Proud moment for us

Truly proud moment for the School Choice Campaign team and everyone else at Centre for Civil Society.
It is sometimes embarrassing to take credit for things, especially when
it is a good deed. But this time I can’t help but feel proud.

His dream comes true, 8-yr-old will go to school from today in the Indian Express, Delhi Section on July 6, 2007.

A simple Rs 300 per month can do this. I spend more on coffee every
month. Imagine what a private and tax payer funded basket of education,
health and life insurance and food vouchers can do for the poor! The
money is there. Governments spend a zillion times more than Rs 300 per
poor person per month.

Soon…. Soon …. God, give me patience till then.

His dream comes true, 8-yr-old will go to school from today

Courtesy School Choice scheme of Centre for Civil Society, 400 poor kids will get education vouchers to study in a school of their choice

Under the School
Choice scheme of the Centre for Civil Society, 400 students would be
given education vouchers. Sharik, a resident of Mulla Colony in Gharoli
village of East Delhi, is the first among them to get admission. Due to
ill health of his father Zulfiqar, the family did not have enough money
to send him to school. Sharik, who is the youngest of four brothers,
has a 14-month-old sister also.

His mother
Shabnam Khatun is happy. “He (Sharik) always wanted to study but we had
so many loans to pay off that we could not send him to any school. I am
relieved now that he will be going to school finally,” she said.

It was Sharik’s
brother Azam who had got the voucher. Azam studies in Class V in a
government school in Kalyanpuri. He wanted to go to Karan Swaroop
Public School himself but the voucher amount of Rs 300 per month did
not cover his tuition fees and other expenses. So, his parents decided
to transfer the voucher in Sharik’s name. “They do not teach English at
my school properly. I am sure my brother will study well,” said Azam.

Shabnam wanted to
send Sharik to Gautam Public School but found the “one-time fee” there
too high. “They demanded Rs 1,700 as one-time fee which we could not
afford. I went to Karan Swaroop school then where this fee is Rs 1,000.
I borrowed the amount from some people which I will have to pay off in
a few months,” she said.

“Because of
Sharik’s father’s illness, we had to withdraw Azam from the private
school where he was studying earlier. We had to raise so many loans for
his treatment and it was difficult for us to afford good education for
all our children. My husband has got back his job now in a cloth
factory but he is still not allowed to do much physical work. But I am
happy that even though my elder sons are studying in a government
school, at least Sharik has got a good platform to start with,” Shabnam
added.

As for Sharik, he
looks forward eagerly to the new life waiting for him in the school.
“When I go to school tomorrow, the teacher will give me new uniform and
new books. I will work very hard,” he said.

About the concept
A new concept in the country, ‘School Choice’ gives children right to
choose their school by giving them adequate financial freedom.
Education vouchers have been issued under the programme to students
from economically weaker section so that they can choose their school
and are not forced to study in government schools only. In a pilot
project initiated by the Centre for Civil Society, 400 vouchers worth
Rs 300 each will be distributed in July. Five lakh people in 68 wards
of Delhi were informed about the scheme. Of these 1.5 lakh people who
filled the voucher forms, 408 have been selected — six from each ward —
by a draw of lots.

Letter to editor – Deccan Chronicle

Check out The Business of Education
by Prof. Shantha Sinha, chairperson, National Commission for Protection
of Child Rights. The statements she make are not new. In fact you will
hear them in any elite educationalist circles across the world. It is
amazing how easily people like Prof Sinha are able to insult the
choices made by parents, poor or otherwise, market, etc. etc. If she
had made any attempts to look for evidence, before making blanket
statements, she would have found that vouchers actually work. Even I
could have sent her a big zip file full of facts and data my colleagues
have put together.

Anyway, my quick letter to editor, not sure if the editor published it or not.

Sir, this refers to The business of education (DC, June 13).
Pretty much everyone I know went to private schools. Are they less of a
citizen? In fact they are able to serve their society and the world
precisely because of the better quality education they received in
private schools. Market competition enables citizens to access superior
goods and services, if they pay. Vouchers, cash transfers, tuition
reimbursement, tax credits etc. are being implemented by left-wing and
right-wing governments from Columbia to Sweden and Brazil to
Bangladesh. Prof Sinha misses the point that these schemes are for
empowering the very marginalised she laments about, so they can access
superior services, provided by the private sector hopefully with a
smile and a thank you, today afforded only to the rich and the middle
class. Poor are moving en mass to private schools as soon as they are a
bit less poor. They know something that the elite don’t seem to respect
- English medium private schools provide their children the best way
out of poverty. Empowered with tax payer funded vouchers, let the poor
choose what is best for them. The elite must stop insulting their
choice and stop hiding behind mythical concepts of universalisation and
inclusive democracy of government schools.

Choice for me, inspection for you

Go to any seminar on education. Usually the speakers are
intellectuals, from the upper or middle class, city bred. The
discussion invariably veer towards state of education for the poor.
Soon people start talking about how bad government run schools are. Not
enough teachers, some places there aren’t any building to begin with,
no separate bathrooms for the girl children, so on and so forth. Right
after the wailing they volunteer with their suggestions.

• We must energise the bureaucracy
• We must encourage the ruling class to find its political will
• We must write a memo to the X (minster, secretary, President of India …)
• The poor, dalit, tribal must perform some rasta roko, dharna, ….
• The village BDO or some other petty government official needs to be empowered
• Government teachers need to be encouraged to a, b, c …
• We are all citizens of this country, those government schools are
  our responsibility. Hence we need to inspect them ourselves and make
  sure they are functioning properly
• We should file a PIL
• Go to Delhi and go on a hunger strike in front of the Human Resource Ministry
• The list of recommendations go on and on.

Now instead of a seminar or conference on education if you were to
attend one on roads, hospitals or PDS, you will pretty much hear the
same recommendations.

Imagine if some of us were foolish enough to take these
recommendations seriously. How many of your waking hours will you spend
inspecting road, ration shops, government hospitals and schools?

Let us step back a bit. These government “services” are funded by
our taxes. We pay taxes for pretty much anything we buy or sell. On
pretty much on any income (especially if you are unlucky like me to be
drawing a salary and left with no avenue to evade taxes). Now my
employer pays my salary for doing work. That too in the employer’s
organisation. Not for inspecting other people’s work. So if I spend my
waking hours inspecting government work, filing RTI, etc. I don’t get
paid. If I don’t get paid, I don’t pay taxes. No taxes, no government
“services”.

Also, what about the people who get paid to do their job? And the
people who get paid to inspect, poke and probe the various government
“services”? Aren’t they getting paid to do all the things we are being
asked to duplicate?

Interestingly, no inspection is required for the goods and services
the speaker, i.e., for people like us – the middle, upper and rich
classer – enjoys. I hardly inspect my children’s school, give the
teacher and the principal a pep talk, inspect their accounting system
or pay scale. I visit it, yes. During one of my rare visits, if I find
one or more of the problems listed above, in my child’s school, what do
I do? I may talk to the manager/principal/headmaster once.

Since I am a patient man, I may explain things to them a second time. “Fix it or else”.

A third time? I take my children and find another school. My money
follows me. Whose lose is it? Mine or the school’s? Finding a new
school may not be easy. Sure. Nothing good in life is easy. But will my
children go uneducated? No!

I don’t have the time or the inclination for rasta roko. I like Mr
Kalam, our President. But I don’t have the time to write to him. Same
goes for the minister, bureaucrats, Supreme Court, PIL lawyers, well
wishers, do-gooders. I like you all. But I can take care of my family.
If I need your help I will ask. But don’t wait for me. Don’t hold your
breath.

Why is that so? Why don’t I need all these powerful, noble well
wishers? Because I have the resources to pay the tuition and rest of
the expenses. So the simple question is: if a poor dalit parent had the
money in her hand, would she need all these patrons and patronising
elite? No!

Why are there plenty of schools where I live. Because there are
plenty of people like me who can pay. Which means there are plenty of
people who have started schools to serve me and people like me.

What is news to a lot of people is that there are plenty of schools,
and increasingly so, around where poor live. Because, as the poor grow
less poor, in fact, the moment the poor is a little bit less poor, they
opt for private services, including private schools.

If the poor have access to the money that the tax payers set aside
to help the poor, they can use that money to access far better services
that the private sector is able to provide. Instead of funding
government services with taxes, empower the poor with it.

(What if the tax payer could give the money directly to the poor
person and get a tax credit? No need to send it to the government and
then redirecting it to the poor with all the leaks in the system. Pay
government for the services like defence that government is supposed to
do.)

Today, I have choice. You, if you are poor, have none. Soon, thanks
to the growing school choice movement in India, this will not be the
case.

For the first time in the history of our society, the poor will be
able to tell both the government and the private service providers,
“You dance to my tune I will give you this money that I have in my
hand. I will tell you how you should dance, when you should, and
quality of your dance. You also have to do it with a smile and a thank
you. If you cannot do that please move on. Next!”

Now wouldn’t that be real empowerment, real liberation for a change?

School Choice Campaign

School Choice Campaign

Fund Students, Not Schools

On
29 January 2007 the Centre for Civil Society launched its School Choice
Campaign. It is a one-year campaign with concrete, measurable goals.
Our nation has given each child the right to education; we must now
make it meaningful by taking it a step further: The Right to education of Choice! Each child and her parent must be empowered so they can truthfully say: My Right, My Choice!

This
is also your opportunity to join the education revolution. Put in your
one year to assure quality education to the poor and secure their and
India’s future. Log on to www.schoolchoice.in and play your part.

Can
poor women (urban, rural or tribal), armed with funds—corporate, bank
or micro-finance—own the school where their children study? Can we
attract entrepreneurs of the calibre like Narayana Murthy to open 200,
may be 2000, schools and replicate the IT revolution in education? Can
venture capital—for profit or philanthropic—help improve the
infrastructure and quality of existing budget private schools around
slums and in villages? Can good teachers of government schools be given
an opportunity to manage schools and improve the quality and reach
millions?

We
feel the answer to these exciting questions is a resounding YES! It is
time to think bold, outside the box of the current education system.

What is School Choice?

As
you know, we at CCS have done considerable amount of research and
advocacy work in the area of education. We have collected a wealth of
data and analysis from around India and the rest of the world. And we
are convinced that quality education for all can be achieved only by
adopting a different strategy: School Choice!

School
choice, particularly for the poor, can be achieved through education
vouchers, cash transfers (like in Bangladesh), or tuition fee
reimbursement schemes (like in Delhi), basically by schemes where funds
follow students and not schools. Let the child’s parent choose the
school. It can be enhanced through broader measures like deregulation
and delicensing of private schools, legalizing for-profit schools, and
microfinance and venture capital for budget private schools. (Today it
is virtually impossible to start a legally recognised school. Also,
since many of the schools for the poor are unrecognised, they cannot
get a bank loan to improve their infrastructure like any other
enterprise).

School
choice can be taken to government schools through decentralization of
decision making and transfer of accountability to local governments, by
tying state grants to enrolment and learning achievements, through
management contracts, and charter schools. The funding for education in
general can be increased by tuition tax credits to individuals and
corporate scholarship tax credit programs.

Goals of the School Choice Campaign

We have set five measurable goals. They
would give you a good idea of the scale and scope of our efforts. By
the end of the campaign, 29 January 2008, we intend to achieve the
following:

1. At least 50% of parents with children in state schools should know the ideas of school choice.

2. All state education ministers and secretaries should be briefed about school choice individually or in groups.

3. All elected representatives
across all levels of the government (Members of Parliament, Legislative
Assemblies, Corporations, and Village Panchayats) should receive
persuasive material on the ideas of school choice and specific ways to
implement them.

4. At least 1912 of the elected representatives should receive a delegation of citizens demanding school choice.

5. Establish or help establish at least 5 projects
(including changes in education policies) that demonstrate the power of
choice in school education. One of the projects would be a private school choice fund that would support at least 9400 students.

Looking Ahead

The
task ahead is not an easy one. But we firmly believe that all of us, by
implementing school choice, can make a serious positive impact in the
lives of millions of children, for generations to come. That thought
and the tremendous encouragement and partnership we have received from
all quarters—dalit and tribal activists, government officials,
politicians, entrepreneurs, and parents and well wishers of poor
children—in the short span of our campaign energise us to march ahead.

All
good campaigns depend on good people, planning and execution. We have
assembled a team of dedicated and competent women and men in New Delhi
and in many states. We have partnered with enthusiastic organisations
and individuals who are now the foot soldiers of the campaign. Our mass
campaign and political outreach is in full swing in many states across
the nation. It is especially heartening to receive overwhelming support
from leaders and organisations representing the marginalised women and
men of our society. Dalit and tribal activists, for example, are
becoming the key leaders of this campaign. They are taking the powerful
message of parental empowerment and choice to communities and elected
representatives.

Our
mass campaign has attracted hundreds of thousands of parents. In New
Delhi we will be providing 400 vouchers to poor children to demonstrate
the power of choice and empowerment. We will unveil similar schemes in
other states. Encouragingly, many government officials have shown
interest in implementing choice based schemes in their states and
cities.

It
has been a discovery process for us too. We have sensed a change in the
thought process of philanthropic organisations and donors. Instead of
charity for the sake of charity, they envision funding projects that
empower people in a scalable and self sustaining manner. Many have
found school choice, with its parent empowering message at its core,
very appealing. Many have or intend to join us in our pilot projects
and mass campaigns.

While
we rejoice our achievements, we are fully aware that this is just the
end of the beginning of the campaign. We have a long and hard, yet
exciting, road ahead. Join our campaign. Together let us create an
education system that puts Students First! Together let us make quality education and a good future a reality for millions of our children.

Join the School Choice Campaign!

Better ways to travel

I am sure Enrique the singer has millions of fans and fanclubs all
over the world.  I hope to start a Chenai chapter of ‘Enrique the Mayor
fan club’.  How public policy nerdy can one get?  Watch and learn.

Looks like he is also associated with 

Let a hundred Hong Kong bloom

Imagine India few years from now as a network of many Hong Kongs – big, medium
and small ones. I first heard this idea from Sauvik Chakravarti. Big
cities, if we have a decentralised way of decision making, would be
catalyst for medium and small cities sprouting around them. Each of
these cities would be connected to others with good roads, rail and
other modes of transportation.

Free trading cities, each flourishing by leveraging its comparative
advantage. These cities hopefully would not be exact replicas of the
great city, as I mentioned in my earlier post.  But Hong Kongs built
with local characteristics and culture as foundation.

How would this come about?  Why not do what Sir John Cowperthwaithe
did for Hong Kong. Government could start by showing ‘benign neglect’
instead of active obstruction.  Remove all economic laws that obstruct
people from earning a living, trade with each other and generate wealth.

Force central government and state governments to devolve most of
the power and accountability to the local level.  Implement the 73rd
and 74th amendments to the Indian constitution in letter and spirit. 
Actually put some resource and energy behind the local government and
panchayati raj concept. 

Let local institutions, both private and public flourish.  Let them
be capable of responding to the concerns and needs of the local
citizens.  Empower local authorities to serve the people who elect
them.  Empower the local citizen to punish the authorities when they
fail to deliver.

Of course there are other issues like land law reform that are
crucial for a city to bloom.  But let us start somewhere.  Let us not
allow the complexity and chaos of the present situation to paralyse us.

Think this is too far fetched?  Not really.  Every government in our
country has toyed with the idea of economic free trade zones.  The idea
is to identity a region and simplify or eliminate all or most of the
pernicious economic laws, give tax holidays to industries in that
region, and so on. 

(I would rather see the entire country enjoy such benefits rather
than politicians and bureaucrats picking winning and loosing regions. 
But a friend pointed out, why not take what you get and ask for more
later.)

If we buy into the economic free trade zone argument, why not
declare a bunch of cities as free trade zones.  Suspend all economic
laws and restrictions.  Drastically simplify taxes.  Why not try this
as an experiment in a few cities. 

I am pretty sure that this would set off the next phase of
competition among states and regions.  Liberalisation process, which
started in the early 1990s, sparked off competition among states in
attracting capital and industries.  Now let the cities compete with
each other in attracting capital, resources and most importantly,
people. 

Good cities will attract the most important of resources — people. 
Bad ones will lose people and with it the tax base, creativity and
dynamism. 

Unleash the potential of our cities.  Let a hundred Hong Kong bloom.

More on the great man Cowperthwaithe and Hong Kong

• Sir John Cowperthwaithe from Telegraph, UK
• The Hong Kong Experiment by Milton Friedman in Hoover Digest
• Sir John Cowperthwaithe by Alex Singleton, Globalisation Institute 

Can Coovam be our ‘Cheonggyecheon’?

Can Chennai’s Coovam become its ‘Cheonggyecheon’?  Coovum, for those who are not familiar, is a giant sewage river that runs through the city.  As you drive around Chennai you cannot miss it.  Even if you are a tourist travelling behind dark glassed cars with the A/C on, your nose won’t miss it.

I have seen black and white photos of Chennai from the early 20th century.  Coovam was not always a smelly, dirty river.  Once upon a
time it had fish and other living beings in it.  Clean water used to flow in it.  Today, no life can survive it.  I suppose almost every
third world city has a Coovam.  What is third world without it. 

Every now and then there are talks of cleaning the Coovam.  Even this week there were reports about building check dams across it. 
Coovam originates in the west of the city and it is not polluted. By the time Coovam meets the sea it is highly polluted. 

I would assume that in a water starved city, there would be enough interest in recovering the water from the sewage.  And/Or pump sea
water in and boats could provide transportation and touristy trips on the river. 

Bangkok’s Chao Praya river does all this, except the sea water part.  The view of the city and the temples from it is beautiful.  Come
to think of it, pretty much every romantic and beautiful city in this world has a river running through it.  And many of them were not clean
as they are now.  So there is hope for Coovam too.  May be we can learn a few tips from Seoul.

Chekhov was Indian

For a Tamil Hong Kong

Wheelchair test

After few years of managing software development teams, I realised that it is not easy to figure out when a particular project is done.  Especially if you are working with multiple teams, multiple departments, sometimes in different cities, complicated requirements, demanding clients and so on.  This is worse when your team members are lying, cheating crooks, who are delusional and paranoid that someone is going to discover what they have actually done.  (Just kidding.)  So a hapless manager can only do one thing.  Ask an independent testing team to create tests that the software must pass.  Clear and simple.  Pass or fail.  This works especially well if the testers are paranoid about missing a bug (a error in a software) and latch on to the developer like a crazy street dog until you fix the problem.

I assume all this is true when it comes to city administration.  Competing claims, lobbies, unwieldy unions, lying cheating crooks, whiny public, and so on.  How do we even know when the authorities are done building safe, clean footpaths?  What does clean and safe mean anyway ?  In fact, what does footpath mean ? 

Well, why not create a simple test and get a bunch of people, who will latch on to the city administrators until the footpath passes the test.  So here is my test for footpaths.

Assume you have an old person in your family.  Grandpa, grandma, annoying old uncle. He or she is really old and is wheelchair bound.  Now the test for the quality of your city’s footpath is that you should be able to push this old person’s wheelchair, with the old person in it of course, from any point in the city to any other point in the city.  Without the old person having to get out of the wheelchair.  Without you having to carry the wheelchair with the old person in it.  Without bystanders and you having to carry …   Ahhhh… My lawyers are working on this to get the words right and loopholes free !

There is a reason for the wheelchair being part of the test.  A person who can walk can also jump over holes and pot holes.  He can get off the footpath and get on with relative ease.  A wheelchair cannot. 

If you have seen the footpaths in Chennai you will realise that even a Olympic Decathlon champ would have difficulty staying on it.  The footpaths are build at heights that only superman can climb.  Even if you climb on a footpath, it lasts only for a few feet.  Because the footpath dips downs again, a sharp fall that is, in front of every house and shop’s entrance.  All this if you are lucky and the footpath is not obstructed by parked cars, autos, shops, gates, illegal constructions of all sorts.  Crap, crap and more crap, usually literally.

Hence the wheelchair.  If the wheelchair can roll smoothly, then you can walk, run or skip on the footpath, from point A to point B.

Now as for testers….  Why not ask old people groups ?  (Yes I realise old people are no longer called old people.  They are, I suppose, differently youthed people or something like that.)  But I figured when old people can actually walk on the streets, without the fear of being mowed down by an assorted variety of vehicular manslaughterites, especially because of my patented ‘Wheelchair Test’ idea, that would be respect enough.

When a road and its footpaths are built, or so claimed by the road and footpath czars, let the elderly unleash themselves on them.  Whip out the wheelchairs and run the test.  Count the number of old people and their wheelchair pushers in the test team.  Chalk out the routes.  A to B. B to C. C to Z.  Ready, set, go!  After the trip count the number of people in the team.  If no one is missing, the team did not have to get down from the sidewalk, etc. test passed.  Else failed.  Sue government.  Take authorities to court.  Picket the city corporation.  Repeat until success.

Wouldn’t that be an inspiring sight ?  Large groups of old people and their well wishers testing their footpath.  Also, no complicated physics, chemistry or mechanical and civil engineering to tell us whether the road and the footpath actually work.

(My apologies to the old people, for any perceived slight of their physical abilities.  Many of them are healthier than so called young people.  If this is the case, the young person can sit in the wheelchair and the old person can push it.  My test is flexible.)

Jokes aside, this would come handy whether the road is being built by the government or by private companies.  This could be part of the bidding process for road building contracts.  Old people association certified.  Like ISO 9000 certified.  The point is that private groups and associations should have more say in these matters.  Old people or not, consumers should have a choice.  Roads should be built by agencies who satisfy consumers’ demand.  If government agencies cannot do this, then let the private companies do it.  Reward private companies if they deliver.  Punish them if the fail.  When it comes to many things, including roads and sidewalks, pedestrians are not treated as tax paying consumers.  This must change.