Edupreneurs Empowering Small Town India

In response to swelling demand, progressive education entrepreneurs (aka edupreneurs) are establishing high-quality, nationally — and in some cases globally — benchmarked schools in India’s haphazardly growing tier-II/III cities – Dilip Thakore With  India’s five largest and chronically misgoverned metros — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru — each of whom grudgingly hosts populations of 10 million plus, beginning to experience saturation if not rigor mortis, the action in terms of industry and business is increasingly shifting to the country’s 53 tier-II/III cities, where rising demand for well-educated youth has spurred the demand for high quality 21st century schools and higher education institutions. Global Initiative for Restructuring Environment & Management (GIREM), a survey conducted in 2010 by Cushman and Wakefield (rediff.com), highlights 36 tier-II/III cities on the threshold of emerging as “great modern cities” and the new centres of India’s growth story. The detailed study identifies three cities each in Kerala, Karnataka and Gujarat, four in Tamil Nadu, two each in Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh and one in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Assam, among others, while providing valuable  information relating to their current business and industry profiles and number of higher education institutions (see box p.48). More recently, a Sm@rt Cities Council and Indicus Analytics study highlighted by the Indian Express (February 14, 2015) identifies 20 cities with a population of over a million as per the 2011 census (excluding the metros), which are slated to modernise subaltern India and contribute to the overall development of the nation. The report admits that while most of these cities haven’t prepared master plans, they have the opportunity to do so based on past experiences of the saturated and slowing metros. The cities that will spearhead the next few decades of economic growth, according to this report, include Surat, Nagpur, Lucknow, Vadodara, Jaipur, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Indore, Chandigarh, Gurgaon, Rajkot, Bhopal, Kanpur, Thane, Visakhapatnam, Faridabad, Kalyan, Navi Mumbai, Ghaziabad, Ludhiana and Nashik. Even though public K-12 education in these towns of the future is characteristically in a shambles, the silver lining is that in anticipation of increasing demand, more forward-looking and progressive among India’s new tribe of education entrepreneurs (aka edupreneurs)  have started establishing high-quality, nationally — and in some cases globally — benchmarked K-12 schools in tier-II/III urban habitations. Although in several new millennium landmark judgements (T.M.A Foundation vs Union of India (2002) and P.A. Inamdar vs. State of Maharashtra (2005)),  the Supreme Court has acknowledged education provision as a legitimate “occupation” — even if not a business — in which private education providers are entitled to make a reasonable return on investment, it’s still commonplace  within  academia, media and even the judiciary, to deplore  “commercialisation of education”, notwithstanding the fact that most critics of private education themselves shun government schools. Nevertheless undeterred, a growing number of edupreneurs — despite official discouragement and harassment — are promoting and establishing private schools and colleges, and are in the vanguard of the imminent boom in the growth and development of tier-II/III cities and towns.    Nor is…