Although your editor found no evidence of it in 2009 when he travelled a long way to Boston, Massachusetts (USA) to investigate why Harvard is the world’s most admired university, there must be some charm in this famous institution’s first woman president, Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust who has been able to arouse the normatively dormant philanthropic impulse of several captains of Indian industry.
In 2010, three Indian business tycoons — Infosys chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy, Tata Sons chairman Ratan Tata and Mahindra & Mahindra heir and chief executive Anand Mahindra — all champions of Indian education who confessed to deep financial distress when it came to purchasing an advertising page (Rs.60,000) in the tenth anniversary issue of EducationWorld the previous year — made handsome contributions of $5.2 million (Rs.26 crore), $10 million and $50 million respectively to Harvard’s $32 billion (Rs.160,000 crore) endowment corpus. Dr. Faust’s fund-raising capability must indeed be formidable because it prompted Ratan Tata to renege on a commitment to endow Rs.100 crore upon the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore — founded by his grandfather J.N.Tata — to endow Harvard (not his alma mater either) instead. And now the latest Indian benefactor of this great university is Siddarth Yog, founder-chairman of the US-based Xander Group who chipped in with a personal donation of $11 million (Rs.55 crore) to his alma mater, Harvard Business School.
But Dr. Faust’s charm seems to be reserved for plutocrats. Because when following tacit assurances by John Longbrake, senior communications manager of Harvard U that an interview with “the President” would be arranged, your editor presented himself in Harvard, she declined even an audience. Nevertheless your editor pieced together a cover feature (‘Why Harvard is the world’s most admired university’, EW June 2009). A few months later the tight purse strings of the said captains of India Inc opened for Dr. Faust and Harvard. Perhaps the world’s most admired university owes EducationWorld a debt, though its president and her courtiers would be the last to acknowledge it.
Better company
Justice Markandey Kajtu, a former judge of the Supreme Court of India most high who recently assumed the office of chairman of the 28-member Press Council of India enacted for the purpose of “preserving the freedom of the Press and of maintaining and improving the standards of newspapers and news agencies in India”, doesn’t have a high opinion of the media and journalists. From every platform available, he hasn’t missed the opportunity to indulge in media bashing. The reformist judge needs to be reminded about the perils of people living in glass houses.
On January 17 a large contingent of the black coated gentry brought all traffic in the heart of the garden city to a halt for over four hours by staging a protest. Their grievance was that one of their fraternity had been admonished that morning by a police constable for riding three astride a two-wheeler, and that too without the mandatory helmet. This act of lese majeste prompted a 1,000 mob of the learned counsels to stage the massive public demonstration.
Frequent resort to violence by lawyers who are sworn to uphold the law, is only one of the acts of commission and omission visited upon the republic by the black-coated fraternity. Persistent failure of members of the bar and bench to reform archaic procedural laws and speed up the wheels of justice has lumbered the nation with a backlog of 33 million cases pending before the courts. According to one estimate, at the current rate of case disposal in India’s courts, the judicial backlog will be cleared 320 years hence. And within the swirling chaos of the country’s over-hyped independent judicial system, by exploiting the law’s delay and ineptitude, the black-coated gentry has prospered mightily. Currently over a dozen top Supreme Court counsel rake in over Rs.50 crore per year. Yet neither the Bar Council of India nor any of the leading lights of bar and bench have made any meaningful suggestions to clear the case backlog or reform the country’s archaic procedural laws.
Over four decades ago your editor began his career as a barrister in the Bombay high court. But appalled by the lack of idealism and primitive capital accumulation obsession of the legal fraternity, I quit the bar. In retrospect it was a good decision. I would have been more embarrassed by the company I would have had to keep, than I keep now.
CISCE in hibernation
An unprecedented power vacuum at the top has frozen all affiliation applications to the Delhi-based Council of Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) — the country’s most prestigious school-leaving examinations board which has some of the top-ranked secondaries including Doon School, Shri Ram (Delhi), and St. Paul’s (Darjeeling) affiliated with it. The council has been immobilised by an apex-level power struggle between the Rt. Rev. Jose Aikara, principal of the De Paul School, Mysore and board members drawn from the Association of Anglo-Indian Schools (AAIS), who have been managing CISCE for the past half century. In July last year Aikara was controversially elected pro tem chairman of the board and executive committee after Neil O’Brien, who had served as chairman for almost two decades, resigned abruptly because of ill-health. Aikara was elected and appointed chairman for the remainder of O’Brien’s term, i.e until November.
According to CISCE insiders, towards the end of his three-month term Aikara presented a draft resolution to the main board proposing an increase in the number of executive committee members from five to 15, with a right vested in the chairman to nominate the other nine from the wider community of affiliated schools. Unsurprisingly this proposal which was construed as a palace coup to wrest control of CISCE, rang alarm bells in AAIS which moved the Delhi high court. By an order issued in December, the court stayed the election of the new committee and alteration of the composition of the executive committee. Nevertheless despite his term having ended in November, Aikara continues to describe himself as chairman of the CISCE board and announce syllabus and policy changes.
Over 200 affiliation applications from schools across the country are pending approval of the board. But with the stakes — the power to grant affiliation — being high, neither AAIS nor Aikara are budging even as the country’s once most respected examinations board is in a state of hibernation.