Thirty young faces. Thirty stories of hard work from some of India’s most remote classrooms. And a Chief Minister who stood in front of them and said, plainly, that the state had let its government schools down for too long.
Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu, joined by Education Minister Pasang Dorjee Sona, felicitated 30 state-level meritorious students on September 10 in what turned out to be far more than a routine prize-giving ceremony. The students — drawn from Classes III to XII and selected from both government and private schools across the state — were honoured under the Golden Jubilee Meritorious Students Award (GJMSA) for their academic performance during the 2024–25 session. Each walked away with a certificate, a cash prize, and in some cases an award going up to Rs 1 lakh.
That’s not a small gesture in a state where geography alone is enough to break a student’s spirit.
The GJMSA was first conceived in 2022 by the Directorate of Elementary Education, designed as part of the celebrations marking 50 years since Arunachal Pradesh was formally constituted as a state. Before 1972, the region was known as the North-East Frontier Agency — NEFA — and its journey from a frontier administrative zone to a state with its own education reform agenda has been long and uneven. The award, in that sense, carries symbolic weight that goes beyond the cash.
Among this year’s 30 honourees, a significant number were girls. That detail matters. In a state where tribal communities span high-altitude villages and dense forest belts, keeping girls in school — let alone seeing them compete and win at the state level — is an achievement that deserves to be said out loud.
Speaking at the event, CM Khandu revealed that his government has distributed over Rs 3 crore under various student support schemes, underlining that recognising talent is not just a feel-good exercise but a deliberate policy choice. He was direct about the bigger picture too. The state is implementing the National Education Policy 2020, a task force has been put in place to drive that process, and the government has set 2029 as its target year for hitting key education reform milestones.
But perhaps the most candid moment came when Khandu addressed the state of government schools. He acknowledged what many parents, teachers, and students in Arunachal Pradesh already know — that government schools have struggled, that private institutions have quietly eaten into their credibility, and that the gap between the two needs to be closed. His vow to revive government schools wasn’t dressed up in bureaucratic language. It was a straightforward admission that more needs to be done.
The felicitation brought together students, parents, teachers, and education officials under one roof — a gathering that, on the surface, looked celebratory but carried the undercurrent of a system examining itself honestly.
Arunachal Pradesh is not short of bright, determined young people. What it has sometimes been short of is a system ready to back them up. If the government delivers on what Pema Khandu promised in that room, those 30 students being celebrated today might just be the beginning of something much bigger for the state’s education story. The question, as always, is whether the promises outlast the applause.
