With India’s metros fast reaching saturation point, the expansion of small town India’s neo middle class has fuelled demand for high-quality globally benchmarked K-12 English-medium schools, especially in tier II-IV cities – Summiya Yasmeen With the Indian economy growing at 7 percent-plus annually — the highest annual growth rate of all large economies worldwide, according to spokespersons of the BJP/NDA government at the Centre — India’s middle class is expanding commensurately even as income inequality between the country’s top 10 percent and rest of the population is increasing. And with metropolitan and larger cities fast reaching saturation point, the country’s estimated 600 tier II-IV cities are experiencing exponential expansion of the middle class. Inevitably, fast-paced growth of the non-metro neo middle class has fuelled demand for high-quality globally benchmarked K-12 English-medium schools in small town India. According to latest (2011) census data, there are 53 cities with a population of 1 million-plus and 256 with populations ranging from 100,000-999,000 countrywide. Ernst & Young’s India Attractiveness Survey 2015 indicates that tier-II cities such as Surat, Jaipur, Indore and Patna are clocking annual economic growth rates of 40 percent, way higher than Kolkata and Mumbai. Between 2001 and 2011, while economic growth plateaued in several metros, the E&Y survey says that “tier-II cities continued on their growth trajectory with their economies growing at an unprecedented rate”. “In 2014, FDI (foreign direct investment) projects in smaller cities surged 79 percent, compared with just 21 percent in metropolises. Cities such as Chakan, Halol, Jaipur, Mohali, Sanand, Thrissur, Vapi and Varanasi are increasingly becoming industrial hubs.” Similarly, E&Y’s more recent report titled India’s Growth Paradigm — How Markets beyond Metros have Transformed (2017), identifies 42 ‘new wave’ cities — “a new emerging class of cities, with millions of aspirational consumers who are vying for attention on the national stage”. Among these “new wave cities”, two new metros — Jaipur and Surat — are top-ranked followed by ten ‘high potential’ cities (Kanpur, Jabalpur, Indore, etc) and 30 ‘emerging markets’ (Agra, Dhanbad, Gwalior, Madurai, Hubli-Dharwad, etc). These 42 new wave cities are India’s fastest growing urban habitats in terms of annual GDP growth in the 2015-20 quinquennium, says the E&Y report. With the benefits of economic liberalisation and industry deregulation belatedly flowing into India’s tier II-IV cities, the aspirational middle class with higher disposable incomes has been quick to discern that high-quality, globally benchmarked English medium school education offers their progeny a good chance to enter nationally top-ranked higher education institutions and land highly-paid jobs in India and abroad, and enjoy the material comforts to which they aspire. Rising demand for high-quality English-medium education has prompted new-age education entrepreneurs (‘edupreneurs’) to establish internationally benchmarked private K-12 schools which are developing the hitherto neglected human capital of small town India. “Over the past decade, the action in K-12 education has shifted from the metros to small towns. With tier II-IV cities becoming the new centres of India’s economic growth story, there’s pressing demand from parents for English-medium education…
