The Grievance Redress System under the Right to Education Act

Chapter 5 examines the conceptual set-up of the grievance redress system created by the Right to Education Act, and analyses studies on its performance. It highlights the deficiencies of the current system, and compares it to other, more effective systems such as grievance redress under the RTI Act. The different institutions that are part of the grievance redress system are either not sufficiently independent or do not have sufficient competences to enforce their ‘judgments’. These deficiencies, as well as additional implementation issues, also translate into a malfunctioning system ‘on the ground’. The chapter also examines other grievance redress systems for different state services (for instance, the ones created by the Right to Information Act), highlighting that some of the deficiencies found in the right to education system are actually not universal.