PPP or Real Estate Business?!

The proposal for Privatization (PPP is an euphemism for Privatization) of three upcoming Navodayas (Dahod and Narmada districts in Gujarat; and Nandurbar district of Maharastra)  is another example of how NVS has become am easy pray for improperly planned experiments. The Project Information Memorandum speaks of eventual privatization:

Presently in this project it is limited to "Limited Education Services". So start with three and end with all the Vidyalayas, we can't rule out that prospect!! So be ready to work under private managements in the future whose sole criteria is money making!

Another important aspect is the proposed " Hierarchy of Use of the Facilities" which allows the private players "right to utilize the facilities created during off hours of the school for commercial purposes;
it is also mentioned that it would be ensured, that the created facilities are available for minimum number hours of commercial use to ensure that the private sector is able to market the facilities" Isn't it real estate business?!


Another interesting and confusing aspect: "The second right would be of the community residing in the campus followed by any third party use such as commercial renting of the space. The community would be expected to pay the same price as may be received from the third party use". Is the Govt expecting us to turn entrepreneur in our rest hours? What else does the community residing in the campus would refer to? Is that word used in view of the eventuality of wholesale privatization?


Putting aside the project details for a while let us deal with more challenging questions to this whole idea of Public Private Partnership. Why the Big Bosses love PPP more than the pure Govt?! Is there any empirical evidence to prove that PPP would be more efficient than the present system? Why stake holders such as Parents and Teacher Unions are never consulted about such proposals? Why such 'limited services' are not experimented with the existing schools as there would be comparable data to measure the effectiveness of such services?


We live in the largest democracy in the world where stakeholders are never consulted, forget about their say in decision making!! So NVS is no exception!!

HOW WE USE TECHNOLOGY- SAVING PAPER OR WASTING PAPER!!

Navodayas have abundant examples, if we care to look for, of how technology has resulted in more wastage. Due to lack of understanding of modern processes and procedures, Navodayas establish such practices which result in wastage. A classic case is how e-mail is utilized in our system. Before we adapted to  e-mails, we used to receive cyclostiled communications on recycled paper. In a way it was greener. Now a days many regional offices, with an exception of one or two, send e-mails which the schools would promptly download and print. The story should end there in ideal conditions. But we are different and our administrators are even more different!! Vidyalayas would receive the same communications in snail mail too in a week or two. We can't be certain that the same happens to the communications ROs receive from Vidyalayas. But odds are in favour of that probability.

If a Principal claims that they have no internet  access nothing more would be dishonest than that, as we are aware that almost all of India is covered by at least 2G connectivity if not 3G. GPRS and EDGE are enough for e-mail communications. Even printing of e-mails can be avoided by taking a soft backup of such e-mails either day wise or topic wise. If you are worried about the safety of the documents, take the back up in more than one place!! Of course our mail boxes already leave no scope for such kind of data loss and back up is no longer inevitable.Back up may be justified from the point of view of immediate access and organization of data for easy access.

Why Can't We Have Wi-Fi Hotspots In Our Campuses?

In half of the schools,communications within the school can be electronic as they are well located. As our campuses are not huge, we can create our own vidyalaya WI-Fi networks. Sounding far fetched then read this. How much of brand image we can cultivate if we can boast of a couple of hundred Wi-Fi hotspots!

Hope somebody is there listening!

Sakshat should be provided to Navodaya Students

Lack of Access to latest news and trends is one of the gray areas of Navodaya Education System. Our Students are handicapped due to this isolation. Remoteness of locations and lack of time or infrastructure for TV and INTERNET access contribute a situation where students can not update themselves with the latest of the world. When the prototype of 35 dollar tablet was unveiled, this blog hoped that our Samiti would take the initiative to make Navodayas as one of the first organizations to lay their hands on Sakshat. Now it is clear that Sakshat would be shipped to IIT Rajasthan by june end. Many were spectical about the capabilities of Shakshat! Here is a demo which clearly shows that Shakshat is suitable for the needs of our students and can bring a revolution in the way they learn. The suitability of the device for large scale release can be checked better if it is provided to Navodaya Students. Our officers should have  taken the initiative with Ministry of HRD.

JNVST 2011 on 10th July 2011

This time it is official. JNVST 2011 will be held on 10th July 2011.

AINVSA website goes Live !!

Until now we needed to depend on the mercy of Principals to know about our union activities as the mails  are sent to school mailboxes. With the launch of  AINVSA website (Click here to go to the site), we all can have a direct source of information. I would like to request all the friends not to miss the details of the court case filed by Shri Mishra on behalf of AINVSA  in the new site.

JNVST on 26th June 2011?

There is no official word on that date. Everybody and his uncle is saying that JNVST will be held on 26th June 2011. It would be prudent to conduct it on 3rd July. Unless an amendment is made to RTE or a notification is issued, Samiti can't go ahead with JNVST.! It seems that the bets are on Monsoon Session of the Parliament!!!

Random Selection instead of JNVST 2011?

Umpteen news reports are found across the nation, both in vernacular and national dailies, about the postponement of JNVST and the anxiety of parents. Everybody is worried as many of these parents have invested lot of their energies for getting their children to prepare for JNVST and they are not ready to loose an academic year for the sake of admission in JNVs.  Lack of  reason for the postponement of JNVST  in the public notice issued by Samiti has lent the situation into a kind of mystery. Nothing seems to be moving in the direction of either notification or an amendment for RTE.
Samiti is left with only one option-going ahead with random selection. Recently Welfare School Organizations in Andhra Pradesh have decided to go ahead with the lottery system of selection. District Collectors are assigned the task of supervising such selection. CBSE, the agency which conducts JNVST, has asked the Vidyalayas to clarify anomalies in the list of candidates forwarded by the JNVs. Once the anomalies are corrected, NVS may go for lottery System. If any such decision is taken, NVS faces a gigantic task of managing its public image. Lottery System, which is legal, may not go down well with the parents. Parents,majority of whom are from rural areas, will not understand the nuances of RTE. They may think that the decision is a way of opening back door entry to non-eligible candidates and circumventing merit selection. It would dent the image of Navodayas which was hard earned by NVS with its credible and impartial selection history.

Online Payment of Salaries from NVS Head Quarters!

Many of us are yet to get salaries of March. Salary payment on time depends on the work culture of our office staff in our Vidyalayas. Some Vidyalayas even get salaries in the second week of the month as a routine. But the shopkeepers and milkwalas will not wait for second week! Samiti has evolved a strategy to overcome this administrative handicap. Union Bank of India and Samiti have joined hands to pay salaries of all the employees of NVS at one go through UBI Portal. Training program for vidyalaya staff is chalked out and intimated to ROs. If everything goes as planned, our past financial predicaments would become past from April 2011.

How Benevolent is the Benevolent Fund?

If you ask any Navodaya staff what is their main expectation from Administrators of Samiti for their welfare, the chances are that there would be only one answer across the cadres,regions and age groups: Govt of India Pension. Benevolent Fund idea seems to have flown from our Administrator's inability to fulfill our expectations. Something is always better than nothing! So let's welcome the move and appreciate the underlying genuine desire for the welfare of the staff.

One of the gray areas of the fund rules is the constitution of the managing committee. It's a norm across the world to include staff representatives and independent,honest and well known social workers (in lines of independent directors) as members of managing committees of staff welfare funds with enough powers to check  excessive use of discretionary powers(3.4.vi empowers the committee with unlimited discretionary power which is not required under normal circumstances) and misuse of the fund. So the Managing Committee needs to be inclusive of staff and independent members to establish  the credible trusteeship.

Economic backwardness must have been included as an important criterion, else the fund may become the benevolent fund for the 'creamy layer of NVS'.  Some kind  of cap needs to be established for the expenditure of the fund. In the absence of the cap, wastage and pilferage can't be controlled. I request the readers to leave their comments here to accommodate the varied views.

Stop Fighting! NVS has Space for More Than One Union!!

Since the untimely and unfortunate demise of JAC, T.P. Mani and L.B Reddy started the mud slinging business again. Sajith Nair,who has been at the forefront of this inner fighting through his blog, has resorted to a vicious e-mail and sms campaign against an attempted meeting by L.B.Reddy and Rai at JNV Baruch in Gujarat. It is necessary to point out that this blog doesn't endorse the stand of either groups. Both T.P.Mani and L.B.Reddy and their cronies pose a grave threat to the welfare of NVS employees. At the same time, we should also recognize their right to strengthen their cadres in a constructive way!!

What is the need of the moment is the realization that two individuals should not be allowed to play with the welfare and interest of thousands of employees. We can't even blatantly ignore their role in our journey so far. What is at stake is the name of AINVSA! Both groups want to project themselves as true owners of  AINVSA. This tangle can only be resolved by allowing them to start their separate unions with different names. Both of them should not be allowed to use the name AINVSA.  More than one union will always create a healthy democratic atmosphere! The one who can garner more than 25 or the majority will be recognized by Samiti. The one who looses has always the option of getting recognized in the future by working for the welfare of the staff.

Delay in implementation of NPS costs each employee Nine to Twenty Five Lakh rupees

The employees who joined prior to 2008 are entirely clueless about their social security and their old age is destined to be spent in unending woes. We are spineless and we deserve so. Employees who joined after 2008 are at least hopeful of making the retirement years comfortable with the retirement fund that could be created with proper investment planning. Please refer my previous posts here and here to know how one can ensure better social security with NPS.

But the unexplainable delay in implementation of NPS in samiti causes huge losses for post 2008 appointees. Samiti took around 8 months to bring out a notification after the approval of cabinet for NPS in NVS. Even after two years of cabinet approval, NPS is yet to be rolled out. Average contribution of an employee is 2000 per month with the same matching grant of NVS which amounts to 48,000 per year. Weighted average return of NPS so far stands at 12.3756 % per year. The loss for an employee for last one year amounts to Rs5000/-.  The corpus so far accumulated would have been around 53000.

The loss in terms of corpus at the retirement, for each employee it would be around 9 lakhs. If we start with the initial investment of 50,000 with 40,000 getting added each year with the 12% CAGR the retirement corpus after 25 years would be 75,94,829. The same investment without the initial fifty thousand would fetch only  66,44,826. The notional loss for each employee is around nine lakhs. For those who are 30 and 35 years away from their retirement, the loss would be 20-25 lakhs!!

No Clarity on JNVST 2011

It was hoped in my previous post  NO JNVST 2011 that NVS would be able to sort out the complications arising out of Right to Education Act  and JNVST 2011 would be conducted in time. But all such hopes seem to be misplaced.  JNVST 2011 is hardly a month away and still there is no solution in sight.
As per the news paper reports, it is yet to be decided by HRD ministry,whether a notification is enough or an amendment is required. We can't say how and where the idea of notification originated, but it seems to have derailed the whole process of finding a proper solution. We can't understand why Ministry of HRD is shying away from pushing for an amendment.Ministry of HRD seems to be illogically  vary of encouragement  such amendment would provide for  lobbying from vested interests in secondary education for further amendments and it may open a Pandora box. No body can dispute the special nature of Navodayas and Sainik Schools. The decision must be legislative so that the sanctity of JNVST could never be challenged. The amendment would also resolve the dilemma of  state government run welfare school organizations.Hope there would be an amendment for RTE in this budget session paving way for smooth conduct of JNVST.