Decentralization

In the name of decentralization

Indore Zila Sarkar’s District Planning Committee approved proposals of opening new schools through rationalization of staff and of commercialization of school properties on May 29. Regarding the latter, past experiences of commercialization, which had done nothing for schools, were ignored. And the former (along with the idea of merging schools) was hastily appreciated and extrapolated into state policy. By June 25, just 5 days before a new academic session started, the state’s school education department communicated its willingness to let District Planning Committees have a free hand in this regard. The Collector in Indore, as soon as he received a fax message to this effect, held a late night meeting and set the ball rolling. Schools in prime locations were closed and merged. “Excess” teachers were transferred to community hall schools where chalk markings on the doors announced these were new schools ready to take students. But approvals by fax, late nigh meetings taken by the collector, hastily transferred teachers and chalk markings on the doors of inadequate buildings, while they may make for popular election politics, do not necessarily make for schools. The beginning of the academic year brought complete chaos. Many well-attended and popular schools were found closed. New schools did not have even basic facilities, not to speak of students.

The Collector solicited and secured funds from private trusts and even from Red Cross for new schools. But the beginning of the academic year had come and gone. The local media reported the full range of problems that had been thrown up by the Indore Zila Sarkar’s hastily implemented interventions. Sections of the press also reported “success” of the collector’s effort to bring schools to slums – never mind that the schools had neither facilities nor students. And, meanwhile, the long pending Cosmo Circle was approved. Now that both the election and the beginning of an academic year are gone and the dust has settled on these frenzied interventions, it is time for a long and hard look at what is going on. The rationalization/merger/new school idea, like many others in the name of decentralization, is sound in principle but – as demonstrated by Indore – very prone to misuse. Here it has been irrationally implemented. So it has achieved nothing for rationalizing school education. It has got Indore a Cosmo Circle approval, which may or may not be what the city needs. And it has been extrapolated into state policy – without any clarity on resource needs, threby paving the way for the extrapolation also of the second proposal of commercialization of school premises! Taken to their logical conclusion these measures will lead to the closure of all existing government schools (on sites with even minimal commercial potential) and their substitution by “gumti” schools. So much for a welfare state committed to education for all! So much for decentralization!

What we need to ask is must our children have to study in pathetic buildings for we have money only for Krishnapura “lakes” and “21st century” Cosmo Circles? Or put up with shops in their schools for we have no money for them otherwise? Or study within squalid slums because we need all other sites for other things? And be grateful for being shortchanged by the administration on what the constitution is committed to give them? Should the state be allowed to inflict all this on our children – simply because children do not count in vote banks, children do not protest loudly and, therefore, children don’t matter in decentralization and its politics? Is this not a betrayal of children and should we not hang our heads in shame for allowing such a betrayal?