Please, Mr Minister

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Please, Mr Minister

The Right to Education (RTE) Act came into force from 1 April 2010. The Act is to ensure that the children in our country are guaranteed an education. Yet it is astonishing how most states are opposed to implement the Act. One prominent chief minister who spends crores on installing her own statues all over the state declared that she has no funds to implement the Act. The same chief minister is adorned with a garland of rupees amounting to crores again by her ‘well-wishers’. She should just pluck some notes from the said garland and give it to the state education minister.

It is a shame that the Right to Education is being treated as a scheme to financial gains by most states. In the recent meeting with the Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal most states said they need more funds to implement the RTE Act.  The HRD ministry’s plan is to divide the expenditure on a ratio of 55:45 between the central and the state governments. But the states want the central government to raise its financial participation.

The attitude of states to RTE is by no means unique or out of ordinary. However what is perplexing is anybody’s opposition to something which will benefit the children. The point is that they make money everywhere – in the construction of roads which are filled with potholes, rail that is never on time, bridges that collapse at the slightest possible chance, and in providing powerless electricity and waterless taps. Why can they not then leave education alone?

I would request the state governments to for once put aside petty political games and greed and let the children have what is rightfully theirs – Right to Education.

PS: The examples of GN Devy who runs a tribal school in Gujarat and Anand Kumar who coaches rural students in Bihar for IIT entrance are ample proof that educating our children is not dependent on money. Kumar tutored students from other schools to raise money for his Ramanujan School of Mathematics and Devy gave up his job as a professor to bring about a change in the lives of tribals. They show that all it needs to is the will and a commitment to our children to make them educated participants in the country’s future.

Editor, MMI Online