Fellow Rimcollians, my warm greetings and welcome to our website.

 
Establishment of the Trust was authorized by the Rimcollian Old Boys Association (ROBA) Annual General Body Meeting held on 13 March 1994, chaired by me as the President, at RIMC Dehra Dun; to improve standards of education and training at our school.
 
RIMC is being run by limited funds available with Ministry of Defense together with subsidized fees payable by parents of selected cadets, many of whom belong to deprived groups. These funds are not considered adequate to achieve high standards in terms of quality of teachers, educational facilities, extra curricular activities, adventure training, sports and general awareness. These areas in all-round development of young men are
essential to develop leadership qualities and character building to uphold the college's reputation of being a "Cradle of Excellence" which has not only produced high quality leaders for the armed forces of India and other countries, but national leadership in all walks of life.
 
There was unanimous approval by all old boys present for our collecting contributory funds to make a positive impact on all aspects of education and adventure facilities at our alma mater, including providing scholarships to selected cadets, paying extra emoluments to school teachers and privately hiring additional teachers as required. Initial contributions were immediately offered by Ajit Singh ( Rs 48000/-) and Mr Hugh Catchpole, our erstwhile Principal, who gave his full backing to the scheme by a grand contribution of Rs 15 lacs, of which 5 lacs was for starting the Trust and 10 lacs for building a guest house. It was decided that all Rimcollians (including old life members) would contribute at least Rs 3000/- to the Trust and Rs 1000/- towards the Association to become life members.

ROBA Trust was registered with the Registrar of Societies on 07 March 1995, as an educational Charitable Trust under Societies Act of India 1960. The Department of Income Tax has accepted the Trust as an educational charity under sec 12 (a) and 80 (g) of the Income Tax Act 1961. All donations made to ROBA Trust are thus authorized 50% income tax rebate in the hands of the donor. This facility is periodically renewed with the Income Tax authorities to whom we submit our annual income tax return, through our chartered accountant.

A number of Rimcollians have made handsome contributions to the Trust. Among these are  Maj Gen Virendra Singh Rs 80,000/-, Lt Gen SS Grewal Rs 52,999/-, Lt Col AK Sethi Rs 50,000/-, Mr Arjun Israni Rs 2,15,000/-, Lt Gen MA Gurbaxani Rs. 1,13,500/- (now increased by us to a 3 lacs 'Lalwani /hard luck' fund which enabled funding of a RIMC vehicle drivers' son to join RIMC as a cadet and get a commission as an officer in the Army); Ms Nandita Shaunik (daughter of Gen VN Sharma) - Rs 1,00,000/-, Shri BD Prasad (father of Col Prem Prakash the erstwhile Commandant of the school) Rs 1,00,000/-; Mrs SC Sinha (W/o Late Maj Gen Samir C Sinha) Rs 1,00,000/-, and Chiranjit Bannerji  38,000/-

So far some 634 Rimcollians have contributed their required minimum of Rs 3,000/- to the Trust, to enable building the Corpus Fund to Rs 43.31 lacs. In contrast, we have been able to request funds from KC  Mahindra Education Trust (KCMET) of Rs 14 lacs, which has been built up to Rs 17.70 lacs and paid out scholarships over a number of years as indicated elsewhere; Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (SDTT) has donated Rs 40 lacs, now built up to Rs 44.74 lacs and utilized for hiring additional teachers besides one scholarship per year. These two charitable trusts have contributed a total of Rs 65.44 lacs to RIMC as they were convinced of our ability to create high quality leaders to serve our country. You can see that these two corporate trusts have exceeded all contributions by Rimcollians.

At present, out of over 2500 Rimcollians across the globe, only a quarter have made any contribution. There is pressing need for all Rimcollians to become life-members of the ROBA Trust and the Association by payment of the minimum amount of Rs 3000/- and 1000/- respectively. This would go a long way in providing the Trust a reasonable corpus to be able to assist RIMC.

Since inception, the Trust has expended over 18 Lacs on scholarships, cadets exchange programmes abroad, financial assistance, publications, master's welfare, hiring of additional teachers and adventure/sports programmes. Details are given elsewhere on the website.
 
The Trustees consider that to raise standards at RIMC it is of particular importance that we address the problem of poor emoluments, life-style, personal standards and training of teachers. This tends to have a deleterious effect on educational standards, character building and leadership training of cadets. The standard of teachers have eroded in view
of ineffective selection procedures through UPSC, coupled with poor pay and promotion scales offered through Ministry of Defense as compared to private and government schools and Kendriya Vidyalayas This causes good masters to leave the school after a few years, in search of better prospects.  

We have, therefore, started the "Masters Incentive Fund" to provide masters with better emoluments, special training and incentives, including 3-month teaching exchange programmes at selected educational institutions abroad for promising masters. SDTT is prepared to help the Trust in this endeavour with a grant of Rs 2.5 Crores, to create a reasonable annual interest income, to meet such expences. However, this grant has the provision that Rimcollians must first prove their commitment by an initial voluntary contribution of 20 to 50 Lacs. This case is pending for two years as we have only raised 7
to 8 Lacs so far. We need generous contributions from all Rimcollians for this cause.

We are disappointed at the poor response made so far by the majority of Rimcollians to contribute to the Trust for the benefit of RIMC. Our accounts are fully computerized, carefully made and expenditures are wisely considered by the Board of Trustees. A chartered accountant reviews all accounts and these are rendered to the income tax (IT) authorities for review and correctness every year. All accounts are updated every quarter
and are readily available for scrutiny at all times on the website.
 
Rimcollians, we do hope you will respond. The Trustees  wish to assure you that we are steadily working to make RIMC financially independent and able to continue to be reputed as the 'Cradle of Excellence'.