Do we really need right to education?

India’s liberals and pseudo-socialists are admiring themselves in the political mirror. They claim with narcissistic glee, ‘We have created a near political utopia where there are these wonderful rights — right to work, education, and, soon, food. We are proud of the caring and sensitive state we are building.’

They think building the state is a way of building the nation. The Supreme Court upheld the Right to Education, and a cheer went up all around. The judiciary has been favouring the extension of fundamental rights, which is also the extension of the state’s obligations and powers.

The private schools association that had challenged the legislation is not questioning the right as such but only the obligation it entails for private schools — of providing place for the poor children and, in the process, losing their profit margins. The private schools argue that if the state is creating a right to education, then that right has to be fulfilled through state schools and the state not encroach on their private sphere.

Private education entrepreneurs are on a weak ground because they have been grabbing favours from a mindless state to maximise their profits, and that too on the pretext of altruism, social service. There would have been some merit in the argument of the greedy private sector if their educational institutions had thrown up a good scientist, a good engineer and even good businessmen of the Infosys, Reliance and Tata kind.

But they do not. They have been churning out successful mid-level employees with high levels of mediocrity. In a democracy, mediocrity is no sin. But it does not lend itself to arguments of ideals of quality education and quality leaders of society.
In the argument over the indiscriminate extension of social entitlements in the garb of fundamental rights, the satanic defenders of private sector mediocrity can be laughed out of court.

The battle has to be fought by others who believe in uncompromising individualism, which is what true liberalism is all about. There are basic questions that need to be raised with regard to these entitlements — work, education, food. Are there enough jobs or is there social security of sorts to make right to work meaningful? Can the state create jobs to meet the obligation of right to work? Can the state force the private sector to create jobs?

Can they employ all those who need a job irrespective of whether they have the required qualifications? Do they — the state and the private sector — have the capacity to create a skilled workforce through educational institutions? Does the right to education mean that the individual gets an education that makes him employable? Is this the definition of the right to education? Or does it also include the individual’s right to seek the education he or she wants, which could include the desire to study ancient

Tamil poetry or the films of Priyanka Chopra? Would the right to food mean that an individual must have the necessary education and the required employment so that he or she can buy food? Or does it just mean the right to stand in the queue at a soup kitchen or langar, run by the state or by a private organisation?

The other set of basic questions with regard to these rights are: What is the meaning of right to education if there are not enough schools in the state and private sectors to accommodate every child?

What is the meaning of right to work if there are not enough jobs on offer and economic expansion becomes a counter-productive and self-defeating initiative? Is it not better to have a vibrant economy with enough food and jobs for all rather than a mere right to food which cannot be implemented? And if there are enough schools, enough jobs, enough food, is there need for these empty assertions of fundamental rights to work, to education and to food?

But such is our intellectual malnourishment that we do not have the stomach to face tough questions about creating a good society. We think it is enough to create the political rhetoric and the constitutional rights framework and that the reality will take care of itself.

This is to indulge in self-delusion and hypocrisy. A good society needs hard work and open debate, enough doubts and dissent about goals and values, to create conditions that ensure dignity and freedom for the individual without making him or her a cog in the wheel, which would defeat the liberal ideal of being human.  Until then, right to this and right to that will remain hollow gestures, loud talk and empty tokenism.