 "school, children, girls, study, exam")
“Path mera alokit kardo, naval prath ki naval rashmiyon se, mere ur ka tam har do,” Saidun Ahmed, 8, recited a Hindi poem by Dwarika Prasad Maheshwari, a twentieth-century poet, at top speed. “Light up my path, with the morning sunlight light of the new sun, overcome the darkness within my heart.”
But when asked to read some lines on the opposite page, the fourth grader, dressed in a button-up full-sleeved brown shirt and skirt – the school uniform of all government schools in Uttar Pradesh – said she had memorised the
