Why Schools in Indian Cities take Cash Donation for Pre-Primary Admissions?

Is it really so? You may ask if you do not have a child to be admitted to the schools and if you do not happen to live in any big Indian city.

But ask the young parents who live in the Indian metros. In private conversations they curse the Indian government and the city school managements and complain about the blackmailing and the exploitation that the big city Indian schools keep on perpetuating. Education is not allowed to be run a any business in India. Education is reserved for the so-called societies and trusts to be carried out on a non-profit basis. The schools of India in the private domain have to be run only by non-profit societies and trusts set up in the guise of charity , religion or social empowerment!

School fees in the past in India, both in the private and in the government run institutions used to be very negligible and no one made any profit by running these institutions. In the private, it used to be almost a social service and a philanthropic service.

But the situation changed in the past two decades. Governments pulled away from urban education and created situations for the private schools to charge heavy fees. The private schools which have been in existence for many decades having all the necessary infrastructure became the immediate beneficiaries as large sums began to flow to their coffers as fees.

The convents and all those minority cash starved educational institutions of India soon became cash rich, attracting the clever ones in their lot to get in to the managements of these institutions. The priests, the bishops and such others from other religions who have educational institutions all became more and more influential and powerful. They set the example to clever individuals to set up charitable educational societies and educational institutions under their respective banners.

Education soon have turned out to be a big profit business without any one any time to pay any taxes or to be accountable to any one! To their merriment, India soon was having a growing population of young parents whose average incomes stood several times higher than the average incomes of the rest-of-India. These higher income neo-middle class gained from the digital economy and the dollars that flowed from the West.

The digital economy parents are fortunate people in the eyes of the rest-of-India.

Many of them are the new-age employees of shining India. Several of them have been employed fortunately by the so-called multi-national companies whose managements do not exploit them to the extent that their India only company managements do with regard to their salaries and perks. Obviously their salaries and perks do make them objects of envy by the rest-of-India.

They are considered to be better educated as they are comfortable in communicating in English- the language of the Indian 'elitists' and they have all the reasons to believe that their prosperity is due to English. So, naturally they are not prepared to forgo English at any cost. They want their children too to be well versed in English and maintain their enviable status in the society.

Unfortunately for them, they are a minority and they are not the vote bank for the Indian politicians. They may be good communicators in the social media of Facebook, Twitter and the like. But the Indian politicians have been shrewd enough to realize the insignificance of these digital economy middle class as far as the election and the vote bank politics are concerned.

So whether they like it or not, the Indian politicians and the Indian socio-religious outfits keep on exploiting them well. 

The elite schools and the elite home builders of the metros began to extract a good part of the money the digital employees have been making. Education and housing have become the two things through which this clandestine extraction worked!

The tri-corner clandestine nexus between the Indian administration, the Indian education barons and the Indian housing barons drains the fortunes of the highly paid Indian neo middle class MNC employees. But the best part about this was the ignorance of the inflicted to realize about it!

It is like the leach sucking the blood painlessly! 

So, how much money you paid for getting your only child to the Indian city school which bears the name of a saint of the past? (many of these so-called well- to- do' s of India have only one child because they are too conscious of the expenses involved!)

Oh, the fees are not very much, it is affordable. Many of them might say in public as they are also too conscious of the status damage their irresponsible complaints could cause!

It is only about Rs.10000/- per month, they might explain. You see, these schools do not allow the child to speak other than in English and they take so much attention to erase the child's mother tongue that had gone in to its brains by mistake! This is a very difficult task indeed and a big service that the school is doing for such a small fee! There are many more expenses for these schools and that is why they are expensive. Some of them might even become staunch supporters of these school managements!

But what happens to the huge sums they collect? What happens if you do not have the money? Indirectly, these schools are allowed to become bench markers for school education costs in India. Let us do a simple arithmetic:

The school is collecting Rs.10000/-x 50 = Rs.0.5 million per month from the parents of fifty odd pre-primary children who have not yet begun their formal class-I learning! 

How many divisions of classes one such school has? How much money such a school would be collecting for a month for all the classes up to senior secondary level? 

If on the average, there are five sections of 50 students for each class, the school would be having (2+10+2)x5x50=3500 students. That is the average strength of any such school. But many of the city schools run in two shifts and have more than double that strength of students. So what is the money they collect in an year as fees? Even if you take the lower fee of Rs. 2500/- an Indian city school with 3500 children collects about 10 million rupees as annual fees. Imagine those who collect more fees and with more children!

How much would be their expenditure? Most of the schools that exist for a few decades have got the land and the infrastructure almost free because of their religious charity status. No doubt they keep improving their infrastructure just to woo the gullible status- over-conscious parents! But the teachers they have are not any extra ordinary souls of extreme caliber! Most of these schools have just ordinary Indian folks as teachers who are paid a monthly salary which could be equivalent to the fee paid by just 5-10 children! Many such schools also do not pay a salary at par with the government run schools in the Indian villages!

But they do have a high profile principal and a few other high status displaying lady teachers who talk English in some artificial style. They are trained to treat the parents according to the latter's social and monetary standing. And that works perfect for the status over-conscious parents that they easily fell to the trap laid by the schools!

Invariably all these schools adopt more or less the same methodology to fool the gullible parents. Remember, they are not hapless parents, but gullible ones! They are party to make the traps to which they jump!

When they go to the school to meet the principal, they are stopped at the gate by a security guard in uniform only to be told that the principal does not meet parents. The first thing these parents have to do therefore is to try some influence to get an appointment to meet such a principal who is projected as more than the Chief Minister of the state! The more the difficulty, the more is the status of the school! The status conscious Indian parent should not have any complaints in this context.

Once the parent gets to meet the principal, he or she would be told about the the government rules that make it difficult for the child to get to this school. This is to assess the parents' eagerness to get the child admitted to this school. 

The clever school principal and his team are professionals who know pretty well how to tackle the parents. The artificial majesty of their office and the sharp care-least attitude make all the difference! 

To the gullible parent who fell in their trap would be told about the method of procuring the admission forms at high costs (usually in the thousands), the type of tests, interviews and the various kinds of fees that are collected with receipts. The child is going to be trained in all trades and tricks to be a winner in this competitive world! And all such trades and tricks are pretty expensive to be taught!

Then they inform about the most important fee- the lump sum one time donation that they should shell out for maintaining the great school in its grandeur!  And of course, the latter money has to be paid in cash and there would not be any cash receipt! After all faith is all that you need in this kind of a business! 

And how much is this faith fee? Nothing much for the affluent Indian parent who draws a take home salary of more than Rs.100000/- per month! It is just peanuts ranging from Rs. 150,000 to Rs. 500,000/- only! This is the current applicable rate in the various metro, semi metro cities of India as in 2015 as I have learnt about it! If the parent has approached through any influential person, then usually a rebate up to 50% might be offered!

Will they accept a banker's cheque or a demand draft? No, no! Only cash here! But how to get cash when the government says not to do any transactions above Rs.20,000/- in cash? Will not amount to an illegal activity? 

The school authorities are least bothered and they do not seem to accept the government restrictions regarding cash transactions! And why should they? What happens to the huge cash (unaccounted black money) they collect this way? 

No Indian politician so far has got the courage to change this! They simply do not see this happening right in front of their noses. And why should they when the parties involved in these transactions have no grievance at all! 

Is it my imagination? Read this article which appeared in the Hindu a couple of years ago. The situation keeps worsening year after year!

When business minded people grab the opportunity to make money through education exploiting the peoples' sentiments, it is understandable. At least, they have to create the infrastructure for the school by spending money from their pockets or by taking loans from the banks.

Many Christians do contribute money for their churches and missionary organizations to set up and run schools, educational institutions and hospitals for the benefit of the society. Sharing some thing good that they have with others is considered as a life mission of a Christian, regardless of what good is shared-material good or spiritual good! They are supposed to do both. For various reasons, this missionary zeal is often misunderstood!

An elite Christian School in Jharkhand spends their surplus 

to provide educational facilities to the poor tribal children.

A march past of the tribal children in the campus of the elite school!

But it really makes me sad when people tell about the acts of some Christian priests and nuns who resort to illegal money making in the guise of education in this nation.

Now how can they be any different when the whole society is immersed in corruption? One may ask!

What could we do? What can be done?

I do not say that we do not need good quality schools. Education is very important and every child in this country needs to get quality education. But at the same time we should not attempt dividing our society and our children into elites and non-elites, the same mistake some of our forefathers have done.

We should not expose our children to the dirty face of corruption in the same place where they are going to mold their characters. What are we going to tell our children about morality when the principal of their school is the one who takes illegal money for getting them admissions?

Why do we have principals' offices in pomp when the teachers of the same school share the same room and the same furniture with little luxury? Why some principals are paid exorbitant salaries and perks while several of their counterparts in other schools are not?

Why can't the schools publish their audited accounts to all those who are concerned with the schools, the parents and the public at large. Why can't they be accountable?

The government of India recently has proposed to bring private companies in the purview of the anti-corruption laws. Will they do it for the private educational institutions? 

Will the government dare to raid some schools to find unaccounted money in cash kept in the schools just as they do for the business houses? 

It is not so easy. The schools have great influential power because they are dealing with the children of influential people. By shrewd manipulation they have learnt the tricks of satisfying the powers that be. The more shrewd their management, the more influential the school!

It is getting too close to what is called crony capitalism. At least some in India are getting too happy about it!

Fortunately this crony capitalism is not the invention of India. Indians are just imitating those whom they now consider as successful in achieving material prosperity. With time all of them would realize their follies!

I am compelled to quote an optimistic warning that the authors of my favorite book of life guidance give:

"Humans should get a vision of a new and higher cultural society. Education would jump to new levels of value with the passing of the purely profit motivated system of economics. Education on earth has long been localistic, militaristic, ego-exalting and success-seeking. It must eventually become world-wide, idealistic, self-realizing and cosmic grasping. The control of education is being passed from the hands of the clergy to the hands of businessmen now. Eventually it must shift into the hands of philosophers and scientists. Teachers would eventually become free beings and  real leaders. Search for wisdom would eventually become the chief motive behind all educational pursuits".

Hopefully, the present age problems of education is temporary in nature and it would refine to good in the years to come!

Note Added on 16th March 2015

At last the government of India seems initiating some actions in this context. In today's Hindustan Times Online there is this news titled: Special team probing black money set to crack down on unaccounted funds in education sector.  The news reports: 'A private study by the Mumbai-based Centre for Research and Prevention of Computer Crimes in 2014 said the business of education generates Rs 48,400 crore of black money annually' (in India!). 

Some Hard to Believe Truths About the Children Who Occupied the First and Last Benches in Schools!

Today morning a cousin shared a truth that he or some one else like him might have experienced in life through the latest real time messaging application now familiar to all as WhatsApp : The message read like this:

"First bench doing job and last bench doing business. Truth of school life. A first bench student knows the answer to every question (problem), but the last bench student knows how to face every problem!"

Yes, there are enough examples that you could find to prove that this is true.

I too am too tempted to agree with this statement wholly and wholeheartedly.

During my school days, I have been more-or-less one of the first type who sat on the first bench mostly always. We were the so-called class toppers who were the pampered best students of the teachers. We were often the role models our teachers pointed to our not-so-fortunate back bench sitters. We hardly got an opportunity to notice the faces of those sat behind us in the back benches. The last bench ones were not the favorites of the teachers, but they were no doubt our heroes! Because, they were good at many things that we could hardly think of accomplishing in those days, other than perhaps scoring the marks in the test papers.

Rose Garden in a Private Suburban Indian School Campus!

Thrust Mainly towards Screening High Scoring First Bench Sitters and
Weeding Out the Low Performing Last Bench Sitters!

Perhaps, that could be one reason that I tried to change my image during my senior days with a bit success. In fact that helped me to experience the advantages of both to some extent!

But being nurtured for the first bench, I was bound to become a servant or naukar doing service or naukari and I became an accomplished naukar among the vast group of such naukars all around. But with my bits and pieces of last bench experiences, I could no doubt notice the poor slavish state of minds that my colleagues mostly possessed with little scope for trying out any new things even if it could make their own lives much better.

They were not trained to face challenges. They have been trained to follow the established legacy of work culture as per instructions only! Most of our bosses too were not much different, because they too were only naukars with a little bit more accomplishments than the rest of us!

Many of us, during the course of our naukari acted the double role of dogs and gods! We understood nothing more than that, to be very frank. We kept remembering our school teachers and our over ambitious parents who either patted or scolded us for keeping us the disciplined children who never ever ventured to question the established ways of knowledge and culture.

In India, our colonial masters needed literate servants in limited numbers and hence the schools that produced such servants were much less in number during the formative years of young nation. But later, the demand rose and we created more and more such schools and educational institutions that continued with the same methodology of teaching and training!

So we had only teaching and training institutions catering only those in the front benches. We cared little for the back and last bench ones. But fortunately, among them were the ones who did not need any formal teaching and training. Among them were the few borne leaders who mastered the skills to face problems instead of selecting stereotyped answers to problems!

I had been an admirer of those who sat in the back benches. Some of them could turn their initial misfortunes to great fortunes in later years. How can I forget the back bench heroes of our times?

Dhirubai Ambani, Bill Gates, Jack Ma etc lead the long list. On the other hand, we the disciplined and well liked ones who occupied the first benches kept doing our servant roles receiving the ten chakrams of Padmanabhadasa. 

I am not telling that servants like us are not required. We are indeed the work force who are doing the jobs. All kinds of jobs!

But regrettably, we are more in numbers than the job opportunities for us to act. We do not know how to create jobs. We only know how to do the jobs that are demanded from us. When we are in great numbers than the job opportunities, the demand for us goes down and as a result our value too!

So those of us of the first bench sitters either struggle to get jobs or struggle to get more value for our jobs.

But the few who sat behind us face our problems differently in a way that we never understood in the beginning until they told us the details. And we find them making value and wealth in such a manner we never could understand well.

So they keep staying as our heroes. We envy them  and secretly tell all bad things about them out of our envies.

But we need more of them for us to think and act differently. We need more of them to lead us. Without them we cannot do our service! We need them to tell us what to do! They are our entrepreneurs and business men. They are the job creators. They are the ones who find ways of creating wealth and enabling us to work! We need them in right proportions among us. Those naturally getting developed by sitting in the back benches are not enough. We really need more of them.

But how can we possibly make more of them? Can any of us of us of the first bench type be made to be like them? What should we do in our schools?

Any ideas ?

Why Do Malayalees Keep Preferring Padmanabha Dasa's Ten Chakrams?

Yesterday evening while having a usual pleasantry talk between me and my daughter over the cell phone, the issue of school admission for my grand daughter got in to our talks. And that initiated a kind of debate between us which soon was progressing towards an agitated argument that I skillfully put an end to our talks and said good night to her.

My book has taught me why I should not argue more to prove my point lest the truth what I want to convey becomes degraded to the status of an untruth.

Before I go further, it would be prudent to give some background of the issue with my readers.

My daughter, her husband and their five year old child are now in New Delhi. My daughter, who is an MBA had been working as an executive for the past few years before she finally decided to become a housewife to look after her child. Ever since, her most important passion and devotion in life is the upbringing of her child. She would go to any extent to accomplish that, just as any other urbanized middle class Indians. She and her husband want their child to get the best possible education. The only difficulty, as I see it, is their lack of clarity with regard to what they consider as the best education! No doubt, here too, they are no exceptions. The majority of urban or suburban middle class Indian parents now possess this mindset which is the bane of the Indian society, in my humble opinion. They are too willing to be exploited by the clever education entrepreneurs and so-called educationists of India who keep subverting the age old system of education for their own benefits. The aspiration for giving the child the best education is no sin. The definition of 'best education' is the real problem!

So, they have already spend a good fortune to get their child admitted in to one public school in the national capital region in the nursery level. Like all others like them, they have been now brainwashed to believe that spending on education for their child is the best thing that they can do for their child.

The Impressive Gates of a Typical 

Saintly Public School in India 

So, if the schools harass them, they are not much perturbed or they tolerate that without any complaints. 

If the schools charge 150,000 for a nursery level admission, they do not feel it as an exploitation! 

After all how can the schools give good and elite education if they charge only peanuts as fees? They argue! 

They are not disturbed and overtaxed when these schools burden them with heavy home works for the parents (mostly to be taken by the mothers!) and the kids, whose brains and bodies are just in the initial stages of development. For that matter, I have heard about other over enthusiastic young parents (again, mostly the young mothers!) who are too willing to get in to a cesarean to be performed on them to get the child delivered at the most appropriate zodiac time in the hope that their child would become a super human genius at some later stage!

My daughter fortunately understood these things very well. But her problem was the lack of mental strength to resist such evils that are slowly destroying the society in the ways that are never discernible to most of such parents. How could she be the odd woman when the whole society moves in one direction?

Now her worries and anxieties are mounting as her husband has determined to move to Chennai from Delhi to take up a better career there. But the Chennai school authorities are no saints any more. They would not even talk to them unless they are prepared to shell out a huge fortune to get her child a primary class one admission there. The schools bearing the names of the Christian saints are in the forefront now to prove the real meaning of sainthood to all those saint seeking people of India! And saintly schools have mushroomed in large numbers in all nooks and corners of India in the recent times with more and more people are willing to get their children educated there at whatever costs!

I told her to read this recent article that has come in the Outlook magazine online edition recently where the learned author has worked out the present value of the cost of educating your child in India now. 

The author has worked it out at Rs. 42 million for an average education spanning about 22 years in any average saintly schools or similar followed by any average kind of private engineering and management institutes of India. 

If this sum is handed over to the young man or lady after 22 years as a fixed deposit in the bank, it would fetch the young one an interest of nearly Rs.300,000 ($ 5000/-) per month. That is the average annual salary now for any fresh MBA in India who is fortunate to get a job!

If the child is allowed to study in the most humble and inexpensive government owned education system, not only this money would come handy, but also the child would learn things in the most realistic manner that would enable him or her to take up real challenges of life in a better way, the author argues. 

I agree with him fully, because I myself have undergone such an education system and it has given me the outstanding capabilities that I consider as my strength. There were a few among my time who had gone through the so-called elite public school education system imitating the Doon School or other such schools which existed as elite schools in India during the British Raj. No doubt, some of their alumni  have matured up as elitists who are generally considered as having good education. Perhaps they have been good in reciting Shakespearean poetry and might have climbed up the success ladders of professional career due to their better accessibility to receive favors and their connections! But many of them do lack common sense and the real human understanding of life gained from real human experiences!

But my daughter would not agree with me. Neither do any one like her. My children would also not agree the way I myself proceeded to educate them. I stuck to my convictions to the extent possible. I have been always against mushrooming elitist public schools  which I firmly believed as agents that destroyed the social fabric of the Indian society in a subtle manner. These schools caused many children to get developed as individuals with some robotic characteristics, eliminating their natural instincts of creativity and free thoughts!

I am not against private unaided schools or unaided educational institutions with good infrastructural facilities. But education as it stands today is a declared non-profit service in India. And if it is so, it has to remain that way in practice as well. It should not become a clandestine exploitation service for the ignorant society at large!

It should be a mandatory requirement for all educational institutions to publish their income expenditure statements and they should not be allowed to accumulate and divert their excess incomes. They should prove that they are non-profit organizations in practice, if they are registered under that non-profit society umbrella.

On the other hands, the government should allow education entrepreneurs to set up education shops for profit for satisfying the rich and the elites in the society. Let them take any amount of fees that their clients can afford to pay. But it should be a declared policy and not a clandestine arrangement. 

The problem now is of hoodwinking. Some educational institutions hoodwink the gullible parents to believe that they provide the elitist education for ensuring sure shot success of their children. The gullible middle class are forced to believe that the success of the elitist children with parental clicks and connections are the real educational contributions of these so called institutions. Many such institutions are functioning in India in the name of saints and gods, declared as charitable or religious organizations for educational service without any profit making desires whatsoever. But as of now, the reality is some thing very different!

To prove that their education is the best, these educational institutions adopt all kinds of tricks in their arsenal. First they screen the children and the parents in the name of various admission tests. 

They achieve a two fold gain in this process. Firstly, they get the children of better IQs or children of over ambitious parents who are too willing to do any thing to get good marks for their children. Secondly, this ensures better results in the examinations that is the net result of the parents' hard work and the children's better IQ. In this process they screen out all children with any perceivable lack of privileges and showcase the better results as their own achievement. This in turn  ensures a steady stream of parents flocking to such institutions year after year, boosting their financials.

Now what happens in this process? All underprivileged children (underprivileged physically, financially or socially) are naturally denied the opportunity of any reasonable education due to the eagerness of the such schools (read the individuals who manage them!) to maintain their market value. The eagerness in making market value naturally involves creating artificial problems in admissions and troubling the young parents in many ways.

The principals of these kinds of schools have become management agents and not any real and respectable teachers. The teachers have become exploited and overworked individuals who no more have the capacity and ability to be termed as teachers in the real sense! They have downgraded themselves to the status of 'education employees' (शिक्षा कर्मी ) instead of becoming the real and respectable gurus or master guides to their children.

There could be exceptions here and there. But in general, things are moving in a direction that is causing a fast deterioration of the status of the teachers, both in the private and in the government funded institutions, for different reasons!

And what is the final outcome? The inherently good students get screened to be exported to foreign countries to become a generation of second class citizens there in the coming future. Another lot becomes improperly educated ones with distorted moral values to become slavish future citizens of India with no enthusiasm for entrepreneurship. Again, you should excuse me for the generalization!

The majority parents want their grown up children to become employees in some foreign nations or of the government or some other public organizations.  

Middle class parents of India normally do not encourage their children to become self employed or to become entrepreneurs. They want them to become salaried persons of any company or the government at any cost. They are not willing to take any lessons from the successful businessmen and women of India who in the recent past have become successful wealth creators and employment creators. Excepting some, a good majority try to kill any such aspirations of their children! And the Indian education system does not help to improve this mindset of the people in any way.

And job generation is a big problem for a country full of average and non-enterprising minds! The number of employment creators keeps reducing with this kind of a scenario that prevails in India now! India does have immense potentials for employment creation. But the non-enterprising minds of the people do not allow it to happen. The governmental attitudes also create much difficulty.

In my home state Kerala, getting a job of the government (सरकारी नौकरी ) of the king was once upon a time considered as the biggest achievement of any person. The erstwhile kings of Travancore kingdom had the title Padmanabhadasa (പത്മനാഭ ദാസന്‍) . The travancore currency used to the rupee with the chakrams (ചക്രം) and Kashu ( കാശ്) as the coins. A government servant getting ten chakrams monthly was considered as having a higher status in the society and was commonly titled as : Padmanabha dasante patthu chakram pattunnavan. (പത്മനാഭ ദാസന്റെ പത്തു ചക്രം പറ്റുന്നവന്‍) which literally meant the person drawing ten chakrams from the king's treasury in a month as salary. Such a person was given a higher status in society than a trader or farmer who made ten times or more that amount in a month! This was because the government servant, though having a lower income, was having a higher level of education than his money making fellows in general in the past. The respect came from the educational status and not from the wealth status. This was indeed a good thing initially which enhanced the aspiration for education among the people. But the difficulty arose with the people refusing to change with the times!

In reality, this mind set is not limited to the Kerala people alone, but is more or less common with most of the middle class people of many Indian states. Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu could be some exceptions! 

Besides, this mindset caused another problem. The Indian people-the majority of them- are not prepared to honor a person who makes a decent living by self employment or by business. A person who has become successful in business secretly becomes one envied and the envy often got expressed in private by the people calling him some words which meant illiterate fool (अन पढ़ गवार)! Naukary ( नौकरी) or employment and a monthly salary continued as a status symbol among the middle class people of India even now. The status as a salaried employee is perceived as less risky and easy even when the situation has changed much from the olden days!

In such a situation, education has been considered as a tool not for gaining knowledge and culture, but a passport for getting a monthly salary earning employment! 

The educational degree certificates became more important than what has been actually learnt! When the degrees became more and more accessible, people began to look for educational certificates that have some exclusivity in them that could give them some additional status value!

The Indian education system has done hardly anything to change the mindset of the Indian people. On the other hand it has been doing  much to enhance this mindset in the Indian people.

And this is the real curse of the Indian society. If India is not making progress in all fronts simultaneously, it is because of its faulty education system. 

India needs an education system that does not cause further divisions in the already divided society on the basis of education based on any pseudo status. There should be a social awareness campaign that would break the false thoughts of the people and encourage them to view all educational institutions equally. All media efforts to promote some educational institutions as the best or having some higher rating should be shunned while constant efforts are done to improve the standards of all educational institutions and schools on a consistent manner.

Parents having the strength of mind and will power should come forward to promote the government run schools and institutions by sending their wards to such schools and institutions as far as possible.

The unholy alliance between some private companies and some professional institutions in selection and recruitment should stop.

Last but not the least, the educational expenses in the country should be brought under control by decisive actions. No educational institute or school declared as non-profit institutions should be allowed to charge unjustified fees that are not affordable to the average Indian.

The government should maintain subsidized education to the meritorious students who study in the government run institutions such as the IITs, NITs and the IIMs. There is no justification for them to charge hefty fees like the private institutions. 

Organizations should be encouraged to sponsor meritorious students with employment guarantees or with merit cum means scholarships.

All professional institutes or the government should give the data regarding the percentage of people who are employed out of the total pass outs so that the parents could take well informed decisions on spending money and time for any particular professional course. 

As land is becoming scarce to open future educational institutions, government should encourage opening large fully residential campuses in remote rural areas instead of allowing them to be opened in urban areas. The best successful example in India in this regard is the Lovely Professional University in Punjab state.

While higher educational facilities have improved much, the school education system has not. It is indeed a pathetic sight with our tiny ones and their guardians taking all the toils in the name of education. We need to learn much from the developed nations.

That is my perception, whether you agree or not. 

But I do welcome your views both in support and against.

When Religious Organizations Run Educational Institutions For Money and Power, the Damage to the Society is More!

To be very frank, I am pained by the way the Indian education system has deteriorated over the past few decades beyond redemption. When I talk about the deterioration, I do not mean the physical deterioration of the infrastructure that the Indian educational institutions have. In fact, the physical infrastructure in many private educational institutions have improved tremendously when the governments have allowed the private educational institutions to charge heavy fees from the students, several times more than what existed a few years ago. So, the deterioration is not on that count.

On the other hand the deterioration I am talking about is the moral deterioration that has been taking place in the education system in India. Again, it is not about any explicit immorality that I am concerned with but about certain kinds of indirectly discernible acts of certain private school managements  that cause the students to get distorted ideas about morality and ethics that are applicable to the citizens. While publicly most schools display their concern for morality, discipline and high ethical standards, what they actually practice convey some thing else!

Most of the school managements cannot set any moral examples for the students because the ones who manage the schools are often ruthless or ignorant people who either do not believe in any moral values or who do not know what it actually is. 

The educational institutions they manage boast of high disciplines, highest standards of education and the like [There are people who can frame all standard objectives, rules and regulations for them to get all statutory clearances!] But those who really manage these are without any of these qualities in most instances. In reality these institutions kill the real creative talents and innocence of the children and reduce them to biological human robots whose ability is measured in terms of the scores or grades that  they obtain in examinations. 

Indian education system as it stands today in the schools and colleges essentially measures the memorizing capacity of students! The training for memorizing begins even before a child learns the mother tongue, killing the child's creative abilities and its abilities for understanding meanings and values! The children and their parents are pressurized and to the highest possible levels all throughout their school education years only to be repeated again when these students become parents again a couple of years later!

In the process, most of the children who are trained through these institutions become intrinsically fearful persons who either have lost their wisdom to live a life according to their inner consciousness or become clever cheaters who do not feel the mind pinch to do any thing immoral or illegal so long as they could do those without getting caught. The children and the parents have been forced to become helpless and rotten on account of the education system forced on them by people who have never undergone through such a torture. The latter are the cleverest ones who know well to control all those who want to become great through what is being cleverly projected as the 'highest quality education'. 

Some children watch the material success of those VIPs who were managing their educational institutions and many of them are intelligent enough to understand the clever games the so-called successful people play. The children also witness how some of their teachers are exploited by the school managements. Those teachers who are not pets of those who manage the schools have been reduced to persons with no self esteem! The children also watch the benefits that some of their teachers who are the favored ones of the management get and they also sense the disparities that exist among their teachers based on various factors which are not logical or justifiable to their young minds. Some of their teachers are good teachers in their eyes but they are not that way before the management or the principal. 

The principal is the visible management representative whose main function is to enhance the institutions' image so that it attracts a steady stream of parents every year who are too willing to get their wards admitted to the institution by any means. Private managements of many of the educational institutions of India are too willing to spend much on the principal and showcase him or her as a living example of pomp and show to boost the image of the institution in the public gaze! 

It is not difficult to find such principals of private schools in India who sit in such lavishly furnished offices which could even make the CEOs of large business groups feel pretty ashamed of themselves. 

Such principals, especially those of the schools,  move around in expensive chauffeur driven vehicles! 

On the other hand, within a few hundred yards away one may also find government run schools or even some private government aided academic institutions having perceptibly higher societal importance getting much less or no facilities of that kind. 

Projecting the principal is a new technique some private educational institutions have adopted to boost the image of their school and hoodwink the gullible parents. More and more private schools and educational institutions are now resorting to this technique in India. But if you happen to talk to any such VIP head of any such institution, it is likely that you soon realize the hollowness of the person sitting on the chair as a neo-aristocrat! 

Meeting such a principal of an educational institution would be perhaps much more difficult for the parents than to meet the Chief Minister of the state. Many principals are also known to show favoritism to the parents according to the wealth and status of the latter. They treat wealthy and powerful parents with visible politeness while they show no such politeness to those parents whom they consider as of no consequence. 

Such favored parents are too happy to oblige to any request the principal may occasionally request from them! This way such principals soon become influential persons of the locality. 

Soon the wards of the less favored who happen to be students of such so-called prestigious educational institutions develop a feeling of class differentiation and a general antagonism within their minds which explodes in manners that we can never imagine, sooner or later! Wards of the lesser privileged in the locality who happen to study in such schools might develop a kind of inferiority complex which gets reflected as psychic anomalies later in their lives. 

Hype generation by educational institutions managed by societies formed by groups of people with motives and objectives for building public influence and power is understandable. At least  they are not making any false claims on morality! Again, there are many educational institutions in India which are essentially family run but officially run in the name of Societies formed by select group of individuals from the same family. Sometimes the name of the society that manages the educational institution might bear a misguiding name! But such acts are done by business oriented people who went in to the profitable education business in the guise of the non-profit societies because they had no other choice to establish such a business declaring it honestly as a profit making venture! How could any body believe that some one would spend scores of millions to establish an educational institution for charity alone? It is quite unlikely. So all those private educational institutions in India run by business groups under the banner of registered Societies are run for profits in terms of money and also for gaining influential positions in the country. That is the reason why India now has hundreds of private engineering colleges, medical colleges, universities and management institutions all competing each other to woo parents to sent their wards to them by paying high fees.

But what pinches is the manner in which even many of the educational institutions run by Christian church groups and other religious organizations slowly getting adapted to the new trends!

In the process they seem to forget what they preach and practice some thing which is not compatible with their teachings! 

The objectives in their bye laws may be good but many of these societies stand hijacked by people who do not possess the moral and ethical strengths of their predecessors. This is because of the democratic nature of these societies where it is very easy for characterless people to enforce their dominance over the majority members many of whom might be good and simple people. Such hijacked educational institutions are capable of creating much damage to the social moral fabric.

Since they could perpetuate the moral and ethical decline through the students of the concerned educational institutions they keep managing, I consider it as much more serious than those doing the education business! 

It is foolish to think that our children are blissfully ignorant about these double standards of our educational institutions set up and managed by our religious organizations! When religious organizations err, the moral damage to the society is many fold!

The educational institutions which boast of high standards and proudly announce their cent percent results in the final examinations are in reality managed by narrow minded pseudo practitioners who are too eager to exploit the ignorance and anxiety of the gullible Indian middle class parents. 

These parents are under the false concept that it is the English speaking students who find success in their career. This erroneous concept has been forced upon the gullible public minds by the very same pseudo educationists of India by using various techniques reinforced by either inaction or wrong actions by the state and central governments.

Let me categorically tell you this. I am not against English medium education. But imparting the education in a second language other than the usual mother tongue or the common language of the locality for a child is highly damaging and it actually kills its ability to understand language and meanings properly in its later years.

There exists a group of people in India who try to show to the rest of India that they are different from others by speaking in a foreign language and directly or indirectly projecting this quality as one of the essentials of measuring knowledge and educational superiority. Coupled with their outwardly lavish life styles and their peculiarly accented English speaking usually create inferiority complex in those people who are not of this category, in spite of many of the latter being better of than the former. 

This growing inferiority complex fuels the fire of aspirations of gullible middle class of India who want their future generations to acquire the much needed aristocracy through the so called English-medium education. Those who cannot fulfill this aspiration then become antagonistic to the system which generates this disparity. A new caste system begins to establish.

Children whose mother tongue is not English and who are compelled to get education in English right from the Kindergarten or nursery levels are bound to develop a language deficiency which is difficult to explain. They are highly handicapped to understand higher meanings. I have seen this deficiency in grown up people who have undergone such an education. 

In my opinion, it is not at all necessary to have English medium education for getting English language proficiency. 

Of course, English is now the international language and proficiency in this language is definitely an advantage for Indians under the present circumstances. But that does not mean that the Indian children should be taught in English right from age two. By creating a situation like this, India is generating a future generation who are not good in any language!

I am pained to read one of the clauses of the a private English medium school under their 'general guidelines for students' that is published on their website. It reads like this:

"Conversation in English - During the school hours but for Hindi classes the students are informed to converse in English which is essential in developing communicative skill in English.  Other than Hindi periods in the class and in the campus and also in the bus English must be the spoken language; if not spot fine will be charged."

So this school threatens the students to speak in English only, in the campus and also while they commute to the school by the school buses. Else they would be fined. The school is honest to declare that they do it to encourage their students to speak in English! Obviously, the school tries to tell that communication skills in English is the most important thing to develop in life as a school going boy or girl for future success! 

And this school is not an exception. There are several such schools in India who frame their ill conceived rules this manner, many of them contradicting the Constitution and the laws of the country in this manner. 

This school is managed by a society formed by Malayalam speaking members of a Kerala based church located in North India. The school administration  is carried out by an elected management committee, having very ordinary folks as its members having pretty no idea about the rules and laws that the governments issue from time to time. Effectively, they are guided by one or two external advisers who pose as chartered accountants and lawyers with some contacts in the concerned government departments. The school committee thankfully take their advises and perhaps even obliged to take 'other' kinds of helps that are required to keep them safeguarded from the government officials who are likely to pounce on them for possible violations of government directives that keep coming from time to time.

Thus a new kind of game gets started. The schools do the education business and money pours in as fees. The more the schools reputation with results and the infrastructure the more the students they get. The more the students, the more the money they get as fees. The more the money, the more the government departments come in to monitor them. The more the government scrutiny the more they have to spend to be compliant with government directives. The more they try to be compliant by unfair means, the more they spend later directly and indirectly for escaping government's punishment acts. The more such indirect acts needed for compliance, the more the chances of the managing committee members to make personal benefits!

This process then leads to a kind of give-and-take friendship among the players. Both sides become influential.

This way running any educational institution could be done by any one in India even if they do not know any thing about the law or about the field that they manage. The educational institutions in India are not managed by any eminent educationist. Any teacher or professor employed by an educational institute who is in the good books of the educational society eventually becomes an eminent educationist.  

The members of the educational society need not have any experience of their own to vouch for the efficacy of English medium education. Even the teachers need not be those who are excellent in teaching in English. What they need to have is the desire to imitate what the so called Indian educationists elsewhere are apparently doing. And that desire is not essentially based on their desire to turn their students to English speaking Anglo-Indians, but by the desire to promote a pseudo aura about the school's elitist culture that would attract more and more parents to send their children to them! And that would ensure them to earn a steady future income and also maintain their influence in the society indirectly.   

But who are responsible for this situation? It is easy to blame the over anxious parents who want the best education for their kids. But personally by analyzing the situation, I consider the parents are not to be blamed. Most parents I talk to and even me myself have been mere victims of the situation. The existing educational institutions who have been doing yeoman service to the nation have been clandestinely closed down by creating situations for their closure or non-performance. 

Is it the unholy or rather ill conceived nexus between  the governmental authorities and the private educational institutions responsible for creating such a thing to happen in India? I am not sure. 

I think it is the unwillingness of the governments to open up education system in India. It is an erroneous thinking that educational societies are formed by eminent citizens with desired levels of qualifications and experience to establish and manage educational institutions effectively for the common good of the nation. Unfortunately, the Societies Registration Acts in force in many states of India are too vague and have no practically effective supervisory controls in regulating the education activity in India. The governments control the education sector by using various administrative orders and also by controlling the examination boards , the universities and also the entrance examinations.

It is again to be stressed that eminent educationists and highly educated and experienced people who are capable of understanding the psychology of children well have no role whatsoever to play in the education management in India. Just as the Indian politics, the Indian education has also degraded to such levels that people with some self respect cannot think of associating with it! Education in India is in the hands of people associated with religion, politics and the like and they would not allow those who are not of that kind to enter into that field.

Artificial scarcity in education in India has made education black market. Helpless parents are anxious about the future education of their children. Fees are sky rocketing year after year. A parent who has a transferable and non-influential job in India posted in a city faces his or her greatest ordeal in life to get a school admission for his or her son or daughter. Many young people are shying away from having children for the dread of education for their children!

Educational societies are making a kill and are not answerable to the most important stake holders-the parents and the students. Unless one is having political blessing, no educational institution can be established. Individuals or companies are not allowed to enter into the formal education field in India.

Education stands as a clandestine business just as public transport, liquor trade, petroleum trade, health industry and the like in India. Those who know the tricks of the trade, big fortunes are awaited at the cost of the poor children and their parents! What a nice country to live on. Any wonder that the Indians who go the USA or Canada for a job do not want to return any time later?

But the worst that can happen is the hijack of Indian educational institutions established by religious organizations by those who have no religious good left in them!

[For more articles on the topic either search using the search box on the right panel or click the key labels below]

Autonomous Education Companies and Campuses: Something For Indian Government to Think and Act!

The following are some suggestions that the law makers and entrepreneurs of any country may consider implementing for making drastic improvements in existing school and college level education in their nations, especially my own country India.

1.Schools and colleges having high standards and facilities should be allowed to be set up also as profit making corporate entities with professional management. The profits of such corporate educational institutions should also be taxable under the law governing business entities. However, tax exemptions may be granted till such time that the institution becomes fully operational. 

(In India at present, there are indirect legal hindrances that do not permit educational institutions to be established under the Companies Act 2013 though the Act in itself does not categorically exclude it. So, one may not find a school or college or educational institution offering formal education having a name such as M/s ABC Education Services Pvt Limited or M/s ABC Education Services Limited. Presently the government allows educational institutions to be set up under the Societies Registration Act-1860 or the Indian Trusts Act-1882. This was something acceptable in olden days when education was considered as a purely non profit activity. However, post liberalization, the situation has clandestinely changed. The government while retaining the policy of maintaining education as a non profit activity allowed both government controlled and private societies and trusts to enhance the fees exorbitantly with no transparency whatsoever allowing many of the existing managements to amass huge funds at their disposal to be diverted illegally for other purposes. For example, a two year Post graduate management program in a government controlled institute which used to be less than Rs.10000/- two decades ago has sky rocketed to Rs.1,700,000/- at present! Yet, there is no transparency on the manner in which these funds are used. On the other hand, a company doing business is bound to publish their profit loss accounts and balance sheet to the public scrutiny and also pay taxes and and declare dividends  if there is any profit!) 

2. The education company should have full freedom to device its curriculum, its teaching system, admission procedures and the qualifications required for its teachers. It should also have freedom to advertise about its functions to draw clients (students and their parents) to avail its educational services. The parents and children should have the freedom to decide whether they would like to have their education in such institutions. However, the government should make laws in such a way that there is a level playing policy clarity with minimum governmental interference while ensuring essential  superintending controls. 

3. Such a corporate educational institution should admit boys and girls who have already completed their pre-primary and primary level schooling and the minimum age of admission to an institution should be ten.

4. Such an institution should have an integrated education system comprising of school and college education in the following manner:

-Middle school education of three years, 
-High school education of three years, 
-Senior school education of two years
-Integrated college level education of  five years. 

Thus a student entering the integrated study program finishes the entire course at an age of twenty three. 

The eight year long school learning provides the Integrated Residential School Diploma Certificate (IRSDC) and the subsequent five year integrated college education provides the Integrated Post Graduate Diploma Certificate (IPGDC) with a common curriculum with about 50% of study time reserved for specialized studies in any elective subjects of interests  from a number of elective courses in the field of physical sciences, applied sciences and engineering,  bio sciences and applied bio sciences, economics, commerce, business, law, etc. 

5. The entire education shall be residential and co-educational. However, the hostels should be separate for boys and girls and the young men and women. A few teachers and trainers shall reside in the hostels as local guardians and counselors.

6. The intake capacity of the lowest sized campus at entry level shall be 50 girls and 50 boys and this capacity should not be changed at any time. The batch strength shall not exceed 100 and the total student strength should not exceed 1300 in such a campus. However larger campuses with proportionately higher student strengths also may be planned. Students may be allowed mutual change of campus that follows similar education pattern.

7. The campus shall be set up at least 25 kilometers away from any urban or city limits and the campus area shall not be less than 25 acres for the lowest sized campus. The campus shall be fully secured to ensure full security to the residents. The campus shall have its own solar powered electric generation system with alternate power back ups. It should also have its own water treatment and supply system with rain water harvesting systems and waste water treatment systems and bio waste processing systems. At least five acres of the land shall be reserved as the campus horticulture farm to enable students to experience the basics of land management and essentials of agriculture.

10. The campus shall have its own medical clinic with medical staff, sports center with sports trainers and environmental practice center with agricultural trainers.

8. Two hours of study on all working days shall be exclusively reserved for language studies for the school level curriculum. Students completing the school level learning shall be fully capable of oral and written communication in one national and one international language. They should also have adequate competency in these languages so that they are capable of self learning in later years by reading and writing. They shall also be adequately computer literate at this stage.

9. All students shall attend 15 days study excursions to various cities, factories, hospitals, farms in the  every year compulsorily on all years of their campus stay, out of which two such trips shall be to foreign countries.

10. All students shall get one month compulsory holidays per year to spend their time with their families.

11. All students shall participate in some kind of games, physical work in the farms or workshops or in the gymnasiums on all working days for at least one hour.

12. Students shall normally pursue one subject of study other than the languages in a week of six working days, each day comprising of five hours of oral and experimental learning activity. They will learn the subject for five days in a language most common and most acceptable for five days, refresh it and complete an assignment on the sixth day of learning a particular learning module. For completing their test assignment they are allowed to use their study materials and references. The completed assignments shall be kept as records and shall be used as one of the means for evaluating the students' performances. 

13. Use of memory based examinations shall be minimal and shall have least weight-age in the evaluation process of the students.

14. Students who are not compatible to the residential campus education system and who are judged as physically or mentally unfit to pursue the education may be allowed to leave the campus after due completion of a process which shall be sympathetic to the student's future development. All other students pass out with just three passing out grades- Brilliant(B), Excellent(E) and Accomplished (A).  

15. The fee chargeable by the institute shall be based on the expenditure incurred and the audited account statements of the institute shall be published in their website. There shall be no government interference in as charged by the institution and the fee chargeable should be deemed as a service charge which could be taxable. The educational company may have more than one campus and they can declare dividends to their share holders in the event of profits just as any corporate business entity. They may not declare any profits even when there is a surplus in case they have immediate development plans. 

16. The education company may enter into agreements with corporate business entities for extended on the job training to the pass-outs and ensuring guaranteed employment opportunities to the graduates from the campus. However, the education and training program of the campus shall be such that every pass out from the campus is a youth who could be an example to all others in all respects.

17. The education service company may employ experienced doctors, engineers, lawyers, technocrats, academicians, trainers, artists or any one who possesses experience and wisdom as teachers and trainers of the students in addition to the permanent campus guide teachers who too are highly qualified and trained to do their duties in a very responsible manner. The campus shall have facilities for fine living and recreation for all its faculty and staff members.

18. The admission to the campus at entry level shall be based on the an Intelligence Quotient  Test (IQT) , Empathy Quotient Test (EQT) and a Preliminary Knowledge Test (PKT). The test and its evaluation shall be done by competent professionals. Students scoring below the average score of all applicants shall not be admitted and all students should have desirable levels of IQT,  EQT and PKT scores.

19. The IRSDC issued by such institutions should be statutorily recognized as equivalent to the conventional Senior Secondary School Certificate while the IPGDC should be equivalent to the conventional Post Graduate Degree.

20. The wholly residential educational institutions set up and run in this manner should be recognized as autonomous educational institutions. 

I know that there could be several additional ideas to fine tune the concept further so that our future generations should be transformed as perfected citizens who are capable of adapting to any situations with ease and are highly competent and honest. 

It is high time that the stereo typed education with least flexibility is discarded and students are benefited to learn from multiple fronts in a holistic manner. 

Examination based education needs to be thrown out and an education oriented to develop students in an all round manner should take its place. 

Creativity, curiosity, honesty and compassion should be encouraged while parroting should be discouraged. 

Our concepts of education need to change. New ideas and experiments should be allowed to happen. The laws and regulations that curtail that freedom of people with innovative ideas need to be reviewed and changed if needed.

In any case, the practice of education business in the guise of non-profit societies and trusts should end. No non-profit charities and trusts should be allowed to exploit the students, parents and the government and manage their enormous funds clandestinely without paying any taxes. In the event, the educational institution is run by non-profit societies and trusts, their income and expenditure statements should be made available in their websites and it should be mandatory for them to get it audited. No such institution should be allowed to enhance fees if they are already surplus with funds. It should be their prime duty to prove that they are really non-profit making organizations. If not they should be allowed to get themselves changed to education companies with profit motive.

It is just a suggestion from a common man of India for any people friendly democratic government of India to think and implement.  

No doubt, educational avenues for the wealthy people have increased many fold in the recent years in India. But employment opportunities commensurate with the cost of education have not increased. It is the government's duty to do research on this aspect and publish such information for the guidance of the people.

At least, the government of India should not be a facilitator for education exploitation by unscrupulous elements in various clandestine manners any more!

Let not our beloved nation to degrade year after year to be known as the mother of all corruptions by perpetuating an education system which nurtures corruption and dishonesty!