Education as Fundamental Right or a Commercial Product: A Need of Hour

Abstract

In the present time, every person tries his best to get education under any circumstances. Education plays an important role in the development of a person as well as a country. Education is given an important place at national as well as international level. Constitution of India provides right to education under Article 21A and various other rights related to education under Articles Article 29(2), Article 41, Article 45 and Article 46. Under various international conventions like ‘International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’, ‘The UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education’, education is considered as the human rights of the every individual. Apart from these rights, some initiatives were also taken by the central government from time to time so that education can be affordable to every individual in every possible circumstance. These initiatives were like ‘National policy of education 1979’, insertion of Article 21A into the Constitution of India through the 86th Constitutional Amendment Act, 2002, Insertion of clause (k) under Article 51A, enactment of Right to Education Act (RTE)-2009 and New Education policy 2020. But nowadays more than the fundamental right, education becomes a matter of business by the educational institutes under which education becomes a commercial product and students become a consumer. Education becomes a matter of competition among the students instead a matter of values. So the preset research paper is the humble attempt to analyze that education is acting as fundamental right of every individual or it is merely becoming a product of commercialization.