The story of Bihar's educational reform is a lesson for all reforms done halfway.
Sakshi Kumari (16) sees her father maybe for six or seven days twice a year when he returns home from Delhi. "I miss him a lot," she says. He is a carpenter in a factory.
Like many other households in Bihar her mother holds the fort at home: Bringing up the children (Sakshi has an elder sister and a younger brother, who, she says disapprovingly, is "very naughty"); tilling a small piece of land that is on rent from a landlord to supplement the family income; and looking after the in laws.
Sakshi is not sure but she thinks the family's expenditure is "around Rs 50,000 a month -- on food, to service the loans we have taken in the past, and on education".
Sakshi stood first in Bihar's Class 10 exam this year.
She says offhand: "If I can remember right, I got 99 per cent in Sanskrit and social sciences, 95 in science, 98 in maths, and 99 in Hindi." She quickly corrects herself: "No, I got 98 in Hindi."
She is a product of the turnaround in Bihar's educational system that began in 2005 -- and the crisis it is facing now.
She lives and studies in Narhan, a small village 30 km from Samastipur, in the local private school.
"But for two years I also attended coaching classes. This meant an additional expense of Rs 500 to Rs 650" she says. "I felt I needed tuition, so I used Newton College and KGN Coaching Institute."
The owner of the KGN Institute says: "We coach 1,000 children and this will go to 1,300 next year. We subsidise the fees of children from low-income families. I am convinced, looking at Sakshi's results, that it is the correct thing to do."
Sakshi has no hobbies. She likes to go for walks and helps out her mother in the fields, especially during the sowing or harvesting season.
"We had a small TV. Mota wala tha (it was the bulky kind). But one or two years ago it stopped working and no one had the money to get it fixed. In any case, I have no interest in the kind of stuff they show. There's too much drama and over-acting," she says with disdain.
The story of Bihar's educational reform is a lesson for all reforms done halfway.
Avni Ranjan Singh, professor of economics at the L N Mithila University, in Darbhanga, says in 2000, when Bihar was bifurcated, it had only two resources left: Agriculture and human resources.
In January 2006, weeks after taking over as chief minister for a full five-year term, Nitish Kumar called a meeting of senior officials of the human resources development department (now education department) at his residence.
The agenda was to ascertain the state of primary and secondary education in the state.
By the time the meeting was over, the senior Janata Dal-United leader, otherwise known for his composure, was in shock.
The state's education system was in a mess. Over 500,000 posts of teachers were vacant.
More than 2.5 million children were out of school.
And there was a complete lack of infrastructure. Within days, the government was ready with a plan to fill the vacancies.
It was decided that teachers would be hired on contract and the panchayats and local bodies would be given the authority to recruit them.
Vacancies were advertised and within a few years, 150,000 teachers were recruited.
With this, Kumar at one stroke boosted school enrolment and provided jobs to the unemployed. The recruitment of teachers was done in two phases -- in 2006 and 2008.
However, problems surfaced almost immediately. Village mukhiyas and clerks were the only ones who benefited: Many with fake degrees bought these jobs.
Realising that this level of schooling would leave their children nowhere, parents began sending their children for coaching.
The parallel economy of education thus struck deep root. By 2023-2024, around 25,000 teachers were under investigation for submitting fake certificates, lacking training and a variety of other misdemeanours.
In 2024-2025, Prashant Kishor of the Jan Suraaj Party led angry students in demonstrations against leaks of the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) paper to highlight that a dysfunctional education system is a core reason why many are forced to leave the state.
"Girls like Sakshi represent the success of the reform Nitishji undertook in 2005," says Minister of Roads and Urban Development Nitin Nabin.
He cites targeted reforms like free cycles for girls by the state, direct benefit transfer to families for uniforms and a host of other benefits aimed at boosting enrolment in schools, and also ensuring that children stayed in school.
But he concedes that these needed to have been toned up and refined over the years.
A top BJP leader also said that the Jan Suraaj Party got its initial impetus (in July last year) largely as a result of imperfectly implemented educational reforms.
The movement's extensive padyatra (foot march) across Bihar in 2022-2023 highlighted that a dysfunctional education system is a core reason why many Biharis are forced to leave the state for better opportunities.
Many leaders of the Rashtriya Janata Dal and National Democratic Alliance say the Jan Suraaj Party has caught the imagination of young people because of its focus on education.
"Gross enrolment ratios have definitely improved over the years. This has resulted in an increase in the quantity of students who can say they went to school. This is evident from the number of children who take the intermediate exams," says the professor. "But as to quality, I am not ready to say."
Singh goes further. He believes targeted reforms like the cycle and uniform schemes for schoolgirls and other interest groups like women tend to become a strategic choice over much-needed structural reforms in education.
These interventions are "aimed at immediate political consolidation especially among marginalised and vulnerable groups".
He adds: "All these schemes are such that have immediate visibility, emotional resonance and electoral appeal especially in a state where people have literacy, not education".
In the meantime, Sakshi Kumari has, taking advantage of a state-government scheme for top rankers, relocated to Patna, where she has been enrolled in an English medium school with all expenses including board and lodging being paid by the government.
She is as yet unsure what she wants to do in life. But her family is her top priority.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff