Lakshmi Lali speaking at a DIET workshop “Writing this story was not just about sharing Lakshmi Ma’am’s journey. It also gave me a chance to understand her work more closely. Through our conversations, I learned so much about her dedication and about the work she does within DIET and among the schools she works with.”…
Shabana Khanum, School Leader, Government Urdu Lower Primary School (GULPS) , AJ Block, NR Mohalla, Mysuru. I walked through the narrow lanes of the big colony in NR Mohalla, Mysuru district, past house after house, until I found it, a two-storey building tucked quietly between them. This was the school Madhu had told me about. …
A policy analysis of NITI Aayog’s 2026 school complex recommendations, and the formal authority still missing from them India has largely solved the access problem in school education. Nearly 50% of school-going children attend one of over 10 lakh government-run schools, enrollment at the elementary stage is near universal,and basic infrastructure such as toilets, electricity,…
A student scores well in an exam. A week later, someone asks them to explain the same concept in their own words, and they go blank. The answer they’d memorised is just… gone. If you’ve spent any time around Indian classrooms, this probably feels familiar. It is not a rare glitch, but a systemic pattern…
What is Reform? In school, most students come across concepts that are difficult to understand the first time they are taught. A change in the teaching method can sometimes make the same concept much easier to learn. In a physical education class, a teacher spent several sessions explaining tournament fixtures on the blackboard. How teams…
Prime Minister Modi’s Viksit Bharat mission aims to make India a developed country by 2047. This goal is not just about economic growth. It means structural transformation across human capital, governance, and social institutions. Education is central to that transformation because it both transmits culture and prepares citizens for the demands of a changing global…
By Abhishek Jain, Head, Public Policy at Mantra4Change. Introduction: Law and Policy as Tools for Social Change Societies have relied on law and policy not only to regulate behavior but have also served as levers of transformation shaping progress, creating opportunities, correcting imbalances, and steering collective action. Nathan Roscoe Pound3 conceptualised law as social engineering.…
By Abhishek Jain, Head, Public Policy at Mantra4Change. Understanding the concept of ‘school mapping’ School mapping is “a collection of methods and processes used to assess national and local educational demand and service delivery, alongside other important information on education outcomes”.3 One of its earliest uses was in 1963 by the Ministry of Education of…
By Abhishek Jain, Head, Public Policy at Mantra4Change. Though this piece we have conducted comparative mapping studies of the right to elementary education across the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“UDHR”), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966 (“ICESCR”), the Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989 (“CRC”), the Constitution of India…
By Abhishek Jain, Head, Public Policy at Mantra4Change. Historical Background to the Right to Education The right to education refers to every person’s right to access quality education. It is a human right that is expressly recognised under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 (‘UDHR’)1 as a right available to all wherein “education shall…