Give the child a fish

In his seminal work Give A Man A Fish, the American anthropologist James Ferguson argues for a new politics that gives a “rightful share” of a nation’s wealth as a basic entitlement to all citizens, independent of their labour. In a society where jobs are not guaranteed, can workers, who are expected to catch fish, be given their “rightful share” of society’s commons instead? As it extends the same idea to all positive rights, like the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, in India, the book challenges the status quo thinking on rights that assumes a default productionist society, where capital and labour are the only valuable inputs that cumulate meaningfully in a society.

According to Ferguson, the operating principle in a mature democracy is that no one gives anything to anyone, and all people simply receive what is due from the commons. So, in the case of the RTE, especially with Clause 12.1.c that provides 25 per cent of entry-class seats in private unaided schools for economically and socially disadvantaged students, it does not simply mean that children “have” the right to a place in a school. Instead, the idea of a mixed classroom and sharing a common school itself is rightful, something that should be done “because it is right”.

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There are two philosophical critiques of the RTE’s 25 per cent entitlement, much like other entitlements such as unconditional cash transfers or basic income programmes in India. One critique is that the policy does not address the root cause of inequality (market failures). It is a Band-Aid fix and will make people dependent on free aid. The second is that the state is abdicating its role of providing quality education and accelerating the privatisation of a public good like education. Until we fix market general equilibrium or state capacity, the argument is that any universal effort to distribute the commons is not worthwhile.

Blurring the strict boundaries between neoliberalism (efficient markets as the only end game) and state welfarism (state as the sole provider of all universal goods and services), Ferguson offers an imaginative and innovative read of policies like RTE. It is a move away from the politics of end-states to a new language of distributive politics, with the focus on the share of a nation’s wealth or commons (universal entitlement) as opposed to a language of deservingness and freebies. Are schools—like seas, air, forests, roads, parks, and so on—part of society’s commons? If yes, what is the rightful share of every vulnerable child in this commons, irrespective of the pin code of their birth?

Let us review the progress of the RTE in its first 15 years of implementation (since its rollout in 2009), especially the last decade of implementation of RTE 12.1.c against its progressive ambitions, since the Supreme Court upheld its validity in 2013.

History of RTE 12.1.c

After Independence, the attempts to break free of colonial roots were modestly successful. While the 1990s saw universal access to primary education, flailing government schools and increasing per capita incomes in the top quintiles led to a flight to various categories of private schools. Since the 2000s, almost one in every two children attends private schools, and a large percentage of them are affordable private schools, where the monthly fee is as low as Rs 500-Rs.1,000 a month (“State of the sector report”, Central Square Foundation, 2020). Because of this slow stratification of schools by caste and class, the most disadvantaged children are now grouped in the lowest-resourced (single teacher, multigrade) and lowest-quality schools. The odds of social mobility for such children are severely limited by the time they enter primary school.

Given the divergent social mobility pathways for children based on the pincode of their birth, RTE Sec 12.1.c was aimed at reviving the “common school” vision of the Kothari Commission Report of 1966. The original conception extended the concept to Central, State, and local government schools, and to aided schools. The RTE legislation aims to expand the coverage to unaided schools, which now have a significant share of students in India.

This is especially true for private schools that have received subsidised urban land from governments and have ignored the implementation of land-use conditionality to provide 20 per cent of seats for economically disadvantaged students. In 2004, the Supreme Court stepped in to enforce the conditionality, a precursor to the committee that drafted RTE draft committee in 2005.

Children from the Narikuravar tribe join students of a Chennnai corporation school in a game of basketball, at Royapuram on July 19, 2018. Schools must be reimagined as a commons. | Photo Credit: B. Jothi Ramalingam

Under RTE 12.1.c, the government reimburses unaided private schools with a per-child amount equivalent to government spending or private school fees, whichever is lower. In 2010, the Society of Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan challenged the provision in the Supreme Court, arguing that the clause impinges on their autonomy to run their schools independently. In April 2013, the Supreme Court upheld the provision, stating that schools as public institutions have social responsibilities, and a 25 per cent entry level quota was in the public interest.

However, this Supreme Court judgment has not settled the debate on the distributive politics of educational seats, as a review of the last decade’s implementation shows. The implementation capacities of States and schools have lagged behind the policy’s progressive imagination, confirming the “priors” that some of the actors had about the provision’s desirability. Legal obstructionism has stifled the clause in a few States, opening the door for a back-handed neutralisation of its distributive intent.

The Supreme Court’s 2013 judgment raises a question for our moral sensibilities: In modern-day India, do we imagine the tribal prodigy Eklavya and the aristocratic elite Arjun in the same classroom? Or will the station of their birth determine their social capital and the long-term odds of their social mobility? An objective review of the last decade of India’s implementation of RTE 12.1.c holds promise even as it highlights the pitfalls.

With a potential coverage of 20 million children in the last decade, RTE 12.1.c is the world’s boldest attempt at affirmative action policy in terms of scale. Research on the effects of policy in the previous decade has thrown up clear pointers. Gautam Rao’s study of Delhi’s elite schools confirms the development of egalitarian behaviours in mixed classrooms, measured by increased likelihood of volunteerism, increased levels of generosity, and reduced levels of discrimination (“Familiarity Does Not Breed Contempt: Generosity, Discrimination, and Diversity in Delhi Schools”; American Economic Review 109(3), March 2019). All these pro-social improvements were observed with no regressions in classroom disruptions or academic scores.

Research by Amanda Gilbertson and Ben Arnold on the English media’s coverage of this provision highlights its regressive role in undermining the “rightful share” or distributive ethos of the policy. Most of the reporting focussed on the traditional welfare language of compassion for the meritorious poor (conditioning the share on ability) and implementation failures (undermining the policy as not adding value). The latest research by Mauricio Romero and Abhijeet Singh in Chhattisgarh revealed significant implementation challenges that undermine the policy’s redistributive goals. Only 20 per cent of the bottom quintile households had information about the policy, and only 9 per cent had Internet access to complete the online applications.

Ritik, 16, son of a daily-wage earner became the first person in India to get a prosthetic limb from the government by invoking the Right to Education Act, in New Delhi on June 29, 2018. | Photo Credit: Sandeep Saxena

Administrative data show a forward-looking trend, with bright spots and hot spots. Most States/Union Territories (20+) now implement the RTE 12.1.c provision with nearly five million students cumulatively admitted in the last decade. Latest retention surveys across four States show a high average retention rate of 91 per cent of the surveyed students in their admitted RTE schools, with girls having higher retention rates (2025 Indus Action). The implementing States have had varied experiences with RTE reimbursement claims, with an average approval rate of 88 per cent recorded in 2024-25.

The Madras High Court’s landmark ruling in June 2025 established several precedents in the RTE reimbursement cycle. For instance, States cannot withhold reimbursements to schools citing the non-receipt of Central funds and the government of India cannot link RTE funding obligations to other policies.

Upstream reimbursement delays from Centre-State have left schools in severe financial strain, especially due to COVID-19. In 2022, nearly 1,300 schools in Maharashtra boycotted the RTE cycle owing to payment dues of Rs.700 crore. Across States, reimbursement delays force schools to either refuse RTE admissions or operate at financial losses. The reimbursement delays put a severe strain on the legitimacy of the States to enforce RTE claims of parents and strengthen their bargaining power with schools.

Open-source publication of administrative platforms for admissions and of a school’s best practices for retention is helping break down knowledge barriers to effective implementation. Despite the teething issues of implementation and state capacities, there has been significant progress in admitting and retaining a large share of eligible students.

However, the major resistance to this distributive policy has come from the most unlikely quarters. The United Progressive Alliance-II government passed the RTE Act in 2009, with the Congress championing the cause. The party contested the 2024 general election on the plank of distributive politics (NYAY) for youth, women, farmers, and labour and fair representation in public institutions. However, in Karnataka and Telangana, the two States where the Congress holds executive power, the governments have passed “unconstitutional” amendments (as High Court rulings in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and Punjab on the same amendments show) to limit access to RTE seats to one million eligible students.

The way forward

A decade of implementation of a radically distributive public policy and two decades of its progressive imagination is a good point to pause for reflection as a society. How do we realise the promise and potential of this positive right? For starters, do we believe in giving every Indian child a fish, regardless of whether they can learn to fish for themselves, whether the boat owners will share the waters, or whether there will be enough fishing jobs in the future?

With regard to the authorising environment, clarity would emerge if either the Supreme Court, the New Education Policy Task Force, or the Leader of the Opposition took a definitive stance against the unconstitutional amendment that is being pursued in Karnataka and Telangana. A generous interpretation of the amendment could be the pressures of public finance or public school enrolment that the local governments are trying to manage. However, restricting the freedoms of disadvantaged parents and children is both unconstitutional and misguided.Both these States can carefully study the experiences of reimbursement committees across several States to balance their education budgets, while attempting to improve the quality of public education. If anything, promoting open access to all schools to all children will only accelerate the ability of institutions to secure a child’s admission on the basis of their quality attributes.

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Institutions like the Central Board of Secondary Education and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights can commission independent longitudinal studies of students admitted under RTE 12.1.c across the country, to build on smaller-scale studies by researchers and civil society organisations.

A nationally representative sample across key stages (class III, class VIII, class XII, and postgraduation) will illuminate the value of a good school (across the types of schools), and the actual returns to this policy will bear out in the long run. We need to look no further than the critiqued Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (20 years) and PDS programmes (60 years) for their achievements, despite the limited state capacity in realising their full potential.

The India I know and continue to believe in is where Arjun and Eklavya study in the same classroom. It is an India in which schools are sites of democratic practice, a commons that welcomes every child to learn and grow. It is the right thing to do and not a freebie to be shared by the political and social elite only out of their enlightened interest. Give every child their rightful fish, and let them teach everyone how to lead us into the future. 

Tarun Cherukuri is co-founder and CEO of Indus Action, a policy implementation organisation that works closely with the government and civil society across India in the primary education sector.