The state's efforts to improve the quality of public schools has become an election issue. While a lot of talk is centred on superficial markers — like better classrooms — the key could lie in restoring the lost space of teachers.
In 2015, the year the Aam Aadmi Party came to power in Delhi for the second time with a landslide verdict, India's government schools were in turmoil. Children were dropping out of them in hordes.There was a time this would have been aggravating for India's already-severe school dropout crisis. But things had changed. It wasn't as if many of these [changes] are not systematic changes, which can be sustained [in the] long term," says Shah of Centre for Civil Society. "Changing systemic accountability and incentives will be required to really reform the sector from within. Without that, the reforms lack stickiness."Hopefully, the stories from Delhi will reverberate long after election speeches stop.