In response to Gurucharan Das’ oft-repeated, sweeping characterization of public schools in the country as ‘a mess’, Abi points to the Kendriya Vidyalayas as one example of government-run schools that do better than private schools:

One of the things that infuriate me about Gurcharan Das and his ilk is the fact that they dismiss oh-so-casually all our public schools without looking into the differences among them, and the underlying causes for these differences. In their zeal for privatized education (and its public support through a voucher program), they use a very broad brush to tar the entire public school system.

Abi could also have pointed out some other classes of public schools (yes, there is a class system in the government funded public school system): like the Navodaya Schools, Gurukul Schools, Residential Schools run by various state governments for all categories of students and also for the Dalits, Adivasis etc., which have done consistently better than the average private school in many states. And there are the many good schools among the garden variety public schools, run by the government at various levels, which also perform well because the stakeholders’ interest (which is a vital factor, as Abi rightly argues, in the performance of any school) in them hasn’t declined.