Hope for learning and learning to hope

It's hard for me to feel elated, ecstatic and upbeat about the day i.e. 15 Aug, our Independence day. I am not a pessimist but it's hard to look beyond the 'here and now' and find solace in what we have achieved as a country in all these years. I can not certainly share or echo the euphoria, celebration and ecstasy that we are told we are supposed to feel about it i.e. be part of the #harghartiranga or #harghartirangacampaign some other campaigns, get certificates and post-selfies about it. I do not believe that we have entered the #amritkaal - the echoes of which again we are told are going to last another 1000 years or so.?

Historically, we are at a better place than when the Britishers left us to govern our own fates. This part i.e. freedom to govern our own fates is important! This means we (and we primarily) are responsible for what happened, is happening, will happen and even what has not happened or could have happened. We can no longer blame the outsiders, invaders or foreign powers or conspirators (don’t we usually hear that when something critical is brought up!).??

Yes, we have achieved many things as a country and the very existence of this nation-state as a sovereign (yes, we are not directly governed by another country), democratic (at least in farce of universal adult franchise, elections and government) and united (yeah, we haven't had state(s) splinter away from the country, no civil war that resulted in a coo or similar) should be celebrated.?

We are doing better in terms of human well-being than ever as economists and statisticians will tell us not only in economic development (GDP, GDP per capita, roads, ports, airports, infra and what have you!) but also in social indicators of health, education, nutrition etc. We have the world’s largest number of malnourished children (around one-third), we have one of the largest public health systems in the world which is in tatters (all of us who read this would never access it, right?), more than half of our children of the age 6-9 pass out of our primary schools without the ability to read or write or do basic math (almost illiterate?). But yeah, things were much worse before or at the time the British left us and they have improved.?

Many social disparities and regional imbalances (as pointed out in our Constitution) have reduced such as access of girls and socially disadvantaged groups (SC, STs) to schooling, women's participation in the economy etc. Number of engineers, doctors and professionals in our universities and colleges has skyrocketed.?

So what's the crib about?

The gripe isn't about the direction; it's about the pace, the inclusiveness and wholeness (of texture) of this progress or growth we have achieved in all these years after independence.?

Let's unpack one by one. The crib is about the pace or quantum or rate of growth. It's hard to disagree that a faster rate of progress would have been better, that's the nature of any growth, more always seems better! But, haven't we done well looking at the constraints of resources (after all, we were left an extremely poor country) and where we started (our baseline was so low!)? Yes, we have done well compared to where we were (the starting line) but one has to also look at where one should be (the finishing line)!?

We have to look at 'what is' left for us to do in the “here and now” and 'what would we be' in the future. This is what? makes one a bit poignant, a bit pessimistic, almost forcing one to flee and avoid these thoughts and find solace in the details of work, futility of arguments, constant distractions on phone, endless labyrinths of music, Netflix or in travel, yoga or gym, in social occasions, family and other banalities of the day!?

To illustrate my points, let me for the sake of my own convenience, pick a field I know relatively well and spend most of my waking and even some of my sleeping hours (by dreaming!) i.e. school education. I will share some facts, data, experience and understanding about where we are today in the field of public school education, but I am urging you to reflect if the same is true of other areas of human life where you have experience and see if we are at a similar place.?

We will start with achievements. We have ensured (almost for a few years now) that almost all (90% or more) of our primary school going age children are enrolled in some or the other school (government or private). This we should be happy about. Yes, because this was not the case a few decades earlier and there were serious regional imbalances, inequity in terms of gender, social category (SC, ST) and other issues. We have done well to achieve the goal of universal access to primary schools. Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and a few in South Asia had similar situations or worse when their colonial powers left them or ran away. Some of those countries in Africa are still struggling to ensure equitable access to primary schools.

So, here comes my first moot question - about pace. Could we have done this earlier? Yes. There was no reason why we couldn't have started earnest efforts soon after moving education into the concurrent list in 1977; making universal primary education as a national goal as we did after the UN MDGs prioritised Education for All (EFA) and allocating resources and efforts towards it for the next 20-25 years as we did under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). We could have been where we are today in the early 2000s! The positive ripple effects of this would have been greater participation in secondary education and higher education and an increased focus on quality and learning outcomes a decade or two earlier.?

Now let’s talk about my second point - the wholeness or texture of things. While most children are enrolled in schools only 60-70% of them attend schools regularly. I am taking a larger range to accommodate and avoid discussions about which sources I am using and reliability of one versus the other - reports by ASER Centre of Pratham Education Foundation , NAS by NCERT, NFHS or anything else. And as with any averages, they mask the situation or starkness of data - so in Bihar, UP (and that's a lot) the attendance situation is 45-60%. Enrolment is not schooling ! The children’s name being there in the school registers, is not equal to them coming to school and learning. Simple??

Third, more than half of the children in the schools are not learning the foundational skills of reading, writing and basic maths by the time they are 9-10 years old and are ready to move from primary schools to upper primary and secondary classes. 世界银行 calls it 'learning poverty', some of us call it a 'learning crisis' and even 'learning emergency'. It is all of that and may be a bit more. These children will not only find it extremely hard to engage meaningfully in classroom activities in higher grades. As there is no time or scope for the teachers of the higher grades to help them catch up on these basic skills - they have a syllabus to complete and results to show, remember! These gaps will get compounded as years go on: that’s the basic nature and effect of time! Again, let's not get into debates of statistics, government (NAS, FLS) or non-government (ASER) sources of data, issues of data reliability, incentives or under or over reporting here. The sad part is irrespective of region (state, district), management (government or private), location of assessment (school or home) the studies broadly point to the same. Children are not learning as much as they should as per their age and grade and the worst part is the learning levels continue to remain low or get worse. Now, let’s try to get a feel of this number. We have roughly more than 25 Cr more children in our school system; slightly more than half of them go to primary schools. So, by broad estimates, the number of children not learning or acquiring basic universal skills would mean crores of children at a country level i.e. 7-8 crores of them ! Let that sink in slowly, take your time. I will give you two other statistics to help you make sense of it. 7-8 crore is equivalent to the entire population of states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu (individually, not put together!).?

Finally, let’s pick up something which always tends to get left out - equity or inclusion. It shouldn't be too hard to guess who would be the majority of these 7-8 crore children. Clearly these would be children belonging to SC, ST, religious minorities, remote rural areas, girls? These would be? children enrolled in almost all government school or the so called affordable private schools (with monthly fee up to Rs. 1000)? In other words, these are all children of poor parents or parents who are unable to spend large amounts or share of their money on their child's education (and hence their life chance). There is ample research worldwide that parental income is the single biggest determinant of learning. So, unfortunately income poverty is the reason for learning poverty and further those children who are subjected to learning poverty today are the ones who will very likely suffer from income poverty as they become adults and start their families due to lack of these basic universal skills.?

I used the word subjected to learning poverty as we the state (people of this republic) are responsible for it not the child. We even guaranteed it (mind you not enrollment in schools, but education or learning) as a fundamental right ! So, if the children are not learning, we have failed to provide and ensure that right for them.?

I want to end with 'what would be' and yet again in this age and times of post-truth (basically falsehood) something that doesn't give a lot of scope for optimism is that if we are not aligned on a single picture of reality today, how can we possible hope to be aligned on the plans and direction of future. Do we all envisage a future where India would be at the forefront of technology, science, business and management fuelled by not just the demographic dividend but also the quality of the tip or top of this pyramid? Yes, that’s what we are told too - we will be ViswhaGuru! Of course! There is no disagreement on the goal or destination as it is too far in time and distance for us to meaningfully engage in a debate. What we need to discuss and debate is whose golden future it will be? Is this ‘Amrit kaal’ and promised ‘acchhe din’ or ‘good times’ for a certain section of the society/country who will have a certain set of characteristics? Will it be only for ‘Us’ - the dominant, the majoritarian and the authoritarian half of the population? Or the fruits of this development and growth and $5 trillion economy (which will be 10) will be for ‘Them’ also - regardless of religion, region, income, paying capability, caste, gender, sexual orientation??

The other big question is what kind of future are we envisaging? Who decides the shape of these things? Is % of area under forest cover and natural habitat desirable or the number of sky-scrapers that have come up in a certain pocket of a state? Is the number of bikes (bicycles) on the road and number of pedestrians choosing to walk and use public transport a good metric to chase or SUVs and luxury cars sales figures? Is the number of Indians in the Forbes richest of the world list to be celebrated louder than a fraction of improvement in MMR, IMR or number of malnourished children? Is the rising market capitalisation of a few large corporations and the sensex & other indices associated with them the sine qua non of development or should we look at the Micro-Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector which has around 6-7 crore enterprises, employing ~12Cr people and see how many of them are sick, declining and about to be shut down? Is doubling the farmer’s income good enough? Not sure what’s the report card on that and many of these things!??

Coming back to education, is the steadily rising number of English medium schools (most of them in the private sector) to be celebrated or should we look at the number of schools, areas where we are able to deliver Mother-Tongue-Based Multi-Lingual Education (MTB-MLE) effectively? Do we want our children to take up STEM subjects or do we want them to take up liberal arts? What kind of science do we want them to study? Do we want them to study the surgery and medicine that apparently we started when Lord Ganesha was operated on and an elephant head was planted on him by Lord Shiva? They will study laws of aerodynamics and aeronautics engineering as per the science that flew Pushpak Vimaan or that defines modern day flights and missiles.

We need to appreciate that our children who will enter a very different world of 21st century with Industry 4.0, AI, machine learning as not cool concepts but realities as real as climate change, depleting natural resources, eroding social and cultural foundations.

Do we, the remnants of the 20th century, with morality and experiences of the past, want to define these things for our children of which we have very little idea about and whatever we know is changing all the time! ?

In fact to make matters worse, some people are actively attempting to change 'what was' i.e. history! What kind of history do we want our children to learn? What happened in the past, happened! Yes, we know that certain narratives get more prominence than others - that of the victors and that of the rulers but alternative narratives do exist and they come out in their own time and space. It is for the students of history and others interested to pick a wholesome meal out of this buffet of narratives. But for a section of those who are ruling today, driven by the desire to shape the future, it's not very scientific or healthy to attempt to change the past.?

That's worrisome yet again not just because we are making a mistake or many mistakes or going down the wrong path! That we have done many times in the past and will continue to do so. It's the systematic shutting down or the attempts to shut down the possibility of learning (from our mistakes and achievements and painting them in a unicolour brush) that's the most concerning for me. Starting with poor learning for children but certainly extending all the way to the very poor learning (or re-learning tending to brainwashing) of adult-citizens, fuelled and fully aided by media, technology and the powers of narratives.?

Societies and nations will continue to make mistakes and have deep rooted challenges of class-divide, caste (this is our special contribution), religion, region, language, sex, sexual-orientation and everything else that can divide (and interestingly unite) the homo-sapien but as long as we learn there is hope !?

There is!

Will end with few lines from Faiz?(thanks to a colleague for sharing this!)

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The views expressed are personal. A first draft of this piece was published on my personal blog and you can read the unedited piece here

I encourage all those who have read the previous piece to also read this to see if this is better, worse or any different at all.