In memoriam

Anita Kaul (1954-2016)

WE started working together in 1989, when both of us joined MHRD. Anita was a director in charge of the Total Literacy Mission and I the director of Mahila Samakhya. Those were indeed heady times – we had a wonderful team of people in MHRD. Led by Anil Bordia, the team had people with varied backgrounds and interests – administrators from the central services, activists, educators and university teachers. I saw Anita emerge from being a shy and almost self-effacing administrator to becoming a passionate advocate of universal adult literacy and later, a firm believer in the right of every child to learn without fear. What was remarkable about this transformation was that Anita drew her inspiration from ordinary literacy volunteers, teachers and social activists.

I still remember our trip to Bijapur – Anita was expected to speak at a literacy meeting. She was nervous, not being a public speaker and looked a bit uncomfortable in the limelight. But, as she walked over to the mike, what came through was her sincerity and humility, leaving all of us moved. She genuinely believed that ordinary people could take their destinies in their own hands and push for change. The literacy movement was just one path, and there were many. When the women of Nellore and Anantapur went on to protest against liquor venders in their villages, Anita’s eyes light up. She was excited about the women of Pudukottai who had taken to cycling as a symbol of empowerment and mobility. She took great interest in the wonderful literacy primer, Khilti Kaliyan developed by the late Safdar Hashmi and the video lessons based on the stories.

A few years later, she asked me to come to Bangalore and travel with her to H D Kote. I accompanied her to many schools where DPEP Karnataka had launched the Nali Kali programme. In every school, she sat with the children and asked them to sing and dance – she never asked them questions! Instead, she asked them to show her the learning ladder and where they thought they had reached. There was so much promise in the air. She, along with the Rishi Valley team, had initiated the programme in 1995. Instead of drawing a blueprint, what Anita did was quintessentially Anita. She asked teachers to volunteer to visit Rishi Valley to see and understand the programme. It was this group of 15 teachers who designed the programme.

What Anita and the teachers saw in Rishi Valley was magical. Operating in small groups, children in these rural schools were working on their own, tracking their progress from one set of alphabets/numbers to another, moving from simple to complex language and mathematics, enjoying their EVS and taking interest in what was happening around them. The teachers were also moving from one group to another, assisting, supporting, and encouraging children to get on the path of learning. Teachers were innovating as they moved along, guided by broad learning levels that were stipulated. The content of EVS was remarkably open-ended; they drew upon local resources, stories, songs and knowledge to make it relevant. Children in class two could read simple words, solve simple arithmetic problems and sing and dance with abandon. The sheer energy and creativity of children was an eye opener.

At that time Anita told me, ‘This approach demands a lot from teachers – she has to transform herself from an authoritarian figure to a fun loving and creative facilitator...’ I interviewed her and thankfully recorded it in my notebook. This was the essence – she believed that teachers, when inspired and supported can truly change the system. She worked closely with Deepa Dhanraj to develop films for and by teachers; at every point in her career she forged close working relationships with creative people and activists. Many of them felt that Anita was not the IAS type!

In the early 2000s, I was documenting initiatives to bring out of school children back into school. When I asked her for her recommendations, she asked me to go to The Concerned for Working Children in Karnataka and look at their work with working children. She also asked to me take a closer look at Nali Kali – which at that time was four years old. She also urged me to go and see the work of MV Foundation in Andhra Pradesh and the Muktangan initiative under Lok Jumbish. Those of us who are familiar with the child labour debate would have been surprised – because the approach of the CWC and MVF are poles apart. Anita explained to me that it was important to look at different civil society efforts to address the child labour issue. She was always ready to listen and see what different people were doing.

Many years later Anita joined Krishna Kumar as Secretary, NCERT and together they initiated another churning in the education community. Drafting the National Curriculum Framework (NCF 2005) involved bringing together a wide range of people – educators, educationalists, teachers, social activists and administrators. She worked tirelessly to facilitate such a diverse group to sit together and work. She spent many hours editing and cleaning up the documents.

Later, when she returned to MHRD as Joint Secretary in 2008, Anita jumped headlong into seeing the Right to Education Act (RTE) through. This was at a time when the education community was polarized on several issues – the role of the private sector in school education, nationwide sample based testing to ascertain learning levels, the debate on contract versus tenured teachers and teacher bashing. Anita remained apprehensive about testing children and shifting the blame on teachers. She believed in trusting and supporting teachers. She was critical of people who argued in favour of using learning outcomes as the primary vehicle to push the system. The key, according to her, was child-centred pedagogy and a curriculum that would encourage continuous assessment by the teachers and children themselves.

Equally, she was a firm believer in strengthening the government schooling system and a staunch critic of privatization of school education. While she recognized the fact that more and more families were opting out of government schools, she was convinced that the Right to Education would enable us to strengthen government schools. She wanted the government to set up structures to monitor the implementation of the RTE Act; unfortunately that initiative did not take off. It remained one of her regrets.

I fondly recall one of Anita’s mantra: When in doubt, when apprehensive about initiating change, go to the schools and spend time with teachers and children… then all doubts will melt away. She drew her inspiration from the ground. She always said there is a lot more to education than bricks, mortar, infrastructure and testing – a motivated teacher and an energized classroom can do wonders. She believed that if we give teachers autonomy to use their creativity, energy and knowledge, support them and empower them, learning will happen.

Bureaucrats are rarely credited with major institutional innovations; that credit belongs to the minister or the party in power. Hardly surprising that few outside the concerned parties appreciated Anita’s immense contribution to helping make the dream of RTE into reality. But more than her role in the educational sphere as an administrator/facilitator, what marked Anita Kaul out was her unshakeable belief in constitutional values and an inclusive society. For her, there was no ambiguity about what was right and what was wrong. She was, as minister Kapil Sibal pointed out in a memorial meeting, a committed but not aligned civil servant.

She left us too soon, when she still had so much more to do and was excited about doing it.

Vimala Ramachandran