratic. There is a need for serious discussion around this topic to bring the matter into the political mainstream. It is shameful that a country that calls itself the largest democracy should have such dismal showing in a vital sphere of human life.
Enabling methods have to be devised and implemented. Decades of experience have shown that the rulers of our country cannot be expected to do this. In fact, it must be remembered that the greed and regressive mindset of the rich ensures that the right to education continues to be denied to many sections of the youth. However, the youth, and the masses of people in cities and villages who have to organise and demand for the right to quality education to be realised in deed and not merely in unenforceable “directive principles”.
by BA and Venkatesh Sundaram
Source of image: https://legalthirst.com/plight-of-right-to-education-of-underprivileged-children-in-india-current-scenario/#google_vignette
