Somebody once quipped that in evolved democracies, governments step in when the private sector fails, but in India, the private sector steps in when the government fails, which is all too often. We can carry the argument further, to say that it’s not even private sector institutions that often step in, but a few public-minded individuals. One such is Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder and former CEO of Infosys and now known as the man who gave identity to faceless millions in the country without which they had been for decades consigned to the sidelines of India’s economic growth story.
After the unique identity project, and especially its embrace by the Modi government, many expected that Nilekani would continue to be the ‘Aadhaar’ for many of the new government’s technology-focused projects, but that hasn’t turned out to be the case. Nilekani, though, has found a different calling, and it’s exactly the kind where the government has failed, but where an individual with an innovative mind, the motivation to effect change at scale, and the heart to put in his own resources, could well succeed: Ensuring that millions of Indian children do not just go to school but actually pick up literacy and numeracy skills.
His new initiative, Ek Step, “is to address the challenge of literacy and numeracy. In education, there has been a big success in expanding reach and building schools and enrolment, but learning outcomes haven't kept pace with that. The Annual Status of Education (ASER) reports of the last 10 years show that”. Indeed, the 2015 ASER reports alarming numbers – nearly half the children in higher primary classes cannot read at Std. II level; nearly 40 percent of children in Std. III do not recognise numbers up to 100!
“If a child can't read or write or do arithmetic, it can't do anything else, it's foundational. We are trying to solve just that foundational problem, not the whole education problem, and then letting the education system take it from there. Today, what's happening is, these children can't read or write, but they keep getting promoted. Ultimately, they drop out because they can't understand what's happening in class. It's a big problem, millions of children drop out every year”.
Ek Step will be a platform on smartphones and tablets that will provide personalised learning for each child. That’s personalised learning and outcome assessments for about 200 million children!
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