There is properly no history, only biography,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), the great American essayist, lecturer, philosopher and abolitionist. Yet in post-independence India, there is a curious reluctance within society — and the media — to give credit to great leaders in vocations other than politics and the film industry. This despite the reality that in business, social sector and the academy, outstanding leaders have built strong institutions that are making valuable contribution to the country’s economy and the national development effort.
Fortunately in my long career in journalism, I haven’t experienced this national inhibition. Way back in 1978 when I was appointed editor of Business India and three years later of Businessworld — India’s first business news magazines — at a time when private sector industry leaders and businessmen were routinely pilloried and rubbished, I made it a practice to lift the corporate veil and identify and eulogise leaders who kept wheels of the economy turning and ensured flow of goods and services into the marketplace. That’s because early in my career, I became aware that the real heroes of the national development effort weren’t overweening politicians and bureaucrats who under the convenient cover of socialist ideology established a stranglehold on post-independence India and transformed its high-potential economy into one of the world’s most backward, but thousands of agriculture, industry and academia leaders working unappreciated and unsung behind the scenes.
Until EducationWorld was promoted in 1999, there was similar indifference towards education, and even hostility against private education institutions. Despite the reality that private schools host 48 percent of the country’s school-going children, and have perhaps educated independent India’s entire middle class. Therefore, ab initio EducationWorld also lifted the veil covering education institutions to acknowledge and proclaim the country’s best performing schools, universities and leaders who are nurturing the nation’s high-potential, but mainly neglected, human resource.
In this issue on the occasion of the 12th anniversary of the O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat (Haryana), recently ranked India’s #1 private university and among the global Top 750 in the World University Rankings 2022 of the well-reputed London-based rating agency Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), we have ventured a step further. We present a biography of Dr. (Prof) C. Raj Kumar, a very extraordinary scholar-entrepreneur who has played a major role in getting this globally benchmarked law, social sciences and humanities university with 12 schools off the ground in record time while winning global encomiums. Our hope is this log cabin to White House genre narrative will inspire all educationists to dream big and aim high.
