Negotiating the Right to Education: 
   Claims and Contestations

   Malini Sur *

This is an excerpt from human Rights in Bangladesh 2003, published by ASK.

Introduction
This paper explores what rights to education imply for those on the social and economic fringes of Bangladeshi society. Though conventionally regarded as a minimal claim that every state owes to its citizens, the implementation of this right is fraught with contestations that straddle the obvious and the obscure alike. While quantity and excellence comprise quantitative enumerations, what lies within the realm of human reflection and action as expressed in content and transactions, often eludes visibility. Thus, the professed realization of educational rights may actually bypass the very aims and objectives towards which they should be ideally directed. The primary means of advancing this right is through an institutional framework, that is, state controlled and aided formal and now increasingly non-formal, non-governmental community based schooling for children and young adults. Actions are translated in achieving thresholds in access, in claiming global standards and in augmenting a committed citizenry, if not a conscious one. Intrinsically value laden, education is only very rarely about well-informed adults engaging in constructive practice to shape young minds and determine how the written word should translate into agency in everyday living.
For Bangladesh, claimants to this right are as much the rural poor as the urban, and small pockets of ethnic minorities who still figure in slots below national benchmarks in statistical handbooks. Claims are on behalf of children who study for years in crowded classrooms with peeling paint, achieving low routine competencies, or those who can neither hear or see or walk to a school, and are thereby unacceptable to and untouched by the formal schooling system. Increasingly and alarmingly, this is a story of corrupt practices to grab the much-cherished certification, with no guarantees of employment. Above all, it is about directing resources to juggle miracles in reducing illiteracy in record time as the country links itself with the global system, where aid in education increases as much as loans.
Fortunately, the story is also about advances, of new pedagogic models and inter-agency co-operation. It is about Bangladesh's remarkable success to enable girls to reach primary and secondary schools, aided by education supplements. It is about taking schools, non-formal and satellite, to child labourers, children in remote areas, and tottering steps towards pre-school education. The country has also witnessed non-state actors, not only intervening through efficient management and teaching-learning models in education, but also countering national statistics with empirical findings and constructing dialogues to advance rights. This paper will explore some of these issues as they dwell in legislation; policy documents and reports churned by government, advocacy groups and international agencies. It locates a few themes - discrimination, quality education and explores the political economy that gives direction to interventions. Within each theme, it flags critical issues and debates surrounding the implications of advancing education as a right. The paper begins by briefly examining the right to education, as it exists in international and domestic law.

The Right to Education - International Norms and Domestic Compliance
For almost six decades, rights to education, including non-discrimination in access and equity have featured in international conventions, to which Bangladesh has been a signatory. In their formulation, such treaties convey the response of the international community to political exigencies - from the emergence of postcolonial states to the recognition of women and children as legal claimants of rights. Acknowledging that education is embedded at the axle of civil and political rights and economic social and cultural rights, international treaties have outlined substantive provisions, while their appending bodies have monitored state compliance. These include the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the Child Rights Convention - upholding non-discrimination provisions in general and with particular reference to education (Articles 13, Article 2, Article 10 and Article 28 respectively). Bangladesh has ratified these conventions, with no reservations on the right to education. However, it submitted a declaration on Article 13 of the UN convention on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, stating that the right to education would be progressively realized, that is, enforcement would be conditional on economic progress.1
Recognizing that children in enormously large numbers were outside any system of education, international efforts have privileged the implementation of the right to primary education. Global concerns urge the immediate realization of this right, reflecting clauses in the UN Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and those expressed in the Child Rights Convention. Other levels are relegated to 'progressive realization', in accordance with national resources. In the past decade, there has been resurgence of the goal of 'Education for All', accompanied by stringent monitoring. Education is also placed as a Millennium Development Goal that countries should aspire to achieve, aided by development assistance. Bangladesh expresses its commitment, inter alia by formulating national plans of action and through periodic self-reporting. In this respect, it bears a higher burden, since it is among countries that have world's highest uneducated population (E 9 countries).
In South Asia, violations of the right to education have provoked large-scale condemnation and public outcry because of an implicit association with child labour and discrimination in access. More recently, education activists in the region have signaled that while we may well be reaching thresholds in enrolment and retention, quality still eludes the system (Ahmad: 2003). Schooling, whether formal or non formal, imparted through government or NGOs, has been proposed as a means to wean children away from harsh working conditions. For Bangladesh, the extreme destitution that accompanied Harkin's Bill, which withdrew child labourers from garment factories, without adequate rehabilitation, is recent in our memories. The years that followed witnessed innovative programs, localized to reach large sections of children who were outside the state operated education system. South Asia has also witnessed large-scale adult literacy programs with differential successes and experiments with vocational training. Women's education has been promoted to serve instrumental purposes of increasing the mean age of marriage and lowering fertility.
The Constitution of Bangladesh safeguards children's right to free, compulsory and uniform education and commits to eradicating illiteracy as laid out in the Fundamental Principles of State policy (Part II). In addition, Article 28 (c) also prohibits discrimination in access to educational institutions, especially with regard to religion and sex (Part III). Further, the right to compulsory primary education was enacted more than a decade ago (the Jonteim Declaration), endorsing that schooling should be compulsory for all children between the ages of six and ten. Education is structured along a multi-phased (primary to tertiary, vocational and professional education) and tripartite system of management (government, non-government and private and religious), which is also linguistically distinct. Public (state managed) institutions and NGOs offer education in Bangla, with the latter providing scope for innovative interventions within state prescribed curricular framework. A parallel stream of religious education operates through more than 7000 madrasas, of which a fragment accommodates girls. Lastly, English education caters to the privileged, through private enterprise. While the public system includes over 38,000 institutions, non-government and privately managed comprise more than 48,000 educational institutions across all levels of learning (BANBEIS 2002).
In the past decade, Bangladesh has attained several milestones in education. For instance, adult literacy rate have spiraled from 35.3 per sent in 1991 to over 51.3 per cent in 1998.2 In 2003, the country claimed to have reached a literacy rate of 62 per cent.3 Disaggregated statistics in literacy and quantitative expansion in education also signals that women are increasingly claiming seats as learners and teachers. At the primary level, NGO based institutions such as community; satellite and other schools have tripled in number since 1990. There has also been a spectacular increase in learners at the primary level between 1985 and 1995, a phenomena which is equally applicable to girl children. The decade of the 1990's witnessed increasing numbers of female teachers in primary schools and in students seeking secondary education, where girls presently outnumber boys. In 2000, almost 100 per cent of all female children enrolled in secondary education were receiving tuition subsidies and stipends. Recent statistics show that more than 4.1 million children studying in 21,000 schools and madrasas are being covered by education schemes such as the Female Secondary School Assistance Project and the Female Secondary Education Stipend project. The success in female participation in secondary education may be largely attributed to such externally aided programmes, which presently cover 460 upazilas in the country. The past decade also witnessed more girls accessing Madrasa education, probably also in response to education stipends which these institutions now offer. Increasing numbers of women have also claimed college, university and professional education, though gains in technical education (BANBEIS 2002) have been far smaller. There have been recent attempts to integrate madrasa education into the general education stream; the National Education Policy (2000) has expressed eagerness to reform this system of education, which caters largely to the rural poor.4
Discrimination in Education
Though such scorecards indicate that there has been progress in implementing the right to education, exclusion and disparities are equally glaring. Intra-regionally, five years ago, Sylhet and Rajshahi divisions fell much below the national average on adult literacy (see Table IX. 1). This may be attributed to the large rural and tribal population respectively in these districts. The overall progress in rural and tribal literacy has been dismally low. For instance, the four sub-divisions that accommodate the highest tribal population in Bangladesh, i.e., Rangamati, Khagrachhari, Dinajpur and Bandarban scaled much lower than the national standards in the above seven-literacy index (1991 Census). In Rangamati, the tribal population constitutes more than half of the total population while in Khagchhari, it is a little less than half (see Table IX.2). Additionally, literacy rates for women have been recorded to be the lowest for any given year. Presently, this stands at 41 per cent with women's literacy recording 35 per cent (EFA Report Government of Bangladesh, 2003). Bangladesh's education index also falls below the regional average (UNDP 2003)5 and the country has one of the lowest levels of public spending on education.6

Table IX. 1: Literacy Rates According to Districts7

Table IX. 2: Literacy Rates in Tribal Areas8

Contesting claims of escalations in literacy rates, which are largely measured through self reported census data, a year ago a cross national empirical study established that only 41.4 per cent of the population over eleven years could claim to be literate. Of this cohort, there were almost equal proportions of those estimated to be 'initial' literates and those who demonstrated 'advanced' literacy skills. A smaller proportion of less than ten per cent of the studied sample were categorized as semi-literates - possessing minimal life skills and for whom nodding acquaintance with literacy did not translate into any major gains.9
While adult literacy, as an instrument of achieving basic reading and writing skills has marginal appeal to the rights discourse in its limitations at advancing capabilities, problems at the initial rungs of the education ladder are also immense. Presently, children who constitute almost half the country's population are mostly first generation learners, more so in rural Bangladesh.10 At the initial threshold, that is, pre-primary education, it is only recently that the state has taken the initiative to set up smaller centers for children untouched by pre-school education. The learning and health requirements of children in their early childhood are crucial in primarily rural impoverished societies, where men and women engage in daylong wage work. Moreover, preschool education propels children into primary schooling at a greater pace and accrues high rates of return to education.11 Children in the age group of zero-four constitute almost fourteen per cent of the total population in Bangladesh. Less than half of these 1.8 million children are presently under the umbrella of early childhood services. Such services are disproportionately concentrated in urban areas, with rural pockets largely neglected. It has also been observed that overall, even where preschool services have been initiated; they are characterized by poor conception and implementation.12 Apart from classes with primary schools, which have additional classes for children four-five years old under the Primary District Education Programme scheme, pre-primary education mostly has been a private and/or non-governmental function. For the under-privileged, these are implemented by NGOs with grants from international agencies like PLAN and CARE, amongst others. The recent national policy on education proposes to include such services for children under five years within existing primary schools, which hardly does justice to rights entitlements for pre-school children. As a schooling system, it requires a distinct set of resources and pedagogy, which cannot be collapsed within the primary system of education. Moreover, in the Government's recent Plan of Action for Education for All13 commitments appear to be diffused and at best modest tokens.
Though programmes to reach urban children, especially child laborers in cities, have been promoted to address the needs of working children, these interventions have been criticized on account of their transient nature. Though such children need more flexibility to accommodate their special life situations, critics claim that the expansion in non-formal centers mirrors state bias toward urban migrant communities).14
On the margins of educational discourse and the human right to education, are learners who are non-mainstream, i.e., those with special abilities and correspondingly, a different set of entitlements. Though the country has endorsed several clauses towards inclusive education, children affected by visual, physical, multiple, intellectual and other disabilities are largely outside the ambit of 'Education for All' and its associated machinery. Presently, more than a million children only in the primary school age group15 require inclusive education. NGOs are the main screeners and providers of schooling for such children, and educators within mainstream set up have neither the skills to attend to such children nor the inclination for want of space, time and societal prejudices. These reasons also contribute to such children dropping out of educational institutions in cases where they have been able to seek enrolment. An empirical study conducted in twelve districts of the country underscored that in most cases, parents faced difficulties in convincing formal schools to enroll children. Yet, as the study indicates, one should not underestimate the learning abilities of special children since once within any system of education, such children demonstrated reasonably satisfactory academic performance.16
Nodding concerns over children with disabilities and their educational integration feature in policy documents, like National Policy of Education (2000) and Plan of Action for Education for All (2003). Refreshingly, there has been discernible progress since the drafting of the first National Plan of Action on Education, which had clearly distanced itself from attending to requirements of children with disabilities with the formal primary system, placing the entire responsibility on the Ministry of Social Welfare and its specialized schemes for the disabled. Unfortunately, professed objectives to provide such education and mainstreaming are not by and large reflected in setting special and definitive targets such as those on gender equity in education. Thus, the issue slips into the all encompassing, overarching targets of expanding enrollment, containing dropouts and enhancing the quality education. Though the recently formulated National Plan of Action 2(2003) proposes an inclusive approach towards primary education (Clause 7.77.iii), in actual project design and training, little or no attention is paid to the entitlements of special learners and the skills that teachers need to imbibe in order to deliver integrated education. The Committee on the Convention of the Rights of the Child, in its Concluding Observations to Bangladesh's 2003 country report, noted with particular concern that children with disabilities - with the exception of those with visual impairment - were outside the state sponsored education system in large numbers.17 In all probability, it is assumed that expanding schooling facilities and increasing infrastructure will automatically promote inclusive education. Redressing such inequities will require more focused government programs similar to those designed to bring girl children within the ambit of equity in access.
Student per capita costs in education also blatantly demonstrates inequities in education. Poverty assessments made by the World Bank also indicate that financing of education is disproportionately in favour of the urban middle classes as demonstrated by the escalation of public spending with the level of education.18 Government spending is skewed towards students in Cadet Colleges and public universities. While the former are highly specialized centers, combining academic and military training to meritorious students, the latter caters mainly to students in urban conglomerations. Five hundred children study every year in ten cadet colleges in the country, out of which one college is reserved for girls. While the Government spends approximately a thousand Taka per child in a primary school and about four thousand Taka on one child attending secondary school, it disburses more than sixty thousand Taka in educating a single student in a cadet college. In a public university, per capita student expenditure is over thirty six thousand Taka. By the same token, the cost per student in a government run Madrasa is almost four times in comparison to a non-governmental one.19 A decadal break up of per capita student expenditure, which reflects such extreme disparities, is presented in Chart IX.1.20

Chart IX.1: Student Per Capita Cost in Education

Quality Education
Though the country has witnessed remarkable quantitative progress in primary education, cross-national studies (Education Watch 2000, 2001) reveal that the quality of education imparted falls much below the desired threshold. Like other South Asian countries, the education system in Bangladesh is textbook centered and examination oriented, where accomplishments are confined to the acquisition of basic learning competencies. For instance, children attending five years of primary school in the country are supposed to achieve competencies in 53 areas of cognitive and non-cognitive learning that were framed by substantially revising the curriculum more than a decade ago. Over 2500 children who had completed five years of education at the primary level, in equally sampled government, non-government and private primary schools, were administered tests to evaluate 27 cognitive competencies. Less than two per cent of the studied sample was able to master the entire list, with performance rates better for urban children and in schools run by NGOs. This holds special relevance for government run schools where 61 per cent of children at the primary level are currently enrolled.21 Only 36 per cent of girls and boys achieved competencies in Bangla, while a small fraction of the sample population scored in English and Mathematics. The study also inferred that on average children had acquired competencies in sixteen areas; performed the lowest in skill based and problem solving areas while boys performed better in eighteen areas.22 Another area of concern also expressed by the Child Rights Committee is that compulsory primary schooling is limited to five years, though ideally this should be increased to eight years.23
Concerns over quality education spill over to secondary and higher secondary education as well. These are characterized by low achievement and output rates, as demonstrated by terminal examinations (See Chart IX.2. In this year, over 900 educational institutions failed to produce a single student who successfully competed in the Secondary School Certificate and Dakhil examinations. Correspondingly, only 179 institutions in the country achieved 100 per cent success rate.24 80 per cent of students from over 7000 educational institutions across the country, which included over two thousand schools, a thousand colleges and more than three and a half thousand madrasas, failed school leaving, vocational and degree examinations. 25

Chart IX.2: The Quantity and Quality of Education in Several Sectors

A comparison of data for the past two years demonstrates the low achievement rate of children in formal and scripture based education. It does not come as a surprise that as compared to achievement rates in the early stages of education, the performance rate is much higher at the tertiary education, though not without segregation. Those who have accrued benefits from quality education at initial stages and have been able to master the art of adapting to a competitive system of higher learning, score the best performance in honors and technical courses. In contrast, students who fall under the general stream of higher education demonstrate much lower performance.26
However, this does not necessarily denote that all higher education institutions deliver quality education. While the increase in private universities from sixteen institutions in 199827 to 52 in 200328may well have placed the demand for higher education to the private sector, there have been doubts about the quality of education that is being imparted. Relying heavily on teaching support from public universities, there has been an on-going exodus of faculties from public universities. The present government has proposed to regulate laws governing private universities (sanctioned in 1992) relating to areas of raising standards of education, making recruitment of full time staff and at least four departments mandatory. These also enumerate powers to vice chancellors so that private enterprise does not damage the quality of education imparted.29 Though a recent World Bank Education Sector review signals that enrolments have escalated in these institutions from nil to about 7.5 per cent of total enrolments in public universities in 1997 and encourages state minimalism in higher education,30 that the cost of education is primarily upon the students, unlike the subsidized public university system, makes such education affordable only to the affluent strata.
The declining success rates of female students in examinations, despite innovative programs like the Female Secondary Education Project, are equally troubling. In comparison with their performance in 1994, when this programme was in its initial stages, the success rate of girls has actually declined from a 69 per cent pass rate to a 37 per cent pass rate in 2001. This raises serious questions about the quality of education imparted. A recent review confirms that the Government continues to be preoccupied with concerns of access than improving quality.31

Political Economy of Education
The same textbooks that learners, especially first generation learners, cannot comprehend or recall in examinations also reflect a political culture that sets the stage for interventions in education. By no means are these concerns unique to Bangladesh; indeed the post colonial state in South Asia has for decades sought to infuse its own brand of nation building through education, which has fluctuated according to regimes. This is also obvious in the latest available National Education Policy (2000) of Bangladesh. As a guiding framework, this persuasively directs that education should be geared to, in order of priority, generate interest in moral, social and religious values, to protect territorial integrity and to provide inspiration for building a good citizenry. Other objectives outline instrumental concerns, which include inducing scientific temper and skilled workforce that is able to align globally. Though education has been linked with socio economic parameters and transmission of knowledge, skills and tradition are enmeshed; these don't convey any indication of education spurring social transformation. Education, in other words, will school learners to be law abiding, nationalistic, skill oriented and humane, than induce critical reflection.
The promotion of textbook centered learning, in turn allows for a single vantage point of national assimilation, subsuming all others. In other words, textbooks assume hegemonic importance in constructing social and national identities.32 Not surprisingly, parties in power have sought to retain state hegemony over education. Each regime has left its own imprint on education. Notions of national identity have fluctuated and historical 'truths' conveyed according to political hues (Hossain et al: 2002). Presently, school, college and madrasas students in Bangladesh are required to read the biographies of leading political activists of the present regime, for which several thousands of books were distributed across the country.33 At the primary level, the curriculum opens with national, prayer and folk songs. Notably at there is no corresponding mention of these under the primary education curriculum devised by the Board of Madrasa.34 Indeed the history that is taught in the madrasas primarily flows from religious scriptures; commemorations of the Liberation War and subsequent history are reportedly sidelined or not observed.35 There is also very little regard for accommodating local histories or those of ethnic and linguistic minorities.
Contemporary education policies and practices also perpetuate the status quo by the virtual neglect of women in the curriculum, which is reflected in multiple levels of control and dominance. For instance, though the Female Secondary School Program has greatly increased the enrolment of girls, it has not increased autonomy or control over life choices that girls should ideally have as rights holders. Both donors who promote such projects and parents, who encourage girls to avail of such education facilities, see the utility of education mostly in instrumental terms. While donors explicitly declare their key objectives to be delays in the age of marriage thereby, contributing to lower fertility rates,36 parents visualize education as contributing to the well being of daughters. Neither groups sees education as a means for enhancing decision making, for instance as expressed in the choice of marriage partners. (Kuennning and Amin, 2000) indicate in their study that while education for girls in encouraged, it does not correspondingly translate into their having the right to schooling. Thus, the popularity and success of this program is also accounted for in its complacency and unquestioning adherence to the status quo.37
While on the one hand the phenomenal expansion in education programs is largely ascribed to political stunts for survival and visibility, on the other, political parties have sought to use students as vehicles of larger political concerns and battles, generating an enormous amount of violence in the process. Though student leadership shaped the Liberation struggle, for the past decade, criminalisation of student politics has been an obvious trend in which every political party has had a stake. The student movement is fragmented along the demands of its political masters and mostly takes the shape of specially targeted vendettas. In this year, there were 100 incidents, both sporadic and prolonged, in eleven prominent public universities across the country, which left more than 700 injured and six dead. In more than 90 colleges across the country, over 800 students were injured and twelve killed as a consequence of armed violence.38 Protests centering on issues of education have been few and far between - mostly these reflect party feuds.
The same political maneuvers translate into centralized control over education, through which governance in education is viewed primarily as a means to perpetuate administrative control and disburse resources. The Education Policy 2000 has also been critiqued for conceiving of education primarily as a problem of access and management - in the light of the vast citizenry who are illiterate. A consortium of policy makers persuasively directed attention to the non-participatory process and underscored its lack of concern on issues of quality and outcomes of education.39 As a policy document, it neither envisaged a vision for the country, nor provided directions towards which society and learners could be steered. Furthermore, this overall lack of vision was complemented by the virtual absence of any framework that would measure progress.40
The present coalition government proposed drafting a new policy document a year ago,41 which among other things, expresses a disinclination to deal with the expansion in primary education up to grade eight in schools. The rationale behind drafting a new policy has been withheld from the public. Such initiatives clearly display the centralized control t the state has on education, including its immense politicization schemes (such as involving members of parliament and ministers from particular districts in education management committees).42 The entire administrative machinery that delivers education is distanced from the demands that ordinary people may have from education, and from the ideology that education activists may envisage for people at large (Ahmad 2003).
That public expenditure in education is declining is also a demonstration of advances and adjustments in the political economy of education, which has a high dependency on foreign loans. Education finance is mainly done through revenue and development budgets, the latter reflecting donor commitment in education. External assistance takes the form of foreign aid and loans, especially in primary and secondary education. For instance, in the second phase of the Primary Education Development Program (PEDPII), the country has taken loans totaling to $250 million from the Asian Development Bank43and the World Bank. In secondary education, the country is presently borrowing $120 million from the World Bank , in addition to funding from other sources. Though donor dependency is seen as more or less inevitable, two consequences are visible in the light of large scale funding in education. The nature of government NGO collaborations has changed, and a dichotomy exists at least in basic education. Previously, NGOs like BRAC demonstrated large-scale innovative models in education, but more recently, several NGOs have mushroomed seeking government funding rather than producing innovative pedagogy. While on the one hand, donor assistance demanded that NGO s partner the Government, the nature of collaborations are also reported to be ritualistic and patronage based. An analysis of Hard to Reach Children's Programs in Bangladesh not only indicates the multiple meanings that such collaborations imply, but also signals scaling of 'briefcase' NGOs which government fails to monitor, and issues of quality education taking a backseat in such negotiations.44
The second spillover of this situation has been rising corruption in the education sector. These extend from sub-contracting teaching duties, showing fake enrolment to procure funds, bribing for staff recruitment and financial mismanagement within the Department of Education. A very obvious outcome of this is also seen in the leakage of public examination papers, which are then sold large-scale. In year, media reports exposed leakages in the Bangladesh Civil Services examination papers, which were followed later in the year by leakages in examinations for Co-operative Officers.45 This year the Prime Minister's office admitted large-scale funds mismanagement in education projects, especially in the women's stipends program. The Total Literacy Movement was also disbanded in August 2003 on grounds of corruption.46 Two months later, the Education Minister in an official statement admitted corruption and wastage of funds were impeding the management of education.47 In 2002, Transparency International Bangladesh placed education as the third most corrupt sector, following law enforcement agencies and local government.48 Within a year, corruption in education had scaled the ladder to claim second only to law enforcement agencies. A database formulated from news reporting and a sample of investigated cases further reveal that the Government had incurred losses of at least 576.5 million. This year, in monetary terms, over 74 million was lost only on account of corruption confined within the education department.49

Conclusion
Education is largely conceived of and promoted as a system of schooling that has placed claimants to this right and its implementers in virtual isolation from one another. Learners mainly read books that have no relevance to their lives and teachers impart instructions, which they sometimes do not even comprehend. Large-scale increases in access demonstrate that there is a demand for education among the rural and the urban poor in Bangladesh. It is presumed that rights to education are naturally propelled by bringing in more and more learners under varying levels of schooling. The system as such perpetuates enclaves of citizenship, where a select few are 'more' of a citizens than others. Even when children avail of state aided education; there is little light at the end of the tunnel since employment opportunities that formal education generates are few and far between. This is compounded by the fact that there has been little emphasis on vocational training and present donor mandates encourage minimal state involvement.
Like child learners across the country, adults are also citizens to varying degrees. Those who constitute the rural and urban poor have little autonomy over life choices except in cases where NGOs have stepped forward with conscientisation programmes. Needless to say, the state system encourages the doling out of education services, and communities have very little say in such a scheme of things, let alone the ability to contest why teachers are absent from schools or why the usual hours of school education are inadequate for learning. Instead, they compromise and incur additional expenses through private tuitions, which are endemic to the system across all levels.
Civil society forums have propelled the rights discourse in education to center stage. Academics and activists have forged alliances to persuasively articulate that there is a right to education, which correspondingly demands accountability. What is most impressive about advocacy efforts is not only the spontaneity with which alliances are forged (such as the Campaign for Popular Education), but also the fact that such endeavors are not limited to petitioning and sporadic protests. These are engagements in long-term negotiations with state and private enterprise in the country. One hopes that such endeavours will extend to dialogues with impoverished communities, in order to prevent agency from slipping away in the conversion of rights to goals, thereby making such goals seem like distant realities.

* Malini Sur is associated with the South Asia Programme of the Social Science Research Council (New York).

Notes

Acknowledgements: Dr. Hameeda Hossain for guidance, ASK research, Documentation units for excellent research support and CAMPE for access to library facilities.