With the country’s cities having transformed into toxic, over-crowded gas chambers, the prospect of sending the children off to boarding schools in the hills to breathe clean air while receiving their unique mix of excellent academic, co-curricular and sports education, has become an increasingly attractive option for SEC ‘A’ households. Here are India’s best co-ed boarding schools 2018-19 With the country’s bumbling and self-serving neta-babu brotherhood having made air and water pollution, traffic congestion, slums and health hazards normative conditions in India’s ill-planned and over-crowded 374 cities with a population of more than 1 million, boarding school education, which had become unfashionable as American socio-economic lifestyles became popular within India’s growing SEC (socio-economic category) ‘A’ upper middle class households, is making a comeback. Presciently, our British masters who oppressively ruled India for almost two centuries, encouraged establishment of boarding schools in carefully developed hill stations far from the noise and bustle of the hot and crowded cities of the plains. And the silver lining to the clouds that rained poverty and misery on the subcontinent’s people for almost 200 years during the British Raj is that India’s hill stations continue to host some of the world’s best boarding schools, modelled upon imperial Britain’s finest. Most of these vintage legacy boarding schools, some of them promoted 150 years ago, have survived and flourished, despite the sustained criticism and hostility of trendy leftists who dominate academia and the media, and professedly socialist governments at the Centre and in the states. And with the country’s cities having transformed into toxic, over-crowded gas chambers, the prospect of sending the children off to boarding schools in the hills to breathe clean air while receiving the unique mix of excellent academic, co-curricular and sports education for which British-inspired boarding schools are globally famous, has become an increasingly attractive option for SEC A households in 21st century India. The resurgent popularity of India’s vintage boarding schools is also attributable to their enlightened boards of governors dominated by conservative businessmen, military brass and progressive principals, who have modernised their infrastructure and significantly improved pedagogies, pastoral care and learning outcomes. Moreover, compared with the country’s new genre post-liberalisation international schools equipped with 5-star facilities and affiliated with offshore examination boards, legacy boarding schools tend to be affordably priced. Hence their resurgent popularity. Against this backdrop and the historical reality that India’s legacy boarding schools are modelled upon imperial Britain’s best and most famous public (exclusive, private) schools, it is a matter of wonderment and telling evidence of the mental and attitudinal independence of contemporary India’s SEC ‘A’ elite that the Rishi Valley School, Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh (RVS, estb. 1926) has been repeatedly voted India’s #1 co-ed boarding school for the past seven years including 2018-19, by different batches of SEC ‘A’ sample respondents. RVS follows the teachings and tenets of the home-grown philosopher-educationist and seer J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986), and on several markers is the antithesis of British boarding schools (no uniforms, vegetarian meals without great emphasis on sports and…
