To the deadly toll of the devastating earthquake of October 8 in the disputed territory of Kashmir which killed an estimated 40,000 people on both sides of the LoC (line of control) where armed troops of India and Pakistan have squared off for half a century, add one more casualty. On the morning of October 18, even as helpful civilians and Indian Army personnel were engaged in the rescue and rehabilitation of the 150,000 rendered homeless in the Kashmir valley, a group of masked terrorists gunned down Dr. Ghulam Nabi Lone, J&K’s education minister, leading to the loss of a valuable life.

Down to earth, frank, outspoken and accessible, Lone was leading a renewed campaign to rebuild the school and college infrastructure of the state, and put the remains of a bruised, traumatised and terrorised education system back on the rails. Following his induction into the state government three years ago, for the first time in many decades, the state had an education minister who enthused students and teachers equally.

A qualified medical practitioner Lone had worked in the state’s health department and retired as block medical officer in 2001 after 33 years of service. His popularity as a doctor in his home constituency, Sangrama in the Baramulla district of the valley, helped him best a seasoned National Conference politician in the historic 2002 assembly election.

“The education system has been the worst victim of militancy and is on the point of collapse. We have drawn up a comprehensive reform policy to be implemented in phases. It involves rebuilding burned-out or bombed school and college buildings, reopening schools which have been forcibly closed in rural areas and motivating teachers unwilling to take classes because of militants’ threats. Moreover the sanctity of the examination system which had become a farce has also been substantially restored. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme is a runaway success in the state because of these initiatives,” Lone told your correspondent who accompanied him on a whirlwind tour of schools and colleges in Srinagar in late July.

Lone’s dream was to transform scenic Kashmir into an international education destination. To this end he had fast-forwarded the proposals of several reputed residential schools to set up affiliates in the valley. He was equally optimistic about rising enthusiasm for higher education in the state. “You need to visit our universities and see how they are buzzing with activity. We intend to rapidly upgrade Kashmir University into a centre of excellence because people have realised how important education is in today’s globalised world,” he said.

Alas, it was not to be. Even in the midst of the misery and destruction that Kashmir’s worst earthquake has visited upon its unfortunate people, another valuable life has been snuffed out. As negotiators from India and Pakistan continue their interminable parleys, Kashmir’s long nightmare continues.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)

Committed gamester

Despite the nation’s perennialy rising population, growing incidence of teenage pregnancies and spread of the HIV virus and AIDS, sex education is a taboo subject in the overwhelming majority of India’s purblind institutions of learning. Fed up with inaction on this front, the Lucknow-based Young Inspirers Group (YIG) is setting about addressing this issue in a major way. A group of peer educators and counsellors committed to promoting sexual and reproductive health, YIG has been working quietly in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Delhi, Chattisgarh, Haryana, Punjab, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Uttaranchal to train social workers and develop communication strategies to make young people aware of their sexual rights and reproductive health issues.

Promoted in 1993 by Manish Kumar (31) a postgraduate of Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Science who was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship (2003-05) for his project “Communication Strategies for the Promotion of Adolescent Health” YIG believes there is an urgent need to cut through the aura of silence and shame surrounding issues of sexuality, gender, risk behaviour, violence, early marriage and pregnancy by developing innovative communication strategies.

To this end Kumar and his team have developed a first-ever “edutainment” programme of seven board games and 20 magic tricks related to adolescent health and development issues. “I was looking to develop a communication strategy which would prompt audience interaction. Hence, the idea of educative games. These games are culturally sensitive, interactive, fun and can be incorporated into lesson plans to teach young adults,” says Kumar.

The board games developed by YIG are notable for their magnified size and Kumar hopes to get his 27×27 ft snakes and ladders, 20×20 ft checkers and 15×15 ft ludo boards played with 9 inch cube dice, registered in the record books. This edutainment material is also scheduled to be displayed at an international conference on communication strategies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in December.

In the pipeline is a plan for a 60×60 ft cricket ground for a 20 overs game. “When a ball is hit and handled by a fielder standing in a particular square, he will be lobbed a question on adolescent issues by the umpire. The batsman will continue to take runs until the question is satisfactorily answered. After scoring every 10 runs, the batsman too would be required to answer a question. And if no answers are forthcoming, the team loses all the runs scored,” explains Kumar.

That’s edutainment with a purpose!

Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)

Also read: Enhancing emotional well-being of children

Youth motivator

Narayan Sethuramon, managing director of the W.S. Industries group of companies head-quartered in Chennai, and national vice-chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s Young Indian (YI) movement, is a man with a major mission. It is to involve all young Indians into playing an active role in the national development effort.

Flagged off on December 18, 2002, YI comprises a vibrant group of young business professionals between the ages of 25-40 who use the YI platform to debate issues of national importance with the objective of influencing the country’s economic and social agenda. “YI is an integral part of CII which already has a Young Business Council. In CII, there’s a broad consensus that business organisations need to venture beyond business activity. YI’s objective is to motivate the nation’s youth to unleash their huge potential, instill national pride in them and involve them in nation building,” says Sethuramon (34), an engineering alumnus of the PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore and an MBA from Purdue University, USA.

Two and a half years on, YI has established nine chapters across the country with an aggregate membership of 433. “We plan to set up six new chapters in India this year, expand our membership base to 750 and promote two international chapters. Moreover we have already convened two national summits which have motivated youth to undertake activities to promote social development on a sustainable basis,” he says.

The enthusiastic response to the YI summits which were well attended by over 800 young businessmen has convinced Sethuramon that YI is on the right path. He takes particular pride in the movement’s initiatives in education. The YI Brigades platform promotes YI Net chapters in schools and colleges. Presently there are 21 YI Nets in institutions across the country with 1,500 student members engaged in leadership skills training and initiatives ranging from cleanliness drives to educating the underprivileged and encouraging youth voter participation in elections.

Sethuramon believes that tie-ups with like-minded youth organisations in China, UK and Germany, will go a long way in promoting co-operation between young leaders in different countries. Therefore a YI mission to China is on the cards and the second Indo-German Young Leaders Forum was convened last month. “Our goal is to become a major movement of young Indians contributing to the community and society through projects that will ensure speedy growth of the economy and society. Right now, we work only in urban areas but plan to move on to semi urban and rural areas in a phased manner,” says Sethuramon.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

Energetic entrepreneur

Senior executive director, Radisson Hotel (Noida), director, MBD Publishing House (annual revenue: Rs.150 crore), interior designer, author, editor, real estate developer, kathak exponent and a successful entrepreneur, Monica Malhotra Kandhari (33), is all of these and more.

A commerce graduate of Delhi’s blue-chip Jesus & Mary College, Kandhari signed up with the family business MBD Publishing promoted by her father Ashok Kumar Malhotra four decades ago in 1968. MBD Publishing prints, publishes and markets school texts, art books and college textbooks. In fiscal 2004-05 the firm published 45 titles. “Over the past four decades we have built up an excellent human resources pool within MBD. This has enabled us to successfully diversify our activities, be it into hospitality or real estate besides publishing,” says Kandhari.

Beginning her career at the young age of 16 in the family firm, Kandhari has also made time to author several award-winning books including Children’s Picture Dictionary, a nursery primer and Begin with A among others. Moreover she is the managing editor of Nouvelle, the Radisson group’s lifestyle magazine distributed across Asia.

In 2003, Kandhari launched the group’s first successful hotel project- the Radisson MBD Hotel in Noida (Uttar Pradesh) where she combined contemporary decor with paintings of budding Indian artists. “I develop interiors as a cohesive whole. There has to be complete homogeneity between space, artefacts, lighting and furnishings,” she says. With the insights and experience derived from the MBD Group’s succes-sful diversification into the hotels and hospitality industry, Kandhari has ventured into real estate by constructing several shopping malls in Punjab as the head of the MBD Group’s export and construction divisions. She has also taken over the erstwhile ITDC Aiport Hotel in Kolkota and will be re-launching it shortly as a five-star deluxe property.

Simultaneously this energetic entrepreneur has drawn up a blueprint for a mixed use development project (MUDP) in Ludhiana, Punjab. It will club together a five star deluxe hotel, a mega mall and a five-screen platinum lounge multiplex. Christened the MBD Neopolis, this new “city” will be first launched in Ludhiana and later in Jalandhar, Amritsar and Patiala.

“You have only one life,” philosophises Kandhari, “and only so much time to realise your dreams. So one should make the best use of it!” 

Neeta Lal (Delhi)

Serial entrepreneur

Given the huge number of talented but underpaid teachers in India there was an inevitability that teaching services would be outsourced by developed OECD countries, where teacher salaries are relatively sky high and the number of college leavers entering the profession is declining. Quick to spot this business opportunity was Bangalore-based serial entrepreneur K. Ganesh, one of the pioneers of the concept of remote global working aka outsourcing. Enter Tutor Vista Pvt. Ltd- India’s first online assisted teaching services company.

“IT, legal, engineering, design and research and development services are being heavily outsourced to India. Our investigations indicate that in the near future there will be a huge demand for science and maths teacher services particularly in the US and UK,” says Ganesh a highly perspicacious alumnus of Delhi University and IIM-Calcutta.

According to Ganesh, Tutor Vista is the first Indian business enterprise to offer tuition services over the internet across continents in a structured manner. “Currently we employ 20 teachers and offer maths, science and English assisted learning services to class V-XII students in the US and UK. The tuition fee is US$ 20 (Rs.900) per hour of assisted learning. On the technical side we have a team of seven software engineers and ten content developers,” says Ganesh.

Though it is early days yet for Tutor Vista, Ganesh is confident that this is an idea whose time has come. Therefore he has invested heavily in teacher training and infrastructure development. The 20 expert teachers employed by the firm have been put through a rigorous four-week curriculum delivery, English improvement and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) familiarity programme. In addition they will be required to undergo 20 hours of skills upgradation training monthly.

A serial entrepreneur, Ganesh kickstarted his career with IT giant HCL before co-promoting ITNT, a systems integration service provider (acquired by iGate Technologies in 1998) and Customer Asset, a 2,700-seat call centre bought out in 2004 by ICICI at an astronomical $22 million.

Now an education promoter, Ganesh plans to grow Tutor Vista into a full service education provider offering Kg-Ph D assisted learning overseas, particularly to first world countries. “By March 2006 we will recruit and train over 100 teachers and have budgeted 1,000 students. India has a large pool of well-qualified but underpaid teachers who face immigration restrictions abroad. All we are doing is matching supply and demand without the hassle of emigration. I believe that the export of education services will be the next big thing in the IT revolution,” says Ganesh.

And in true entrepreneurial style, he’s backing his belief with men, money and materials.

Srinidhi Raghavendra (Bangalore)