Despite the plain fact that they offer the cheapest non-government education worldwide, there is deep-seated animosity towards private schools within the establishment, including the academy and media. Decades of propaganda by self-serving socialist politicians and Left intellectuals who dominate academia, media and the public discourse, has created a sense of entitlement within India’s greedy middle class to first-world private education at third-world prices. Unfortunately for Indian education, ‘committed’ Supreme Court judges appointed by prime minister Indira Gandhi during the 1969-84 era passed a string of judgements outlawing “commercialisation of education”. These judgements remain a huge hurdle against deregulation of Indian education to this day, and the middle class mindset towards private providers of education remains hostile.
Take for instance the nightmarish experience of the Mumbai-based Ryan International Group of Institutions (RIGI, estb. 1976), India’s largest chain of 130 private proprietorial K-12 schools. Last September, a seven-year-old primary student of Ryan International, Gurgaon (Haryana) was viciously murdered in the school’s toilet.
Immediately, there was a huge outcry against the school’s God-fearing management in the academy and media alleging management apathy and neglect of children’s security. In particular the RIGI management was excoriated for having abetted the gruesome crime by permitting lower grade staff access to the school’s toilets. On national television, cantankerous news anchor Arnab Goswami publicly demanded the immediate arrest and incarceration of Ryan Pinto, chief executive of RIGI. But a subsequent CBI inquiry concluded that the murder most foul had been committed by a senior class XI student and the school’s management was blameless.
But even as the juvenile accused’s trial is underway, no apology has been made — let alone compensation paid — by the state government, police, any media company or Goswami for bringing RIGI and its management into public disrepute and causing severe mental stress and anxiety to the promoter Pinto family of RIGI which expended a fortune in legal fees to obtain court orders staying their arrest.