Ajay Singh on Ekal
Vidyalaya and how to end illiteracy in rural India
By: David Gittess
Ajay Singh is a serial
educator with no sense of boundaries. His resume spans wildly from
management training to lifestyle education, and when he speaks, he
goes on with the patience and excitement of someone who has built a
life around passing on knowledge. He is also part of a small group of
people who think they have the key to ending illiteracy in rural
India.
Ekal Vidyalaya, for whom
Mr. Singh works, is in one sense an organization of numbers. Big
numbers, in fact, like 51,717 (the number of schools they run) and
1,489,373 (the number of students currently enrolled in these
schools). Since their modest beginning in 1986, they have brought
rapid improvements in literacy and life management across India,
making incredible progress in the patchwork of cultures, languages,
and topography that comprise the countryside. Where the government
has trouble making education accessible, Ekal Vidyalaya has stepped
in with an approach grounded in the fundamentals of education and
community, promoting smart agriculture, intellectual curiosity, and
gram swaraj, the ideal
of “self government.”
The results speak for
themselves, backed up by a highly sophisticated monitoring and
evaluation process that has allowed Ekal Vidyalaya to demonstrate
quantitative success over the past 25 years. They have a goal of
eliminating illiteracy in rural India by 2015…and they may just be
able to make it happen.
Mr. Singh is confident in
the future of Indian education. Here, he explains why.
DDev: What inspired you
to work in social activism?
AS: I wanted to return to
the society what I had taken. I have been in business for nearly 30
years, so I thought I have played my one inning, and in my second
inning I must plan my business like this so that I pay back what I
have taken from society.
DDev: Why do you care
so much about education as opposed to public health or good
governance?
AS: The one thing that can
save a person’s life is their education. It is the same for any
human being. India is a country of villages. My countrymen, my people
in the villages are not getting the important things for their
development, and I thought that this was the right place to give back
to the masses. At the other time, I’m working on education itself.
My inclination to education is very natural. And I thought that I
would give back to the villages, so they can spend better time and
have a better life.
DDev: What are the
major hurdles that face education right now in India?
AS: Number one: the
villages are in the parts of India where the roads are not there and
electricity is not there, so reaching those people is not very easy.
Secondly, we do not have a sufficient number of teachers to go there
and teach them. Thirdly, the poor people do not prioritize their
education because education is not giving them livelihood directly.
We have to interest the person in their education and let him know
the benefits he can drive out of education. Until bread and butter
are secure, he will not be interested in anything else.
DDev: How do you
address the challenges of education through the Ekal Vidyalaya model?
AS: Our model is
economical. We are spending $365 a year running a school in a
village. This is the beauty of the game: we are teaching the trainer
from the same village, so there’s no overhead, he’s more
responsible to his fellow villagers, and he’s available 24/7 to the
villagers. Our school is of the village itself. It is not difficult
for the students to walk down to the school and drive, come, learn,
and all those things.
We are also educating
their parents. We are training them how to make more money out of
agriculture, how you can better your life. Our job is not just to
educate the students; instead we are working for the entire village
development. Indian economics is basically built on agriculture. So
what are realizing is, if our villages are willing to do agriculture
in the best possible manner, then the villages will get more income,
and the economy of the country will improve.
DDev:
This sounds like microfinance, where it’s a
community venture, not just one person. Everyone is responsible for
making sure the loan is repaid, or in this case, the student goes to
school.
AS: Correct. But it is
different from microfinance because microfinance is concentrated on
only one part. Our idea is multi-dimensional. Education is how to
make your agriculture better, it is how to make your life better, how
to remain healthy.
DDev: If the goal is to
remain healthy, then how do you monitor the retention of these skills
maybe two, three, ten years later?
AS: The monitoring process
is actually in-built. We have got the teacher at the village level
who teaches, and then we have a supervisor. There is one supervisor
who is looking over 30 villages. Then there is one more supervisor
looking over 30 multiplied by 4, 120 villages. So we have got a
multi-level supervision process. Moreover, we keep on doing the
assessment survey.
DDev:
How do you maintain such a high efficiency
rate? I notice in your magazine that 90% of the money goes to schools
as opposed to administrators.
AS: Actually, what happens
is the people like me and more, they are all volunteering. We are
spending from our own pockets. Money is not the only motivation. We
also provide the marketing and all those things. We keep it minimal.
We believe more in doing the work than publicizing it. Otherwise, it
is very difficult to do it, yes, you are very correct.
DDev: It seems as
though volunteer commitment would be a challenge. You may have a
problem where if somebody wakes up a little late or whatever, they
might not show up until halfway through the day. How do you handle
this?
AS: We have the problem of
the poor taking care of their families, so we provide assistance they
might need for securing their future. We have people who have done a
lot for themselves and now they are satisfied, and now they want to
volunteer… Many students have been successful, they have gone to
highest careers. And the beautiful thing is, many who have been a
student of Ekal Vidyalaya have come back to give back to their
society. They learned that is not our life that is important to us,
it is our society that is important to us.
DDev:
Why did you choose to include a moral
component even if it’s so subjective? If one culture prioritizes,
say, women’s rights more, then it might be more or less receptive
to your program, and your goals may be jeopardized. How do you deal
with this?
AS: It’s a tough
question to answer in one sentence. At the moment, I can only say
this much, that all the schedules can be altered. India is divided
into so many parts, and it is so different, that one program cannot
be applied everywhere; it has to be on a case-by-case basis. Like in
Jammu and Kashmir, the human situation is different than it is in
Kerala. Some women are already getting literacy, they are working,
whereas in the Kashmir part, women are not working and they are not
going for education. The challenge is very different.
DDev: Where will Ekal
Vidyalaya go after you’ve hit your goal to eliminate illiteracy,
currently set for 2015?
AS: The first step is to
reach 100,000 villages. Then what we plan to do in the second job
will be to make them skillful. At the moment we are not able to do
that and all those other things in a proficient manner. We would like
to create a better market in the villages – a group of villages
will be given a possibility to create their own markets, so that the
middleman can be provided.
DDev: Do you think the
Ekal method can be exported to other countries? This program came up
to address a specifically Indian concern, but do you think there are
parts of it that would translate well across the globe?
AS: Our model is very much
replicable. But yes, there are, there may be some customization
because local needs are different in my country and in African
countries. But is the importance of education is there? Yes, no
doubt. Our target is to employ the local person to solve the local
problem. The same model can be replicated everywhere, and it is
beyond doubt that the local person who is living in the same
community will be more responsible. What we have to do is send some
of our experts to those countries, find out what are the local
problems, the local means, and then implement it in the system that
has been developed by us for the past 25 years. In fact, we have
planned for this kind of development also.
But we thought, first let
us do it in our home, find out and meet all the targets, and then we
can look for work with foreign partners. But yes, we are open to it,
and this year we have announced that we are going to invite students
from America and other countries to do fellowships in our
organization. They will be here for four weeks, eight weeks, see our
system, study it, write their paper, and find out what we have been
able to do well. What we have not been able to do well, they will let
us know, and we will improve.
DDev: Is there anything
else you would like for me to include? Anything you find interesting?
AS: Actually, the most interesting thing is, when I was
working for myself, I was not feeling so happy. When I started
working for the society, then I was more happy, more content, more
prepared, that’s what I can say. I am doing it for my people - that
is the most important thing to me.
