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6 - Legislating Human Rights

Experience of the Right to Education Act in India

from Part II - Adjudication and Rights in Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2019

Katharine G. Young
Affiliation:
Boston College, Massachusetts
Amartya Sen
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

The 86th Amendment to the Constitution of India recognized the right to education as a fundamental right. This chapter examines the follow-up legislation. Legislating a human right has been the subject of critical attention in human rights theory. This chapter studies the enforcement of the RTE Act in India in its first five years of operation (2010–2015). To this end, it surveys judicial enforcement of the RTE Act and allied education-related cases. At the same time, it analyses the role of executive authorities, schools and non-governmental organisations in the statutory enforcement of the RTE Act. It does this through semi-structured interviews with relevant stakeholders in the National Capital Territory of Delhi to assess the state of ground-level enforcement of the legislation. Its findings suggest that enforcement of the RTE Act has been primarily bureaucratic, thereby short-changing the "rights" issue into one of "compliance." While the courts have been attentive, they have been limited by a narrow framing of questions and enumeration of remedies. The RTE Act is not an exclusive method of realizing rights.
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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