Discrimination in schools amounts to corporal punishment: NAC

Segregation of students on basis of religion or caste, calling them by their caste, religion and taunts from teacher of not being fit for education would amount to corporal punishment under the new definition of discrimination suggested by Sonia Gandhi headed National Advisory Council to the government. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jan 29, 2013, 19:20:38 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Segregation of students on basis of religion or caste, calling them by their caste, religion or parental occupation and taunts from teacher of not being fit for education would amount to corporal punishment under the new definition of discrimination suggested by Sonia Gandhi headed National Advisory Council to the government.

The NAC on Monday asked the HRD ministry to come out with regulations under the watershed Right To Education (RTE) Act on corporal punishment with specifics on ways to end discrimination against students of weaker sections --- Scheduled Castes and Tribes, Minorities and Disabled --- in schools.

“The NAC has recommended a paradigm shift to deal with discrimination which has been weakly mentioned in the RTE Act,” said a NAC member, who was not willing to be quoted.

The recommendations comes in wakes of reports of children from weaker sections being segregated in government across in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and made to eat mid-day meal separately.

There have also been instances where children from disadvantaged sections were not allowed to play and use toilets in schools.

Even in private schools in Delhi, discrimination is reported against children admitted under 25% seats reserved for economically weaker sections.

The NAC wants course correction and has asked the government to bring an amendment in the RTE Act to explicitly state that discrimination against children belonging to “disadvantaged” groups would be a punishable offence.

It also has listed types of discrimination such as segregation or to make students clean classrooms specifically mentioned in the rules to prevent any inaction by school authorities in case of complaint especially by children getting admission under reservation prescribed in the RTE Act.

“Bringing social attitudes and prejudices of the community into the schools by using belittling remarks against a specific social group or gender or ability/disability,” should also be treated as discrimination in schools, the NAC has said.

The council on Monday was also of the view that the government should be asked immediately to implement the recommendation without waiting for amendments to the RTE law, which could take some time.

It also wanted that the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights should be designated as the national body to monitor enforcement of provisions against corporal punishment including discrimination.

The NAC has also asked the government to come up with a policy for small and marginal farmers to set up cooperatives to compete in market with bigger farmers when Foreign Direct Investment in multi-brand retails becomes a reality.

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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