Grey Sunshine: Stories from Teach For India

India is battling an educational crisis of unprecedented proportions. Half of the country’s Standard 5 students cannot read a Standard 2 level text in their native language. Seventy-six per cent of Indian students don’t make it to college. The list of alarming statistics doesn’t end there. But who are the faces behind these statistics? What are their stories? What would it take to alter their futures and subsequently, the future of India? Grey Sunshine tells the human stories behind the national crisis we see—and yet don’t see— every single day: the state of Indian education. It is an invitation to walk in the shoes of hundreds of thousands of children from less privileged backgrounds. Battling the injustices of poverty alongside them are 4,000 unlikely leaders from Teach For India, a two-year fellowship programme that places young people as full-time teachers in government classrooms across the country. The stories of these students and teachers represent the struggle to reform a failing education system and the hope for a brighter sun to shine tomorrow.