Mafia town once, now a learner’s destination

And so, real estate agents and academy brokers jostle with each other as they heartily display their wares on billboards which choke the broad, grey, asphalt roads. There is Gaur Galaxy Apartments and Garg Engineering College, Mewar Marbles and Mewar Institute of Management, Jai Mata Di Properties and Babu Banarsi Das Institute of Technology, sample flats at Supertech Estates and Residences, entrance exams at Santosh Medical College — take your pick.

Young, eager undergraduates throng the institutes from as far as Guwahati and Golconda, Gorakhpur and Gonda, and Ghaziabad has become the adademic hub for the arid cowbelt tossing out former centres of learning like Lucknow, Allahabad and Varanasi. This boomtown scores on four fronts — availability of seats for average scorers, promises of quality education in modern management and technical study, modern infrastructure and faculty and, most important of all, its close proximity to the Big City, New Delhi.

Says 19-year-old Gaurav Shekhar of Lucknow, a first-year B-Tech student at Indraprastha Engineering College, ‘‘My average state entrance exam scores allowed me colleges of this level and I chose Ghaziabad because its colleges are new, the labs are well-equipped, and it is close to Delhi. Job opportunities are more in big cities and I heard the last batch of graduates from Indraprastha did well for themselves.’’

Twenty-somethings Geeta Mishra of Ferozabad, Meeta Gupta of Allahabad, Devesh Kumar of Varanasi and Rakesh Agarwal of Guwahati are all First-Year students of Jaipuria Institute of Management. While they would have preferred a government college if they had scored better as fees are less and reputation is high (Rs 32,000 per year as compared to Rs 90,000), they are ecstatic that they have got seats, that too in a management institute run by an industrial family trust. ‘‘We hear the Jaipurias themselves come to the institute to look for job placements in their company, so we surely have an advantage,’’ they chorus.

Dr H.P. Bhattacharya, director of the one-and-half-year-old Jaipuria Institute, a former senior bureaucrat with the Textile Ministry and a former World Bank officer, nods sagely when he says, ‘‘I am pleased we have given an opportunity to scores of students who come from small towns to study modern methods of management.’’

Bhattacharya, however, concedes there is a glut of institutes in the town and that perhaps, the Jaipurias should have set up their school in another region. ‘‘We will have to work hard to build our reputation and credibilitiy to survive,’’ he says.

Obviously, it did not take long for Ghaziabad to live up to its old reputation — horsetrading and undercutting of fees is a common lament among deans and directors of the dozens of colleges that have mushroomed all over. Seats have to be filled for the college to run commercially apart from the scores of fake colleges (a land- and money-grabbing venture) that have been slammed shut because of lack of requirements set down by the HRD Ministry.

Says Dr L.N. Paliwal, director of Inderprastha Engineering College, ‘‘To set up an engineering college requires a deposit of Rs 50 lakh with All India Council of Technical Education, a minimum requirement of 10 acres of campus land, a full teaching faculty — all this without government aid. Ghaziabad at least gives you land at a good rate.’’

Therefore, Dr R. Ayyadurai, director, Santosh Medical and Dental College, is candid when he admits his Chennai-based Maharaji Education Trust-run college is open about accepting capitation fees for admission which is as high as $75,000 for an NRI student. ‘‘We are the only private medical college which is recognised by the UP Government. Look, most students opt for a masters’ degree, so merit rather than reputation counts, as they have to sit for a common entrance exam again.’’

Despite these confident assertions, large corporates are almost scornful of Ghaziabad’s management institutes. Dr Yasho V. Verma, vice-president HR, LG Electronics Pvt Ltd, New Delhi, laughs when he says, ‘‘We will not consider these schools at all because they are a totally commercial venture. Perhaps I can pick one or two institutes, but most of them mean nothing. Unfortunately, this is an accepted fact in the industry.’’

Perhaps it is the property shark who succinctly puts the Ghaziabad scholarship paradise in perspective when he says, ‘‘Kaunsi jaga hai jahaan paanch crore school mein lagaya aur ek crore ek saal mein banayaa?’’