High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sainik School Kazhakootam, Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) situated 18 km away from Trivandrum city on the National Highway 47. After the Indo-China border conflict of 1962, in which Indian armed forces did not fare too well against the Chinese military, the then-Indian defence minister Mr VK Krishna Menon conceived Sainik Schools as a residential school for boys, to select and train students for admission to the National Defence Academy (NDA). NDA is the training Academy for armed forces officers in India. The move was designed to build a stronger military. Each state of the Indian union was assigned one Sainik School each. For Kerala it was located at Trivandrum. Mr VK Krishna Menon was a native of the state of Kerala, and it was reported that he took a personal interest in the formation of this particular Sainik School.