We celebrated Teachers’ Day this week. We suddenly wake up to the importance of education and teachers. The ritual is repeated every year. After a few perfunctory ceremonies and many meaningless shibboleths, it’s business as usual.

The Compiling and release of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2005 is a landmark event in the evolution of school education in India. Pratham, a reputed civil society organization conducted a nation-wide survey of school-going children in 485 rural districts. 776 small and big groups along with about 10,000 volunteers participated in this massive exercise, and assessed the elementary education outcomes on a large, randomly selected sample of nearly 400,000 children in 9521 villages.

“Today, more than ever before in human history, the wealth–or poverty–of nations depends on the quality of higher education.  Those with a larger repertoire of skills and greater capacity for learning can look forward to lifetimes of unprecedented economic fulfillment.  But in the coming decades the poorly educated face little better than the dreary prospects of lives of quiet desperation”.   These words of wisdom from Malcolm Gills, the President of Rice University in 1999 have great relevance to all nations today.  But nowhere in the world are they more apt than in India.