Bal Sansads: Members of Parliament at 11
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COMMENTS 
As India constitutes its 14th Parliament in New Delhi, 4,000 children in Tilonia, Rajasthan, have elected 56 members of parliament to their fifth Bal Sansad. The Bal Sansad is a novel way to teach children about democratic processes. But it's not just about role-playing: children are actually responsible for school administration and solving local problems such as water management
Nausar is a Class V student at a night school in Kuchil village, Silora block, Rajasthan. He grazes cattle during the day and studies in the evenings. Nausar’s school was set up by the Barefoot College, back in 1975. This non-governmental organisation (formally known as the Social Work and Research Centre) has been working for the past three decades as a centre of learning and re-learning, providing basic services to 100 villages and more than 100,000 people spread over 500 square miles.
The Barefoot College is located in Tilonia, a small village 175 km from Jaipur, Rajasthan. From the 150 night schools that fulfil the educational requirements of children like Nausar, there grew the need to make children politically aware and to teach them, through practical experience, the importance of democracy.
And so Nausar is also a member of the Bal Sansad, an actively functioning children’s parliament.
The Bal Sansad (children’s parliament) was conceived as a tool to make children aware of the powers of a parliamentary democracy. It is also an early lesson in being a responsible citizen and stresses the need for involvement in community affairs. Via the Bal Sansad, children at the Barefoot College’s night schools learn about democratic processes, the right to vote, the rule of law, the power of a fair ballot and the need to choose candidates on merit rather than according to caste, religion, creed or sex.
In what goes beyond a theoretical exercise, periodic elections are held where all the children who form the electorate vote to elect members of parliament. These MPs perform a whole host of duties. They see that teachers and students come to school on time; they check that all schools have adequate supplies of teaching material; that there is enough drinking water in the schools; that the premises are kept clean; that complaints about corporal punishment, teacher tyranny etc are attended to, and so on.
They also report on their visits to other night schools, attend meetings of their local village education committee, take matters up with ministers and secretaries, budget expenses for the running of the government and ensure that elections are conducted in all schools. They are entrusted with the task of enrolling children who are out of school. And they take disciplinary action against any minister who does not attend meetings regularly.
The meeting of the cabinet is a serious matter. Each minister has to visit every school under his administration five times a month and oversee everything including the maintenance of records. Members of parliament are vested with the power to fire teachers who fail in their duties, following an investigation based on the formal lodging of a complaint. Children can lobby for solar power and water pumps in villages that do not have them.
Cabinet meetings also deliberate on larger policy issues that have a bearing on everyday life. These may include health and water issues. Apart from Bunker Roy, founder of the Barefoot College, who holds a permanent position as president, adults do not interfere in the functioning of the parliament except when help is directly sought.
The children also elect a prime minister. Campaigning for this post has to be clean -- one child who tried to become prime minister by distributing sweets was severely criticised by his voter peers! Although children’s parliaments exist in other countries like Sweden and Germany, at Tilonia the Bal Sansad goes beyond role-playing by setting examples on issues such as fair elections.
Only children registered as voters are allowed to vote or run for office. Candidates are required to know how to read and write. Nomination forms have to be accompanied by identity cards and sanction letters from parents and village committees who are enlisted to monitor elections. The minimum age for candidacy is 11 years, and 38% of the seats are reserved for girls. Elected representatives meet every two months in a nearby ruined fort. They select ministers for transport, education, health, women and the environment. Adults function as civil servants and are answerable to member ministers of the Sansad.
“Being a good speaker means giving other children a chance to address parliament and generally air an opinion without adults butting in. Because when adults do all the talking, what will we learn,” asked the speaker of parliament at a 1996 meeting. “There was a meeting last year where we had to draw up parliamentary budgets. Adults talked a lot and did not give us a chance to speak. I do not think this should be allowed,” he said.
Says S ‘Vasu’ Srinivasan, who has been working at the Barefoot College since the early-’70s: “The idea (of a Bal Sansad) came about at a Bal Mela (children’s fair) where the children expressed a desire to know more about the importance of the different institutions of governance, including the panchayat, the legislature, parliament, the courts as well as the police. The mela went on for three days. During the course of this gathering of more than 1,000 children, both boys and girls, they spontaneously decided that there should be a children’s parliament. There have been four parliaments elected by more than 3,000 children since 1993.”
He continues: “The present parliament is the fifth, wherein more than 4,000 children have elected 56 MPs. Over the past five parliaments there have been specific initiatives taken by MPs which reflect the aspirations of the MPs to assert themselves in monitoring the night schools of Tilonia as well as solving village problems. Like Dev Karan, an 11-year-old boy who settled a village dispute with the panchayat and collected Rs 40,000 from his village community to establish a community-managed piped water system. Dev Karan was the speaker of the first children’s parliament.”
In another inspiring example, Kaushalya, who became prime minister after finishing her studies at night school in village Buharu, had to move in with her in-laws in Panwa village, 40 km from Tilonia. She persuaded community members in Panwa to get a solar pump to fill up a 100,000-litre water tank from the community well. The Bal Sansad was able to collect Rs 40,000 from community members, along with a monthly contribution of Rs 20 from each individual household user of the system. Till then, no village had ever paid to access drinking water.
InfoChange News & Features, May 2004