Education in India has made monumental progress since Independence but continues to face daunting challenges a... — Shashi Tharoor

Education in India has made monumental progress since Independence but continues to face daunting challenges at multiple levels, particularly in terms of quality, infrastructure and dropout rates. We have islands of excellence floating in a sea of mediocrity.

Author: Shashi Tharoor

Insight: There's something oddly familiar about that image of islands of excellence floating in mediocrity—because most of us live on one of those islands without realizing it. You might have access to good schools, tutoring, or parents who push academics, while someone in the next town struggles with collapsing buildings and absent teachers. The real problem isn't that excellence doesn't exist in India; it's that it's randomly distributed, based almost entirely on geography and privilege. This matters now because access is becoming the invisible inequality. A brilliant kid in a village might never get the chance to become anything, while a mediocre student in an urban center gets shuttled through the system smoothly. We talk about fixing education as if it's one problem, but it's actually dozens of separate problems wearing the same name. Real progress would mean shrinking those islands—bringing some of that excellence inland instead of just celebrating it in pockets. The uncomfortable truth is that our education system works exactly as it's designed to work: it separates people early and efficiently. Until we genuinely prioritize infrastructure and quality where it's most lacking—not just where it's easiest to show results—those islands will keep floating, and everyone else will keep treading water.