One R of education

Last week, at the release of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), a report on the quality of education in rural India published by the NGO Pratham, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, was asked to give the keynote address. Throughout his speech, Ahluwalia repeatedly referred to the R in ASER as "rural" and spoke about how the report needed to include urban India as well. That forced the organisers to tell him, towards the end of the speech, that the R in ASER stands for Report and not rural.