RTE

Starting tomorrow, all hospitals will provide free services to the poorest of the poor in the country. What more, even shopkeepers will stop charging any money for goods bought by them. In fact, let everything under the sun be offered for free to India's poor and needy.

Shocked?

Well, don't be because the way the decision makers are functioning right now, the scenarios outlined above may well become a reality. We are sure that the Honourable Supreme court does not have any sensible economist as its judge. For had that been the case, its recent decision to allow 25% of seats in private schools to be reserved for economically weaker sections may not have seen the light of the day.

We believe that this step is a retrograde one and does not take into account the cost of delivering educational services to society. The honourable court should have known that there is no free lunch and ultimately, the burden of sponsoring education for poor kids will fall on the other 75% students. Why can't the Government clean up its act and improve the education standards in the country instead. On one hand, it continues to tolerate massive inefficiency in India's public education system and on the other, chooses to put further pressure on the already overburdened middle class population of the country. Don't get us wrong.

We are not against denying a right to education to the country's poor. But the mechanism could have been much, much better we believe.

The above is from the mail I receive from Equitymaster.

I agree with the the author.. The inefficient government cannot improve the education system.

They appoint sub-standard teachers according to their political affiliations and quotas and then expect the education to improve.

There is so much work to be done but our government is mired in corruption.

Population is to be controlled if the benefit of any increase in GDP is to reach everybody otherwise we will be fighting a losing battle.

Proper facilities for storing and preserving our food produce should be put in place so that nobody sleeps hungry in the country.

Proper education should be provided to all up to the graduate level, inculcating values in the people. What goes education today is to gain materialistic gains - by hook or by crook, mainly by crook as our political leaders who should set example are the worst lot.

Earlier we used to have Chandrasekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev as leaders to whom the children looked up to.

Now we have Mayawati, Mulayam Singh, Lalu Yadav, Karunanidhi, Jaylalitha, Raj & Bal Thackeray, Sharad Pawar, Suresh Kalamadi as examples. What a let down?

I am of the opinion that if we can provide good education, to all and women work along with men in offices, the caste problem will solve by itself

Free education should be provided to the economically weak sections of society irrespective of caste or religion or language and it is the governments duty to provide it.

They are already milking us dry with hundreds of taxes, duties, cesses and yet they cannot do it for their inner corruption.