Something isn’t quite right about the Times of India’s ambitious Teach India programme inspired by the highly successful Teach for America initiative launched in the US in 1990. Although the overriding objective of ToI — arguably the most profitable daily worldwide with a net profit of Rs.1 crore per day — is laudable and clearly in the national interest, the execution of this project by the lucre-driven Response (marketing) division of Bennett Coleman & Co has cheesed off many well-wishers of the Teach India campaign, which is enlisting educated volunteers to provide supplementary teaching in government schools and to out-of-school children.
Given the excuse to associate with blue-chip companies which are perceived to be big advertising spenders, ToI’s hard-driving, commissions-spurred Response managers haven’t been able to resist the temptation to mix business with philanthropy. Typically, they are not-so-subtly grabbing the opportunity to drive up readership and advertising revenue of the already stinking rich daily.
That’s probably why ToI managers are paranoid about sharing details of the Teach India programme. Enthused by this initiative, which is clearly in the public interest, EW correspondents in Delhi and Mumbai made several efforts to solicit more information and interview ToI managers driving the campaign. However all bona fide enquiries were stonewalled with suspicion and hostility. In Mumbai Rakesh Dewal who heads ToI’s Teach India initiative demanded numerous details about EW, and requested time to obtain “permission from higher authorities”.
Common sense dictates that information about a professedly public interest campaign should be liberally shared, so that it grows into a media rather than ToI campaign. By the looks of it, the Teach India campaign is all set to degenerate into a clone of ToI’s Lead India campaign of early 2008, which was of ToI, by ToI and for the greater glory of ToI, and disappeared without a trace.
Gratuitous advice: Great causes require great minds.