For Iqbal Singh, education is more than books! Read the Governance Now magazine’s latest article on Babaji that will take you to an insightful journey of BabaJi’s education odyssey; the exclusive article elaborates upon some of the never-revealed facts about the inspirational & extra-ordinary journey of an ordinary man, who alone, with the grace of almighty, is re-defining the horizons of retirement & philanthropy. Also, get one-on-one with the Kalgidhar Trust’s Advisor & PR Head S. Ravinder Pal Singh Kohli, the multi dimensional man, who solemnly burnt all his bridges to dedicate his life to service & uplift of humanity.

1. SPECIAL KONARK’S SUN TEMPLE FACES MONUMENTAL APATHY p.48
November 16-30, 2013 | Vol. 04 Issue 20 | ` 30
RNI N o . U PE N G/ 2010/ 33794 | PRN: UP/GBD-150/2012-14
w ww .go ve rna nce no w. co m
MODI’s
SARDAR
TRIAL BALLOON
Why he is breathing new
life into an old debate
Going by the book:
For Iqbal Singh,
education is more
than books
p.06
p.14
COVER-UP of a COVER-UP
Exclusive peep into the Arvind Mayaram
report on the NSEL scam
p.36

2. contents
Founders Team
Gautam Adhikari
Markand Adhikari
Anurag Batra
Editor
B V Rao
bvrao@governancenow.com
06 Iqbal Singh: Going by
the book, literally
Managing Editor
Ajay Singh
ajay@governancenow.com
Deputy Editor
Ashish Mehta
Contributing Editors
Rohit Bansal, Kajal Basu, Bhavdeep Kang,
Alam Srinivas, Dr R Swaminathan, Imran
Qureshi, Shubhendu Parth
Senior Editors
Shantanu Datta, Sanjay Behera
Special Correspondents
Brajesh Kumar, Trithesh Nandan
08 Former banking secy
DK Mittal reminisces
about his term
Principal Correspondents
Geetanjali Minhas, Jasleen Kaur,
Pratap Vikram Singh, Pankaj Kumar
Correspondents
Shivangi Narayan, Puja Bhattacharjee,
Srishti Pandey, Ankita Lahiri
Design
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Photographer
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Volume 04 Issue 20
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Cover image: Ashish Asthana
14 Modi’s experiment with half-truths!
Since RSS lacked a powerful icon around whose
personality a counter-narrative to Nehruvian dominance
could be weaved, Modi’s choice for Sardar is obvious
36 Spot the cover-up
Jignesh Shah’s NSEL scamsters got a three-year free
run under the benign oversight of the department of
consumer affairs
32 Interview with
media futurologist
Gerd Leonhard
28 Myths of democracy
How representative is our democracy? Not much, it
seems. Even 14 percent votes can make you an MLA,
and minister, shows an ADR/NEW study
30 Changing colours of saffron
RSS reinvents the shakha to attract young professionals and counter the fall in its membership
46 Fighting Phailin with power
How Odisha power secretary Pradip Jena is meeting
the challenge of restoring electricity supply after the
cyclone and floods
66 Yesterday once again:
are you ageing, my
friend?
48 Sun sets on Sun Temple
Monumental apathy of officials and nonchalance of
administration make Odisha’s architectural marvel
a building in decay
42 “Dedicated freight corridor will be a game changer”
Interview with CONCOR CMD Anil Gupta
www.GovernanceNow.com
3

3. people politics policy performance
Gravity of ‘Gravity’
Going by
the book,
literally
For Iqbal Singh, education is more than books – it’s a means to keep the
youth of rural Punjab from taking to drugs and hitting the bottle
Jasleen Kaur
F
or most, retirement is a
simple enough noun. It means
end of work. Period.
Not for Iqbal Singh, though.
For him, it was the beginning of a
new phase – working to change life of
many others, by providing them access to education at their doorstep, in
villages in Punjab.
Called ‘Babaji’ by people who know
him closely, Singh, now 89, has worked
relentlessly toward one direction – imparting education in rural and marginalised areas to fight drugs and alcohol
abuse in Punjab – since he retired
as director of agriculture, Himachal
Pradesh.
In charge of Kalgidhar Trust since
1965, nearly two decades before he
retired in 1987, Singh now oversees
work of the organisation that runs
128 CBSE-affiliated English medium
schools that have more than 60,000
children, most of them from rural
Punjab, enrolled. Far away from the
urban milieu, these schools focus on
6
GovernanceNow | November 16-30, 2013
value-based education to children
from marginalised sections of society.
The Akal academies run by the Kalgidhar Trust are an example of how
a not-for-profit organization can still
earn profit even while focusing on
social development.
Admitting that it is no easy task to
run schools in villages where education still retains its novelty factor,
Singh says, “More than 55 percent
children here are first-generation
learners.”
The Beginning
Singh was studying agriculture at Amritsar’s Khalsa college in the late 1940s
when he first heard a lecture by Teja
Singh, a former principal of the college. Teja Singh advocated education
for girls and blending education with
spirituality for all, and that one lecture
proved to be a turning point in young
Iqbal Singh’s life.
Taken in by the academic-turnedactivist’s strong will to change the society, Singh decided to work with him.
After completing his post-graduation
in agriculture, Singh joined the Punjab
government as a research assistant
against his father’s desire. The Singhs
were financially sound, and young
Iqbal’s father always wanted him to
go abroad for higher education. Singh,
however, wanted to follow the footsteps of his mentor Teja Singh.
A year later, in 1952, Singh left his
job with the Punjab government and
joined the Himachal government to
work closely with Teja Singh, who
was working to establish the Kalgidhar trust, a not-for-profit charitable
organisation.
Singh started working closely with
the trust and helped it to search and
zoom in on the location of its first
academy. Four years later, they settled
for a 400-acre plot at a place called
Baru, about 60 km from Solan in
Himachal.
In 1965, Singh assumed charge of the
Trust after Teja Singh’s death and got
deeply involved in operationalising
the mission to combine modern education with faith while still working with
the government.
In 1982, Singh was promoted as the
director of agriculture department.

4. Arun kumar
Post-retirement, Singh established
the first academy in 1987 – a one-room
school at Baru, with five students.
Singh says he used his pension money
to have the ‘building’ constructed and
manage the academy for the first year.
“It was all jungle then and we faced a
lot of criticism initially. People said we
were fools to establish a school where
no one would come,” says Singh. The
following year more than 70 children
from nearby districts took admission.
“Many families also came forward to
help the trust that year.”
The Akal academy, Singh says, believes in imparting value-based education that not only meets the demands
of the time but also trains students to
use their skills for society’s welfare.
“Education is provided to students irrespective of their caste, religion, ethnic background or gender. We work to
develop love for education in children
in the initial years and support them
with adequate infrastructure to supplement that through their academic
life,” the octogenarian says.
But soon it was realised that establishing one academy in Himachal would
not solve problems faced by children in
nearby districts. This was also the time
when the drug and alcohol problem
was increasing in Punjab and many
families saw children going astray.
As the Baru academy established its
place with its unique focus on education, families from many Punjab villages requested Singh and his team to
open more academies and help save
their children from getting trapped in
the drug menace. “It was difficult for
us to accommodate all the children in
Baru Sahib. So we thought of opening
academies in the villages itself.”
The trust, thus, opened the first Akal
academy in Muktsar in 1993.
Spreading the wings
The Muktsar school was meant for
children from marginalised areas but
it was not a free school, Singh emphasises. “There were two reasons
for this. First, students do not value
the education they get if they are not
charged and, second, if schools depend
on donations, they would close down
the moment donations dry up.”
The school, Singh says, charges a
minimal tuition fee from students.
“Building such a large
number of schools is not
possible if we just depend
on people to help us. Also,
academies are required now
– we can’t wait for years to
build them. That’s why the
trust took a `90-crore loan to
establish the academies.”
Ravinderpal Singh Kohli
By 1999, the trust had opened 19
academies across Punjab, with the
next string of academies coming up
in 2007, and the count going up to 128
today.
Almost 80 percent of land for setting
up the schools has been donated by
the villagers. Emphasising that these
schools are as good as any urban
English-medium private school, Singh
says teaching aids like television and
the internet are used extensively in
the classrooms.
Beginning with a few students and
up to class II, all new schools are expanded gradually to include higher
classes. All academies are day boarding so that children can spend maximum time at school. “If they spend
less time outside it would help them
stay away from the bad environment.”
Challenges, working around them
The biggest challenge the academies
faced was to provide quality teachers in villages. “It was difficult to find
teachers in villages, or to ask them to
come from cities every day,” Singh explains. To solve the problem the trust
started a free elementary teacher’s education programme for young village
girls in 2006. At present, it runs three
centres in Punjab which have trained
more than 2,000 teachers so far.
As part of the training module, girls
who have cleared either class X or XII
are given free education and trained
to teach in these academies later.
Asked why he chose education to
help the community, Singh says, “We
wanted to focus on creating good human beings, which can be done only
through value-based education. Children have the most impressionable
minds and it is easy to mould them.
They can create wonders if are put on
the right path.”
These schools have played a big role
in not just helping students stay away
from drugs and alcohol abuse but
have also motivated their parents to
leave these habits.
“Punjab depends heavily on revenue
from sale of liquor but in the recent
past many sarpanches (village heads)
have made their villages liquor-free.
Children studying in these academies
have been partnered in various drives
by the state police against the use of
drugs and liquor,” says Ravinderpal
Singh Kohli, who left his garment business to work with the Trust.
Specifying that the trust aims to
open 500 new academies over the
next few years, Kohli says: “Building 10-20 schools was not a problem.
But building such a large number
of schools is not possible if we just
depend on people to come forward to
help us. Also, academies are required
now – we can’t wait for years to build
them. That’s the reason the trust has
taken a `90-crore loan to establish the
academies.”
Iqbal Singh makes it a point to stress
that Kalgidhar’s success is not the
story of a “one man army”. “Many
people have contributed in educating
children. For example, the doctor couple, Dr Devendra Singh and his wife
Dr Neelam Kaur, who now works with
the academy at Baru Sahib as director
and principal, left their well-paid government jobs in Delhi to join the trust
in its initial years,” he points out.
Meanwhile, the game could have
barely begun for the 89-year-old, for
the trust is now working to set up a
university in Punjab. n
jasleen@governancenow.com
www.GovernanceNow.com
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