Talk by Mr.

Samina Bano

Submitted by - Tarun Kumar Meena | 2111480

Submitted to – Professor Trilochan Sastry

According to the speaker, almost 40% of these welfare schemes are not achieving their
intended results. Because they're very inefficiently being implemented, or this money is still
lying in the government treasury and is not getting unlocked. Around 40% spent on welfare
schemes is getting wasted each year, and some small improvements in the implementation
of policies can unblock a lot of funds which is getting wasted. Even a 1% improvement can
unblock $4bn of public funds (40% of India's total private philanthropic spending).
Improving the efficiency of the existing welfare scheme can do something which a new
scheme can't do; asking people to donate 100 Rs is a very tough job, but asking them to
donate 1 Rs and telling them that we'll use this 1 Rs to unlock 100 Rs is much better.
Suppose there's a pipeline with holes, and we get a few buckets of dirty water. Other NGOs
are removing those buckets of filthy water so people can get clean water buckets. And what
the speaker wants to do here to solve the problem is to do something to fill the holes of the
pipeline, which results in reduced dirty water buckets at the end.
Speaker also told us about the RTE act, where children belonging to weaker sections of
society are given an opportunity to study in good private schools whose fees they were
unable to pay earlier. Private schools will have to take up to 25 per cent of their total
capacity in entry-level classes. These schools will provide admission to these children, and
the government will make some payments to the schools on behalf of these students. But
the main issue arises in getting the schools to implement this act. One of the main reasons
why private schools don't say yes easily is delayed payments from the government side. Not
only that, they are also worried that these 25 per cent of children can be a burden or affect
the studies of the other 75 per cent. But in reality, these 25 per cent kids bring diversity into
the classroom and are also trying to bring about inclusion in the classroom. Rich kids might
not help these kids, but the poor kids will help rich kids.
With this diversity, all kids will become more pro-social and generous human beings. This
inclusion will make children not discriminatory by nature. And also she talked about some
papers which have shown that this rule is not affecting the quality of education. Also, one
more issue is growing inequality, and it can be removed if we begin at the starting point, i.e.
the classrooms. If the school also segregates rich and poor kids, this problem will keep
increasing. Imagine a child has only studied in a vibrant classroom or with friends. Will they
ever understand the issues of poor kids? It'll be very Rare.
When this idea came, it was not easy to implement; there were a lot of cases where people
were trying different ways to move around and not give admission to kids who needed it the
most. Private schools do not want to implement it because if they took money from the
government, they come under the purview of the right to information, so they have to
reveal their sources. They had to renew the sources of income and show where this money
was going with all the transparency. The private school came together and filed against the
government in court. Fact government was also not very keen on implementing it at that
time, so the government had also included private schools. They also came up with some
policy which was in no way prohibiting the implementation of that policy. To sort it out
speaker started working in this field, and she was attacked and had to face a lot of FIR and
court cases. She was scared but continued her fight with that school and succeeded.
Supreme Court said that schools must implement this policy, and the children should be
admitted. The 13 children for whom Samina ma'am has been fighting must be admitted to
the school; otherwise, the schools and the head of the school will be charged under
contempt of court case. Ma'am won the case, and since then the journey in the last ten
years, she has been able to get 4,07,000 children from impoverished backgrounds to study
under RTE in 75 districts of Uttar Pradesh. Because of Samina ma'am and her team's efforts,
girls' participation increased by 8%, and they could unlock more than 300 Cr rupees.
Speaker and team also created tools for measuring social inclusion with the help of a self-
assessment tool. She also talked about the need for and importance of the apprenticeship
for the experience. Rightwalk foundation, the speaker's organization, also employs a push-
and-pull approach to realize the full potential of the apprentice scheme. In 1.5 years, Samina
and her team registered 7400+ establishments, and more than 50,000 apprentices were
onboarded with Samina and her team's support. She also discussed how to approach
government officials or people in suitable positions. She gave a few examples of how she
could connect with officials who were not giving her time for an appointment.