Dear Prime Minister Narendra Modiji, how about expanding the Kendriya Vidyalayas in 100X hiring the best teachers through rating by students on an app; making a superpower PSU for education with Edtech companies buying equity and chipping in?
Dear Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji,
India today stands at an inflection point. We speak confidently about becoming a developed nation, about manufacturing leadership, digital public infrastructure, and global influence. Yet the foundation of all these ambitions remains fragile: school education. No country has ever become a true economic or civilisational power without first building a strong, equitable, and scalable public education system.
India already has a hidden asset in this space—the Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs). Quietly, consistently, and often without much public debate, KVs have delivered reasonably good outcomes across regions, languages, and social strata. The question is no longer whether they work. The question is whether they can be expanded 100-fold, modernised radically, and turned into a national education engine that defines the next 50 years of India’s growth.
This article argues that they can—and should—through a bold but practical idea: a massive expansion of Kendriya Vidyalayas, hiring the best teachers using student-driven digital ratings, and creating a “super PSU” for education with EdTech companies as equity partners.
Why Kendriya Vidyalayas matter more than we admit
Kendriya Vidyalayas were never designed to be glamorous. Their original mandate was pragmatic: provide uniform, quality education to children of transferable central government employees. Over time, they became something more—a rare example of a reasonably functional public school system in India.
KVs offer predictable teacher attendance, standardised curricula, relatively low corruption, and exposure to science, mathematics, and languages that many state schools struggle to provide. Their alumni quietly populate India’s IITs, civil services, research labs, armed forces, and global corporations.
In a country where elite private schools serve the top 5 percent and government schools struggle to deliver basics to the bottom 50 percent, KVs occupy a crucial middle ground. They demonstrate that public education in India can work—if governance, incentives, and accountability are aligned.
The scale problem: Islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity
India has roughly 1,250 Kendriya Vidyalayas for a school-age population of over 250 million. Even with generous assumptions, KVs serve a tiny fraction of Indian children. This is not a design flaw; it is a scale failure.
Your government has spoken often about “last-mile delivery” and “minimum government, maximum governance.” Education is where this philosophy must be tested hardest. If KVs work at one scale, there is no moral or economic justification for not expanding them massively—especially when the alternative is continued dependence on uneven state systems or profit-driven private schooling.
A 100X expansion does not mean copying the existing KV model blindly. It means re-imagining it for the digital, demographic, and economic realities of 21st-century India.
Teachers are the system: Everything else is secondary
If there is one hard truth in education, it is this: infrastructure, curriculum, and technology matter far less than teachers. India’s biggest education failure is not syllabus design—it is the inability to consistently attract, motivate, and retain excellent teachers.
Today, teaching talent is trapped between two extremes. On one side are underpaid, under-trained government school teachers with weak accountability. On the other are private school teachers, often better motivated but poorly paid, overworked, and lacking long-term career pathways.
A massively expanded Kendriya Vidyalaya system can solve this—but only if it breaks away from traditional hiring and evaluation models.
Student-driven teacher ratings: Radical, necessary, inevitable
The idea of students rating teachers may sound controversial, even dangerous, to traditionalists. But the alternative—opaque seniority-based promotions and near-permanent tenure—is far worse.
In every other knowledge industry, feedback loops drive quality. In education, we pretend that teachers should be exempt from scrutiny, even though their impact shapes entire lives. This must change.
A carefully designed, age-appropriate, anonymised student feedback system—delivered through a secure government app—can become a powerful signal, not a blunt weapon. Combined with peer review, classroom observations, and learning outcomes, student ratings can help identify exceptional teachers, average performers, and those who need support or exit.
This is not about humiliation or popularity contests. It is about making excellence visible.
Hiring the best, paying them like nation builders
India pays its best bureaucrats, judges, and scientists reasonably well because it recognises their national importance. Teachers deserve the same respect.
A reimagined KV system should recruit aggressively from top universities, teacher training institutes, and even industry professionals willing to transition into education. Salaries must be competitive, career progression transparent, and excellence rewarded visibly.
Imagine a system where India’s best physics teacher in a small town is nationally recognised, well-paid, digitally followed, and professionally respected. That alone would change how society views teaching as a career.
The super PSU for education: Government backbone, market energy
Here is where the idea becomes truly transformative. India does not need to choose between state control and private innovation. It can combine both.
A national education PSU—let us call it EduIndia—could act as the backbone of this expanded KV system. The government retains majority ownership and policy control, ensuring equity, access, and national priorities. But EdTech companies are invited to buy minority equity stakes and contribute technology, platforms, analytics, and content.
This is not privatisation. It is strategic partnership.
EdTech firms already build learning apps, assessment tools, teacher dashboards, and adaptive curricula. Instead of operating in fragmented, profit-driven silos, they can be integrated into a national public mission—while still benefiting commercially from scale and data-driven innovation.
Why EdTech will come in, if structured right
India’s EdTech sector has suffered from hype cycles, questionable practices, and investor fatigue. But the core capabilities remain strong. What it lacks is stable, long-term demand and institutional trust.
A national KV expansion project offers both.
By allowing EdTech firms to hold equity—rather than merely sell services—the government aligns incentives. Companies invest not just technology, but reputation and long-term commitment. The PSU benefits from private-sector speed, while the private sector gains scale, legitimacy, and impact.
This is the same logic that made India’s telecom revolution possible through public-private balance.
Digital ratings, data, and the new accountability loop
Technology should not replace teachers; it should make teaching measurable without dehumanising it.
A unified digital platform can track student progress, teacher performance, attendance, feedback, and outcomes across the country. Patterns emerge quickly: which teaching methods work, which regions need support, which teachers deserve mentoring roles.
This data is gold—not for surveillance, but for intelligent policy.
For the first time, education decisions would be driven by evidence rather than ideology, anecdote, or bureaucratic inertia.
Addressing the obvious fears
Critics will raise valid concerns. Will student ratings be misused? Will teachers teach to please rather than to educate? Will EdTech companies influence curriculum?
These risks are real—but manageable.
Ratings must be one input, not the only one. Curriculum control must remain with independent academic bodies. Data governance must be transparent and privacy-first. None of these challenges are unique to education; India has already solved harder problems in digital identity, payments, and governance.
The greater risk lies in doing nothing.
Federalism and inclusion: KVs as a national bridge
Education in India is politically sensitive because it sits at the intersection of language, culture, and federalism. An expanded KV system must respect this.
The solution is not uniformity, but structured flexibility. National standards for science, maths, and reasoning can coexist with regional languages, histories, and cultures. KVs already operate across linguistic diversity; scaling this experience is feasible.
In fact, KVs could become a rare institution that bridges regional divides, offering shared educational quality while respecting local identity.
The economic argument: Education as the highest ROI PSU
India debates PSUs endlessly—privatisation, disinvestment, efficiency. But no PSU will ever deliver returns as high as education.
Every rupee spent on quality schooling multiplies across productivity, innovation, health, and social cohesion. A well-educated workforce reduces welfare burdens, improves governance, and fuels entrepreneurship.
A super PSU for education is not expenditure. It is nation-building capital investment.
Political courage and legacy
Prime Minister Modi ji, your political capital is built on attempting what others hesitated to touch—GST, digital identity, insolvency reform, sanitation, and infrastructure. Education reform at this scale demands similar courage.
There will be resistance from unions, bureaucracies, and ideological camps. But history rarely remembers those who preserved comfort. It remembers those who changed trajectories.
If India is to truly become a developed nation by mid-century, it must begin with children entering classrooms today—not with slogans, but with systems.
From “Schooling” to “State Capacity”
This proposal is not about buildings, apps, or branding. It is about rebuilding state capacity in education—the ability of the Indian state to reliably deliver quality learning at scale.
A 100X expansion of Kendriya Vidyalayas, powered by the best teachers, accountable through intelligent digital feedback, and supported by a public-private education PSU, could be the single most important reform of independent India’s second century.
Dear Prime Minister, you have often said that India must think big.
This is one idea where thinking big is not optional—it is overdue. The children of India are waiting.
