By Satish Jha
NEW DELHI (India CSR): The schoolbag was lighter now, the burden heavier. In Jaipur, children once walked into digitized classrooms supported by Ashraya, their backs freed from the weight of books, their hands clutching tablets instead.
For three years, the OTPC project — One Tablet Per Child — promised a revolution: arithmetic taught through simulations, science unfolding as experiments on screens, history narrated with images and voices that made the past breathe.
Teachers spoke of classrooms alive with participation, of children leaning forward, eager to learn. And then, as resources dried up, the project closed. The tablets were collected, the promise folded away. The children returned to heavy bags, rote lessons, and futures once again uncertain.
That closure is more than a logistical detail; it is a metaphor for India’s educational dilemma. Innovation sparks, but sustainability falters. Projects rise, but permanence eludes them. The pain of the student is the heart of this story — the girl in Jodhpur who had glimpsed a world of interactive science and now sits again with chalk and rote diagrams, the boy in Jammu who had tasted the thrill of learning through touch and now returns to memorization under dim light.
Their futures are not abstractions; they are the measure of whether India’s education system can turn opportunity into reality.
Across the landscape, different models attempt to fill the gaps. Ekal Vidyalaya gathers children for two hours of literacy and numeracy in villages where government schools falter — a fragile bridge across the chasm of neglect.
Pratham has given India the gift of measurement, its ASER surveys shifting the national conversation from enrollment to learning, though its strength lies more in diagnosis than cure.
The American India Foundation supplements government schooling with digital equalizers and migration support, patching gaps but rarely substituting for full schooling.
Each effort matters. Each fills a niche. Yet each is partial.
And then, almost quietly, another story emerges. In Jaipur, Ajmer, Jodhpur, and Jammu, schools under the Vidya Bharati network blend traditional ethos with contemporary pedagogy. Their classrooms are disciplined but alive, bilingual yet rooted, efficient yet holistic.
Only about one percent of India’s students study here, yet year after year they claim half of the top ten ranks in board examinations across states. Their alumni walk into civil services, professions, and business not as exceptions but as a steady stream.
What distinguishes them is not only performance but a sense of wholeness — confidence, community, responsibility. For the resources they command, the efficiency is astonishing.
If citizen-making were scored, Vidya Bharati would probably stand at 80 out of 100, while Ekal’s reach may earn 15, and Pratham and AIF may hover near 10. These are not dismissals but acknowledgments of scope: literacy bridges, measurement tools, digital supplements — all valuable, all partial.
Yet here is proof that disciplined schooling can nurture not just readers or test-takers, but confident, employable, civic-minded individuals who embody the promise of India’s demographic dividend. The closure of OTPC at Adarsh Vidya Mandir sharpens this contrast. Technology can democratize learning, but without sustained investment it becomes a fleeting experiment.
Vidya Bharati’s strength lies in its permanence — its ability to deliver outcomes year after year, across geographies, without collapsing when resources thin. The lesson is clear: innovation must be married to institutional depth, and efficiency must be measured not in slogans but in lives transformed.
Consider the child in Jaipur who once solved fractions by sliding shapes across a tablet screen. She had felt mathematics come alive, had seen numbers turn into patterns she could touch. When the project ended, she returned to rote multiplication tables, her curiosity dimmed. Or the boy in Jammu who had used his tablet to explore the solar system, zooming into planets with a fingertip. Now he memorizes diagrams from a blackboard, his imagination clipped. These are not isolated stories; they are the lived experience of millions whose futures hinge on whether India sustains its educational experiments.
Vidya Bharati’s classrooms, by contrast, do not depend on fragile pilots. They are rooted in communities, scaled across states, and designed to deliver outcomes consistently. Their alumni are not only exam toppers but citizens who step into civil services, professions, and business with confidence. The efficiency is startling: one percent of India’s students, yet half of the top ten ranks in board exams. It is a reminder that education, when disciplined and holistic, multiplies its impact far beyond its share.
The crescendo builds slowly but unmistakably. India’s future will not be secured by enrollment drives alone. It will be secured when classrooms produce citizens ready for the nation’s challenges, when education translates into opportunity, when one percent can shape the many. The pain of the student whose tablet was taken away, whose future hangs on whether her school gives her more than rote literacy, is the nation’s pain. The promise of the student who rises from a Vidya Bharati classroom to claim a place in the civil services is the nation’s promise.
Education, at its best, is not a statistic but a transformation lived in the lives of millions. India’s demographic dividend will be realized not through slogans but through schools that deliver outcomes, through models that prove efficiency and holism can coexist. The task for policymakers is not to choose camps but to recognize where futures are truly being shaped — and to ensure that no child’s promise is folded away for lack of resources.
About Satish Jha
Satish Jha is a social entrepreneur who earlier co-founded Jansatta for the Indian Express Group, was the chief Editor of newsweekly Dinamaan of The Times of India Group, a global CXO with a couple of Fortune 100 firms, founded edtech firm Edufront, chairs a family foundation Ashraya and supports about 27000 K12 students with One Tablet per Child programs.
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