Abstract
Professor Muchkund Dubey was not just an individual but an institution himself. My association with Professor Dubey spans more than two and a half decades, dating back to when the Indian state was considering amending the Constitution of India to make education a fundamental right after the Supreme Court’s historic verdict in the Unni Krishnan case in 1993. Since then, Professor Dubey played a key role as a champion advocating for universalising free and compulsory education for all children up to the age of 18 years. He was crucial during the period from 1987 to 2002 when the process of amending the Constitution to make education a fundamental right was underway. He strongly lobbied and advocated to bring all children from 0 to 18 years under the purview of this Fundamental Right in consonance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
When the Indian state betrayed children by reducing the fundamental right to cover only children from 6 to 14 years, keeping 0–6 and 15–18 years outside its purview through the Constitution (Eighty-Sixth Amendment) Act, 2002, Professor Dubey was very upset. All our efforts through civil society campaigns under the banner of the National Alliance for Fundamental Right to Education (NAFRE) to lobby the federal government to consider free and compulsory education as a fundamental right until Class X miserably failed and disappointed many of us.
During this period of disappointment and despair, Professor Dubey provided space in the Council for Social Development (CSD) to build a new movement under the banner of People’s Campaign for Common School System (PCCSS). Many leading academicians, bureaucrats-cum-social activists such as Anil Sadgopal, Dinesh Abrol, Vinod Raina, Janaki Rajan, Madan Mohan Jha, Sarwat Ali, Geeta Athreya, Vasanti Devi, Vinay Kanth, Ravi Kumar, Deepak Malik, Madhu Prasad, Ambarish Rai, Pratibha Sindhe, Ashok Agarwal, and Mitra Ranjan, among many others, came together to revive the agenda of Common School System as conceived and recommended by the Education Commission (1964–1966), also known as the Kothari Commission. Professor Dubey played a key and active role in conceptualising the structure, composition, and strategy to advance the PCCSS movement.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the process of reviving the agenda of the common school system under the leadership of Professor Dubey led to the constitution of the first Common School System Commission in the country by the Bihar Human Resource Development Department. Professor Dubey was the chairperson, along with Professor Anil Sadgopal as a member, and Dr Madan Mohan Jha, the then commissioner and secretary of the Human Resource Development Department, as its member-secretary in 2006. The commission, through its hard and meticulous work, produced one of the best reports on the common school system and submitted it on 8 June 2007.
It is important to recall that when it came to the question of the common school system or universalising quality education for all children, Professor Dubey was very straightforward and never minced words in communicating his strong viewpoint on the issue at hand. For instance, Professor Dubey, while submitting the report of the Common School System Commission, made his point very clear in his cover letter to Shri Nitish Kumar, the then Chief Minister of Bihar. He said:
The financial implications of the Common School System that we have calculated may appear to be daunting; but given the cumulative neglect of the past and the inherently ambitious task of building a Common School System, they are not at all surprising. Our nation, society and the governments both at the Centre and the States, will have, at some time or other, to come to terms with the inevitability of mobilising resources on the required scale for school education, if India is to survive as one nation and claim its rightful place in the comity of nations. We have suggested a set of measures for mobilisation of resources.
This shows that when it came to universalising education, Professor Dubey had a clear vision, and he was blunt in communicating it to the ruling class.
Professor Dubey was known for multitasking and working simultaneously on different areas and issues. As chairperson of CSD, he was active in the office from 10:00
Given our continuous and consistent struggle to get child-centred legislation based on a rights-based approach, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 was a shocking disappointment for most of us. Despite all our constructive criticism and inputs on the various versions (2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2009) of the proposed legislation, the Act had many inherent flaws. As a result, it had very little to offer and much less to cheer. To make things worse, it was an unabashed attempt to legitimise and promote the privatisation of the education sector, which is constitutionally mandated to be a state responsibility.
Despite the major flaws in the legislation, the Indian state had recognised the education of children between 6 and 14 years as a fundamental right in the Constitution. This was the result of a long battle from the freedom struggle until the enactment of the legislation. Recognising this history, it was decided to engage with the Act, using it as a powerful legal tool to expose the inherent contradictions within the school education system while at the same time demanding necessary amendments to include children from 0 to 6 years and extending the scope till 18 years to cover free and compulsory education up to Class XII. A larger civil society alliance consisting of academicians, activists, social movements, and non-governmental organisations was formed to demand the effective implementation of the RTE Act.
Professor Dubey played a key and decisive role in the functioning of the RTE Forum. The working Secretariat of the forum under the convenorship of (late) Ambarish Rai was housed in CSD with all facilities and support systems under the guidance of Professor Dubey. One of the core and popular events of the forum was holding the National Stocktaking Convention on the implementation of the RTE Act with an evidence-based Annual Stocktaking Report. Professor Dubey was part of all 10 National Stocktaking Conventions with renewed optimism and conviction for the effective implementation of the RTE Act.
It is important to acknowledge that (late) Ambarish Rai played a very decisive and pathbreaking role in bringing civil society organisations together as part of the RTE Forum. Professor Dubey was a great admirer of Rai, who was known as Professor Dubey’s blue-eyed person. After Rai’s demise, Professor Dubey felt he had lost a great friend who had dedicated his life to the cause of the Right to Education, and all activities at CSD were stopped for some time.
Nevertheless, Professor Dubey’s conviction for universalising quality education through the effective implementation of the RTE Act was so unstinting and uncompromised that it led to the creation of the RTE Cell within CSD to continue the legacy of demanding the effective implementation of the much-celebrated RTE Act. It was a great honour for me when CSD appointed me as the Honorary Visiting Professor of the institute and the National Co-ordinator of the RTE Cell. Professor Dubey is no longer physically with us today; however, he has left the legacy of working for a cause with honesty, integrity, conviction, and, above all, with perennial optimism to ensure equitable quality education for all children through an equitable common school system as a prerequisite for national development. All of us owe a great debt to carry forward the unfinished task of ensuring the fundamental right of every child in the country to equitable quality education. This is the most befitting tribute to the champion of universal free and compulsory quality education. Let us continue our struggle to reclaim the RTE Act that has been lost in the past decade.