Why should it not be possible for our next Minister of Human Resource Development to come up with a policy that would encourage this kind of public-private partnership on a national scale? Thanks to Dr Manmohan Singh’s economic reforms Indian companies are now so rich that if they want they could transform public education. It cannot be done without government but it cannot be left only to government either. The problem is too serious and it affects us all. Every time someone points out that half of India’s children are malnourished by the age of five, it shames us all.

In the glittering conferences that big businessmen organise in Delhi and Mumbai they usually talk of how fast our economy is growing and how much India has changed since the economic reforms began. But, the sad truth is that far too few Indians have benefited from these reforms. In rural India things remain almost as bad as they ever were. Real primary education could bring real change. We need to build proper schools that serve at least one meal. Just that one hot meal a day can lift a child out of malnourishment.

Why, if the solution is as simple as I am making it sound, has no prime minister done anything about it so far? Well, because the bureaucrats who design our anti-poverty programmes like to design elaborate ones filled with holes big enough for serious leakage to become possible. These same high officials are allergic to ideas that involve private money so we continue to waste taxpayers’ money on massive schemes that rarely benefit those they are meant for.

... contd.