India’s emergence has a deficit that may not be too late for us to collectively close—empathy

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Ten years ago, only two or three students from a class of 30 would pass the class 10 board exam at this government school. Today, only two or three from a class of 60 do not.The class has grown because the school changed. As the class 10 board results were transformed, parents began moving their children here from other schools—mostly private ones.

The teachers were thrilled by this resounding acknowledgement of their work and gladly added a second section of 30 students each in classes 9 and 10.The woman with whom these changes began was born and brought up in that very village. Her father was a stone worker. For reasons she doesn’t remember, the father who laboured like everyone else—cutting stones every day—was unlike anyone else in the village.

He valued education deeply and ensured that all his five children, including two daughters, went to school and college. This had never happened in that village.After her undergraduate degree, she enrolled in a bachelor’s of education programme to qualify as a teacher. On graduation, she joined a private school at a good salary.

Years passed and she saw no improvement in the lives of her community. The village was trapped in a cruel equilibrium. The young received poor education, most dropping out or failing; girls were married off at 13 or 14, with boys joining stonework or some other back-breaking labour at the same age.

Poverty in the village wore other faces too—among them, early mortality, which left a number of orphans.She couldn’t take it anymore. About 12 years ago, she resigned and joined the government school as a ‘guest teacher’ at a substantially lower salary. In her telling, she downplays her own role in what followed, saying that