Are state governments which insist upon imposing vernacular languages as the medium of instruction on school children under their jurisdiction acting in the public or private interest? The latter I believe because every parent countrywide wants her child to become English fluent. Ironically the peoples’ representatives, i.e politicians, seem unaware of this grassroots reality.
In late May, with an order which deserves an entry in Ripley’s Believe it or Not, the education department of the Karnataka state government “de-recognised” 96 privately-promoted schools with an aggregate enrollment of over 100,000 students in Banglaore and its environs and ordered their closure. Their unpardonable sin? They are in breach of the state government’s language policy which makes it compulsory for all schools promoted after 1994 to adopt Kannada (or the mother tongue for linguistic minorities) as the medium of instruction for children in classes I-V.
Answers to several questions have been pending for a long time. Among them: how come these and other English medium schools have been operating for over a decade right under the noses of education department officials? No prizes awarded for the correct answer. Moreover were state level politicians who formulated this language policy driven by love of their native language and culture as they claim, or more mundane considerations such as availing the opportunity to appoint under-qualified products of the substandard government education system as teachers, and to award vernacular language textbooks printing contracts to kith and kin? Unfortunately Indian democracy, particularly at the state level, has sunk so low that I believe it’s the latter reasons.
That’s why it was a pleasure to write this month’s cover story on the Ryan International Group of Institutions (RIGI) on the eve of the commencement of its silver jubilee year. A mere 25 years ago, Dr. Augustine Pinto, then a struggling school teacher in suburban Bombay (as it then was), promoted his first school driven by the mission to provide high-quality English medium K-XII education to as many children across the country as possible. Taking advantage of an enlightened constitutional provision (Article 30) which endows religious and linguistic minorities with the fundamental right to establish and administer education institutions of their choice, Dr. and Mrs. Grace Pinto have done the nation a great service by transforming RIGI into the country’s fastest growing primary-cum-secondary schools chain providing high-quality, English medium education at affordable prices to India’s rapidly-expanding middle class.
How within a short period of two decades, the Pintos have transformed RIGI into the country’s fastest growing closely-held schools chain and what is the guiding philosophy of the promoters of this mission-driven organisation, is the subject matter of our cover story this month. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I learned while writing it.
And in this month’s second lead feature our Chennai-based correspondent Hemalatha Raghupathi examines the curious case of India’s growing pool of unemployed engineering graduates at a time when India Inc is experiencing an unprecedented shortage of qualified engineers. It’s a conundrum related to the poor quality of vernacular education dispensed in the country’s 1.12 million government primary schools. Although the country’s Midas-in-reverse politicians seem unaware, everything’s connected.