Open the doors

Supreme court's yet another positive intervention in upholding constitutional validity of RTE - Right to Education is most welcome. It is criminal to deny education for our children and there is no doubt that every delay will result in delaying India achieving full literacy and all round development.

Government run public schools will not have an issue in implementing the directive. This is about 80% of the schools in India. However with the poor infrastructure and lack of accountability quality outcomes are not expected from these schools. Here's where the government needs to plough in funds and make the public schools vibrant. Education is the primary responsibility of the government and they should not pretend to have outsourced it to the private sector.

Coming to the private schools they have too many problems with the judgement, their objections are silly. Fundamentally they operate for profit and hence their objections for doing anything which is not profitable, their back of the envelope calculations with 25% seats reserved would have shown their profits come down. Also they do not want the daughter of a maid to be in the same class of the owner. They are ridiculosuly class consicous. These institutions should be audited for fraud and class discrimination they subscribe to.

Having said that the real problem of the directive is, practicality of its implementation and more importantly governments intent.

An incident that happened two days back will give us a dose of reality on the issue of child education in India-

I was on a visit to Delhi along with my friends and went to chandini chowk area for lunch in "parathe wali galli". We were served sumptuous parathas by a boy named pappu. Pappu was young and sprightly and i could not stop asking him why he was not at school and why he was working.He talked about the familiar story of father being drunk and his support needed for the family to survive. Mean while the eatery owner was upset that i was talking about education and started shouting on Pappu. There are many such boys and girls in restaurants and shops across the country who are missing the road to quality life. Who will put these boys and girls in schools ?