 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I'm Poranjoy Gohar Thakurtha and with me here in the studio I have Aatishi Madalena. She's a spokesperson of the Amadhi Party. And in the first part of this interview with her, we talked about politics. But she is a topper. She's a history topper from St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi. Then she studied at the University of Oxford. And besides being the only woman in the Amadhi Party's Political Affairs Committee, she used to be the advisor to the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia, on education between July 2015 and April 2018. So, in this segment we're not going to talk about politics, but we will talk about education. Aatishi, you have received a lot of kudos. You've received a lot of praise from large sections of people cutting across political lines for your attempts to change the government school system in the national capital. In fact, you were hired for a salary of one rupee. And then when in April 2018, there was this advisory from the Home Ministry. The Ministry of Home Affairs headed by Mr. Rajmath Singh, which says your entire appointment was null and void. That post should not have been created in the first place. And that was the end of the story. Now, how do you see, I mean, how, why did it take the Ministry of Home Affairs? What should I say? Almost three years, I mean, nearly three years to realize that your appointment should not have been there. It should not have been made in the first place. How do you see the situation? I think they removed us if you see the letter that we got. If I remove the legalese from that letter, it basically said that we are removing you because we can and that we could have given post factor approval for your appointment, but we are not doing so and therefore you're dismissed. But I think in the larger context of the conflict between the central government and the Ahmadini Party, that is where we can find an explanation for this. And the explanation for this lies in the fact that many of the advisors in the Delhi government were actually helping run the reform project that the Delhi government has been carrying out, including myself working on education, some others working on different reforms in different departments. And I think that one can see the fact that the central government has been trying everything in their ability to prevent our government from functioning. This is where I'm finding it difficult. You know, I know that Mr. Manish Sisodia wrote to, I mean, he sent out a public message to Mr. Modi saying, what's the message you want to send out by dismissing such a patriotic, educated, talented woman? Now, Mr. Manish Sisodia invited Narendra Modi to visit the schools and he said, come with an open mind and make schools like this all over the country. Now, don't you see, I mean, is the government simply being cursed? But if there is something good that is being done, why should politics, in that sense, intrude into an attempt to improve the education system? And everybody and his brother doesn't matter what your politics is, what your political ideology. We all would agree that the primary education system, the school system in this country could certainly do with a lot of improvement. I think this question will need to be answered by the home minister since he's the one who dismissed me. But I think that the larger question is that in the politics in our country, you have government after government, party after party who comes into government and yet nothing changes for the ordinary people of this country. I think with the Amadmi Party's focus on improving governance for ordinary citizens of this country, be it issues like water, sewage, electricity, health, education. I think that if the people of this city begin to see that this governance is possible, that schools, government schools can function well, that government hospitals can function well, that if there is no corruption in the system, the system can work differently, then business as usual for all other political parties is bound to come to an end. No, is it as simple as that? Just because you did good work, you opened 8000 new classrooms in government schools. You send principals, 300 principals, 100 teachers, you send them to Cambridge, you send them to Harvard, you send them to Singapore's National Institute of Education. You had modern state-of-the-art facilities, you opened libraries, etc., etc., etc. You did a whole lot of things and we can talk about some of these in greater detail. Above all, I think Delhi was the only government in the country where about 25% of its budget was devoted to education and the budget, in fact, doubled from 500 crore to 1,000 crore. Now, why would anybody want to oppose it? That's the million-dollar question. And I think that if you see that education in this country, for example, has always been run for only 5% of the people in this country. So you have 5% of children who have access to world-class education. But you have a large majority of the children either going into budget-private schools or going into government schools, neither of which are functional. So I think for the first time there was an attempt to actually improve government schools. But it seems that the central government didn't want it. Interestingly, not just the current central government, but all political parties, especially in Delhi, both the Congress and the BJP, their leaders actually have a lot of stake in private schools. Many politicians run private schools. So the very people who are charged with... Are you trying to suggest that because there are some BJP politicians, some Congress politicians that are involved in running public schools, they have a vested interest in putting down the government schools in the city? Is it as straight as that? Absolutely. And this is not just what has happened in this tenure. I think one can see that for the past 20 years, there's been a systematic neglect of government schools. Many of the things that you talked about that the Ahmadi Party government has done, none of this is rocket science. This could have been done by any government before us. The question is, why is it that they want enough classrooms for children? Why is it that teachers were not trained well? Why is it that there was not enough budgetary adaptation? Everybody knows the infrastructure was in a mess. So you people tried to improve the infrastructure. Everybody knows that children from disadvantaged, underprivileged sections of society go to government schools that they can't afford private tuition. But people have also raised some doubts. Let me ask you one doubt. The poor performance of the children in class 5, in class 6, and the fact that there's a no detention policy all the way up to class 9, and there have been successive reports in by the annual survey of education reports, all of which shows that the quality of education is very, very poor. How do you suddenly explain that in the central board of secondary education results come? Delhi's performance is excellent. It goes up from 88% in 2017 to 90.6%. All the students clear exams. And these are the students who study in about a thousand state government-run schools which are opting for the central board of secondary education. I think one needs to understand two things here. First of all, is there an educational crisis in the country? Yes, there is. Pratham's ASA report has been telling us that for more than a decade that half the children in this country don't even know how to read and write. And this is precisely the situation in Delhi. When we ourselves found that 75% children in class 6 could not even read their textbooks. So we have been carrying out a lot of reforms in the past three years to actually bridge this learning gap. So even if the child is in class 7, does not know how to read and write, we have been focusing on making sure that they first learn how to read and write and then we move them ahead with the syllabus. So I think there's been a lot of research on this particular issue because this is not a problem just in Delhi. So we have adopted this method called teaching at the right level where children are grouped by level, not by their actual grade. So if you have a child in class 6 who does not know how to read and write, there's no point in making them sit in an algebra class. One minute. Do you think this problem has been worsened because of the no-detention policy? Do you support the no-detention policy? See the no-detention policy is a good idea. But I think it's a policy that's come before its time. That one needed far better systems of teacher training, improved curriculum, better teaching methodologies, better systems of assessment before one could actually introduce the no-detention policy. Now what we have effectively done with the no-detention policy is that by taking away exams from the system, we have removed whatever little accountability that existed in the government school system. Now children and parents are not accountable. Children don't even need to come to school for a single day in the year and they would still be promoted. Teachers are not accountable because whether the children learn or whether children do not learn, they're going to get promoted to the following year. Your government, when did the other extreme? By saying we should have CCTV cameras, close circuit television cameras. You want, you know, I mean here at one level you complain about Mr. Modi and the BJP, the surveillance society, you know, big brother is always watching you and you wanted to do exactly the same. This has been criticized severely that this is not the way to hold either teachers accountable for attending classes, teaching students properly or for that matter monitoring what students do in class just because there are some delinquent students and there have been some terrible incidents in the national capital region. This is not the way forward to have the CCTV cameras inside each classroom. Yes. I could turn the question around to you that for all of us of people in the city who have children studying either in government schools or in private schools, security is a major concern. And we have, as you have said, had multiple extremely serious incidents as far as security and safety of children go. Now my question to you is, okay, you oppose CCTV cameras. Do we have any... You've already never had your way. So I'm asking, do we actually have any other solution? How do we actually ensure... The solution is precisely what you talked about. That in the 50,000 classrooms that we have, how do we actually ensure the safety and security of children? Okay. The accountability of teachers can be ensured by several other means, which we have tried, especially bringing in accountability by community participation in schools. But tell me, is this the only way to ensure security of children? Isn't this a kind of intrusive way? I mean, you rightly pointed out, train your teachers better, have better security systems, especially for girl children in schools. But is CCTV just because it's a quick fix kind of a solution? But what other solutions exist? I think that one also has to understand that a government is operating on a very large scale. We have 50,000 classrooms where children are studying it at any given point of time. In a thousand-odd schools? In a thousand-odd schools. So how do we ensure that there are 16 lakh students who are studying in our schools? And we do not want to put the safety of any single child at risk. So what method do we have to ensure this kind of decentralized security mechanism? We have said this repeatedly. If any people have suggestions that they can give us, we would be happy to adopt other means of security. Alright, let's take a step back and talk about the kind of education. You've talked about the tyranny of completing the syllabus. Now what can you do with this? You can't do anything about it. It's a problem, it's an old India problem. How can Delhi be an island in a problem that you're having? Let's say, yes, the way the whole education system is structured in this country and teachers are under a lot of pressure to complete the syllabus. So at the end of the day, the teachers said, yes, I've completed the syllabus irrespective of whether the students have learnt or not. And that is precisely what we have been trying to change in Delhi for the last few years. Because I think that what the child actually learns has to be more important than what the syllabus is. Two years ago we were running this reading campaign as a part of improving the foundation skills in our schools. And one very senior, committed, sincere officer said to us that if we teach children to read for a month and a half, then what about the syllabus? To which another officer pointed out to her that if she didn't know how to read, how would she do the syllabus? And I think that the entire system has been operating without actually thinking about the child who's at the centre of it. And even if you look at the syllabus, the syllabus that we currently have in schools is not designed for first generation learners. Our syllabus, our teaching methodologies, teaching practices have not changed in the past three decades, even though the social demographic of children coming into government schools has completely changed. More than half the children who are coming into government schools today are actually first generation learners. Aditi, another issue on which you had a huge problem with the left-wing governor was on the issue of regularising the appointments of about 15,000 odd contract teachers. Now you believe that Delhi is different from other places that almost all these contract teachers have degrees. They're well-trained, they're well-educated, and Delhi government schools, unlike, you know, state schools, state government schools in other parts of the country, they all appear for the exams set by the Centre Board of Secondary Education, other than, of course, the Kendra Vidyalaya and the Navodaya Vidyalaya. Now the question is, again, the left-wing governor rejected this proposal several times. Several times. What are the reasons he gave? See, I think the left-wing governor rejected this proposal not because of any specific reason that he had, but I think it was because it was an election promise of the Ahmadi Party because there is absolutely no reason why a teacher who is equally qualified as a teacher who is going to, who has not been teaching in our schools, there is no reason why you would not choose a teacher who actually is more experienced. These are teachers who have been teaching in our schools, many of them for four, five, six, seven years. They are used to teaching, they have the experience of teaching in the specific situation and circumstances of Delhi government schools. They are used to teaching first-generation learners. And now we are going to get in a corridor of 15,000 new teachers who will take several years to actually get accustomed to this situation. These teachers are qualified, they are experienced. Why has their regularization not been approved? Because the LG tries to stall everything that the Ahmadi Party government does. So just as I talked about in the letter of the advisor, it almost says something like, I am refusing because I can. Interestingly, not in this matter, but in another file, the left-in-in governor had actually written these words that he rejected a policy of the Ahmadi Party government. And I quote here because I do not think this is a very good idea. He doesn't like your face. So it seems. Last question. This whole idea about introducing spoken English. There is an opinion that has been expressed that it is an elitist. That it is better to ensure that they speak their mother tongue. Yes, only a small section would go to the IITs and institutes of higher learning. But we should get about time we get rid of our old colonial hangover. I know we are speaking to each other in English. Precisely. How important is spoken English for the underprivileged sections? I think it's probably the most important thing for the underprivileged sections because the entire access to jobs, the access to the market, actually depends on spoken English. And interestingly, this was a demand that came from the students of our schools. Last year, the chief minister and the deputy chief minister were interacting with Delhi government school students who had cleared the IIT JEE exams. And in that interaction, one student got up and said that sir, our schools have very good education. But because we don't know how to speak English, when we go to the world, we lack confidence. And I think that if government school students get access to spoken English, there is nothing that is going to prevent them from being at par with private school students. Okay, last few questions. Education, you know, we see across the world this debate, role of the private sector, role of the government. What are your views? I think it is the responsibility of the government to provide high quality education to every child in the country, irrespective of their ability to pay. And I think the primary responsibility does lie with the government and there is no two questions about it. Unfortunately, governments have failed to play this role and therefore the private sector has been the one who has been the provider of any high quality education. The armed army party does not say that we will do away with the private sector. For us, our philosophy has been that we are going to improve the quality of government schools to a point where they are the schools of first choice. And if you are going to get high quality education without paying anything, why would anyone want to pay high fees for it? The failure of the state, can it be compensated by the private sector? I don't know what your parents who have been part of the public education system. There have been professors of history who would go along with you. I think that the failure of the state can be compensated by the private sector because only very few people can access the private sector. And therefore, anyone who does not have the ability to pay therefore does not have access to social mobility. So what you are saying is that if you are born into a poor family, you will always remain poor because you cannot get access to good quality education. And you will do well only if you are born into family that can afford high fees. And what should be the role of the state in controlling regulations on private schools including the fees that students should pay? See, as a government, we have never interfered in the functioning of private schools. What they teach, how they teach, what activities. Do you believe the government should control fees? You know, as in the case of public health care? I think that there has to be some... Private schools often claim that they are doing something for the underprivileged but actually don't. So I think that there needs to be, minimum regulation needs to be introduced both on private schools and private hospitals. Especially when land has been given by the government often at throwaway prices to these private schools. And land has been given to these private schools on certain terms and conditions where they are supposed to admit children from underprivileged sections where they are supposed to get their accounts audited by the Delhi government every year. So the only thing that the Delhi government has been doing is what is its legal regulatory function that we will check your accounts. What that has meant is that now for the past three years private schools have not been able to hike their fees. Because many of them have crores and crores stashed in their bank accounts and yet are increasing fees year after year. Adishi, you are no longer the advisor to the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi on education for the last two months you've been without a job. You're not even getting the... You're one rupee salary. One rupee salary too is not getting. What are you doing on the education front now that you're no longer holding the official position that you were? So I was joking to someone a few days back that two months ago I used to get one rupee a month for giving advice to the education minister. Now I give my advice free of cost. But yes, I think that while one can say that in a light mode I think that of course the role that one could play in that capacity as an advisor to the education minister can no longer be played and I think that that is where the politics of the BJP seems to be so petty because it's not about my designation. The fact of the matter is that we had been trying to reform schools. We had been trying to improve the lives of 16 lakh students who study in Delhi government schools. And the central government's decision to remove me as an advisor seems to indicate that the central government doesn't want the children of the poorest children in Delhi to have good education. Something that the Bharati Chanta Party and the Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi would certainly disagree with and instead say how your party believes in sensational dramas rather than work on the ground. Something that you will surely disagree with. I think that the past three and a half years our track record and governance, especially in Delhi government schools has shown that there has actually been absolutely no sensationalism. And the people of this state and the people of this city and the people of this country will judge you. Absolutely. Now for your words, but for your actions. Thank you very much, Atishi, for coming here and giving us your time and giving us this interview. We just heard Atishi Marlena in the first part of this interview. We discussed politics. She was then talking in her avatar as a spokesperson of the Aam Admi Party and in this section we've talked about the education system and the role she played as a former advisor to the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi on education. Thank you for being with us.