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PROF. M. RAMADASS Thank you for the opportunity given to me to speak on this Bill moved by Shri Sudhakar Reddy. This Bill, as the earlier speaker was commenting, is intended to ensure free and compulsory education to children in the age group of 6-14.  This Bill seeks to insert a new article 45 (a) in the Indian Constitution.  Article 45 states:

“The State shall endeavour to provide within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of 14 years. ”   MR. CHAIRMAN : Are you reading from the Constitution?
PROF. M. RAMADASS : Yes, Sir. Shri Reddy wants to insert one more section after 45 in the form of 45 (a).
MR. CHAIRMAN: Are you reading the Directive Principles of the State Policy?
PROF. M. RAMADASS : Yes, Sir. According to his contention, to ensure free and compulsory education compulsory feeding of the children or the nutritional support is a desideratum or is a pre-condition. 
I fully agree that nutrition to the children at the early age is an imperative need in view of the fact that the social set up in which we live today has got a lot of disparities and dichotomies which produce vast inequalities in the endowment of food or nutrition to the people.  Especially, if you see in the Indian context, we have rural children and urban children.  In the case of rural areas we have more deprived sections of children.  Within the rural areas we have caste-wise disparities.  We have gender disparities.  We have Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribe and OBC children and all these children have different kinds of disabilities.  Their parents are poor.  Most of them live below poverty line.  Most of them remain unemployed or under-employed or even disguisedly unemployed.  The purchasing power in the hands of this section of people is very low and, therefore, they are unable to feed their children properly.  They think that every child born is an asset to them because after ten or eleven years each child can get more to the assets or the income of the family rather than going to the school and remaining in the school without earning.  That is why the incidence of child labour in India is increasing. Each child is expected to supplement the poor or the lower income of the family[R47] .

MR. CHAIRMAN : The time allotted for discussing this Bill is over.  Ten more hon. Members want to speak on this Bill.  If the House agrees, the time for discussion may be extended by one hour.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Yes.

PROF. M. RAMADASS : The examination system that we have encourages only rote-based and memory-based learning which is not at all interesting.  Students study only for the purpose of examination.  Such students when they reach their adolescence are of no use to this country.  A student may write very well about the Battle of Panipat.  He may not miss even a word.  He may write from the first sentence to the last sentence.  But when we ask him about the reasons for that battle, he would not be able to say anything.  But in the examination he gets ten out of ten.  A student who gets 100 per cent in mathematics is not able to say what is Parliament.  He does not know who is the President of this country.  So, the general knowledge and the IQ is very low.  That means skills are not developed.  Their thinking power is not developed. Therefore, examination system must be reoriented in such a way that you are able to improve the skills of the people. I would only wish that in these days of increased use of Information Technology, we must bring in Information Technology at the primary school level itself so that the students, after seeing the computers, are attracted towards the schools and remain there.  We should bring in modern methods of teaching.  I think I am contradicting myself because when there is no school, how can one bring in Information Technology and other modern methods? But it is my wishful thinking that if you want to promote and provide free and compulsory education and if you want to achieve universal education, this may be probably one of the important inputs that we need. We must introduce some kind of vocational education at the lower level and try to give the students overall knowledge[r53] .