These are the best and worst times for India’s community of educationists and educators, principals and teachers included. On the positive side, perhaps more than ever before in the history of the Indian subcontinent, public interest in education and its life-sustaining social and private benefits is at its zenith. On the negative, there are the Central and state governments which like bulls in a china shop are running amok in Indian education interfering with private education institutions and piling on ill-conceived populist legislation which dilutes teaching-learning standards and learning outcomes in the country’s 1.26 million government schools, 80,000 private schools, 31,000 colleges and 611 universities. It is no exaggeration to state that at stake is the globally competitive capability and future of the next generation — 550 million children and youth enroled in India’s crumbling, rapidly obsolescing and dysfunctional institutions of primary, secondary, higher and vocational education. Against this sombre backdrop, heavy responsibility has devolved upon the country’s beleaguered minority of bona fide educationists and educators to positively influence public policy and simultaneously guide their own institutions of learning through treacherous waters and currents. This responsibility is not only of education philanthropists and private education entrepreneurs (‘edupreneurs’) who have “established and administer educational institutions of their choice” — a fundamental right conferred upon linguistic and religious minorities by the Constitution of India (Article 30 (1)) and expanded to all citizens in the Supreme Court’s landmark verdict in T.M.A Pai Foundation vs. State of Karnataka & Ors (2002) — but has also devolved upon vice chancellors, faculty and administrators of public universities, and principals and teachers of the country’s government schools. They need to practice leadership skills to nurture institutions under their care into centres of excellence and protect them from the populist leveling down efforts of rampaging politicians and bureaucrats. Contrary to popular belief, such exemplary education leaders and visionaries are a growing minority within Indian education. After a hiatus of three years, EducationWorld presents thumbnail biographies of 50 education leaders who are struggling within a hostile regulatory environment to raise teaching-learning standards in India’s beleaguered preschool, school and higher education institutions. Early promise belied Kapil Sibal, Union minister of human resource development. A Harvard Law School alumnus and one of the country’s most successful Supreme Court lawyers of the famous Rs.50 crore per year income cabal, when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition was returned to power in New Delhi in May 2009, Sibal was allocated the vitally important human resource portfolio to undo the damage done to India’s floundering education system by his predecessor, the late and unlamented Arjun Singh. Unfortunately, since then the currents of Sibal’s education reform enterprises of great pith and moment have run awry and during the past two years, Sibal — hitherto the most prominent media spokesperson of the Congress party — has almost completely eroded the massive bank of goodwill that he had built up during his first year in office. Most of the hastily drafted legislation relating to reforms in higher…
