MARGINALIZATION UNDER ARTICLE 21-A OF INDIAN CONSTITUTION
BY: Adv. Meenu Padha/ Tavleen Kaur
We are committed to ensuring that all children, regardless of gender or social status, have access to education." An education that prepares them to become responsible and active citizens of India by providing them with the necessary skills, knowledge, values, and attitudes." (Former Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh).
According to Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everybody has the right to be educated .The elementary and fundamental levels of education must be free. It is required that all children receive an elementary education. Technical and professional education must be widely accessible, and all people must have equal access to higher education based only on merit. Education is a fundamental human right. It is sin qua non to human advancement, and a nation can only develop when its citizens do as well.
The Indian Constitution obligates the government to give citizens access to education. The right to education is incorporated in the right to life enshrined in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees the right to live with dignity, and it is education that brings forth a human's dignity. Individuals cannot be assured of their dignity until their personalities are cultivated, and the only way to do so is via education. Unjust social, economic, and power dynamics have a significant impact on children's access to school and engagement in the learning process. This is demonstrated by the disparities in educational attainment and access between various social and economic groups in India, due to which marginalised children are hindered from accessing to their fundamental right. It is said that ‘mother and that father are enemies, who do not give education to their children’.
Since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to education has been universally recognised and enshrined in numerous international conventions, treaties, constitutions, and development plans.
The most crucial part of human growth is education. Education is critical to the development of a good society; it also promotes good governance and transparency in a state.
India has made commendable strides toward development in its sixty-year history. It is widely acknowledged that education contributes to a country 's progress. However, because India is a land of contradictions, despite overall progress, the education system has been plagued by vicious ills such as unemployable graduates, aimless policy-making, poor performance, exclusionary, discriminating against the poor, marginalised, and especially girls. Marginalization is the common phenomena of all the societies in the world. Every society has some form of marginality. However, the fundamental causes of marginalization differ from one society to the next. In Indian society, the division of population based on birth as per the preambles of the Varna system became the primary source of marginalisation.
Marginalization is a multifaceted process that denies opportunities and outcomes to those and quot; living on the margins" while increasing opportunities and outcomes for those "at the centre. " In many societies around the world, caste and class prejudices exclude many communities and impede their effective participation in economic and social development. A state and #39;s growth and development are primarily determined by the quality of education provided to its citizens. The right to education implies that these individuals have the ability to speak up and take action. The right to education for all is one of the most pressing development issues confronting the international and national communities today. In certain circumstances, the right exists alongside the expectation that the user would pay for it, undercutting the entire notion of a right. On the other hand, while the right exists in theory, there is no capacity to implement it in practise.Under British rule, the Indian education system was primarily based on the truancy model. This should have changed after independence, but it did not for a variety of reasons. It is clear that the system has failed to level Indian society and has actually contributed to the widening of the chasm between the haves and the have-nots. The state is facing the greatest challenge in the form of poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and unemployment, all of which point to the urgent need to address these issues through the tool of education.
Individuals cannot be assured of human dignity unless their personalities are developed, and the only way to do so is through education. The Constitutional Amendment Act of 1976 included "Education" in the Concurrent List of the VII Schedule of the Indian Constitution, allowing the Union Government to pass legislation on the subject. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, which was enacted by the Indian Parliament on August 4, 2009, went into effect on April 1, 2010.The Act guarantees education for all children aged 6 to 14. The question is whether the government achieved its goal by passing the Right to Education Act or whether it failed to provide the right to education. For the Right to Education Act to be successful, marginalised children must be socially as well as physically included in schools. Being reminded of one's status as a member of an underprivileged group may cause cognitive difficulties and impair performance. As a result, both parents and children must change their mindsets. India, like a tree with strong roots, has educational policies that, if implemented, can nurture and empower her children, her future.
Our children, and our nation, will fly only when all guardians of children recognise that education is the wings to tomorrow. The phrase " marginalisation 1 " describes people or groups who exist on the periphery of society. Another name for it is social exclusion. Due to their suspension between social classes or cultural groupings without being fully assimilated, their situations may be historical or cultural. In the post-colonial, postmodern, and world that is primarily governed by market forces, the phrase has multiple meanings and subtlety. In cultural anthropology, ethnic groups and their socioeconomic circumstances are investigated in relation to marginalisation.
At one level, it can take many different shapes, such as class, caste, gender, community, and so forth, while at a higher level, it can take the form of groups who experience social and economic sufferings. These groups may still be disenfranchised at numerous levels in a country like India, which has seen great socio-political transformations both before and after independence. Marginalization is a multifaceted process that limits chances and outcomes to those "dwelling on the periphery" while increasing opportunities and outcomes for those "at the centre." The EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010: Reaching the Marginalized defines marginalisation as "a form of acute and chronic disadvantage rooted in underlying.
The significance of education in a country's development is demonstrated by the current study. In India, corruption in the educational system is pervasive and needs to be eradicated from the ground up. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act of 2009 is a significant step in guaranteeing the right to education for kids aged 6 to 14. According to this Act, it is now everyone's obligation, including the government, parents, and instructors, to educate the children. What about children who are below six and above fourteen For families with lower incomes, there are no provisions in higher education. As a result, more liberal education and scholarship loans with less procedural requirements should be made available. With free education, the emphasis should be on providing high-quality education, and exploitation in the workplace should be eliminated. The greatest method to eliminate teacher harassment is through recruitment, which should begin as soon as feasible. Because money are essential to the success of any enterprise, the problem of a lack of funds should be addressed in the expansion of education. The primary goal of education should be to eliminate unemployment in India.Although it cannot be stated that nothing is being done to
1 https://www.liberties.eu/en/stories/marginalization-and-being-marginalized/43767 realise the right to education in India, more must be done. The 86th Amendment Act neglected to acknowledge the importance of the child's early years for both their physical and mental development. It is a critical stage in a child's physical and mental development.
Consequently, here are some suggestions:
The right to education should include the right to quality education.
Article 21-A of the Constitution and the RTE Act of 2009 should be promptly revised to include children from 3 to 5 years old as having fundamental rights to education.
There is an urgent need to alter Article 21A of the Indian constitution and the RTE Act, 2009 to include four more years, from 9th to 12th grade, in free and compulsory education.
Free and compulsory education should be offered for children from 3 to 18 years.
The optimum age for the right to free and compulsory education should be the same as the age of majority, the right to work, and the right to marry, among other things.
In unaided private schools, a school management committee should be established to protect children from weaker sections and disadvantaged groups.
Those parents who fail to enrol their child in a school for elementary education should be barred from receiving all government benefits such as ration cards, water, electricity, LPG, job cards, and so on.
It is important to inform primary schools about the provisions provided for 25% of seats to go to the economically, socially, and educationally disadvantaged groups of children in society, as well as the responsibilities of school governing committees in this respect.
Primary education problems for marginalised students are alarming. One of the biggest gaps in the system is the lack of a thorough conversation with the population to understand how they view education and the place of the child in the family. The system continues to be heavily focused on administrative and policy planning functions. This is the reason why the primary education system is currently being reorganised in a number of developing nations, either to better suit the social, economic, and cultural circumstances of the students and their community, or simply to develop it using a more " People Centered Approach." Primary health centres and sub-centers need to participate more in promoting health programmes for the less fortunate areas of the communities, especially for children.
The need of the hour is for awareness training programmes to inform parents and guardians of children about the benefits of education in reducing poverty and equipping them with information and skills for social and economic improvement. By enhancing public-private partnerships with the municipal corporation, quality education can be increased. The issue of a lack of resources, both financial and human, will always be a major source of worry. What needs to be considered is developing an organisation that can function with very limited resources and that transforms obstacles (such as a lack of space) into possibilities (such as asking the communities to offer spaces). Together, philanthropists, NGOs, and the municipal government can raise the standard of instruction in a city's public schools. The ability of NGOs to drive systemic change by collaborating with the public school system should be emphasised. Building the capacity of instructional leaders and teacher supervisors, supporting teacher training, developing curriculum and pedagogical practices, assessing student-teacher interactions, remedial education programmes, and school management through school adoption should all be included in the interventions. The marginalised children must not only be physically included in schools but also socially integrated for the Right to Education to be successful. Reminding someone that they are a member of a disadvantaged group may cause cognitive difficulties and impair performance. Consequently, it is necessary to alter both parents' and kids' mentalities. Succinctly, it can be said that it is only the light of education that can remove the darkness of ignorance from a person's life and make them a responsible and efficient citizen, which is the necessity of the day for India's development and advancement.
Author : Adv.Meenu Padha (Advocate J&K High Court ) can be reached at meenupadha571@gmail.com and Tavleen Kaur (Student B.A. Llb Criminal Law (Hons.) can be reached at tavleenkaur99@icloud.com
(The Views Expressed by the Authors in the article are those of their own and are no way responsible for any liability arising out from their contents. Hence the views of the Authors do not represent the organisation)
