July 17th

Saturday is my day off and I had many plans of getting myself sorted out for the week ahead with teaching materials, a good plan etc but then when I went downstairs at 10 there was little Manisha (see one of earlier blogs) sat in the kitchen waiting to be taken to the boarding school that I visited on the first weekend. When I was asked if I wanted to come along I said yes straight away. There is such a good atmosphere at the boarding school, and the children we dropped there a few weeks ago seem so happy there and I wanted to see them all again to see how they were getting on.

I am really glad I chose to go. I met the principal of the school who seemed a very nice man, quite young for a principal, and he was very friendly. Anou holds him in high regard so I am sure he is very good. It was really good to see all the children again, and they all crowded around to grab my hand and take me around their playground, all of them with big smiles on their faces - they were going for their refreshment break and all the Project Why children were desperate to get me a drink before they got themselves one! It was quite funny to see the reaction of the other children at the school that are not part of the Project and as a result had not seen me before - all of them were staring and talking to me in English and trying to hold my hand. One lad even touched my knees, which is a mark of respect for elders here, which I was a bit confused about until Anou told me what it meant!

It was not just the children however that were very interested in this white guy in their school grounds. The warden of the older boys' dorm saw the huddle of children and at first told them all to move on, but then he saw me and his facial expression changed immediately. He told the children they could stay, and then despite the fact that everyone was stood up, he decided to offer me a chair! Anou, Dharmendra and I then continued to talk while the warden just stood there, until he asked me for permission to leave! The white 20 year old was all of a sudden someone he needed to obey and ask for orders - quite funny at first, yet quite embarrassing when you think that this attitude must have come from the manner of British rule pre 1947...

On the way to the school it struck me that there are so many schools, and it is clear that it is a big business here - private schools have become very fashionable yet the reality is that the education at some of them really is not much better than the education at government schools, given the cost. My first thought was that if there were so many private schools, there must be a high demand for these schools, and therefore a lot of competition between private schools and also between public and private. With such competition you would surely expect a large improvement in the quality of the schooling. I am not saying that the education at all of the private schools is not good, but with so many young people in this country and a clear demand for education (especially for boys) why has there not been a significant improvement in education provision?

One reason I thought of to explain why government schools had not improved was that the children that go to the government schools are often the children of the poorest families - it does not matter how many private schools appear, the competition is only really between private schools rather than between public and private - the large number of people that cannot afford to go to private schools remain in the public sector and so there is no incentive for the government to perform any wide scale education reform. You also have to wonder about the kind of competition that goes on between private schools - the reality as I mentioned is that they are often not much better than government schools (similar class sizes etc) and you can question whether the motives of the management are centred on child performance or revenue received. In addition to this, performance of children in government schools is not exactly an opportunity to make money for officials so maybe this is the reason why there have not been improvements, after all corruption is so clearly ingrained in government here. Please offer any other explanations that you can think of, and I too shall think more on the issue!

Now, one minor rant over, and I shall (as you may have predicted) return to the issue of the Commonwealth Games as every day I hear something even more ridiculous about them. It just so happens that the officials have decided to cancel the catering contracts and instead take it upon themselves to select which caterers will earn contracts - now I may be rather one sided on this but does this just not seem like another opportunity for corrupt officials to take bribes? I am sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation...
Also, one of the sports that is played at the CWG is cricket of course, and India as we all know is well known for its cricket - however, the Indian Cricket Board have managed to organise a series with Australia at the time of the games so they shall not be competing! The officials have demanded that the Indian Cricket Board pay them a large sum because of the revenue that the CWG will miss out on because of the cricket team not competing. Where this money is going I am not so sure but I would not bet on it being spent on rehousing the slum families that have had their homes destroyed in the process of preparing for the games.

On a lighter note, I have now been labelled with the nickname "Lambu Dada" which I am told means Tall Big Brother (thanks Rohit for the translation!), and I am looking forward to exploring Delhi tomorrow.