Pratham formed volunteer teams in all 600 Indian districts. These teams tested more than 1,000 children in randomly chosen villages in every district—700,000 children overall—and came up with a report card. One of the leading lights of the ruling Congress-led government, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, launched the report, but what he read could not have made him happy. Close to 35 percent of children in the seven-to-fourteen age group could not read a simple paragraph (first-grade level) and almost 60 percent of children could not read a simple story (second-grade level). Only 30 percent could do
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