Prospects of Right to Education in Manipur

As is well known, one of the most significant failures of India’s development story since independence has been with respect to public provisioning of good quality education. Although the country’s Constitution (particularly through its Directive Principles) is replete with copious references to the importance of education, both for instrumental and intrinsic reasons, appropriate policies and achievements on the ground have been seriously inadequate.

Even with respect to free and compulsory education up to the age of 14 years, as promised by Article 45 of the Constitution, it took the lawmakers more than six decades to put an act in place (in spite of its several limitations), to this effect. Of course, even this act was achieved after a sustained campaign by a large number of progressive movements and organisations. Possibly, one of the most important legal impetuses for making education a constitutional guarantee came from the judgment pronounced by Justice P N Bhagwati, in the famous Francis Coralie Mullin vs The Administrator, Union Territory of Delhi and Others 1981,¹ which was a much-needed interpretation of the Right to Life as enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution.