The decision was taken last week in the meeting of National Advisory Council of RTE. A task force headed by Kiran Karnik, former chairperson of Nasscom, gave a report on community mobilization for RTE. Karnik said knowledge about RTE, "a revolutionary legislation", was very little compared to MNREGA or similar other laws. He said while the government was busy putting the system in place in terms of setting up more schools, hiring more teachers and emphasizing on quality, there was little awareness about the law.
"There is a need to create a buzz about key provisions of RTE. For instance, community should be involved in spreading knowledge about things like zero-detention, no corporal punishment. Ten critical provisions of the bill should be taken to people. Schools should be made RTE-compliant," Karnik said.
Right now, the plan for community mobilization was a work-in-progress, he said. "Mobilisation programme should be decentralized to the district-level and NGOs and civil society should be involved," he added.
Educationist Vinod Raina, who helped Karnik’s task force in evolving the campaign, is already carrying out independent community mobilization in many states like Bihar. He said response of community mobilization was "very good" so far.