Philanthropy: Sunil Mittal building 550 schools to educate 1 lakh children

Gurbheg Singh, a teacher at the Sathya Bharti School in Khanpur village in Punjab, remembers Harpreet Kaur as a shy little girl. She spent the early minutes of her first day at school in 2007, fiercely determined not to come out of hiding from behind her father’s legs. Singh had to pry her away from the father and into the classroom. But now, Harpreet is a transformed child. This April, at the end of her third year at school, she brought her mother Jaspal Kaur to the parent-teacher’s meet.

The mother was asked for her thumb impression. That was the normal practice. Most parents of the children studying in the school are illiterate. But then, recalls Singh, this mother did something unexpected. She asked for a pen, and hesitantly wrote out her name in English. Eight-year-old Harpreet had been teaching her mother.

Sunil Mittal, the chief dreamer, architect and financier of this school, and also 236 similar schools across five states, hasn’t heard Harpreet’s story yet. When he reads this, he will be happy to know that his thesis that education can be a multiplier is being proven true. “If you can teach a child, then her family and her future is taken care off,” says Mr Mittal as he warms up to an hour long interview on this project, which is now underway at the Bharti Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Bharti group. These schools are being run at an annual cost of Rs 28 crore.



Harpreet is one of the 30,000 students who are now studying in Mittal’s free English-medium schools in Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. This is likely to increase to 50,000 in two years. The plan is to eventually build 500 primary schools and 50 secondary schools which will enroll 100,000 students by 2013.
Not only is this one of the largest such direct interventions by a business house, but Mittal also claims this is one of the largest affirmative action initiatives in the country.

“More than 21,000 of the 30,000 or 70% of the students in these schools are from SC/ST and OBC categories. The ratio is the same among the 1,100 teachers now on the foundation’s rolls,” says Mittal. “We have not gone looking for SC/ST students, but we have gone into catchments that are very poor. And, by this very design, we have got them,” Mr Mittal adds. Moreover, 47% of the students are girls.

Amandeep Singh, now in fifth standard, loves to work on clay as much as he likes to get his hands on a computer. He did not get to see either during his first few years at a government school in Ghumana, Punjab. But he discovered both when his parents took him from the government school and enrolled him into the Satya Bharti school.

Most of them have been set up as an alternative to poorly-run government schools. There is a world of difference between the two. Kirthi Sharma, a head teacher of one of the foundation’s schools near Ludhiana, points out that simple things like clean drinking water, working infrastructure, clean toilets were some of the things that the 191 students in the school cherished. A replacement teacher is also sent from a nearby school or from the foundation if a teacher goes on leave, ensuring that all classes are always staffed.

Each of these schools is built according to a blueprint drawn up by Delhi-based architect Navneeth Malhotra. The Foundation invited several architects to make a pitch for the project and were given a Rs 20 lakh cost cap for a school building. Finally, Sunil and brother Rakesh Mittal handpicked Malhotra.

Each school is located in half an acre of land and has five classrooms (for standard 1-5) and a staff room. Other facilities include toilets, a vegetable garden and a playground. Every school also has an internet connection. “We send weekly updates on attendance, books, and uniforms to Delhi on email. We also download teaching manuals, instructions and sometimes even additions to the menu amongst other things,” says Anamika Kappor, head teacher in a school in Ludhiana district Punjab. The schools run on two shifts and have between 5-7 teachers whose salaries start at about Rs 4,500. The head teacher is paid about Rs 7,000. On an average, the foundation spends about Rs 12 lakh per annum to run each school.

The Bharti group’s managerial skills are quite evident in the way these schools are run. Like every group company, the Bharti Foundation has a CEO in Vijay Chadda. He quit the army in 1992, held a string of high-profile corporate jobs, including that of CEO of Carlson Wagonlit Travel and Kuoni Travel, before he took a pay cut to join the foundation in 2008.

Sunil Mittal occasionally visits some of these schools when he travels to Punjab and Rajasthan; his elder brother Rakesh who is the co-chairman of Bharti Foundation and the head of the group’s CSR activities, goes there often. But it is Chadda who runs the day-to-day operations.

He has a team of 1600 employees; 1100 are teachers, while the rest are involved in logistics, training, curriculum design, and other support roles. Three state-heads oversee the functioning of about 90 schools each, and report to the headquarters in Delhi.

The centralised training wing and a team of 10 trainers prepare the curriculum and coach the teachers. Training is a 365-days-a-year operation. “There are subject specific modules happening all the time — for instance, the maths or science teachers of all schools in that district will be called to a centralised location and taught new tools and skill sets,” explains Mr Chadda.

Amandeep Singh, the fifth grade student who discovered clay and computers at the Sathya Bharti school, is distraught. His days at this school are coming to an end. Sathay Bharti is a primary school, and at the moment, does not offer anything for students who pass the fifth grade. It has only one secondary school, which was recently opened in Amritsar in partnership with the Punjab government.

Kirthi Sharma, principal at the Bharti school near Ludhiana, has seen three batches of standard five students pass out. She roped in other teachers and persuaded parents to let the children continue their education. “Last year, 10 students passed out and we have ensured that all joined government schools,” she says.

Though it has 236 primary schools, the Bharti Foundation is planning to set up only 25 secondary schools, that too over the next 3 years. Mittal’s plan is to have each of these 25 secondary schools absorb all the students passing out from 10 primary schools in the vicinity. He chose this hub-and-spoke model for various reasons.

Foundation executives say it is impossible to upgrade all primary schools to secondary schools. “The latter would require labs for subjects like Physics and Chemistry and teachers for such specialised areas,” Mr Chadda said. Funding the infrastructure and finding the teachers for 236 such secondary schools would be a challenge. That’s why it settled for one secondary school as a hub for students coming out of 10 primary schools.

But foundation executives admit that many primary students may miss out because they may not travel to the secondary school which could be several kilometers away. The foundation has no plans to run school buses, but it is working with village heads and panchayats to get them to organise tractor trolleys, etc.

Mr Chadda says the primary schools could be extended to class six if the local community helped in building another classroom. This has already happened with 6 schools in Rajasthan. “When they contribute, there is a sense of ownership from the local community, which is vital for the long-term success of such projects,” explains Mr Chadda.

The Rajasthan government is undertaking joint surveys with the foundation to convert many of the existing schools to senior secondary schools. The World Bank has also shown interest, Mr Chadda added. There are other problems too like 20% attrition amongst teachers. The foundation pays only a third of the salaries when compared to a government school. “Many teachers use this as a platform to get experience before moving on,” he says. “We pay higher than other private schools in the locality, but being a charitable organisation, we cannot match government salaries,” he adds. He believes attrition will come down once the secondary schools become operational. “Primary school teachers can be promoted — this will be an incentive,” he said.

Finally, what happens to the students after secondary school? Mr Mittal says that the foundation is working on a proposal to ensure that all students pick up a skill during their final years in the secondary school. “We will teach them skills like carpentry, electrical work, etc., and certify these skills through CENTUM, a group company,” he adds.

Mittal didn’t initially start off with such a big vision. Like many businessmen, he started out by writing a few cheques to NGOs like Akshay Patra and Adharshila. Soon, he realised the NGOs did not have the scale to make a big impact.

Next, he tried providing financial support to one school in every district in Madhya Pradesh, and funded mid-day meal programmes. But even this had limited impact. That was when Mr Mittal decided to do it himself. He started the Bharti Foundation in 2000 with a corpus of Rs 200 crore. The dream for 500 schools that would educate 100,000 poor children was taking shape in his mind.

He studied the US model where individuals and companies had pledged long-term commitments towards philanthropy. In 2006, he visited the Gates Foundation in Seattle and had lunch with Bill Gates’ father. He also went to the Rockfeller Foundation. He was inspired and convinced that direct intervention was the way to go. Early on, there were many challenges, and the biggest was to convince panchayats to allot half acre of land for each school.

“Initially, most panchayats were suspicious,” explains Mittal. Things have changed since. Families first experimented by sending one of their children to the Bharti schools. Soon everyone followed. Pravjot Singh, a 4th standard student in Ladowal was the first to join. Now, Pravjot has two brothers and five cousins in the same school.

The community in Sopara, a remote village near Jodhpur, donated stones for a boundary wall and Sriram Mehgwal, an 84-year-old resident, whose grand children attend the school, built it single-handedly. “I am overjoyed to see my grandchildren in this school,” he says.

Soon, the Rajasthan government offered 49 schools in the Neemrana and Ajmer blocks for adoption. It moved existing teachers to other schools and gave the foundation a clean slate. The foundation then invested Rs 5 lakh to renovate each school and hired new teachers. It was a brave move considering the political ramifications of handing over state-owned and run schools to corporates. But, like his businesses, Mittal wanted to scale up fast here too.

The foundation also enjoys the support of companies, especially Bharti’s business partners. “IBM is putting a computer in every school with games and other features that are meant for education. PwC and E&Y are doing the audit of the entire foundation free of cost. Deutsche Bank has adopted four schools and Wal-Mart has adopted one,” says Mittal.

Deutsche Bank’s CEO and managing director (India) Gunit Chadha said that the bank’s partnership with Bharti was aimed at providing quality education to underprivileged children in India. “Even some individuals who got in touch with us and agreed to fund the cost of running, say two or five schools,” said Mr Mittal. Employees of Bharti companies also contribute under a scheme where the company will donate an equal amount.

Bharti Foundation CEO Chadda’s first encounter with philanthropy began with an argument with his daughter. The ex-army colonel won a car in a lucky draw in 1997. She was eyeing the car. But Chadda won her over, collected the gift in cash, and donated it to initiate four scholarships for primary school children —two with the local rotary club and another two under the Gurkha regiment with whom he had served.

He met Sunil Mittal exactly a decade after that. He was to be interviewed for the role of the CEO of the foundation. Chadda had his doubts about the project. This was his first meeting with Mittal. “I was worried about sustainability...the group’s commitment towards this,” he recalls. But the interview changed everything. “He explained his vision and I could see his commitment,” says Chadda.

He remembers asking Mittal why he was doing all this. Those of us who have been given much, need to give back much, came the reply. Mittal made the choice to give many years ago. “This is very different from writing a cheque (as charity to NGOs),” he says. “You don’t have the choice not to fund it in the next year. You are in it for life.”