A visit to Sehwag's new school

Rohit Mahajan visits Virender Sehwag's newly opened school, the Sehwag International School, in a village in the northern state of Haryana. Mahajan writes in Outlook that the campus is spiffy - "23 acres of paradise children could be residents of if their parents can pay Rs 2 lakh (around $4100) every year" - but the school has had to deal with villagers who are angry as they feel the land for the school was leased out at less than market rate.

The village has leased 23 acres to Sehwag’s Krishna Drishti Educational Society (KDES) for Rs 51,000 a year, for 33 years, with an yearly increase of 5 per cent. When just 11 acres of the same land was leased to a village resident after an auction, it brought in Rs 94,000. But then, the MoU between KDES and the village panchayat stipulates that five per cent of seats would be reserved for children from Shilani Kesho, and that they’d be exempt from paying tuition fees, admission fees or any school funds. Sehwag, inaugurating SISJ on October 9, raised the student quota to eight per cent.