School education in has been more or less sucked into the corporate market. The children of the privileged and rich study at the good and high-fee charging schools. Most of these schools look like retail malls or multiplexes. The school authorities look at the school education as a multi-crore market. They hire PROs etc, to help them penetrate the market and crores on branding. They have different business models; many of them adopt franchisee model.

For how can man die better than facing fearful odds?
For the ashes of his fathers & the temples of his gods.
-Rezangla Memorial (13 Kumaon)

Vijay Kumar as a part of the team during the cordon and search operation in Anantnag on 1st April 2008.

Recently our MPs had a friendly match in the Indian parliament. Their topic of concern was inflation. As expected, no result came out of the friendly match. The only thing they gained probably was in terms of vote bank. Even with the average annual incomes having doubled, the inflation has only worsened the quality of life for more than 70% of the population.

India had a glorious tradition of learning and education. I am particularly very proud of it. It is really unfortunate that we left this glorious tradition of knowledge and learning systems behind. What is tragic is that we today think that these systems are outdated and unsuited to the contemporary world. We have somehow established a strong connection between modernity and western civilization. We don’t realise how wrong we are when we think that to be modern is to be western and to be western is to be modern.