India has a basic consensus today on school education

A remarkable convergence of views on this elementary matter makes space for optimism

- ANURAG BEHAR

When big changes happen slowly, we don't notice them. Climate change is a glaring example. Slow change is anything that happens over a human lifetime or more. There have been massive changes in education over the past 25-30 years, for example, but that's such a large part of our life-span that we are mostly unaware of them. We tend to take the current state as natural and given.

One of the most important of these changes has been the development of a cross-party consensus on school education, much like the political consensus on the direction of India's economic management that emerged in the early 1990s. Since education is a matter in which everyone has a direct stake, most individuals have a view on it. And so, this consensus rests on an underlying societal consensus, unlike the economic management of the country, on which the average citizen may not have a well-formed view even though everyone is affected by it.

What are the key points of this consensus? Let us explore them. Some of these will seem so elementary and so given that it is hard to believe there were different views, beliefs and positions on these matters just 20-30 years ago.

First, the most basic of all: that all children should be going to school. This includes girls and children from all castes and classes. It is hard to believe today that neither societally nor politically was this elementary must-have universally agreed upon, even in the 1980s. The near 100% enrolment of children in primary classes tells us the extent of the transformation we have gone through.