Nandan Nilekani now
logs in to boost primary education
BENGALURU: InfosysBSE
-0.76 % co-founder and former UIDAI chairperson Nandan Nilekani is working on a
high-impact, mass-scale education project. This ends speculation about what
Nilekani intended to do after his Lok Sabha election loss earlier this year. It
also closes the chapter on him being drafted by the Karnataka government to
help rebuild Brand Bengaluru.
The 59-year-old
technocrat, who has had an illustrious track record, is launching a not-for-profit
initiative at the inter section of education and technology that would
change the dynamics of how primary education is taught in the country.
Nilekani is learnt to
have started work on his pet project — a platform focused on elementary
education that would act as a great equalizer offsetting social inequities.
Though the project is in stealth mode, Nilekani has hired a small team working
on gamification of elementary education and developing relevant technology
tools to attain scale. "He wants to initially focus on children who're 2-7
years old and expand it to other age groups so that they board the technology
platform early on," sai d a source who didn't
want to be identified.
Nilekani is currently
giving talks in Ivy League universities in the US and could not be reached for
comments.
While the Siddaramaiah
government has talked often about utilizing Nilekani's expertise to recharge
Bengaluru, no concrete proposal was made to him. Instead of getting embroiled
in factionalized party politics, Nilekani seems to have decided to opt out of
it altogether and focus his energies on the underserved education sector.
It's learnt that
Shankar Maruwada, former head (demand generation and marketing), UIDAI, is part
of the team building the technology platform. Maruwada was co-founder of
marketing analytics firm Marketics that was acquired by Nasdaq-listed BPO major
WNS Global for $65 million in 2007.
Ravi Gururaj, chairman of Nasscom Product Council, said: "Nandan is passionate about building platforms that are national scale, have huge impact on the nation and next generation. The Aadhaar platform is superb evidence of his drive. With his massive credibility, talent and passion, Nandan will attempt something big and grand in education — that leapfrogs the status quo, leverages technology to the hilt, delivers massive platform value and transforms early education across the nation for all classes of citizens."
Access to primary education presents daunting challenges due to the lack of social infrastructure and teachers in the country. A 2013 India Country Report by the Central Statistics Office said the dropout rate for primary classes (I-V) was 27% during 2010-11 and it was 40.6% for elementary classes (I-VIII) during the same year.
The report showed that
there was one teacher for 43 students for primary schools, 37 students for
upper primary schools and 31 for secondary/senior secondary schools in 1990-91.
This figures stood at 43, 33 and 34, respectively, in 2010-11, and the needle
has barely moved in primary education indicating that more needs to be done in
that area.
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