The government presented the free and compulsory education for children bill in the winter session, and we are celebrating as though we had beaten Australia in cricket. We should hail it as a great blow against the curse and shame of child labour. But we are not, and for good reason — we have lost faith in the state's ability to run schools.

We accepted capitalism and the liberal reforms in 1991 because we thought that as the state withdrew from running businesses, it would pay attention to education. Having abandoned the socialist ideal of the equality of result, we now hoped for greater equality of opportunity, as so many capitalist societies in the West and the Far East have achieved. But this did not happen. Government schools remain unreformed, the gap persists, and a sense of betrayal mocks us. In desperation, many Indians have begun to look for radical, heterodox solutions and one of the best on offer is by Sanjay Kumar, B J Koppar, and S Balasubramanium in the Economic and Political Weekly (23/8). It proposes that government should not run primary schools but lease them to teacher-entrepreneurs (with minimum HSC qualification) who would manage them up to class 4 according to a standard curriculum of ankh and akshar. The state would give parents vouchers worth Rs 100 per child per month to pay for school fees, which the schools would be able to cash against confirmed attendance. Like railway bookings, vouchers would be tracked on the Internet to minimise corruption. Eventually, competition between schools for the vouchers would force the schools to improve.The authors have suggested an innovative design for primary schools, consisting of two airy classrooms on each side of a common playing field. Each set of two classrooms would be leased to a teacher-entrepreneur and her assistant, who would compete for the children's vouchers. If a teacher persistently beats a child, then the parent would move her to another school on other side of the playing field. A bad teacher would lose income and respect every time a child moved.A greedy teacher who tried to pack in too many students into a class would be punished in the same way. Schools would become responsive to parents needs — allow flexible hours, for example, for older girls, who have to look after younger siblings and which today forces them to drop out. Schools would compete to ensure clean toilets, nutritious mid-day meals to win their customers vouchers. Thus, schools would become accountable to parents and children would be freed from the evil of absentee, or bored or bullying teachers.

School vouchers were first mooted in Prime Minister Vajpayee's Economic Advisory Council in 2000. They have been tried in many countries with varying degrees of success, as a World Bank report brings out. In India, primary schools are in such distress that we owe it to ourselves to test this idea in at least one district, perhaps in Rajasthan, which is home to the best innovations in education. Through the test we will gain conviction before expanding vouchers nationwide.

We should also be prepared for opposition from vested interests — teachers, bureaucrats, and politicians don't want to become accountable. But if the test succeeds, it might revolutionise primary education just as the STD booth revolutionised telecommunication. Mind you, the STD meter also started out as a test in one district.