Dysfunctional School Development and Monitoring Committees: Critical Appraisal in Lambani Thandas of Karnataka

Abstract

National policy on education of 1986 visualized direct community involvement in the management and monitoring of school development activities through decentralized educational governance framework. Article 21A of Indian constitution mandates state to guarantee ‘elementary education’ as an important fundamental socio-cultural right of children aged between 6-14 years. This important constitutional responsibility when read along with article 273G and eleventh schedule visualizes maneuvering decentralized governance mechanism in elementary education through gram panchayats. Systematic co-option efforts to create parallel institutions in ‘decentralized governance framework’ with the establishment of school development and monitoring committees by centralized executive order is an unintended effort by educational bureaucracy to delink panchayaths from mandated constitutional responsibility. Unplanned fund disbursal by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and recent confusions created by ‘right to education act of 2009’ on the roles and responsibilities of individuals, authorities, institutions etc., are seen as some of the common reasons for disfunctioning of school development and monitoring committees in Lambani Thandas of Karnataka. Critical appraisal of these committees using institutional ethnography has helped to probe more on the inability of these badly engineered ‘pseudo decentralized structures’ in performing the roles and responsibilities prescribed to them by educational bureaucracy. Thus proposed paper is administered to incorporate on the challenges and issues related to incorrect visualization of equitable quality elementary education to disadvantaged Lambani communities through constitutionally decentralized institutional structure and processes.