Satara District, Maharashtra asks couples to put parenthood on hold

Offering couples cash incentives if they put off having their first child by two years has delayed 2,500 births, claim officials in Satara district,Maharashtra.

On August 15, India’s Independence Day, several couples in Satara district in the western state of Maharashtra redeemed their pledge of not having a child for two years after marriage. Officials say this family planning initiative of the Satara district administration has delayed 2,500 births in the two years since it has been in existence.

In 2007, officials in Satara introduced the voluntary scheme with a corpus of Rs 6 crore from the National Rural Health Mission to curb the rising birth rate in the area. Couples who agreed to defer their first child by two years would be given a cash incentive of Rs 5,000. Around 485 couples will get a cheque of Rs 5,000, while another 2,366 couples will be awarded during the year as soon as they complete their two-year vow.

Satara district has a population of around 28 lakh, with a girl:boy ratio of 995:1,000. District medical officer Dr V Phalake says that roughly 25,000 marriages take place every year; over 80% result in a baby in the first year. This is largely because of the widespread belief that a child born during the first year of marriage will be healthy.

According to Dr Phalake, roughly 10% (2,366 couples) of couples have participated in the programme and, as a result, 2,500 births have been delayed. “The birth rate of the district is steadily dropping. From the previous 17 births per 1,000, it will become 15 by 2010,” he says.

Vivek Baid, president of the Mission for Population Control, approves of the scheme even though his NGO advocates permanent family planning measures like vasectomy. “It will work like a temporary family planning device like IUD, birth control pills and condoms. The financial benefit added to this package will motivate couples to delay childbirth,” he says. Indeed, the idea is to delay births, not deprive parents of the joys of parenthood.

The scheme has attracted couples from different sections of society and with different motives. Some couples find the scheme attractive because it allows both partners to continue working. Others find the money useful. Says daily wage earner Vinod Waghmare: “If it wasn’t for the scheme we would have had children in the first year of marriage. But now I want to open a fixed deposit from this money for the future of my child.”

For those who delay having a child by another one year, the financial package goes up to Rs 7,500.

Many couples say, however, that they have to keep their participation in the scheme a secret from their families who would certainly disapprove. When Jawade Rao told his mother, she stopped talking to him and his wife. He says he cannot afford to let such a state of affairs continue.

The Satara model has attracted interest from Assam and Jharkhand. The fight to contain population cannot be won by coercive methods, say experts. But the effectiveness of incentives and disincentives in family planning is also a matter of debate.

Indian Parliament passes landmark Right to Education Bill

It has taken six-and-half years, two governments, and half-a-dozen drafts to put in place enabling legislation making the right to education a fundamental right in India

The Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament, has adopted the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill 2009, approving it by voice vote on Tuesday, August 4, 2009. The upper house, the Rajya Sabha, passed the Bill on July 20. Once the President gives the Bill her assent, education will become a fundamental right for every Indian child.

Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal called the move “a national enterprise that will help shape India’s future,” explaining that “this Bill is about the child’s right to have free education and the State’s obligation to provide compulsory education. This is a historic opportunity as there was never such a law in the last 62 years since Independence. We, as a nation, cannot afford our children not going to school”.

Answering a range of questions on the form and content of the Bill, Sibal said that its essential features included free education, compulsory education, quality education (with schools requiring to have facilities like a playground, library, etc), quality teachers (minimum qualification for teachers is compulsory; under-qualified teachers will be given five years to upgrade themselves), social responsibility (private schools will have to reserve one-fourth of their seats for disadvantaged children), de-bureaucratisation of the school system, and participation of civil society in school management committees (where half the members will be women).

As the purpose of the legislation is to set a certain benchmark for school education, the Bill details punitive action for running unrecognised schools, and also provides for de-recognition of institutions that do not meet certain standards. These standards, in terms of teacher qualifications and duties, and pupil-teacher ratio, have been specified. It comes with a diktat that prohibits teachers from taking private tuitions and schools from deploying them for non-educational purposes other than the decennial population census, disaster relief, and election duty.

Stressing the need for a boost to children’s education, Sibal said that out of every 100 children attending elementary school only 12 reached the graduation level; in Europe it was 50-70 (students reaching college from the elementary level); the global average is 27. The Centre wanted to increase India’s average to 15 by 2012 and to 30-35 by 2020, he said.

The curriculum will be less rigorous and will ensure all-round development of children. “A child must not be subjected to board examinations in Class V or Class VIII. The element of fear must be removed from the child’s mind. At present the child has no choice but to take exams and the government was determined to end it,” the minister added.

Responding to questions raised in Parliament, Sibal clarified that no punitive measures were planned for parents who failed to send their children to school. He also clarified that it was for the states and local authorities to decide on the broader contours of neighbourhood schools (with no interference from the Centre), within three years.

The Bill seeks to do away with the practice of schools taking capitation fees before admissions, and subjecting the child or parents to a screening procedure. If a school disregards this it could be fined up to 10 times the capitation amount. If tests or interviews are conducted, a school can be fined Rs 25,000 for the first violation, and Rs 50,000 for every subsequent contravention.

Schools cannot deny admission to a child because of lack of age proof, and no child can be detained or expelled until the completion of elementary education. Physical punishment and mental harassment will attract disciplinary action under the service rules.

It will be up to the states to implement the policy of reservation in admissions. While 25% of seats in every private school will be allocated for children from disadvantaged groups, including differently-abled children at the entry level, as far as minority institutions are concerned, up to 50% of these seats can be offered to students from their own community.

On infrastructure, the minister said there was provision for establishing a recognition authority in every state under which all schools would have to fulfil the minimum requirement for infrastructure within three years. Otherwise they will lose recognition. Similarly, appointment of teachers had to be approved by the academic committee, Sibal pointed out.

On the medium of instruction, Sibal said there was provision to provide elementary education, as far as possible, in the child’s mothertongue. The law would ensure that the child got free, compulsory and quality education by qualified teachers. It had not been brought in to interfere with the state government’s attempts to provide elementary education.

The minister emphasised the disability clause, saying that the differently-abled would be considered part of the broad “disadvantaged category (that includes scheduled castes [SCs], scheduled tribes [STs], socially and educationally backward)… integrating schooling for the disabled in normal schools”. He added that children suffering from autism too would soon be able to join normal schools.

A spate of protests over the past week by disabled rights groups across the country were followed by a meeting with Sibal on Monday. The prime minister also met them the day the Bill was passed. “The prime minister assured us that our concerns would be addressed,” says Javed Abidi, head of the disability rights group that has been spearheading the protest along with the Spastics Society of India.

Disabled rights activists argue that the Bill effectively extends benefits only to those with physical disabilities -- not children with cerebral palsy or autism. The definition of disadvantaged children -- for whom each private school is required to reserve 25% of their seats -- does not include the differently-abled. Also, they say, the Bill does not mention special schools with a barrier-free environment for differently-abled children.

The government still has to finalise funding norms for implementation of the proposed law; this remains a major concern for educationists in the country. “The right to education will effectively become implementable only when the funding is clear and is released. Till then, it will remain a law only on paper,” said one senior HRD ministry official.

The ministry has asked the finance commission to finalise funding norms for the proposed law. Critics of the Bill say it is unclear how the government plans to pay for it. They also say it does not cover children below the age of six and therefore fails to recognise the importance of a child’s early years of development.

Achieving universal education is one of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals to be met by the year 2015. Currently, around 70 million children in India receive no schooling; more than a third of the country’s population is illiterate. At present, India spends a little over 3% of its GDP on education.