The general consensus in Indian society is that “commercialisation of education” is one of the seven deadly sins. Politicians condemn it even as using insiders’ knowledge of the byzantine education licencing and regulatory system, they promote private education institutions and profit from them. The learned justices of the Supreme Court condemn it, unmindful of the irony that India is one of the few countries worldwide which levies a tax on (agonisingly tardy) justice by way of court fees, while the country’s subsidies-addicted middle class demands world class, globally-competitive education for its children but baulks at having to pay for it. Although private school and college tuition fees in India are the lowest worldwide, the country’s myopic middle class is always complaining and inviting government control, despite unwillingness to touch free-of-charge government schools.
Against this backdrop, brave entrepreneurs driven by the urge to combine business with idealism to develop the country’s abundant but wasted human resource have my full support. According to a league table compiled by the World Bank in which it measures ease of doing business in 183 countries, India is ranked 132. And if a global index measuring the ease of promoting and establishing education institutions is ever compiled, I have no doubt that contemporary India will rank last. Despite this uninviting prospect, within the country’s 1.2 billion population, there’s no shortage of edupreneurs driven by public demand, sense of priorities, and altruism who are ready, willing and able to take on discretionary rules, regulations and arbitrary impositions to establish and administer private schools, colleges and vocational education institutions, to offer the country’s youth meaningful, globally competitive education. This tribe of edupreneurs deser-ves the gratitude rather than opprobrium as is the fashion, of the nation.
The cover feature in this issue narrates the story of one such edupreneur from a modest background, who is determined to endow the enabling power of quality education to India’s youth and children. Seventeen years ago, Satya Narayanan R, an alumnus of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi and IIM-Bangalore, started Career Launcher as a one-room test prep firm with hired furniture. Since then the enterprise has come of age as CL Educate Ltd, a multi-divisional company which has established an excellent reputation in the test prep, K-12 school and vocational education and training segments of the education sector. Our cover story traces the philosophy, growth and transformation of Career Launcher into CL Educate, a company set to emerge as the market leader in private education.
Coincidentally, the special report feature in this issue is a no less inspiring story of edupreneurs who gave up cozy corporate perches to follow their dream of infusing sports education into the dull and exam-centric curriculums of India’s schools and colleges. Believers of the philosophy that a healthy body is the precondition of a healthy mind, and driven by the mission to transform the nation’s also-ran youth into podium finishers in the Olympic and other global sporting arenas, this new genre of professionally-qualified sports educators are delivering a slew of fitness and training programmes to education institutions and schools. For further and better particulars, check out the special report filed by our indefatigable managing editor Summiya Yasmeen.
