The Supreme Court’s latest directives on basic educational facilities deserve a loud welcome. At least someone in authority has acknowledged what millions of parents and students already know: our classrooms are not equal, and pretending otherwise is cruel self-deception.

Six years after NEP 2020, India’s much-hyped “education revolution” looks more like a clever rebranding of old privilege. Yes, enrollment is almost universal. But learning, dignity, and opportunity remain deeply unequal. This is not reform; it is a quiet, polite apartheid.

Read in Hindi: शिक्षा में गैर-बराबरी अब हो गई है असहनीय...!

Step into two schools with the same syllabus. In one, there are smart boards, AC classrooms, fluent English, career counsellors and confidence. In the other, leaking roofs, missing toilets, overworked teachers and borrowed textbooks. Both are called “schools”. Only one prepares children for life.

Government schools still educate the majority, especially in rural India, but remain starved of funds and attention. Parents spend peanuts per child here, while private schools burn through money and promise “global futures”. The gap is not accidental; it is structural. From Bihar to Telangana, families vote with their feet, fleeing government schools not by choice, but by fear.

Language seals the divide. Policy praises the mother tongue, but the market worships English. Jobs, interviews and promotions don’t ask how well you think, only how smoothly you speak. Those without “polished English” are filtered out early, efficiently, and without apology.

Then comes coaching, the parallel education system that decides winners in advance. If you can pay, you compete. If you can’t, you are told to accept your “limits”. Kota’s factories of hope and heartbreak are proof enough. Talent without money doesn’t fail exams; it is never allowed to enter the race.

COVID exposed the digital lie. Online education was sold as an equaliser. Instead, it became a magnifying glass for inequality. Urban students logged in. Rural students logged out—no devices, no network, no electricity. “Buffering” became a way of life, not a technical glitch.

Degrees are multiplying, but skills are not. Universities produce graduates faster than the economy can absorb them. Youth unemployment remains stubbornly high, and educated young people are angrier than ever. From exam paper leaks to street protests, the message is clear: the system is broken, and the young know it.

We celebrate independence, announce policies, and launch portals. But education today does not liberate—it sorts destinies. Birth decides the classroom. The classroom decides the future.

Until public education is funded seriously, language stops acting as a gatekeeper, technology reaches the last child, and opportunity is treated as a right, not a luxury, this educational apartheid will continue to shame us.

The Supreme Court has spoken. Now the rest of the system must listen.