Shantanu PrakashThe Dataquest PathBreaker Award Winner and the Man of the Moment

Education has always occupied a very important place in the Indian psyche. The dream to get high quality education is accessible to just a few. The actual number of children, who even get access to education in the villages of India, is also pitiably small.

Estimates say that some 140 mn children in India dont go to school. The quality of elementary education in many parts of India is far from satisfactoryprimary education is a dark spot for India, still.

Not that the governments have not tried. Apart from making it attractive through mid-day meal schemes, etc, the central government has, from time to time, tried to incentivize state governments; use technology such as television and satellite; and many other means to make attending school more attractive for these kids.

Most of these incentives have not worked at a national level though, despite doing well in the pilot stages. In the last few years the role of information technology has become especially important here. But technology alone cannot solve the complex problem of providing universal, high quality education in a country as large and diverse as India. For the efforts to succeed an understanding of the social, cultural, political, infrastructural and economic factors prevalent in the country becomes asolutely necessary.

But thats easier said than done; it also requires that all the pieces are put together for the model to work. Till now, no one had been able to figure out the right combination.

Theres some good news now. For the first time in decades, we finally have a model that seems to be succeeding in making quality education available in schools across different parts of the country. The man behind the ideanot to forget the effortis Shantanu Prakash, the chairman and managing director of Educomp, the winner of Dataquest Pathbreaker Award for 2010. Through his vision, determination, perseverence, and smart decisions, Prakash has ensured that the solutions created by his company are of value to primary schools, from villages in the remotest corners to the most elite schools.

The Education Puzzle

Grassroot Level Education: In India, since the days of Indira Gandhi, grassroot level education has been a cause for concern and a topic of hot debate. The status is still quite dismal. As Prakash says, If we are to consider the top 10 things in which India failed as a country, I think education would certainly figure in the list. The illiteracy rate of India is highest in the world; the public education system is in shambles; the dropout rate is more than 40%...the list goes on. However, with Kapil Sibals entry into the picture, things seem to be changing for the better. I now see an invigorated education ministry, which is trying hard to do something for the people at the bottom of the pyramid, says Prakash. Let the government direct its attention and money towards the poorest of the poor, the bottom of the pyramidthe private sector is vibrant enough to take care of the rest, adds Prakash. However if the government actively implements the Right to Education Act, under which it plans to provide free and compulsory education to all children between the age of 6-14 years, it can potentially bring about a tsunami of positive change in the field of education in India.

Meanwhile the country needs to create reasonably high quality capacity to cater to the needs of the Indian citizens. Besides the US, countries like Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and UK have also become popular education destinations for Indian students; and India has been exporting professors and teaching faculty to these countries for several years now. Its time now for the government of India to create an enabling environment for education in the country, not just to retain our talent, but also to bring back the faculty so they can plan a career right here in India.

India has a great opportunity to attract over a million students each year, and according to statistics, we can earn an estimated $25 bn every year just from the field of education.

If I were to be the spokesperson for the education industry in India, I would say the biggest expectation from the government is to create an enabling regulatory environment, in which private capital can flow in, private enterprises can thrive, and theres regulation for quality, urges Prakash.

Higher EducationPublic vs Private: Be it the IITs, IIMs, IIMCs or others, as far as higher education is concerned, today at least 6 of the top 10 institutes are publicly funded government institutions. Undoubtedly these institutes had the pace, the money, and the talent to become what they are today. However, the nation has well realized the need of private sector involvement. Over the next 10 years, the institutions that will be built using private capital will be of international standards and very soon India will be one of the few societies where private sector education will compete directly with the marquee publicly funded institutions, says Prakash. Therefore what the government really needs to do now is to free up the private sector while regulating it.

An Idea that can Change LivesAdopt a School

Bridging the education divide between the rural and urban schools is not really just about education per se, it is about equality and fairness. As innovative as he is, Prakash shares an interesting idea. The government should make it mandatory for each urban high profile private school to adopt a nearby rural underprivileged school, offering them incentives for doing so.

Unlike the private schools, the major drawback of these government-run rural schools is the lack of good teachers. The urban private school can therefore develop a twinning system with the school it has adopted and send its teachers there twice or thrice a week to teach. For doing so, it may decide to increase its tuition fees by 10% and that 10% can go to that rural school it has adopted. This will probably make no difference to the lives of the people who send their children to the high profile private school, but will transform the underprivileged rural school. Now, such innovative, simple yet life-transforming ideas can come only from a pioneer like Prakash; and if implemented, can change Indias education landscape forever.

In a major initiative, Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal has recently announced that 2,500 schools will be built as model schools under the PPP act, the implementation of which will prove to be a big milestone in the history of Indian education.

Educomp: Making a Difference

Prakash started the company with a very simple ideachange classrooms through technology. And that simple idea has grown into a company with 14,000 employees today, serving about 15 mn students in 25,000 schools across the world. Weve grown in concentric circles around our core competence, which is to focus at the grassroot level and see what happens in the classrooms there and then make provisions so that children can learn better, says Prakash.

With this in view, they have developed the largest content library in the world, a product called Smart Class. The product has already been installed in almost 5,000 schools in India. Following that, they took up the project to improve teachers productivity by providing them with very high quality digital content, which acts as a teaching instrument in itself. This changed the face of classrooms and has proved to be very successful. Thereafter, the need was felt to create more teachers in India and train them to become better educators. This encouraged Educomp to launch a Professional Development Program, through which theyve been successful in training about 1.6 mn teachers till date. One thing led to another, and Educomp now realized that India faces a big shortage in the number of schools itself.

According to CBSE, India needs at least 200,000 new schools. So Educomp started helping build schools across the country. Currently they help run about 45 high schools, 800 pre-schools, 7 colleges, and 250 vocational training centers in India. Focusing on the pain area of the customer and creating a set of products and services with a lot of intellectual property, has been the key strategy of Educomp. Prakash has found a way to deal with the challenges. The trick, he says, is in India to make products affordable. So our challenge and aim is to bring the price of education down, so that the 140 mn kids who dont go to school today can find an affordable high quality alternative, he says. He adds, The elite already have choices. We want to work for people who dont have any. Today Educomp operates Indias largest R&D center for education (located in Noida) with 400 researchers, the companys major claim to fame.

Since Prakash started Educomp with every passing year, the company kept reinventing itself and changing its vision for the better. As we move up, we can see a clearer tomorrow, which helps us to understand what we can do next, says Prakash.

Serve the Students

Having all the characteristics of a good trade, today education is looked upon as a business in India with consumers who are willing to pay a price for it. Like Prakash says, If you treat these customers as students, you place yourself above them and can never get into the service mentality. The moment you start considering them as customers, youll make sure of giving them the best of education, best practices, best teaching, and automatically your attitude will change towards them. So being business-minded does not necessarily mean being ruthless. In his case, Prakash surely knows how to be a do-gooder for the society while doing serious business.

Drishti D Manoah
drishtim@cybermedia.co.in