Mumbai: Madhav Chavan, the founder of educational non-profit Pratham, has a singular mission: he wants every Indian to learn to read.
While leading a college teachers’ strike in 1988, the chemistry graduate met a bureaucrat who asked him to give more than lip service to a cause. Nearly a decade later, Chavan has become a beacon of hope in a country where half the children cannot read or write properly. Within the last decade, Pratham has reached one million children and aims to reach 60 million more in the next three years.
Under the Pratham model, a motley group of different trusts in 21 states draw literate local volunteers and paid workers in slums and villages to teach illiterate children within their own communities. Pratham attacks the fundamental problem of access to educational opportunity among India’s poor by providing basic salaries and reading materials to teachers. The classrooms could be anywhere: under shady trees, amid rubble heaps of pavement, homes of migrant workers in cities, and sometimes, just in front of a blackboard propped in the narrow alleys of Mumbai’s slums.
The three Rs: Madhav Chavan aims to provide basic education to 60 million children in the next three years.
Although reticent and self-deprecating, 53-year-old Chavan is animated about his team, describing their passion and commitment in making a difference. Empowering both teachers and students is the bedrock of his leadership style. “It is a principle of Lao-Tzu. You have to disempower yourself to empower others.”
Well-read himself, he cites the Chinese philosopher: “A leader is best when people barely know he exists. Not so good when people obey and acclaim him. Worse when they despise him. But of a good leader who talks little, when the work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: ‘We did it ouselves.’”
Nearly 200,000 people volunteer and work with Pratham in 262,000 villages; they are paid as per their skill level and expertise. “There are professionals who take a sabbatical to come and work with us, other professional investment bankers and consultants, who leave their jobs to work with us, and retired military professionals. They oversee administration, analyse data, define strategy and train others. Others are college students, young graduates and homemakers, who want to accept a challenge, basically anyone who has a skill set and would like to help empower others with it.”
Chavan describes his childhood in an idyllic socialist home, with little money, lots of books, ideas and poetry. His father, Yashwant Chavan, was the founder of the Lenin-inspired Lal Nishan Party, a party rooted in trade union activism. During Chavan’s teens, he fought for causes and issues.