Community Participation in education essential but lacking

SEKHAR CHETTRI

I am just making an endeavour to accustom you with the latest buzzword doing the rounds in every sphere of life, with beautiful and universal appeal – Community Participation. This sounds pretty simple and unequivocal to a general listener but when it comes to a realistic situation where you collide head on with the intricacies involved, it’s easier said than done.
Community involvement, general awareness, shouldering of responsibilities, support and impetus from the governmental machinery, honesty of purpose and most prominently fanatical willingness on the part of every stake holder to fight against the odds when the chips are down would determine whether legislative provisions would actually travel the desired distance.
There are in fact very few sectors who could dare to defy the writing on the wall. But, we might have to wait a little longer till this realization gets the better of their deeds.
Confining to educational parlance, the idea is not new to our society. Since ancient times, community institutions like ‘pathsalas’, ‘madrassas’, ‘shedas’ etc were entrusted with the responsibility of transmitting knowledge, skills, culture and traditions to the new generation. Even in the recent past, the fact that almost every village of our state used to own ‘Committee’ run schools till as late as early seventies of the last century gives testimony of the willingness on the part of community to support the educational pursuit of the young generation.
Perhaps, they had realized then that education is a social process and participation of community in the process of education is a pre-condition. However, with growing formalization, governmentalization and  commercialization of education, the linkage between the school and community has invariably weakened leading to a widening gap.
Most of the thinkers have put the blame squarely on the colonial Britishers for this debacle. They have claimed that their system of education was designed solely to fulfill their vested interest. Community participation therefore has been the chief concern of modern policy makers.
Even an organization of international repute like UN has felt the need to define community participation as ‘the creation of opportunity to enable the members to actively contribute to and influence the development process to share equitably in fruits of development.’ Thus, participation requires voluntary and democratic involvement of the people.
The National Policy of Education 1986 and POA ’92 have emphasized the importance of decentralization, planning and management of education at all levels and most importantly people’s participation in education. Again, when we talk about decentralization, we are bound to sub divide it into its vital components like de-concentration, devolution (of resources and power) and delegation (of roles and responsibilities).
Have we been able to inject these minute but vital details in our system in the real sense of the word?
The 11th schedule of constitution has entrusted the Panchayat bodies with the responsibility of looking after formal and non-formal education. It was expected that as part of decentralization, local communities through appropriate bodies would get involved in improving the functioning of the schools as the destiny of this great nation is being shaped in the four walls of its classrooms.
The CABE committee on decentralized management of education suggested the constitution of VEC at Village level and Panchayat standing committee on education at intermediate and district levels.
The RTE has so impeccably delineated the role of each and every stake holder that on paper its fool-proof claim can even thrash the Indian Cricket Team by a tremendous margin. But when it was actually dished out with a venomous cocktail of CCE, it has bewildered the teachers, students and the parents alike to a greater extent than a die hard cricket fan would have reacted to an unexplained batting collapse of the Great Indian Batting line-up.
All these fool-proof policies have failed to deliver the goods because of one and only reason - they were not able to and still are not able to generate community participation. Though every school boasts of having SMC, SMDC, PTA, MTA etc among its rank yet we realize that their contributions vary from person to person as well as from one place to another.
The three major issues of education in today’s world, namely access, equity and quality need to be addressed in a holistic manner to ensure that our systems of education and research not only contribute to nation building but also to create a knowledge society, with values of sustainability, peace and development. This is the vision of our Hon’ble Chief Minister. Let this vision ultimately underline all our policies and programmes.
[the writer is a resident of Melli, South Sikkim]