5 min readJul 26, 2026 06:17 AM IST First published on: Jul 26, 2026 at 06:16 AM ISTParadoxical and a little thrilling that it was a slapdash bunch of young Indians and not the opposition parties who brought the Prime Minister to his knees. On Saturday, just as this column was going to press, the PM finally persuaded the Education Minister to resign. He was the rotten symbol of a rotting education system and had to go. But, by taking his time, he may have done India a favour. As for the Prime Minister, all he has offered is a stringent new law which he has told us was stringent at least five times before. Not good enough.Here I must point out that the Leader of the Opposition is delusional when he says that before Modi became Prime Minister the Indian education system was the envy of the world. It was not. Indian children who could not afford private schools were dependent on a school system that let them down from kindergarten to the time they graduated from high school. BJP chief ministers control most large Indian states and should have been able to transform schools but did not. Their priorities have been rewriting history to exalt ancient India and rubbish the Moghul period. And to exalt India’s achievements since Modi became Prime Minister. This is a subject for another day.