Some version of this gets asked at every dinner table in India. Parents ask it about their children. Teachers ask it in staff rooms. Employers ask it in interviews without knowing that’s the question.
But what does the whole country think about it?
39% of workers’ core skills are expected to change by 2030.
World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025
The frameworks are ready. The answer is not.
The National Education Policy asked for a fuller picture of a child. PARAKH mandated that the report card carry it.
What nobody has is the thing those frameworks need. Some account of what readiness actually means, from the people who live with it.
So we are asking. Not a panel. Not a consultation. A million people.
Not marks.
We are not asking whether school taught you enough; we are asking about five things marks were never able to show.
These five are how we will sort a million answers; they are not the answer. That part is still missing, which is the whole reason we are asking.
Thinking for yourself, choosing your own direction.
Knowing how the world works outside a textbook.
Having someone who has your back.
Being alright, and safe enough to fail at something.
Still learning, once nobody is making you.
What these five actually mean is what a million answers will decide.
The top half exists; every school in the country can produce it. The bottom half is what a million people are being asked to help write.
You cannot measure something until you have agreed what it is; which is why nobody has built it, and why we are asking first.
Held against what the rest of the world has worked out about readiness, and against what already exists here.
Not as one number for the country. Broken down by age, place and circumstance.
To shape how readiness is understood and assessed, starting with what a report card would need to carry.
A people’s movement to improve all 1 million public schools in India, so that every child walks out ready for what comes next.
Teachers, parents, young people, district officials. Nearly four lakh of them, across two lakh schools. Not an organisation. A movement.
Your younger sibling. Your mother, who has opinions and has never been asked. The person at the chai shop who left school at fourteen and knows exactly what he needed.
That is it; that is the entire plan. A million is just this, a million times.
That’s when the country finds out what it said; your voice will be in there too.