Far away from the cut and thrust of running large corporate houses, there’s something that’s keeping Azim Premji and Sunil Mittal, among the most successful entrepreneurs in India, busy. For the last almost 10 years, both have committed serious money, managers and their own time to providing quality education for India’s underprivileged children. They recognise that education has perhaps the greatest “multiplier effect”.
The Bharti Route
In Bharti’s case, one question that bothers observers is whether it will continue to find teachers. Perhaps that’s why Bharti trimmed its target of 1,000 primary schools to 500. It has now decided to also set up 50 senior secondary schools with a focus on vocational training. “We realised that our children passing out from Bharti schools needed to go somewhere,” says Rakesh Mittal.
(This story appears in the 02 July, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
Whatever APF may be doing is just about a few generations behind the state of the art for developing countries. Consider this, if you can run at 10 miles an hour, would you like to run at 2 miles instead? That is what APF and Satya Bharti Mittal and all the rest have been doing in the country ever since they started. Consider this, if you want to go to Patna from Darbhanga, how far will you go? Unlikely farther than Patna. You will hardly ever reach Delhi. APF is on its road to Mysore from Bangalore. Its not thinking tomorrow. Its thinking 1950. These approaches make them look good in the hearts of people but keep India decades behind the world. India has not even reached a point of learning where, other than what the western world dazzles us with in gadgets, technology, education, services, products or what have you, where it can evaluate technologies. Of course each of thinks we know more than anyone in the rest of the world. Just that it does not show in what we do. Jingoism is what underlies our thinking process and that must change to becoming a knowledge driven society again that India was before it began following the rest of the world! Have you examined what One Laptop per Child has achieved in 40 countries in THREE years? Does any Indian initiative come close? How will India be in 5 years had they adopted that?
on Nov 16, 2010What actually is needed, how we look at concept of education. P2P, autodidact, edupunk movements are going in that direction. Its not just about schools anymore. Education is much broader, than literacy. Out of the box thinking is required here,not just more schools,teachers model.
on Jul 6, 2010NGO-NGO-Government-Partnership(NNGP) could be more effective and help acheive scalability and quality. There should a common minimum agenda with which NGOs, which are in the field of education, should help each other out in various aspects of providing quality education. Further, emphasis should also be laid on career options - not limited to medical or engineering field - open after 10 2, so that student do not find themselves out of track if they decide to pursue higer education.
on Jul 3, 2010