Anjuli Bhargava

What Govts Can Do to Make the Most of EdTech – Instead of Handing Out Tablets to Students

The Union and state governments should take advantage of efforts to counter disinformation in the edtech landscape.

As the bad news continues to come in from various educational technology or edtech companies in India, I’m coming with a small but important piece of good news for readers and all stakeholders in the online education space.

A few weeks ago I had written a piece exhorting the state and the Union governments to jump in to assist and rescue hapless parents and students who fall prey to mis-selling and mis-representation of facts by certain edtech companies who seem driven by only one motive: profit.

I suggested that the Union and state governments, through the education ministry and departments help segregate the wheat from the chaff and run campaigns based on their findings.

The good news is that the governments don’t need to begin from scratch. In 2020, in the midst of the heady edtech boom, Central Square Foundation (CSF), an education advocacy body and IIT-Mumbai came together to set up Edtech Tulna. ‘Tulna‘ is ‘comparison’ in Hindi.

The framework has been built by an IIT Mumbai research team under Professor Sahana Murthy with a team of around 15 full and part time members and was financed by CSF.

EdTech Tulna is an evidence-driven evaluation index that aims to reduce information asymmetry in the ecosystem and seeks to build a shared understanding of what good edtech looks like.

Also read: Ed-Tech Companies Won’t Create a More Egalitarian, Educated India

The framework sets standards of quality and is built to evaluate products on three parameters: content quality, pedagogical alignment and technology and design. The content quality measures the accuracy and appropriateness of the product’s content for the intended users or learners. The pedagogical alignment measures how well the product incorporates the national educational requirements and pedagogical strategies. And lastly, how well the technology and design integrate with the pedagogy to provide a meaningful learning experience.

Although Tulna is currently a work in progress – comparison of products for students and parents are yet to be done – more progressive states can already begin to make more informed choices if they so choose.

In fact, in May, the government of Haryana became the first state government to procure personalised adaptive learning (PAL) solutions to support half a million senior school students, using EdTech Tulna as the technical evaluation framework for the request for proposal (RFP).

Prior to Haryana, the government of Madhya Pradesh released an RFP to procure PAL solutions for nearly 1,000 schools. The state has used EdTech Tulna as part of their pre-qualification criteria to ensure that all solutions considered first meet a minimum benchmark of quality.

The paragraph above may sound like gobbledygook to lay readers so let me explain why this is significant.

State governments have failed over the years to make any sense of both technology and online learning so every time an election nears, the chief minister hands out tablets or some kind of gadgets to the needy students in the hope that this translates into an electoral victory.

Almost no thought goes into whether the student is in a position to take advantage of the free gadget he receives or whether the software is in any way relevant to his age, stage or capability. It has been akin to throwing money into a black hole, hoping that gold emerges from the other end. This is perhaps the first time a state government has at least attempted to approach the problem with the student’s welfare and software needs in mind.

Second, as Tulna advances and spreads its tentacles, it can perhaps be a good evaluator for lower-middle income parents, many of whose wards study in India’s vast network of affordable private schools. This is the lot that is most vulnerable to the mis-selling and mis-representation of facts that is wreaking havoc in the edtech ecosystem by players driven by only the profit motive.

This would be as valuable a contribution as one that helps state governments offer the right products to their school students who in the absence of state support would go without any online learning as affordability of virtually anything remains a huge barrier.

In the final analysis, while disseminating the information is a ball that is likely to remain in the state and Union governments’ court, at least half their work has been done by Tulna and its proponents. Now, the states can simply take this ball and run.

Anjuli Bhargava is a senior business journalist.

Is it Possible to Make India Poverty-Free by 2047?

By pooling in resources from high networth individuals and philanthropic organisations, Nudge Foundation has been working on livelihood and poverty elimination programmes in the country’s most underdeveloped regions.

As India watched the grief and pain of many of its less advantaged citizens as the COVID pandemic gripped the country in March 2020, many high net worth individuals, institutions and foundations offered financial help to tide over the immediate crisis.

One of the largest efforts was led by GiveIndia in collaboration with Nudge Foundation, headquartered in Bengaluru, by effectively raising Rs 220 crore and putting it to good use through a vast network of NGOs and civil society organisations they worked in tandem with. In the second wave – a crippling one for the country – the amount raised and disbursed for relief work by both the organisations shot up to Rs 1,100 crore.

Now, the Foundation has raised its ambitions even higher and is in fact metamorphosing into the Nudge Institute.

In a recent meeting with Nudge Institute’s founder and Give India’s CEO Atul Satija (45), over Zoom, he explained to me how and why the institute – with the support of nearly 600 private individuals who engage directly or indirectly – is aiming to aid in the effort of making India poverty-free by 2047.

His argument goes like this:

“At Independence, 70% of India’s population was classified as ‘poor’. In 75-odd years, those below the poverty line are now 30%. 273 million people were pulled out of poverty over a 10-year period or so. The number of extreme or ultra-poor fell from 22.5% to 10.2% between 2011 and 2019, as per a recent World Bank report. Pre-COVID, the absolute number of extreme poor in the country was estimated at around 65 million. Post COVID, most experts expect it to have touched 100-120 million.

Yet in absolute numbers, the total number of poor, including ultra-poor, in India is jaw-droppingly high at 400 million. We still have the second largest number of extreme poor in the world. We are ranked 131 in terms of human development indicators. One-third of under five children in the country are stunted. The demographic of youth and unemployment also remain an issue, and so on. The list of problems remains daunting and we cannot rest.”

He further argued that with India’s expenditure budget tripling in the last decade and the philanthropy landscape finding its feet with rapid wealth creation, India, as a country, is not poor anymore.

Also read: Additional 230 Million Indians Fell Below Poverty Line Due to the Pandemic: Study

“Hence, we should, at least, aspire to eradicate poverty by the time we are a 100-year-old nation,” he said.

It is to eliminate poverty by 2047 – one hundred years after India’s Independence – that the Nudge Foundation is transforming itself into an institute and drawing up a detailed game plan on how to go about it.

Pooling of resources

It all sounds so good in theory that the Indian in me is excited, hanging on to his every word. A poverty-free India in his lifetime will coincide at least partially with my lifetime too.

But the journalist in me is far more skeptical. How does one even begin to tackle something of this magnitude? Why am I even listening to this? Can this fairly young and idealistic social sector leader pull off what many Cabinet ministers and successive governments have failed to? As an aspiration, it sounds rather bold, even bordering on absurd.

But I listen on and it sounds more and more credible as the minutes tick on. The biggest redeeming feature of Satija’s plans, which would otherwise be dismissed as fanciful, is that he’s not exactly doing all this alone: everybody, and his uncle so to speak, has jumped in. As he speaks, I think to myself, that the private sector appears to have completely lost faith in the establishment’s ability to deliver on this count.

India presents a classic case of the rich getting richer, and the poor further getting pushed into abject poverty. Photo: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters.

I learn from him that there are 350 plus full-time ‘nudge-sters’ (the team), just over 35 new founding supporters and donors, over 50 existing corporates, foundations and high net worth individuals (HNIs) including the Indira Nooyis and Sundar Pichais of the world already vested and a board of over 10 members and advisors.

A total of at least 600-odd people are already vested. If one includes the 100-plus incubatee NGOs, the numbers run into thousands. The new funders include several new-age millionaires and billionaires. Thirty-plus founders have committed over Rs 10 crore to the cause. HCL’s founder member Ajai Chowdhry, Flipkart’s Binny Bansal, Meesho’s Vidit Aatrey, Big Basket’s Hari Menon are among the many who are supporting the institute at an individual level.

Institutional support as patrons is coming from Omidyar, Mphasis and the Zee group, among others. SEWA’s Renana Jhabvala and Ujjivan’s Samit Ghosh have joined the board in advisory capacity. The institute is raising Rs 1,500 crore on an ongoing basis over the next five years to support its activities over the next eight years, and Satija assures me that they are not “funding constrained”.

I have closely seen the involvement of many individuals in the first fundraise GiveIndia did in 2020 and then 2021, which Nudge helped distribute. In 2020, a 16-member advisory board (most of whom donated and gave their time) – with Arun Seth, former chairman of British Telecom; Kiran Shaw Mazumdar; Devi Shetty; Sanjiv Mehta; Binny Bansal; V. Vaidyanathan; among other equally well-known industry representatives – was set up. And, a three-member steering committee – Govind Iyer, Egon Zehnder partner and board member of GiveIndia; Ingrid Srinath, director at Ashoka University; and Shailesh Haribhakti, independent director and chartered accountant – was set up in 2020.

Also read: Wealth of India’s 10 Richest Enough to Fund School, Higher Education for 25 Years: Oxfam India

Both advisory board and steering committee were requested to fast-track and clear proposals for funding relief that would be vetted and tabled by the GiveIndia team. This fundraiser brought in donors from every corner, including big contributions from Vinod Khosla, Indira Nooyi and Sundar Pichai. Indian HNIs like Ajay Piramal, Anu Aga, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Binny Bansal, Amit Chandra were some of the big Indian donors. The Google Pay leadership team (five individuals from the team contributed Rs 5 crore), Google.org, and the Nilekanis all contributed generously.

Actionable programmes

So how does Nudge Institute plan to achieve its lofty goal?

To begin with, the Nudge Institute will produce a yearly report on the status of the ultra-poor report, a bit along the lines of ASER by Pratham. The latter (ASER report) almost everyone in the education sector will agree that it has been a huge success by any yardstick.

To tackle any problem, one needs to both acknowledge it and estimate it accurately. This report will provide data so that the stakeholders understand the problem before beginning to deal with it. This is much needed since two recent papers on the subject (of the World Bank and the IMF) have led to much inconclusive debate in the absence of hard, high-quality data on the subject among experts and economists just in the last few days. Since it will be yearly, it will also be a good indicator of how much impact the institute’s work is making.

Second, the institute will launch programmes – akin to its Jharkhand programme where it is working to uplift 1200 ultra-poor families in the tribal districts through the “graduation” approach endorsed by Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo – to prove that this approach works in different geographies, contexts, environments and differently endowed regions.

For a start, the Nudge Institute is looking at launching similar programmes in districts of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, West Bengal and Northern Karnataka where similar ultra-poor families reside.

In addition, the new institute will put together a “graduation fund”, which will allow other NGOs to replicate and improve upon the graduation approach in their areas of operation. The money will be a corpus on which such NGOs can lean to launch similar programmes in their areas of operation.

To ensure that all the action happens on the ground, Nudge Foundation is being transformed into an action-oriented institute, with a few specific features.

One, it will be a doer, instead of a facilitator or funder. It will be collaborative in nature, instead of functioning solo; actively working with CSOs, government and market players.

Two, it will not spread itself too thin. The focus will not be on education, health, nutrition and the entire gamut of problems that afflict the communities, but only on resilient livelihoods for the rural and urban poor.

There will be various centres – like the Center for Skill Development or for Social Innovation – under which various programmes will be housed and executed across states. In addition to this, there will be a few “hubs” that act as muscles for all the centers and provide essential inputs to build capacity. For instance, the data hub will provide data to all centers, technology hub, innovative financing hub, impact hub and public policy hub, amongst others.

Despite all the ifs and buts in my mind, what strikes me as encouraging is the fact that the institute is working on a vision paper on eradicating extreme poverty with the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM). Nita Kejriwal, joint secretary in the ministry of rural development (MoRD) is working closely with them on it. It is also working to bring various states on board.

A recent MoU signed with the Jharkhand government is going to expand the reach of the graduation approach to a few additional districts in the state, a partnership where Nudge will work closely with state government machinery. This strikes me as key to the effort: eradicating poverty at such a scale is not something that any organisation in India can achieve without both state and Union government involvement.

Satija seems to appreciate this too, as he told me that the “player and do-er at scale” for the 2047 goal can be “governments in partnership with Nudge”. I am skeptical about governments in general – given my 25-odd years of closely observing their work – but their involvement gives me hope that the government will perhaps not “kill” the attempt.

Satija and I spoke for over an hour. I listened and interrupted with questions all through our chat while oscillating on an emotional plane from extreme joy and hope to extreme hopelessness and cynicism as we grappled with the problem of India’s ultra-poor. Yet, as we decided to conclude our chat, I realised that I am every bit a resilient Indian: never willing to give up or lose hope even when all the odds may seem against this 75-year-old nation of ours.

Anjuli Bhargava is a senior business journalist.

On Women’s Day, India Should Look to the Indefatigable Rukmini Banerji

The Pratham CEO’s tireless work in the field of education recently won her the much-coveted Yidan Prize for 2021.

It was when she moved from Pune to Delhi in 1971 at the age of 11 or so that Rukmini Banerji got her first taste of how conservative schools in the capital back then were.

She easily cleared the entrance tests and interviews at one school in the capital, but when the authorities learnt that her mother was working – as a lecturer at the Lady Shriram College – she was denied admission. The school was of the view that the children of working mothers received no attention at home, after school hours. Her forward-thinking parents scoffed at the absurdity and admitted their daughter to Carmel Convent, a school that had “no such hang-ups” and one they had previous links with from Patna, the town where she spent her early years.

Not only did Banerji shed and break all such conventions, but she has also gone on to chart a course for herself that recently won her the much-coveted Yidan Prize for 2021 (with a cash reward of approximately US $ 3.9 million), for her work in the field of education. She is the first Asian woman to win the prize since it was first instituted in 2016. The prize is given away to individuals who have made significant contributions to education research and development.

Convention was not exactly her thing in more ways than one. At a time when few parents encouraged, and some even frowned upon their daughters playing sports, Banerji played anything she could lay her hands on: from tennis to hockey to swimming. As a good “exam taker”, all she did was only study three days prior to the crucial exam and get over with to go back to playing whatever sport was holding her attention at that point.

Also read: Lockdown Is Disrupting a Generation’s Education. What Can Be Done?

As the CEO of Pratham, India’s leading NGO in the K-12 space, Banerji and I have been connecting over Zoom in the midst of utter confusion over schools opening physically across states. India – like other countries – is faced with the very real possibility of a “generation lost” thanks to the severe learning losses that have occurred since February-March 2020. Almost every state is scrambling around to see if any of this loss can be bridged.

Early influences

After finishing school, Banerji graduated in economics from St. Stephens College and followed it with a one-year master’s from the Delhi School of Economics (DSE). Later, she went to Oxford University winning a prestigious Rhodes scholarship. Yet economics was never where her heart lay with its numerous theoretical postulations but rare practical application. So, when she decided to head to the US for further studies – a doctorate as only those got funded – she applied and got into American scholar John Dewey’s University of Chicago Laboratory School, an institution at the forefront of education reforms at the time.

The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Photo: Public domain/Wikipedia

Three things happened back then at the lab school and her neighbourhood charted the course of her life from that point. The university was coming up with a math curriculum that was being tried as a pilot in schools in that area. To earn some extra money, she worked with the schools, learning a lot about the practical application of such reforms in the bargain.

A politically-charged area as the hub of the Black activist movement of the day – Banerji’s children attended the same preschool as the first Black female senator’s children, the first Black mayor lived nearby, Jesse Jackson’s headquarters were in the area and so on – also influenced her thinking as did a three times a week volunteering exercise in a local ghetto government middle school. Working at the school gave her an insight into the lives of the less privileged kids and made her curious about the situation of government schools in India.

So, every summer Banerji took time off from the US assignments and came back to Delhi’s Ambedkar Nagar and immersed herself in a study of 30 MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi) schools for three years. It was around this time that she started working with Jean Dreze and his team, coming up with some great insights that shaped her later work and thinking.

One of these insights was how there was a great cohort variation within the same school with students of almost identical economic and family backgrounds depending upon the quality of teachers. So if a student got a good teacher from Grade 1 to 5, he or she did relatively better than a cohort who ended up with a not-so-good teacher for these grades.

Representative image. Photo: Facebook/Rukmini Banerji.

A second insight they gathered was that the poor were very much invested in their children’s education and often took good decisions on where their wards would fare best, given the range of schooling options before them. Both findings were contrary to what media articles at the time may have led academicians and policymakers to believe.

In 1996, Banerji relocated to Mumbai with her family to work with Bombay Municipal Corporation schools, where the team had one researcher as opposed to Chicago’s 100-odd member research team for a similar number of schools. The single researcher there was aghast that someone with her background wanted to work there and suggested she went back to Delhi instead.

It was after she was rebuffed by the Bombay Municipal Corporation that she happened to come across Pratham led by Madhav Chavan. She now jokes that she can never be fired as she was never “hired” but just “blended in” and became a part of the early years of the NGO, which at the time was setting up “balwadis” in the state.

Rukmini as minister for education

Although I am quite enjoying the delve into her past, I bring her back into the present with its rather hard realities. We have had two years of school closures and unprecedented learning losses across states in the country. India’s learning poverty was absurdly high and climbing. What would she do to remedy the situation if I made her the Union minister for HRD or some such?

Mothers look on as children work together as part of Pratham’s Library programme in Assam. Photo: Facebook/Rukmini Banerji.

I suspect she was asked this question before, as she takes less than two seconds to respond. She refers to my article that appeared that morning in The Quint on Tamil Nadu’s experience with volunteers – mostly young housewives – who are helping small cohorts of children catch up on their learning. This has been Pratham’s biggest learning in the pandemic, she says. Family matters and in spite of all the difficulties they faced, it’s an area where Pratham has seen a lot of traction.

“We have underestimated what even the poorest families can and will do for their children,” she says. Mothers of young children working in groups can make all the difference if encouraged correctly and can be one of the strongest pillars of NIPUN Bharat (National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy). Pratham has during the pandemic worked directly with close to 40,000 mothers’ groups across 10,000 villages in India through the pandemic and it’s been an eye-opener on what can be achieved.

A second area where she would focus would be on merging the anganwadis seamlessly with early schooling to create a continuum of learning for children of the age group three to eight years – the target group for NIPUN Bharat. This is an area where the project component of her Yidan Prize will be invested over the next few years. And, last but not least, if it was up to her teaching would be at level and summer holidays would be spent under banyan or peepal trees helping children catch up and reach grade level before progressing to the next class. A country-wide catch-up programme through youth volunteers. Thinking small is clearly not a characteristic of this lady.

As we end our chat, I ask what she would do with the personal component of the Yidan Prize, around half of the prize money. I learn that this amount – which is not tied in any way – has been kept aside to build a corpus for staff welfare of Pratham’s 6,000-odd employees who are typically not very highly paid, had a particularly hard time during the pandemic and who, she argues, the organisation should be in a position to support in their time of need.

If only more ministers in the country thought like this, I think to myself, India would not be facing a plethora of crises and challenges across sectors, especially in education at least.

Anjuli Bhargava is a senior business journalist.