Page 82 - EW August 2023

Postscript

Overhyped wizards sunny Goa for an R&R break. For a 40-minute flight from
Bangalore to Goa which is ordinarily priced at Rs.4,000,
HE IMMINENT COLLAPSE OF THE Bangalore- the asking rate had shot up to Rs.13,000. And another
based edtech start-up Think & Learn Pvt. Ltd aka gent who was under compulsion to fly from Delhi to Deh-
TByju’s, makes one wonder about India’s talking- radun, a 30 minute flight, was obliged to pay Rs.45,000
heads stock market and financial experts who drove up for the last remaining seat.
the sky-high valuation of this online tutoring company On the other hand, according to a statement issued by
which rose to $22 billion (Rs.1.8 lakh crore) at its peak the Bangalore police on July 19, 722 auto-rickshaw driv-
in 2020. Common sense and logic should have informed ers were fined for over-charging commuters beyond me-
them that online tutoring has inherent limitations in a ters issued by the state government’s transport ministry
traditionally conservative country in which internet con- and/or refusal to ply. Likewise, Uber and Ola taxi-drivers
nectivity is poor, languages are many, Smartphones offer who practice surge pricing also suffer punishment by the
numerous distractions, and rather than Stanford and withered arm of the law. However, for mysterious reasons
HBS grads, the company is helmed by two school teach- a cap on airfares was lifted last August. Since then their
ers. managements have been routinely price gouging when-
Unsurprisingly in its fiscal year ended March 31, ever opportunity presents itself.
2021, the company ran up a loss of Rs.4,558 crore, a sum Undoubtedly, the Indian economy needs to be freed
greater than its revenue. The March 2022 balance sheet is from the iron grip of licence-permit-quota raj from which
not yet ready and isn’t likely to be much better. Unsur- the neta-babu brotherhood has profited mightily, but
prisingly, the auditor and several directors have resigned what’s a crime for an auto-rickshaw/taxi driver can’t be
and 1,000 employees have been fired. The down-sizing allowed to be passed off as routine ‘free markets’ business
of Byju’s to yet another edtech and test-prep company (it by dressed up civil aviation managers. They are giving
acquired the bricks and mortar tutoring company Aakash free markets ideology a bad reputation.
in April 2021) is inevitable. Meanwhile, Byju Ravindran
and his spouse have reportedly bailed out on golden para-
chutes, having sold company shares valued at Rs.4,000 Under-valued professionals
crore to some incredibly gullible investor.
Even as some of the country’s largest corporates, MONG THE MOST DEDICATED, BUT ALSO
banks and investors were pouring barrels of cash into under-appreciated professionals are Indian
Byju’s, investment invitation letters from D.T. Media & Ahospital nurses. Perhaps for reasons connected
Entertainment Pvt. Ltd (regstd.1999) which owns this with the country’s obnoxious caste system, these silent
publication, for a third round of funding received nil re- professionals are not accorded the social respect that they
sponse. This despite the sui generis EducationWorld and are given in enlightened countries globally. They are also
ParentsWorld having first movers advantage in a market pathetically under-paid. Some five years ago, when I was
comprising 450,000 private schools, 42,000 colleges felled by one of the thousand unnatural shocks that flesh
and 1,042 universities and PW’s market potential of 60 is heir to, I was shocked to learn that the English-fluent,
million households. When we wrote a cover story on the qualified (four years) dedicated nurse who sat up all night
edtech boom, Ravindran was “too busy” to talk to us. Now on a plastic chair while your correspondent was in ICU
one can’t help experiencing satisfying schadenfreude. of Bangalore’s top-rated Manipal Hospital, received the
rock-bottom remuneration of Rs.5,000 per month. Which
seemed patently iniquitous since the room rate where
High-flying gougers one was on death-bed was Rs.10,000 per night plus
everything else. Even a juniormost office attendant in our
LTHOUGH THEY ARE AN UNMITIGATED struggling journal earns five multiples thereof.
blessing which have reduced long-winded train In the circumstances it’s unsurprising that India has
Ajourneys to a sepia memory, there’s something a mere 17 nurses per 10,000 people according to World
wrong about the hyper-commercialism of the men (in Health Organisation data, against the global average
the words of a learned judge, the word embraces women) of 38/10,000. According to data of the Indian Nursing
who run India’s airlines. The pejorative “price gouging” Council, the number of registered nurses and midwives in
doesn’t seem to be part of their vocabularies. Recently 2021 countrywide aggregated a mere 2.47 million to serve
when the domestic airline GoAir faced headwinds and a population of 1.4 billion. Little wonder that every nurse
was obliged to cease operations because of mismanage- one meets is planning to migrate abroad where they are
ment which lumbered it with heavy debt, other airlines well-paid and enjoy high esteem and social respect.
promptly seized the opportunity to charge sky-high air Indeed, way back when your editor was a student
fares on domestic routes because of a sudden shortage of in London, to have a nurse as a girlfriend was a much
capacity, especially on the routes also serviced by Go Air envied status symbol. And it’s also worthy of note that the
(mis) managed by a scion of the Mumbai-based Wadia Brits — one of the most ingrate species on Planet Earth —
family of Bombay Dyeing fame. acknowledge that Indian nurses, who keep their National
In mid-May your editor, stricken by a stress-related Health Service alive, are the most compassionate and
illness which according to expert medical opinion was the competent. Yet managers of India’s best hospitals and
consequence of unwarranted fastidiousness in presenting hospital chains seem unaware of value of these pearls.
a world-class publication to an “ADHD target market ac- Now they are experiencing a severe shortage of trained
customed to reading headlines, if that,” booked a ticket to nurses. Serves us right.

82 EDUCATIONWORLD AUGUST 2023