From the Desk of the Chief Executive
I got an opportunity to serve Vidya Bhawan for a little over three months during the outgoing year. This time period was both exciting and eventful. Firstly, I was required to fill in the big boots of Dr Suraj Jacob who had done some amazing work on the job. As the first chief executive of Vidya Bhawan, Suraj had brought in a rare combination of academic brilliance and administrative excellence. Secondly, the richness of history and traditions at Vidya Bhawan was overwhelming for me as an outsider. Such richness of history and traditions makes this great organisation highly resilient, which has been amply evident in the way Vidya Bhawan has been managing the current crisis caused by Covid-19.
When the information regarding the virus started trickling in, we started making our students and the staff aware of whatever facts we could get to know about the disease and how it was likely to spread. The information from the official sources was collected and disseminated to our staff so that they were not misinformed and did not become victims of rumour-mongering. The Wellness Team was fully engaged in an intensive awareness generation program across all our campuses. They used the government of India IEC material and also prepared their own material to make students and teachers aware of the precautions to be taken to avoid getting infected.
We were perhaps the first organisation in the state, and definitely in Udaipur, to have stopped classroom teaching in the interest of our staff, their families and the local communities. We did not want any of us to become a carrier for the virus. The government advisory about completely locking down educational institutions came later. The extra time we got before the said government advisory was issued allowed us to systematise our closure. Our Heads made detailed plans in consultation with their staff on what work each teacher would be doing while at home every day, and how it would be monitored on the daily basis. The ERC prepared learning materials for them to go through while working from their homes. We also made special efforts to send hostel inmates back to their parents safely. In some cases, we even used the school buses to ensure that the children reached their homes safely.
We were also concerned with the plight of the society at large around us, in particular the families getting worst affected by the lockdown. Vidya Bhawan staff contributed generously to create a fund for helping the vulnerable communities. Some of our illustrious alumni also pitched in to augment the fund. We sent out several proposals to various philanthropic organisations for financial support towards relief works. As a result of those efforts, Give India agreed to provide direct financial support to the identified households through Vidya Bhawan.
At the institutional level, Suraj had made a highly significant contribution towards integrating various institutions of Vidya Bhawan, which had been evolving somewhat independently from each other for a long time. We strengthened his initiatives in this regard, and made efforts to make meetings of the heads of institutions more frequent and more effective. We also took steps to rationalize the human resources across the institutions and made the process of inter-institutional transfers and deputations of personnel easier.
We further attempted to make our Prakriti Sadhana Kendra even more relevant to the society at large by developing a week-long residential course for the school students on environment education and climate change. The programme could not take off due to the onset of the pandemic. We are waiting for the pandemic restrictions to be lifted for assembling the children to initiate the action. We are also in the process of developing an intensive training programme on environment and climate change for teachers. Both these programmes will also be open to the students and teachers from outside the VB institutions.
During the year, we tried to achieve better coordination of activities at our Krishi Vigyan Kendra in the interest of the farming communities in the district. We are planning to follow the cluster approach, while promoting organic agriculture and indigenous breeds of livestock. KVK will also develop a model to provide adequate marketing support to organic farmers and indigenous livestock rearers.
Overall health of an organisation depends on strengths of its systems, processes and procedures. During the year we tried to strengthen our existing systems and processes, and made efforts to ensure that they are followed in letter as well as spirit across the entire organisation.
The more I learnt about Vidya Bhawan the more impressed I was with its vision and mission, and its past achievement. However, as I started getting involved more deeply in the affairs of Vidya Bhawan, I realized that such a long history may also be a burden for an organisation, particularly if its external environment is changing fast requiring it to re-imagine and re-invent itself. This is the most important challenge that has been facing Vidya Bhawan for the last few years. How Vidya Bhawan responds to this challenge in the coming years will largely determine its long-term future.
The other, far more immediate challenge, is presented by the current pandemic and its economic consequences. These are extremely difficult times for all the nonprofit and voluntary organisations across the country. The sources of funding for the voluntary sector have been dried up due to the disastrous economic impact of the pandemic. Even within the voluntary sector, the educational institutions are perhaps the worst affected, as a large portion of whatever limited funds is available for philanthropy is being earmarked for relief measures, livelihood generation and security, and other programmes for poverty reduction. There is very little, if any, amount available for educational purposes. On the other hand, the regular fee incomes are going to be significantly reduced, particularly for the institutions largely serving the vulnerable sections of the society, such as Vidya Bhawan. The impact of the economic slump is most severely being felt by the people working in the informal sectors and belonging to the disadvantaged sections of the society. It is proving to be quite difficult for such people to pay the school/college fees for their wards. A majority of our students come from these families only.
Given its long history, there were certain times, which presented greater challenges to Vidya Bhawan’s existence and continuation than the other times. The history also suggests that Vidya Bhawan could manage to overcome such challenges through its institutional resilience and competence of its leadership. I am, therefore, quite confident that we shall be able to come out of this crisis too, rather unscathed.
Looking at immediate future, the two major issues that need high-level sustained efforts are continuous improvement in the quality of education delivery, and inculcating the core values of Vidya Bhawan amongst our staff, and through them, amongst the students. It is needless to mention that Vidya Bhawan’s founding values have even greater relevance in the current times when our society is becoming increasingly fragmented on the basis of religion, caste, languages and so on. Income and economic inequalities have already reached astronomical proportions. The efforts to address these issues inter alia include identifying and carefully selecting competent candidates for teaching and other activities, remunerating the staff well, investing in induction trainings and regular on-the-job-trainings for the staff, and generally keeping the motivation levels high. In the coming years, we would be focusing on putting much greater energy to achieve this.
On a personal note, it was an extremely difficult decision to move to Udaipur without my family, while forgoing highly remunerative assignments. However, every minute of my stay at Vidya Bhawan and at Udaipur has validated that decision over and over again. The vibrancy and the diversity of the intellectual scene at Udaipur keeps surprising me to no end, which I firmly believe has a lot to do with the fact that this has been the city of Vidya Bhawan since 1931. I thank each and every member of Vidya Bhawan staff and its various Governing Bodies who accepted me and made me feel welcome. My special thanks to Shri Ajay Mehta, our President, who guided me compassionately through my transition, and reaffirmed my faith on the fundamental human values by personally embodying and exhibiting those values more than anybody else I have ever come across!
Anurag Priyadarshee
Udaipur