Indiawest: Five Indian American Doctors Settle Insider Trading Case
The main culprit in this new item: Dr. Apparao Mukkamala, a prominent physician in the Indian American community and a resident of Grand Blanc, Mich., ....bought shares through the trading account of Chinmaya Mission West, a charitable organization where he was president. Chinmaya received $7,076 in illegal profits from Mukkamala’s $25,427 investment, according to the SEC complaint.
May 29, 2011
Cheated: Chinmaya International Residential School (CIRS), Coimbatore, India
17 May 2015
Update:
More than a decade late, and the school still has not owned up to its responsibility to provide an accountability of its charges and refunds owed to me. That in itself speaks volumes of the integrity of this organization and the cult it espouses.
7 August 2011
To any prospective fee-paying parent - you have two choices: first choice is to not even bother reading my blog entirely - simply click on the readers' comments for this blog [in which case scroll almost halfway down] to get a feel for the quality of this school and its alumni in a number of cases - the profane language describing various sexual acts in their comments all speaks for itself really. Please note: the profanity used by the CIRS alumni in some of these comment posts is definitely not suitable for reading by children/minors.
And, second choice: if you have the patience to read the entire blog: then, just a quick update - CIRS still has not found the audacity to tie up the loose ends of unfinished accounting. Please note that the original blog was written in 2006 - scroll to the bottom....date highlighted in yellow.
Update:
In addition to Anonymous' advice (Jul 13 2011), there have been numerous others who have said that "I...don't carry a 5 year old feeling and hold that grudge with you."
It all really begs 2 questions immediately:
Firstly, what makes the(se) reader(s) think that it is a "grudge"? This is completely risible. I will explain again: the bursar at CIRS refused to provide for proper accounting of expenditures and reimbursements (in accordance with his duties) to a final closure, and, instead, willfully taunted a tryst in the courts. Presumably, because I didn't acquiesce to the appropriate personal (or official?) bribe to settle the matter with the bursar, the whole issue in his mind became non sequitur ipso facto. I steadfastedly refused to pay the expected bribe: in retrospect, had I done so, then, very likely I would have had to report it on http://ipaidabribe.com/ when that website came online in 2010 or 2011- presumably, it would have been a somewhat ruinous publicity for CIRS that I presciently helped avoid?
Secondly, why is it that not one of these sagacious commentor parents, and the salacious CIRS alumni, who have clearly expressed much fondness for their present and past experiences at CIRS have asked the following with just as much rapacity: why has the CIRS administration not done anything to rectify the shambled situation left by their erstwhile bursar? And, more importantly, why has the CIRS administration not taken the intiative, brush aside its intransigent obduracy, and brought the matter to a suitable closure?
The CIRS administration has my name and information, and are well aware of the outstanding issue that needs to be brought to closure. They even passed on my personal information to the CIRS alumni who then posted profane comments to my blog which was previously posted on http://www.sasural.com/ - because of the foul language posted by the CIRS alumni on that website, the host was forced to retract the blog so that it would not reveal the debasing morals of these CIRS alumni. As you will see below in the comments to this blog, there is some gratifying sense of deja vu since it has not stopped some of them from posting again some of the same crass language, replete with expletives, as was used on sasural.com. Once again, these maleficent alumni have successfully failed the reputation of their alma mater.
So, as a prospective parent and parents of present attendees, please be warned that your personal information with CIRS may not necessarily be safely guarded. From my experience, I can confirm that it was freely shared with the alumni who then used it for nefarious purposes. Which then brings up even more questions on the moral integrity of the privacy policies enforced by the Board of Directors for CIRS.
If you have made it this far....here's the rest from previous posts...
==================================================================
19 June 2011
There have been numerous euphemistic and often derisory comments on the need to "move on", some polite and others not quite so. Some alumni have even displayed their wealth of profane language that needs no interpretation even to the uninitiated [perhaps, one of the English language courses taught with certitude?].
Regardless, to those who have threatened acts of indecency, and of gratuitously nefarious sexual acts towards an under-aged minor, I stake a claim that these maleficent alumni have failed the reputation of their school, let alone miserably fail in questioning the mysterious motive of their school's failure to settle the matter once and for all - so that we all can "move on"?
Updating a blog annually with the same old news is no task to be relished: only a rolling stone gathers no moss. Surely, only the most well-intentioned CIRS alumni need now cower from the arrestingly skilled display of profanity from their compatriots? As is whispered in gentrified circles: one cannot run with the hares and hunt with the hounds at the same time.
A moment of lux et veritas, shall we say?
==================================================================================
16 Dec 2010
Given the level of corruption, bribery and thievery in India - which is presently in the news with respect to the raids on individuals related to the 2G spectrum inquiry (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11997227) - there is no surprise that the lower echelons of society take a leaf from the upper echelons and conduct the same level of gross dishonorable acts.
CIRS still - to date - fails to give an accounting close-out statement. And still have not heard from the Swami at the school - almost 7 years later. I have no doubt that any attempt to take this through a legal process will be met with bribery and subservience to the judiciary in order to get anywhere. With this in view, I would invite any reader to consider carefully the ramifications before handing over large sums that purport to be "refundable deposits" or "discretionary" spends - there is no accountability to be sourced, given the level of insidious instutionalized corruption in India. Therefore no one or no insitution is held accountable to honesty - even in the name of religion.
==================================================================================
06 March 2010
Another year passes by - and no CIRS response. Even the headmaster has had to resign his position in 2009 and go back to Dehra Dun.
More importantly, all prospective applicants/parents should take a look at the CIRS alumni Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=2205266406 - Facebook was going to archive all groups in the old formats and so this link might turn old - but, in any case, you can search Facebook for the alumni pages) and...follow at least some of the students' individual facebook profiles and wall pages and you'll quickly asceratin the calibre (or lack of it?) of the CIRS alumni: here's an example of what you'll note from one student sampled at random -Sharmeela Sheila Jesupaul - she is to graduate from UC Santa Cruz in 2012 according to the profile as of the date of this blog - read the kind of invective language used by this illustrious alumnus. And then wonder if you'd really want your child to end up in the same heap...and...presumably, there is some plausible reason as to why this student (Sharmeela) ended up at UC Santa Cruz instead of some other well-recognized university institution after her attendance at the illustrious CIRS...??? And if you are a prospective employer - have a field day on the CIRS alumni Facebook page and get a quick read of the calibre of this school and its alumni...
Meanwhile, wishing a happy retirement to Mr Anurag...the ex-principal at CIRS as of 2009...what a great job he did of churning out the questionable generation of characters (if their Facebook pages are anything to go by) during his tenure at CIRS....
==================================================================================
10 June 2009
As of yet - 5 years on - still no response from CIRS.
==================================================================================
06 March 2006
A plea to all parents prospectively looking to send your child to the Chinmaya International Residential School (CIRS) in Coimbatore, India.
Please read this blog first before you hand over a single penny to the school.
Be warned of the practices that we encountered at this school, and the manner of extracting money. Here's a brief account of our real life experience with CIRS - a school that supposedly cares for kids, but it certainly has not been our experience.
The conclusion: after our dealing with CIRS, we can conclude that only if you absolutely hate and despise your child would you ever consider sending him/her to CIRS because it is the cruelest form of punishment you can ever think of for a child. Read on for what happened in our one-year experience with this "school" when we sent our daughter there. It is the biggest mistake we ever made for our child. When you look at the CIRS website, there is are grand visionary statements that, in the main, turn out to be questionable.
CIRS was supposedly founded on Chinmaya "vision", and put into action by the Swami Tejomayanand – who, its website proudly declares, was named "Hindu of the Year". The school was started in the mid 1990s with the aim of attracting rich Indian and NRI kids to attend the school...Our child "studied" at CIRS for one year, and here's a litany of things we experienced that unfolded after we had committed ourselves to our child's attendance at the school:
1. CIRS does not make provision for such simple things as basic hygiene: so, for example, whenever the children have to go to the toilet, they have to carry their own soap with them. There is no care for the kids' hygiene to install soap dispensers so that there is no transfer of pathogens upon visiting the toilets. Imagine the disgusting bacterial transfer whenever some child doesn't wash his/her hands properly because of the lack of soap. What if the child forgot to take his/her soap? They would have to wander back into their dorm room (with their unclean hands), find the soap in their cupboard and go back to the bathroom to wash their hands. And that is assuming that on the way back and forth, nobody else bumps into them - because as we all know kids will be kids. So, ok, they don’t have the money to put in these soap dispensers? Well, how about the disgusting waste of money that you see when the school puts on the extravagant welcome party at the beginning of the term in July. They must spend upwards of Rs. 50,000 to put this fancy party together: could they not have just forgone that expense and instead installed soap dispensers, and provide a basic necessity kids? Based on our experience, I do not believe that CIRS would even be honest enough to admit to the parents if the children were in danger of an outbreak of a serious disease.
2. The year that our child started (2004), a number of parents protested that the mattresses were stained and old - they looked disgusting (never mind the stench). Imagine the stains from the body fluids on these old mattresses, upon which they were forcing the kids to sleep: the administrators at CIRS did not even think to have them exchanged for new mattresses. Presumably, there was too much preoccupation with planning a budget for the extravagant party, so of course there was not enough money for buying clean mattresses for the kids. After protest by certain parents, and I guess some miracle, the mattresses were changed - of course, the expensive parties must go on...one cannot give up on that lifestyle, especially when it is on other people’s dime.
3. CIRS does not enforce discipline with children who do not follow the norms and mores of a civilized society: one of the dorm girls tried to strangle our child on several occasions, and the school refused to acknowledge the attempted murder or do anything about it. Our daughter complained to the principal, who, in turn, did absolutely nothing to investigate this and brushed it aside as horseplay. I wonder if any child has been severely damaged (i.e., mentally or physically) at CIRS - and I wonder if CIRS had had the honesty to admit its fault in the lack of enforced discipline? On another occasion, our daughter sustained considerable physical assault whilst in the care of the school: the administrators did not even have the courtesy to email (let alone telephone) to let us know of our daughter's injuries. The only way we found this out was during the holidays when we saw the scars on her body: that's when she told us about it. Apparently, she had been told not tell us (on the phone) about the injuries: why? What was the school thinking? They have no answers for the scars that she now has on her body and her face. Would you want your child in this kind of an environment??
4. There were multiple occasions when our child experienced bullying and harassment - and the school failed in not bringing the offending child(ren) to discipline. Instead, the principal and director of the school retorted that our daughter was simply too sensitive and needed “to get over it”. Since when is bullying considered a norm of civilized society? And what about the bullies attitudes? They kept on bullying without any punishment. The response we repeatedly heard was: we like to treat every child the same. Interestingly enough, when it comes to getting their hands on money, every child is not the same: the NRIs end up paying twice as much fees as the local Indians. So what happened to the equality principle when it came to the greed of extracting money from foreigners??
5. Another example of lack of enforced discipline: there is considerable vandalism and thievery going on at the school, but these events were brushed aside and no one in the power of authority did much about it. The lack of enforced discipline is abominable: the boys constantly broke and entered into the school lockers (where the kids keep all their valuables), they stole other kids' stationeries, and all the while the school administrators did little to stop this. Here's the reason why: despite the high school fees (Rs. 125,000 per term - and this is in 2004) the school forced every child to buy their own pencils, paper, erasers, you name it and they had to buy it. So the more stealing that goes on, the more buying is required, and...you guessed it...the parents end up having to buy all these things from the "tuck" shop set up at CIRS. So all in all someone connected to the school makes a fortune, and all long as the fortune-making goes on, who cares if items are stolen persistently on the school premises?
6. Regarding the bursar at CIRS – earlier in the year he tried to cheat us and make money on the side by indicating that CIRS was going to have to hire someone special just to renew our child's visa in New Delhi. [The visa was up for renewal, and we had been told by the consular office that the school must have the local (i.e. Coimbatore) Superintendent of the Police (the "SP") extend the validity of the stay in India]. So by pretending that a special person was going to be required to renew the visa in New Delhi, the idea was that I'd have to pay for the effort of hiring this person and getting the visa renewal done. In fact, just as noted by the Consular office, all the bursar did was to have the local "SP" in Coimbatore endorse the visa extension. Bottom line: the intent in the first place was to make money from us by pretending to have the extension done in New Delhi - which really needn't and didn't happen.
7. There is no accountability: the bursar doesn’t automatically provide you with accounts of how your money is being spent. You have to ask for the accounts – only then do you receive an explanation. They were charging us unnecessarily for health insurance; charging for various items including erasers, pencils and other school materials. At the end of the academic year, they then refused to refund any of that money that was inappropriately spent. Forget the refund, they didn’t even provide receipts for the school fees unless you asked for them. It makes one wonder if all that is being sought is a free hand in spending other people’s money without the accountability? Indeed, one specific example of the lack of accountability is that in which we requested a meeting with the director-in-charge at CIRS to discuss various issues about the bullying, thievery and other educational issues. Not only did she not honor the request, but she failed to acknowledge the request or even let us know whether she would be willing schedule at another time. The silent attitude was almost as though she didn’t feel the need to be responsive. As soon as you have handed over the school fees, you instantly become a persona non grata. A year after we withdrew our child, we have yet to receive an accountability document or refund from the bursar.
8. CIRS asks for a “refundable caution deposit” of Rs.125,000 per child. This supposed deposit was arbitrarily retained by the school earlier this year when we refused to have our daughter stay for the next academic year. [After all the above stuff, would you want your child to go through this year-in year-out?] They were supposed to refund the Rs. 125,000 deposit, and, instead, that money was withheld with the endorsement of the Board of Directors of the school. They have flatly refused to return any of it - presumably it has all been spent of extravagance and to line someone's pockets? Does it make you wonder if there was any intention at all to return this “refundable deposit” in the first place? In which case why call it a “refundable” deposit? In fact, the bursar was positively gloating and oozing greed when he told us to go fight it out in the courts if we had the audacity to want the money back.
So basically, this amounts to the philosophy of the Chinmaya Mission when it instituted CIRS in 1996. It is effectively the back door way of embezzling money from NRIs and other rich folks for the grander vision of the Chinmaya Mission. Create a school, pretend to care for the kids, and embezzle money…Interestingly enough, this swami Tejomayanand who leads the flock for the Chinmaya Mission is also the Chairman for the CIRS school board. And no one seems to see the conflict of intererst or connection to a modus operandi for increasing the cash flow?
Whatever the ultimate goal, one thing is for sure: every penny of the money that CIRS has absorbed without proper due course is destined for pure unadulterated evil and calamity to befall upon CIRS and the Chinmaya Mission. Our overall summation of the experience, and we surmise that CIRS was set up to raise money for the Chinmaya Mission in the disguise of educating children - nothing beats putting a fox to guard the henhouse. In fact, our experience has been that they are not educating those kids out of altruism: they are demoralizing them, and allowing physical and mental abuse to go unchecked. It is the only way Chinmaya Mission can appropriate large sums of money from NRIs and other rich Indians to further the cause of the Chinmaya Mission.
I wrote to the Swami about our experience, and there has been no response. That's how little he cares about the kids in preference to appropriating as much money as possible.
If you are still thinking of sending your child, I would warn you to not part with your money until you have spoken with other parents who have had bad experiences...CIRS will very likely only steer you to those parents to afraid to speak out and truthfully disclose the shenanigans.
We never expected the turn of events as they happened and nobody forewarned us - but if you have read the above, and, you get ripped off by CIRS, then you cannot say that you were not informed.
Caveat emptor.
Update:
More than a decade late, and the school still has not owned up to its responsibility to provide an accountability of its charges and refunds owed to me. That in itself speaks volumes of the integrity of this organization and the cult it espouses.
7 August 2011
To any prospective fee-paying parent - you have two choices: first choice is to not even bother reading my blog entirely - simply click on the readers' comments for this blog [in which case scroll almost halfway down] to get a feel for the quality of this school and its alumni in a number of cases - the profane language describing various sexual acts in their comments all speaks for itself really. Please note: the profanity used by the CIRS alumni in some of these comment posts is definitely not suitable for reading by children/minors.
And, second choice: if you have the patience to read the entire blog: then, just a quick update - CIRS still has not found the audacity to tie up the loose ends of unfinished accounting. Please note that the original blog was written in 2006 - scroll to the bottom....date highlighted in yellow.
Update:
In addition to Anonymous' advice (Jul 13 2011), there have been numerous others who have said that "I...don't carry a 5 year old feeling and hold that grudge with you."
It all really begs 2 questions immediately:
Firstly, what makes the(se) reader(s) think that it is a "grudge"? This is completely risible. I will explain again: the bursar at CIRS refused to provide for proper accounting of expenditures and reimbursements (in accordance with his duties) to a final closure, and, instead, willfully taunted a tryst in the courts. Presumably, because I didn't acquiesce to the appropriate personal (or official?) bribe to settle the matter with the bursar, the whole issue in his mind became non sequitur ipso facto. I steadfastedly refused to pay the expected bribe: in retrospect, had I done so, then, very likely I would have had to report it on http://ipaidabribe.com/ when that website came online in 2010 or 2011- presumably, it would have been a somewhat ruinous publicity for CIRS that I presciently helped avoid?
Secondly, why is it that not one of these sagacious commentor parents, and the salacious CIRS alumni, who have clearly expressed much fondness for their present and past experiences at CIRS have asked the following with just as much rapacity: why has the CIRS administration not done anything to rectify the shambled situation left by their erstwhile bursar? And, more importantly, why has the CIRS administration not taken the intiative, brush aside its intransigent obduracy, and brought the matter to a suitable closure?
The CIRS administration has my name and information, and are well aware of the outstanding issue that needs to be brought to closure. They even passed on my personal information to the CIRS alumni who then posted profane comments to my blog which was previously posted on http://www.sasural.com/ - because of the foul language posted by the CIRS alumni on that website, the host was forced to retract the blog so that it would not reveal the debasing morals of these CIRS alumni. As you will see below in the comments to this blog, there is some gratifying sense of deja vu since it has not stopped some of them from posting again some of the same crass language, replete with expletives, as was used on sasural.com. Once again, these maleficent alumni have successfully failed the reputation of their alma mater.
So, as a prospective parent and parents of present attendees, please be warned that your personal information with CIRS may not necessarily be safely guarded. From my experience, I can confirm that it was freely shared with the alumni who then used it for nefarious purposes. Which then brings up even more questions on the moral integrity of the privacy policies enforced by the Board of Directors for CIRS.
If you have made it this far....here's the rest from previous posts...
==================================================================
19 June 2011
There have been numerous euphemistic and often derisory comments on the need to "move on", some polite and others not quite so. Some alumni have even displayed their wealth of profane language that needs no interpretation even to the uninitiated [perhaps, one of the English language courses taught with certitude?].
Regardless, to those who have threatened acts of indecency, and of gratuitously nefarious sexual acts towards an under-aged minor, I stake a claim that these maleficent alumni have failed the reputation of their school, let alone miserably fail in questioning the mysterious motive of their school's failure to settle the matter once and for all - so that we all can "move on"?
Updating a blog annually with the same old news is no task to be relished: only a rolling stone gathers no moss. Surely, only the most well-intentioned CIRS alumni need now cower from the arrestingly skilled display of profanity from their compatriots? As is whispered in gentrified circles: one cannot run with the hares and hunt with the hounds at the same time.
A moment of lux et veritas, shall we say?
==================================================================================
16 Dec 2010
Given the level of corruption, bribery and thievery in India - which is presently in the news with respect to the raids on individuals related to the 2G spectrum inquiry (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11997227) - there is no surprise that the lower echelons of society take a leaf from the upper echelons and conduct the same level of gross dishonorable acts.
CIRS still - to date - fails to give an accounting close-out statement. And still have not heard from the Swami at the school - almost 7 years later. I have no doubt that any attempt to take this through a legal process will be met with bribery and subservience to the judiciary in order to get anywhere. With this in view, I would invite any reader to consider carefully the ramifications before handing over large sums that purport to be "refundable deposits" or "discretionary" spends - there is no accountability to be sourced, given the level of insidious instutionalized corruption in India. Therefore no one or no insitution is held accountable to honesty - even in the name of religion.
==================================================================================
06 March 2010
Another year passes by - and no CIRS response. Even the headmaster has had to resign his position in 2009 and go back to Dehra Dun.
More importantly, all prospective applicants/parents should take a look at the CIRS alumni Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=2205266406 - Facebook was going to archive all groups in the old formats and so this link might turn old - but, in any case, you can search Facebook for the alumni pages) and...follow at least some of the students' individual facebook profiles and wall pages and you'll quickly asceratin the calibre (or lack of it?) of the CIRS alumni: here's an example of what you'll note from one student sampled at random -Sharmeela Sheila Jesupaul - she is to graduate from UC Santa Cruz in 2012 according to the profile as of the date of this blog - read the kind of invective language used by this illustrious alumnus. And then wonder if you'd really want your child to end up in the same heap...and...presumably, there is some plausible reason as to why this student (Sharmeela) ended up at UC Santa Cruz instead of some other well-recognized university institution after her attendance at the illustrious CIRS...??? And if you are a prospective employer - have a field day on the CIRS alumni Facebook page and get a quick read of the calibre of this school and its alumni...
Meanwhile, wishing a happy retirement to Mr Anurag...the ex-principal at CIRS as of 2009...what a great job he did of churning out the questionable generation of characters (if their Facebook pages are anything to go by) during his tenure at CIRS....
==================================================================================
10 June 2009
As of yet - 5 years on - still no response from CIRS.
==================================================================================
06 March 2006
A plea to all parents prospectively looking to send your child to the Chinmaya International Residential School (CIRS) in Coimbatore, India.
Please read this blog first before you hand over a single penny to the school.
Be warned of the practices that we encountered at this school, and the manner of extracting money. Here's a brief account of our real life experience with CIRS - a school that supposedly cares for kids, but it certainly has not been our experience.
The conclusion: after our dealing with CIRS, we can conclude that only if you absolutely hate and despise your child would you ever consider sending him/her to CIRS because it is the cruelest form of punishment you can ever think of for a child. Read on for what happened in our one-year experience with this "school" when we sent our daughter there. It is the biggest mistake we ever made for our child. When you look at the CIRS website, there is are grand visionary statements that, in the main, turn out to be questionable.
CIRS was supposedly founded on Chinmaya "vision", and put into action by the Swami Tejomayanand – who, its website proudly declares, was named "Hindu of the Year". The school was started in the mid 1990s with the aim of attracting rich Indian and NRI kids to attend the school...Our child "studied" at CIRS for one year, and here's a litany of things we experienced that unfolded after we had committed ourselves to our child's attendance at the school:
1. CIRS does not make provision for such simple things as basic hygiene: so, for example, whenever the children have to go to the toilet, they have to carry their own soap with them. There is no care for the kids' hygiene to install soap dispensers so that there is no transfer of pathogens upon visiting the toilets. Imagine the disgusting bacterial transfer whenever some child doesn't wash his/her hands properly because of the lack of soap. What if the child forgot to take his/her soap? They would have to wander back into their dorm room (with their unclean hands), find the soap in their cupboard and go back to the bathroom to wash their hands. And that is assuming that on the way back and forth, nobody else bumps into them - because as we all know kids will be kids. So, ok, they don’t have the money to put in these soap dispensers? Well, how about the disgusting waste of money that you see when the school puts on the extravagant welcome party at the beginning of the term in July. They must spend upwards of Rs. 50,000 to put this fancy party together: could they not have just forgone that expense and instead installed soap dispensers, and provide a basic necessity kids? Based on our experience, I do not believe that CIRS would even be honest enough to admit to the parents if the children were in danger of an outbreak of a serious disease.
2. The year that our child started (2004), a number of parents protested that the mattresses were stained and old - they looked disgusting (never mind the stench). Imagine the stains from the body fluids on these old mattresses, upon which they were forcing the kids to sleep: the administrators at CIRS did not even think to have them exchanged for new mattresses. Presumably, there was too much preoccupation with planning a budget for the extravagant party, so of course there was not enough money for buying clean mattresses for the kids. After protest by certain parents, and I guess some miracle, the mattresses were changed - of course, the expensive parties must go on...one cannot give up on that lifestyle, especially when it is on other people’s dime.
3. CIRS does not enforce discipline with children who do not follow the norms and mores of a civilized society: one of the dorm girls tried to strangle our child on several occasions, and the school refused to acknowledge the attempted murder or do anything about it. Our daughter complained to the principal, who, in turn, did absolutely nothing to investigate this and brushed it aside as horseplay. I wonder if any child has been severely damaged (i.e., mentally or physically) at CIRS - and I wonder if CIRS had had the honesty to admit its fault in the lack of enforced discipline? On another occasion, our daughter sustained considerable physical assault whilst in the care of the school: the administrators did not even have the courtesy to email (let alone telephone) to let us know of our daughter's injuries. The only way we found this out was during the holidays when we saw the scars on her body: that's when she told us about it. Apparently, she had been told not tell us (on the phone) about the injuries: why? What was the school thinking? They have no answers for the scars that she now has on her body and her face. Would you want your child in this kind of an environment??
4. There were multiple occasions when our child experienced bullying and harassment - and the school failed in not bringing the offending child(ren) to discipline. Instead, the principal and director of the school retorted that our daughter was simply too sensitive and needed “to get over it”. Since when is bullying considered a norm of civilized society? And what about the bullies attitudes? They kept on bullying without any punishment. The response we repeatedly heard was: we like to treat every child the same. Interestingly enough, when it comes to getting their hands on money, every child is not the same: the NRIs end up paying twice as much fees as the local Indians. So what happened to the equality principle when it came to the greed of extracting money from foreigners??
5. Another example of lack of enforced discipline: there is considerable vandalism and thievery going on at the school, but these events were brushed aside and no one in the power of authority did much about it. The lack of enforced discipline is abominable: the boys constantly broke and entered into the school lockers (where the kids keep all their valuables), they stole other kids' stationeries, and all the while the school administrators did little to stop this. Here's the reason why: despite the high school fees (Rs. 125,000 per term - and this is in 2004) the school forced every child to buy their own pencils, paper, erasers, you name it and they had to buy it. So the more stealing that goes on, the more buying is required, and...you guessed it...the parents end up having to buy all these things from the "tuck" shop set up at CIRS. So all in all someone connected to the school makes a fortune, and all long as the fortune-making goes on, who cares if items are stolen persistently on the school premises?
6. Regarding the bursar at CIRS – earlier in the year he tried to cheat us and make money on the side by indicating that CIRS was going to have to hire someone special just to renew our child's visa in New Delhi. [The visa was up for renewal, and we had been told by the consular office that the school must have the local (i.e. Coimbatore) Superintendent of the Police (the "SP") extend the validity of the stay in India]. So by pretending that a special person was going to be required to renew the visa in New Delhi, the idea was that I'd have to pay for the effort of hiring this person and getting the visa renewal done. In fact, just as noted by the Consular office, all the bursar did was to have the local "SP" in Coimbatore endorse the visa extension. Bottom line: the intent in the first place was to make money from us by pretending to have the extension done in New Delhi - which really needn't and didn't happen.
7. There is no accountability: the bursar doesn’t automatically provide you with accounts of how your money is being spent. You have to ask for the accounts – only then do you receive an explanation. They were charging us unnecessarily for health insurance; charging for various items including erasers, pencils and other school materials. At the end of the academic year, they then refused to refund any of that money that was inappropriately spent. Forget the refund, they didn’t even provide receipts for the school fees unless you asked for them. It makes one wonder if all that is being sought is a free hand in spending other people’s money without the accountability? Indeed, one specific example of the lack of accountability is that in which we requested a meeting with the director-in-charge at CIRS to discuss various issues about the bullying, thievery and other educational issues. Not only did she not honor the request, but she failed to acknowledge the request or even let us know whether she would be willing schedule at another time. The silent attitude was almost as though she didn’t feel the need to be responsive. As soon as you have handed over the school fees, you instantly become a persona non grata. A year after we withdrew our child, we have yet to receive an accountability document or refund from the bursar.
8. CIRS asks for a “refundable caution deposit” of Rs.125,000 per child. This supposed deposit was arbitrarily retained by the school earlier this year when we refused to have our daughter stay for the next academic year. [After all the above stuff, would you want your child to go through this year-in year-out?] They were supposed to refund the Rs. 125,000 deposit, and, instead, that money was withheld with the endorsement of the Board of Directors of the school. They have flatly refused to return any of it - presumably it has all been spent of extravagance and to line someone's pockets? Does it make you wonder if there was any intention at all to return this “refundable deposit” in the first place? In which case why call it a “refundable” deposit? In fact, the bursar was positively gloating and oozing greed when he told us to go fight it out in the courts if we had the audacity to want the money back.
So basically, this amounts to the philosophy of the Chinmaya Mission when it instituted CIRS in 1996. It is effectively the back door way of embezzling money from NRIs and other rich folks for the grander vision of the Chinmaya Mission. Create a school, pretend to care for the kids, and embezzle money…Interestingly enough, this swami Tejomayanand who leads the flock for the Chinmaya Mission is also the Chairman for the CIRS school board. And no one seems to see the conflict of intererst or connection to a modus operandi for increasing the cash flow?
Whatever the ultimate goal, one thing is for sure: every penny of the money that CIRS has absorbed without proper due course is destined for pure unadulterated evil and calamity to befall upon CIRS and the Chinmaya Mission. Our overall summation of the experience, and we surmise that CIRS was set up to raise money for the Chinmaya Mission in the disguise of educating children - nothing beats putting a fox to guard the henhouse. In fact, our experience has been that they are not educating those kids out of altruism: they are demoralizing them, and allowing physical and mental abuse to go unchecked. It is the only way Chinmaya Mission can appropriate large sums of money from NRIs and other rich Indians to further the cause of the Chinmaya Mission.
I wrote to the Swami about our experience, and there has been no response. That's how little he cares about the kids in preference to appropriating as much money as possible.
If you are still thinking of sending your child, I would warn you to not part with your money until you have spoken with other parents who have had bad experiences...CIRS will very likely only steer you to those parents to afraid to speak out and truthfully disclose the shenanigans.
We never expected the turn of events as they happened and nobody forewarned us - but if you have read the above, and, you get ripped off by CIRS, then you cannot say that you were not informed.
Caveat emptor.
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