Education: Nitish Kumar’s high grades, and then a dip

Sakshi Kumari (16) sees her father maybe for six or seven days twice a year when he returns home from Delhi.

- ADITI PHADNIS

"I miss him a lot," she says. He is a carpenter in a factory. Like many other households in Bihar her mother holds the fort at home: Bringing up the children (Sakshi has an elder sister and a younger brother, who, she says disapprovingly, is "very naughty"); tilling a small piece of land that is on rent from a landlord to supplement the family income; and looking after the in laws. Sakshi is not sure but she thinks the family's expenditure is "around ₹50,000 a month-on food, to service the loans we have taken in the past, and on education".

Sakshi stood first in Bihar's Class 10 exam this year. She says offhand: "If I can remember right, I got 99 per cent in Sanskrit and social sciences, 95 in science, 98 in maths, and 99 in Hindi." She quickly corrects herself: "No, I got 98 in Hindi." She is a product of the turnaround in Bihar's educational system that began in 2005- and the crisis it is facing now.

She lives and studies in Narhan, a small village 30 km from Samastipur, in the local private school.

"But for two years I also attended coaching classes.