The Right to Education

Anant Anand Gupta — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 13:56:06 +0000

A few days ago I joined as JBoss Consultant in Red Hat India Pvt. Ltd. in Delhi… The job is going fine and the work place is great… but I have to travel from Gurgaon to Delhi as I do not have any plans yet to shift to any place near by.

Today when I was going to office on my Bajaj Discover bike, on my route, I had to stop at a traffic signal after around one km from Mehrauli before turning right towards Nehru Place. It was a long line of vehicles… a few hundred meters long traffic jam. In the car on my right hand side the window glass was down as it is no longer chilling winter in Delhi and two persons sitting inside were engaged in a serious conversation… having nothing to do, I also started to listen their debate which happened to be about making primary education compulsary for every one. To remind you there was a bill passed in parliament which is about including right to education (upto primary education) in the basic human rights of indian citizens. This bill required an amendment to the constitution and was passed in 2008. The intense discussion and debate was going on about the quality of education and effect on private schools and enforcement of the bill.

A little 8-10 year old girl having a bundle of red and white roses in her hand appeared and plead to the persons in the car to buy one rose. They tried to ignore her and then asked her to go and ultimately scolded her. One of them even called her as “Bastard Beggar” and the girl peacefully listening tried her best to pitch for her cheap beautiful rose flowers. She told them to look at the beautiful flowers and asked them to buy one. She said if they take one beautiful flower and put that on their office table, it will make their day beautiful because whenever they will look at the flower they will feel the beauty of it and feel happy from inside. The persons laughed at her logic and told her not to waste their time (I think the poor kid was wasting her own time not of those morons). The girl seemed to be very calm and contained and kept trying her best to sell one rose.

At last one of the persons called her as “Bastard Beggars wasting their time and spoiling their day by starting in morning”. On calling her as “Beggar”, the little girl seemed to be hurt and she replied back. She rebuked them not to call her beggar.

“Aye Saab… Bhikhari bolne ki jaroorat nahi hai… kama kar khate hain… subah subah uth ke gulaab tyyar karna aur aise ghoom ghoom ke bechna… aapko kya maloom…. nahi lena to na sahi… par main koi bhikhari nahi hu business man hu”

(O Sir… No need to call me beggar… I earn by working… what do you know about rising early and preparing roses and selling them wandering like this… if you dont have to buy no one can force you… but I am a business man, not a beggar)

And then she moved on to find another customer…

I started thinking about the contrast we are living in… One side we talk about Right to Education and making primary education free for all and the other hand we have kids forced to work because of poor economic condition. One side we vow to fight child labor and on the other hand we close our eyes to the kid working as house servant in our own or some relative’s or neighbour’s house. What can we do to provide education for all? How can we brighten each child’s face? How can we help the struggling majority population of our country?

As a software engineer I never cared for such things except few small monetary contributions to relief funds or charities which would have spent on saturday night parties otherwise. But gradually it has dawned on me that each of us can make some difference and collectively it will be a big difference.

After joining Red Hat, I feel proud to be part of the free software endeavor that enables poor man to own and use a computer. I feel that I can make some difference to our country while enjoying the work I do as my profession. I learnt that by using more and more free software and supporting the companies that develop it, we can make the software cheaper.

I find that the $20 (Rs. 1000) laptop mission of Govt. of India has far reaching effects. However it would be just a computing device with small RAM and hard disk with nothing much to do, it will allow the users to connect to internet and use it. The web based free services such as Google Documents will enable people to use word processor, spreadsheets, presentations and more without spending any money and also allow them to store them online and hence the users of $20 laptop will not have to worry about the memory and storage. The free wireless internet proposed by govt. of USA will allow poor people to use the resources on the world wide web. If something similar happens in India, it will bring a revolution. The zeal to rise will bring more SLUMDOGs forward. All we need to do is to make sure that we do not miss our part of work… we must contribute in what so ever way we can…

I was still lost in my thoughts when I heard the horn of the car behind me buzzing me. I saw the car in right of me going in front of me. On its back it was written: DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Anant Anand Gupta » India

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The Right to Education