India's quest for skills

How Indian society and polity need to be carried along

A couple of years ago, in a moment of heroic idealism, I volunteered to teach algebra to Class VIII students in a neighbourhood school, a few yards away from where I live, in Colaba, Mumbai. A sizeable proportion of the children in the class were sons and daughters of fishermen working off the nearby Sasoon Docks. My lasting memory of this brief episode (alas, work-related travel put an end to my attempt at heroic idealism) was the raw talent of these children and their eagerness to learn. If any of them had been born into middle class families such as