Tamil S, 26, is a young housewife in Tamil Nadu’s Madurai district, living with her family in one of a cluster of six villages. In the normal course of things, with no pressure to augment the family income, she doesn’t have much to do besides some kitchen and household duties throughout the day. Most of her spare time is her own, and life is comfortable if unimaginative.
But since November 2021, soon after the state launched its war-like volunteering campaign to pull in people to teach young children, Tamilarasi has something to look forward to. She teaches 20 upper-primary students, all from nearby and mostly known to her, for one-and-a-half hours a day, six days a week. Keeping her cohort engaged while enhancing their learning keeps her mind ticking This is after she was selected as one of the 1.23 lakh volunteers who are now holding such classes in 63,000 locations in the state for 20 lakh students.
The search is on for another 52,000-odd volunteers to take the total number up to 1.75 lakh, and is expected to be completed by end-February.
A PRIORITY TASK
What has taken even the authorities and government officials by surprise is the enthusiasm and the consequent speed of the roll-out of the campaign. On 1 December, ITK was introduced as a pilot project in 13 districts, and within one month, it was rolled out to almost all 38 districts of the state. As positions for the remaining volunteers are filled, the full roll-out is expected to be completed soon. The classes are held in locations where students can just walk from home, and are held in small groups. The idea is to do remedial school work and bring the students back or as close to grade-level as possible. The volunteer has a fair amount of agency over what her cohort ingests.
One of the reasons the quick roll-out was possible was the elevation of the mission by the Chief Minister to a priority. In June, soon after the new government had taken charge, the state had constituted an economic advisory council that included Esther Duflo, Raghuram Rajan, Arvind Subramanian, Jean Dreze and S Narayanan. Overall, the state was fully cognisant that it needed to step in to remedy the loss suffered in the first wave, and even after that. But it was not sure – like many other states – how to go about it.
WHY THE CAMPAIGN WAS DESIGNED
It wasn’t as if everything fell in place right from the word go. Just like all other states, Tamil Nadu also found itself at a loss when the COVID-19 pandemic led to the closure of its 38,000 public and 20,000 private schools. The Commissioner for School Education, Thiru K Nanthakumar, says that after the first wave and lockdown, the state knew that most of their children were falling severely behind and that it was able to reach barely a fraction of students with online, digital and mobile interventions. Although states across India tried and in some cases reached students through online and other interventions, there was no escaping the fact that many students had suffered a severe learning loss due to the disruption
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