Blog Post Year: 2015

Right To Education Act Section 12(1) (c): Reservation within reservation

The Indian Parliament in 2009 passed the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, as a landmark legislation. Section 12 (1) (c) of the ACT mandated reservation of a minimum of 25% of the seats at the entry level class for children belonging to economically weaker sections (EWS) and disadvantaged groups in all private unaided schools; excluding minority institutions. The cost of education of these children is to be reimbursed by the government to the extent of per child expenditure incurred by the state or the actual school fees, whichever is less. The provision was initially challenged in the Supreme Court and after April 2012, when the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of the Act through its judgement, section 12 (1) (c) became applicable. Given the salience of such a provision and its potential to put millions of children in private schooling, deeper scrutiny is required on the nuances and the manner in which it is being implemented.

To begin with the provisions of the scheme, it is useful to know how the terms “disadvantaged groups” and “weaker section” have been defined. Owing to the ambiguous nature of the guidelines issued by the central government, each state has modified the model guidelines and framed its own set of implementation processes. Delhi defines EWS as the families from economically weaker section having household income less than 1 lakh per annum while the disadvantaged groups include SC, ST, and non-creamy layer of OBC, orphans and physically and mentally challenged children. On the other hand, Rajasthan has set this income limit to 2.5 lakhs per annum.

A lot of states including Haryana, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu etc. have specifically included HIV affected children in this quota in addition to other categories.  Uttar Pradesh has further conditioned admission under this section. A government order issued in UP in 2012 stipulated that children from EWS sections could be admitted to private schools only after all seats in government or government-aided schools had been filled.

Moreover, the state government is responsible for deciding on the neighbourhood and age criteria to be followed under this section. There are again some inter-state variations. For instance, in Rajasthan, they follow a ward criteria while in Maharashtra, neighbourhood is defined in terms of aerial distance. In Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, the admission is further conditioned on the enrolment of a minimum number of children to be enrolled in the neighbourhood of 1 km. This measure was aimed at providing equal access to education for children from socio-econ­omically backward sections and was primarily formulated to foster inclusion of marginalised children.  While it has the potential to improve both equity and efficiency in school education in India, the implementation so far has been highly haphazard across states.

Four years down the line, the Right to free and Compulsory Education Act has made education neither free nor compulsory in most parts of the country. In the light of the RTE Act, the model rules framed by the Central Government state that children admitted under Section 12 (1) (c) shall not be segregated from the other children in the classroom, nor shall their classes be held at places and timings different from the classes held for other children. It further provides that these children shall not be discriminated from the rest of the children in any manner pertaining to entitlements and facilities such as textbooks, uniforms, library and ICT facilities, extracurricular activities and sports.

But the opaque and unclear process of implementation of this provision has received representations from various stakeholders as the private schools have brazenly violated the above mentioned principles in some of the states. Since there is unambiguity as to what amount has to be reimbursed to these schools, there are several heads other than “tuition fees” for which the parents are being charged. In case they deny to pay this fee, the school conveniently keeps such children admitted under this quota out of any activity that takes place outside the four walls of a classroom. There have been sporadic instances of blatant discrimination and denial of admission in some of the elite private schools.

The problem lies with the view several schools take towards EWS admissions. Since the 25% number amounts to a critical lot, what remains a thorn in the flesh, is the lack of clarity in the reimbursement to be made to private schools, which has further hampered the compliance in many states.  In response to RTIs filed regarding the reimbursement procedure, some states like Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, and Karnataka seem to have extensively detailed the process of reimbursement while several others like Goa, Himachal Pradesh, and Punjab have no clarity on the per-child reimbursement amounts even after 3 years of implementation. Moreover, this provision has opened the private schools for greater governmental interference and owing to inertia among these schools in declaring their fees publically has also led to delays in the entire process. Such unformulated provisions further tend to obstruct the effective implementation on the ground.

Further, building monitoring structures for this Act and putting in place grievance redressal mechanisms is needed to bridge some of the above mentioned implementation gaps. Given that there is a growing trend of privatization in majority of states and the lack of quality confronting the education in government schools, it requires concerted efforts from government, schools and civil society organizations to actually translate the intent of this provision into practice.

The Anatomy of Indian Administration

In this blog post, I briefly take stock of Lant Pritchett’s arguments on the “flailing” nature of the Indian state, and Michael Lipsky’s seminal work on “street-level bureaucrats” in an effort to theoretically understand the structure of Indian administration.  Pritchett’s attempt through his paper is to make sense of India in its totality, and so he comments on all major facets of what makes this nation-state tick. For my current purpose, my focus is on the administrative aspect covered in his paper. Lipsky’s book covers in rich detail, the workings of and the context in which field level officials of the state, toil. In this post, I have borrowed from the central idea of his work.    

India as a “flailing” state

In his attempt at reconciling “the contradictions of a booming economy and democracy with world class elite institutions and yet chaotic conditions in service provision of even the most rudimentary types,” Lant Pritchett proposes that “India is today a flailing state—a nation-state in which the head, that is the elite institutions at the national (and in some states) level remain sound and functional but that this head is no longer reliably connected via nerves and sinews to its own limbs.”

Pritchett’s definition of the “flailing state” hinges on the ‘soundness’ of the head comprised of the elite institutes and its apparent inability to control the rest of the body. The grey matter of the Indian state’s brain is composed of Indian Administrative Services, the Supreme Court, and the IITs among other elite organisations. The limbs of the body are the different tiers of government responsible for implementing the plans created by this head. I would like to think the intricately designed monitoring and feedback mechanisms, the streams of government papers and files make up the connective tissue, nerves and viscera. The people who populate these spaces form the life force or the blood coursing through this apparently dysfunctional body.  By “control” he means not only getting government officials at the lower levels to perform but also just being able to get them to show up for work!

“I propose to label the inability to maintain sufficient control of the administrative apparatus in order to effectively deliver services through the government in spite of a strong democracy and strong capability at the state level a “flailing” state.” When we look at the plethora of governance failure stories or the quality of service delivery in almost any sphere, this argument begins to look like a no-brainer.

Lipsky’s “Street-Level Bureaucrats”

According to Lipsky, street-level bureaucrats are field level agents who deal with a large number of people on a daily basis such as teachers, police officers, and public health service providers. Two common characteristics of street-level bureaucrats are a) They exercise discretion in the line of duty which might mean sometimes bending the rules laid down by the state; and b) They develop coping mechanisms to streamline the process of dealing with the general public. He goes on to add that they are unable to perform the best they can because they lack time, information, or other resources necessary to respond to each case properly. This, Lipsky argues, ultimately affects the quality of a programme’s outcomes.

His main thesis is as follows: “The decisions of street-level bureaucrats, the routines they establish, and the devices they invent to cope with uncertainties and work pressures, effectively become the public policies they carry out…Public policy is not best understood as made in legislatures or top-floor suites of high-ranking administrators. These decision-making arenas are important, of course, but they do not represent the complete picture. To the mix of places where policies are made, one must add the crowded offices and daily encounters of street-level workers. Further…policy conflict is not only expressed as the contention of interest groups, as we have come to expect. It is also located in the struggles between individual workers and citizens who challenge or submit to client-processing.”

Dissecting the administrative anatomy

One reason behind the discord between the main head and the body according to Pritchett is the conditions under which the Indian administrative body was established. A colonial inheritance, our bureaucratic structures largely continue to remain distant from the people they aim to administer. Moreover, the society in which these structures are embedded is fraught with socio-political tensions. Identity based groups frequently set the political agenda at the local level and the administration is not immune to its impacts. Pritchett also touches upon the subject of corruption within the Indian bureaucracy.

On decentralization and furthering citizen engagement with the state, Pritchett observes that these discourses have taken shape in India in the context of the state’s abysmal service delivery and accountability record, aloof as it has remained from the society. The idea behind deepening decentralization, as Pritchett argues, is to gradually transform these identity centered contests among fragmented groups into united calls for better governance, thereby harmonizing the will (shaped by the head) with actions of the body. Lipsky would most certainly be in favour of greater decentralization going by the sheer number of people, street-level bureaucrats have to deal with on a regular basis. Despite the bulky nature of Indian bureaucracy, the number of officials catering to India’s ever expanding population is not nearly enough.

Lipsky’s microscope is pointed at the veins coursing through the limbs of this creature. He recognizes the fact that lower level officials frequently distort or bend rules sent by the “head” for reasons mentioned above. Carry this out over time and one gets to see good and bad practices getting embedded. Lipsky’s conclusions are particularly telling of the state of affairs in a country as vast as India with its massive bureaucracy. He also brings attention to the fact that it’s not just the interest groups that shape the policy agenda but the agents of the state as well by their acts of interpreting rules sent by the top. All because they have to implement the master head’s plans and directly bear the brunt of its “feedback” from the general public.

In this sense, the administrative body of India doesn’t possess a single head but is rather a hydra-headed creature. These “heads” not only interpret and act on the instructions of the master head as described by Pritchett, but also legitimately create and act on their own plans. The limbs thus appear to have minds of their own and they tackle problems different from those faced by the master head. Perhaps then the reason why the master head as described by Pritchett appears sound is because it doesn’t have to directly deal with the vagaries of governing a chaotic society.

Or maybe I have stretched Pritchett’s delightful metaphor to its limit, and should instead start a probe into the Indian administration’s innards a la Lipsky.