Ensuring dialogue and institutional alignment in the education system

Education is important, interesting but a complex process. It is complex because it is social in nature. Geographical, cultural and other diversities in a society are a major source of complexity. A second source of complexity results from the wide field of content areas and pedagogies which keep changing. Yet another area that adds to this complex process is the variety of stakeholders, for example the diversity we come across with respect to students and teachers with the kind of changes happening there in multiple dimensions. The context of public education in a large and culturally diverse country like India takes the issue and scope of complexity to an entirely different level. We can get a glimpse of it by just looking at the number of children who are being provided Mid Day Meals (MDM) in schools. This number is more than entire populations of many countries. The diversity of food habits even in one Indian state is such that preparing MDM menu itself is quite a challenging task.Collective and coordinated efforts and a continuous ‘dialogue’ are much needed for all those working in the education domain. This dialogue and mutual alignment would break the professional isolation of education functionaries and thus help individuals and institutions to support each-other and play complementary roles. ARG experiment in Uttarakhand provides a healthy beginning though the journey is very long and we find ourselves only it its first leg. We see that ‘communication and alignment is not a destination but a direction and ARG is heading towards it