Nandan Nilekani now logs in to boost primary education

BENGALURU: Infosys co-founder and former UIDAI chairperson Nandan Nilekani is working on a high-impact, mass-scale education project. This ends speculation about what Nilekani intended to do after his Lok Sabha election loss earlier this year. It also closes the chapter on him being drafted by the Karnataka government to help rebuild Brand Bengaluru.
The 59-year-old technocrat, who has had an illustrious track record, is launching a not-for-profit initiative at the intersection of education and technology that would change the dynamics of how primary education is taught in the country.
Nilekani is learnt to have started work on his pet project — a platform focused on elementary education that would act as a great equalizer offsetting social inequities. Though the project is in stealth mode, Nilekani has hired a small team working on gamification of elementary education and developing relevant technology tools to attain scale. “He wants to initially focus on children who’re 2-7 years old and expand it to other age groups so that they board the technology platform early on,” said a source who didn’t want to be identified.
Nilekani is currently giving talks in Ivy League universities in the US and could not be reached for comments.
While the Siddaramaiah government has talked often about utilizing Nilekani’s expertise to recharge Bengaluru, no concrete proposal was made to him. Instead of getting embroiled in factionalized party politics, Nilekani seems to have decided to opt out of it altogether and focus his energies on the underserved education sector.
It’s learnt that Shankar Maruwada, former head (demand generation and marketing), UIDAI, is part of the team building the technology platform. Maruwada was co-founder of marketing analytics firm Marketics that was acquired by Nasdaq-listed BPO major WNS Global for $65 million in 2007.
Ravi Gururaj, chairman of Nasscom Product Council, said: “Nandan is passionate about building platforms that are national scale, have huge impact on the nation and next generation. The Aadhaar platform is superb evidence of his drive. With his massive credibility, talent and passion, Nandan will attempt something big and grand in education — that leapfrogs the status quo, leverages technology to the hilt, delivers massive platform value and transforms early education across the nation for all classes of citizens.”
Access to primary education presents daunting challenges due to the lack of social infrastructure and teachers in the country. A 2013 India Country Report by the Central Statistics Office said the dropout rate for primary classes (I-V) was 27% during 2010-11 and it was 40.6% for elementary classes (I-VIII) during the same year.
The report showed that there was one teacher for 43 students for primary schools, 37 students for upper primary schools and 31 for secondary/senior secondary schools in 1990-91. This figures stood at 43, 33 and 34, respectively, in 2010-11, and the needle has barely moved in primary education indicating that more needs to be done in that area.