Opinion - News Analysis   

Primary education for the poor

V.R. Krishna Iyer

Primary education should be a right of the have-nots, not a purchase of the rich.

PRIMARY EDUCATION ought to be universal in operation. Illiteracy is our nation's bete noire. Not a single soul should exist sans primary education. This is an inflexible fundamental. Whatever the cost to the exchequer, this value must come first.

Industry is important, technology and research are great imperatives; speedy justice is high priority. But never should basic education come second. That is the obligation to the Indian child.

All the natural resources must first be devoted to quantitative and qualitative education to the lowliest and the last. We have failed here as a nation, as a governmental administration, as a legislature, as a public interest-obligatory judiciary. Dr. Ambedkar would not have sat in a school, being a depressed class child, had his father not been a soldier in the First World War enjoying a military concession. All the constitutional mandates are futile. Why?

Is it not atrocious that Rs.20,000 is charged for admission to even lower kindergarten (LKG) by private managements, with lawless licence. To call this self-financing is monstrous inexactitude perversely dignified.

What a shock and shame! I wish and hope with militant angst that the Marxist-led governments and Nehru-inspired regimes will make LKG, UKG, and primary education, not a purchase of the rich but a right of the have-nots without exception, whatever the cost. Capitation fee collection should be visited by pain and penalty. We cannot stop youth's right to full development, which can be attained only by higher education through appropriate institutions.

For this, the State must start its own colleges and universities or inspire, by special inducements and initiatives, the charities, churches, gods of all religions to serve the poor by free education. That is implicit in the Preamble and is a first fiduciary charge on the state's treasury.

Self-financing colleges are a euphemism for commercialisation of higher education, which is incongruous with our Socialist Republic's agenda. In this context, so much of state waste and extravagance has to be stopped, so much of private wealth in exaggerated ostentation has to be stopped. State austerity and pooling of private benefaction by state measures must be ruthlessly adopted and adroitly used for higher education. There is, in this country, a large number of philanthropists as is evident from the colossal sums spent on many temples, mosques and churches.

Self-financing is today a racket fleecing students to buy degrees beyond their financial capacity.

Let us realise our duty to those who hunger for higher education but have no means to fulfil their capabilities.

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