Redemption of Faith

Education needs fundamental change at all levels: teaching, curriculum, assessment and school administration

Sardar "Pinder" Singh Bhangra was an adventurer. Even he had a tingling sensation when he saw the spectacular sight of the 6,316mt high Bandarpunch Peak. This was somewhere on the long, winding and climbing road to Uttarkashi. In an exercise of local myth-making, that spot is now called Tingling Point.

I also felt the tingling, but not because of the view of the peak, which I couldn't see at all as it was covered by clouds right from the bottom of the Assi Ganga valley, but because of my chat with Dhiraj. He was selling vegetables at Tingling Point. It was cold, but the 12-year-old didn't seem to feel it at all.

We negotiated with him the price of thorny bitter gourd, and admired his strength that carries 20-30kg of vegetables up that steep and deep distance of the valley. He takes two days off every week from school to sell the vegetables. The days are set-Monday and Wednesday. From the way he spoke he seems to be taking school seriously. He said: aaj ke liye sabji, aage ke liye school (vegetables for today and education for the future); wisdom indeed for a 12-year-old, enough to leave me tingling.

It was another day, another stop, on another winding road in the Garhwal; this time for lunch, at Lakshmi's hut. I hesitate to call it a dhaba, because the word has acquired pop grandeur, and this really was a hut. My shepherd and friends, Anant, Jagmohan and Prakash, know Lakshmi well because of the countless trips on those treacherous roads. We had carried spinach, potato and tomato, knowing that at the precarious height of Lakshmi's hut, vegetable supply is unreliable.

She was quite upset with that. She said: "Don't you know in this season, our patch gives enough vegetables?"Anant, Prakash and Lakshmi then cooked the best meal I have had outside a home in a long time. She kept chatting with us, like an old friend.

I learnt that her husband is a daily wage earner. He is skilled as a mason, but he does the work he gets. He leaves early, and is back after nightfall. Her old father-in-law helps her in running the kitchen, and growing vegetables in season (which they also sell). On a good day she may feed 20 travellers like us; on a bad day she has to be happy with none. I asked her how much money they made. Enough to survive and to send her two children to school and her brother to college, she said. That, according to her, was the central, long-term issue: education. She kept the vegetables which we had brought only after much cajoling, and we left on the winding road.

The plains of Raichur in north-east Karnataka do not have the aesthetic or spiritual succour of the Himalayas. They can grind a visitor down, especially in the summers. On such a hot summer afternoon, Raghavendra showed me videos which he had made on an inexpensive camera.

It was a patient investigation of why schools have low attendance during the cotton-picking season. Children don't show up at school because they are especially "capable" of cotton picking. They don't have to bend to pick the low-growing cotton balls, since they are short, and their hands are gentler than that of an adult. This is in addition to the simpler fact that when cotton has to be picked, it has to be picked, so it's sort of all-hands-to-the-deck.

Anyone familiar with those areas won't find this surprising. What is actually (pleasantly) surprising is that these children are enrolled in schools, and at most other times they do go to school. This is the first generation in these communities going to school. They do it because they have started believing that school education is important.

The massive increase in enrolment numbers in schools over the past two decades or so, across India, isn't an adequate picture. It hides actual attendance numbers of children and there is also a bit of fudging of data on the ground. But the massive increase is real, and does accurately reflect a very critical change across our country: across class, caste and creed, there is a dramatic increase in the importance of school education. Battling every conceivable physical, economic and social shackle, 200 million children are showing up in Indian schools. They show up with the faith that education is their future.

Lakshmi works for that, Dhiraj pauses work for that. They put their faith in the education system and entrust it with their future.

We know the state of our school education. The schools do not deserve this faith of millions yet. The only redemption is in giving it our best shot; we have generated the faith, now we have to at least try our hardest to fulfil it. That, as I have argued in these columns, needs fundamental change at all levels: teaching, curriculum, assessment and school administration.

Anurag Behar writes every fortnight on issues of ecology and education.

To read Anurag Behar's previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/othersphere-

About The Author

Anurag Behar is the Chief Sustainability Officer of Wipro Limited, CEO for Azim Premji Foundation & Vice Chancellor, Azim Premji University. The Foundation and the University established by it are not-for-profit organizations committed to the vision of "contributing towards a just, equitable, humane and sustainable society". They run institutions and programs in India for improving school education and in related fields of human development. The field work of the Foundation is in collaboration with various state governments, to help improve equity and quality of the public education system. The current geographical focus of this work is in 7 states of India, which have over 350,000 schools. The University's teaching and research programs are also focused on the fields of Education and Development.

Anurag has been closely involved with efforts to improve education in India for the past eleven years. He has been a vocal advocate for the critical importance of public systems, in particular the public education system. His years in business have given him an insider's view in to both the possibilities and limits of markets. For the past few years he has also been engaged with environmental and ecological issues. He writes a fortnightly column for the newspaper Mint, on Education and Ecology, available on www.livemint.com.

He has led the social and ecological initiatives of Wipro Ltd for the past eleven years. He continues to provide oversight to this work as the Chief Sustainability Officer of Wipro.

Anurag has earlier played leadership roles in business. As the CEO of Wipro Infrastructure Engineering, he led the business from being No. 20 in the world to being the No. 1 in 5 years. The business has operations in Europe, India, Brazil and China. He led Wipro's investments in two strategic diversifications - in the Clean Energy and Water sectors. Earlier he has been responsible for multiple functions of Wipro including Brand, Quality and Innovation. He has also worked with GE Medical Systems, including being part of the team that built the leadership position of Wipro GE Healthcare in South Asia.

Anurag has served on the Board of Wipro GE Healthcare Ltd and of the TERI University. He serves on various government & industry councils, such as the National Mission on Teachers and Teacher Education, the Government of India implementation committee for the Justice Verma Commission, and with the CII's National Climate Change Council. He has been honored by the World Economic Forum, by being recognized as a 'Young Global Leader'.

He has an MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur and a BE in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Trichy. He enjoys long distance running.

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