There are two forces invading the Bihari countryside: Pratham, and Amul Macho Male Innerwear (crafted for fantasies, of course).

Most of my weekend was spent on a colossal commute across Bihar: from Patna to Bettiah. I clattered down an old and deeply pot-holed lane/main road for seven hours in each direction on a visit to the Read India evaluation site. Luckily, with my eclectic group of companions and Amul adverts, the time flew by. (Enter Rukmini Ma’am, leading the charge with Michael Walton, an extremely well traveled Englishman and professor at Harvard; Mark, the Garba aficionado, Adrien, the nearly Bhojpuri film star, and me, trying not to think about sudden death by oncoming traffic).

Business as usual: elephant and camel in near miss with large truck

Bihar is lush and fertile: we were flanked by lychee orchards, banana groves, watermelon, rice and wheat fields all the way to Bettiah. Everything was so green I needed sunglasses to look out the window. At the same time, the poverty is severe and institutionalized, and it was fascinating for me to spend fourteen hours in conversation with people who are helping Bihar move in strides towards development. While there had been no teacher recruitment in Bihar for fifteen years, in 2005 the state government recruited 85,000 new teachers and Pratham designed and implemented the teacher training program. A further 115,000 teachers have been recruited since.

Once in Bettiah, it was truly exciting to see this in action: the very purpose of our trip was to oversee a workshop that was training project monitors to measure the impact of Read India properly. Leading the training were three very impressive young women: Afsha, Heena and Paribhasha. They were feisty and bright, and I couldn’t help but smile at the way the three young women were confidently commanding the attention and respect of fifty men. This was another opportunity for me to marvel at the incredible people that Pratham attracts and grooms. I also found the training interesting for two reasons: firstly, I enjoyed learning about the project testing methods. I was curious to know how the impact of Read India could be measured and evaluated. Secondly, this was my first direct exposure to the research and development side of Pratham. Pratham has a rigorous system of evaluating its impact, both at the point of designing program content and (like today) in order to evaluate the success of a program . This seemed such efficient cycle: Pratham’s literacy programs teach children faster than ever because materials are built exclusively around material that children respond well to, as determined by continuous investigation.

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www.readindia.org
www.pratham.org.uk
www.prathamusa.org
www.pratham.org