Ei Dialogues

In this episode, we have Kruti Bharucha, the CEO of Peepul, in conversation with Pranav Kothari. Prior to Peepul, Kruti was Country Head for Ark India and led Ark India's work to pioneer PPP schools in Delhi as well as work with governments on improving governance and accountability systems on education. Kruti moved to the development space after working in the corporate sector for 19 years. The video highlights her journey, what made her move back to India to start the Peepul schools, how did she reach from an enrolment of 4 students in her first year to 800 students in a span of three years, what are her experiences in doing teacher professional development, and what does scale mean to her. This episode was originally published on February 15, 2019.

In this episode, we listen to Parth Shah, President, Centre for Civil Society in conversation with Pranav Kothari, VP, Large Scale Education Programmes, at Educational Initiatives. Parth breaks down the basics of policymaking, some benevolent aspects of the RTE policy, and his views on the recent amendment on removing the no-detention clause. The conversation further steers towards democracy in policy decisions and the top three ways to implement the RTE act differently. This episode was originally launched on December 10, 2018.

In this episode of EI Dialogues, Pranav Kothari converses with Amitav Virmani, the Founder CEO of The Education Alliance. Amitav talks to us about what is really meant by good quality education, how his organisation is creating effective partnerships by connecting governments with non-profits to leverage the strengths of both, and how they are creating a layer of accountability within the system for improving student enrolment, student and teacher attendance, and more importantly, learning outcomes. Amitav moved from corporate America to come work in the Indian social developmental sector, and in this episode, he busts some myths regarding the same. This episode was originally published on April 26, 2019.

In this episode of EI Dialogues, we converse with Ramya Venkatraman, co-founder of Center for Teacher Accreditation (CENTA). During the conversation, Ramya shares about her passion for education, her journey from McKinsey & Co to CENTA, and CENTA's work and why we misunderstand the teaching profession. 

Vinod is the co-founder at TheTeacherApp,  a not-for-profit education technology startup that creates open-source, digital learning experiences for the professional development of teachers in low-resource schools of India. Vinod has been driving the conversation on collaboration in the development space with over 20 partners ranging from government, content creators, media production, and funders. He drives home an important point regarding the availability of pedagogically sound content for teachers in vernacular languages and talks about how technology can be leveraged to reach the rising population of teachers with high-quality content.

This episode was originally published on January 11, 2019. 

During the conversation, Ashok talks in-depth on building organisations that are scalable and sustainable. He also sheds light on his transition to the development space after spending 24-years in the corporate sector and his experiences with Akshara thereafter.

Ashok Kamath has been Managing Trustee since 2003 and Chairman of Akshara Foundation since July 1, 2008. In April 2019, he has conferred the prestigious 'Namma Bengalurean' award for exemplary work in education. His alma mater, IIT-Bombay, presented him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2013 for his various initiatives and contributions to the field of child education. 

Meeta Sengupta is a writer, speaker and advisor on education with a cross country perspective on policy, skills and pedagogies. She has written extensively on school systems and impact, pedagogies and processes, assessments and outcomes, teachers and leaders, and on education gaps and funding. During the conversation, Meeta elucidates on the role of educational research, India's participation and preparation for PISA, and developing the right kind of assessments. She also sheds light on the education policy in the country, the process of policymaking, and the role of public-private partnerships in education.

In this conversation, Dr. Pritchett provides a background about the challenges within education in the Indian context while explaining the importance of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) and sharing instances from education research. He also elaborates on the concept of RCTs, including when and how they can be adapted to the field of development economics, and to what extent policymakers should rely on impact evaluations when judging multiple interventions.

Neelima Khetan is former Group CSR head of Vedanta Ltd. Prior to joining HZL, she was the Director-CSR and Sustainability for Coca Cola in India and South-West Asia. During the conversation, she shares her 25-year long journey at Seva Mandir, and the consequent transition to the CSR department in the for-profit sector. Furthermore, she sheds some light on how to build synergies between the for-profit and non-profit sectors, what funders look at, and why impact evaluation is essential. 

This video was originally shot in September 2019. 

Sourav Banerjee is the Country Director of Room to Read. In this episode, he gives us a birds-eye view on the evolution of the Indian education system and the education governance landscape. The discussion then moves to the issue of multi-language literacy in India, where a child is often caught up in transitioning from home language, to market language, to state language, to English. The conversation further gains insights on various scale-up pathways for an NGO, elaborating on creating partnerships with the government and accountability in the system.

This episode was originally launched in November 2018.