There’s a serious disconnect between the techno nerds who run India’s booming IT industry and the rest of society. Such disillusionment and criticism is particularly applicable to IT companies which dominate the industry scene in Bangalore, aka Silicon Valley of India. Despite the income tax free status IT companies have enjoyed for over a decade, and transformation of tech entrepreneurs into dollar billionaires, one would have to search very hard for any civic amenity — public library, free schools, university, public garden — that any of them has endowed upon the city which has enriched them beyond their wildest dreams.
The latest example is provided by T.V. Mohandas Pai, the human resources director of Infosys, who has been loudly complaining about unreasonable pressure and “coercion” being exerted upon Karnataka’s richest and most famous company, to contribute generously towards the rehabilitation of an estimated 10 million people in 15 northern districts of the state, who have lost homes, crops, property and jobs valued at Rs.18,000 crore in the devastating floods which swept northern Karnataka in early October. In an interview granted to the Deccan Chronicle (October 24), Pai made much ado about Infosys committing Rs.20 crore, and its four founder-directors Rs.2.5 crore each, towards building 3,000 new homes for the flood afflicted. According to him, despite this contribution, persistent demands for more have become a “nuisance” for the company.
Yet weighed against the fact that Infosys recorded a net profit of Rs.6,907 crore in the year ended March 31, 2009 on which but for the company’s special income tax exempt status it would have been obliged to pay Rs.2,417 crore into the government exchequer, it’s quite clearly paltry. Bearing in mind that its founder-chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy has often called for revocation of the tax-exempt status of major IT companies, surely Infosys could have stepped forward to contribute the equivalent of the income tax it would have paid but for its tax-exempt status, towards the worthy cause of meaningful relief for the flood-devastated people of the state.
Indeed against the backdrop of such complacent and insensitive statements of Pai and other spokespersons of the IT industry, there is an urgent necessity to impose a compulsory special levy on Karnataka’s IT companies to compel them to pay advance tax on their projected profit for fiscal 2009-10, for deployment into a dedicated calamity fund. To rely on the grudging philanthropy of IT nouveaux riche engaged in primitive capital accumulation, is to expect too much.
Why Sibal steps gingerly
The abrupt volte face of union human resource development minister Kapil Sibal on the issue of class XII cut-off percentages for students writing the joint entrance exam of the IITs (IIT-JEE), is an indicator that six months into his new job, the diverse pulls and pressures of the quagmire that is 21st century India’s moribund education system, are beginning to tell on him. On October 19 while chatting with media personnel, Sibal opined that a minimum cut-off of 80 percent — instead of the current 60 percent — in class XII board exams should be an eligibility condition for the IIT-JEE, written by 385,000 students across the country competing for 8,300 seats available in the highly-prized 13 IITs countrywide.
This ex facie sensible remark provoked banner headlines and a nationwide storm which could have snowballed into a Centre-state confrontation, if Sibal had not promptly denied making the statement, and clarified that determining the cut-off percentage for writing the IIT-JEE is the sole prerogative of the joint council of the IITs. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar read an anti-Bihar conspiracy in Sibal’s innocuous remark. According to Kumar, Sibal’s intent is to reduce the number of students from UP and Bihar who despite a weak school system and thanks to the coaching classes industry, have been entering the IITs in substantial numbers during the past few years.
In the end Sibal’s diplomatic volte face deflected an ugly Centre-states spat. Yet the almighty row over the issue is indicative of the minefield that is contemporary India’s patchwork education system. Little wonder that despite brave statements of intent, thus far Sibal has focused his attention on tinkering with minor flaws in private education. The daunting task of raising standards in India’s 1.8 million failing government schools, seems to be giving the reformist HRD minister cold feet.
Modest real ranking
A Times of India news report (October 27) headlined The International School, Bangalore (TISB, estb. 2000) as having “been ranked first among top five schools across the globe” by the Good Schools Guide, described as “a publication which conducts survey (sic) on independent schools in the UK and abroad”.
The supressio veri in the report is that the Good Schools Guide (GSG) is a book published annually as a guide for British parents who prefer private schooling for children and is not an independent “survey” as suggested in the news report. GSG reflects the subjective opinions of the promoter-publishers who also conduct an annual independent schools exhibition in London in which TISB had participated.
Yet if the ToI reporter had done some elementary research, he/she would have discovered that in an objective independent survey commissioned by EducationWorld, in which a representative all-India sample of parents, principals, teachers and educationists ranked and rated 250 high-profile schools, TISB was ranked 15th among India’s international schools. According to knowledgeable educationists, the prime cause of TISB’s modest ranking in the EW-C fore survey (see EW September 2009) — despite the school being rated first on the parameter of infrastructure provision — is the authoritarian management style of its promoter Dr. K.P. Gopalkrishna, who has earned the reputation of moral policeman par excellence.
According to several sources, whenever and wherever puppy love — inevitable in a co-ed school with Western liberal pretensions — manifests itself on campus, Gopalkrishna throws the entire library of petit bourgeois “Indian culture” at suspected students. This over-zealous righteousness (which resulted in the abrupt sacking of the school’s first “too-liberal” principal John Macfarlane in 2001), has dimmed TISB’s star. Hence its modest real ranking.