Common school proponent

NLS chief’s challenge

Dr. Parth J. Shah, president of the Centre for Civil Society (CCS), Delhi. An alumnus of Auburn University (USA) and former professor of economics at Michigan University, Shah promoted CCS in 1999. Since then this NGO has transformed into one of the country’s top think-tanks for propa-gating liberal causes. In particular CCS has been very active in researching Indian education and suggesting ways and means to improve standards and systems of elementary schooling.

Earlier this year, when the draft Right to Education Bill, 2005 was being debated in Parliament and beyond to give effect to the proposed Article 21-A of the Constitution which mandates free and compulsory education for all children aged six-14 years, CCS produced a detailed ‘legislative analysis’ of the Bill under Shah’s supervision which prompted the Union government to wholly revise its provisions. Moreover recently after continuous criticism from CCS, the Delhi state government abolished an archaic provision which required private school promoters to obtain an ‘essentiality certificate’ from the state government certifying that a new school was needed in the district where it is proposed to be sited.

Also the author of Law, Liberty and Livelihood (2005) which highlights the harassment of street vendors and citizens working in the informal sector of the economy by policemen and local government officials, under Shah’s leadership CCS has emerged as an intelligent and fearless protector of citizens’ economic rights and freedoms •

KVS model leader

Ranglal Jamuda, IAS commissioner, Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS). A graduate of Ravenshaw College, Cuttack (Utkal University) with an MBA from the University of Hull (UK), Jamuda took charge as commissioner of KVS in September 2004 following postings in Orissa in the power sector, and as higher education and revenue secretary of the state government. Initially promoted by the Central government as schools for its employees, KVs have since emerged as model government schools with a reputation for academic excellence. Consequently 23 percent of the 900,000 students in 928 KVs countrywide instructed by a massive teacher task force of 20,000, are children from non-government households.

To add to the 928 Kendriya Vidyalaya schools in India — and three abroad (Nepal, Russia and Iran) — Jamuda has drawn up plans for 50 new schools in the coming year. The commissioner is justifiably proud of his schools’ pass percentage in the CBSE class X school leaving exam (89.85 percent) and class XII (92.4 percent) in 2004-05, as against the average 50 percent and 54.5 percent of government schools in general.

With its brand reputation on a par with IITs and IIMs, KV schools have emerged as models for all government schools to emulate •

Dr. Verghese Kurien, chairman Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA), Gujarat. The designer and architect of the White Revolution aka Operation Flood which transformed chronically milk-deficient India into the world’s largest producer of lactose and dairy products, and progenitor of the Anand-model of farmers’ milk cooperatives who has attained legendary status in his lifetime, Kurien is also the incumbent founder-director of IRMA. Like its promoter, IRMA (estb. 1979) which offers its 250 students instructed by a faculty of 27 postgraduate qualifications in rural management on its sylvan 60-acre campus in Anand in rural Gujarat, is sui generis. Most of its graduates are absorbed into the hundreds of milk marketing cooperatives modelled on GCMMF (Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation) founded by Kurien, but from which he was recently ousted in a boardroom coup after a 30- year plus reign as its chairman. However of late with corporates venturing into the food processing and agri-industry, IRMA graduates are hot property with an average annual remuneration of Rs.4.38 lakh (in 2005).

Yet Kurien’s contribution to Indian education is much greater than the promotion of IRMA. He taught India’s historically short-changed milk producers to become business savvy and in the process catalysed India’s as yet unreplicated White Revolution •

Prof. Bala V. Balachandran, founder and honorary dean, Great Lakes Institute of Management (GLIM), Chennai. J.L Kellogg distinguished professor at the Stuart Graduate School of Business (SSB) of the Illinois Institute of Technology, Balachandaran established GLIM — Tamil Nadu’s first internationally benchmarked B-school — in Chennai in April 2004. The institute’s first batch of 130 students has graduated with a 100 percent placement record. Balachandran was also actively involved in the planning and promotion of the Rs.250 crore trail-blazing Indian School of Business, Hyderabad (estb. 2000).

An alumnus of Annamalai and Dayton (USA) universities who was awarded a Ph D in industrial administration by Carnegie Mellon University, Balachandran’s extensive teaching and corporate consultancy experience and contributions to the development of the science of business management have won him numerous scholastic honours, awards and fellowships including the Padma Shri in 2001. In addition to running GLIM and teaching at SSB in the US, he also runs Allsec Technologies, a thriving call centre in Chennai.

With eminent leaders of corporate India on GLIM’s advisory council and visiting faculty from the best B-schools abroad, it won’t be long before Balachandran realises his dream of GLIM being rated among the top three B-schools in India •

Doon internationalist

Kanti Bajpai, headmaster, The Doon School, Dehra Dun. A former professor of international affairs at Jawaharlal Nehru University and a popular choice of TV news channels to comment on foreign policy issues, in his new avatar as the headmaster of perhaps India’s most famous all-boys boarding school, Bajpai is all set to infuse his international outlook and academic experience into his alma mater. The blue-chip Doon School, which currently boasts an enrollment of 500 students, has shaped the character of some of the country’s leading lights including former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, authors Vikram Seth and Amitav Ghosh, and Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan.

This self-described "foreign service brat" who described his appointment in 2003 after a global headhunt as "a dream come true", taught political science at M.S. University, Baroda and Wesleyan University, USA before joining the JNU faculty in 1994. Bajpai faces the daunting challenge of maintaining this CISCE-affiliated institution’s position as India’s # 1 boarding school against increasing competition from a new genre of five-star international schools boasting affiliations such as the International Baccalaureate and British ‘A’ levels, and offering mind-boggling sports and residential facilities •

Dr. Bakul Dholakia, director, Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A). An alumnus of M.S University, Baroda where he taught econometrics prior to signing up with IIM-A in 1992, and after teaching industrial economics for seven years (1992-97), Dholakia was appointed director of IIM-A, India’s very first B-school established in collabo-ration with Harvard University and whose campus was designed by the renowned American architect Louis Kahn. Since it was promoted in 1961, this pioneer institution of business management education has acquired a global reputation for the excellent quality of its graduates.

In recent years with the IIMs which were promoted and are funded by the Central government having attracted the unwarranted attentions of successive ministers presiding over the parent Union human resource ministry who have prescribed lower fees and special quotas for backward castes, the autonomy of these institutes is in jeopardy. A committee of IIM directors under Dholakia’s leadership is fighting hard to devise ways and means to ensure the administrative and financial autonomy of these blue-chip B-schools, which by common consensus are national assets. Meanwhile perhaps with this objective in mind, on May 13 IIM-A formally announced the establishment of India’s first B-school abroad by inaugurating its Asian Centre in collaboration with the Essec Business School, France, in Singapore. The Essec Asian Centre will admit its first batch of postgraduate students in April 2007 •

Dr. C.N.R Rao, chairman, Scientific Advisory Council to the prime minister and president, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore. In informed academic circles there is considerable despair about declining standards of science education and the growing inability of the science teaching community to generate student interest in the study of the sciences. The country’s most high profile scientist who seldom misses an opportunity to warn about this infirmity of the education system, Rao isn’t afraid to speak his mind on this important issue. According to him, an incremental number of colleges across the country are closing down science faculties, and because of neglect of research, the IITs are "being converted into ordinary engineering colleges". According to a latest report in The Hindu (May 20) Rao intends presenting "facts relating to the neglect of science" to the prime minister.

The prime minister and the public would do well to heed Rao’s warnings because he is perhaps India’s most distinguished scientist. An alumnus of Mysore, Benares Hindu and Purdue universities, Rao began his career as professor of chemistry at IIT-Kanpur and rose within academia to the apex position of director of the prestigious Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (1984-94). This indefatigable septuagenarian is currently a visiting professor at Purdue, Oxford and Cambridge universities and widely acknowledged as one of the world’s foremost authorities on solid state and materials chemistry •

Unmatched institution builder

Professor N. S. Ramaswamy, promoter-trustee of the Centre for Action, Research and Technology (CARTMAN) and Indian Heritage Academy, Bangalore. Currently engaged in propagating the message of animal welfarism and ethics in business, the trust derives its name from Ramaswamy’s many years of successfully researching the perfectly designed bullock cart, which eases the burden of animal power which to this day provides over 20 percent of the energy needs of rural India.

However octogenerian Ramaswamy’s contribution to Indian education extends far beyond the boundaries of the Cartman Trust. His claim to fame is that he has conceptualised, constructed and operationalised two of India’s top-rated B-schools — the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai (estb. 1965) and the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (1972) as also the National Institute for Technical and Industrial Engineering (NITIE –1968), commonly ranked among contemporary India’s top ten engineering colleges. This feat of building high quality and durable institutions of higher education is unmatched by any other individual in Indian academia •

Ashish Rajpal, co-founder and managing director, iDiscoveri India Pvt Ltd, Delhi. An alumnus of XLRI, Jamshedpur and Harvard University where he acquired a Masters in education, Rajpal was marketing director of the Paris-based processed foods and consumer goods multinational Danone, until 2001, when he returned to India to rejuvenate iDiscoveri, promoted in 1996 by a group of B-school and IIT graduates. Described as "a social enterprise with a mission to renew education in India" by devising contemporary teacher development, education leadership, pedagogy innovations and cultural transformation programmes, the company has got off to a flying start. It has enrolled over 2,000 teachers countrywide in its in-service training programmes and reached over 200 school principals with its education leadership initiative.

The firm recently inaugurated its iDiscoveri Center for Education and Enterprise offering a postgraduate diploma in innovative teaching and education leadership.

These activities apart, the company also runs a successful division in enterprise education for school and college promoters and its Youreka outdoor education programme for children. Driven by Rajpal and a phalanx of highly trained and motivated education professionals unencumbered by the dead hand of government, iDiscoveri offers the exciting promise of changing national mindsets and attitudes toward education •

Child rights activist

Ingrid Srinath, chief executive of CRY (Child Rights and You). With an annual disbursement budget of over Rs.13 crore, five offices countrywide and 170 full-time employees, CRY (formerly Child Relief & You) is one of the largest child welfare non-government organisations in India. A fund-raiser extraordinaire who combines passion with a penchant for reeling out bone-chilling child deprivation statistics, Srinath signed up with CRY in 1998 and has been instrumental in transforming the organisation into a children’s rights advocacy NGO. "In over 2,500 poor and marginalised communities in 21 states, CRY has inspired the incredible change that is possible when children, parents and local governance come together to ensure children’s rights," says Srinath.

An economics and statistics alumna of Elphinstone College, Mumbai with an MBA from Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta, Srinath acquired considerable experience in organisational management in advertising agencies Lintas and Trikaya Grey (1986-1998), before signing up with CRY as its director of resource mobilisation. Six years later she was promoted to the office of the chief executive.

Currently CRY provides financial and non-financial support to 157 voluntary organisations across the country and has impacted the lives of over 1.4 million children •

Narendra Kumar, chairman Delhi Public School Society (DPS) Delhi. The promoter- director of Vikas Publishing House, once India’s largest book publishing firm but which has gone into relative obscurity, Kumar has metamorphosed into the driving force and chairman of DPS Society which runs 130 Delhi Public Schools with an aggregate enrollment of 150,000 students in India and abroad. Run on the franchisee model with the first DPS on Mathura Road, Delhi prescribing the minimum infrastructure norms and curriculum, DPS schools have established an excellent national reputation for delivering standardised secondary education of high quality, much appreciated by India’s rising new middle class. Indeed the DPS model has proved so popular that DPS schools have been established as far afield as Nepal, Bangladesh, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and several Middle East countries.

With Kumar ready, willing and able to establish working partnerships with state governments to upgrade and manage their schools across the country, the DPS model offers a great opportunity to state governments to radically improve their overwhelmingly non-performing schools characterised by poor learning outcomes. Although it’s unlikely that Kumar’s offer will be accepted, it is a measure of the rapid countrywide growth of DPS which until 1972 had only its pioneer Mathura Road school to showcase •

Dr. Ashok Ganguly, chairman of CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education). An alumnus of Allahabad University, who heads the largest pan-India examination board with 8,278 affiliated schools, Ganguly has initiated exemplary academic and exam evaluation reforms in secondary education. They include introduction of novel subjects like defence studies, fashion technology, mass media, genetic engineering and entrepreneurship; elimination of the sudden death examination in favour of a continuous grading system from 2008. Moreover recently the CBSE board has ordered reduction of the textbook load in children’s school bags. The pace of reform within this pace-setting board has accelerated in the past two years with the rising popularity of competitive international examination boards such as the International Baccalaureate and Cambridge International Examinations among India’s top-tier schools.

Designated an autonomous body, CBSE is under the direct control of the Union ministry of human resource development and is obliged to prescribe NCERT textbooks for its 8,278 affiliated schools. Though the reclusive Ganguly is currently under investigation by the Central Vigilance Commissioner for flouting service rules and allegedly promoting textbooks of private publishers, he is likely to overcome and continue to ring in winds of academic change in India’s largest examination board whose affiliated schools have a combined enrollment of over 4 million students countrywide •

Pre-school education pioneer

A.K. Khetan, chief executive of Zee Interactive Learning Systems (ZILS), Mumbai. A former chartered accountant who worked with several corporates including Rallis India and Multi Channel India Pvt Ltd, quality education is Khetan’s mission statement. Following his appointment as CEO of ZILS in 2003, he has revived and reactivated this company promoted in 1999 by satellite and cable television pioneer Subhash Chandra.

Today ZILS delivers learning solutions and training to several segments of society through its divisions viz, ZIMA (Zee Institute of Media Arts), ZICA (Classical and Digital Animation Training Academy), Zed CA (Career Academy) and Zee E-learning (online education). Under Khetan’s leadership, in 2004 the company successfully diversified into pre-primary education under the brand name Kidzee. Since then, the franchise model Kidzee has expanded its imprint to 350 nursery schools across India. With plans to expand ZILS’ education services to cover the entire 0-16 age group, Khetan is likely to play an increasingly important role in shaping the contours of school education in the near future •

Prof. Yash Pal, chairman, National Steering Committee, National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2005. An alumnus of Punjab University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA who spent over 25 years teaching at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, this octogenarian scientist-educationist has served as chief consultant to the Planning Comm-ission; secretary, department of science and technology; chairman, National Institute of Design, and chairman, University Grants Commission. During his 45-year career in academia, Pal has played a pivotal role in formulating national education, particularly science education and technology policies.

In 2004, Pal was appointed by the Congress-led UPA government as chairman of the 35-member National Steering Committee which supervised 21 national focus groups in authoring the path-breaking National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE) 2005. NCFSE 2005 acknowledges to being strongly influenced by Yash Pal’s monograph Learning without Burden (1993), which advocated child-centric instead of textbook-centric education for children •

Dr. Y.G Rajalakshmi Parthasarathy, dean and director, Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan Senior Secondary School, Chennai. A renowned teacher, administrator and patron of arts and culture, octogenarian Y.G. Rajalakshmi Parthasarathy (popularly known as Dr. YGP), is a pioneer of progressive and culturally-rooted education in the port city of Chennai. In 1958, when most middle class children in Chennai clamoured for admission in Christian missionary schools, YGP started Bala Bhavan with just 13 children. This modest initiative has since grown to four PSBB schools, affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), offering value-based education to 7,300 students instructed by 500 teachers. Today PSBB schools are Chennai’s most admired secondary education institutions, renowned for rigorous scholarship.

One of the first women postgraduate diploma holders in journalism who served briefly in The Mail and The Hindu, YGP read for her B. Ed degree from Mysore University at age 45, followed by an M.Ed and Master’s in history and a doctorate from Madras University. "In this new age of technology we need to inculcate humanitarian values in our children, even as we mould them to become successful citizens. As teachers we need to accord greater attention to the environment, prevent cruelty to animals and encourage children to be caring and giving," she says •

Professor M.S. Ananth, director, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M). An alumnus of AC College of Technology and University of Florida, Ananth signed up with the department of chemical engineering at IIT-Madras in 1972 where he steadily rose up the faculty ranks prior to taking charge as director in 2001. Under his policy of infrastructure development, innovation and incubation, IIT-M has leaped forward in media ratings to a pre-eminent position even as its Strategic Plan Vision 2010 promises better things to come.

Established by the Union government in 1959, IIT-M houses 13 departments, ten advanced academic research centres and over 100 well-equipped laboratories for teaching and research. The institute offers undergrad and postgraduate engineering and technology study programmes to 4,082 students instructed by a faculty of 318. This academic year (2006-2007), IIT-M will cross another milestone by inaugurating its department of humanities and social sciences which will offer a unique, five-year integrated Master of arts degree programme comprising developmental studies, economics and English.

Moreover under Ananth’s leadership, IIT-M has drawn up a blueprint to establish an industrial research park contiguous to its campus with a seed investment of Rs.100 crore •

AICTE chief

Prof. Damodar Acharya, chairman AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education), Delhi. An alumnus of Regional Engineering College, Rourkela and IIT-Kharagpur, Acharya took charge of AICTE in May last year.