Happy tidings

If Italian PM Romano Prodi’s 4-day visit to Kolkata in February and Japanese PM Shinzo Abe’s forthcoming visit – both leading high level business delegation – are like music to the ears of the city’s business fraternity, no less is so the commencing of American School since yesterday.

Mumbai, Chennai and of course the capital, New Delhi already have American School. Kolkata’s turn has come late, but that it has come is once again an indicator of foreign investors’ growing confidence in Bengal and the whole of eastern region.

US consul-general in the city, Henry Jardine said as much (quoted from TT):

In addition to meeting the educational needs of expatriate families, I hope the school will also serve as a magnet for foreign businesses as a vote of confidence in the rapid economic growth in this region.

As mentioned in my earlier post, American School, the school has started small in the very campus of US consulate on city’s Ho-Chi-Minh Sarani (an unlikely address for a US consulate given that Ho Chi Minh was a tall communist leader of Vietnam).

Soon however the school plans to shift to a new sprawling campus at an as-yet undisclosed location. It’d cost around $10,000 a year to study in the school, and the MoEA condition stipulates that a student has to have some ‘international connection’ to be eligible for enrollment.