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In 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted with students on Teachers’ Day, his message was drowned in the controversy about it being compulsory for children to watch the event.

This year, thankfully, there was no such frenzy about PM Modi’s Paathshala; it was treated by the government, schools, students and political parties as a routine event. The absence of distracting divisive debates around the optics of the event will hopefully ensure that the focus remains on what Modi said, instead of the politics behind it.

Modi at the Teachers’ Day event. PIB image

It would’ve been a pity if lessons from this year’s Paathshala too were lost in a mindless commotion. The PM was at his philosophical and innovative best while interacting with students at the Manekshaw Auditorium in Delhi on Friday. Some of his ideas and thoughts have the potential to reshape the lives of students and simplify childhood.

Consider, for instance, his suggestion for ’Aptitude Certificates’ to students. The PM said he has advised the government to work on a plan to ensure every child gets a certificate listing his capabilities and talent before leaving school. This, he rightly believes, will help a student much more than a ’character certificate’ that is routinely doled out at the time of school-leaving. "Even those who later end up in jail also have ’good character’ certificates," Modi said evoking laughter.

In many ways, Modi is a classic antithesis of our education system. The PM candidly told his audience that he was not a bright student, his interest was, thus, more in what happened "outside the classroom". Most of what he learnt — public speaking, poetry, leadership and, as he jocularly said, even his sartorial sense — was self-taught.

And, more importantly, he succeeded because of his refusal to fail, not because of parental pressure.

There were, of course, many other takeaways, trademark alliterations and slogans at the event. Waste to wealth, his latest coinage, indicates Swachch Bharat is still high on his agenda.The fact that schoolgirls in Bengaluru have come up with an award-winning app for waste disposal, he said, proved that the campaign had taken deep roots. The PM’s suggestion that everyone who can teach must volunteer 100 hours of teaching in a school nearby would solve the perennial problem of shortage of good teachers.

More importantly, the hour-long interactive session where the Prime Minister took questions from high-achieving students from schools across the country was choreographed carefully. The glitch-free interaction with off-site student groups itself was, in itself, the biggest endorsement for his Digital India dream.

And, of course, we got to see glimpses of Bal Narendra at the event. The image of a young boy who loved to swim, climb trees and play kabaddi; a peripatetic scholar who roamed India in a kurta--whose sleeves he shortened with the intent to create more space in his bag but ended up serendipitously contributing the Modi kurta to couture-- and a couple of books in his bag added a little more to our understanding of the enigma called Modi.