The middle of beginning

“If we intuitively know what is wrong, why the hell can’t we express it as a problem to solve?,” I questioned myself.

Discussion with a newly minted civil officer

Bokaro, 2016: I was meeting a friend of mine, who had just joined active civil service at Deogarh, Jharkhand, post his year long IAS training. We talked of many things, one anecdote stuck.

He told me about a school visit he did. The school catered from pre-primary to Standard 5 students. This involves teaching how to sit through school for those who are new to the school constructs to being able to do basic arithmetic and write your name, and basic letters.

The school had 1 teacher.

1 teacher who catered to all these students. His modus operandi was simple: he used to come to the class and write numerals 1 to 100 on the blackboard. He then asked the class to replicate this.

He did this every school day. With different students, different capabilities, different learning needs.

My friend, being a scientific guy, wanted evidence. He quizzed a few students. He discovered they knew more than just these numerals.

He was puzzled. Asking around, he figured that these students learned these from the tuition masters (supplementary private educators), who charged somewhere around Rs. 50 (<$1) for their services every month.

Discussion with a strange co-passenger

Mumbai, 2016: The Mumbai-Delhi segment is a nightmare on evenings. Too many flights, most of them delayed, created a vicious circle of further delays. On one particular day, as I boarded the flight after much delay, I was stuck with a chatty passenger (I hate small talk in general).

But post the complaints on food, we started talking about education.

He was a social entrepreneur. He talked about how they were delivering a teaching process, which involved using assessment of children to understand why they were making mistakes, what micro concepts that were not getting, and then using that to formulate a teaching plan for the children.

“It is simple, makes intuitive sense”, I said to myself.

Defining the problem

Mumbai, Guragon, Dhanbad, 2017: As the NEEV team, we were brainstorming on how to showcase what is that we are solving for. The strange co-passenger was on the call. He wanted to do what he was doing on scale. We had now become friends and were now collaborating as co-founders of NEEV (NEEV in Hindi means Foundation, but we didn’t had a name back then.)

We had several attempts to define the problem.“If we intuitively know what is wrong, why the hell can’t we express it as a problem to solve?,” I questioned myself.

Today

Gurgaon, 2018: We are still in the process of articulating the problem simply. All of my co-founders have a different version, all of them good articulations. None of them lead to the solution — my criteria of a good problem statement.

My version is this.

We need education for all, regardless of their context — their economic conditions, their gender, their social grooming, their capabilities, their interests.

We have failed miserably to do so.