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Nestling in the Satpuras, picturesque Chilwaha had a problem. The village school teachers often played truant. "Our children" remembers Manohar Singh, a local farmer, "couldn't read even after three years." Fed up with teachers who treated their vocation as a state government-funded sinecure, the villagers decided on direct action.

That was a year ago. Before Madhya Pradesh's Education Guarantee Scheme(EGS) won the gold prize under the 1998 International Innovations Awards Programme of the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management.

The residents of Chilwaha decided to open their own, parallel school. The village panchayat drafted an application to the district panchayat. Next it hired a teacher. A local resident offered his verandah-and the school was born. Today Singh's four daughters study there. They have learnt to read and write as well. Says Onkar Singh, the farmer who heads the school's committee: "We control the teacher. He knows he'll be sacked if he does not teach."

The EGS is the very embodiment of responsive government. Villages which don't have a primary school within a kilometer can simply demand one. It is obligatory upon the state to set up the school within 90 days. The teacher is appointed and monitored by the local community but the salary, Rs.500 a month, comes from the state capital.

Amita Sharma, director, EGS, is convinced of its utility: "The formal system could provide only 80,000 primary schools in 50 years. This left 20,000 habitations unserved. The EGS bridged this gap in 18 months."

Adds R. Gopalakrishnan,the civil servant who fathered the EGS: "Universalising primary education is less a matter of finding the money and more a matter of foregoing alliances of the right kind. " As they say in Madhaya Pradesh these days, where there's a will there's EGS.

Gopalakrishnan and Sharma would find a kindred sprit in Kalva, a village in Andhra Pradesh's arid Kurnool district. There Fatima Bi,33, is still learning to read and write. She can barely sign her name. But that didn't prevent her from getting the 1998 United Nations Race Against Poverty Award. Fatima is a tribute to India's emerging womanhood -of that intangible but arresting idea called empowerment.