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EDUCATION: SCHOOLS
The Doon Boom
The city that houses Doon School is now playing
host to a whole array of new education barons--with big money and bigger
ambitions
By Ashok Malik in Dehradun
Some weeks ago,
a Gurgaon-based businessman walked into the office of Upendra Arora, proprietor
of the Natraj Bookshop on Dehradun's popular Rajpur Road. The visitor
was planning to set up an "international-class school in Bangkok"
and, sotto voce, explained that "a general close to the king of Thailand"
was helping him. The problem was he needed a principal and sought his
host's help. "Tum Mason ko tudvao (You get us Mason)," he said,
in a reference to John A. Mason, headmaster of Doon School.
Arora acknowledged a nodding acquaintance with
the man who heads Dehradun's best-known institution but pointed out he
was a humble bookseller, not a headhunter. He also suggested his guest
set up a school in Dehradun instead. The reply was direct: "Arre
yahan to school dal hi denge. Magar tum Mason ko tudvao ... Bangkok ke
liye Doon ka chaap chahiye. (I'll set up a school here but you get me
Mason. I need the Doon stamp in Bangkok)."
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NEW GEM: Hope Town's promoter sold jewellery before setting
up a school
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What Detroit was to cars and Silicon Valley is
to information technology, Dehradun has become to whole millions of aspirational
Indians for schools: the benchmark. Sandeep Dutt of the English Book Depot--he
supplies books to almost every school you name and also runs the website
doonsschools.com-is quite clear, "There was a time when ONGC ran
the local economy; now schools do."
Dutt's regularly updated database tells him
Dehradun has 253 schools at the moment. They range from the "common
garden schools" to the government-run Kendriya Vidyalayas to, of
course, the Doon. Jyotsna Brar, principal of Welham School for Girls,
points to the "mile-long Curzon Road" behind her house and counts
nine schools on that tiny stretch. As Nityanand Swami, chief minister
of Uttaranchal, puts it, "Schools are a very big industry here."
He should know; in March he inaugurated three schools, one in Dehradun
and two in Udham Singh Nagar.
Yet recent months have been hectic even by standards
Dehradun has become inured to. "A certain spurt", to use Mason's
expression, in school building is perceptible. The trend began about two
years ago and seems to be peaking this academic session (2001-02), with
four schools-if one includes the Mussoorie Girls School, located in the
hill station an hour away-opening their doors. That aside, Analjit Singh
of the Max Group has bought land in Dehradun for, an associate says, "the
biggest school of them all".
The new institutions are being promoted by people
who bring to their schools a wide variety of experiences. R.K. Sinha (Indian
Public School) covered the Bangladesh War for Hindustan Times before,
in a display of remarkable entrepreneurial ingenuity, setting up a security
agency that initially employed demobilised soldiers and now has 300 offices
all over India. Sunny Gupta (Aryan School) is director of Wheezal Labs,
"the biggest homoeopathic combinations unit in northern India".
For Amarjeet Singh, Asian School is a diversion
from his limestone quarrying business. Kamal Sehgal (Hope Town) is a jeweller
who ran Gem India in Mumbai's Kala Ghoda before closing down the outlet,
returning to Dehradun and commissioning a project report on a girls' school.
Om Pathak is a former civil servant whose most recent venture was a poultry
farm in Ghaziabad. In February 2002, he hopes to begin classes at the
55-acre SelaQui School.
So strong is Dehradun's association with education
that Sumer Singh, headmaster of Asian School and an old Doon hand himself,
smirks, "If you set up a school here, you could cut your advertising
budget by 75 per cent." Not that this stops the New Horizon International
School from putting up hoardings that announce its "profile of a
child" is "a Spartan in build with an Athenian mind".
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