The Generation That Could Remake India - BW Education

Education is India's most important long-term economic infrastructure and the next generation may be its biggest opportunity

Education is not another item on a crowded policy agenda. It is the master lever. Educate one generation well and the effects can cascade for decades: higher productivity, better incomes, a more employable workforce, greater entrepreneurship and social mobility. Families escape poverty, communities become more economically productive and India moves closer to becoming the high-capability society it aspires to be.

The urgency is greater now because the global economy is entering another technological transformation. Artificial intelligence is likely to reshape industries, change the nature of work and create new categories of employment. India will compete with China, the US and other economies for investment, manufacturing, technology, innovation and high-value jobs.

Countries with educated, adaptable and digitally capable populations will be better positioned to benefit. Those without strong foundations in literacy, numeracy and digital skills risk being left behind.

India cannot aspire to become an AI power while millions struggle with the foundations required to participate in an AI-driven economy. Basic education is therefore no longer merely a social obligation. It is an economic necessity.

There is, however, a paradox. AI could democratise access to knowledge, but it could also deepen inequality. A child with good literacy, connectivity, a device and educated parents can use AI to accelerate learning. A child without reliable internet or basic educational foundations may receive almost none of those benefits.

The answer is not to resist technology, but to make its benefits broadly accessible.

AI can potentially give students something approaching a personal tutor: identifying learning gaps, adapting explanations, generating practice exercises and providing immediate feedback. A student struggling with fractions could receive another explanation while a classmate ready for algebra could move ahead.

This is particularly relevant to India, where a teacher may have 30 or 40 students with very different levels of understanding. AI could make a degree of individualised learning possible at scale.

Language is another opportunity. AI can translate and explain educational material in Indian languages, support English learning and make high-quality resources accessible to children whose parents may themselves have had limited formal education.

But AI must supplement teachers, not replace them. Education requires judgement, empathy, motivation and human relationships. Technology should extend the reach of a good teacher, not become an excuse for reducing the human presence in classrooms. Safeguards will also be necessary against inaccurate outputs, algorithmic bias, excessive screen dependence and misuse of student data.

Yet technology cannot compensate for the absence of a functioning school.

India had 11.07 lakh government schools in 2014-15. By 2024-25, that number had fallen to 10.13 lakh. NITI Aayog attributes the decline partly to consolidation and rationalisation by states, while the number of private unaided schools increased from 2.88 lakh to 3.39 lakh.

Consolidation can make administrative sense where demographic change has left schools with very few students. But a school that appears inefficient on a spreadsheet may still be the only realistically accessible school for a child in a remote village.

Access matters as much as infrastructure.

The national infrastructure picture has improved, but averages conceal substantial gaps. NITI Aayog's analysis of UDISE+ 2024-25 data puts functional girls' toilet coverage at 94 per cent nationally. Yet coverage was only 68.7 per cent in Meghalaya, 73.7 per cent in Arunachal Pradesh, 74.5 per cent in Manipur and 75.4 per cent in Tripura.

For an adolescent girl, a clean, private and functional toilet with water and menstrual-hygiene facilities is not a peripheral amenity. It can influence whether school remains a practical option. Safe transport, electricity, drinking water, usable classrooms and secure premises belong in the same category.

They are prerequisites for education. So is nutrition.

PM POSHAN -- the successor to the Mid-Day Meal Scheme -- covered about 11.20 crore children in Bal Vatika and Classes I-VIII across 10.36 lakh government and government-aided schools in 2024-25.

The scale is extraordinary. So must be the accountability.

A CAG performance audit, covering the earlier 2010-14 period, found that 1,876 of 2,102 food samples tested in Delhi failed to meet prescribed nutritional standards. That finding is historical, but it illustrates the importance of independent monitoring in a programme operating at such scale.

School meals should therefore be monitored as seriously as examinations. States should use the monitoring mechanisms already built into PM POSHAN, while strengthening random testing, public reporting and grievance redressal. Menus should also reflect local dietary patterns while meeting nutritional requirements.

The objective is simple: no child should be too hungry to learn.

Intervention should begin before Class 1. Anganwadis and early-childhood programmes need to be treated as part of the education continuum, combining nutrition, healthcare, language development, play and school readiness.

And declaring education free is not enough. The state must make attending school practical.

Where school consolidation substantially increases travel distances, safe transport should accompany it. For girls, that means particular attention to safe journeys, functional sanitation, menstrual hygiene, secure campuses and mechanisms for reporting harassment.

Financial support also matters. Scholarships, textbooks, uniforms, learning materials and other essential support can determine whether children from poorer households remain in school.

A child who leaves school because a family cannot afford to lose his or her labour is not simply an educational failure. It is an economic-policy failure appearing in an education statistic.

Parents must become participants rather than spectators. Government schools should publish simple annual report cards covering attendance, learning outcomes, teacher vacancies, infrastructure, meals and expenditure. School Management Committees should have meaningful access to this information and the ability to demand time-bound action.

Recent youth mobilisation around examination integrity has shown that education can become a mass public issue. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), founded by Abhijeet Dipke, emerged from a youth-led campaign around examination leaks and wider concerns about education and employment. Its prominent figures have included Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka.

The movement subsequently expanded its focus to government-school conditions. Whatever one's view of the organisation, the broader signal is important: young Indians are increasingly willing to demand accountability from institutions that shape their futures.

That energy should be channelled into constructive public scrutiny.

But buildings, meals, devices and broadband will accomplish little without competent and supported teachers.

India has millions of dedicated government-school teachers working under difficult conditions. At the same time, the system cannot ignore absenteeism, proxy teaching, vacancies or inadequate subject competency where these problems exist.

Accountability must not mean vilifying teachers. Teachers who need support should receive proper training. Those who perform well should have opportunities for recognition and advancement. But persistent absenteeism and proxy teaching cannot be normalised.

Technology can strengthen this accountability. Attendance-monitoring systems, digital records and data analysis can help administrators identify unusual patterns, provided privacy safeguards are built into their use. At the same time, teachers should not be buried under administrative work. Their primary job is to teach.

Connectivity could become the next great equaliser.

India's Department of Telecommunications has already recognised LEO and MEO satellite constellations as potential sources of broadband connectivity. Schools, libraries, panchayat buildings and community learning centres in poorly connected areas could use fibre, mobile broadband or satellite connectivity depending on local conditions.

But connectivity alone is insufficient. Students also need affordable devices, reliable electricity and content designed for low-bandwidth environments and Indian languages.

This is where AI could become particularly transformative.

A village school may not have a specialist mathematics or physics teacher. A student preparing for an entrance examination may live hundreds of kilometres from a coaching centre. A child whose parents cannot help with homework may have nowhere to turn for an explanation.

A carefully designed AI tutor could help fill some of those gaps.

It could explain a difficult concept in Marathi, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali or another Indian language; switch to English when necessary; generate practice questions; provide feedback and adapt explanations to a student's level.

The opportunity is not to replace teachers or coaching institutions. It is to reduce the extent to which geography and family income determine access to academic support.

India should also build a much stronger national educational commons. Universities can make high-quality lectures, learning materials and open educational resources available online, subject to copyright. AI-powered translation can increasingly allow material created in one part of the country to reach students elsewhere.

The best mathematics lecture produced in Chennai should be available to a student in Bihar. An exceptional physics lecture from Delhi should be accessible in Ladakh. A high-quality resource created at an IIT should not remain confined to its campus.

Knowledge, once created, should travel.

The economic consequences could extend well beyond education.

Over the next two decades, today's better-educated children will become workers, technicians, entrepreneurs, managers and professionals. Districts that companies currently overlook because they lack skilled workers could become more attractive locations for manufacturing, services, logistics and technology-enabled businesses.

Industry follows infrastructure, but it also follows human capital.

If smaller cities and districts can produce skilled workers and provide reliable digital connectivity, economic opportunity can become more geographically distributed. That could reduce some of the economic compulsion behind migration to already crowded metropolitan centres.

Education can therefore transform not only individual lives but the economic geography of India.

Financing this transformation will require more than the education budget.

CSR can play a role. Under Section 135 of the Companies Act, eligible companies are required to spend at least 2 per cent of their average net profits of the preceding three financial years on activities covered by Schedule VII. Education is among the permitted areas.

Companies can support school infrastructure, libraries, laboratories, connectivity, teacher development and scholarships. But CSR should complement public education rather than substitute for government responsibility. Spending should be transparent, independently monitored and driven by educational need rather than branding opportunities.

The Health and Education Cess is another reminder that education already has a dedicated fiscal instrument. The cess is levied at four per cent of income tax and applicable surcharge.

The broader principle should be straightforward: money allocated for education must produce visible educational outcomes.

India has demonstrated that it can build national systems at extraordinary scale. Aadhaar and UPI show what is possible when technology, public infrastructure and institutional ambition converge.

Education deserves the same ambition.

Higher education, meanwhile, needs a different kind of reform. Institutions should move away from treating attendance as a proxy for learning wherever physical presence is not academically necessary. Laboratories, clinical training and other practical activities require physical participation; many theoretical courses can accommodate more flexible models.

The examination system also needs reform.

For generations, students have been asked to demonstrate years of learning through their ability to write rapidly for two or three hours. That measures only a narrow slice of capability.

Education should reward knowledge, reasoning, communication, creativity, empathy, integrity and the ability to apply what one knows. Examinations should therefore combine objective assessment with analytical answers, projects, practical work, oral examinations and, where appropriate, open-book components.

The purpose should be to measure understanding -- not handwriting speed.

Ultimately, however, this is about something larger than schools, technology or examinations.

It is about one generation.

Give every child adequate nutrition, healthcare, a functioning school, competent teachers, connectivity and access to knowledge. Prepare that child for an economy being reshaped by AI. Then allow the multiplier effects to work.

Educated and healthy adults are more productive and employable. They are better equipped to educate their own children. Better-educated communities are more attractive to businesses and investment. Local economies deepen. Opportunity becomes less dependent on geography.

The support required by the next generation should diminish precisely because the investment in this generation succeeded.

India's demographic opportunity will not remain open indefinitely. Nor will technological change wait for the country to catch up. The cost of inadequate education is no longer merely lower literacy or fewer opportunities. In the age of AI, it could mean exclusion from the most productive parts of the global economy.

That is why India's next great welfare project and its next great economic project should, in many respects, be the same project.

The next great infrastructure project should be the Indian child.

Nourish one generation. Educate it. Keep it healthy. Connect it to the world's knowledge. Prepare it for the age of artificial intelligence.

That generation could remake India.