RIGHT TO EDUCATION THROUGH PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP

admin | March 10, 2016 | Constitutional | No Comments

This article was written by Reeti Tripathy, a student of University Law College, Utkal University

The cherished right to education is inherent in human origin and is concomitant to the Fundamental Right to Life & Personal Liberty. The new insignia in governance and administration of welfare legislations is the Public- Private Partnership (PPP) Model which effectively enforces the State’s Constitutional Obligations towards the citizens of India.

The pre-eminence, universality, indivisibility, indispensability, inalienability and inter-dependence of fundamental freedoms, elementary human rights and rudimentary humanitarian value standards engrafted in the effervescent proclamations of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, along with various International Instruments, Regional Arrangements, Constitutional Legal Principles and Statutory Welfare Legislations define the inviolable bedrock of human existence and moral doctrines of rights and duties inherent to human origin. Recognition and sustenance of fundamental rights stem from the collective conscience of different stakeholders of the society; may-it-be, public functionaries or private juristic personalities.

Education is the emancipation of soul, liberation of thoughts, empowerment of individuals, means for enforcement of intrinsic rights, acquisition of knowledge, development of judicious conscience, and holistic development of human resources which leads to the establishment of an egalitarian social order characterized by economic-social-political-juristic-cultural equality. Education revitalises the realisation of the legal dogmatics, the Rule of Law, the constitutional mandates, and the juristic interpretations of laws. Education is the foundation stone of effective administration of legislative enactments, welfare legislations, governmental schemes, and developmental strategies. Education has been regarded in all societies and chronologically in human history, both as an end in itself along with a means for the individual and society to prosper. Its recognition as a fundamental human right is inherent in the indispensability of education to the preservation and enhancement of the inherent dignity of the human person.

Democracy is intricately associated with human rights and fundamental freedoms. It aims at securing an egalitarian social order governed by the Rule of Law. Democratic ideal stands for the right to self-determination and right to live with human dignity. In fact, Democracy is the most congenial for Human Rights. The machineries of the State potentially strive to promote human rights, the rule of law and access to justice by helping to strengthen the impartiality and effectiveness of the national human rights machinery and judicial systems. Public Administration, bureaucratic intervention, and executive implements are the three foundation pillars on which the Right to Education Act, 2009 has been enacted for realisation in reality. The paramount duty of a Welfare State, like ours, is to build up a network of propositions articulated in terms of the right to education and its developmental realisation.

The pertinent concept of a public-private partnership (PPP) recognizes the existence of alternative-unconventional options for providing edification services besides public finance and public delivery. The forms of PPPs include partnerships where private or non-governmental organizations support the education sector through humanitarian activities and high engagement enterprises. The main rationale and justification for developing public-private partnerships (PPPs) in education is to maximize the potential-prospective endurance for expanding equitable & reasonable access to schooling and for improving education outcomes, especially for marginalized groups.

The Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) is the new insignia of development where the state and private actors, who have had a long history of conflict now work in collaboration, and cooperate with each other to advance common goals of a market-driven, growth-oriented agenda. State actors “enter into partnerships with organisations in civil society, the market, and with transnational organisations & conglomerates, to affect the governance of privatisation-modernisation-liberalisation-globalisation. The privatisation of state and para-state institutions, and the sub-contracting of state functions, is what modern governance is all about.” Community participation in active sense is crucial for the success of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009. Engagement with the local self-governance systems like Municipal Corporations, Panchayati Raj Systems and Civil Societies has been neglected and efforts towards popularizing entitlements of the Act should be reinforced further by the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Model of Governance.

Strengths of Public-Private Partnership Model of Governance in implementation of the Right to Education:

The emergence of PPPs is seen as a sustainable financing and institutional machinery with the prospective of bridging the infrastructure gap between the bureaucratic network of administration of welfare policies and the private participation in effective execution of the programmes relating to the proper enforcement of the right to education.

PPP primarily represents value for money in public procurement and proficient operation. Apart from enabling private investment flows, PPPs also deliver efficiency expanses and enhanced impact of the investments. The efficient use of resources, availability of modern technology, improved developmental designs and implementation, & improved operations combine to deliver efficiency and effectiveness gains which are not readily produced in a public sector project for the application of the Right to Education Act (RTE), 2009.

PPPs result in enhanced deliverance of public services and also promote public sector reforms.

Private Management also increases accountability and incentivises performance and maintenance of required service standards. Transparency, accountability and dynamism in the governing and implementing machinery of the State and of the public functionaries prove to uplift the human dignity and protection-promotion of the compendious expression of the Right to Life, i.e. Right to Education.

Dynamic & imperative Involvement of formal governmental institutions, public functionaries, political parties, financial institutions, local-governance models, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), private conglomerates, civil societies, consumer associations, interest groups, pressure groups, start-up agencies, public sector undertakings.

PPPs can create competition in the education market which encourages and accentuates a new & unconventional form of learning system.

PPP conventions can be more flexible than most public sector arrangements or public sector undertakings.

PPPs intend to mobilize community support, people’s dynamic participation and other resources to address issues of provisioning access to quality education.

PPP as a new emblem in the enforcement modalities of the policy initiatives can achieve an increased level of risk-sharing between the governmental associations and the private sector thus, creating a welfare State with due reverence to the Supreme Law of the land. This risk sharing & peril partaking are likely to augment efficiency in the delivery of services and, consequently, to induce the channelizing of additional-substitutive resources to the provision for education.

Educating the children and empowering them is a challenge which can be achieved by collective efforts of all the stakeholders of the society such as formal institutions, public-government functionaries, village community, private organisations, interest groups, minority groups, civil societies, non-governmental organisations, corporate houses, public sector undertakings, elected representatives and the entire stretch of psychography-demography of the general public. Public-Private Partnership in school education is projected as a strategy to distribute the ownership of institutions between private entrepreneurs and civil societies on the one hand, and the government or State on the other. While the raison d’être for PPP is inefficiency of the government machinery, the means offered to overcome the incapacitation, rationalises the proper execution of the RTE Act, 2009, in true letter and spirit. PPP is not an idea, but rather an imperative ideology which promotes liberalisation-privatisation-globalisation-modernisation as a means of reducing the government’s conscientiousness to increase the standard of elementary and higher education in the topography of the largest democracy in the world.