रामायण

I was watching रामायण after very long. I guess last time I watched it was when I was in class 8 or something. Here mummy is alone at home, so to give her company, I watch it. I found that even today, when so many hindi films have been released since Ramanand Sagar's रामायण , still this one carries so much emotional value. I feel moved to tears in many scenes. Unlike Mahabharat, रामायण is story of so much love and affection . One can notice the word 'sneh' umpteen number of times in one episode. One really feels like having cleaned his mind and heart of all vices. Every character in the story (ofcourse barring few - kakayi, manthura and those from Ravan's camp), have so much love for each other. Every one's fighting to give comfort to some one else. I feel that Ram's age must have been the most peaceful and stable times on earth.

Timing of my realization of these things is pretty apt. I mean very recently Karunanidhi questioned the existence of Ram. He was giving some arguments that he claimed were rational. Even I am myself a computer science graduate. But still I feel influenced by these mythological stories. At least they are putting in us some fear for god, some fear from doing fallacies. If he wanted to make bridge, then he should have gone ahead, but not by inciting people by attacking faith of people. I remember once I was complaining to an Austrian Professor that in India, some rivers get polluted a lot because people put dead bodies and other things in the reiver for religious reasons. Then even that chap, who was complete foriegn to hinduism and mythology replied,"But people have faith in that. It's the question of faith." And Karunananidhi is from south India, the land, where we can find most religious people in India. Even that bridge is ultimately for welfare of people, then it is actually service of God, people would not have complained if that new bridge is making the lives easier. But it is crap to say things about Ram sethu or for that matter Ram's existence per se, as this was all uncalled for. It's like if we can build a hospital for destitute by breaking some temple, then it should be fine. But we should not break the temple because we don't believe in the deity worshiped in that temple. May Ram give some sense to these morons.

double standard, glorified.

July 24, 2007

Some prominent media houses give following headlines :

NASDAQ : "Suspect Haneef's Clean Chit To Australian Federal Police "

The Times of India : "Diary notes are mine, not by cops: Haneef"

Times Now : "Haneef gives a clean chit to AFP "

Yahoo News / CNN-IBN : "Haneef says Oz cops did not doctor his diary"

July 30-31, 2007 : When Haneef is back in India, here's what we see :

The times of India : "Haneef wants Australia to apologise"

The Hindu : "Haneef: I am a victim of Australian conspiracy"

This sudden change in the Hanif's attitude is quite visible through headlines!

bangalore - glass house?

It's been more than a month since I moved to Bangalore. A lot has been said ans written about this so called silicon valley of India. Here's my contribution, my first hand experience. My office is on the Airport Road, right across Leela Palace. I thought this must be the most happening place in the city. Soon my illusions were over when I saw the map and discovered that actually we are far from the hip hop spots of Bangalore. Most of the services have their centres far from here. Near to this area, I once saw a mini La Defense. The place around that golf course had all the brands of IT one could think of Microsoft, Yahoo, HP Google and what not? In erecting these high rise posh buildings, people behind all of it, forgot that India has a weather different from that of countries where these glass houses are a norm for business houses. In my own office,




in spite of state of art air conditioning and climate control system, I feel sultry in the noon if i am sitting next to a glass wall exposed to weather outside. So, those feeling awestruck (as I felt when I DLF building for the first time while going by Gurgaon road) by the sight of glass buildings, do have a heart for how it feels behind those glasses!

India's Educational policy

India’s Education Policy

Ours is a land which was a centre of learning for centuries. But since independence to this day, we have been facing challenges in achieving the goal of making India an educated state. On one hand nature of such challenges has been the same. For instance even today our goal of making primary education accessible to one and all, is far from being achieved. At the same time, challenges have taken more complex form today. Rewriting of history books with every new government and lack of funds for making higher education available to the rapidly growing population (whose size has gone through enormous increase) need intelligent strategies to deal with. This paper is not going to present a dismal picture India’s educational policy by giving an array of statistics, which is any way known. Nor will it mention a positive interpretation of such statistics in the way websites of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and National Literacy Mission boast of their achievement. It will rather describe the handicaps, plaguing the policy makers in the matters pertaining to education, and some plausible solutions, and some threads opened in the paper will be kept open for the readers to close them, for the author failed to obtain one feasible way for the same.

Moving in the natural order of development of a human, primary education sows the seeds of growth. The desire of providing free and compulsory education for all nurtured in our constitution and in the minds of gentlemen who drafted it. Even today, 59 million children out-of-school and another 90 million in school learning very little^[1]. We have plenty of villages where there is no school nearby. Government of course has a big role to play there. It should figure out all such villages and start a rapid movement of sort to install one primary school in each such village. In fact there should be one primary school within 1km radius. This goal of government is yet to be completed. To begin with, we can arrange for only few teachers, who should be paid more than their counterparts serving in the towns and cities where there are more number of teachers to share the burden. This won’t need much infrastructure. Of course black board education of such kind is not as effective as with some visual aids, but the whole idea is to make the kids literate, to prepare them for further education, to avoid their exploitation at the hands of the rich and slightly literate people of village, so that they don’t suffer the same plight as their parents. And we should not expect all the latest technology to reach in every village of our country overnight. But nor can we wait for that to happen. We must understand that literacy is as important as food or cloth. Only if a person knows basic mathematics, reading and writing short simple statements, needed in every day life, in one language, can he expect to secure some kind of employment in a country of 1 billion crippled with unemployment. He needs this literacy to get onto the right bus, to read before signing on a paper and virtually in every circumstance which is going to affect his life.

Apart from the government initiatives, we need more people like Magsaysay award winner Sandeep Pandey, who gave up his job of teaching at IIT Kanpur and came to a dalit village of Lalpur in district Ballia of UP, where despite all odds , he opened a school and took concrete steps to alleviate poverty. This happened in a village where even candidates of State Assembly elections made no commitments. Government has to later on make reservations for these dalit children. Why does it not educate them at primary level itself as to make them natural competitors with students belonging to general category. Here when situation is so grim that whole village is not able access a school, then will the government make reservation for the entire village? Why should it rather not open a school or two there? Government can’t always be relied upon for two reasons. Firstly, sometimes (though it happens very rarely) to focus all all areas at one time or it suffers from lack of funds. Secondly, government servants don’t want to serve the areas where they won’t benefit much in terms of votes or money through corruption (and this one happens more frequently).

Primary education suffers not just because of their lack of availability in rural India, but also on other grounds as well. Quality of that primary education in one such issue. It can be measured by learning levels of those attending primary schools. It is found that 40.2% of class 5 kids could not read class 2 level paragraphs and 56.6% of them could not perform subtraction sums ^[2]. If something could be done here, then it is the change in teaching methodology. Kids should be taught in a natural way of learning. For example, the most natural method of learning basic arithmetic is counting. A mother can ask her child to count the number of potatoes left in a basket after she put some of them aside. There can be more effective methods. We need to constitute a committee of experts in pedagogy, urgently to make suggestions in this direction with in a time frame, so as to implement new methods of teaching by the next academic session. Idea is to start looking for a solution as soon as a problem is identified. We need our government to give up its lethargy at least in the education sector and start working towards quick and effective solution.

Another area where work needs to be done is decreasing the dropout rates and increasing the number of enrolments per se. Firstly, we should understand that at times we have parents themselves wanting their kids to work and at other times kids themselves find going to school a boring task and would rather prefer working. Many factors contribute to this, frequent absenteeism of teachers (who are in fact better paid as compared to their counterparts in private school), inferior methods of teaching, making learning a tedious task and lack of infrastructure. For this constant monitoring of working of schools is essential. For instance, 25% of teachers were absent from school, and only half were teaching, during unannounced visits to a nationally representative sample of government primary schools in India. ^[2] It is worth mentioning that midday meal program of government of India is doing really good job by pulling the kids to school, and parents also find a reason to feel convinced to send their ward to school. But in the cases of working children, first solution is banning any form of child labor. Non Formal Education is a good but still a temporal solution for imparting education to working children. But here bottom line is that all good measures should be continued with more zeal.

Moving to middle and secondary school education, it also faces problems similar to those enlisted above for primary schools. There is an urgent need for a state-private partnership. Where there are government schools, education is very much subsidized. A monthly fee is on an average Rs.70 from class VI to VIII. In spite of that number of enrolled is far less than the expected. In such situation, we need huge awareness amongst the parents about value of education so that they can send their ward to school. But as we notice every year that it is the private schools that outperform the government schools not just in terms of results of public examinations but in the competitions pertaining to co-curricular activities also. So private schools should now realize their social responsibility and allow poor children to be part of their so called elite club. Or else rich children won’t have the experience of studying together with the kids from economically poor background, of sharing the joy of learning together. A sense of equality will then never be ensured in the growing minds.

Also in schools, student should not compulsorily taught Hindi. Two languages – their mother tongue and English should be enough. It’s important students enjoy reading and writing in their mother tongue also, that will help in the development of regional languages and literature and cinema.

Another concern about school education is changing of textbooks , particularly history textbooks, according to the whims of current political power at centre. NCERT and related organizations such as Indian Council for Historical Research should be given autonomy. Religion should also be kept strictly separate from education. In this wake, all RSS schools and madrasas should be closed, but then each community has been given constitutionally, the right to preach and propagate its religious beliefs. Some solution has to be thought to balance the two.

Higher education sector is the one that finally fuels the economic growth. America has more proportion of population going to higher education than any other country. No wonder it is the biggest economic power today. Moving focus away from higher education to work on primary education is something impractical. In Professor C.N. R. Rao’s words,” I don’t think that we should wait for all people to become literate before we improve our universities”.

The biggest problem we are facing today in the area of higher of education is the greater role of state in it. Either state should provide educate funds or otherwise let the colleges charge the fees that is some where near the actual cost of education, rather than heavily subsidizing it. In IIT’s, hostel rent per semester is Rs.500. At no place in the world can one find a room for Rs.500 for four months. Medical Fees per semester is Rs.100. This despite the fact that one time consultation fees of doctors these days itself is Rs.100. These were just a few examples to present an idea higher education is subsidized in our country. But in these colleges of higher education, children of industrialists and IAS officers also study. There are in fact plenty of students who can at least 2 times what they are paying now. So such students should be charged more. In fact, we can have a federal fee structure, like income tax rather than fix it for all (of course except students from SC, ST and OBC). The idea is to charge fees proportionately. This way, the dilemma of excellence versus access and quality versus quantity can also be solved. Because if government lacks funds, then in order to cater to the needs of growing for higher education, government will create more institutions or increase more seats in the existing institutions. In either case, it will result in decrease in over all quality and excellence, for the total funding is still the same.

We must also learn from the education system in developed countries. Private universities have been a great success in United States. Top 5 universities of the world include 3 private American universities. Of course, that success can be attributed to America’s economy being capitalist in nature, and we can’t have complete privatization of higher education, but still considering the high cost incurred in the education of a single graduate, and growing demand for higher education, government can just not hope to do it all by itself with the current total spending on education being 4% of GDP. Emergence of world class private institutes is inevitable. Indian Institute of Science and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research were also visions of industrialists and scientists. And these institutes have produced some of the nation’s finest researchers and scientists. Recent establishment and good performance of private institutes like Dhiru Bhai Ambani Institute of Information Technology and Jaypee Institute of Information Technology are also positive signs. Other business houses should also take lead in this direction.

The public sector institutes of learning like IIT’s, NIT’s , AIIMS and IIM’s should also depend lesser and lesser on government. Rather, they should generate their endowments through research and consultancies. These institutes should change their image from lethargic universities to that of profit making and fiercely competing companies. Competition always leads to good quality. For this very reason, we should allow FDI in education. If MIT opens its campus here, people would consider that also as a good option. This would reduce the pressure on several hundred thousand students, appearing each year for admission tests of various elite institutes, only a small percentage of which constitutes the finally selected students. But a constant vigil on all universities and colleges , particularly those in private sector is needed. Because we have private universities like Amity whose directors have been issued warrants against them. Even the Delhi Government’s Indraprastha university has so many small colleges affiliated to it which hardly have infrastructure for the courses they are conducting. In places like Bangalore, Noida, Ghaziabad, Hyderabad, and Gurgaon , one can find plenty of teaching shops claiming to be colleges affiliated to several private or government universities. The elite institutes like IIT’s are catering to the needs of very small percentage of students. Thousands of other students clamor for admission to these lowly colleges. All such colleges charge hefty amount of fees. Such institutes need to be checked.

While discussing higher education, mention of much talked about reservation is indispensable. The simple argument against such idiocy is that if some method failed to achieve its purpose in spite of having used it for 60 years or so, then how can the same method be strengthened further an used to achieve that purpose? On the top of everything else, no school or college in India denies admission to someone because of his/her caste.

Conclusion

The goal of universal education can be achieved by opening primary schools in every possible place where they find utility. No kid should be denied primary education for the reason of non availability in the neighborhood. Quality of education is also equally important and can be ensured through reforms in teaching methodology and more accountability and transparency in schools. Dream of having high standard higher education for all can be a reality with the help of private hands, and with increased funding , more emphasis on research than just conducting examination.

TOI bashing.... again

This is the text of a news article on the front page of The Times of India paper dated few weeks back.

Sanjay Dutt was busy speaking to someone on his phone. He looked into us as though the glass wall that separated the bar from his living room never existed. After a few minutes, he walked out of his bar and strode into his living room to greet us. He stood besides us donning a white floral short kurta that gracefully gave way to show his twin layer of white and golden beads, a chain with golden coin of Lord Balaji of Tirupati inscribed, on his neck. He was a wearing a pale blue gunshot jeans that would have made John Travolta think a thousand times 20 years back. A huge golden Rolex with a green dial and a black bezel kept time on his left wrist while his left hand clutched a pack of cigarettes. He radiated the combined grace and elegance of his parents, Nargis and Sanjay Dutt, as he firmly shook hands with warmth.

He sat in the corner of a black and soft-grey leather sofa with prominent black cross-stitches on its edges. Majestic, at ease, his right leg at right angle to his left and his right hand on the arm of the sofa, his left hand sliding over his pointed black and brown triangle-patterned leather shoes, he fielded questions with outright honesty and without a whiff of pretension. “No I have not read Gandhiji’s My Experiments with Truth” he said during the interview.

Well, what brilliantly important details on the front page!

Final year.. i am sporty!

All Work No Play, Makes Jack a Dull boy.. In IIT(G.. it happens Guwahati at least!), this thought descends upon the minds of students in the last lap of their race called 'IIT life'. Yes, final year fills in the students, particularly B.techs, an unprecedented enthusiasm for sports. Not being a part of at least one sport becomes so ‘not cool’ suddenly. But the first three year find a significant section of people not busy with sports. And this trend has been observed invariably year after year. So an intriguing question is "Why now? Why not earlier?" Let’s explore…

Generally, one gets a standard reply to such question, that “we had other tasks earlier. ”, but considering an IITian style of living, it is quite reasonable to agree that the ‘other tasks’ were mainly different types of recreation, since students in IIT are not nerds. So one cannot buy any sort of argument that would imply that earlier students did not get time for sports. They did, but for other kinds of leisure activities which are different for different chaps. There is one breed of people who sleep and wake with computer games. They talk of it even during meals in the mess, if at all they remember to have food during mess hours! Similarly, we have the movie maniacs. Members of this tribe are crazy about watching movies and soaps.

But film studios haven’t stopped releasing movies. New seasons and episodes of various soaps are also available even now. There is no dearth of computer games or of excitement for new arenas of old computer games. So why the other wise really exciting passions of students fail to please them now? Why are those passions put on backburner now? People who never held a ball in their hands are now hitting courts regularly. A basket ball team consisting of final year students has not five but as many as seven (or even eight sometimes!) players. Even some good second year inter-IIT students are at times displaced from the fields and are told to play somewhere else to make room for their seniors. Oh yeah, they are seniors, at least, in terms of years spent in IIT if not in their experience in sports. Students can be seen trying their hands at everything under the sun as if tasting all the food stuff in their meal! Lawn tennis seems to be the easiest option to start with. No wonder tennis court is found so much congested these days. Some boys have gone as far as purchasing new tennis rackets. It’s true that it’s never late to learn anything in life, but why this learning thought strikes in eighth semester!! Is it because your next door neighbor is playing, so you should also go for it (so that you would not be appearing left out)? ….. If reader finds a suitable answer to these questions, author would be more than pleased to see it, as he could not find one.

Rajeev Gupta

(A final year student himself and a struggling player since first year!)

“Problems are meant to be solved …. not grumbled about"

This is one of the many good lessons I have learned from my friend Sachin. The deplorable state of various amenities in our hostels is something we constantly whine about. I had an interesting experience recently in this regard. There is a cistern above the urinals in our washrooms. I am not sure if people are aware of that because I have never seen them working here in any hostel in over three years. Perhaps no one complained to the concerned person for this, though lots of people come out of and go into washrooms with their hands on their noses. Cisterns are supposed to constantly let some drops of water fall on the urinal so that urine is flushed out regularly which otherwise smells like shit. Naphthalene balls are a cheaper solution but I was impressed to see cisterns in their place. So, I thought that when we are given this costly facility, why not it be put to use. I used the electronic complaint system launched last semester. Its response was far more than I expected. The plumber knocked at my door the very next day! I was truly taken by surprise. I showed him the situation, he did something. The cistern worked for a day. After that, rather than sprinkling water, it was like a running tap! It was closed in few days. This semester, I complained again. Again they came to me on the first working day itself. I was this time not too impressed because I expected that like last time, he will do some quick service to show officially that he has fixed the problem and gain money- typical ‘sarkari’ method. So I talked to him this time in a very firm manner. He explored the cistern very patiently and told that some thing was blocked for not having been used for ages. I was appalled to see that such costly things are kept idle to become useless in long time (by the way, the expensive Sony music system in the gym is another such example). It was truly useless now, as he had to change it. Two days later, I got a new cistern in out washroom. It is not the branded Parryware or Hindware like the previous one, but it does work! And ours is perhaps the only washroom at least in Manas that has a cistern up and running. By the way, I also noticed in admin building recently, a urinal with automatic cistern, it had a sensor! I really felt that I was Indian Institute of TECHNOLOGY.

Moral of the story? Rather than bitching about “JUST TEN SPOONS IN MESS” or “FED UP WITH ONLY ‘Panther’ PRESCRIBED IN DISPENSARY?” or “WHY ARE HOSTEL TOILETS STINKING”, get up and talk politely but firmly to the person responsible for the situation. Remove this misconception from the minds of admin that ours is just another ‘sarkari’ office. This is IIT, where they have got to deal with educated and young dynamos called IITians who know well how to fight for their right.

Work hard dude..

We have always despised government departments and offices for being inefficient and corrupt. We view them as a store house of lazy babus. Have we ever given a thought as to why year after year, babus keep on getting born in these offices? When one babu departs (retires.. because they are never fired!) to make room for a new candidate for his job, all that we get is another incompetent employee. Why?

We might get an answer if observe our technical and cultural fests. We organize Techniche and Alcheringa every year, which are indeed splendid festivals in terms of scale , organizational responsibilities, events and what not. We notice one thing in most of the events: they are delayed. They are not on time most of the times. In the inauguration of every edition of Techniche and Alcheriga, Dr. Gautam Barua , our director, urges us to start an event scheduled at 5 , at 5 and not at 5:30! But this doesn’t happen. I am not blaming anyone for this. I am myself a part of the same system for four years now. My event was also delayed. But is the inability to do things on time inherent in Indians? Is it impossible to respect punctuality? I am bewildered with these questions and observations because today when we go to , say, reservation counter of a railway station, we feel annoyed to see clerks sitting on counter taking ages to make the ticket or to find him not in his seat during office hours. But ultimately it is the people of a country that constitutes that nation. All of us will join the work force in a matter of few months. If we can’t organize things here in IIT with punctuality, how shall we do it in the offices we will join?

A similar and intriguing trait I observed during placements. I found many students more than willing to join NTPC or other PSU’s like IOCL and ONGC. They presented the simple logic that they would not need to work much in those companies. Well, these are the people who are called young IITians, graduates from elite institutions. If they are so much averse to work, what can one expect from the babu sitting in some municipality office or at a railway station for that matter?