Double barrel rejoinder
Despite plenty of advice to the contrary, there’s no shortage of fools continuing to rush into education where angels tread warily. Accustomed to bullying, bribing and steamrolling all opposition, booming Bangalore’s builders and real estate tycoons are majorly bulldozing their way into education. But they have yet to learn that there’s more to schools than fancy classrooms, marbled corridors and five-star dormitories. A case in point is Bangalore’s ubiquitous Brigade Group which some two years ago, entered into an agreement with the Chennai-based PSBB (Padma Seshadri Bal Bhavan) Group which runs three highly-rated day schools in the port city, to promote a primary-cum-secondary school in Bannerghatta, a suburb of Bangalore where Brigade has constructed a glitzy housing complex for the city’s cash-rich IT professionals. The dean and director of PSBB schools is the formidable octogenarian Dr. (Mrs.) Y.G. Parthasarathy, who during the past four decades has transformed them into islands of academic excellence.
Inevitably, the natural inclination of M.R. Jaishankar and his wife Geetha (who run the Brigade Foundation) to call the shots in the new school was resisted by the doughty Dr. YGP. This prompted the Jaishankar duo to "unilaterally terminate their relations with PSBB" and go it alone. Unsurprisingly buyers of Brigade’s Bannerghatta apartments who had signed up on the premise that they would be served by a new PSBB — rather than Brigade — school, were outraged and over 1,000 of them banded together to constitute a Learning Leadership Academy Trust which has teamed up with the PSBB Group to go ahead with the construction of a new school.
Ill-advisedly on March 2, the Brigade Group issued a public notice in several news dailies threatening Learning Leadership-PSSB with a restraint order. Quite evidently the Jaishankars seriously underestimated the redoubtable Dr. YGP, who let them have it both barrels in a rejoinder advertisement in the Times of India (March 5). Alluding that the parties had fallen out because "perhaps they did not agree with the educational values that we hold dear at PSBB — ethics, values, excellence in academics and a passion for education that went beyond any business interest", YGP charged that the Brigade Group had "crushed the dreams of the parents for a PSBB education for their children". Hence the new school promoted under the name and style of PSBB learning Leadership Academy.
In its public notice of March 2, the Brigade Group said it was "contemplating legal action" against PSBB. Following the spirited response of Dr. YGP, wiser counsel seems to have prevailed and the proposed legal action of the Jaishankars remains in the realms of contemplation.
Media meanness
One of the less endearing characteristics of the much-hyped ‘free’ Indian media is the sense of insecurity bordering on paranoia, which its editors/ proprietors display on a daily basis. Although the country boasts a reported 50,000 print publications, all of them are in denial of each other. In the boardrooms and editorial offices of media companies, there’s a cast-iron unwritten rule that the existence of a rival — indeed any other — news publication must never be acknowledged. The absurdity of this unwritten rule was highlighted again in early March when the Delhi-based weekly India Today convened its Conclave 2006. Staged at a cost of several lakhs if not crores, the annual India Today gabfest featured some of the world’s top politicians, intellectuals and social scientists including German chancellor Gerhard Schroder, China expert James Macgregor, Queen Rania of Jordan, economist Andy Xie and Prof. Vijay Govindarajan of the Tuck School of Business, USA among others. This cast of foreign notables was supported by top-drawer indigenous politicians and business leaders.
Yet such is the mean-spiritedness of Indian dailies and the media that until Conclave 2006 was reported in extenso in India Today itself (March 27), hardly anyone knew this mega event featuring a galaxy of speakers had been staged over two days in the national capital. Although several publications took the advantage of interviewing or featuring some of the invited delegates, they took great care to avoid any reference to their host weekly. The rival Outlook couldn’t resist a photo-op with the beauteous Queen Rania, blandly stating she was in Delhi for "a conclave".
But then India Today publisher-editor Aroon Purie is hoist with his own petard, for his flagship weekly despite its loudly proclaimed dominance of the periodicals market, seldom deigns to acknowledge the existence of lesser publications. Perhaps if he invited the latter — like this tiny organ — to cover his annual conclaves, he might receive some acclaim for the valuable public debates he hosts. But inviting minnows to the top table might be too much for the puffed-up Purie.
Influential education missionary
Although EducationWorld’s sustained advocacy of mass education as the foundation block of national development seems to have made no impact on Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, prime minister Manmohan Singh or Union finance minister P. Chidambaram, who are on the editor’s complimentary list — of which there’s no acknowledgement, let alone a word of thanks — a high-potential parliamentarian who has evidently been converted into a missionary of education is Rahul Gandhi, MP (Amethi). In his 20 minute maiden speech in the Lok Sabha on the Union budget delivered on March 9, the heir-apparent focused exclusively on education and exhorted Parliament to move the subject right to the top of the national agenda.Non-preachy and spontaneous Gandhi stressed the urgency to take education "to the toiling masses" and to infuse Indian children with the dream of "breaking free from their parental past". Reaching deep into India’s ancient tradition of veneration for education, the influential young MP referred to Nalanda and Taxila universities as the Harvard and Cambridge of their times. "Why can’t we revive this tradition?" he asked, provoking thunderous applause and prompting Lok Sabha speaker Somanth Chatterjee to remark that the young MP had displayed "the right spirit" in his first speech in Parliament.
At least some people in the rarified upper reaches of the establishment are getting the message.