In recent times, our country has made a lot of progress in many fields such as science& technology, health, education, food security etc. Progress is encouraging in some fields, but education sector is not getting the attention it deserves. Especially the underprivileged members of the society are far behind in reaping the benefits of modern education. Some may ask is it important to educate these people, when basic amenities of life food, water and shelter are also out of reach for them. Is it not necessary that the primary focus should be on providing these basic things? The answer is that education can solve most of the problems very easily which otherwise need a lot of effort. For example, if a poor is educated, he can get a job. This employment opportunity will help him to feed his family members, provide them health care, shelter and education. Thus education will help in a cyclic manner. There is no denying in the fact that education is indispensable for downtrodden people. It is the only medium through which poverty can be defeated. More than 60 years have passed since independence yet the poverty is present in our country. The political parties have not shown enough will to solve this problem. So instead of being dependent on government subsidies and freebies, the poor people should be educated so that they can make a decent living.
Now the question arises how to educate these people. There are numerous challenges present in achieving this goal. Some of the key challenges are-
1) The government run schools are unable to provide the quality education.
2) The private schools are too costly to be afforded by these people.
3) There is lack of awareness among these people.
4) Our education policy is not favorable to these people.
The above challenges can be tackled but we need a sound framework with honest implementation and monitoring mechanism. Firstly we need to understand that the requirements of downtrodden people are entirely different from the middle class or higher class people. In most of the cases the economic condition is too weak as a result all the family members including child are forced in labor work. There is lack of encouragement for these people to educate their children.
Now what is the solution? This problem has to be solved at two levels. On way is through government efforts. The other way is through public private and society partnership. The government has enacted some legislation such as The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act or Right to Education Act (RTE). However the implementation of such legislation is not very effective. We need to ensure that act serve the purpose for which it has been enacted. The civil society need to pressurize the government to implement this act strictly. We need a special act for the marginalized society, which ensures that every child of such society gets free education up to graduation level. There should be job oriented course structure, which ensures that they get a job after completing their study. If this happens it will be big encouragement for poor people to send their child to school. The private sector has an active presence in the education field. However they are costly, the government can give subsidies to the private schools to educate the poor’s children. At the panchayat level, a monitoring committee should be formed which will be entrusted to ensure that the government schools are functioning properly. The committee should also organize awareness camps, where parents should be told about the benefits of education. The NGOs and private bodies which are working in this field need to increase their efforts. They should encourage the educated youth to join their efforts. The focus should be on the needy people. Learning method employed should not be of rote type. It should be more of a practical approach. Some short term courses need to introduced, which provide the basic skills to be employable in industry. In past our country needed “Green revolution” to solve the problem of food, now we need an “Education revolution” to solve many problems. This “Education revolution” should focus on the marginalized society. Each and everyone the government, private bodies and society have a role to play in this revolution. There are some states in our country which have already achieved a lot in this field. The experience of such states need to used to solve the problem of other states.
So the need of the hour is to make understand everyone that, quality education should be within the reach of poor people. It is their right, we need to work together so that underprivileged have access to their right.
Vivek Singh
IWC2012013