Is India ready to implement RTE?

Separate toilets for boys and girls, safe and adequate drinking water, a kitchen where midday meals can be cooked, playgrounds and boundary walls are only some of the norms and standards, schools should adhere to, once the Right to Education (RTE) Act comes into being.

    Although most private schools already have these systems in place, it is institutions under government care which lack these facilities.
Are government schools equipped with the mandatory infrastructure proposed by the Act, and if not, will they be able to comply with all these criteria within the six-month period after the Act is implemented?

Going by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) report, 46% of schools do not have playgrounds, 33% lack compound walls, around 13% require drinking water facility, and over 27% require ramps and over 10% still don’t have libraries.  All this, when the state is ready to go ahead with the RTE from the next academic year.   “In a big city, every school has a playground.  But, schools in Bangalore cannot have playgrounds in the next 30 years, let alone the three-year period given by the RTE,” said AS Seetharamu, consultant, SSA.
    According to another consultant, there isn’t enough open space available to be given to schools for playgrounds. “There is no land to allot to schools. The only option is to have a common playground for different schools or cluster playgrounds. The government should find out the total land available and allot a playground to one school on one particular day and to another school the next day,” says the consultant.

NORMS TO FOLLOW
• The school building should have at least one classroom for every teacher and an office -cum-store-cum-head teacher’s room, barrier-free access, separate toilets for boys and girls, safe and adequate drinking water facility, kitchen facility, playground as well as a boundary wall
• A library in each school is must. With newspapers, magazines, books on all subjects-- including storybooks
• Play material, games and sports equipment for each class as required
• For Classes I to V, the minimum number of teachers should be two. Also, the student teacher ratio should not exceed 40:1. For Class VI to VIII, there should be at least one teacher each for Science and Mathematics, Social Studies and languages.
THE REPORT SAYS-

• 201 elementary schools do not have buildings.
•164 buildings are not fit for use.
•There are 1,98,415 classrooms in 45,677 elementary schools of the education department out of which 20.78% classrooms need minor repairs and 11.18% are waiting for major repair work
• The condition of classrooms which need minor repairs has not changed much, and the numbers of classrooms needing major repairs has increased
• 61 schools do not have drinking water facility, 43 schools don’t have separate toilets for boys and girls
• Supreme Court issued direction on Oct 18, 2011, to government schools across all states and Union Territories to build toilets and ensure availability of drinking water by end of November 20

Waste management is not the responsibility of the government

“Delhi is filthy, Mumbai is filthy, every part of India is filthy” are the complaints we hear from the citizens of India every now and then. But who creates the filth? There has been much reportage on waste management over the years. Yet as a country we don’t seem to be making any headway in finding a lasting solution to it! Recently, there was a media report that the land fill site near Ghaziabad was near to its full capacity. This led to a sudden stop of refuse collection from people's homes for close to a month in some parts of Ghaziabad. One can totally understand the frustration that the residents in the nearby areas had to go through. Living with filth in and around their homes.
However, as individuals, what steps or measures are we taking to help reduce the challenges Government is going through to salvage the situation?
I find it difficult in understanding why an individual drinks pure water from a plastic bottle and throw it on the street. I remember growing up and watching adverts on TV educating citizens not to litter around. Waste bins are placed after every few meters’ on our streets to help solve the situation of littering. So the question is why do we still litter around? Though I agree with people who say the bins were not being managed properly since there were reports of bins getting full without being emptied for several days, I think as citizens we have done ourselves a great disservice by allowing the issue of littering to fester. These bins which were meant solely to dispose of litters on our streets were later being used by people to dispose of their household waste!  Though these bins are nearly extinct now, it should not be a reason for us to make our streets filthy. We see people littering around but how many of us are bold enough to ask them to desist from such acts? The issue of littering which is a major concern when it comes to waste management should be addressed by all and sundry and not left to government. As individuals and citizens of this country we need to check our attitude regarding matters concerning littering.
Besides the issue of littering, we need to tackle the issue of waste separation in our homes. There has been much talk of separating decomposable waste from non-decomposable ones in our homes. It has been found out that this method can help the country in its efforts to move into recycling of wastes and also converting the waste into energy. An environmentalist, Mr. Reginald Sawyer has come out to propose a permanent solution to waste management in the country. He talks about converting waste to energy and using the residue for fertilizer. If all these are to materialize, the issue of separation of waste should be taken seriously by everybody. We need to start from our homes, offices, institutions and schools.
To conclude, I believe every citizen has a role to play in finding lasting solutions to waste management challenges in the country. The points raised above are just a few ways by which we can help out. The government is doing its part, we must also check our attitude towards littering and how we go about disposing of our waste. When India is clean, it is clean for all of us and not just the government.