With the recently elected United Progressive Alliance government in Delhi giving top billing to education, academics and non-government organisations believe this is a good time to press for a common school system recommended 40 years ago by the Kothari Commission. Summiya yasmeen reports Following the shock defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led National Democratic Alliance in India’s 13th general election held in April-May, Indian education has received a new lease of life. Within academia there is a sigh of relief that the nation’s education institutions have been spared the regressive hindutva agenda masterminded by RSS front man Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, whose writ ran unchallenged within the Union human resource development ministry. Instead with the swearing in of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in Delhi on May 22, there is considerable excitement within the community of educationists, academics and social activists about the top billing education has received in the UPA government’s Common Minimum Programme (CMP). In its CMP, announced on May 28, the UPA has pledged to raise public spending on education to at least 6 percent of the GDP, impose a cess on all central taxes to “universalise access to quality basic education” and to reverse the creeping communalisation of school syllabuses of the past five years. Given this sudden and unexpected top-level commitment to education, particularly elementary education, academics and education non-government organisations (NGOs) believe this is a good time to press their long-standing demand for a common school system (CSS). First recommended 40 years ago by the Kothari Commission on Education (1964-66) and subsequently given lip sympathy in the National Education Policies of 1986 and 1992, the proposed CSS has remained a dead letter for almost half a century. “We are happy that the UPA coalition unlike many previous governments has made a public commitment to quality education for all children. Such purposefulness is new and a sign of changed priorities. In our letters to the drafting committee we had strongly recommended that the CMP should commit itself to a ten-year framework for developing a common school system up to high school. The rationale of CSS is self evident: to provide education of equitable quality to all children and end the canalisation of children into private, government aided and government schools on the basis of parental ability to pay and social status. Though the CMP is silent on CSS, we are encouraged by the commitment the UPA has shown to education and will continue to press our demand for implementation of a common school system in India,” says Illa D. Hukku, the Bangalore-based director, development support, Child Relief and You (CRY). Established in 1979, CRY is among the 2,400 non-government organisations which have joined hands to promote the National Alliance for the Fundamental Right to Education (NAFRE) which conceptualised and lobbied hard for the 86th Amendment to the Constitution of India unanimously approved by Parliament in November 2001. This constitutional amendment makes it mandatory for government to provide “free and compulsory education to all children of…
