Lifetime Achievement in Education Leadership: Lt. Gen (Retd.) Arjun Ray

Lt. Gen (Retd.) Arjun Ray

CITATION

SINCE 2008 WHEN THE ANNUAL educationworld india School Rankings assumed their current shape and form, the Indus International School, Bangalore (estb. 2003) has been ranked #1 among all international schools on the parameter of leadership/management quality, for five years consecutively. The consensus is that this extraordinary achievement of the IBO (Geneva)-affiliated class I-XII school which is also the country’s #1 international day-cum-boarding school, is mainly attributable to the extraordinary leadership and institution building skills of Lt. Gen. Arjun Ray, PVSM, VSM, Chief Executive of the Indus Trust which has promoted two other Indus International schools in Pune and Hyderabad. All of them are ranked among the national Top 10 in the category of international day-cum-boarding schools. 

An alumnus of the globally renowned Staff College, Camberley, UK and former military advisor to the Indian High Commission, UK, during his 38 years of service in the highly-disciplined, 1.2 million-strong Indian Army, Gen. Arjun Ray rose to the apex position of the military corps. In his last assignment before early voluntary retirement in 2002, as commander of the 14th Corps in Ladakh on the Indo-China border, he played the lead role in befriending and integrating alienated citizens in the border areas into the national mainstream by conceptualising and implementing Operation Sadbhavana (goodwill). Under this programme, he set up 13 schools, 11 women’s empowerment and 60 adult education centres along the Line of Control in Jammu & Kashmir. In recognition of this service in nation-building, in 2002 Gen. Ray was awarded the Param Vishisht Seva Medal, the highest award of the armed forces for distinguished service.

Immediately after his voluntary retirement from the Indian Army in 2002, Gen. Arjun Ray was hand-picked by the promoters of the Bangalore-based Indus Trust, who include Kumar Malavali, co-founder of Brocade Communications, USA, and Sushil Mantri, promoter-CEO of Mantri Developers, Bangalore, as Chief Executive of the trust. Since then, the Indus Trust has promoted three state-of-the-art Indus international schools in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune which currently have an aggregate enrolment of 2,650 students from India and 30 countries around the world mentored by 310 teachers. Moreover, the Indus Trust has promoted the Indus Training and Research Institute, Bangalore; the Indus Leadership School, Yellagiri (Tamil Nadu), and the world’s first Equal Opportunity School, Bangalore for children below the poverty line.

In recognition of this sterling contribution towards raising primary-secondary education to  best global standards, IB World, the in-house magazine of  IBO, Geneva, recently acclaimed Gen. Ray as one of six ‘IB World School Leaders Rethinking Education’. Likewise, for the same reasons and for his manifold contributions to internationalising Indian school education, the Board of Directors and Editors of EducationWorld are proud and privileged to confer its Lifetime Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2014 upon Gen. Arjun Ray.