Pinning down Madhav Chavan, co-founder and CEO of Pratham, for a lunch with Business Standard proved harder than I expected. After several emails he agreed, sounding totally disinterested in the 'lunch' part of it (he said he didn't know any of the restaurants in Delhi I suggested - The Imperial hotel, Machan at The Taj Mahal Hotel or Latitude in Khan market), leaving the choice of venue entirely to me.
We are finally seated at Machan. He takes one look at the menu and the communist in him - given the influences he grew up with, as I learn subsequently - wakes up instantly. "These prices make no sense," he says and I agree, rather hastily. Although he makes it sound like it's not worth eating at this place, we place the order to get it out of the way as soon as possible. I begin by asking how a chemical engineer ended up educating poor children in India.
What one is trained to do, what one plans to do, and what one actually ends up doing can be radically different and Chavan's life is a shining example of that. After spending eight years in the United States in the late 1970s, Chavan was drawn back to the country he felt most comfortable in. He started teaching at the University of Mumbai's Department of Chemical Technology (now known as The Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai) and while things were going smoothly, he soon started asking himself what he was doing there.
Questioning everything might have had something to do with the way Chavan grew up. An only child of communist parents, he grew up in Mumbai in a community surrounded by trade unionists. He says the late 1960s and early 1970s in Mumbai were "a time of extremes" - the Shiv Sena was just born, trade unionism was at its peak, there was "terrorism of a different kind". "Our house was an office by day and a place for many to sleep at night. It was a very different kind of home," he says. Growing up in this environment, he did a fair share of "protesting".
A teachers' strike at the university in 1988 led Chavan to write an impassioned letter to then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi about the state of education in the country and where it was headed. The letter must have struck a chord somewhere - soon after, Chavan found himself summoned by then Union Education Secretary Anil Bordia (after Rajiv Gandhi had passed on the letter to him), a man Chavan credits with many things, including his own involvement in education.
We are finally seated at Machan. He takes one look at the menu and the communist in him - given the influences he grew up with, as I learn subsequently - wakes up instantly. "These prices make no sense," he says and I agree, rather hastily. Although he makes it sound like it's not worth eating at this place, we place the order to get it out of the way as soon as possible. I begin by asking how a chemical engineer ended up educating poor children in India.
What one is trained to do, what one plans to do, and what one actually ends up doing can be radically different and Chavan's life is a shining example of that. After spending eight years in the United States in the late 1970s, Chavan was drawn back to the country he felt most comfortable in. He started teaching at the University of Mumbai's Department of Chemical Technology (now known as The Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai) and while things were going smoothly, he soon started asking himself what he was doing there.
Questioning everything might have had something to do with the way Chavan grew up. An only child of communist parents, he grew up in Mumbai in a community surrounded by trade unionists. He says the late 1960s and early 1970s in Mumbai were "a time of extremes" - the Shiv Sena was just born, trade unionism was at its peak, there was "terrorism of a different kind". "Our house was an office by day and a place for many to sleep at night. It was a very different kind of home," he says. Growing up in this environment, he did a fair share of "protesting".
A teachers' strike at the university in 1988 led Chavan to write an impassioned letter to then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi about the state of education in the country and where it was headed. The letter must have struck a chord somewhere - soon after, Chavan found himself summoned by then Union Education Secretary Anil Bordia (after Rajiv Gandhi had passed on the letter to him), a man Chavan credits with many things, including his own involvement in education.
Chavan's work in the slums was also growing as was his disenchantment with his teaching job at the university and Bordia at that point (in 1991) relieved him of his teaching duties so that he could join the mission full time. "What I liked about the mission was the thinking that governments can't make people literate, people have to make themselves literate."
Unicef's primary education project in Mumbai had also begun to gain momentum at the time. The idea was to involve the government, businesses and civil society in Mumbai and create a "societal mission". The Tata group patriarch, JRD Tata, was alive at that time and he was also pulled in. "They spoke to Shobhaa De, Sunil Gavaskar, Vijay Tendulkar - just about everybody to build consensus around it." Everyone agreed this was what had to be done but no one knew how to go about it.
At some point, the Unicef head in Mumbai asked Chavan to take the ball and run. There has been no looking back. People from all walks of life were pulled into the trust. Some of the biggest names of Indian industry - for instance, ex-banker and philanthropist Narayanan Vaghul - helped shape, finance and take the organisation where it is today. The Birlas, the Piramals and Reliance all did their bit.
Chavan argues that Pratham may not have been what it is today without the support of people like Vaghul. "In a way, Vaghul became the champion of what we were attempting. He told us, don't worry about the money, just go ahead, I will raise the money for you. You create programmes, get the projects cleared by the board and I will find the money."
He also gives credit to India Inc. While Indian industry was not what it is today - in size, scale or financial muscle - those who could help the mission, did. Several companies, whose employees were working full-time on the Pratham movement, continued paying salaries to these employees.
Something that started small has grown into a big movement today, with people from all walks of life joining along the way. Pratham, the NGO he helped found and heads at present, reached out to around seven million children across the country last year (it directly teaches about a million students a year in community- and school-based programmes and also partners with the government). It has 46,000-odd volunteers. Pratham works directly in about a thousand villages across 20 states. It has a USA chapter and funding is no longer a problem.
We are halfway through the lunch - his '1980 Lucknowi Gosht biryani', a signature dish at Machan, and my Thai green curry and rice. So where are we today? How far have we come from the 1980s and 1990s? Aren't some of the problems that plagued India's education then still alive today?
This clearly needs a second lunch but he plunges right in. Getting children to school was a problem then and it remains a problem today. Today, children may be registered but many schools are virtually dysfunctional and learning outcomes are abysmally low. Students who end up going to school don't end up learning very much. This becomes a chicken and egg situation because students drop out when they fail to see value.
Chavan argues that the failure of children to read and write and do basic arithmetic should be attributed to a lack of "focus on the basics". "What is our school model? It asks teachers to complete the curriculum in a prescribed time. You can rush through it if you like, but you have to complete it. Nobody has laid down that certain measurable outcomes should be attained," he says.
This is evident from the Annual Status of Education report released by Pratham, which, year after year, shows little improvement in the quality of outcomes across states. "Let's start by laying down the measurable basics we need to attain. Even that has not been clearly articulated," Chavan laments.
Pratham tries to correct this mismatch by running small pilot programmes and even though it reaches several million children, the effort remains a drop in the ocean. Given India's population, Chavan's - and Pratham's - task is far from over
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