RTE public hearing gives new hope to villagers

As a bunch of enthusistic villagers gathered at a courtyard in Badarpur Khada on Tuesday evening under a dimly lit shade, not many could believe that the residents of this 250-year-old village still live in the dark ages, literally. Just 35 km north-east of the Supreme Court, this village still doesn’t have electricity connection.

Updated on: Sep 8, 2010, 02:28:20 IST

PTI | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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As a bunch of enthusistic villagers gathered at a courtyard in Badarpur Khada on Tuesday evening under a dimly lit shade, not many could believe that the residents of this 250-year-old village still live in the dark ages, literally. Just 35 km north-east of the Supreme Court, this village still doesn’t have electricity connection.

What’s more, the children of the village don’t have a school to go or a dispensary to access healthcare facilities. “I hope things will change soon,” said Supreme Court judge Mukundam K. Sharma, who spent an hour listening to the the villagers’ grievances at a public hearing on implementation of Right To Education Act (RTE).

Kailash Satyarathi of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) said 150 public hearings are being conducted across the country to find whether the RTE Act is actually implemented or not. “We are told that the law is only on paper,” he said, while explaining that the aim to take the Supreme Court judges to people was to make them see the ground situation.

Once the public hearings will get over by the end of September, the BBA will be filing a petition on non-implementation of RTE in the apex court. “The meeting showed that the law has not even reached Delhi. The government’s tall claims about RTE success are a hogwash,” Satyarathi said. The nearest primary school at Badarpur Khadar is 4 km away and that too in Uttar Pradesh.

“When we take our children for admission, the school asks for residence proof certificate, saying that we are inhabitants of Uttar Pradesh,” said Asgar Ali, a villager. So many children prefer to look after the cattle instead of going to school. “Char meel ja kar padhna namumkin hai (It is impossible to travel so much every day.

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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