General Election 2014: Education apathy
EducationWorld April 14 | EducationWorld Special Report
In the final leg of campaigning for the 16th General Election to be held from April 7-May 12, the issue of education provision and reform is conspicuously missing from the public discourse UNSURPRISINGLY AND IN keeping with post-independence India’s myopic political tradition, education of the world’s largest child and youth population — 600 million Indians are below 24 years of age — is a low-priority and hardly noticeable item for political parties donning battle gear for General Election 2014. In the final leg of campaigning for the country’s 16th general election to be held from April 7-May 12, the issue of education provision and reform is conspicuously missing from the public discourse. At election rallies, public meetings, in the print media, television and on the internet, leaders of the country’s major and minor political parties wax eloquent on the 2002 Gujarat and 1984 anti-Sikh riots, corruption, inflation, secularism, communalism, etc. But below-the-line issues of larger budgets for public education, upgrading the crumbling infrastructure of government schools, improving teacher-pupil ratios, contemporising curriculums, stemming the 53 percent dropouts from primary education and improving rock-bottom learning outcomes, are peripheral and will undoubtedly merit no more than mention in the manifestos of all political parties which are yet to be released as this issue of EducationWorld goes to press. Though political indifference to education and child welfare is not new, it’s particularly glaring in the run-up to Election 2014 because over the past decade, there’s been rising public awareness about the critical importance of elementary education and sustained pressure from civil society groups to push children’s rights to the forefront of the national development debate. For instance, last November Child Rights and You (CRY), the well-known Mumbai-based NGO, launched a six-month campaign titled ‘Vote for Child Rights’ and released its Child Rights Manifesto, urging political parties to commit to putting children at the centre of all policy, legislation and practice. “Despite children constituting over a third of India’s population, issues relating to their care, safety, protection, health and education are ignored by the political class. That’s the reason why CRY decided to launch its ‘Vote for Child Rights’ campaign to pressurise political parties to put children first, and commit to implementing our Child Rights Manifesto. In the past five months since we launched the campaign we have received over 1.4 million online votes, and have met leaders of all major political parties to persuade them to do more for children and guarantee their rights to education, protection and healthcare. Even though all political parties expressed their support for our manifesto, it remains to be seen whether they actually accept our demands. The only way to get the political class to act is by building the pressure of public opinion in favour of children and education,” says Suma Ravi, regional director (South) of CRY. The Child Rights Manifesto, based on CRY’s Status and Trends in Child Rights in India — An Overview of the Past Decade report, makes 10 demands including effective implementation of the…