50 Leaders Changing Indian Education

These are the best and worst times for India’s community of educationists and educators, principals and teachers included. On the positive side, perhaps more than ever before in the history of the Indian subcontinent, public interest in education and its life-sustaining social and private benefits is at its zenith. On the negative, there are the Central and state governments which like bulls in a china shop are running amok in Indian education interfering with private education institutions and piling on ill-conceived populist legislation which dilutes teaching-learning standards and learning outcomes in the country’s 1.26 million government schools, 80,000 private schools, 31,000 colleges and 611 universities. It is no exaggeration to state that at stake is the globally competitive capability and future of the next generation — 550 million children and youth enroled in India’s crumbling, rapidly obsolescing and dysfunctional institutions of primary, secondary, higher and vocational education.

Against this sombre backdrop, heavy responsibility has devolved upon the country’s beleaguered minority of bona fide educationists and educators to positively influence public policy and simultaneously guide their own institutions of learning through treacherous waters and currents. This responsibility is not only of education philanthropists and private education entrepreneurs (‘edupreneurs’) who have “established and administer educational institutions of their choice” — a fundamental right conferred upon linguistic and religious minorities by the Constitution of India (Article 30 (1)) and expanded to all citizens in the Supreme Court’s landmark verdict in T.M.A Pai Foundation vs. State of Karnataka & Ors (2002) — but has also devolved upon vice chancellors, faculty and administrators of public universities, and principals and teachers of the country’s government schools. They need to practice leadership skills to nurture institutions under their care into centres of excellence and protect them from the populist leveling down efforts of rampaging politicians and bureaucrats.

Contrary to popular belief, such exemplary education leaders and visionaries are a growing minority within Indian education. After a hiatus of three years, EducationWorld presents thumbnail biographies of 50 education leaders who are struggling within a hostile regulatory environment to raise teaching-learning standards in India’s beleaguered preschool, school and higher education institutions.

Early promise belied

Kapil Sibal, Union minister of human resource development. A Harvard Law School alumnus and one of the country’s most successful Supreme Court lawyers of the famous Rs.50 crore per year income cabal, when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition was returned to power in New Delhi in May 2009, Sibal was allocated the vitally important human resource portfolio to undo the damage done to India’s floundering education system by his predecessor, the late and unlamented Arjun Singh.

Unfortunately since then the currents of Sibal’s education reform enterprises of great pith and moment have run awry and during the past two years, Sibal — hitherto the most prominent media spokesperson of the Congress party — has almost completely eroded the massive bank of goodwill that he had built up during his first year in office. Most of the hastily drafted legislation relating to reforms in higher  education (National Commission for Higher Education and Research, Foreign Education Providers (Regul-ation of Entry and Operations) and Prohibition of Unfair Practices in Technical Education Institutions Bills among others) has been heavily criticised, even by Congress MPs, and stalled by the standing committee of the HRD ministry.

Perhaps the only saving grace of his stint as HRD minister has been the passage of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 through Parliament. But ab initio, this historic legislation which became law in 2010 has been mired in controversy. And although on April 12 in Society for Unaided Schools of Rajasthan vs. Union of India & Ors, in a split verdict the Supreme Court substantially upheld the constitutional validity of the RTE Act, it is becoming increasingly clear that having failed to even minimally reform the crumbling government school system, the Act represents Sibal’s last- ditch effort to transfer the burden of educating the children of the poor to privately promoted schools.

With his term in Shastri Bhavan drawing to a close, it is clear that like his predecessors in this high-potential office, Sibal hasn’t been able to make any significant headway in implementing overdue reforms in Indian education. His inclusion in this list of 50 great education leaders is ex officio rather than for any notable contribution to Indian education which continues to flounder in shallows and misery.

Rural education messiah

Sanjit (‘Bunker’) Roy, director Barefoot College, Tilonia. Although with 67 percent of its population resident in rural India, the nation lives in its villages, in the Soviet-style centrally planned Indian economy, the gap in education delivery — and therefore in standards of living — between rural and urban India has widened over the past six decades since the nation wrested its independence from British rule in 1947.

In the early 1960s, first-hand experience of a famine in rural Bihar aroused deep emotion within  Roy, an alumnus of the blue-chip Doon School and St. Stephen’s College. Determined to address the development problems of rural India, in 1972 Roy established the Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC) in a hot and dusty rural tract in the desert state of Rajasthan. Since then, SWRC has metamorphosed into the Barefoot College (BC) which runs 714 night primary schools for 235,000 children in 673 villages in five states of the Indian Union, and transforms illiterate and quasi-literate peasants into competent (but deliberately uncertified) barefoot solar and  water harvesting engineers, hand-pump mechanics, architects, blacksmiths and weavers.

Roy claims that Barefoot College is the sole education institution worldwide which “consciously follows the teaching, life and work style of Mahatma Gandhi who envisioned an India comprising thousands of self-sustaining village republics”.

Moreover in a global initiative BC has transformed over 225 rural women from 26 developing countries around the world into barefoot solar engineers under its GWBSE (grandmother women barefoot solar engineers) programme.

Yet unsurprisingly, BC is more renowned abroad than in India where there is strong adherence to the country’s teacher-centric education model. With the middle class and the media uninterested in rural India, the public is largely unaware of the unique Barefoot College rural development model which if scaled up has the potential to radically improve rural productivity and incomes to transform the Indian economy.

True-blue K-12 educator

Ashish Rajpal, chief executive iDiscoveri Education. In 2001, Rajpal chucked up a by-all-accounts spectacular career assignment as the global marketing director of the Paris-based dairy products and Evian water vending multinational Groupe Danone (annual sales: Euro 19.3 billion or Rs.123,500 crore) and signed up as a student at the Harvard School of Education. The next year he returned to India and teamed up with some of his XLRI, Jamshedpur batchmates to promote iDiscoveri Education Pvt. Ltd. Since then iDiscoveri, which has assembled a highly-qualified team of 300 education profess-ionals, has grown into India’s most progres-sive 21st century K-12 schools reform and development company providing a wide range of services including content, curriculum-based teacher training, institutional and leadership development advice to 850 schools with an aggregate enrolment of 400,000 children and 25,000 teachers.

Although currently iDiscoveri has restricted the delivery of globally benchmarked curriculums and institutional development services to private schools, Rajpal is ready, willing and able to provide the company’s services to the country’s 1.26 million government schools as and when they “have more respect for their customers”.

Science education evangelist

Dr. C.N.R. Rao, chairman, Scientific Advisory Council to the prime minister and president, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore. The country’s most high-profile scientist who seldom misses an opportunity to complain about the neglect of science education and development of the country’s research capability, Rao has repeatedly warned of the dangers of a growing number of arts, science and commerce colleges closing down their science faculties, and of neglect of research in the IITs which are “being converted into ordinary engineering colleges”. A frequent essayist of EducationWorld, in a widely appreciated recent column in this publication, Rao forthrightly called upon the Central and state governments to bite the bullet of raising university faculty remuneration several-fold to attract the best talent into academia as a “national priority”.

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). Currently, this indefatigable septuagenarian is 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.

Tribal children champion

Dr. Achyuta Samanta, founder director of KIIT University and the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, Bhubaneswar (Odisha). Born in rural Odisha (formerly Orissa), Samanta experienced grinding poverty in his youth despite which he put himself through school and college graduating with a Masters in chemistry from Utkal University in 1987 and starting his career as a college lecturer.

Starting with a capital of Rs.5,000, within the span of a mere 15 years, this deeply religious education entrepreneur has built two great institutions — the for-profit KIIT University comprising 23 colleges of professional education with an aggregate enrolment of 15,225 students, and the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), reportedly the world’s largest boarding school which provides free-of-charge K-12 and collegiate education to 15,000 children drawn from the state’s most backward tribal population. Under an ingenious cross-subsidisation model devised by Samanta, the surpluses of KIIT University — routinely ranked among the country’s Top 50 providers of professional education (engineering, medical, management etc) — are ploughed into KISS to fund the education and upkeep of children in the latter institution which has won unstinted praise from educators in India and abroad.

Having established KISS as a model institution for providing high-quality holistic education to India’s neglected tribal children, Samanta has set his sights on replicating KISS in eight tribal areas of Odisha and across eastern India. “Meaningfully educating and mainstreaming children from bottom-of-the-pyramid families is the best prescription for combating the Naxalite insurgency confronting the nation and raising the poor majority out of poverty,” says this visionary education leader (see EW April 2012 cover feature).

Primary education benefactor

Azim Premji, promoter-chairman of Wipro Ltd, the Wipro Group of companies and Azim Premji University. Over three decades ago in the early seventies, Premji had to cut short his higher studies at Stanford University and return to India to take charge of the Mumbai-based Western India Vegetable Oil Products Co, which he diversified into the customised software business in the 1980s. This diversification paid off so mightily that Premji, who owns 84 percent equity of this publicly listed Bangalore-based IT major (sales revenue: Rs.35,000 crore; no. of employees: 135,000), has become one of the wealthiest individuals in India in terms of net worth.

In the year 2000 he promoted the Azim Premji Foundation (APF) with the object of upgrading the quality of primary education in India, and the state of Karnataka in particular. After several years of insufficiently impactful forays into teacher training and content development for primary education, in 2010, Premji bit the bullet and made an irrevocable deed of gift to APF of a massive sum of Rs.8,846 crore for the construction and establishment of the Azim Premji University (APU) — the largest endowment for public education in Indian history.

The prime objective of APU is to set new standards in teacher training and research for school education. Sanctified by a special Azim Premji University Act, 2010 of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, APU admitted its first batch of 150 students last July. Even as its state-of-the-art campus in Sarjapur in suburban Bangalore is taking shape, APU is set to change the primary education landscape in 21st century India by setting new stand-ards in vitally important teacher training and development.

Co-curricular education pioneer

Dr. Jagdish Gandhi, founder-manager, City Montessori School, Lucknow. A graduate of Lucknow University, in 1959 Gandhi with his wife Bharti started a one-room school in Lucknow. That initiative has since morphed into the CISCE-affiliated City Montessori School (CMS), a K-12 private, indep-endent  school with the largest student enrolment in a single city (44,000 students spread over 20 campuses) — an institution building achieve-ment acknowledged by Guinness World Records. CMS is also the only school worldwide to be awarded the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education (2002).

A distinguishing char-acteristic of CMS is its extraordinary emphasis on broad co-curricular education for teachers and students. The school hosts 32 international events on subjects ranging from astronomy to robotics annually and has an active student exchange programme with 20 schools overseas. It is also the first school in Uttar Pradesh to have installed an in-house FM radio network and uniquely, has hosted 12 international conferences of chief justices from around the world to discuss ways and means to build a safer world for children.

Although the septuagenarian Dr. Gandhi often draws flak for his aggressive use of the media to promote CMS, there’s no denying this pace setting and exemplary K-12 school, promoted 53 years ago, is highly regarded and respected. In the annual EW Survey of Schools 2011, CMS was ranked among the top 50 day schools countrywide, and among top three in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous and educat-ionally backward state.

UGC chairman

Prof. Ved Prakash, chairman of University Grants Commission (UGC), the country’s apex level funding and supervisory authority for higher (non-technical) education. Founder vice chancellor of the National University for Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), Delhi, a former director of NCERT, World Bank consultant, and hitherto secretary and vice-chairman of UGC, Prakash was appointed chairman of the council in February 2011.

With an annual budget of Rs.10,350 crore (2012-13), under the University Grants Commission Act, 1956 the commission has the discretion to confer development grants to the country’s 6,014 recognised (by UGC) colleges and Central and state universities. The commission is also vested with regulatory powers to enforce minimum standards of teaching, examination and research in non-technical colleges and universities countrywide.

An eminent academic and author of several books, articles and research papers on higher education, Prakash has helped UGC move beyond its funds disbursing function to evolve as a supervisory and monitoring organisation advising Central and state governments on measures necessary to improve higher education.

Budget schools defender

Dr. Parth Shah, president of the Centre for Civil Society (CCS), Delhi. An alumnus of Auburn University (USA) and former professor of econo-mics 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 the formulation of public policy related to education, this Delhi-based NGO, which has been sternly critical of poor quality education dispensed in the country’s government schools, has made valuable suggestions for systemic reform.

Moreover, under Shah’s leadership CCS has played a major role in propa-gating government-funded school vouchers which would permit the entry of children from socio-economically disadvantaged households into private schools of their choice. CCS has also emerged as a defender of promoters of private low-fees budget primaries sited in urban slums and villages which offer children from poor households an alternative to dysfunctional government schools characterised by crumbling infrastructure, chronic teacher absent-eeism and poor learning outcomes.

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, Shah has helped CCS emerge as an intelligent and fearless protector of citizens’ economic rights and freedom.

Private professional colleges shepherd

Dr. M.R. Jayaram, chairman, Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges-Karnataka (Comed-K) and Gokula Education Foundation (GEF), Bangalore. The Gokula Education Foundation manages the M.S. Ramaiah Group of 18 education institutions sited on a sprawling 65-acre campus in suburban Bangalore.

A commerce graduate of Bangalore University, in 2005 Jayaram was appointed chairman of Comed-K which currently has a membership of 157 engineering, 12 medical and 25 dental privately promoted colleges with an aggregate enrolment of 160,000 students in Karnataka. Following the Supreme Court’s landmark judgements in T.M.A. Pai Foundation vs. State of Karnataka & Ors (2002) and P.A. Inamdar (2005) cases, which permitted private colleges of professional education to administer their own collegiate entrance exams and levy reasonable tuition fees, an onerous responsibility to ‘voluntarily’ negotiate government quotas and fees with the state government has devolved upon Comed-K. Under Dr. Jayaram’s leadership, the consortium has successfully resisted arm-twisting by government and has repeatedly negotiated a fair deal for privately promoted colleges in the state.

Founded in 1962 by the late M.S. Ramaiah (1922-1997), a successful civil contractor, visionary, educationist, industrialist and philanthropist, GEF has promoted  18 education institutions (including a B-school, medical, dental, and engineering colleges) which provide Kg-Ph D level education to over 10,000 students.

Inclusive education diva

Dr. Mithu Alur, founder-chairperson Spastics Society of India (SSI) and the National Resource Centre for Inclusion (NRCI), Mumbai. An alumna of the London School of Economics with a Ph D awarded by London University, Alur who founded the Spastics Society in 1972 and the state-of-the-art National Resource Centre for Inclusion, Mumbai in 1999, is the celebrated champion of inclusive education for children with disabilities.

Apart from promoting SSI and NRCI which provide education to 3,000 physically and mentally challenged children, under the auspices of these two organisations, Alur has staged four global North-South conferences on inclusive education (i.e on ways and means to include challenged children into mainstream education) in Mumbai (2001), Kochi (2003), Delhi (2005) and Goa (2012).

According to Alur, currently 60 million differently abled children in India are denied education. As a result of her tireless efforts to champion the rights of challenged children, the Union government has accepted their inclu-sion into mainstream schools as a cardinal principle of its education policy. Therefore the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 was amended by a special Amendment Act passed by Parliament in April 2012 to specifically include children with special needs within the category of  poor neighbourhood children for whom the RTE Act reserves a 25 percent quota in class I of private unaided non-minority schools.

Cultural education doyenne

Dr. Y.G. Parthasarathy, dean and director, PSBB Schools, Chennai. A renowned teacher, administrator and patron of the arts and culture, octog-enarian Y.G. Rajalakshmi Parthasarathy (popularly known as Dr. YGP) is a pioneer of progressive and culturally rooted education in Chennai. In 1958, YGP promoted Bala Bhavan, a school propagating Indian culture and values, with an enrolment of 13 students. This modest initiative has since grown into three pace-setting CBSE-affiliated Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan (PSBB) schools in Chennai with 7,221 students instructed by 335 teachers.

One of India’s first women journalists, who worked briefly in The Mail and The Hindu before she switched to educa-tion, Dr. YGP enroled for the B.Ed study programme of Mysore University at age 45. This was followed by an M.Ed and a Masters in history and a doctorate from Madras University. Since then under her enlightened leadership, PSBB schools have attained an excellent reputation for providing high-quality academic learning enriched by culturally-rooted co-curricular education. In the EducationWorld India’s Most Resp-ected Schools Survey 2011, the flagship PSBB school was ranked third among the country’s Top 10 days schools and first in Chennai and south India.

In 2008 the PSBB School celebrated its golden jubilee year, and in collab-oration with the Delhi-based ICT (information communications techno-logy)-in-schools heavyweight Educomp Solutions Ltd, Dr. YGP successfully launched the state-of-the-art, fully-wired PSBB Millennium School in Chennai. Currently, four PSBB Millennium schools have been established in peninsular India — two in Chennai, and one each in Bangalore and Coimbatore.

Transnational education providers

Dr. Ramdas Pai, chancellor, Manipal University, Dr. Ranjan Pai, chief executive  and Anand Sudarshan, president of the Manipal Education Group (MEG). Since taking charge of MEG following the death of the legendary Dr. T.M.A. Pai (1889-1979) who pioneered the concept of self-financed, privately promoted institutions of professional education in India, Dr. Ramdas Pai has steered the growth and development of Manipal University (formerly MAHE) into India’s largest private provider of internationally acceptable medical, engineering and professional (nursing, pharmacy, business management, communications etc) education.

Certified India’s first multi-disciplinary, multi-campus deemed (private) university in 1993, MAHE officially transformed into Manipal University in 2006. Over the past half century, MEG (which includes Manipal University) has morphed into India’s first education transnational. At the invitation of the governments of Malaysia, Antigua, Nepal and Qatar, MEG has established state-of-the-art joint venture medical colleges-cum-teaching hospitals in these countries.

Today MEG comprises five universities and 40 institutions of education with an aggregate enrolment of 250,000 students instructed by a 2,000-strong faculty in India. Of this aggregate enrolment, 200,000 students spread over 55 countries are enroled in its Edunxt distance education programmes.

Moreover under Dr. Ranjan Pai and Anand Sudarshan, MEG has expanded to provide vocational skills education with the London-based City & Guilds; acquired majority equity stakes in the Singapore-based U21 Global (the world’s premier online business management university) and Merit Trac (India’s largest skills assessment company). Also rapidly assuming shape and form is a state-of-the-art Manipal University campus in suburban Bangalore exclusively for professional education of children of NRIs (non-resident Indians).

Preschool education pioneer

Lina Ashar is the Mumbai-based founder-director of Kangaroo Kids Education Pvt. Ltd (KKEL), Mumbai. Educated in Africa, UK and Australia and an education alumna of Victoria College, Melbourne, Ashar began her career as a secondary school teacher in Australia in 1987. Four years later she relocated to India to promote KKEL.

Starting with one preschool in Bandra, Mumbai with a first batch of 13 children, Ashar has engineered the growth of KKEL across 24 cities in India, Dubai and the Maldives. Today the company provides its services to 55 Kangaroo Kids preschools and 18 Billabong High International schools run on the franchise model. KKEL has recruited, trained and nurtured a team of over 65 skilled and experienced educationists who design, develop and deliver curricula based on contemporary education research and pedagogies — apart from dispensing continuous in-service teacher training to its 73 franchised schools.

Over the past 18 years since she started her first preschool in Mumbai, Ashar has refined and enriched her education philosophy and pedagogies, which have beneficially impacted the neglected area of preschool education in particular, raising standards countrywide.

ICT-in-education innovator

Shantanu Prakash, chairman and chief executive, Educomp Solutions Ltd (ESL). Innovator of the unique BOOT (build, own, operate and transfer) model to enable teachers and students across the country to utilise new ICT (information and communication technologies) to improve classroom teaching-learning outcomes, and for schools to painlessly become owners of sophisticated comp-uter labs, Prakash has developed ESL into India’s most high-profile ICT-in education listed company which went public in 2006. An alumnus of the Shriram College of Commerce, Delhi  and IIM-Ahmedabad, Prakash promoted the Delhi (Gurgaon)-based ESL in 1994 to serve the dormant needs of K-12 education. Currently ESL provides IT infrastructure, digitised curriculum and content, and teacher training services to 29,000 private and government schools countrywide, in which over 19 million students learn the Educomp SmartClass way by paying modest user fees of between Rs.80-150 per month.

Since then, ESL has rapidly diversified its services and products mix signing an agreement with the Singapore-based Raffles Education Corporation, the largest education provision group in the Asia Pacific region, under which the two companies will introduce the entire suite of ESL’s products and services in China; promoted its Roots and Wings presch-ools division and its ‘Millennium’ K-12 schools. The company has also entered into a joint venture with the London- based Pearson Group to promote a chain of vocational education and training centres across the country.

Vocational education missionary

Krishan Khanna is the Mumbai-based founder-chairman iWatch Trust and i2k Solutions. An indefatigable champion of vocational education for almost two decades, in 1993 Khanna threw up a promising corporate career to start iWatch, a not-for-profit charitable trust to promote vocational education for school-leavers and dropouts. Since then, this mechanical engineering graduate of IIT-Kharagpur has consistently lobbied the cause of vocational education and training (VET) in New Delhi, Mumbai and within Indian industry through his monthly publication Transforming INDIA. As a result, the establishment has belatedly woken up to the importance of VET, hitherto a blindspot of Indian education.

A promising outcome of Khanna’s persistent advocacy of VET is that heavyweight offshore providers of vocational education have begun low-profile operations in this country. Two London-based education behemoths — City and Guilds, which boasts the widest range of VET programmes worldwide and Pearson Plc, arguably the world’s largest education and publishing company — have linked up with the Manipal Education Group and the Delhi-based Educomp Solutions Ltd to promote India Skills and IndiaCan respectively, to dispense VET in India. Belatedly there’s new hope that widespread dissemination of VET will resolve India’s paradox of a massive pool of unemployed and an acute shortage of skilled technicians and workers.

Fast-track education entrepreneur

Satya Narayanan R, chairman, CL Educate Pvt. Ltd. An alumnus of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi and IIM-Bangalore, Narayanan quit a plum job at Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd in 1995 at age 24, to start a tutorial centre in a small room in Delhi for B-school aspirants with an initial investment of Rs.3,600. Currently, Career Launcher (now CL Educate) runs 225 wholly-owned centres offering test prepa-ratory tuition to 100,000 students writing a plethora of public entrance exams including CAT, GRE, GMAT, TOEFL, GATE, etc. With its 225 state-of-the-art fully-wired CL tutorial centres manned by 2,000 faculty (a majority of whom are IIM and IIT alumni) acknowledged as among the best in the country, in 2006 Narayanan diversified into the promotion of bricks-and-mortar education institutions including schools and colleges across India.

Since then, Narayanan has operat-ionalised 22 fully-fledged K-12 schools branded Indus World School across the country with an aggregate enrolment of 10,000 students in eight states of the Indian Union. That’s not all. An Indus World School of Business in Noida on the outskirts of Delhi is fully operational (enrolment: 120 students)  and has applied for deemed university status. Moreover, 35 vocational schools including ITIs, are being revamped under the public-private partnership model.

Also on Narayanan’s drawing board are 250 mid-market K-12 schools and a chain of low-cost schools over the next few years.

Divinely inspired edupreneurs

Dr. Augustine & Mme Grace Pinto, chairman and managing director respectively of the Ryan International Group of Institutions (RIGI). An economics graduate of Loyola College, Chennai who began his professional career as an English language teacher in suburban Mumbai in 1983, Augustine Pinto (together with wife Grace) promoted their first KG-class V school in Mumbai with a few dozen students. Since then, within the span of a quarter century, they have nurtured and expanded RIGI into the country’s largest chain of 128 private sector wholly-owned K-12 schools with an aggregate enrolment of 250,000 students in 16 states of the Indian Union.

Devout Christians, the Pintos attribute the rapid growth and development of  RIGI into India’s largest school chain to divine inspiration and guidance. But evidently divine inspiration has been supplemented with determined and skillful institution development progra-mmes. In the EW Survey of Schools 2011, Ryan International, Goregaon was ranked among the Top 10 day schools in Maharashtra and several RIGI schools were ranked among the Top 100.

Over the past three years, the RIGI management, which now includes heir apparent Ryan Pinto, a business manage-ment graduate of Warwick University, has continued to  spread its operations across the country and has inaug-urated eight new RIGI K-12 schools in India. Moreover, living up to its titular description, RIGI has recently promoted two CBSE-affiliated primary-secondaries in the Middle East (Gulf) countries. In addition, driven by a resurgent spirit of upgradation and innovation, the RIGI management is currently engaged in a massive organ-isation streamlining and restructuring exercise to improve teaching-learning standards and learning outcomes across the RIGI chain.

Powerhouse philanthropist

Shiv Nadar, promoter-chairman HCL Technologies and Shiv Nadar Foundation. An electrical and electronics engineering graduate of the PSG College of Engineering, Shiv Nadar is one of the early pioneers of India’s booming IT industry who co-founded Hindustan Computers Ltd in 1976 with an investment of Rs.1.87 lakh. Since then, the company renamed HCL Technologies Ltd which has diversified into over 40 subsidiaries, shifted its focus from manufacture of IT hardware to become a full-fledged software development and outsourced services corporation (revenue: Rs.16,034 crore in fiscal 2011-12). In 2007, Nadar stepped down from the role of chief executive of the company to work full-time with the Shiv Nadar Foundation.

Since it was registered in 1994, the Shiv Nadar Foundation has promoted a Vidya Gyan primary school for rural children in Uttar Pradesh; the first of its proposed chain of state-of-the-art K-12 Shiv Nadar schools across the country; laid the foundation stone of its Shiv Nadar University on a 286-acre site in Delhi’s National Capital Region; promoted the SSN College of Engineering (1996), the SSN School of Management and Computer Applications, the SSN School of Advanced Software Engineering, Chennai, and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (estb. 2010). “The foundation’s focus on education evolved from my personal belief in education as the single most powerful tool for individual and social change…,” says Nadar.

Liberal face of Hindu nationalism

Homi N. Dastur, Mumbai-based  executive secretary and director general Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan (BVB). An English literature and journalism postgraduate of Bombay University who signed up with BVB in 1963, this septuagenarian educationist has been closely involved with the Bhavan’s activities for almost half a century.

Founded by Kulapati K.M. Munshi on November 7, 1938 with the blessing of Mahatma Gandhi, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has steadily evolved into a nationwide intellectual, cultural and educational movement propagating the liberal and inclusive tenets of Indian — specifically Hindu — culture. During the past six decades, this essentially cultural organisation has promoted 92 schools, several arts, science and mass communications colleges, six business management institutes and 375 institutions and departments through its 125 centres across India and abroad. The aggregate student enrolment in BVB institutions is estimated at 300,000 and BVB’s print  publications exceed 1,750 titles with aggregated sales of over 30 million.

The polar opposite of rabid right-wing and anti-minorities Hindu nationalism represented by the RSS and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, this values driven education and cultural organisation represents the acceptable face of majority nationalism, as envisioned by its founder K.M. Munshi (1887-1971).

Computer literacy pioneer

Rajendra Pawar, promoter-chairman of the Delhi/Gurgaon-headquartered NIIT Ltd (revenue: Rs.1,576 crore in the year ended March 31, 2012). Promoted as a software development and ICT (information and communications technology) company by Pawar, Vijay Thadani and P. Rajendran, batchmates at IIT-Delhi in  1981, over the past 31 years NIIT has metamorphosed into “Asia’s No. 1. IT training company and leading global talent development corporation”. Most strikingly, NIIT which has 3,850 employees worldwide, delivers IT training programs and services, not only in India, but in 40 countries including the neighbouring People’s Republic of China, where it has established 192 owned and franchised NIIT Learning Centres in 24 provinces. These centres offer Mandarin-language computer training and English learning programs to “millions of students” in that country.

Short-term IT training programmes for youth and business executives apart, NIIT’s school learning solutions divi-sion offers computer training and curriculum-mapped multimedia learning services to 7,800 government primary/secondary and 1,200 private K-12 schools in 15 states countrywide.

Indeed it’s not an exaggeration to state that by spreading computer literacy NIIT has played a major role in the emergence of India’s IT industry as a significant player in the global IT and ICT sectors. And NIIT’s latest contribution to Indian education — Pawar’s brainchild — is the state-of-the-art NIIT University sited on a 100-acre campus in the fortress town of Neemrana, Rajasthan which offers engineering and business management education to 400 students.

New NCERT head

Prof. Parvin Sinclair, director of the National Council of Educational Research & Training (NCERT). An alumna of IIT-Kanpur and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, Prof. Sinclair acquired three decades of academic and teaching experience with TIFR and IGNOU, Delhi before taking charge as director of NCERT in January this year.

NCERT (estb.1961) is an apex level organisation which advises the Central and state governments on all matters related to school education. Its National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2005 is widely acknowledged as an excellent template for Central and state school education boards to adapt and follow. NCERT is also the country’s largest school texts publisher, and the council has often courted controversy for allegedly being used by incumbent governments in New Delhi to inject their ideologies in textbooks published by it.

A low-profile but well-respected mathematician and academic who has designed and developed several certificate programmes for school teachers as well as written school textbooks, Sinclair has reportedly short-listed development and renewal of curricula and instructional materials, and developing contemporary textbooks and teacher training programmes as her priorities.

Private schools defender

Damodar Goyal, president of the Society for Private Unaided Schools of Rajasthan which comprises 108 primary-secondary schools in the state. Following the legislation and unanimous enactment of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 by Parliament and its promulgation into law on April 1, 2010, Goyal has been in the forefront of the agitation against several provisions of the RTE Act which he believes severely threaten the constitutional guarantees conferred upon minorities — and expanded to include all citizens by the Supreme Court’s historic verdicts in the T.M.A Pai Foundation vs. State of Karnataka (2002) and P.A. Inamdar vs. State of Maharashtra (2005) cases. By these full-bench verdicts, the apex court held that all citizens have a fundamental right to be engaged in the ‘occupation’ of education provision without government micromanagement of privately-promoted  institutions of education which haven’t or don’t receive any government aid or largesse.

Goyal believes s. 12 (1) (c) of the RTE Act, which makes it compulsory for all private schools to admit 25 percent poor neighbourhood children, is in contravention of Article 30 (1) and Article 19 (1) (g) as interpreted by the T.M.A. Pai Foundation and P.A. Inamdar judgments of the apex court. The Society for Unaided Schools challenged the Act and s. 12 (1) (c) in particular by way of a writ petition No. 95 of 2010. However in a controversial 2-1 majority verdict delivered on April 12, the Supreme Court substantially upheld the RTE Act, but exempted unaided minority and boarding schools from the ambit of s. 12 (1) (c). Convinced that the important principle of the autonomy of privately-promoted education institutions is involved, Goyal has reportedly filed a curative petition in the Supreme Court praying for the society’s writ petition to be adjudicated by a larger bench of the apex court.

School education expert

Dr. Krishna Kumar, professor of education, Delhi University. An alumnus of Sagar University, awarded a doctorate by the University of Toronto, and nationally-reputed as an authority on foundational school education, Prof. Krishna Kumar was appointed chairman of the National Council of Educational Research & Training (NCERT) — the country’s apex level curriculum setting and K-12 textbooks publishing organisation — by the Congress-led UPA-I government immediately after it assumed office in May 2004. In his first term at NCERT, Kumar successfully excised most of the right-wing Hindu propaganda and mythology injected by the BJP-led NDA government (1999-2004) from NCERT social science textbooks. Moreover, during his six years in office he conceptualised and wrote the National Curriculum Frame-work for School Education (NCFSE) 2005, widely appreciated as perhaps the best ever blueprint of secular, liberal and holistic education for primary-secondary schools and examination boards.

When the Congress-led UPA-II government was returned to power in 2009, Dr. Kumar was retained as chairman of NCERT and appointed a member of Congress party president Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council with a special brief to advise on the implementation of the landmark Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. However, reportedly disillusioned with the failure of the Central and state governments to implement NCFSE and RTE legislation with sufficient enthusiasm, in 2010 Dr. Kumar put in his papers at NCERT and returned to the faculty of education at Delhi University. 

New CISCE  board chief

Rev. Jose Aikara, chairman Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE). A botany postgraduate of Madras Christian College, Chennai, founder principal of De Paul School, Berhampur, Orissa (1987-2000) and currently founder principal of De Paul International Residential School and College, Mysore (estb. 2003), Aikara was elected chairman of the pan-India CISCE examination board in March this year. The Delhi-based CISCE is a wholly autonomous organisation which has 1,800 of the country’s top-ranked private schools including The Doon School, Dehradun; The Shri Ram School, Delhi; Cathedral & John Connon School, Mumbai among others affiliated with it. An estimated 191,000 students countrywide write its annual class X (ICSE) and class XII (ISC) exams.

Though Aikara’s election to the top post in CICSE was mired in controversy with some associations of CISCE schools strongly opposing his appointment, he succeeded in convincing a majority of the 52-member board to elect him the first non-Anglo Indian chairman of the council (estb. 1958). In the top job for barely three months, Aikara has publicly committed to embarking on a curriculum upgradation drive and introducing new supplementary courses to ensure CICSE retains its position as India’s most preferred school-leaving examinations board.

Amity Group’s can-do family

Dr. Ashok Chauhan, promoter-chairman Amity Group of education institutions. A science graduate of Agra University who won a scholarship to study chemical engineering at Wurz-burg University in then West Germany in 1966, Chauhan tarried in Germany to transform into the most successful businessman of Indian origin in continental Europe as the founder-chairman of the AKC Group of companies. In the early 1990s after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunifi-cation of Germany, Dr. Chauhan reverse migrated to India to focus on the activities of the Ritnand Balved Trust (estb.1986) and the growth of the Amity Group of institutions in India.

Since then the Amity Group’s K-12 and higher education institutions have multiplied with unprecedented speed and purpose under the care and management of Dr. Chauhan and his wife Dr. Amita Chauhan and London School of Economics and Wharton Business School educated sons Atul and Aseem. Today the Amity Group comprises five universities, 17 primary-secondary schools and 150 other institutions of education with an aggregate enrolment of 95,000 students and 3,500 faculty spread over 17 campuses in India and seven abroad. These highly rated institutions include the state-of-the-art Amity University, Noida (aggregate enrolment: 35,000) managed by Atul Chauhan and Amity University, Rajasthan (5,000 students) by Aseem Chauhan.

Determined to provide Indian students with globally comparable undergrad and postgraduate profess-ional (engineering, business manage-ment, biotech etc) education at Indian prices as well as global exposure, Amity University has established seven campuses abroad and according to Dr. Chauhan has drawn up plans to establish Amity campuses in 25 countries worldwide.