Some four decades after it bequeathed its mantle to the Delhi-based Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) which conducts the prestigious ICSE school leaving examination for 1,286 secondary schools scattered across the country, the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), is all set to make a comeback to Indian shores. In mid-February a top-level three person UCLES team led by Dr. Fred Burke, director South Asia and Mauritius of the Cambridge (UK)-based syndicate (est.1858) made a week’s whistle-stop tour of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore to conduct teacher training workshops which attracted over 550 senior teachers including principals.

“Yes, you could say that we are making a comeback of sorts to India. But this time round our focus is on training programmes — face-to-face, online and distance — for teachers in Indian schools to improve their classroom teaching skills. Therefore we are offering cooperation rather than competition to the national boards of examination — CBSE and CISCE — in India,” says Burke.

According to him there is also considerable latent — and increasingly articulated — demand for the bouquet of diploma programmes which UCLES has designed for schools and professionals looking to upgrade their skill-sets. The syndicate has developed short-term study programmes for information technology, business management and travel and tourism for school to postgraduate learners, apart from its popular teacher training programmes. “The response from school principals and from students and learners for our diploma programmes has been excellent,” says Burke.

This is hardly a matter for surprise because UCLES has an association with India which goes back over a century. And even though the syndicate hand-held and anointed CISCE as its successor examination board four decades ago when in deference to nationalist sentiment it quit India, to this day 120 Indian schools offer UCLES’ International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE), the globally recognised equivalent of the British GCE-O level, to class X students who opt for it. Therefore while this time around the syndicate’s emphasis is on marketing its teacher training diploma programmes in the subcontinent, the gradually rising affiliations are an additional bonus.

“We have retained friendly contact with the national examination boards, particularly CISCE for the past 25 years. And now we are looking more intensively for ways and means by which we can work with them for the good of education in India,” says Burke.

That sounds like an offer too good to refuse.

Dilip Thakore (Bangalore)

New B-school pacesetter

The hitherto low-profile Bangalore-based Institute of Finance and International Management (IFIM) is rapidly moving up the hierarchy of India’s reportedly 930 business management training institutions. Promoted in 1995 by the Centre for Developmental Education (CDE) — a registered trust — IFIM has made it into the ranks of the top 50 B-schools in the country according to Outlook magazine (September 15, 2003).

“The differentiating characteristic of IFIM is our strong emphasis on learning by doing. We believe that personalised attention or mentoring is the best B-school pedagogy. Therefore each student is assigned a faculty member who monitors his progress closely. That’s why we bill ourselves ‘the Mentor B-school’,” says Prof. R.K. Vijaya Sarathy, an alumnus of Bangalore, Mysore, Long Island (New York) and Western Ontario (Canada) universities who signed up as dean of IFIM in 1995 and was appointed director in 1999.

Prior to IFIM, Sarathy served as professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore where he taught for two decades (1974-95) and was visiting professor to several reputed B-schools including the IIMs at Kozhikode and Indore, Netherlands Business School, Erasmus University, and the University of Buckingham.

Initially housed in a small rented building with only 40 students on its muster roll, today IFIM is a fully-fledged B-school with 380 students and 40 faculty. Last November the institute shifted base to a new Rs.4 crore state-of-the-art compact (1.5-acre) campus in Electronics City which houses India’s major IT giants including Infosys and Wipro Corporation.

“The campus offers three conference halls of differing capacities, an indoor games room, a large and growing library of 20,000 volumes and 200 journal subscriptions, and a computer lab of 50 systems with 24-hour internet connect-ivity in addition to airy classrooms and administrative areas. The objective is to create a learning environment which replicates well-designed corporate environments,” says Sarathy.

Recently IFIM entered into academic agreements with North Texas University, USA and the Liverpool Business School, UK. “Contemporary curriculums and international focus have ensured that our graduates readily meet industry requirements. This is indicated by our excellent placement record. Of the latest batch of 55 students who graduated last December 95 percent have been snapped up by front-rank corporates such as ICICI Bank, ABN Amro, Le Meridien, Tata Tea and Satyam Infoway, while the rest have gone abroad for higher study,” says Sarathy.

On IFIM’s drawing board are plans to launch one-year postgraduate programmes in insurance, rural, retailing and healthcare management and short-term executive development programmes for working middle-level managers, and the construction of a hostel on campus.

Srinidhi Raghavendra (Bangalore)

Dr. Himanshu Mehta doesn’t like dropping names. But this Mumbai-based ophthalmic surgeon’s patients’ list reads like a Who’s Who of Indian industry, Bollywood and politics. At the same time no patient who comes to his clinic is turned away, the poorest of the poor included. Mehta subscribes to the old-fashioned notion that the healer’s profession must be combined with philanthropy.

An alumnus of Mumbai’s Jai Hind College and the Seth G.S. Medical College affiliated to KEM Hospital who proceeded to the Herman Eye Center, Houston, Texas where he specialised in vitro-retinal surgery, Mehta returned to India in 1992 to establish the Vision Eye Center in Juhu, Mumbai. He is among the very few ophthalmic surgeons in India who have specialised in both anterior as well as posterior eye surgery. “There are a total of six super specialties in ophthalmic surgery. Usually an ophthalmic surgeon specialises in anterior including cataract surgery, or in posterior retinal surgery. It’s rare for a surgeon to specialise in both,” he explains.

Practising at the Lilavati and Nanavati hospitals and the Pramukh Swami Eye Hospital in Mumbai, Mehta performs complex eye operations with delicate finesse. He has treated movie star Amitabh Bachchan’s parents. Later he joined hands with Bachchan to conduct a free eye camp on December 1, 2003 on the occasion of the late Harivanshrai Bachchan’s 96th birthday, where he examined more than 1,000 patients and performed over 150 free eye surgeries.

Mehta views ophthalmic surgery as a combination of art, science and philosophy. His strong philosophical moorings and profound faith in God give him the courage to confront the toughest situations with equanimity. “We will soon be traversing new frontiers in eye surgery, such as retinal transplantation or transplanting electrodes on the retina,” he predicts.

Apart from advocating the study of philosophy, Mehta has other advice for aspiring medical practitioners. “They should at best expect to earn a decent living; they will never become millionaires. You need to be driven by a higher calling than the need to make money out of the healing professions,” he advises.

Mona Barbhaya (Mumbai)

 

Shamsie’s world

Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie (31) stole the show at Chennai’s Stella Maris College last month, where she participated in a week-long ‘writer in residence’ programme to teach creative English writing to students.

Tall, slim and poised, Shamsie has an easy, friendly manner and a natural flair for the language. After schooling in Karachi, where she was born, Shamsie went on to Hamilton College, New York graduating with a degree in creative writing. The seeds of her first novel were sown in a short story she wrote in Hamilton from where she pressed on to acquire a Master’s in fine arts and creative writing from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her first novel In the City by the Sea, which was her Master’s thesis, was accepted for publication while she was still at university and published in England and India in 1998. Set in Karachi, the novel was shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys/ Mail on Sunday award in Britain and won the prime minister’s award for literature in Pakistan in 1999.

Shamsie followed this up with her second and best known novel, Salt and Saffron. Published in the US, Britain, Pakistan and Italy in 2000, it’s the saga of an affluent Dard-e-Dil family, divided by Partition but united despite it. Her third novel Kartography is set against the Bangladesh war of 1971.

Success sits lightly on this young writer who was named an Orange Prize ‘writer of the 21st Century’ at the age of 28. “I don’t write for fame and awards. I tend to write of the worlds I know and if I’m lucky to win an award, it’s all to the good. My novels are set in Karachi and it’s the only place I want to write about,” she says.

Currently Shamsie teaches creative writing at her alma mater Hamilton College and shuttles between London which she considers her second home and Karachi. She is now working on her fourth book to be published shortly. “My ambition is to be a better writer than I am today and to try to be different in every book I write,” she says.

Power to your elbow!

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)