Ten-year-old Ramesh, who sells necklaces in the Indian capital, has never been to school and doesn’t have much prospect of going despite the country’s landmark new right to education act.
“I’d like to go to school,” Ramesh, a spindly boy who darts among fast-moving cars to sell bright beads for 10 rupees (about US$0.20) to motorists at traffic lights, said with a shy grin revealing brown tooth stumps.
However, his mother Sunita, who travels with her family into New Delhi each day by metro from a teeming suburban slum, said the family didn’t have enough money to lose an income earner.
“He has to support the family,” said Sunita, a toddler hoisted on her hip and a six-year-old daughter tugging at her sari.
India’s education act, championed by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was born to a poor family and studied under the dim light of a kerosene lamp, means all states must now provide free schooling for every child between the age of six and 14.
Launching the program on Thursday last week, Singh said in a nationwide address that he wanted “every Indian child — girl and boy — to be touched by the light of education.”
Backed by 250 billion rupees (US$5.6 billion) of government cash, the scheme aims to get about 10 million impoverished children currently excluded from the education system into schooling.
“India is trying to be a leading superpower and the government is recognizing with this law that this isn’t possible unless its children go to school,” UNICEF India education chief Urmila Sarkar said.
The act is one of several populist laws enacted by the Congress Party-led government, which has staked its electoral future on helping hundreds of millions of poor Indians bypassed by India’s strong economic growth.
There are multiple pitfalls, however, the biggest of which is enforcement.
Critics point to legislation four years ago banning child labor that is routinely flouted. Children can still be found working in dingy factories and restaurants, delivering groceries and cleaning houses, working 12-hour days.
“They have nice laws on child rights, including the child labor act, but they have not been enforced, so what’s the point?” asked Bhuwan Ribhu, a leader of New Delhi-based Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or Safe Childhood Movement. “As long as there is child labor in the country, how do you propose to get these children in school?”
The government’s figure for unschooled children has also drawn fire for badly underestimating the extent of the problem.
“This is not a very honest number,” said Ramakant Rai, head of the National Coalition for Education, a non-governmental organization, referring to the government’s 10 million estimate.
He said the last census, in 2001, showed 85 million children between six and 14 were working, never attended school or were dropouts.
“All these children can’t simply disappear,” he said.
The problem of education is particularly acute for India, which has a staggering 51 percent of its population of nearly 1.2 billion people under 25.
Experts say India’s “youth bulge” could drive economic development or be a demographic disaster, threatening social cohesion if the government fails to provide education for its brimming young population.
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