Comment by abhishivsaxena | Hacker News Reader

Comment by abhishivsaxena | Hacker News Reader

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It doesn't matter who runs the school. However if the school identifies itself as a minority institution it doesn't have to comply with RTE guidelines as per the constitution bench of Supreme court. Here's an excerpt from a newspaper report.

   However, the constitution bench exempted minority
   schools, both aided and unaided, from the purview
   of the Act. It said minority schools could not be
   put under legal obligation to provide free and 
   compulsory elementary education to children 
   who were not members of the minority community
   which had established the school. It said, 
   "In our view, if the Act is made applicable 
   to minority schools, aided or unaided, the right
   of the minorities under Article 30(1) of the
   Constitution will be abrogated. Therefore, 
   the (provision of the) 2009 Act, which made it 
   applicable to minority schools is unconstitutional." 
   [1]

So it's more about minority rights, than about religious discrimination which your post seemed to suggest. Quite mischievously too if I might add.

And so far as schools being shut for not complying with some "arbitrary clause", it is actually more about private schools refusing to fulfil 25% reservation for children from socially backward communities. You also left that out.

Jai Hind!

[1] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/25-pc-re...

Use common sense instead of Supreme court's sophistry. Why should a one school which admits general students for general education should not be subject to a state regulation only because the management is Christian ? Education is a perfectly secular activity like running a taxi service. Having tight regulation to one regulation where as total exemption to another religion seems stupid.

It could have been a minority rights issue if this exemption was limited to say a church run institution for religious studies. But then why not give same exemption to Hindu school for religious studies ?

Another catch. Some Indian states like J&K and Kerala have Hindus as minorities. But Hindus can not run minority institutions despite this. Reason ? Any minority institution needs to get a N.O.C. from National Minority Education Council but by law only Christians and Muslims can be members of this council and are allowed to give permissions only to Christian and Muslims schools.

Because such institutions were explicitly founded to provide education to minorities, and it would be unfair to force them to allocate their limited resources away from that goal. Most do so voluntarily anyways.

It's actually quite simple to understand I think, and the judgment says so in what is plain language, not some sophistry.

And Hindus are minorities in Kerala? Despite being 54% of total population? Citation please.

As far as J&K as concerned, I'm not too sure what you are saying is correct. Maybe it's true, but then J&K never merged with the India, so it's possible since laws enacted by parliament don't automatically apply to J&K. Citation please.

EDIT: Your point about NMEC is invalid as well [2].

Let me know if you want me to suggest some material/books so you can better understand this issue.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Kerala

[2] http://ncmei.gov.in/writereaddata/filelinks/c296efcb_Guideli...

Minority rights is nothing but religious discrimination. There is no difference.

Except that the Supreme court doesn't think so.

Supreme Court is not the final stop for application of common sense. Anything can be defined as a minority right.

For example does it make sense to give exemption to a christian businessman calling it a minority right ? You can but that would be against common sense just like in the education case.

The serious effects of this law is that while Hindus have to jump through the draconian provisions of RTE, a church run school need not. Guess which schools will run more efficiently and grow at a faster rate and provide better education ?

I am not sure why minorities should have a different set of rights than the majority. Uniformity should be the foundation of law.

Because these rights are necessary for minorities to be protected from majoritarian excesses in a democracy. It's really not that hard to understand if you try to think of it from a neutral standpoint.

Regardless of that, as everyone in aware, religious minorities perform poorly on most social indicators - often ranking even below the scheduled caste. The Sachar committee report [1] is full of examples which illustrate this point.

So it also makes pragmatic sense for state to proactively work for their upliftment. We also do it for schedule/backward caste members even thought they belong to the majority religion.

Btw, I would just say that your point about draconian provisions is simply unsubstantiated.

I'm proactively repeatedly countering you on unsubstantiated facts, just because I don't want such misinformation to spread around and influence other minds.

[1] http://www.minorityaffairs.gov.in/sites/upload_files/moma/fi...

I don't see how giving blanket exemption to a completely secular industry (education in this case) under the pretext of religion has anything to do with majoritarian excesses. Why not do it in Taxi business or Restaurants or why not let a Muslim get away with 1 murder per year or something like that ?

Unless you are ignoring a distinction no one should be given a right that grossly violates rights of someone else.

I would have agreed with you if the exemption was limited to religious education meant for that community only.

Under the current law Hindu schools can not operate and compete with Church run schools and I find that vile and against basic sense of justice.

Sachar committee is a heap of garbage for many reasons. But even if we accept it only Muslism community among minorities seem to suck not Christian or Parasis or Jains or Sikhs. That despite being the most politically influential community in India.

(This trend is seen in USA too where politically influential Irish Americans score worse than least influential Japanese Americans on socio economic indicators).

RTE's draconian provisions and how they hurt both Hindu community and schools is well documented. Over 15K schools are in danger of losing their legal status because of this law.

Also I am completely unaware how it can be justfied that a Hindu can not preside over NMEC which happens to be a government's administrative body!

Check this: [1] Over 1 lakh schools shut down because of RTE http://www.governancenow.com/news/regular-story/rte-5-years-...

[2] Church runs schools banning pagan practices in their schools. https://realitycheck.wordpress.com/2015/10/24/analyzing-indi...

[3] Statewise numbers of schools shut down because of RTE http://nisaindia.org/data-on-school-closures

[4] Constitutionality of NCMEI challenged https://realitycheck.wordpress.com/2015/05/09/is-the-congres...

There's no official data to say over 100,000 schools have been shut down. You linked to some blog which just reported some figures which some "Civil society coalition" fed to them. Without any reference. Please cite an official or reputed sources if you have.

The "National Independent School Association", NISA, have been lobbying unsuccessfully against RTE for years. That's just because most private schools don't want to reserve 25% seats for backward/schedule caste. It's as simple as that. Someone should tell them it is 2015!

You can't expect minority institutions to adhere to this quota for backward hindus, since minorities such as muslims are socially, economically, and educationally backward themselves.

Also, it's not that a NCMEI chairperson can not be a hindu, but that he should be a minority himself. It makes total sense to me since it's the "National Minority Education Commission".

I'll again rephrase.

RTE needs to be applied to private schools so backward/schedule caste have access to education just like you and me. It does it by reservations and regulations.

It doesn't apply to minority institutions because bulk of minorities are backward/scheduled themselves. So they can't be expected to have reservations for backward/scheduled from mainstream.

I can't see how anyone can consider this to be vile from a neutral standpoint. In fact to me it just illustrates some of the most peculiar strengths of the Indian system.

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