Beyond Jantar Mantar: India's Unequal Education System Part 2

Now, there's an old explanation for why Muslims sit so low on these numbers. You've heard it: they don't value education, they prefer madrasa, it's a cultural choice. So we went and looked house by house in Jamia Nagar, a Muslim-majority part of Delhi, not too far from Jantar Mantar. We surveyed 2,700 households, nearly 4,000 children. 94% of those children are enrolled in school. More than 97% say they want to go to college. Madrasa-only schooling is a small minority. The aspiration is not missing — it is overwhelming. So where does it break? Not at wanting, at the system around the child. In Shaheen Bagh, one of the most densely packed neighbourhoods in the city, there is not a single government school. So families pay: 57% of the children are pushed into private schools their parents can barely afford. And then into coaching on top, because the school itself doesn't finish the job. And here is the quiet tragedy: in class three, fewer than four in a hundred children can read at their own grade level in English. Sentence reading is almost non-existent. The child is enrolled. The child is aspiring. The child is even paying. And this child is not learning. That is not a culture that rejects education. That is a system failing a community that is straining every muscle to get in. Step back and the scale becomes clear.