NEW DELHI (AsiaNews) – Wealthy parents are rushing to Catholic schools as moral crisis hits public schools in Delhi, this according to John Dayal, president of All India Catholic Union, a national Catholic lay organisation. "Parents," he said, "are worried at what they see as a moral collapse in the city's very expensive secular public schools".

Most of the boards running these schools are chaired by former ministers, top politicians or big time industrialists who name them in honour of their father or mother, and charge high tuition fees.

Parents pay a lakh* of rupees or more to get their children admitted to schools which have ponies, mini gold courses, 24 hour hi-band Internet and reverse osmosis filtered drinking water.  For a moment, one can even forget the climate-controlled swimming pool."

Regrettably, such places with their Internet and the mobile phone are a menace because they kindle premature sexual adventures among students

One case in point occurred in one of the many branches of Delhi Public School. A male student seduced a female classmate, had sex with her, photographed the act and then SMS-ed to the rest of his male friends and a few girl friends. Days later the SMS had been converted into a CD. School authorities reacted by expelling both boy and girl and stating that the 'act' had been committed off school premises and outside school hours.

According to Mr Dayal, parents of school-age girls (especially those between the ages of four-and-a-half and five-and-half year) prefer to send their daughters to Catholic schools because they are in despair and dissatisfied over the moral decadence of public schools, concerned about how it could affect their children's moral development and future public life. For this reason, they have been choosing prestigious convent schools in and around India's capital, schools like those of the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Carmel Convent, Mater Dei by the Franciscan Sisters, St Mary's and Auxilium, just to name a few. More significantly, the same thing is happening in other parts of India.

In these schools, principals are hard pressed to select one or two out of the 50 or so applicants who regularly want to attend Delhi's most prestigious schools. And the reason is simple. "For parents," Mr Dayal points out, "convents provide a cloistered environment, one that is served, supervised and policed by nuns, one in which morning prayers, moral science and the statue of the Blessed Virgin protect the girls' chastity and uphold it as an essential value. Here, they learn the dangers of pornography and casual sex".

About 90 per cent of the more than 3,000 students are non Catholic, mostly non Christian. Just five nuns run the schools with some 100 teachers with the assistance of 200 employees.

"The very presence of the nuns," Mr Dayal insists, "guarantees that the teaching and support staff will give their best under the protection of the Virgin Mary. Thanks to the Catholic schools, 300 young women reach maturity still chaste and ready to face life with solid moral foundations."

* One lakh = 100,000.