From the chairman Education is globally linked with development and upward social mobility, particularly in a country such as India. The economic boom is pushing people to want better lifestyles. Good education is seen as a stepping stone to lucrative careers and parents are willing to spend any amounts to educate their children.

But the situation in our country is an enigma. On the one hand we have the best institutions in the world and on the other there are thousands of schools, which are sad stories that tell of our country’s backwardness despite tremendous progress. This is the great paradox!

“A revolution is needed! While there are noteworthy moves such as the Right to Education for all, there is a lack of motivation from the education industry” to act, we must!

According to a World Bank report sometime ago there were about 7,40,000 formal schools with more than 3.6millions teacher. Whatever is the precise number, this is phenomenal figure. But many of these institutions run with woefully inadequate infrastructure. Teachers are ill equipped to face the recent challenges and a large number merely carry on class room routine.Schools like Timpany must take the initiative and send its teachers to train up teachers in lesser privileged schools. I would like to see this as a commitment we make to raise up the standards of education in rural schools, for instance. What a noble contribution this can be and we must get started soon.

Ken Gnanakan Ph.D. (Lond.)