Having started Warhorse, an educational enterprise, at 19, and successfully run it for five years, Vishal Vasanth is now all set to study policy at Harvard University.
“I was born, raised, educated and employed in Chennai. I wanted to study education policy; however, I did not have enough perspectives or insights to work in policy-making. I wanted to broaden my perspectives,” he says. Consequently, Vishal embarked on a three-month, 12-states tour and worked with various educational organisations, NGOs and government schools, to get a better perspective of the many faces of education in the country.
Glitches in the system
In tune with the thought that education must expedite tackling problems of the present, Vishal emphasised on how education in rural areas would serve a greater purpose, if it helped tackle regional problems. This includes being educated in vernacular languages, rather than laying heavy emphasis on English — a trend that is observed in many pockets of rural India. Furthermore, lack of proper implementation of child labour and child marriage laws threaten access to education, for many children. “In any developing country, when the education system is faulty, there is little that can be done, as lack of education is merely a small part of a vicious cycle.”
“It is like a 10-headed monster. It doesn’t help if you cut off one head, because the other nine heads are going to consume you, anyway. In the next decade or so, our workforce will grow. So, job creation and skill training are the need of the hour; a skill-based education rather than a classroom education. The government is also trying to bring in changes through initiatives like the National School Development Council (NSDC).”
Power of ‘we’
How do we deal with impending problems? “That was the question with which I went on the trip, and I found out the answer pretty quickly — community mobilisation is the way forward.” This idea seems to echo former Reserve Bank of India governor, Raghuram Rajan’s newest proposition in his recent book The Third Pillar . He argues that strong communities can promote democracy and contain crony capitalism and corruption, just as healthy markets can contain the state’s authoritarian impulses.
“Communities are built on the base of many identities such asprofessions, skills, interests. If these communities are mobilised to work together, much can be achieved,” Vishal recounts his sojourn in Hivre Bazar, popularly acknowledged to be the richest Indian village. Situated 120 kilometres from Pune, near the town of Ahmednagar, the village represents “the power of community mobilisation and its ability to do good for everyone.”
Charging education
“It costs around ₹18,000 annually,for the government to educate one child, under the Right to Education Act (RTE). That figure can be brought down to nearly half, by undertaking Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), hence making better use of public funding,” Vishal articulates. However, it is an inherent mindset in India that one must not make money out of education. If that changes, and a PPP model comes in, India will see drastic changes in education in a short span.
Vishal is all set to study International Education Policy at Harvard University, after which he hopes to work with the Indian government on the economics of education.
