Delhi: Anniversary advice

On the third anniversary in office (May 26) of the BJP-led NDA government which was swept to power in General Election 2014 with the largest majority in the Lok Sabha since 1985, the BJP — which has an absolute majority in the lower house in its own right — went to town in an orgy of celebrations. Among the claims of the party led by its messianic prime minister Narendra Modi, who is invested with every virtue imaginable by BJP spokespersons: annual rate of GDP growth is highest worldwide, inflation is at its lowest ebb; the government has rolled out its national goods & services tax (GST) and Ram Rajya (God’s rule) is imminent. However, there’s an emerging consensus that the education policies and initiatives of the BJP/NDA government are confused and incoherent. Certainly, the promise made in its election manifesto to raise the annual outlay for education (Centre plus states) to 6 percent of GDP has fallen by the wayside. On the plea that as per the recommendation of the 14th Finance Commission, the Central government has increased the allocation of states from the Central divisible pool of taxes by 10 percent, the Modi government has actually reduced Centre’s budget for education.  And in a populist drive, the professedly pro-private enterprise BJP has been targeting private schools — which host over 40 percent of the country’s school-going children — for levying high tuition fees and not abiding by the provisions of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which controversially transfers a part of the duty of the State (Central, state and local governments) to provide free and compulsory education to children in the 6-14 age group, to privately-promoted schools. Under s. 12 (1) (c) of the RTE Act, private schools are obliged to provide free education to classes I-VIII children from socio-economically underprivileged households in their neighbourhood. The cost of educating such poor children is to be reimbursed to private schools to the extent of the per-child cost the state/local government incurs in its own schools. Inevitably, there’s a long delay in reimbursing private school managements even these subsidised fee amounts. According to Kulbushan Sharma, president of the National Independent Schools Alliance (NISA), which has a membership of 36,400 private budget schools countrywide, the BJP/NDA government is “indifferent” to private education providers. “We have made many representations and requests for audience with HRD ministry officials in the past two years, but have never been given a chance to discuss our problems,” he says. Referring to the BJP’s DBT (direct benefit transfer) scheme under which social welfare benefits due to poor households are transferred directly to their bank accounts, he wonders why RTE reimbursement amounts aren’t also transferred to private schools’ bank accounts. “If schools get RTE fee reimbursements through DBT, we would be able to pay our teachers better salaries. The BJP government promised to change archaic laws, but they have made promotion of new schools more difficult,” complains Sharma. On the other…