R. Anandakumar, the Collector of Erode, who put his child in a government school

This month when schools across Tamil Nadu reopened after summer vacation, a school in Erode created a bit of stir. Enrolled in the school, it turned out, was a six-year-old girl called Gopika, whose father happens to be the district collector, R. Anandakumar. The Tamil-medium Panchayat Union primary school has no other child of a government official and, reportedly, even teachers prefer to send their children elsewhere — as it is their legitimate right to do, to enrol their children where they think their life chances are better served. Anandakumar’s decision to send his daughter to the panchayat school is, instead, a reminder of the need for the privileged and well-connected to be invested in state schools and to narrow the gap, both perceived and very real, with private schools.

A seemingly stray development after Gopika’s enrolment is revealing. When news spread that the collector’s child was a student there, officials of the panchayat visited the school to recce the facilities. Education is central to the promise of equality of opportunity, a crucial part of the essential contract of our Constitution. This contract has been dishonoured in many ways. In ways that curriculums have been framed, for instance, so that state schools have been denied a beneficially multilingual mix, in the name of protecting local languages. Yet when in such a policy framework when children of those who make and implement the policy are sent to private schools, mostly English-medium, it raises questions about sensitivity to aspirations. And as the Erode case shows, how facilities are checked when a child of a somebody enlists in state-run schools, the message is also reinforced that when the elites opt out of common schools, the responsibility to maintain them too is often abdicated.