7×7 Concise History of Indian Education (1999-2006)The seven year period (1999-2006) during which EducationWorld has discharged its watchdog role as India‚s sole education news and analysis publication, has been perhaps the most eventful ever for Indian academia. For the first time in the half century since independence, public education has begun to move from the outer peripheries towards centre stage. Quite obviously it would be presumptuous to claim most ‚ or any ‚ of the credit for this overdue seismic shift in the national mindset. It‚s the outcome of the silent and usually unappreciated efforts of hundreds of voluntary organisations and thousands of individuals who have discerned the vital connection between post-independence India‚s failed national development effort and its neglected public education system. Nevertheless during this historic period, this publication has been the only serious chronicler of momentous developments in Indian education. In our seventh anniversary issue we highlight 7×7 landmark legal, technology, new institutions, NGO, education leadership etc events and initiatives which have the potential to transform Indian academia and society and usher in a new era for the contemporary world‚s largest child population. 1. Seven milestones in Indian education 86th Amendment and Sarva Shiksha AbhiyanNovember 28, 2001. The Lok Sabha unanimously passed the 93rd (now renumbered to 86th) Amendment to the Constitution which mandates the State to provide “free and compulsory education to all children of the age six to fourteen years”. The same day outside Parliament, more than 50,000 parents of out-of-school children and education activists from all parts of India staged a shiksha satyagraha, pledging support to this historic constitutional amendment. Subsequently the BJP-led NDA government, which was voted to power in 1999, rolled out the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All) campaign to fulfill this constitutional obligation to provide free and compulsory education to all children in the six-14 age group. This ambitious programme ‚ detailed in a 659-sheaved document ‚ is being implemented in alliance with 31 state governments and is expected to meet the education needs of 192 million children in 1,100,000 habitations. Its target: all children in school by 2010.Supreme Court frees Indian educationOctober 31, 2002. In a landmark judgement in the TMA Pai & Ors vs State of Karnataka & Ors, the Supreme Court restored the right of private sector unaided professional education colleges to regulate admissions, determine fee structures and fully administer their institutions with minimal interference from government. The apex court not only upheld the right of minorities to “establish and administer educational institutions of their choice”, but also expanded this right to all citizens (including non-minorities). This judgement which was diluted by a subsequent SC verdict in the Islamic Academy vs Union of India in August 2003, was again reaffirmed by the apex court in its verdict in P.A Inamdar vs. State of Maharashtra. On August 13, 2005 the Supreme Court reiterated that Central and state governments have no right to appropriate admission quotas at arbitrary tuition fees in private professional colleges they haven‚t funded or financed.Saffronisation of school textbooksOctober 3, 2002. More than two years after the presentation of a new National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE 2000), the National Council of Education, Research and Training (NCERT) presented the nation with a new set of model social science textbooks for classes VI-IX.This routine curriculum revision exercise generated a storm of protest from opposition parties, historians and academics because the textbooks had been patently rewritten to accommodate the extremist hindutva agenda of the BJP and its far-right affiliates such as the RSS, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal. Several well-established historical facts were omitted, reinvented and/ or ‚Ëœsaffronised‚ in the new texts to fit with the ideological predilections of the BJP. Assault on the IIMs/ IITsFebruary 5, 2004. Former physics professor of Allahabad University, Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, in his capacity as Union HRD minister issued a terse five-paragraph order directing all six Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) to slash tuition-cum-residence fees payable by students admitted in the new academic year (2004-05) by 80 percent ‚ from Rs.1.5-1.75 lakh to a uniform Rs.30,000 per year. Earlier Joshi had targeted the country‚s seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) ordering them to route all alumni donations through a government constituted Bharatiya Shiksha Khosh trust. Joshi‚s interference with IITs and IIMs which have acquired global reputations for the high quality of problem-solving engineers and managers they produce, proved particularly galling for India‚s fast-expanding urban middle class and precipitated an electoral backlash against the BJP and NDA.Ouster of Joshi and UPA‚s new education agendaMay 22, 2004. In the 13th general elections called by the NDA government in April-May 2004, the BJP-led NDA suffered a shock defeat with the imperious Union HRD minister Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi failing in his bid for re-election from the university town of Allahabad.Following this unexpected electoral rout of the BJP, a Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was sworn in on May 22 in Delhi. In its Common Minimum Programme announced on May 28, the UPA pledged to raise public spending on education to 6 percent of the GDP, impose a cess on all Central taxes to “universalise access to quality basic education” and reverse the creeping communalisation of school syllabuses and texts.93rd Constitution AmendmentDecember 22, 2005. To nullify the judgement of the Supreme Court in P.A Inamdar vs. State of Maharashtra which reaffirmed that the State cannot impose its quota reservation policies on private unaided colleges, the Union HRD ministry responded with the 104th Constitution Amendment Bill which pointedly overrules this unanimous apex court judgement. Last December, Parliament unanimously approved the Bill which became the Constitution 93rd Amendment Act, 2005 when President Kalam signed it on January 20, 2006. Subsequently a new clause was added to Article 15 of the Constitution permitting the State to decree reservations for any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in all private educational institutions, including schools.OBC reservation diktatApril 5, 2006. Union human resource development minister Arjun Singh announced that the 17-party coalition United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre has approved his ministry‚s proposal to reserve an additional 27 percent (in addition to the 22.5 percent reserved quota for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes) of capacity in Central government promoted universities and education institutions (JNU, IITs, IIMs, AIIMS, etc) for OBC (other backward castes) students. While this out-of-the-blue reservation diktat evoked studied criticism from the intelligentsia and media, the student community particularly in north India, responded with nationwide protests and campus rioting. Consequently on May 29, a 13-member Oversight Committee chaired by former Karnataka chief minister Dr. Veerappa Moily was constituted to recommend ways and means to expand institutional capacity of Central government institutions without reducing the merit students quota. The committee is due to submit its final report shortly.2. Seven extraordinary education leaders Choosing seven leaders from among the estimated 5 million professors, teachers, officials and education entrepreneurs, who have impacted Indian education most in the past seven years since EducationWorld turned the spotlight on the nation‚s neglected groves of academe, is a challenging ‚ perhaps controversial ‚ task. While compiling this list of the most influential seven, the prime consideration has been the degree to which they influenced national education policy for the greater good, and/ or exhibited positive role model qualities. Literacy program inventorFakir Chand Kohli. Widely acclaimed as the founding genius of India‚s booming IT and ITES (information technology enabled services) industries, and first chief executive of the Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services Ltd ‚ India‚s largest IT software and ITES company (annual revenue: Rs.11,282 crore; no of employees: 70,000) which has offices in 35 countries around the world, Kohli is also the mastermind who developed TCS‚ revolutionary computer-based functional literacy (CBFL) program which has demonstrated the potential to transform contemporary India‚s estimated 300 million adult illiterates into readers of daily newspapers within 40 hours of learning time. Developed in 2000 by a high-level team of TCS professionals working under Kohli‚s guidance, CBFL is a computer-driven audio-visual pedagogy based on visual recognition of familiar words in the learner‚s mother tongue. Successfully tried and tested in several states (Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat) and having already transformed over 56,000 absolute illiterates into functionally literate citizens, a national rollout of CBFL has been stymied by Central government indifference to its mind-boggling potential. With Indian industry failing to respond to Kohli‚s call for donation of used personal computers required for the programme, the project was stalled for five years by the refusal of customs authorities to permit the import of computers donated abroad, free of customs duty. In 2004 a government notification granted customs duty exemption for donated second-hand PCs. But refusal by the Central and state governments to assume responsibility for distributing imported PCs nationwide has further stalled this revolutionary adult literacy programme, which needs widespread public support ‚ NCERT saviourDr. Krishna Kumar. During the five-year term in office of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government (1999-2004), hindutva rightists made a determined effort to ‚Ëœsaffronise‚ social sciences textbooks commissioned and printed by the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT ) ‚ the country‚s largest textbooks publisher. Convinced that under previous governments NCERT had been publishing and prescribing ‚Ëœpseudo-secularist‚ history and social sciences texts to school children, former HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi packed research institutes such as the Indian Council of Historical Research and Indian Council of Social Sciences Research with like-minded scholars of dubious antecedents to rewrite Indian history from the hindutva perspective.Following the unexpected ouster of the NDA government in the general election of 2004, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government appointed Krishna Kumar, professor of education at Delhi University, as director of NCERT to repair the damage. In the two years since, Prof. Kumar has played a major role in drafting a new National Curriculum Framework for School Education (2005) and commissioning new social sciences textbooks which have been widely appreciated by liberal academics and intellectuals for their objectivity and balance. A deeply learned and child- friendly academic, Kumar has also been instrumental in giving momentum to the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan or Education for All initiative, which has been unreservedly adopted by the incumbent Congress-led UPA administration from its predecessor BJP-led NDA government ‚ Model varsity builderDr. Ramdas Pai. Since taking charge of the Manipal Education Group (MEG) and the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) following the death of the legendary Dr. T.MA Pai (1889-1979) who pioneered the concept of self-financed, privately promoted institutions of professional education and famously promoted the Kasturba Medical College, Manipal in 1953, Dr. Ramdas Pai has steered the growth and development of MAHE into India‚s largest private provider of internationally acceptable medical, engineering and professional (nursing, pharmacy, business management, communications) education. MAHE was certified India‚s first multi-disciplinary, multi-campus deemed (private) university in 1993. Over the past half century, the low profile MEG has acquired a global reputation for medical education and at the invitation of the governments of Malaysia and Nepal, has established state-of-the-art medical colleges-cum-teaching hospitals in these countries.Today MEG comprises 55 institutions of education with an aggregate enrollment of 86,000 students instructed by a 1,500-strong faculty in India. A firm believer in continuously ploughing back revenue into institutional development, during the past seven years MEG has promoted several world class institutions in India and abroad. Among them: Manipal College of Medical Sciences, Nepal (capital cost: Rs.195 crore); Sikkim Manipal Institute of Medical Sciences (Rs.42 crore); Sikkim-Manipal Institute of Technology (Rs.70 crore) and Melakka-Manipal Medical College, Malaysia (Rs.54 crore).Moreover during the past quarter century since Dr. Pai inherited stewardship of MEG, the small town of Manipal (pop. 40,000) has transformed into a model university town. Infrastructure investments made in Manipal ‚ and its environs ‚ during the past seven years include the Library Block, MAHE (Rs.46 crore); Chandra-shekar Hostel (Rs.23 crore); Dr. TMA Pai Convention Centre, Mangalore (Rs.33 crore); Innovation Centre, MAHE (Rs. 20 crore) and Manipal College of Dental Sciences, Attavar (Rs.12 crore) ‚ Disabled children‚s championDr. Mithu Alur. An alumnus of the London School of Economics with a Ph D awarded by London University, Alur who founded the Spastics Society of India in 1972 and National Resource Centre for Inclusion (NRCI), a state-of-the-art school-cum-research centre in Mumbai in 1999, is the celebrated champion of people ‚ especially children ‚ with disabilities. Apart from promoting SSI and NRCI which provide education to 2,500 physically and mentally challenged children, Alur has staged two global North-South conferences on inclusive education (i.e on ways and means to include challenged children into mainstream education) in Mumbai (2001) and Kochi (2003). According to Alur, currently there are 36 million children in India who are denied education because of their disabilities. However as a result of her tireless efforts, the Union government has accepted the inclusion of challenged children into mainstream schools as a cardinal principle of its education policy ‚ CRY change agentIngrid Srinath. An economics and statistics alumna of Elphinstone College, Mumbai with an MBA from Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta, Srinath was a senior executive in some of the country‚s top advertising agencies including Lintas and Trikaya Grey (1986-1998), prior to signing up with CRY as its director of resource mobilisation. In 2004 she was promoted to the office of chief executive of CRY (Child Rights & You), an NGO 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 has been instrumental in transforming the organisation into a children‚s rights 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 governments join together to ensure children‚s rights,” says Srinath. 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 ‚ Pratham pioneerMadhav Chavan. A chemistry alumnus of Ohio State University, USA and former reader in physical chemistry at Mumbai University, Chavan experienced a Pauline conversion to the cause of primary education in 1994 and promoted the Mumbai Pratham Initiative, an NGO committed to universalising and upgrading elementary education in India. Since then, Pratham has emerged as the largest and most influential education NGO countrywide with an annual budget of Rs.36 crore. Operating in 18 states, it has helped 500,000 children become literate through its three-week reading and basic maths programme. Also active in teacher training, curriculum development and education research, Pratham recently (January) published a first-of-its-kind Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2005. After a learning assessment survey conducted by 20,000 ASER volunteers in 485 of the country‚s 600 districts, ASER 2005 revealed that the quality of primary education dispensed in rural India is so poor that almost half the students in class VII are unable to exhibit the learning and comprehension they should have attained in class II (see cover story EW March 2006).Meanwhile Pratham is mobilising a huge army of research volunteers to compile the data required to write ASER 2006. A fund-raiser extraordinaire, Chavan is also an influential member of the National Advisory Council, hitherto chaired by Congress party president Sonia Gandhi ‚ Slum children‚s championShukla Bose. Once the most highly remunerated woman chief executive in India as chairperson of Resort Condominiums India Pvt. Ltd (RCI) ‚ the company which introduced the concept of time share holidays in India ‚ Bose suddenly quit the corporate world “to do something more meaningful” in the mid 1990s. Still maintaining her links with Christel De Haan the US-based founder-promoter of RCI (USA), she conceptualised India‚s first Christel House English medium school in Bangalore for the Christel Foundation in 2000. Three years later she fell out with De Haan on the issue of greater autonomy for Christel House, and promoted the Parikrma Humanity Foundation (PHF) in 2003. Since then PHF runs four primary-cum-secondary co-ed free schools for slum children with an aggregate enrollment of 730 students. The distinguishing characteristic of PHF schools is that they follow the curriculum of the Delhi-based Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) which has licensed over 1,605 of India‚s top-rung private English medium schools. As such the Parikrma schools provide globally benchmarked English medium instruction to their students. This is a sharp departure from established practice in India where the children of the poor at the base of the socio-economic pyramid, are provided vernacular medium education in deference to the sentiments of state governments. Assuming full responsibility for students, PHF schools (funded by public and corporate donations) provide nutritious snacks, a mid-day meal and healthcare and parental guidance services. “In PHF we are confident that we can equip the children of the poorest of the poor with the education and life skills required to succeed in the global marketplace,” says Bose ‚ 3. Seven new genre 5-star schoolsIn the 1990s, on the threshold of the new millennium, in anticipation of year-on-year 6-7 percent annual rates of economic growth following economic liberalisation and deregulation which would release the purchasing power of India‚s new middle class, several education entrepreneurs almost simultaneously promoted a new genre of capital-intensive international schools which have become the latest status symbols of India‚s upwardly mobile middle class. Providing leisure-resort style, landscaped, fully-wired campuses bristling with hi-tech equipment and teaching aids, en suite residential accommodation, expat headmasters, affiliation with the best international examination boards and charging mind-boggling annual tuition fees ranging from Rs.1-6 lakh, new genre international schools have eclipsed the country‚s once venerated British-inspired public i.e private schools such as Doon, Mayo, Bishop Cotton, St. Joseph etc. EducationWorld has diligently chronicled their birth and growth. The magnificent seven:Jain International Residential School, BangaloreSprawled over 150 acres of landscaped gardens and constructed at an estimated cost of Rs.100 crore, JIRS is an oasis in the desert of the arid Kanakpura taluk, 40 km from Bangalore. Since it admitted its first batch of 270 students in 1999, this fully residential co-ed CBSE-affiliated school which provides its 800 students extravagant state-of-the-art academic infrastructure, plush dormitories and sports facilities, has become a model for other five-star schools. Promoted by Bangalore-based former Reliance textiles salesman turned edupreneur Chenraj Jain, chairman of the Sri Bhagwan Mahaveer Jain group of 20 institutions, JIRS is affiliated with the Delhi-based CBSE and offers its 800 boarders residential suites with four students to a room, attached bathrooms with 24 hour hot water supply and a range of sports facilities unimaginable to a 1980s or even 90s generation parent. They include badminton, tennis, basketball courts, cricket field with a turf wicket, indoor athletic track, horse riding, swimming pool, golf course, gym, sauna and jacuzzi. (tuition fee: Rs.2.5-3.65 lakh per year)The International School, Bangalore (TISB)The jewel in the crown of the National Public Schools group of six education institutions and spread over 125 acres in suburban Bangalore, TISB which admitted its first batch of 210 students on June 4, 2000 current