Panditji used to address hundreds, maybe thousands of students, but then he didn't have the luxury of technology that Modi used to interact with over 1.8 million school students. So what if the principals of a few upscale schools - even in Delhi and Mumbai - recounted how students missed parts of the prime minister's lessons because either the computer played truant or the video buffered almost endlessly?
For many others, the hastily arranged interaction was a logistical nightmare. An example of a picture being more eloquent than a thousand words was provided by The Indian Express, which carried a snap of students from the Thane Zilla Parishad School in Saga village of Bhiwandi taluka, taking a TV on a boat across the Kalu river from Atali to Nandkar, from where they carried it to the school.
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Hopefully, the TV worked properly and the Thane Zilla School got to listen to the prime minister. Though his opening speech was off colour, the subsequent Q&A session brought out the vintage Modi - an articulate leader who doesn't mind cracking jokes at his own expense or recounting childhood pranks. Parents will also be happy with his comments on character-building and quotable quotes such as "don't let the child in you die".
But beyond the hype, the prime minister may have let go of the opportunity of making the interaction more meaningful. For example, in response to a pertinent question on climate change, Modi said it will be a great service to the environment if on a full-moon night, street lights are switched off for two to three hours. Perhaps, the nation deserves better answers from its prime minister.
More disappointing, however, was his statement that there is a need to find out why the value of teachers has lost its sheen and why students don't want to become teachers when they grow up. One hopes the Prime Minister's Office doesn't feel the need to set up yet another committee to find the answer, as it's already known to everybody. As Aam Aadmi Party leader Yogendra Yadav told a TV channel minutes after the prime minister's "paathshala" that everybody and his uncle know "five million teachers work in poor conditions, that teachers' recruitment is a scam and that most of them are paid far less than what's shown in the books".
Let's take the last point first. The salary range for a government primary school teacher at the beginning of his/her career is Rs 16,000-22,000 a month, depending on the state. This should still be all right but for the fact that most schools employ teachers on contract at salaries that are far less. The situation is worse in many private schools, which make contract teachers sign documents that show far higher salaries than what they actually get. Sometimes, the salaries these contract teachers get is even less than Rs 6,000 (your driver must be earning double that amount).
So the quality you get is the quality you deserve. It, therefore, wasn't a surprise when a maths test conducted in elementary government-aided schools a couple of years back showed that most of them could not even do simple maths; and over 60 per cent could not give a correct title to a paragraph in a language comprehension test. A study among 25,000 teachers in Karnataka showed that 60 per cent of them at the elementary level and 15 per cent at the high school level do not have a college degree. The study, Teacher Needs Analysis, conducted by the Karnataka Knowledge Commission and the Azim Premji Foundation showed that one out of 10 teachers had only a basic school-level degree.
The teachers have, of course, found a better way to supplement their income - by bunking school and doing odd jobs. Some are better off - an acquaintance from Bangalore says his wife, a teacher in a local school, has a flourishing real estate agency business and the only sacrifice she has to make is opening the shop an hour late because of the school's diktat of signing the attendance register daily. But the problem is these days she can't even find enough time to do that because of the festive season rush in the property market.
Thus, it should not come as a surprise that India is marginally better than Uganda in absence rates of primary school teachers and the country scores lower than Bangladesh, Peru or even Papua New Guinea on this account.
Studies after studies have suggested stopping the corrupt practices before appointing contract teachers and the urgent implementation of a foolproof plan to link government school grants to performance. While curtailing an existing grant may not be feasible, future grants or increments to teachers may be a good way to start the process after devising a proper rating system.
One hopes Modi will prepare better for some of the more substantive questions students ask him on the next Teachers' Day.