Since the first call for free and compulsory primary education made in pre-independent India in 1910,1 it took almost a century for elementary education to be recognised as a human right backed by legislation. The wheels were set in motion by two seminal Supreme Court judgments in 19922 and 19933 in which the Court declared that the right to education flows from the right to life, and subsequently recognised the fundamental right to free education for all children up to the age of 14 years. The right received formal constitutional recognition through the 86th Amendment to the Indian Constitution in 2002, though it was made applicable only to children between the ages of 6 to 14 years.