Govt to make free education a fundamental right

George Iype in New Delhi

The United Front government is planning to amend the Constitution to make free and compulsory elementary education up to the age of 14 a fundamental right.

The federal human resources development ministry is in the process of giving finishing touches to a draft legislation to enable the government to introduce it in the ongoing Budget session of Parliament.

The bill will also have an explicit provision to make it a fundamental duty of every citizen, who is a parent, to provide opportunity for elementary education to all children up to the age of 14.

Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram is expected to considerably enhance the allocation for education sector in the Budget scheduled for Friday, February 28, as the proposed bill envisages the unravelling of countrywide elementary education schemes.

Official sources aid the bill forms part of a series of far-reaching programmes that Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda and his HRD minister S R Bommai are planning to launch soon to reform the education system in the country.

These include setting up special cells for women's education in universities, a separate education authority for the scheduled castes and tribes in the hill areas of the North-Eastern states and opening more vocational educational centres across the country.

"The measures envisages promotion of quality and excellence in educational activities to meet the challenges of emerging areas of science and technology and reconstruct the education system to encompass the country's human resource potential," a top HRD official told Rediff On The NeT.

He said the prime minister is keen to launch rural programmes to eradicate illiteracy and spread elementary education in the age group of 15 to 35 by 2000.

HRD ministry sources said the proposed education bill would be based on the recommendations of a recent high-powered committee led by Minister of State for Education Muhi Ram Saika on the 'Implications of the proposal to make elementary education a fundamental right.'

The committee, which included education experts and education ministers of different states submitted its report to the prime minister last week. It suggested that the Constitution should be amended to make the right to free education up to the age of 14 a fundamental right.

Education is now under the Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution and education experts have all these years have demanded a Constitutional amendment to make it a fundamental right.

Deve Gowda and his coalition partners are said to be united on the issue of introducing the bill in the current session of Parliament. The UF government's Common Minimum Programme had promised to hike the budgetary allocation for the education sector.

The UF government has already announced that it would earmark six per cent of the Gross Domestic Product for education in the Ninth Five Year Plan.

If the government succeeds in amending the Constitution to make education a fundamental right, it will join other key rights like the right to equality and the right to freedom of expression.