Decentralisation of Education

Vinod Raina

If every habitation had its own school, education would be completely
decentralized. But providing free and compulsory elementary education
is the duty of the state, as the Indian constitution decrees, so how
can each habitation have its own school, where would it find
resources to run its schools? It is the state that must provide
schools, and since the state traditionally governs through
bureaucracy, centralisation is inherent in its functioning. Except of
course if the functioning of the state and the notion of development
are different.

From its inception, the Indian state was confronted by two different
visions of reconstruction; the Gandhian project of reviving the
village economy as the basis of development, and the Nehruvian plan
of prosperity through rapid industrialisation. Gandhi put his views
together as early as 1909 in Hind Swaraj. Many years later, on the
threshold of India's independence (October 5, 1945), Gandhi wrote a
letter to Nehru in which he outlined his dream of free India. "I
believe that, if India is to achieve true freedom, and through India
the world as well, then sooner or later we will have to live in
villages - in huts not in palaces. A few billion people can never
live happily and peaceably in cities and palaces...My villages exist
today in my imagination.... The villager in this imagined village
will not be apathetic.... He will not lead his life like an animal in
a squalid dark room. Men and women will live freely and be prepared
to face the whole world. The village will not know cholera, plague or
smallpox. No one will live indolently, nor luxuriously. After all
this, I can think of many things, which will have to be produced on a
large scale. Maybe there will be railways, so also post and
telegraph. What it will have and what it will not, I do not know. Nor
do I care. If I can maintain the essence, the rest will mean free
facility to come and settle. And if I leave the essence, I leave
everything". One of the elements critical to realising such a dream
was Gandhi's notion of basic education( nai talim).

`God forbid that India should ever take to industrialisation in the
manner of the West', he observed. `The economic imperialism of a
single tiny island kingdom (England) is today keeping the world in
chains. If an entire nation of 300 million (nearly a billion today)
took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare
like locusts'. He had earlier in 1940 already expresses his
misgivings regarding centralisation thus, `Nehru wants
industrialisation because he thinks that if it were socialised, it
would be free from the evils of capitalism. My own view is that the
evils are inherent in industrialism and no amount of socialisation
can eradicate them … I do visualise electricity, shipbuilding,
ironworks, machine-making and the like existing side by side with
village crafts. But … I do not share the socialist belief that
centralisation of production of the necessities of life will conduce
to the common welfare'. The appeal of Gandhi lay in his programme of
revitalising village communities and craft production by employing
simple technologies to provide jobs and a decent livelihood to a
predominantly rural population. The liberation that Gandhi promised
was not merely an economic independence; it was, most profoundly, an
assurance that the cultural traditions of the Indian peasantry would
reign ascendant. Local culture and methods of production were at the
heart of his vision of a supportive basic education. Decentralised
development therefore was deeply integrated with a supportive school
education system in Gandhi's approach.

Gandhi's vision struck no chords in the mind of Jawaharlal Nehru, who
replied rather brusquely to Gandhi through a letter on 9 October
1945: `It is many years since I read Hind Swaraj and I have only a
vague picture in my mind. But even when I read it twenty or more
years ago it seemed to me completely unreal ... A village, normally
speaking, is backward intellectually and culturally and no progress
can be made from a backward environment'. Having dismissed Gandhi's
plea thus, Nehru's own ambivalence was to surface only a few years
later when he talked of the evil of centralized, gigantic and mega
projects.

The idea here is not to pursue particular positions in what is a
familiar historical debate regarding India's development, but to
highlight the point that exploring the question of decentralisation
of education is superficial without delving into its political and
developmental linkages. Descriptive accounts about various
governmental initiatives regarding decentralisation in education
already exist[1]. Instead of repeating them, this paper would examine
recent efforts at educational decentralisation in India with
reference to the tense relationship of the state and the market,
which has overtaken the world through the globalised neo-liberal
economic regime. It is of particular interest because the decade of
Education for All, beginning from 1990 has coincided with such a
regime in many countries of the world, including India.

During this decade, far-reaching changes have taken place in
education in most countries. These changes have included shifts away
from state control towards privatisation and decentralisation.
However these terms have different interpretations in different
contexts, which necessitates locating them within a general framework
involving the state, market and the community. Following Dale[2], we
could argue that for most of the countries `education system, like
all state organisations, could not avoid addressing the three central
problems confronting the state in capitalist societies; i) supporting
the capital accumulation process, ii) guaranteeing a context for its
continued expansion, and iii) legitimating the capitalist mode of
accumulation, including the state's own part in it, especially
education'. These core problems set limits to state actions, though
it does not mean that there wouldn't be variations in the manner
different states seek solutions. Applied to India where education is
a concurrent subject, we can explore the different ways each state
government has tried its solutions, restricted however by the general
framework.

Education has been affected both directly and indirectly by the
changes in the global economy in the recent past. The direct impact
is seen clearly in developing countries whose education systems have
been shaped increasingly by the lending policies of the World Bank
and the demands of structural adjustment, particularly the shrinking
of the public sector and the expansion of the private, that
organisations like the IMF make conditions of support. More indirect
effects are seen in these advanced countries that have been coping
with the decline of the welfare-state to the point where public
funding of services like education seems no longer feasible at
previous levels.

In order to better understand the impacts of these changes in a
developing country like India, the reaction to them from advanced
countries is relevant and a pointer to future course of events. From
advanced countries we may discern a loss of some activities of the
state to supranational bodies as we go upwards in the education
ladder, and a loss of others to sub-national or non-state bodies
downwards towards elementary education. We therefore see similar
moves towards various forms of privatisation and decentralisation of
education in many countries of the world in recent years. We might
therefore say that while education remains a public issue, in common
with many state activities, its coordination has ceased to be the
sole preserve of the state or government. Instead it has become
coordinated through a range of forms of governance, among which
decentralisation and privatisation figure prominently. Mass Literacy
Campaigns, DPEP, Lok Jumbish Project etc provide examples of such
newer forms of governance during the EFA decade, as we shall
presently argue.

In focusing on the governance of education it must be distinguished
as to what is involved in the governance of education, and how and by
whom these activities are carried out. It is generally believed and
taken for granted that running education was a single activity and
that it is carried out by the state. We may however distinguish three
distinct and separable activities that together constitute what is
generally referred to as `state intervention'2 They are how it is
funded, how it is delivered, and how it is regulated or controlled.
We may argue that it is not necessary for the state to carry out all
these activities, while remaining in overall control of education.
These functions have to be coordinated and generally three major
institutions of social coordination can be distinguished for the
purpose. The state and the market are the two key institutions of
social coordination. The third, community, is always a residual
category to the state and market and is conceptualised differently
according to the conception of the state and market. It should be
noted that the `traditional' assumption has been that all the
activities involved in the coordination of education were carried out
by the state. However, a moment's reflection should suffice to show
that the state has never done all these things alone; the market and
especially the community have been indispensable to the operation of
education systems. The difference now is that the areas of their
involvement have been greatly expanded and formalised as the area of
direct state involvement is contracting. The governance of education
can therefore be seen as a three by three table involving the state,
market and the community on one side and funding, delivery and
regulation on the other. It then provides a framework to locate
various activities and the actors in education, in particular to make
sense of various forms of decentralisation and their relative merits.
The table demonstrates the inadequacy of a simple `public-
private/community' distinction and shows how confusing that
distinction can be. Only if and when the funding, regulation, and
provision were all carried out by the state alone could we speak of
a `public' system. Only if and when they were carried out by `non-
state' bodies could we speak of a `private/community' or
decentralised system, even then `private' would have to be
interpreted as `non-state'. The table therefore points out to the
complexity of the centralized/decentralised debate and the dangers of
oversimplified arguments about `decentralised', `private'
and `community' forms of education. We need not only ask what
activities are being decentralised or handed over to the market or
community, but what this means. And to do that, we need to look more
closely at the complexities in the relationships between governance
activities and coordinating institutions; in particular at the
governance activities for it is they which ultimately shape and
invest the coordinating institutions with specific purposes.

Funding: Even though the state is responsible for `free and
compulsory education till age 14' as per the Constitution, a cursory
glance at the funding mechanisms of schools should convince us that
the actual situation is far more complex. In actual terms, funding
can be made up of direct state funding, fee payments, of community or
parent-raised funds, of international funds for education –
whether `public' (mediated through state/and or voluntary bodies)
or `private' provided by transnational sources or by
international `non-profit' organisations, or, of course, by any
combination of these sources and types of funding. Thus apart from
the majority of state controlled government schools in the country,
we have the phenomenon of panchayat schools, unaided private schools,
aided private schools, mission and convent schools mostly church-
funded, other religious-bodies funded schools like madrassas and RSS
schools, and schools partially funded by corporate houses, in each
case charging from moderate to heavy fees. The current regime of
economic liberalisation is shrouded in the ideology of `public
choice' so that parents may be free to choose from an open market the
best education for their children, and naturally pay for it. Which
opens avenues for non-state funding of education, resulting in
a `decentralised' mode of functioning benefiting the middle classes,
and in the process widening the caste and class disparities.

Regulation: It is the ultimate ability of the state to determine
policy and sanctions through law that shapes the whole area of
regulation. Together with funding, regulation provides the framework
within which provision and delivery is made. Funding and regulation
combine in different ways to create the context for educational
policy, delivery and practice. However as Prosser[3] points out, the
tendency towards greater marketisation and privatisation of education
seems to be seen by policy makers as the resolution of technical
issues of economic principle which are assumed to be similar in any
market-oriented economy, so neglecting the particular constraints of
legal and political culture. The tendency is to bracket out such
cultural factors in favour of an `acultural form of rational
behaviour'. This emphasises the crucial point that markets are in no
sense `natural' institutions, but are always shaped by patterns of
state regulation. In looking at what might shape education markets
therefore, it is essential to pay close attention to the regulations
that frame the attempted move towards them. This
includes `deregulation', the removal of existing regulations that are
perceived to act as barriers to greater consumer choice of schools,
and all that it is assumed will flow from it in the way of
responsiveness, efficiency and community participation. Such
policies, seemingly promoting `decentralisation' typically seek to
remove bureaucratic/democratic controls and minimise the areas over
which professionals have discretion.

Another aspect of regulation of interest here concerns the use of law
in structuring social, political, cultural and economic life, which
we may call juridification. The effect of juridification has been to
remove particular, often politically contentious, issues from the
political agenda, making them subject to legal and not political
dispute. This applies in the field of education not only to issues
like National Curricula, but to teachers' training, their conditions
of service, and the basis on which the schools are to run. Later we
shall examine such juridification in relation to recent policies
regarding Minimum Levels of Learning (MLL's), Education Guarantee
Schemes, Shiksha Karmis (para-teachers) etc.

Delivery: Provision and delivery are undoubtedly shaped by changes in
funding and regulation. A major factor here is the manner in which
provision relates to the question of entitlement. Choice-based
policies seek to make products and services available to consumers,
even if that means they ate not available to everyone, while
entitlement-based policies place the emphasis on ensuring the widest
possible distribution of a basic minimum, even if that means
curtailing the choice for some. The distinction when applied to
education concerns that between consumers and citizens. In a system
of education designed for citizens, an attempt is made through the
mechanisms of funding and regulation to ensure that everyone has
access to a sound education, something missing in India as yet. For
consumers the principle on which education is provided is that of
ability to pay. For citizens education is provided as a universal
entitlement – universalisation entails treating all members of the
society on the same basis. In practice, as has been the experience in
India and other countries, however, states' definitions of the
population entitled to benefit from universally provided education
does not include every child, but is typically based on caste, class
and gender. Consequently, in India at least, there has been greater
stress in recent years on delivery mechanisms focussed on
the `educationally deprived', but it needs to be analysed as to how
decentralised these state initiatives have really been.

Earlier attempts at decentralisation

Having abandoned the Gandhian approach to development in general and
basic education in particular, the resurgent Republic of India, in
1950, however acknowledged his vision through Article 40 of the
Constitution of India which states that `the State shall take steps
to organise village panchayats and endow them with such powers and
authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of
self-government'. The launching of the Community Development
Programme in 1952, which led to the creation of development blocks,
was an attempt towards decentralised planning. But it soon became
apparent that the programme was not working, mainly because of
unabated bureaucratic control. This led to the setting up of the
Balwant Rai Mehta Committee in 1957 to make recommendations on new
structures to be created to involve local people in the development
process. The committee recommended the `establishment of an inter-
connected three-tier organisational structure of democratic
decentralisation at the village, block and district levels'. Many
states enacted Panchayati Raj acts in the fifties, not all following
the pattern suggested by the Mehta committee. However, interest and
support for the Panchayats declined in the sixties, with very little
funds flowing into them and the reluctance of most states to hold
elections to them.

Meanwhile, as a supportive measure to rapid industrialisation,
emphasis was given to higher education, in particular to the setting
up of elite IIT's, and laboratories and institutions under the CSIR,
ICMR, ICAR etc. The school system did expand, as also children's
enrolment, but not at a pace that would ensure universalisation with
quality by 1960, as the Constitution had decreed. The expansion of
the school system went hand in hand with a bloating educational
bureaucracy, controlled from the state capitals, which was mostly
dealing with teacher appointments, transfers and payment of their
salaries that took up 95% of their budgets. Expansion meant
increasing centralisation and greater distancing from ground
realities. In many states, as has been the experience of some people,
the state education departments did not even have a proper address
list of schools under them. Decentralisation mostly meant adding
further tiers in a bureaucratic chain of control, at the district,
block and recently at the cluster level. As for the actual process of
teaching-learning, which is why schools are set up in the first
place, the centralisation went right up to the national level. Most
of the academic, pedagogic, content and methodology norms continue to
be determined at the national level, the SCERT's and DIET's acting as
mere carrier of these norms in the form of school texts, teacher
training's and other functions.

The EFA Decade 1990 - 2000

Consequently at the time of the 1991 census, the nation was jolted to
find out that nearly half its population was illiterate as also
nearly half its 6 to 14 population of children was out of school, as
never enrolled or drop outs, after nearly 45 years of independence.
The need for an alternative to centralized bureaucracy in school
education had been articulated earlier in 1986 in the Policy on
Education and was forcefully reiterated in the revised version of
this Policy in 1992.

During the last decade, one finds a fairly vigorous attention to the
problem of management and control of education, both at the policy
and implementation level, and greater advocacy for the need to
involve communities in the process of school education through
decentralisation. This shall be outlined in some detail. There is
however a disquieting nature to such admittedly increased attention
to the problem, which is the absence of relating the processes of
management and control with the purpose of education, a major concern
articulated, for example, by Gandhi. For many therefore, any talk of
decentralisation without always keeping the purpose of education in
mind is some kind of a techno-managerial issue, not an educational
issue. At the same time, one can not also ignore the efforts that
have been made in the past decade in this direction. It is only a
critical appraisal of these efforts that can lead to a better policy
and implementation perspective in the future.

Apart from the Revised Policy of Education, 1992, the other major
events in the EFA decade that have a bearing on the question of
decentralisation are:

- CABE recommendations in light of 73rd and 74th amendments of the
Constitution
- the Mass Literacy Campaigns (MLC's)
- the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP)
- the Lok Jumbish Project
- People's Planning Process of Kerela
- the Education Guarantee Scheme of MP
- the joint UN-GOI Community Education Programme
- and the efforts of some Voluntary Agencies (VA's)

CABE recommendations on Decentralised Management of Education
The somewhat failed attempt of the Panchayati Raj Institutions
(PRI's) during the sixties was revived through the 73rd and 74th
Amendments of the Constitution in 1992 that made the setting up of
local bodies at the village, block, district and municipal levels,
through a process of elections, mandatory. This is arguably the most
significant policy initiative for decentralised governance that India
has formulated since independence. The mandatory reservation of one
third of the elected posts for women, in particular, is a major step
in lessening the gender imbalance in the country's governance system.
What is also heartening is that except for just one state, Bihar, all
the other states have gone through an election process to choose
representatives to these local bodies. The powers of the PRI's extend
to areas listed in the Eleventh Schedule of the Constitution, which
includes education, including primary and secondary schools.
The 73rd and 74th Amendments provide an enabling framework for
decentralisation, the actual implementation requires positive action
at the executive level. That is where the pattern is uneven across
the country. Empowering the PRI's to play designated role clearly
means a lesser role for the bureaucracy and other political
interests, requiring considerable will and efforts to overcome the
consequent obstacles. In particular, proper flow of funds and other
resource support mechanisms to PRI's are necessary in order for them
to function meaningfully.

Taking cognizance of these Amendments, the Central Advisory Board on
Education (CABE) set up a special committee under the then Chief
Minister of Karnataka, Veerapa Moily in 1993 to formulate a framework
for decentralised management of education under the PRI framework.
Where as the National Policy of Education 1986 had recommended the
setting up of District Boards of Education, the Moily Committee took
the process further in recommending the setting up of Village
Education Committee and Panchayat Samiti on Education at the Block
level, in addition to the District Board. The Committee reiterated
the problem of flow of funds to the PRI's, and cautioned about the
fragile nature of these bodies saying `these institutions may not
grow immediately into their full potential and start performing….
They need to be nurtured, supported and encouraged in a positive
manner…. The positive partnership between the PRI's and State
governments will go along way in confronting the multifaceted tasks
of educational development'. Such tentativeness has marked the
response to the PRI's from many quarters since they came into
existence – `they are okay but can they deliver?'. This is
reminiscent of the British response to the concept of an independent
India and Indians during the 1940's – `can they govern themselves?'.
As mentioned earlier, the involvement of PRI's in education since
1994 when they were constituted has been uneven across the states.
Kerela has moved vigorously in making them central to development
planning, including education, Madhya Pradesh has shown a keen desire
to give them a central place while other states have shown varying
responses. For example, in West Bengal, where the PRI's functioned
even before the 1992 Amendments, education has been organised under
the nominated District Primary Education Councils for many years.
Instead of constituting a body from elected representatives, the
State government continues with the nominated Councils even now.
Similar parallel systems, of village and other committees exist under
many other educational programmes and projects, sometimes producing a
bewildering situation at the grassroots level.

Under the People's Development Planning (PDP) process in Kerela,
initiated by the Kerela Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP) in the
beginning and adopted by the government for state-wide implementation
later, each panchayat has made its own ninth five year plan. What is
however unprecedented is the decision of the Kerela government to
make available 40% of the ninth plan funds directly to the panchayats
for the implementation of these plans, which include education. Very
often, state governments make policy statements regarding the powers
of panchayats, but administrative rules and procedures that determine
actual practice by the bureaucracy are left untouched. In Kerela,
however, the Sen[4] committee has made an exhaustive study of the
existing administrative laws that need to be changed or amended so
that the rules and procedures allow panchayats to exercise their
powers unambiguously and without conflict with other authorities. The
committee has identified over a thousand rules that require
rectification!

Another state that has exhibited keenness to empower PRI's has been
Madhya Pradesh. The process here is somewhat different. In the absence of a
people's movement, or the reluctance of the state government to help one take
shape, the process of empowering the PRI's is mostly through
government announcements and promulgation. Announcements are made
about the transfer of powers and responsibilities in various sectors
from time to time, but a resource support mechanism that would help
the PRI's to meaningfully put its powers into practice seems to be
absent, either in an institutional form or through NGO collaboration.
What is considered a significant step, however, is the highly
publicised decision of the MP government, taken a few years ago, to
provide access to education through an Education Guarantee Scheme.
Under the scheme, if forty parents in a locality (only twenty-five in
a tribal area) seek an educational facility for their children,
routed through the Gram Panchayat, the state government is committed
to provide a less paid teacher's (guriji) salary for the purpose. The
Gram Panchayat can appoint the guruji from within the community, and
it also has to make arrangements for space where the guruji can
organise the children into classes. Whether such rudimentary access
can in fact provide even a minimum quality education to children
seems to be an open question. Since opening of new schools has been
replaced by these EGS centres and instead of appointing regular
teachers, the MP government has recruited about 70,000 less paid
shiksha karmis in its regular schools through the panchayats, the
fear is that such decentralised mechanisms in a state where the
quality of education is already very low may be diluting the very
concept of a school. School management and even the physical
infrastructure of the schools has in fact been transferred to
panchayats in MP. But as Govinda[5] points out, `Apart from the fact
that the transfer of powers and functions to panchayati raj bodies
has been effected only through a process of executive delegation,
even the list does not signify true empowerment of the people in
decision making. It is very clear that the list of transferred items
mainly represent functions and responsibilities rather than power and
authority. In fact most of the decision-making areas are retained as
the state government activities. There is considerable vagueness and
ambiguity in the items specified in the list …. No serious attempt
has been made to restructure the management system operated by the
Department of Education. Neither have the roles and functions of the
existing functionaries been redefined nor has any systematic
reorientation been given to them on the changed system of management'.
The Lok Jumbish (People's Movement) initiative in Rajasthan, though
without its erstwhile luster now, is another significant example of
an attempt to bring in community participation in school education
during the EFA decade. Visualised as an autonomous project under the
Lok Jumbish Parishad, created by the state government, the initiative
departed from the tradition of keeping the district as the main level
of planning and execution of primary education. Block level bodies
(popularly called KSPS from their Hindi acronym) were empowered to
these tasks, through an executive order of the state government.
Starting from a few blocks, the programme gradually spread to about
100 blocks of the state covering about 13 districts.

The attempt has been to create a system of management from below by
laying great emphasis on the formation of village teams. A core team
of the KSPS has functioned as a spearhead for the purpose, using
participatory school mapping and other aspects of micro planning as a
mobilisational method. It is the villagers themselves who carry out
field surveys and prepare an education map of the village indicating
the status of every child in the village. Backed up by a strong
emphasis on training at grass roots level, and the involvement of
leading NGO's of the state and the country in developing teaching-
learning material and teacher trainings, Lok Jumbish provided a
motivating atmosphere for others, including from other parts of the
country. Sadly, many of its innovative aspects seem to be melting
away now, since the state government decided to `streamline' it
and `integrate' it with other initiatives, particularly the DPEP.
The tension between micro efforts and macro needs is constant. Though
local initiatives are motivated by making an impact on either the low
quality or lack of access to schooling, a qualitative impact on the
mainstream however requires building upon such a localised
innovation. Among a host of such innovations in India, the approach
of the Lok Jumbish Project was similar, to build up gradually. Using
essentially the block level model -in comparison to the district
focus of DPEP- LPJ slowly and gradually worked up by involving the
local community and a large number of state and national level
resource agencies to work out a participatory method of innovative
education, particularly for the girl child. LPJ thus did not resort
to the usual method of macro change by invoking state level policy
changes – it was therefore a constructive rather than a normative
method for change.

DPEP has very quickly become a large-scale programme in the past five
years, spreading to over 200 districts of the country. Though
envisaged as a decentralised programme at the district level, the
rapidity of its expansion combined with the fact that it is a
centrally sponsored scheme controlled from the centre, the functions
and modalities of the DPEP are fairly different from that of LPJ. The
degree of decentralisation, community participation and academic
innovations of LPJ have been in comparison, very significant.
As stated, there is a need for quality micro efforts to be scaled up
in order to increase their impact. But such scaling up requires care
that the basic elements of its innovative character are not disturbed
or lost in the process of scaling up. In fact such a scaling up of
the LPJ would have been a very welcome attempt. However the decision
of the Government of Rajasthan to administratively integrate LPJ with
other programmes like the DPEP, Swaran Jayanti schools scheme etc.
suggests that centralized state level control is likely to dominate.
In such a situation, `streamlining' would mean opting for a more
homogenising and normative functioning of the various programmes.
This would inevitably imply that local specific aspects and the
pluralistic innovations would get curtailed. Such signs are already
visible. The decision to give up the preparation of separate
innovative books under the LPJ and the cancellation of contracts and
the dissociation of a large number of resource support agencies are
manifestations of a peculiar streamlining process that has been
undertaken. Such streamlining and integration is therefore open to
question. There could be other ways through which streamlining and
scaling up could be attempted, in which the project participants
could also be the planning participants. The question therefore is
not whether scaling up should be attempted or not, the question is
how?

Mass Literacy Campaigns

A major effort during the EFA decade in India have been the Mass
Literacy Campaigns, also called the total literacy campaigns. Their
visibility and impacts have provoked strong sentiments, both for and
against in recent years. We shall only examine the decentralisation
aspects of the campaigns here. As the name implies, these were
conceived as people's campaigns, rather than as a usual government
scheme or project. As is well known, the campaign form was used in
many countries, notably in China, Viet Nam and Nicaragua for a rapid
increase of literacy rates. In most of these successful examples, the
literacy campaign was part of a political revolution, which gave it a
people's character. Historically therefore, the campaign form is by
its very nature a massive community programme, rather than a
bureaucratic one.

It was KSSP and the All India People's Science Network (AIPSN), both
non-governmental organisations that chose to experiment with the
campaign form in a non-revolutionary setting in India. Choosing the
district of Ernakulam for the experiment, the structure envisaged for
implementing the campaign was conceived as very broad-based,
involving governmental and non-governmental agencies as also
political parties. The separately registered district committee so
formed was later called the Zilla Saksharta Samiti (ZSS), which had
units at the block and right up to the village level. The structure
was not set up first; it evolved through a phase of mobilisation that
was undertaken throughout the district. The mobilisation was led by
the kala-jatha teams, which used local cultural forms and traveled
from village to village. Village and block level conventions soon
followed where volunteers for the programme came forward, both for
organisational work and for the actual teaching-learning process. An
intensive household survey, conducted in a festival form in a day in
the entire district helped identify both the learners and the
volunteer teachers (VTs). A proper matching and batching of the
volunteers and the 10 learners followed that set the next phase of
teaching and learning going, after a short training for the VTs. In
Ernakulam about 25,000 VTs participated in the campaign lasting a
total of about eighteen months. Except for organisational persons who
worked full time for the duration of the programme and received
modest honorariums, the entire campaign was run on a voluntary basis,
through community participation. Government of India provided funds
for teaching-learning materials, given free to the learners and for
various trainings.

The MLC's have operated over nearly 500 districts of the country in
the past ten years and have generated a great deal of debate about
their efficacy, in both organisational and mobilisational terms as
also in terms of literacy outcomes. While the proponents of the
programme see the MLC's as the biggest ever mobilisation of the
community for EFA in independent India, the opponents tend to see
them as another highly publicised state-sponsored effort and a
distraction from the real issues concerning Indian education. A
critical view is therefore necessary while evaluating what has
undoubtedly been a major effort in the last decade. The three-way
table using the governance components of funding, regulation and
delivery on one side and the state, market and the community on the
other side would be useful for such a critical review.

The MLC's were initiated through the Ernakulam experiment in 1989,
nearly three years before the onset of the market-based economic
liberalisation programme in the country. Since the `Ernakulam Model'
has subsequently become a topic of intense debate in Indian
education, it would be worthwhile to dwell on it for sometime. The
Ernakulam experiment was a non-governmental initiative conceived by a
mass organisation, KSSP. However, in its conception, prepared under
the title `Lead Kindly Light' by KSSP, the campaign was conceived as
a partnership, between community groups, NGO's, panchayats, political
parties, and the government at the district level. In order to ensure
that all the participants felt equal, KSSP purposefully proposed an
independently registered set up, the District Literacy Committee
(later called Zila Saksharta Samiti), rather than house the programme
under its own organisational banner or under the education department
of the government. The motivation to launch a campaign using literacy
was discussed by KSSP in detail with the national federation of
People's Science Groups, the All India People's Science Network
(AIPSN) on various occasions. The efficacy of the kala-jatha to
mobilise people had been amply demonstrated by the Bharat Jan Vigyan
Jatha (BJVJ) earlier in 1987, which was jointly organised by the
groups who later formed AIPSN as a consequence. Both KSSP and AIPSN
agreed at that time in 1989 that that a call for literacy could
mobilise the masses to work together for a common cause and act as an
integrating agenda at a time when many divisive agendas were
weakening community action. In that sense the idea of mass
mobilisation for literacy in a campaign form went beyond furthering
reading and writing abilities amongst the masses. The initial
initiative for the literacy campaigns therefore came from outside the
government, very clearly motivated by a desire to mobilise a large
number of people for community action in education, whose impacts
might go beyond education.

The initiators of the campaign form were however clear from the very
beginning that such a large initiative could not be undertaken
without involving the state. To begin with, the actual teaching-
learning process involving learners from mostly poor backgrounds
could not be expected to pay to get literate and that would require
funding, which would have to come from the government. Also the
delivery mechanism, though organised autonomously under the ZSS,
could not expect to function at a district level without the active
support and cooperation of the district administration. At Ernakulam,
given the particular personalities involved, KSSP proposed the then
district collector head the ZSS by becoming its chairperson. The
funds, however, were sought from the central government.
The major community contribution was conceived in the teaching-
learning process, hitherto traditionally regulated by the state. This
is what distinguishes, in my opinion, the MLC's from many other
initiatives. State funding for the animators, the teachers, was
sought to be replaced by volunteerism. In a sense, the entire
mobilisational effort was focussed on motivating the community to
volunteer as teachers and/or organisers for a total of eighteen
months. Since the teachers would no longer be employees paid by the
government, the teaching-learning material was likewise conceived as
not necessarily regulated by the adult-education department or the
state resource centre, as is traditionally the case. The ZSS was
empowered to create its own primers and other books as also the
trainings for the voluntary teachers and other functionaries.

Consequently in Ernakulam, persons who were not directly connected
with the adult education department or the state resource centre of
the government devised the teaching-learning process.
The jump from the KSSP initiated Ernakulam experiment to the nation-
wide programme is somewhat curious. Independently and around the same
time as Ernakulam was being conceived, the Government of India set up
five Technology Missions, one of which pertained to literacy. Though
the objective was to initiate a rapid delivery mechanism that would
integrate the functions of various government departments, the
initial blueprint of the newly created National Literacy Mission
(NLM) was no different from the centre-based model, involving paid
animators. However, there was stress on involving mass media,
particularly the AV media for awareness generation, and many front
ranking advertisement gurus of the country had been contacted by the
NLM for the purpose. The rapid and successful culmination of the
Ernakulam campaign in 1990 persuaded the NLM to adopt the Ernakulam
approach for the entire country. Since the mobilisational aspect of
the Ernakulam approach was based on a person-to-person contact,
spearheaded by the kala-jatha, NLM requested the AIPSN to undertake
such mobilisation for the entire country. Subsequently, the people's
science movement set up a separate organisation, the Bharat Gyan
Vigyan Samiti (BGVS) to undertake such a mobilisational exercise, the
Bharat Gyan Vigyan Jatha, in 1990 across the entire country, setting
up units in many states. In the meanwhile the Executive Committee of
the NLM, comprising of an equal number of non-government members,
began processing proposals prepared at the district level by the
ZSS's for undertaking literacy campaigns.

There was no document or written norm that compelled the districts to
exactly imitate the Ernakulam model. In fact, the stress was to adopt
local-specific approaches. However, district teams were exposed to
some broad structural and organisational aspects of the campaign
form. This included the need for an initial environment building
phase using the local culture, music, songs and theatre for person-to-
person contact and the identification of potential organisers in the
district through this process. The organisational structure of the
ZSS was expected to evolve through such a mobilisational exercise,
rather than through initial nominations to various bodies of the ZSS.
This was expected to be followed by a district-level one or two day
house-to-house survey to identify each learner, as also the potential
voluntary teacher, and that would become the basis for the campaign,
rather than the statistics of the 1991 census The survey itself, it
was stressed, could act as a mobilisational event if carried out in a
festive manner that promoted empathy with the surveyed, rather than
making them objects of a detached data collection exercise. The
identification of the voluntary teachers (VT's) and matching and
batching each one of them with 10 learners, from the same locality
where they lived would be the next task. The ZSS was expected to set
up a district academic team to create primers and other teaching-
learning material, with help from the state resource centre. Only
when all these initial tasks were satisfactorily completed, would the
actual teaching-learning phase begin. The creation of a functional
three-legged model, consisting of the district administration, the
full time ZSS functionaries, not necessarily government people, and
the people's structures, which included the VTs was emphasised and
each district was expected to flesh out its own proposal around such
a skeleton. At no time was it emphasised to follow the Ernakulam
process in detail, including, for example, as to who would be the ZSS
chairperson. In West Bengal, for example, it was the Zila Panchayat
president, the Sabhadipati, that headed the ZSS rather than the
Collector.

Since we are examining these details in the context of
decentralisation, it is necessary to point out that the
decentralisation of a variety of tasks to the district level, that
included planning, organisation, curricula, training, and
implementation, did not imply the absence of some centralized
functions. Funds, for example, flowed right down from the central
government, through the NLM, to the ZSS's, bypassing the state
government or the district administrative structures, such as the
district education office. Of the regulatory mechanisms, the one that
was to cause a lot of distress and even damage to the district
efforts was the IPCL committee located within the NLM at the centre.
The Improved Pace and Content Learning (IPCL) pedagogy had been
adopted for the campaign in order to ensure that a new learner would
become a neo-literate in about 200 hours of teaching. District
academic teams were expected to work out their primers in conformity
with the IPCL approach, and an IPCL committee was entrusted with the
task of examining and certifying each of the primers before being
used. In practice, the committee became a bottleneck, with district
academic teams being asked to travel to Delhi repeatedly for
presentations and clarifications, resulting in long delays and
frustration. Many districts therefore opted to use the already
certified primers of their state resource centres. However, the
number of districts that did make and use their own primers was
fairly large and a great deal of academic innovation is visible in
them. In most of these cases, the presence of BGVS resource persons
played a critical role in academic capacity building of district
teams. Where such resource support was lacking, from any quarter, the
tendency, expectedly, was to use the available academic material. For
example, the primer of Darbhanga district of Bihar referred to the
question of land relations, the focal point of Bihar's life and
politics, explicitly. But it was the chapter in the primer of Nellore
district that catalysed the women's anti-liquor movement in Andhra
Pradesh. The state government initially acted on expected lines,
decreeing that the district primers would have to be cleared by the
state's home department! Because of the intervention of the EC of the
NLM and also since the agitation forced the state government to
finally bring in prohibition, the decree was withdrawn. This is an
explicit example that illustrates why there is such a resistance to
decentralising and weakening the states' role in regulating the
teaching-learning process. One could say that the literacy campaigns
managed, to a degree, such decentralisation.

A number of contentious issues are intrinsic to the question of
academic decentralisation. The first concerns the desirability to do
so. Since quality is generally measured from the content of any
teaching-learning material, involving the best national level subject
and other experts is seen to be ideal, which necessitates
centralisation. There is a political aspect to it too, that is
related to desirability. Given that national integration has been
identified as a major value that school education should promote,
decentralised curriculum that might promote linguistic, ethnic and
cultural values of a state or region is considered potentially a
threat to such integration, since, as the proponents of such a view
contend, it can lead to fissiparous tendencies amongst the children.
A nationalistic approach to curriculum too requires centralisation.
Then there is the question of feasibility. Are there enough
professionally competent persons available at the district level that
can prepare pedagogical inputs? And finally we have the question of
regulation, who should certify that the local efforts are acceptable -
technically, politically and culturally. Should or should we not
require such certification?

These are obviously highly debatable issues. Take desirability for
instance. If it is assumed that quality is intrinsically linked to
experts at the national level, there is no getting away from
centralisation. But shouldn't one of the prime objectives of
education be to extend the quality base within the country, so that
it does not remain an isolated central island? Then there is the
question of the very definition of quality. It often subsumes a
subject dominance – maths, sciences, history etc. – to elementary
curriculum. If the curriculum were also to base itself on local
knowledge and culture, the experts more often would also be local,
central experts would mostly be redundant in such a approach. As for
the political issue, may be it is time, more than fifty years after
independence, to review whether a nationalistic approach to
curriculum has actually spread feelings of national integration or
harmed it. The increasing regional political movements, be that in
the North-East, Punjab, Kashmir, Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh, Uttarakhand
and so on have spread inspite of a nationalistic fervour in our
education. Perhaps the stifling and suppression of various identities
through a nationalistic curriculum heightens rather than subdues such
identities. From such a viewpoint it would in fact seem desirable to
attempt an approach that judiciously mixes a local and national
perspective within the curriculum.

Feasibility is most often quoted as the main hindrance to
decentralised curriculum making. And it does require some serious
thought. Preparing curriculum at local levels does not imply leaving
the job to the local teachers alone, as is very often assumed.
Curriculum development for young children requires besides
perspectives, a deeper understanding of the knowledge and processes
involved in each subject, awareness of child development aspects, the
cultural background of the children, local knowledge and production
systems and the local environment, both physical and social. Replace
child development by adult processes and we would have the
requirements for preparing adult education materials. Quite
obviously, no single person or institution can combine all these
requirements. The approach would be to create groups that are
adequately endowed to deal with each of these requirements, which is
only possible through a combination of the mainstream experts and the
local teachers and others. The task would however need to be done at
the local levels, to ensure higher local participation. But that
requires the willingness of city based resource persons to engage at
local levels. The question is, is that feasible? How can it be
institutionalised? As should be apparent, such an approach does not
imply the disbanding of centralized structures like the NCERT and the
SCERT's, it implies a different role for them, as resource support
agencies. A critical institution in such a scenario would in fact be
the DIET, which could be the nodal platform for initiating and
housing such groups of curriculum designers. Involving voluntary
groups who have worked similarly and understand the process better
could strengthen the resource support efforts. The initiation of the
process would itself lead to capacity building at local levels,
ensuring less and less dependence on outside resource support
persons, over time.

Feasibility has to be worked out and created. There is no point in
saying it does not exist, without initiating processes that would
make it happen. In a way, the districts that created their own
teaching-learning materials during the literacy campaigns were
precisely those where such a combination of human resources were put
into place. Similarly, the Seekhna-Sikhana approach to primary
education in Madhya Pradesh was initiated by a similar combination of
persons, DIET's and voluntary agencies. Even though the MP Government
jettisoned some of the processes along the way, quite a few DIET's
are functioning even today under the original philosophy. The
Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme has functioned continuously
for nearly thirty years through these processes. Lok Jumbish too
initiated a similar approach. There is therefore no dearth of
evidence, both theoretical and empirical, to suggest that such an
approach is feasible, the question is: Does the vision of
decentralisation extend to such processes or is it confined merely to
the transfer of some administrative burdens to the community?

Conclusion

There is little doubt that during the past decade or so, a noticeable
desire to decentralise primary education and literacy has been
evident in the country. There may however be differences of opinion
as to the motivation for such a desire. The most prominent would be
that the state has understood the limitation of its own bureaucratic
structures to universalise elementary education and is therefore
seeking the community's help in doing so. This is a process that one
can trace to the sixth five-year plan that raised the question about
the ability of the state structures to deliver, in all areas of
development. But as has been noted earlier, most of the attempts have
been confined mainly to administrative or management aspects, the
delivery mechanisms. Voicing at times its inability to allocate
adequate funds to universalise elementary education, mainly because
of a lack of will to provide six percent or more of GDP to education,
the government has at times also exhorted the community to contribute
in cash and kind for various needs related to schooling, even though
the Constitution of the country squarely places such responsibility
on the government. However, the limited attempts to involve
communities have not really translated in diminishing the role of the
state in controlling and regulating education. Even though
privatisation and community-based education are terms often used in
educational debates now, regulation and control are still
unquestionably linked to the state. One may wonder then whether only
responsibilities are meant to be decentralised, and if so, how can
that be empowering?

In the state, market, community triad, marketisation of education for
greater public choice is also a form of decentralisation, but it
clearly lacks equity. A clear policy articulation is necessary in
India that spells out the kind of decentralisation the state and
civil society ought to promote, keeping in view the rampant caste,
class and gender disparities. But above all, mere decentralisation of
the delivery mechanism completely ignores the major issue related to
educational decentralisation, that of the teaching-learning process
itself. In a multi-cultural context, with traditional production
systems rather than urban industry providing economic sustenance to a
larger population, the linkage between the content, process and
pedagogy of education to the developmental and cultural aspects
provides a more persuasive argument for educational decentralisation
than decentralised management. It is only in the mass literacy
campaigns one notices a move in this direction, that too somewhat
thwarted by a centralized regulatory mechanism in the form of the
IPCL committee. Most of the special school programmes under the EFA
have however worked under an even more stringent centralized norm,
the nationally prescribed Minimum Levels of Learning (MLL's), and
there is little evidence that such an approach is likely change since
similar MLL's are being prescribed for higher classes too. It is
clear therefore that till the state remains the main force in
providing basic education, as it must, it would also tend to utilise
education as an instrumentality that suits its convenience in
governance. Such convenience is facilitated through centralized
control and regulation. But it is equally true that political
compulsions also push the state to pronounce education, in a populist
way, as an empowering process for the marginalised deprived and
disadvantaged groups, and decentralisation is a natural modality for
such an approach. Both these tendencies coexist and form the
essential tension under which programmes and policies need to be
examined. As for practitioners working in the empowering paradigm, it
is up to them to adapt their practice and advocacy roles to push the
decentralisation agenda, but it must be clear that it shall very
often clash with the competing tendency, emanating from the state.
Literacy campaigns, Lok Jumbish, Seekhna-Sikhana etc clearly provide
evidence of such tension. Sometimes it becomes seductive to think
that if the state is gradually marginalised from the process of
providing basic education, an empowering process can be put into
place mostly through, what has become fashionable to call, civil
society action. A moment's reflection should be enough to point out
the ridiculousness of such a proposition. To begin with, the civil
society formations are by definition heterogeneous and fragmented and
to assume that they all prescribe to the same empowering principle,
if at all, is completely erroneous. Secondly, the enormity of
providing education to about 200 million 6-14 year population is
inconceivable without state responsibility, as the Constitution has
rightly decreed. The tension between using education as an
instrumentality for consolidating state power as against an
empowering process is therefore intrinsic to the process of
education, and shows up as a tension between centralisation and
decentralisation. Only determined action, that finally must reflect
politically, must be sustained.

Pedagogical questions regarding the production and diffusion of
knowledge, empowerment, linkage of social, cultural and natural
environments with the teaching-learning process, and enhancing the
quality of education by making it relevant and interesting to the
child are at the heart of the decentralisation debate in education.
Literacy campaigns, Lok Jumbish, some of the approaches in Madhya
Pradesh, and the People's Planning process in Kerela suggest as
examples where some of these elements were tried out, even though
somewhat unsustainably. An approach whereby a programme begins with
the decentralisation of the teaching-learning process, evolving as it
proceeds a facilitating administrative mechanism, as happened in the
Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme, is evident only in NGO
efforts rather than through the efforts of the state.

It may be reasonable to conclude that the efforts of the previous
decade, even if they may have not significantly contributed to a
large scale decentralisation of education, have nevertheless provided
vigour to explore and debate the question through an analysis of the
governance functions, like funding, regulation and delivery on one
hand, and the actors; the state, market and community on the other,
thus restoring the link between development, pedagogy and educational
practice. The stress on Panchayati Raj, community action, literacy
campaigns and voluntary action provide hope that a renewed policy
perspective, that goes beyond the issues of management and
administration and focuses on questions like equity, local and global
knowledge systems and cultural pluralism would locate
decentralisation within these bounds.
References

[1] See for example T.N.Dhar in Decentralisation of educational
management: Experiences from South Asia, Ed. R Govinda; International
Institute of Educational Planning, Paris, 1997
_ednref2
[2] Roger Dale; `The State and the Governance of Education'
in `Education, Culture, Economy, Society', Eds. A.H.Halsey, Hugh
Lauder, Phillip Brown, Amy Stuart Wells; OUP, 1997
_ednref3
[3] Prosser, T. The State, Constitutions and Implementing Economic
Policy: Privatisation and Regulation in the UK, France and the USA,
Social and Legal Studies 4 .
[4] Sen, S.B. Committee on Decentralisation; Govt. of Kerela, State
Planning Board, 1999
_ednref6
[5] R. Govinda, Dynamics of decentralised Management and Community
Empowerment in Primary Education: A Comparative Analysis of Policy
and Practice in Two States of India; National Institute of
Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi