Examining Education Reforms of India in the Matrix of Rights and Biopolitics

Author(s):  
Jyoti Dalal

Three significant reforms were established at the turn of the century in India: the National Curriculum Framework of 2005, the National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education of 2009, and the Right to Education Act of 2009. All three reforms reflect a contradiction between the rights of citizens and the regulatory biopolitical inertia of the state. Indian State has undergone cyclical shifts in its orientation. In certain phases, rights became the fulcrum to guide policy and legal framework, and in other phases, the regulatory impulse of the state was at the center. The neoliberal turn of the 1990s marked a sharp shift in which the state left behind its welfare outlook and adopted a more regulatory structure. The rights-based agenda of the three reforms needs to be understood against the backdrop of the changing nature of the state. The three reforms stand apart from those instituted before and after, in that they were informed by a critique of the rights-based framework even while working within it. The three reforms and their social context provide an example of the tension between rights and biopolitics; the reforms emerged as a response to this tension. While proposing rights-based reforms in school education, the intent was much more ambitious, going beyond the immediate domain of education. Occurring in the middle of a neoliberal, market-driven discourse, these reforms critiqued the 21st-century state and pushed it to serve the role of a provider and not just a regulator.

Author(s):  
Chiedza Simbo

Despite the recent enactment of the Zimbabwean Constitution which provides for the right to basic education, complaints, reminiscent of a failed basic education system, have marred the education system in Zimbabwe. Notwithstanding glaring violations of the right to basic education by the government, no person has taken the government to court for failure to comply with its section 75(1)(a) constitutional obligations, and neither has the government conceded any failures or wrongdoings. Two ultimate questions arise: Does the state know what compliance with section 75(1)(a) entails? And do the citizens know the scope and content of their rights as provided for by section 75(1)(a) of the Constitution of Zimbabwe? Whilst it is progressive that the Education Act of Zimbabwe as amended in 2020 has addressed some aspects relating to section 75(1)(a) of the Constitution, it has still not provided an international law compliant scope and content of the right to basic education neither have any clarifications been provided by the courts. Using an international law approach, this article suggests what the scope and content of section 75(1)(a) might be.


Author(s):  
Florian Matthey-Prakash

What does it mean for education to be a fundamental right, and how may children benefit from it? Surprisingly, even when the right to education was added to the Indian Constitution as Article 21A, this question received barely any attention. This book identifies justiciability (or, more broadly, enforceability) as the most important feature of Article 21A, meaning that children and their parents must be provided with means to effectively claim their right from the state. Otherwise, it would remain a ‘right’ only on paper. The book highlights how lack of access to the Indian judiciary means that the constitutional promise of justiciability is unfulfilled, particularly so because the poor, who cannot afford quality private education for their children, must be the main beneficiaries of the right. It then deals with possible alternative means the state may provide for the poor to claim the benefits under Article 21A, and identifies the grievance redress mechanism created by the Right to Education Act as a potential system of enforcement. Even though this system is found to be deficient, the book concludes with an optimistic outlook, hoping that rights advocates may, in the future, focus on improving such mechanisms for legal empowerment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 12-62
Author(s):  
Raina Nikolova

The article analyzes the Bulgarian administrative legal framework on emergencies (state of emergency, crisis management and overcoming, emergency situation and emergency epidemic situation). It indicates the temporary restrictions of the right of free movement of the citizens provided in the legislation. The article discusses the competence of the central executive authorities, interdepartmental bodies and territorial authorities (regional governors and mayors) to deal with a pandemic. The article discusses also the legal basis and justifications for the introduction of the curfew by some of the regional governors and mayors during the state of emergency, caused by SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19).


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahul Mukherji ◽  
Seyed Hossein Zarhani ◽  
K. Raju

This article argues that the Indian state can develop the capacity to deliver economic rights in a citizen-friendly way, despite serious challenges posed by patronage politics and clientelism. Clientelistic politics reveals why the Indian state fails to deliver the basic rights such as the right to work, health and education. We argue that the ability of the state to deliver owes a lot to bureaucratic puzzling and political powering over developmental ideas in a path-dependent way. We combine powering and puzzling within the state to argue the case for how these ideas tip after they have gained a fair amount of traction within the state. We test the powering and puzzling leading to a tipping point model on the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in undivided Andhra Pradesh (AP). How and why did undivided AP develop the capacity to make reach employment to the rural poor, when many other states failed to implement the right to work in India?


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 204-224
Author(s):  
Manoj Kumar ◽  
Ronita Sharma

The study is an attempt to understand the prevailing discourse in India on education as a right by closely reading the parliamentary debates on The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Second Amendment) Bill, 2017. Prior to the passing of the above-mentioned amendment bill The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 had debarred schools from detaining or expelling a child till the completion of her elementary education. This provision was amended by the Indian Parliament by passing the bill. When the bill was moved in the Indian parliament it generated debate on the various aspects of education and schooling. The study critically analyses the texts of two proceedings of the parliamentary debate: one from the lower house (Lok Sabha) and the other from the upper house (Rajya Sabha). The study concludes that the deliberation on the bill turned the right-based approach on elementary education almost upside down. The 86th amendment in the Indian constitution and subsequent enactment of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 had recognized children in the age group of 6–14 years as ‘right holders’ while the Indian state had been identified as the ‘duty bearer’. The discourse emerged in the Indian Parliament during the debate on the Amendment Bill, 2017 constituted Indian children of school-going age, their parents and teachers as groups accountable to the state for achieving the goals for universal elementary education, while the Indian state was constituted as an entity with the right to demand compliances from children, parents and teachers.


Author(s):  
Gerhard Oertel

The effect of two consecutive strains (only two states enter into the calculation of a strain, the states before and after, independently of the actual strain path) can be calculated by premultiplying the transformation matrix of the first strain (its stretch tensor) with that of the second. Unless the two strains are coaxial (their principal directions coincide), however, the resulting cumulative transformation matrix represents not only a strain but also a rigid-body rotation; in that case the matrix is asymmetric. The method of polar decomposition allows one to interpret the combined transformation as if it had come about either by a strain followed by a rotation (right polar decomposition) or by a rotation followed by a strain (left polar decomposition). Let 𝔸 and 𝔹 be two stretch tensors, or transformation matrices, representing each a strain without rotation; and let the strain 𝔹 follow the strain 𝔸. Then the combined transformation matrix 𝔽 is: . . . 𝔹𝔸 = 𝔽 = ℝ𝕌= 𝕍ℝ, (8.1) . . . where 𝔽 results from premultiplication of the earlier stretch 𝔸 with the later 𝔹, where ℝ𝕌 is the “right” and 𝕍ℝ the “left” decomposition of 𝔽, where 𝕌 and 𝕍 are two distinct stretch tensors, and where ℝ is the transformation matrix for a rotation (elements of rotation matrices are indicated by the symbol aij elsewhere in this book). 𝔽 is asymmetric and ℝ differs from the identity matrix (δij) except when 𝔸 and 𝔹 are coaxial. 𝕌 and 𝕍 have the same principal stretches and differ by orientation only. In Problems 120 to 122, false approaches in the search for an appropriate decomposition of an asymmetric transformation were recognized by yielding impossible values for a rotation. Application of eq. (8.1) makes such a trial-and-error approach unnecessary.


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gulzhan Uskenbayeva

<p class="22">We investigate a new approach to the construction of vector Lyapunov functions. An approach to the construction of Lyapunov functions as vector functions is developed based on a geometrical interpretation of the second method of Lyapunov. The negative of the gradient is determined from the components of the time derivative of the state vector (i.e., the right-hand side of the state equation). The region of stability of a closed-loop linear, stationary system with uncertain parameters is governed by inequalities in the matrix elements of the closed-loop system. This study developed a method for analysing the robust stability of SISO and MIMO linear systems in canonical forms.</p>


1787 ◽  
Vol 77 ◽  
pp. 318-343 ◽  

M. de la Lande having announced to some of my astronomical friends the utility of accurate observations of Mercury, at his two elongations the last year, in August and September; I tried to get observations of that planet in crossing the meridian, for some days before and after the greatest elongation in August; and though the state of the atmosphere about that time was not very favourable to the purpose, yet there was one day that I thought unexceptionable, but could not perceive the least appearance of Mercury; at which i was the rather surprised, as I had formerly seen that planet in the like situation, with the same instrument, with perfect perspicuity: and as i did not hear of any one else having succeeded in this observation, I thought it might be very possible for the same disappointment again to happen, with respect to the approaching elongation in September.


Author(s):  
Alexander M. Martin

A peculiarity of the right in imperial Russia was the weakness of conservatism—that portion of the right which equates national identity with the currently dominant cultural values and social hierarchies. Instead, the Russian right was more often palingenetic, that is, it looked to the state to revitalize a nation whose potential was allegedly stifled by the very same cultural values and social hierarchies that conservatives embraced. Russia and its people appeared to lack the rootedness and the matrix of organically evolved local and communal identities that were central to conservatism’s socio-political vision elsewhere. Russians were drawn instead to Utopian schemes resting on palingenetic notions that the nation was capable of, indeed in need of, a ‘regeneration’ that hinged on remaking the collective and individual consciousness. Palingenetic nationalism proved to be a revolutionary force that both destabilized Russia itself and became one of the country’s most explosive exports.


2006 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-43
Author(s):  
Natasha Assa

One of the key principles of the modern legal state (Rechtsstaat) is the right of all citizens to seek judicial protection against unlawful acts of government officials. It stems from the fundamental principle of the rule of law that asserts that all citizens, including state officials, are equal before the law and have the right to a fair trial. Within this legal framework a distinct field of law, “administrative justice,” governs public litigation against state officials. Its domain of jurisdiction reflects complex philosophical and legal distinctions between the public and private spheres in the modern state. As legal scholars and philosophers continuously redefine the boundary between the public and private spheres, the prerogatives of government officials over the rights of private citizens continue to evolve. The key questions in the debate are as follows. Should the state guarantee an undisputed precedence of citizens’ rights over administration or should it protect its officials from widespread litigation and therefore grant them a certain degree of immunity? Should ordinary courts and laws decide disputes between government officials and private individuals, or should the state provide separate norms, judges, and procedures for administrative litigation? Should punishment for misuse of administrative power be equal to that of the breach of civil or criminal laws? Who and to what extent should be made liable for any damages incurred through misuse of administrative power?


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