Another god joins Hindu pantheon, courtesy your taxes

At a time when the Govt appears helpless and faces public censure for its poor response to floods, terror attacks and revolt in Kashmir, the silent success of a publicly funded programme in education gives room for optimism and hope. Chetan Chauhan examines...

Updated on: Sep 28, 2008, 24:55:24 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Trichy (Tamil Nadu)

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Every morning before their lessons start, about 350 children of the Sellappa primary school gather in the playground and pray. It is not the lord they thank but the central government’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, or the Education for All programme, for changing their lives.

It may be a form of indoctrination, but the data shows it is not unjustified. In the past five years, this programme has enabled more than 3.4 lakh new schools to come up, about a third of the 11.96 lakh government schools in India, according to the Delhi-headquartered National University for Educational Planning and Administration.

The programme has also succeeded in raising net enrolment by 12 percentage points in the six years to April 2007, which translates to an additional 1.24 crore children now in schools, of which 52 per cent are girls.

At a time when the Indian government appears helpless and faces public censure for its poor response to floods, terrorist bombs in cities and revolt in Kashmir, the silent success of a publicly funded programme in a vital field like education gives room for optimism and hope.

Over the past seven years, the central government has spent more than Rs 50,000 crore on the programme, which aims to provide elementary education to all children between 6 and 14 years by 2010, with the help of state governments.

R. Murugan, 12, from Sellappa primary school, benefits every day from the initiative. In his prayer, he thanks the programme for his tasty lunch, for lessons on cleanliness and for making him confident overall.

“We call it the ‘Thank you SSA’ prayer,” said K. Sunderashan, the principal. “It is an apolitical prayer in which children are reminded of the benefits of the programme.”

The prayer is not compulsory, M. Kutralingam, Tamil Nadu’s principal secretary responsible for school education was at pains to point out. “There is no directive from the government,” he said. “Some schools may be doing it voluntarily.”

The prayer can be seen as one innovation to help students realise the importance of education, said M. Bhaskaran, education officer of Krishnagiri district, nearly 350km from Chennai, where many schools also recite the prayer.

Quality, not just quantity

By helping schools upgrade their infrastructure and raise the teacher-student ratio, the initiative has also improved the quality of education, said a senior professor at the National University for for Educational Planning and Administration.

This is reflected in improved academic results. Nearly 45 per cent of the girls and slightly over 45 per cent of boys scored more than 60 per cent at class V examination, the university’s report said. “Education is now a reality rather than just a dream,” said Madhav Chavan of the non-profit group Pratham, which has been monitoring the progress of the education programme for past four years. “Many states have adopted innovative methods to make education an interesting learning experience.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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