From Your School to Our School

Abstract

From Introduction: The question of compulsory and free primary education is now in this country the question of questions’. The question that Gopal Krishna Gokhale singled out in the year 1910 continues to haunt us even after nearly a 100 years with the same poignant urgency. Unless the state resolves that its commitment to universal primary education will be enforceable by the community through a sovereign guarantee, the goal will remain on the wish-list. The most recent articulation of the goal of universalising primary education came in the recent conference of Chief Ministers called by the Prime Minister to discuss Basic Minimum Services. The conference unanimously agreed to placing universal primary education as a goal to be achieved in the “next two to three years” along with two other goals of provision of safe drinking water and 100% coverage of primary health service facilities. The budget presented in the Parliament reaffirmed this commitment to basic minimum services by keeping apart Rs. 2466 crore as central assistance to increase availability of funds for these schemes.