A new fund for corporate and individuals to invest in education

Corporate and private individuals could invest in public school education with the government providing for a matching contribution.

Updated on: Sep 19, 2011, 19:21:19 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Corporate and private individuals could invest in public school education with the government providing for a matching contribution.

The idea born during discussions on the 12th five year plan and being considered by the government would mean setting up of an independent education fund to receive funds from industry, philanthropy and other sources. The government will provide equal amount of money received from private sector.

It has been proposed that the fund will be managed by a board having representatives from the government and non-government sectors. “Proposals received would be subject to independent evaluation and agencies through an open and transparent system,” the minutes of the plan panel’s sub-group on elementary education said.

The new fund would primarily work for innovation in school education with an aim to develop concept and implement them in different parts of the country as per local requirements. The money could also be utilized for effective monitoring of Sarva Siksha Abhiyan.

Dr Rukmini Banerjee of NGO Pratham said that there is no systematic or enduring mechanism for the civil society organizations to contribute towards quality education and the partnerships have been relatively “short term and ad-hoc”.

“The Right to Education (RTE) provides an opportunity for evolving new partnerships,” she said. The watershed law provides for innovation fund to improve quality of education around the country especially 150 educationally backward districts. “There should be revision of guidelines to utilize expertise in the private sector,” she said.

Another educationist Vinod Raina emphasized on the need to institutionalise partnerships with NGOs and suggested setting up a Council for People’s Parternship with representation from the government and the civil society to implement programmes on the ground to be provided by the government.

After the detailed discussion on the new fund, the HRD ministry has set up a task force to work on the framework of the institutionalized partnership with the civil society group and corporate sector.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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