Final Day in Ludhiana

Yesterday was my final day in Ludhiana, and it coincided with the monthly meeting of all Pratham District Coordinators (PDCs) in Punjab meeting with the two State Head Directors, Bharatdeep Singh Malhi and Ronald Abraham, with whom I’d been working and staying with in Ludhiana. The Pratham Punjab program is just about 2 years old and has recently ratcheted up their work dramatically preparing for Parrho Punjab (the local version of Read India) which will work very closely with the State Ministry of Education in order to improve education dramatically across the state.

The breadth of this program is unbelievable, for example: Pratham Punjab recently hired almost 150 more Block Coordinators in the span of a few weeks when the government agreed to fully participate in the program.

It is worth noting that during my time in Ludhiana I witnessed Ronald and Bharat's extraordinary commitment and exceptional work. Ronald has a BA in Economics from St. Stephens College at Delhi University (which people—Stephanians at least—claim is the Harvard of India) and worked for a policy think-tank in Delhi before joining the Pratham national Research/Analysis group and was vital to the success of the 2006 & 2007 ASER reports, in addition to numerous other projects.

Like Ron, Bharatdeep’s 2-year anniversary with Pratham is at the end of this July. Bharat was born and raised in Ludhiana, and completed a BA in Economics/Geography/English and an MA in Geography. After this he received a scholarship from the Norwegian government to get his MPhil in Developmental Studies from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Three days after he finished in Norway he returned to Ludhiana to begin work as the first State Head of Pratham Punjab.

See both of these passionate men talk more about Pratham’s work in Punjab below:

At the end of a long day of meetings with Pratham District Coordinators, Ron and Bharat presented a certificate to Baljinder Singh of Gurdaspur District for Outstanding work as a PDC. The certificate and a 500 Rs. prize is given out monthly to a deserving PDC to encourage quality work for the PDCs (who all work full time for Pratham).

After this meeting ended Baljinder and I left for Gurdaspur where we would visit more summer camps.

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