Although shopping malls offering a plethora of goods and services under one roof is a familiar and well-established concept in post-liberalisation 21st century urban India, a well-administered education mall offering a variety of high quality degree and certification programmes under one roof is a new proposition. That’s the objective of education entrepreneur Robert Donison, promoter-managing director of the Bangalore Management Academy (BMA, estb.2004), which he prefers to liken to a “knowledge village” offering  a constantly expanding menu of learning programmes to the public.

“We provide the skills-based qualifications of well-established universities and institutions of higher education in BMA. Currently, we offer the business management degree programme of the Bharatidasan Institute of Management (BIM) — the B-school of Bharatidasan University; the MBA (international), Master of professional accounting and Master of hospitality management of the Edith Cowan University, Australia; the LLM degree of the University of Aberdeen, UK and a foundation course to qualify students for entry into any of  the 11 universities of the Northern Consortium of Universities, UK which includes Manchester, Leeds, Yorkshire and other well-reputed British universities. We also offer the 18-month diploma programme of the Retailers Association of India,” says Donison.

An engineering graduate of PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore who pressed onto acquire a Masters in computer sciences from the London campus of South Eastern University, UK, Donison began his career as director of international admissions at the Emile Woolf College, London. In 1999 he co-promoted the London School of Commerce which quickly expanded into “one of the largest private sector B-schools in the UK with 3,000 students from 40 countries”, offering bachelor and Masters degrees in business management and administration. However in 2004, he felt the call of the home country and returned to India to promote the Bangalore Management Academy in the “happening garden city”.

Having invested over Rs.30 crore in his novel BMA project, Donison has drawn up ambitious plans to establish the academy as the country’s first private sector knowledge village, spread over three acres at Marthahalli in suburban Bangalore.

“Our objective is to establish BMA as a respected provider of multinational degrees and qualifications recognised and accepted worldwide, by working in close collaboration with reputed universities and institutions of higher learning around the world. By 2009 we will offer ten degree-based career pathways, and expect an aggregate enrollment of 2,000 students in BMA — all of whom will become highly skilled graduates of top universities with the option to either proceed abroad for higher studies or to be absorbed by Indian industry. A huge skills shortage is imminent in India Inc. We are preparing our students to contribute towards filling the breach,” says Donison.

Right on!

Dilip Thakore (Bangalore)

Acharya phenomenon

Fifteen years ago in 1992, Prof. R. Kalyanakrishnan and some of his students in the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M), department of computer science and engineering, initiated a research and development project with profound implications for the country’s lackadaisical adult literacy programme. The objective: to develop multi-lingual software to enable the country’s huge non-English speaking population to use computers in their mother tongue or other Indian languages. Since then, successive batches of 70-80 students have worked under Kalyanakrishnan’s guidance to develop a software programme christened Acharya which today benefits not only the socio-economically underprivileged but the visually challenged, the hearing impaired and spastic and autistic children as well.

“The uniqueness of the Acharya software is its ability to enable multilingual computing in all Indian and South Asian languages in a uniform manner. The Acharya program is based on the phonetic sounds of Indian languages with a specially installed multilingual text editor which transliterates across languages. The project has not been funded by any government or private organisation and is offered free of cost to all users. Moreover, in 1998, we added a speech-enhanced web browser that verbally articulates the content of websites and enables visually handicapped people to navigate the web, access information, exchange e-mail and chat in any language. Acharya is also the only known software program in the country which can produce books in Bharati Braille,” says Kalyanakrishnan, an alumnus of IIT-M and Yale University, who has been teaching in IIT-M for the past three decades. The Acharya learning program received international acclaim when it was nominated for the Stockholm Challenge Award (2002) and Kalyanakrishnan received a national award from former president Abdul Kalam in 2003.

To ensure that the software is accessible countrywide, the IIT-M team works closely with a Chennai-based NGO Vidya Vrikshah (estb.1997), which offers training programmes for the visually challenged and volunteers from other organisations wishing to use the Acharya program. During the past seven years, Vidya Vrikshah has trained more than 350 NGO volunteers assisting visually challenged people in different parts of the country. Moreover in 2003 two national level projects jointly initiated by IIT-M and Vidya Vrikshah — National Initiative for the Blind (NIB) and Village Information Knowledge and Skills (VIKAS) — were launched to help the country’s visually impaired and underprivileged rural women and children access literacy and learning programmes in their own languages.

Since 2005, when Acharya became an open source project, it has received overwhelming response mainly from India’s huge population of the blind estimated at 10 million, prompting Kalyanakrishnan to further empower this socially disadvantaged group. “Currently Vidya Vrikshah publishes a children’s monthly magazine Drushti in Braille which is sent to 25 schools for the visually challenged in Tamil Nadu. We need the help of many more software students, professionals and volunteers to take the Acharya project forward and ensure that it empowers target groups,” says Kalyanakrishnan.

The Force be with you!

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

Muktagan model innovator

Muktagan, a pilot school project initiated four years ago by the promoter-directors of Paragon Textile Mills, Mumbai (estb.1941), in collaboration with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), to run an English medium primary school in Worli, Mumbai could well become a template for reviving the languishing 1,188 primary schools promoted and managed by BMC in the country’s commercial capital. With a teacher-pupil ratio of 1:15, the Muktagan school allows children a free hand in learning, breaking away from conventional chalk-n-talk pedagogy. The seed funding of Rs.9 lakh was provided by the Paragon Charitable Trust (estb.1965).

Started as a balwadi (pre-primary) with 50 children and seven childcare workers in 2003 in the Paragon Mills compound, the Muktagan model was well received by parents. Consequently in March 2004 they requested the BMC to allow Muktagan to adopt a municipal school. Acknowledging the success of this new education model, BMC permitted Muktagan to adopt the G South Ward Municipal School, Worli as a pilot project. Children of mill workers are admitted into the school and the Muktagan pedagogy has been adopted in all classes upto IV.

“The starting point for effective change in the education system is a strong belief that it is possible to teach differently. We need to question the prevailing system which results in poor learning outcomes, and huge numbers of children dropping out of primary schools,” says Elizabeth Mehta, founder director of Muktagan.

A psychology graduate of Leeds University, UK with a B.Ed from Mumbai University, who started her career as a teacher at Queen Mary’s School, Mumbai in 1970, Mehta moved on to teach at the high-profile Bombay International School where she served for 12 years (1980-1992) rising to the position of vice principal. Subsequently in 1992 she signed up with the Aga Khan Educational Services in Mumbai where she served for 11 years, and became project director.

Muktagan’s innovative, child-centric, teaching-learning systems are beginning to pay off. Four of the six toppers in the annual class I exam conducted in 554 English medium schools by BMC in 2005, were from this NGO’s first batch. Moreover 92 percent of Muktagan students averaged over 70 percent in the same exam the following year (2006).

Widely acclaimed in the Mumbai media as a primary education innovator following the success of the Muktagan run primary in Worli, Mehta believes that high quality teacher training is the pre-condition of better learning outcomes in primary schools. “There’s an urgent need to restructure teacher training with the inclusion of substantial periods of internship in the classroom for teachers. Moreover educationists with substantial field experience rather than bureaucrats should be responsible for pedagogy and curriculum planning. Without a clearly enunciated educational philosophy, vision and mission, education initiatives can never be successful,” says Mehta.

In the Muktagan managed BMC primary school in Worli, she has walked the talk.

Vidya Sundaresan (Mumbai)

Girl child champion

A citation on Dr. Neelam Singh’s table commends her “outstanding contribution to the cause of protection and care of the girl child with particular focus on preventing female foeticide”. It’s an issue that has consumed her completely, she says. A practising gynaecologist in Lucknow, Singh has transformed into a one-woman mission to check rampant female foeticide in Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous state (180 million) — where the female-male ratio has plunged to 898:1000, way below the national average of 933:1000.

Through the promotion of Vatsalya — a voluntary organisation committed to building the capacities of grassroots functionaries, and providing consultancy services relating to social health issues — she is committed to creating mass awareness on the issue of female foeticide and its social consequences and towards implementation of the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994. Her gritty persistence and campaigns against female foeticide have earned her the reputation of having single-handedly created awareness of the issue in a state where the female-male ratio has dipped to alarming lows in certain districts (844:1000 in Hardoi and 847:1000 in Baghpat).

A core group of six members at Vatsalya works with 40 grass roots organisations in 12 districts. “We make use of local communication tools such as panchayat meetings, rallies, street plays and work with all kinds of associations to create awareness of the social implications of female foetcide,” she says.

Singh is unfazed that she is up against a powerful nexus of ultrasound machine manufacturers, banks which encourage doctors to take loans to buy them, and amoral medical practitioners. She is of the firm belief that morality and ethics shouldn’t be divorced from technology. “Studies the world over have shown that the use of ultrasound machines has not affected maternal and fetal outcomes in any significant way, yet their use persists. In developing countries in particular, the social implications of introducing new technology should be fully examined,” she says.

A recipient of the Acharya Vinobha Bhave National Volunteer Award in 2001 and the Rotary India 2006 Award for championing protection of the girl child, Singh is grateful that these awards have focused the spotlight on her cause. “There’s a very long way to go before the deep bias against girl children can be reversed. It requires massive and sustained investment in women’s education,” she says.

EW is with you!

Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)

Perth education promoter

Recently Murdoch University — one of Australia’s premier institutions of higher education — signed a memorandum of association (MOU) with the Pune-based Bharati Vidyapeeth University (BVU), to jointly promote and collaborate in biotechnology research projects. This path-breaking collaboration, which will include faculty, student and research exchanges, was facilitated by the Mumbai-based Jamal Qureshi, regional marketing manager of Perth Education City (PEC), a division of the Western Australian Trade and Education Office (WATO), which helps promote trade relations between India and Western Australia (WA). PEC in particular helps WA universities to recruit students from India, and sign partnerships with Indian education institutions and corporates.

Appointed the first regional marketing manager (South Asia) of PEC in September 2006, within a short span of 15 months Qureshi has put Western Australia on the map as a destination for high-quality international education for the increasing number of Indian students venturing abroad for higher study. “When I signed up with PEC, there were 796 Indian students pursuing higher education in Western Australian universities. In just one year this number has risen to 1,300, transforming WA into a hub for Indian students. Right now my goal is to make Perth the # 1 study destination for students from South Asia. To this end, I am identifying education agents and working with key academics and government officials. The Murdoch-BVU agreement is the first of many,” says Qureshi, a commerce and marketing graduate of Bombay University and the Welingkar Institute of Management and Research Development respectively. Prior to signing up with PEC, Qureshi was an education consultant advising Indian students about study opportunities in the US, UK, New Zealand and Australia.

According to Qureshi, WA hosts five major universities — Murdoch, Curtin, Notre Dame, Edith Cowan and the University of Western Australia — among other colleges and vocational training institutes. Currently, 41,804 students from around 60 different countries are studying in WA.

With tuition fees in Britain and the US rising sharply in recent years, Perth is fast emerging as a popular study destination for Indian students because of the quality and range of programmes offered by universities in this climatically salubrious city. “Institutions of higher education in Perth are ranked among the best in Australia and offer innovative and flexible degree programmes with strong emphasis on research and development. There are also a wide range of vocational programmes on offer. Moreover Perth enjoys temperate climate, the lowest unemployment rate in Oz and offers plenty of internship and work opportunities,” says Qureshi.

Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai)