It’s a season of change in some of India’s top-ranked private boarding schools. Several legacy residential schools across the country have new incumbents in the office of principal/headmaster. Among them: The Doon School, Dehradun (TDS, estb.1935), routinely ranked the country’s #1 all-boys boarding school in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings and the Lawrence School, Sanawar (LSS, estb.1858), also routinely ranked among the Top 3 co-ed boarding schools.

Peter Mclaughlin, an alum of the London School of Economics who had headed international schools in the UK and Egypt before he was appointed headmaster of TDS in 2009 after a global search, has put in his papers. Moreover after a long hiatus, Vinay Pande, who served as faculty at TDS for 19 years, has been appointed principal of the Lawrence School, Sanawar, where he had begun his teaching career. To this list, one might add Mayo College, Ajmer (estb.1875), although the new principal, the formidable Lt. General (Retd), Surendra Hari Kulkarni PVSM, AVSM, VSM, took charge over a year ago.

Although EW (estb.1999) was the first publication to acknowledge the valuable contribution these vintage schools have made towards developing the nation’s human capital stock, the admiration was less than mutual. It was only after 2007, when your editors introduced the annual EW India School Rankings in which public opinion recognised the superior education provided by these islands of primary-secondary excellence, that their lofty headmasters deigned to acknowledge this pioneer publication.

And while Praveen Vasisht, the long-serving principal of LSS, wrote some columns for EW and was inclined to share the frustrations of having to manage a board packed with government babus, Mclaughlin earned the jokey appellation of Perfidious Albion — a descriptive he didn’t quite appreciate — for having reneged on a contract to sign up every TDS parent as a subscriber. Nor was he amused by your editor’s narration of the no doubt apocryphal story of a Scotsman run over by a taxi while pursuing a pound coin in Regent St, London. Coroner’s verdict: Death due to natural causes.

Crab culture complaint

Most people — including media scribes — are probably unaware, but June 13 was a historic day in Indian journalism. In the insightful column he contributes to the Times of India, ad guru and social commentator Santosh Desai was allowed to acknowledge the existence of rival dailies Indian Express and also the Hindustan Times. This is a historic departure — although it could be a sub-editor’s oversight — from the established practice of Indian journalism and its competitive culture, under which every publication feigns ignorance, probably born out of contempt, of the existence of all rival publications, real or imagined. Hitherto, it was quite de rigueur for mighty media pundits to debate with phantom, unspecified enemies.

Thus despite being promoted with the highest motive of raising Indian education to global standards, which would help the sales of newspapers, the isolationist mind-set of Indian media and the crab culture of editors, have denied this once-struggling publication even the tiniest whiff of oxygen. At best we receive the grudging, dismissive descriptive of “a leading education magazine”. This despite our editorial policy of not only citing other publications by name, but also helpfully providing dates for the benefit of readers.

Moreover, our offers of collaboration to media behemoths including ToI, Hindustan Times, Anand Bazar Patrika, Dainik Bhaskar etc to make common cause with us to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda”, have suffered the proud man’s contumely, even as our data and education reform ideas are routinely stolen without attribution. But in a society where copying and plagiarisation is nothing to be ashamed about, this is a cross that parvenu publications have to bear.

Tiny cloud

For the past two years, your editor has been couriering Union human resource development (HRD) minister Smriti Irani a complimentary copy of this not-so-’umble publication ex officio. Less to curry favour than to provide her a route map for urgently needed reforms in Indian education, sine qua non. Naturally, as is the custom of the tribe of politicians, the Rt. Hon minister hasn’t communicated any appreciation of this precious gift — although NB Madam, the prime minister’s office once e-mailed his thanks.

Now, I understand the cause of her silence. Far from being appreciative of your editor’s monthly gift, the sentiments of the Rt. Hon minister may have been unwittingly hurt upon receipt of every complimentary copy of EW. Because appended to each copy is a post-it with your editor’s hand-written message drawing the attention of the busy minister to pages which may be of interest to her. A hand-written message, I was advised long ago by a PR (public relations) guru, personalises a gift for the recipient. Which it could have, except the handwritten post-it began by addressing the Rt. Hon minister as ‘Dear Minister’ or a more indigenised, grovelling ‘Dear Smritiji’. This I have recently learned to my great consternation, is a grave faux pas and against the fundamental tenets of Hindu scripture and cultural mores.

In a twitter-space war which has broken out between Ashok Choudhary, education minister of the opposition-ruled state of Bihar and Irani, the Rt. Hon minister sternly upbraided Choudhary for addressing her as ‘Dear Smritiji’ in one of his tweets. According to Irani, addressing women with the descriptive ‘Dear’ in communications is insulting and injurious to their self-esteem. Rejecting Choudhury’s contention that it’s normative for “professional emails to start with the word ‘dear’”, the country’s HRD (education) minister advises use of the honorific adarniya (honourable) in all missives addressed to the reportedly weaker sex. And so we live and learn. Except, isn’t there a tiny cloud over the Rt. Hon minister’s qualification to teach?