"It does not matter how great your dreams are...

your dreams shall remain just dreams unless you get up and do something about it" -Anon.

Sometime's things that happen are so weird that we cannot help but wonder whether they are simply matters of chance, or is there some greater force with a weird sense of humour at play.Lets take The Childeren's Right To Free and Compulsory Education ACT,2010.The first time a law came into force by the speech of the Prime Minister.But i doubt Mr. Manmohan Singh, during his speech realised that the date the ACT came into force was April 1st, the international Fool's Day.Now whether this was just a coincedence or some God's sense of humour, i am not in any authority to ascertain.What i do know is that even two years after this ACT has come into force nothing much has changed in India. "Equality, of status and opportunity;.."- Preamble of India. The Preamble is the soul of the Indian Constitution, the essence of all the laws formed.It speaks about equality.It does not matter if a child is a Dalit or a Hindu.Nor should it matter if the child's father is a rich businessman or a poor merchant.What matters is that according to the sprite of the Preamble enforced through the Art. 21 of the Constitution of India, every citizen of India is to be treated equally.And for those who do not get opportunities it the resposibility of the goverment to see to their needs. Knowledge is the most vital tool now.If there is knowledge then there are no limits to what one can acchieve.If India wants to develop then it needs to educate its youth.The youth are the future and it is the responsibility of the goverment to nurture our future.But unfortunately this is not so.Even with all the laws and ACTs in the world we are still not being able to reach our goal. The ACT has many criticisms.Some have criticized the act for having being hastily-drafted, not consulting many groups active in education, not considering the quality of education or the infringment on the rights of private and religious minority schools to administer their system.Another drawback of the act is that stringent provisions of the Act make it mandatory for all children to produce income and caste certificates, BPL cards and birth certificates. Orphan children are often unable to produce such documents, even though they are willing to study. As a result, schools are not admitting them, as they require the documents as a condition to admission.Yet the

goverment seems to be deaf to all these problems. We need to ask ourselves now.Why is it that even though we have enough laws and rules that nothing ever gets done.Do we not have the will to implement what we make?Are we to simply make empty promises of Uthopia without taking a step towards it?The problem in India, my dear friends, are not in the laws but in the lack of proper implementation. In this paper I have not only analysed the strengths and weakness of the RTE ACT and tried to find out what actually stops our dreams from turning into a reality, but also went further to ask people from different speares of life about their opinions about this.After all the ACT is for the people.

By Sourya Banerjee