RamkiRambling

Sociology of Arts

2011-10-05T17:29:00.000+05:30

While surfing the channels, I chanced to watch some scenes from a circus show going on in Chennai. The TV channel was attempting to create some awareness about the life of circus artists. The acts that I watched were all improvisations for modern times though the traditional skills of acrobatics and juggling were the underlying themes. The enormous length of time that it must have taken for these artists to have mastered the act the constant practice required to be in shape and the extreme concentration required each time they perform are all probably a lot more than or comparable to what a star musician requires. However, consider the material life and the social status of a star musician in comparison to the circus artist’s life and status. Wouldn’t you be struck by the contrast? Why should it be that way? In fact, even a star cricketer’s life can not be as rigorous as that of the circus artist. Again, what a contrast!

I recall vaguely in a novel by Nigel Balchin –a British author whose novels I enjoyed – a passage – probably a conversation between two characters – which surmises that “classical” arts are considered superior to “folk” arts largely because of the artificial exclusivity created by the elite. The “cultivated” taste as opposed to what one would inherently enjoy is “superior”. The fact that “cultivating” some tastes require considerable resources which the poor can not afford ensures the “classical” arts would be exclusive for the elite and not be polluted by the plebeians or “proles” a la Brave New World of Huxely.

Of course, the mass following for the exclusive film singers such as SPB or the one-foot-in- both-world singers such as Jesudas or Unnikrishnan and the material as well as social success of cricket stars are also indicators of another phenomenon – the hype of market and the power of the mass media. My disappointment is that our mass hysteria is unfortunately around the less action-filled and high-cost sports of cricket rather than around soccer or desi games such as kabadi. I wonder whether there are Ph.D theses on the sociology of arts and sports. May be organized sports started as an “entertainment” for the ruling class rather than as an organic leisure time activity of the working class. I need to look up a lot of references if I have to say anything more.

2011-10-05T16:15:00.001+05:30

I found this blog intended to be posted 2 years back was never posted. Since it is not anything contemporary, I decided to post it now.
----------------------.

My holiday trip in May 2009 was to Utharakand to spend time with my old friend and erstwhile colleague at IIMB, Bharat Junjunwala, who has chosen to settle down near a village called Lakshmoli -120 km north of Haridwar – having built a home on the banks of Alakananda . Besides doing rafting in Alakaananda and visiting Chopta to see snow in May, I managed to finish reading Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppy and John Grisham’s Playing for Pitzza.

Of course Ghosh’s work as I I usually find is an education in history at lest for me. I had vague notions of the “Opium War” and Parsee merchants’ – including Tatas – involvement in opium trade to China. But I had no clear notion of the ravage done to Bihar peasantry on account of the British avarice to sell opium to China. Similarly, while I had read Ghosh’s account of the travails of indentured labour transported to Burma in his book Glass Palace, the brutality with which the indentured labour from Bihar transported to Mauritius were treated during the voyage is quite disturbing even though you have read so much of the slaves of the Americas!

I can not but contemptuously smile at the irony of the US and other Western nations now going to war with several opium producing small nations in order to stop cultivating narcotic plants because they don’t want their society becoming addicts. The English manufacturers and merchants of opium justified war China to preserve “free trade” for opium then!

Sometimes I wonder whether the ravages by the colonialists can ever be redressed and the majority of the third world would ever be capable of a level of development enjoyed at least by the bottom 20% of the developed nations in terms of basics of life.

I did find the character of the Goomastha a bit outlandish but then a master story teller like Ghosh has no problem in making him a credible character. It is indeed amazing Ghosh manages to weave together a plot with such disparate characters and sub-plots.

On becoming an actor

2011-09-27T16:45:00.001+05:30

Last Saturday I attended a 'theatre workshop at "Alliance Francaise' here at Tiruvanathapuram. I wanted to participate largely to be able to later work with children and help them stage skits and plays. The lady who conducted the workshop made us - about 15 adult participants - go through some exercises to express our sensory perceptopns. She also demonstrated how to express emotions and an excellant act of pantomime of getting into a small car, driving, getting out and removing luggage from the boot. I also learnt the difference between mime - just imitating a bird, animal or any non-human object - and pantomime where a human acts with objects which are only imagined. My experience to be expressive made me appreciate and respect the professional actors and their performance.

The first set of exercises were to convey to the audience our sense of sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste.
Seeing a beautiful sight; Smelling a old hat which smells rotten; Holding a burning bowl or pan (not to drop it though!); Hearing a 'Bad' sound such as a false note or sudden burst etc. (not to close your ears for indicating that); Picking up an imaginary glass, gulping something and finding it tastes bad.

Tips to keep in mind: The eye isght must be at the audience level and not to look up or look down. Distinction between touching something that is burning versus touching something dirty / scary must be clear. Sequence of gulping and then expressing the bad taste must be correct.

All this seems so trivial and easy; but when you see how unsuccessful the participants are compared to the demonstration by the instructor, one realises the importance of practice and talent. Looking forward to the next session on Oct 1.

Teachers-in-a-flap-over-kids-locking-lips.

2011-03-30T11:20:00.000+05:30

http://tinyurl.com/68uvk5o

The above report is in some ways amusing and perplexing too. I wasn't aware that that the Indian society had become so 'modern' that adults were kissing often in public for that behaviour to be imitated by children. In any case, kissing young children, of course not on their lips, and asking children to kiss us , of course not on our lips, has been an age old practice in Indian society irrespective of the 'modernity' of the people. However, that practice so far has not led children to adopt that practice once they cross the tiny-tot stage. Many young children often seem embarrassed when their uncles and aunts show their affection by pecking at them! Even in the 'modern' Western societies, this kind of behaviour does not seem to have manifested among children. So it is surprising that the reported behaviour is more noticeable in the Indian society now.

In any case, one can also wonder why should it be a cause for worry. Kissing in the mouth as a form of greeting among adults, not as a gesture of intimacy- sexual or otherwise- I believe is prevalent in some societies. So, why should we plant unwanted ideas in the minds of the children about 'bad touch'. Of course any touch by a person with wrong motives can be 'bad touch' and that is something, the children must be made aware of, Though, how subtly that can be done is something which needs great attention. Otherwise, we can create young psychotics who may abhor all kinds of physical contacts.

In other words, are we making mountain of a mole hill when we observe these apparently abnormal behaviour of 'modern' children? Will children probably outgrow such behaviour at some stage and follow largely the norms of the society in which they interact, rather subconsciously?

Business and Government -Collusion to loot

2011-03-22T15:12:00.000+05:30

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2011/03/20/stories/2011032050260400.htm

In four North Karnataka cities — Hubli, Dharwad, Belguam, and Gulbarga — about 30,000 households have had their water handed over to a French water corporation on World Bank orders; in Mysore, under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission the entire water supply has been contracted to JUSCO, a TATA company. These private firms have made no investment; the state is paying the companies many times more than it ever spent when it managed these services. That apart, the state is contractually obliged to provide brand new infrastructure, purified bulk water, fill up overhead tanks, and depute its staff to work under the private company and pay them too.

Can this really be true?

2011-03-07T14:09:00.000+05:30

தமிழில் முயற்சி. ஹிந்து நாளிதழில் இன்று சாயிநாத் கட்டுரை வெளியாகியுள்ளது. வர்த்தக நிறுவனங்களுக்கு அளிக்கப்பட்டுள்ள வரிவிலக்கு பல லட்சம் கோடிகள் என்று தெரியவருகிறது. வறுமைக்கோட்டுக்குக் கீழே வாழும் மக்களுக்கு உணவுப் பொருட்கள் வழங்கவோ அல்லது இலவசக்கல்வி வழங்கவோ நிதியில்லை என்று கூறும் அரசு, ராட்சத வர்த்தக நிறுவனங்களுக்கு வசதியாக வரிவிலக்குகள் அளிப்பது ஏற்கமுடியாததுதான். ஆனால் எனது நண்பர்கள் கூறும் ஒரு வாதத்திற்கு பதில் அளிக்கமுடியாதவனாக இருக்கிறேன். அரசு வசூலிக்கும் வரிப்பணம் விரயமாகிறதேயல்லாது மக்களுக்குப் பயன்படுவதில்லை. கலால் மற்றும் சுங்க வரிகளைக் குறைப்பதால் பொருட்கள் விலை குறையும் என்பதே அந்த வாதம். இத்தகைய வாதங்களுக்கு புள்ளி விவரங்கள் மூலம் எவ்வாறு பதிலளிப்பது?

Teachers or Technology - continued

2011-02-11T11:36:00.000+05:30

A friend of mine who has been a successful public sector CEO in transport and who is a top education administrator in private sector responded to my earlier blog. I reproduce some excerpts from that response followed by my responses to his observations. First some of his observations (only excerpts):

Teacher population ratio instead of teacher student ratio. I do not have data on peoples and pupils across various countries.

Girls qualified waiting to be married off, spend their time in educational institutions without any commitment or interest. Males pass their time in schools and colleges till they clear competitive examinations or some IT tests. Only those who do not succeed in these endeavour of finding a suitable match or job, continue to vegetate in the corridors of education business. These commercialise by offering tuition or indulge in unethical practices.

without being thorough in a subject, one starts teaching that subject. It is true in 10th ,12th and in Arts and Science and Engineering.There is no competency mapping of teachers. All these will change in course. The demand for teachers is so high now, the boom is simply absorbing all the dust.

Now my response:

Yes, you are right that the index of teachers to students rather than population may show India's status slightly better. However, the number of teachers per million population is a logically acceptable index reflecting the educational status of the society. If a large percentage of population including the adults in continuing education are being catered through availability of teachers, then that society is definitely better given that we are becoming more and more citizens of knowledge-influenced societies. In societies such as ours where a significant proportion of the population who ought to be in an educational system but are unfortunately are not, the teacher student ratio is in fact not that effective an index, you would agree.

Shyam Sundar's arguments are in support of better compensation for teachers so that better people are attracted to the profession. Unfortunately, as you have pointed out the fact that the teaching profession is not too unattractive has resulted in the positions being auctioned by the managements and even teacher recruitment boards of the governments. Hence, better pay alone is not a panacea for improving teacher quality. Though teachers are expected to 'stand out' as roll models, the fact is that they are just typical members of the society and all the warts of the society are seen in the society of teachers too.

I do not follow the second part of your observation below:
"good and committed academics command both respect and recognition. Most often their pockets are heavy."

Rest of your arguments are in fact supportive of the argument that was advanced in the note (see my earlier blog) in which Sundar's observation has been quoted. http://tinyurl.com/4k5zmro
That argument is that it is too expensive to have adequate number of quality teachers and hence ICT has to be used to let mass of students access education at an affordable cost. That is why I raised the question: More teachers or more technology?

Teachers or Technology

2011-02-10T12:24:00.003+05:30

India has one of the lowest teacher-student ratios: Expert - The Times of India

Should India spend more on increasing the number of teachers, which move would also create employment or should ICT be used so that the 'better teachers' are accessible to a larger group of children? I am unable to categorically take a stand. Given the way a significant proportion of teachers at all levels operate, I sometime feel technology may be at least more cost effective for the same result achieved. Rather a sad thought on my part, given I belong to the community of teachers!!

Continued on Feb 11: http://tinyurl.com/4k5zmro

The blog above was triggered by what I read in the link given above arguing for use of ICT for education. A response from a friend of mine, (which is discussed in a subsequent blog) led me to believe that I set the context for my blog by sharing that trigger.

.

How to promote a common school system - a different take

2010-12-15T21:31:00.003+05:30

The TN High court judgment reported in the following link
http://tinyurl.com/39ldqyz
is welcome by most education activists. However, can a revolution be brought about by judiciary is my rhetorical question. While the present RTE act which is just symbolic and is not likely to bring about any major changes needs to be replaced with an act which is more unequivocal and assures the commitment of the required resources, the struggle to achieve that goal is unlikely to be successful without the parents support. How can we ensure that?

http://tinyurl.com/39ldqyz

There is no doubt that an equitable society requires, as part of the foundation, a neighborhood-based common school system which ensures all children are provided free, accessible and quality education. However, can we stop any child or the parents going beyond such an education and providing their children additional educational or training inputs if the children are capable of absorbing those extra inputs without feeling the ‘burden’? Obviously we can not. In fact, a significant number of children of those parents, who can afford the extra expenses and whose children seem not to be troubled by the extra efforts, are already providing such inputs whether it be in arts, sports or curricular related fields such as learning a foreign language or computer skills beyond what is provided in the school curriculum. That situation will always prevail. The point I wish to make is that a certain kind of private education can not be banned. What we should encourage and in fact pressurize the state is to make such opportunities available at affordable costs to whichever child needs it. Obviously the school curriculum itself will have to be revamped to accept what is considered as the basic minimum in the traditional curriculum comprising language, mathematics and sciences and incorporate electives in other fields currently considered as ‘extra-curricular’ or ‘add-on’ courses such that the typical student is not overburdened.

If the logic of the infeasibility of banning private education is thus accepted, the goal of common school system can be achieved only by the parents desiring it rather than by restricting the private enterprise in education. It is in this context, I feel that the moves to insist on some disadvantaged children being admitted to private schools and protesting against the fee hike by unaided schools are in fact counter productive from the long term objective of public funded common school system being the most dominant system available and desired by the parents. Let me explain how.

The ‘disadvantaged’ children accepted by the private schools probably would have been categorized so under false pretenses and all that we would have created would be another rent-seeking opportunity for the ‘certifiers’ who enable such admissions. Even if the truly disadvantaged is admitted to such schools on account of the compulsions of the RTE, the schools will ensure that the child gets alienated very soon and seeks a change voluntarily giving grist to the mill of the so called incompetence of the ‘disadvantaged’ children. The seats opened thus would gradually be filled by the affluent children. Even if the scenario is that the disadvantaged children do very well in the private schools, what will that achieve? The parents may be reaffirmed in the ‘efficiency’ of the private schools and if the ‘citadel theory’ does not work these parents may encourage other parents to seek admission to private schools. That, in the long run may enable the government to increase the percentage of disadvantaged students to be admitted to the private schools. The private schools would even persuade the government to pay the full cost of such students, thus letting the PPP model work very much to their favour. Are such scenarios outlandish? I think not. That means the public school system will further deteriorate for lack of patronage.

On the other hand, letting the unaided schools and even the aided schools ‘a free hand within the regulatory framework of academics alone, the parents who feel exploited through increased fees and other measures, may wean away from such schools. But it is important that simultaneously the quality of infrastructure and the education in the public schools must be raised to the perceived level of ‘efficiency’ in the private schools. One important requirement is to see that the government schools teach English in such a way that by the time the child is in 8^th standard, the communicative English is as good as those studying in private English medium schools. Then only we will gradually wean the parents away from private schools to public schools. I am sure that with English being taught as a language as early as 3^rd standard now, the goal is not unachievable if English teaching is revamped for communicative ability.

In any case, given that more than 80% of the school going children (and of course, those who ought to be in school but are not) are to be benefited by public school system, we should concentrate all our efforts to make that system attractive to children and their parents on the lines already discussed in the earlier paragraphs. Such a strategy will force the private schools to gradually lose their sheen and eventually they would have to survive either by accepting to run on no-profit basis or close down. It is a long struggle but other forms of struggles in which the opinion-making stake holders are going to be in the opposition is unlikely to succeed.

Public Sector Bashing - Journalistic Ethics etc.

2010-11-15T08:12:00.000+05:30

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article845253.ece

I mailed to the Readers’ Editor the letter given below in response to the Open Page item that is cited above. I have not seen it published yet. Would The Hindu publish the item if a private sector telecom player had been talked about in the same way?

-------------

Dear Sir

I am surprised that The Hindu published the piece “Caught in the net for a whole week” (Open Page, Sunday, Oct 24). Even if the writer’s experience was entirely true and attempt to caricature it was largely for the humor, it is unfair to make such charges without the specific details through a column like this. I have had similar unpleasant experiences with private sector; and your esteemed publication has already published instances of satisfactory customer service by BSNL. Thus to let the writer get away castigating BSNL and allow him to compare his experience (again without specific details) with a private operator is not journalistic ethics in my opinion.

To 'Develop' or not to 'develop' - that is the question.

2010-11-06T13:17:00.001+05:30

What should be our "take" (as the current jargon goes) on such issues? Should we not seriously consider Amulya Reddy's DEFENDUS approach to electricity generation? May be with strict safeguards nuclear power can be "safer" in a holistic sense? We can definitely ask for ban on cricket games during the night and other such extravagant use of electricity; but will those measures be enough to maintain an acceptable level of industrialisation?

-------------------------------

     Ten years of Uttarakhand
     Dr Bharat Jhunjhunwala
     The hill areas of Uttarakhand are in deep distress. There are few employment opportunities. Youth are forced to migrate to the plains where they get low-wage jobs given via contractors. They have no job security and no facilities such as Provident Fund or medical benefits. The people of the hill areas alone had waged the battle for a separate state. They wanted that a development model consistent with the character and culture of the hills should be adopted. The state previously had dense mixed forests. The local people used to get fodder and fuel wood from these. The forests also maintained biodiversity, absorbed carbon from the atmosphere and provided happiness to the tourists from their pristine aesthetic beauty. The British Government cut these mixed forests and planted pine forests which provided turpentine that was required by the government. The present state government is also fonder of these pine forests because they provide revenue. Mixed forests are beneficial for the people while pine forests are beneficial for the government officials. The state has made no policy to replace pine forests with mixed forests. Consequently, forests are no longer friends of the people. There is a disjoint between them.
     The state has huge opportunities in the service sectors. Uttarakhand can be developed as a global tourist destination like Switzerland. Software parks, call centers, universities, cinema studios and hospitals can be established in the beautiful hills and by the side of dancing rivers. Local youth would get high-paid jobs in these activities and nature also will be happy. Focusing on the service sector is important because it is the sunrise area. Share of the service sector in national income rises along with economic progress. The share of this sector in the income of the United States, for example, is about 80 percent with 19 percent coming from manufacturing and a meager one percent from agriculture. The share of services sector in our national income is rising rapidly while manufacturing is stable and agriculture is declining. In coming years manufacturing is also likely to become less. Therefore, the state must focus on service sectors. But the state government has no policy to welcome these service providers.
     The main reason for disinterest in mixed forests and services sectors is that the state government has got hold of the kamadhenu of hydropower. This is being made the foundation of economic progress. Thinking is that the free-flowing rivers will be dammed and cheap electricity will be produced. This electricity will be provided to industries being established in the plains. Local people will get jobs in the hydropower projects. Problem is that these jobs are available only for 4-5 years during the period of construction. Thereafter the local people become totally helpless. The jobs evaporate into thin air. Agriculture is destroyed because fertile land is submerged in hydropower reservoirs. Blasting done for making in the mountains leads to piercing of the aquifers and mountain springs which are source of irrigation dry up. The beauty of the free-flowing river is also destroyed. The whole area becomes desolate. This hits at tourism and pilgrimage. I was told by a visitor from Himachal that one temple previously used to attract about one lac pilgrims every year. Number of pilgrims declined to mere 25,000 after a hydropower project diverted the free-flowing river nearby into a tunnel. Visitors to Badrinath will see a stretch of about 15 kilometers of River Alaknanda that has gone dry because the entire water has been diverted from Lambgarh to Vishnugad into a tunnel for generating hydropower. The pilgrims are deeply hurt.
     The benefits of industrialization that is taking place in the plains are also not likely to stay. Most industries are being established to avail of tax exemption that has been provided to industries in the backward states. This tax exemption is available only for 10 years. Many of the industries are likely to close shop and go back once the period of tax exemption comes to end. At that time the state will be left with empty factory sheds, broken rivers and destroyed agriculture. The state government should, therefore, immediately eschew hydropower and make a policy to develop the services sector which will both be environment-friendly and provide long term and well-paying jobs to the hill people who laid their lives for creation of the state.
     Author's address: bharatj@sancharnet.in

Adarsh Scam- Action to be taken

2010-11-06T12:57:00.001+05:30

If action taken in the case of Adarsh scam has to be an Adarsh action for future, then what is most important is to mobilise a campaign to do the following:

1. Demolish the building at the cost of the builder.

(We need not lament over the loss of an asset created. According to Kayne even digging a ditch and filling it up is a wothwhile economic activity in some cases in order to stimulate the economy! So we have created some jobs and will create some more for demolition and that is good enough. The' loss of asset' is not for the society but for individuals anyway!)

2. If the law prevents such an action, since 6 floors have been permitted, let the builder demolish 6th floor up within a specified time frame beyond which the government will demolish it and take legal action to recover the costs from the builder. The officials who enabled 'permissions' which are 'legal' must be brought to book too by being dismissed and fined / jailed.

(Of course all those who bought flats lose their money for having "bought a stolen property" as it were. That is the law applicable when you buy a 'stolen' property I understand.)

3. Ensure that mechanisms are installed for every construction project to display all the relevant permissions in highly visible sign boards at strategic places in the construction area to which public access is not denied.

4. Ensure that the urban development authorities have field squads who are constantly patrolling new constructions to ensure the relevant permissions are obtained.

5. Educate all citizens to watch out whenever new construction starts to look for these display of permissions and if absent to report to the appropriate authority or even allow PIL to be filed.

If such action is not taken the VIPs involved in the scam will see to it that the whole thing is "regularised".

Snippet out of North American trip experiences

2010-09-30T17:37:00.000+05:30

Part of the Blog composed at different times; hence confusing tense usage may be there!

-----------------------------

Well, it would have been too good to believe if there had not been some glitches in a 5 week trip across North America. We escaped one self-created near glitch when I had mistaken my bus trip from Toronto to Montreal at 11.15 PM while it was for 9.30 PM. Fortuitously Girish, the newly married guy who had elected to drive me to the bus station from Mississauga had a look at the ticket for some reason at 7.30 PM and found that there was no time for the planned trip to his in-law’s home before we reach the bus station. We managed to be well ahead of time, but missed saying ‘bye to his wife and the family. In fact, we could not even take leave of my other nephew and his wife with whom we were staying since, they went out for some shopping intending to be back by 8.30 PM to see us off!

While at Montreal I managed to wash my shirt with the 3-day city pass still in the pocket. Fortunately the station officials could retrieve the number from the soaked and dried ticket and gave me 4 ride tickets for the rest of our final leg, of which I managed to lose one somehow! So one trip final trip from the hostel to the bus station had to be paid for again! After that nothing happened that can be described as a glitch excepting the one on the very last day in North America. In fact, contrary to our belief that we are allowed only one check-in baggage fro the LA-JFK flight (despite being part of an International ticket) we were pleasantly surprised to see the message that we can check-in two pieces when we went through the self-check in process through the machine! We rued our decision not to buy a few more items including some nice backpacks we saw on sale. In fact we had folded up our backpack and put it in one of the bags. Not being seasoned international travelers, we did not think on our feet to take out the backpack to be carried as carry-on baggage even after learning that we are entitled to two check-in bags plus, of course, the carry on bag. Well, I am not talking about it as a glitch; wait for the real one.

Ten minutes to 7 AM when our American Airlines flight to JFK from LAX was to take off, the pilot announces that there is some kind of a leak and we might be delayed. By 8 AM we were told that we have to deplane and get on to another plane since the trouble could not be fixed. Finally we were airborne only by 9.45 AM – 2hrs 45 minutes behind schedule. Just now ( 1.30 PM PST and 4.30 EST) we are told that there are problems in JFK airport with wind conditions and a runway having been closed. Several holding patterns may be there and we are not sure when we will land; but definitely not before the scheduled take-off of Jet Airways flight at 18.10 EST. Of course, if the Jet Airways had problem landing in JFK on time, we may connect. Else, we will have to be rebooked and when will that next flight be, we don’t know. So the great glitch in the 5-week trip happened in the last leg and fortunately not on account of any self-inflicted mishaps.

Well, thanks to strike by ATC at Brusseles, JetAirways flight scheduled to leave by 18.10 (EST), Tuesday from JFK got delayed to leave by 00.35 on Wednesday. So we did not miss our flight. We reached Chennai by 5.30 AM on Thursday instead of 11.30 PM, Wednesday. A blessing indeed since getting home after midnight is a hassle.

Emulating the West appropriately

2010-09-16T20:42:00.000+05:30

As I travel through north America after nearly 32 years, I find the development has been more in terms of even better infrastructure than what I experienced in the ‘70s. The Metropolitan Boston Transit Authority , The Montreal Metro, Quebec bus system were all very inexpensive and user-friendly. I expect they are all heavily subsidized – a fact that the pro-capitalists in our country will never speak about. In a sense the “poor” and the “middle class” who uses these facilities are getting benefits of the tax largely paid by the “rich”. In our country, I am sure proper studies will show that the poor subsidise the rich: look at the percapita “subsidy” on Kerosene – poor people’s product versus the percapita subsidy on cooking gas. The recent ads by the petroleum ministry justifying the price increases themselves indicate that the small percentage the population who are cooking gas consumers are pampered more than the kerosene consumers whose number must be several times more. I would suspect if we can compute the subsidies that the air traveler enjoys (T-3airport costs are more than 10 thousand crores) or the subsidies for treated water flowing out of the taps of households ( a small percentage) who have homes with running water supply, we can establish that contrary to “capitalist” societies, Indian society is the one which favours the rich and short changes the poor. Of course, the public school system in North America which is patronized by more than 90% of the population is another stark example that India is hardly socialistic compared to the capitalist US. Canada is even more socialistic with free health care etc. The irony is even this good a system - compared to ours - is criticized since US is a harshly self-critical system.

Talking about water, what prevents us from adopting the technology of waterless urinals that I found in many places here? With acute water shortage and, in fact, absence of running water supply in many public places, this technology must be very relevant for us. Is the initial expenditure for these units so prohibitive that we can not adopt them? Do all the “babus” and “nethas” who gallivant around the globe ever notice these initiatives and think about adopting them in our country? They only want to have global standard airports, shopping malls or theme parks – and ,of course, sports stadiums which will be used a few times in a decade!

Bhopal Tragedy - Are people "witch hunting" against TNCs?

2010-07-06T10:29:00.002+05:30

http://tinyurl.com/39jkgst (I had given the wrong link when I published this post earlier)

The above link is to an article by Anil Chawla - management consultant, philosopher etc as per his claim.
The friend who forwarded this article expects that this version after 25 years must be believed over all the other versions that have been floating around. Many of the observations have already been reported in media.
Whether it would be impossible to have traced the acts of such sabotage, (or even to frame some fellows, if necessary) if indeed there had been one from within is not the only question. How slack was the "control system" if such an act of sabotage of grave consequences can take place is equally an important question.
If some one wants to ensure that no harm is caused on account of his "negligence" they can always take precautionary action. UCIL could have told the MP govt, that they would close the plant unless the surrounding area was kept free of population. The fear of losing the industry might have prompted sterner action just as the attraction of bringing the industry made Indira Gandhi supposedly clear the license within 4 months of emergency while Industries dept had denied license on account of the hazard of the industry!

So there are different perspectives. No one can absolve the politicians of their callousness either. But corporations with all their technical expertise should take a more 'rational' stand when dealing with issues which are likely to lead to serious consequences. Of course industrial accidents happen even in advanced countries. But the follow up remedial measures are of no comparison to what the same corporations would do in poor countries. The fact that in some country, the human lives of the poor are considered dispensable should not lead the corporations to exploit the situation.

That is the philosophy behind protest against "blood diamonds" or "child labour" products and now the protest against the use of the precious metals such as tantalum found only in Central African countries, the mining of which metals are leading to "slavery", rape and health hazards, I am told. See a recent article in The Hindu of June 29 page 11 bottom.

As I have always maintained, while blaming individuals is of no use without changing the system that makes individuals act the way they do, the responsib
ility of "changing" the system lies also with the corporations and the media that they control since they are the ones who today have the power to change governments, (See Korton's book, Corporations Rule the World) people's tastes, attitudes and public opinion.

Accidents - Compensation - Class bias -Legal ethics etc.

2010-06-18T11:13:00.000+05:30

One of my Guindy Eginnering batch mates had written as below towards the end of a longer mail that he posted regarding issues connected with Bhopal tragedy and accidents in general. He had also questioned the need for giving compensation to accident victims (of rail / air / bus whatever) out of taxpayers’ money. I felt compelled to respond and the response is after the passage quoted.

Quote

It my considered view that (sic) the root cause for all these “ERRORS “ is the policy of reservations. If you give admissions / appoint persons on the basis of their birth how will you get merit personnel in decisions making positions ? (sic). An engineer coming through merits would have been more conscious to attend leakage than one who has got the post / degree by the birth qualifications. Intelligent / brainy people have to be encouraged so that they will CONTRIBUTE . Merit needs to be recognized..

Unquote

My response

While there are some valid points in SK's communication, he is going overboard and also mixes up issues. Intelligence / competence and integrity / social consciousness are not necessarily always co-existent. Anti-social crooks are very intelligent / competent too. I do not think we have enough statistical evidence to show that more accidents have been caused by the negligence / incompetence of employees of particular communities, for SK to make statements of the kind he has made towards the end.

Yes, all deaths can be considered as "accidents"; so can be murders committed on impulse. So do we let murderers free? That is why we have different degrees of the crime - pre-meditated, cold blooded murder at one end and culpable manslaughter due to negligence on the other end. The punishments differ too.

It is true that industrial accidents are largely the result of collective failure rather than - in exceptional cases - attributable to a specific individual. However, it is also true that suppliers of equipment are not averse to hiding the shortcoming of their equipment, especially when dealing with corrupt third world economies. Many hazardous industries being shifted to "emerging" economies; or drugs banned in the parent country being peddled in third world countries are examples of callous attitudes of large corporations. If we go by the dictum "buyer beware" for all such transactions too, we might as well accept anarchy. We then, don't have the moral right to criticize Maoists' violence or for that matter should not cry of "exploitation" by auto drivers of Chennai!!

Remember corruption, black market etc. involve two players and both are equally guilty. In fact one can even argue that corruption was instituted by myopia of some business without realising the long term implication. Now, the most affected are the poor. See Sainath's article in the link below:

http://bit.ly/dj4DET

Of course, I agree that attempt to punish Anderson is just symbolic and is a waste of time and effort. Focus must be to get relief for the real victims and efforts to prevent man-made catastrophes in future.

CBSE versus State Board and Entrance Tests

2010-06-10T11:57:00.000+05:30

Even students who are top rankers in the state board examination getting as much as 98% in the plus 2 examinations of the TN state board are unable to even get the "qualifying rank" in the IIT entrance test! When I explored the reasons for this disturbing situation, I was told that the IIT entrance tests are patterned after the CBSE syllabus which is vastly different from that of the state board syllabus. I can understand if the syllabuses are somewhat different; but not to the extent that even the top rankers can not "crack" the IIT entrance test.

Of course, I am not aware whether even the top rankers in the CBSE stream fail to "crack" the entrance test if they are not specifically coached for the same. If that is the case, then something is seriously wrong with the entrance test mechanism.

See my article in http://tinyurl.com/39vxf64

Char Dham Yatra - The 'unforgettable' trip I would like to forget!

2010-06-08T11:18:00.002+05:30

The holy shrines are called "Dham"s in North India. The Char daham (Four shrines) yatra (trip) covers Yamunothri - supposedly the origin of the river 'Yamuna', Gangothri - of Ganga, Kedarnath (Shiva), Badrinath (Vishnu). My interest was to take in the scenic mountains of Himalyas with the opportunity to look at snow-clad peaks. Though Shyamala and I had already visited Kedar and Badri some time in the early 8os - trekked the 28 km (round trip) with a night stay at Kedar - a trip to Y'tri and G'ngtri got aorted at the last minute in the year 1988. Hence, when we learnt about a family group planning this trip, we impulsively decided to join and pulled in another pair too. We flew to Delhi on May 14 and that very night left on the trip with the first halt at Rishikes the next morning. What happened in the rest of the trip was briefly put down by me on returning to Delhi on 25th as below. Some selected pictures are in the enclosure link. The last 4 pictures were taken during my trip during the '80s. http://picasaweb.google.com/ramkishyam/CharDhamYatra

----------------------
May 25, 2010
Finally we are back to civilization; yes that is how I feel getting back from the arduous and mostly unsuccessful ‘char dham’ yatra – Yamunothri, Gangothri, Kedarnath and Badrinath. Lesson learnt: never travel to religious destinations during peak season. We spent most of the days as well as nights traveling in the bus or just waiting out traffic jams. Thanks to these jams we were dropped more than 5-6 kms before the base camps for the treks to Yamunothri and Kedar.

Many of us were not in a position to cover that extra distance besides the required trek (14 kms one way for Y’thrri as well as for Kedar) and hence decided to abandon the final trek. Even those who opted for pony and ‘doly’ rides since they managed to trek to the base camp meandering through hord of yathris who themselves were walking between vehicles parked on both sides of the road, came back without entering the temple on account of long lines. Of course there were some who somehow hustled their way through for a one-minute dharsan of the lords!

My expectation of a relaxed trek enjoying the scenery of the Himalyas was completely shattered. The only place where I went close enough to the goal was at Gangothri; even here I abandoned the final leg of getting into the temple since I can not walk barefoot thanks to corns and fearing stampede which seems pretty routine in many religious places. The few photo opportunities were when we were halting on account of traffic jams! Badrinath is accessible without a trek,though the walk from the lodging to the temple was a mini-trek. The long line for Dharsan deterred me here too from entering the temple. The eagerly expected dip in the hot water 'tapth kund' was also skipped by me when I saw the jostling crowd!

Of course, the tour operators – Rao Travels – were very inefficient. While they could not have done anything about traffic jams, the ineptitude with which they “lost” the hotel bookings (and no communication about changes since our bus had no representative of the operator on board!) for the stay at the base camp of Kedar and even for halt during the return journey were the worst part of the trip; not to mention the break down of our vehicle and having to travel all night in alternate vehicles through a “short cut” –meaning pretty bumpy road – to a place 6 km before the base camp for Kedar. On other nights we went to bed around one AM! All together 3 fuul nights were in the bus – Delhi to Rishikesh, the emergency trip talked about just now and the final leg of Haridwar to Delhi. The last one thankfully happened while most of the time were sleeping or drowsy; otherwise some rise in BP or even heart attack would have occurred for some people. The distance of little more than 200 kms was covered in about 4 hours plus driving time! No great speed if we are in US interstate highways, but not in India with truckers seemingly driving straight at you from the opposite direction. Anyway, reached Delhi in the wee hours of 25th and that morning meal with 'vaththal kuzambu' and veppampoo rasam' at G's house practically compensated G's 'sin' of having gotten into this trip! (Well, actually JG who casually informed us of their trip and we forced ourselves in!)

The impulse decision to join this trip was largely on account of the fact that family members and friends would be companions. But that dimension had its own problems too. The physical capacities as well as the priorities on for comfort, expense, what to see and what can be missed etc. were so diverse that conflict situations arose rapidly with all the problems mentioned earlier.

We had one 60 plus lady who needed help to climb into the bus, get off it, climb stairs etc. On top of it she became sick – fever purging etc. She must have refrained from drinking water since she can not manage even the rare bio breaks that the driver allowed! She became dehydrated and fortunately at Badrinath we got a doctor to visit her and got glucose and saline drips. After a couple of hours rest she was carried in the basket into the temple through the back gate and managed the dharsan of Badrinath. Shyamala was the one who had to be helping her throughout the trip and hence she too missed joining the others in getting to see whatever can bee seen.

Since I was not interested in the Dharsans, I stayed put at all base points. I managed to have a dip in the Ganga at Rishikesh and managed to walk a couple of kms from OUR Kedar base point – Sonprayag - and got down to the river and enjoyed lying around in ice cold water for few minutes, while the group had gone further. Of course just before the return journey on 24th started from Haridwar, I also plunged in for a few minutes, just to get out of the sweaty /muggy feeling on account of the ride from Chamoli to Haridwar – about 8 bours.

In one sense everybody must have felt chastised, having been provoked to let their masks down and reveal some of the not-so-pleasant sides of their personalities. I hope no permanent damage has been done for future relationships. Thathasthu!!

Games or Education

2010-05-09T08:49:00.002+05:30

The following excerpts from a mail by Dr Anil Sadgopal, Educationist clearly reveals the priorities of the ruling elite! I wish he had also pointed out the ease with which GoI finds resources for Common Wealth Games.

February 2008 draft Bill of this Act did specify “Electrification, telephone and at least one personal computer” under the ‘Desirable’ (though not essential) category of the Act’s ‘Schedule of Norms and Standards for a School’. These ‘Desirables’, along with the “Facility for pre-school education”, were deleted from the final Bill presented in Rajya Sabha in December 2008. This deletion can be traced to the review undertaken by the High Level Group of Ministers constituted by the PM during UPA's first regime to look into the feasibility of the RTE Act. The Minutes of this High Level Group of Ministers reveal that one of its four members, Dr. C. Rangarajan, Chairperson, PM’s Economic Advisory Council, insisted that the Norms and Standards were too expensive for the government while the other members – Sh. Arjun Singh (then Minister of HRD), Sh. P. Chidambaram (then Finance Minister) and Sh. Montek Singh Ahluwalia (Dy., Chairperson, Planning Commission) - concurred by underlining that the government lacked adequate resources to implement the Act. Does anyone require a more convincing evidence of the intent of the present neo-liberal State incorporating World Bank’s Structural Adjustment agenda in the RTE Act?

Would any of the four members of the High Level Group of Ministers or the PM who constituted the Group and accepted its recommendations send their children or grand children to the multi-grade schools (i.e. one teacher teaching more than one class simultaneously in one classroom) with a para-teacher ….

Nice Nature Trip

2010-04-20T14:40:00.000+05:30

Gavi forests in the same mountain range as that of Sabarimala is about 30 km from Vandipperiyar which is on the road between Kumili and Peermede. The Kerala Forest Development Corporation has promoted eco tourism in this forest which is also a tiger reserve. The only way one can travel inside the forest is to take a package tour. The stay package (costing just Rs. 1750 per person) includes one night accommodation and 3 meals besides a guide attached to you. We went on two treks - one in the morning and one in the evening besides an early morning jeep safari. We did sight Wild buffalo, elephants and a lone Sambar. Getting leaches sticking to you of course is another adventure. This inspite of wearing a knee length leach socks provided by them along with liberal application of salt all over the shoes. One of the ladies in our group had the problem no-stop oozing of blood for several hours even after an injection and anti-allergens. The rooms were comfortable and the food very good. All the people employed in the place were locals. The place seemed quite popular with both local and foreign tourists. Enjoyable trip.

Live-in Relationships and Marriages

2010-03-27T16:06:00.001+05:30

Many seem to be perturbed by the Supreme Court’s stand on live-in relationships, as if Supreme Court has sanctified such relationships. That something is not considered illegal may still be considered “unethical” or “immoral” by the current norms of the society and those norms in our society seem to dominate what is sanctioned by the law or considered as a crime! All the honour killings associated with inter caste / community marriages are a testimony to that situation.

I came across the following argument somewhere, to which I subscribe: .."the idea of “contemporary morality” (which many seem to be impressed with) is not based on any empirical evidence of social benevolence or a set of principles but simply on the victories of special interest groups forwarding their vested agendas. Arguments can be conveniently weaved around the positions to reflect “Humanist ideology”, “progressive philosophy” or whatever other names one wishes to call, but the core reason for the existence of these moral imperatives in “contemporary pop-morality” is the victories (or losses) of the special interests and therefore logical arguments favoring/justifying them are irrelevant."

If we accept the quoted argument, we can understand how the legal acceptance of live-in relationships or gay marriages is a challenge. I have no problem with the stand that sexuality, just as religion, must be a private affair and not brought into public space. But we have seen how some practices get proscribed by religion or law over time. Without altering the perspectives radically we cannot expect what we may consider progressive changes merely because the court does not find them illegal.

Why did the need for the court to take up this issue of live-in relationship or the need to legally recognize gay marriages arise? Only when some people are inconvenienced and can afford the litigation take up the issue. Many poor people practice live-in relationships and in one sense it is good that the judiciary has clarified that it is not a crime. Otherwise many of these couples, mostly the women would probably be harassed by our police, not so much on moral grounds but for the purpose of utilizing their power for making some extra income. (I am reminded of one of the segments of the award winning Adoor Gopalkrishnan’s “Naalu Pennugal” (Four women) movie!)

That brings up another fundamental question. Why should law recognize marriages - conventional or homosexual? We are told that we need that for purposes of sharing income, property, custody of children etc. In my opinion the state / legal system should interfere only to provide some protection to the children born through marriage; no need for any other intervention with respect to property, income etc. These must be decided by the partners through specific written contracts and be dealt with as any other business transaction in the event of the “marriage" breaking up. (e.g. Jacqueline – Onasis marriage?)

In any case majority of the people would sort out the problems themselves; in the case of the fraction of the relationships which go sour, no great harm is done to either "spouse" if no children are involved. "Buyer beware" must be the caveat as in the case of Indian marriages where grooms are "bought" through dowry! (Or through one's youth in the case of young women "buying" rich old men as happens in the West!). All physical abuse of "spouse" must be treated as "criminal" just as in the case of other physical attacks! Marriage licenses need to be optional. There is no need for tax concessions to facilitate married life, excepting to support children (natural or adopted) by "partners in the marriage".

Without accepting such a view on marriage, crying foul about the non-acceptability of same-sex marriages by the society or frowning on people who are not able to digest the Supreme Court’s pronunciation on living-in relationships seems to me to be equally hypocritical.

Striking Contrasts

2010-03-27T14:11:00.001+05:30

Mr Salman Kurshid, Minister for Corporate Affairs and Minority Affairs, recently pandered to the sentiments of the management crowd while delivering the key note address at the Silver Jubilee Celebrations of Trivandrum Management Association, by using the by now clichéd humour about one does not have a heart if one is NOT a communist during one's twentys and one does not have head if one is still a communist diuring one's forties!
I wonder how Mr Kurshid will react to the following excerpt from Fidel Castro's recent speech:

"it is really amazing that 234 years after the Declaration of Independence proclaimed in Philadelphia in the year 1776, which drew inspiration from the ideas of the great French encyclopedists, the government of that country has approved medical care for the overwhelming majority of its citizens, something that Cuba accomplished for its entire population half a century ago despite the cruel and inhuman blockade imposed --and still in force-- by the mightiest country that has ever existed. In the past, it was only after almost a century of independence and following a bloody war, that Abraham Lincoln could obtain the legal emancipation of the slaves."

Can we only talk about our "glorious" past?

2010-03-24T15:59:00.000+05:30

Tamilnadu government is going to be assisted by experts from Singapore on rendering the Cooum river meandering through the city of Chennai - what is the word I can use, I wonder - less of a problem , more "useful" or whatever. That there is some initiative to do something about this river may be welcome. But I can not help feeling a little (?) sad that the city which boasts of an engineering education institution which was founded in 1857 as a Survey School - an institution which has graduated generations of engineers who created the several hydro electric / irrigation projects which are still going strong - has to resort to experts from a tiny city state. If I want to rub it in further, our civil engineering expertise goes back to the Karikaal Chozhan period when what is now called Grand Anicut - Kallanai was built. There is a fascinating article in the Tamizh magazine published by Anna university on how divers got the big boulders deep into the riverbed while the Kaveri was flowing full by digging around the boulders and letting the water pressure push the boulders into the sand bed.
Cry thy proud Thamizhakam?

BSMED-Silver Jubilee- The speech I did not deleiver

2010-03-23T15:27:00.000+05:30

The following was prepared by me expecting that some time will be given during the main event. But no participation by ex-Directors or faculty during the main event excepting to walk up the stage and get a plaque (which could have been personalized by engraving the names). I managed to get across some the points below during the interaction with alumni in the afternoon; very few of the current students were present then!

------------------------------------------------

The undelivered speech.

Needless to say, that I am thrilled to be part of this exciting event. For an institution which will go on to celebrate centenary, bi-centenary and so on, Silver Jubilee may be but a small step. But for those of us who have been associated with the institution right from its birth, 25 years is a memorable milestone.

I am sure you would permit me to recall some instances / anecdotes which are relevant in the current context of debates on higher education. BSMED was founded when management education had still not become widespread in spite of the IIMs having been around for 20 plus years. Thanks to visionaries such as the then vice-chancellor of this university who is kindly gracing this occasion, an IIM B Dean, Dr MNV Nair was invited to give shape to BSMED. It is unfortunate that Dr Nair is no more with us to participate in this momentous occasion.

I must mention that the caring but liberal leadership of the vice chancellor and the syndicate at that time enabled BSMED to make its mark within a short time. The UGC awarded grant for infra structure and 5-years support for a full complement of faculty and that grant was several times more than what was awarded for all the departments put together for the 7^th plan!

Another instance of the support of the university leadership is the ready accession to our request to send members of the faculty to the Faculty Development Programme at IIM Ahmedabad which then was for a full year, not 4 months as I understand it is now. Of course, I have to mention the complete academic autonomy we enjoyed right from the admission process to the curriculum development and the evaluation process.

Such enabling leadership of the then vice-chancellor and the syndicate and the efforts of the committed small team of faculty led to instances of recognition such as a press report of those years in which BSMED was reckoned as one of the top ten business schools outside of the IIM category.

Thanks to such innovative and organic growth, I may claim that BSMED has done a lot to the spread of management education in Tamilnadu. One of our founding faculty team, Dr Uma Maheshwar, became the first Director of the Management Department of Alagappa University; unfortunately, he is also not with us today having been plucked away from this earth rather prematurely. Our alumnus Dr. Chandrasekhar Nair is the current Director of Institute of Management, Kerala of the Kerala University and his batch mate Dr Anandan became the first Director of the Sardar Vallabhai Patel Institute for Textile management here in Coimbatore. Dr Koteeswaran, the first PhD from BSMED is the Dean of a management institution in Chennai. I know there are many more of our alumni both MBAs and PhDs who are serving the cause of management education in India and abroad.

Of course, I have been emphasizing the BSMEDians’ achievement is the academic field because of my preferences. But we are equally proud of all those who have passed through the portals of BSMED and who are today successful management professionals and entrepreneurs. I am glad to see both the Gold medalists of the first batch – Senthilkumar all the way from Europe and Balaji as well as many others from the 1^st batch, have chosen to participate today. Many of our alumni in leading organizations, have proven themselves equal to or even better than their colleagues chosen from what are called premier management institutes.

I am sure with a much larger complement of faculty, user friendly ITC technology that is widely available now, a great demand for management education which should ensure that students with the right attitude and competence are admitted through a good admission process to go through a curriculum, which should never be allowed to become archaic, BSMED will become a model for a university-based management institution worthy of emulation. I am sure BSMED would have reached and will still reach such heights if an enabling leadership which we enjoyed in the early years had been or is continued. In these days of difficult times for higher education, it is a tough task; but BSMEDians, I am sure, enjoy the challenges of a tough task. So let us accept the challenge.

Thank you.

Silver Jubilee of BSMED

2010-03-20T17:15:00.000+05:30

The Silver Jubilee celebrations of the Management school of Bharathiar University, Coimbatore were held recently. I had been associated from the very first batch of students till I retired in 2004. Several of the alumni have been in touch with me personally either through the school's group mail, through personal mail or through networking sites. There was also an ad supplement in "The Hindu" prior to the celebrations. A group of alumni had worked hard to organise the event, and they would have used the linked-in, facebook, twitter etc. to reach other alumni, I assume. Those who had manged to come had a good time, I suppose, definitely those who turned up for the informal get together in the evening would confirm that.

I did expect a large attendance given that nearly 1000 students have gone through the system. I must admit that I was rather disappointed. Even many alumni, who I know are from Coimbatore did not show up. I would have at least expected some kind of a greetings message from many who cared. May be there were a few, but not to be excited about. I am surprised that with all the "social networking" hype many did not bother to network. Why was that? Did people feel that there is nothing much in it for them? Does the rat race of the work place not allow them time to even send an email greeting? Or may be they did send and the information was not shared during the event? The ever questioning and never satisfied, Ramki again?

Innovative solution for women's representation

2010-03-20T16:58:00.000+05:30

Rather than fighting over the reservation for women, we should let every parliament constituency and assembly constituency be represented by one man and one woman. The suggestion may seem outlandish and is definitely not made in any lighter vein.

The major objection will be the increased expenditure on account of this doubling the members. First of all, we have to see what percentage of the total expenditure for governance is the expenditure on members of parliament and state assemblies. Besides, we need not double the membership. Let us remember that the size of the constituencies were configured when transport and communications were not very easy. Today, it is not the case. The members can visit their constituencies physically in a very short time; they can resort to video conferencing or phone-in sessions and be in touch effectively. (In any case most MPs and MLAs hardly ever keep in touch with the voters of their constituencies; some are not even domiciled in their constituencies!).

Hence, by increasing the size of the constituencies we can retain the same number of members. In that case the quota within quota problem will become irrelevant. Even if the numbers are increased to say 600 for the parliament, the present infrastructure will be amply adequate given that most of the time we see the parliament mostly empty. In any case, compared to the parliament chamber of of the "mother of all parliaments" in England, we have a very spacious hall and some minor reconfiguring can easily accommodate even double the present number!

So why stop at 33% ? Let us be represented by both men and women in equal numbers.

Status of School Education in TamilNadu

2010-02-23T15:59:00.000+05:30

The following are some excerpts from an exchange with a friend whose children are studying in US. The exchange was triggered by a mail I posted him reviewing a test to assess 8th standard students. The test is appended at the end.

I am not perturbed about the lack of physics / chemistry till high school. What is probably needed is the ability to observe the environment and learn the phenomena and ask question. No need to learn the exact terminology such as the type of chemical reaction or the chemical equations for reactions. If a child knows why a hard ball dropped from a few feet may break a glass but one which is pushed gently horizontally and hitting against a glass at the same distance does not break the glass, that physics is enough even at the 8th level. Simple experiments or thought experiments such as these can get such concepts as the gravitational force, concept of potential energy and kinetic energy.

Only those who are opting for a career in science / engineering be saddled with the advanced level of maths and sciences. Unfortunately that is not the case in our country. Too much of ground is covered without any understanding and the ability to apply the learning. That is what should change.
--------------------------

The following is an attempt by an NGO to assess independently the learning outcomes in TN schools. I have translated the questions which are in Tamil in the Math paper to the best of my ability. The English paper is a character by character copy. I point this out so that you can see what kind of errors are the in the question paper itself. I have not reproduced the Science question paper which is basically of the information recall type with questions such as: "How many chambers are there in the heart of a cockroach?" The question paper pertains to 8th standard.
*Math*
1. The number in decimal system equivalent to 41₅ (base 5) is

a) 21; b) 41; c) 38
2. 101₂ + 101₂ = a) 202; b) 1010₂ c) 306
3. The point (5,3) will be in the first quadrant: True / False

(in Tamil First quadrant is indicated as muthal kaalpakuthi!!/)
Open ended questions:
4. Add: 10101₂ + 1010₂

5. Subtract: -24315 - 13425 (Is the student expected to understand it
as it stands or to *subtract* (-13425) from the first number?)
6. Multiply: 403₅    x 23₅
(Why should an 8th std student become proficient in expressing numbers and doing calculations with different base systems?)
/
*English.*

I. Choose the correct answers from the given options: (Obviously
text-based questions)
1. Neem give us timber which keep the termites away; a) material; b)
tools; c) large piece of wood
2. Dhyan chand's autobiography is ..... ; a) Score; b) Goal;   c) hockey
3. ........... is the goddess of love and beauty: a) Earth; b) Venus;   c) Mars
4. Man is trying to pitch his tent in ....... a) Pluto; b) Venus; c) Mars
5. The farmer became .....    a) deaf; b) dumb;   c) blind.

II. Open ended questions to recall text material.

III and IV are questions on synonyms and antonyms which are ok.

V. Quote from memory from the poem "The Moon"
From: The moon........
To:........... of the house,

VI. Text based recall questions.

VII. Identify the sentence pattern      (I have no idea what this is supposed to mean! I never recall learning anything like this! I suppose the student is expected to say "active voice" or "passive voice"!)

1. Trees preserve the soil
2. The neem trees are grown in villages and towns.

VIII. Syllabify the following words (I do not know to this day "syllabification"! I suppose, while speaking we unconsciously do syllabify, though not correctly always!)

1) conversation; 2) painful; 3) madam

IX. Form words using correct prefixes and suffixes   (photo, ship, poly)

1...........graph;   2. friend.......;    3) ..........clinic

X. Give the expansions of the following abbreviations

NASA    2) IPS;    3) MLA

U S Court on porn movies

2010-02-04T09:28:00.001+05:30

A victim of child abuse whose images in porn movies are with many "collectors" has been awarded compensation, by a U S court, from those who possessed the movies. This landmark decision is being questioned by many as stretching the liability too far. I disagree. The judgment is, in fact, a sterling example of systems approach - even an economic approach - to solve problems. If the consumers of porn are made liable to pay damages, demand for porn will decline and pron producers will slowly wither away. Those who keep blaming corruption never acknowledge that they are part of the problem, being ready to bribe to get things done faster, in the process creating problem for others who can not afford to bribe.

What is fair fare?

2009-12-09T20:50:00.001+05:30

முதன் முறையாக தமிழில் முயற்சி. சென்னையில் ஆட்டோ ஓட்டுனர்கள் பேரம் பலருக்கும் பிடிக்காத விஷயம். ஆனால் கன்னிமரா ஓட்டலிலும், அறை வாடகை பேரம் பேசப்படுகிறது என்கிற விஷயம் எவ்வளவு பேருக்குத்தெரியும்? சொந்த அனுபவத்திலிருந்து சொல்கிறேன். போகட்டும்; management பேராசிரியர்கள் ஒரு கல்வி நிறுவனத்தில் வேலைக்கு சேரும்போது ஊதியத்திற்கு பேரம் பேசுவது கிடையாதா? அதற்கு நாசூக்காக negotiatiation என்று சொல்கிறோம்! ஆகவே ஆட்டோ ஓட்டுனர் கிடைத்தவரை லாபம் என்ற அடிப்படையில் ஆரம்பத்தில் அதிகம் கேட்பதில் என்ன தவறு என்று தோன்றுகிறது. ஆட்டோ ஓட்டுனரும் information asymmetry, மற்றும் what the market can bear என்கிற அடிப்படையில் வியாபாரம் செய்ய விரும்புகிறார். ஆட்டோ சவாரி செய்ய விரும்புபவருக்கு சரியான தகவல் தெரிந்திருந்து negotiate செய்யக்கூடிய நிலையிலும் இருந்தால் optimal கட்டணம் சாத்தியம்! அவ்வளவுதான் விஷயம்.

Demands by IIM Faculty

2009-09-29T15:04:00.002+05:30

It is unfortunate that professors at IIM are not satisfied with the pay hikes suggested by the HRD ministry and are protesting rather vigorously and asking for a 100% hike from current pay. As is usually the case with media, which takes up issues only when the elite interests are affected, we see a lot of television footage – largely supporting the professors. Have we ever seen such extent of coverage when school teachers demand something? Whether the recent protests by the doctors in Kerala about the revision in their salaries got such coverage even in Malayalam channels is a moot question. In the course of the discussions on the IIM professors’ pay several distortions are introduced and as academics management professors must be aware of them but are conveniently silent about them. Let us see some examples, 1. Comparison between IIM professor’s salaries with that of a Harvard professor (NDTV channel was flashing Harvard Professors' salaries along with IIM Professors' salaries during the time the IIM spokesperson was airing his view) in rupee terms is a serious distortion. Management professors know something about purchasing power parity based comparisons. Moreover, should we not then compare what a school teacher in the United States makes in comparison to the school teacher in India; or what a medical college professor makes in comparison to a medical professor in the U S and so on? 2. It is pointed out that the IIM /IIT graduates at the entry level make more than the professor who taught them. This is true of the entire world. Academics do make less in terms of monitory benefits compared to those who go into the profession whether it is management, medicine, law or even science. The important issue to be noted here is that one (the writer included) chooses to be in academics NOT as a missionary renouncing everything and wedded to the cause of education alone; (if it were so this whole discussion would not have arisen!); the choice to get into academics is because the person values that way of life more than other ways of life and hence the price he / she pays for that desired value is the acceptance of a lower salary compared to the professional in other occupations. 3. From the society’s perspective the professors in medical schools, doctors in hospitals, teachers in universities and schools who build the foundation and serve to create responsible democratic citizens are probably more important than the professors who help to create a few thousand individuals whose indifference to social responsibility has begun to be questioned all over the world, consequent to the global economic crisis. 4. It is strange that IIM professors do not talk about the ways in which many of them earn an additional income - sometime even more than their salaries – through consulting, hourly fees for training programmes and such other avenues. 5. It is debatable whether all the management professors if they chose to go to the corporates, will be grabbed at much higher benefits to them. I would suggest, in line with my second point above, that many may not fit in the corporate sector for a variety of reasons – not to be confused with lack of competence. I would also suggest that many a business would value the intervention of a person, with largely an academic aptitude, more as a consultant, churner of ideas or catalyst rather than a full time employee. 6. Even if the professors who want to leave for corporate pastures left these institutes, (Has there indeed been such an attrition among management teachers, is a question to be examined!) I believe that the IIMs can function without compromise to quality of management education with the next best available in the country and with the guest teaching by many industry professionals who have a flair for teaching. 7. That brings me to the final point. When the IIMs were started in the early sixties, there was a need to spearhead the movement of formal education in management and hence the state took the initiative to heavily subsidize these institutions. It is time that the government stops subsidizing these institutes and in fact moves away from this largely corporate-focused (that too largely for global corporations) educational activity. Instead they should concentrate on strengthening management departments of selected universities who may have the potential to perform well. Having stopped the subsidies to professional education through IIMs and IITs, the question of student fees and salaries to professors can be decided entirely by the institutes' management. At best the government may insist on some subsidized programmes be run for targeted groups such as government and public sector managers, in return for the subsidies enjoyed by the institutes over the past several decades. Considering issues raised above one should think that the professors’ protests are not just unfortunate but can be characterized as unjustified if they want the government to continue to fund the institute to any extent. It is time to seriously reconsider alternative models for such exclusive professional education. Late Professor Dandekar had suggested once that the teachers in specialized higher education must be just given the basic infra structure, a subsistence salary and the freedom to offer courses and training programmes for which the clients would pay. The entire payment may be retained by the professors. If such a system is put in place in the field of management education we would come to know how indispensable or otherwise these wizards are. In fact some professors in IIMs may probably be already aware of the consequences if such a situation is created. Let them pass to think on how many students would opt for some of the courses if they were not core courses. So let the professors not ignore the fact that they may have to pay a price for the luxury of having a ‘market’ created for them through a variety of means in addition to the generous funding by the government in the past.

PPP for Parking Facility

2009-09-29T14:41:00.001+05:30

The Chennai Corporation has decided to get a private consortium to put up a multilevel parking facility near Apollo Hospital – a prime area (See the link below) http://www.hindu.com/2009/01/28/stories/2009012858970400.htm The corporation will allot nearly 27000 sq.ft of space and the consortium will build at a cost of Rs. 50 crores (Rs. 500 million) commercial spaces in the ground level and parking spaces for 200 cars and 290 two-wheelers. The government is suggesting a fee structure for the parking (not for the rented commercial space) and the entire revenue will go to the consortium for the next 18 years. The consortium will pay the corporation a paltry Rs. 46 lakhs (4.6 million) annually. The corporation is patting itself for insisting that the annual levy will be collected in advance every year! In another decision the Corporation is leasing out the parking spaces in the city to a private company which will put up parking meters and collect the revenue 11.5% of which it would share with the corporation. What should be the economic rationale for deciding the levy in such cases of common resources being handed out? It is a pity that the corporation can not mobilize Rs. 50 crores to build the facility and collect all the revenue, if necessary handing over the management of the collection of fees / maintenance for a fee to be paid to the management agency. What are the practices in car-dense countries? I am aware of a corporation property in a prime area of Coimbatore which has been leased ( 99 years?) to a private agency supposedly for putting up a “socially-desirable” auditorium, which of course has been put up, just a huge hall and a dais. But surrounding the hall on both sides – since it is a corner plot - car show room and commercial shops have been put up and all the revenue is gobbled up by the private agency. Another dimension is the parking fee fixed for cars and two-wheelers: Car parking @Rs. 20 per hour while two-wheeler parking is @ Rs. 5 per hour. What is the rationale? If you go by the area required for say the 200 cars, including the space needed for manoeuvring the vehicles, I would estimate that nearly 1500 two wheelers can be parked in the same area. It is also more likely that the two-wheeler space is utilised at a higher rate than the car parking given the density of these two types of vehicles in the city. Add to that the fact the car owners should cross subsidise the two-wheelers in this limited context of car parking facility. Thus, the two wheeler charge should not be more than 10% of the car parking fee. As is the nature of the state the super elite get subsidised by the lesser elite. How can we make the citizens think about these issues and protest?

Indian Elections 2009

2009-05-27T10:53:00.003+05:30

The election results are touted as definite indicators of the Indian voters’ preference for stability and to their frustration with regional parties. I am not inclined to swallow this conclusion – not even a hypothesis. If the regional parties had contested all the seats in their respective regions and had failed to obtain a significant share of the votes in multi-cornered contests, then such a conclusion can be supported. However, the anomalies of the present system which lead to the first ranker winning the seat irrespective of the percentage of votes polled create a false impression of "dominance" of winning parties. As a consequence of the anomalies, political parties tend to form alliances without contesting all the seats fearing that the division of votes among many contenders may lead to outcomes unacceptable to the respective parties. This has lead to a situation where the regional parties seemingly have lost out. The very fact that the Cogress has won largely because their regional allies have won (Trinamul Congress, DMK etc.) shows that the regional parties are still a force. Even in UP and Bihar, if we were to look at the share of votes polled by the regional parties we can not escape the above conclusion. It would be even more illuminating to look at the share of the votes of the regional parties of only those seats where they contested. If we look at the share votes pattern where there were no alliances, it would provide another picture. While the government formation as of now does not depend on these kinds of analysis, a political scientist/ sociologist can not ignore such analysis. Unfortunately the present constitutional arrangement favours the dominant national parties and the failure of the regional parties (when the national parties were weak) to press for alternative systems such as proportional representation or run-off elections among the top 2 contestants in the event of none getting 50% votes, have led to the seeming rejuvenation of the large “national” parties. The left parties’ failure, to my mind, is largely a result of the public perception that these parties are more concerned with global / international issues rather than local issues. The time and energy wasted in opposing the nuclear deal without educating the public on how exactly it would affect their life seems to have been a waste. Nuclear deal issue was not touched upon by any party in the election campaigns! Of course, the intra-party bickering in Kerala and the lack of tact in handling Singur and Nandigram problems definitely seem to have had an impact. Having accepted the parliamentary party system, should the left just go it alone without alliances, at least in those states where there is a modicum of presence? May be some grassroots work might get done on account of such a strategy. We must overcome the fear that such a strategy will lead to BJP gaining power. After all one stint by them did not bring down India in any great manner compared to the "secular" congress! They were taught a lesson by the electorate that India can not shine just for a few! In the long run the negative strategy of keeping the worse evil at bay, rather than take every evil head-on, may be counter productive to build the movement! Ramakrishnan May 2009

Social change - Planned or serendipitious

2009-01-16T15:53:00.000+05:30

Are we right in thinking that social changes in the past have really been the result of planned orchestrated movements? Soviet and Chinese resolution, Vietnamese victory over the mighty US and our own freedom struggle will obviously be cited as examples. I am not so sure. That the subsequent development in all these socities were not according to the original plans makes me feel that what happened was the result of the combined effect of various factors and fortuitously one factor happens to be the “peoples struggle” I am aware that I am being very dismissive of what are termed as epoch making struggles. But in the time frame of human civilization’s evolution the episodes seem to be just that - episodes; episodes without much lasting influence given the fact of Soviet Union’s demise and China’s march toward capitalism. Look at the countries with a semblance of socialism: Nordic countries, Costa Rica, even Canada (compared to USA) and France. Did socialism (whatever little remains of it) come about in these societies as a result of people’s struggles of the kind we call revolution? How is Cuba holding out while Nicaragua has almost been subjugated by US capitalism? All such questions make me wonder whether social changes are just accidents rather than events with a pattern. We seem to adduce reasons selectively to rationalize the “success” of one and the “failure” of another! May be I am being overly “realistic” or fatalistic to rationalize my inaction. May be we have not studied enough to understand the dynamics of social transformations and how to bring them about.

Civil service examinations

2009-01-16T15:51:00.000+05:30

I wonder why a degree should be the minimum qualification to appear for IAS / other UPSC exams. After all, the candidates are not compelled to write the examination in the subjects in which they graduated. In fact many engineers and science degree holders choose subjects such as Comparative Religious Studies, Philosophy etc. as the special subjects. Obviously the degree specialization is not considered relevant or necessary. Then why not allow anybody to appear for the preliminaries and if successful examine ALL candidates in the same subjects relevant to the career as a civil servant: Indian Constitution, Indian Society/ Economy, Basic Public administration, Human relations etc. besides the GK and English. When people prepare for UPSC exams they will prepare for these subjects. The cost of conducting exams also will be less since the number of subjects to be offered will be less. If we believe that the UPSC exams are adequate to discriminate between those who can be a competent civil servant and those who cannot, then why bother about the minimum requirement of graduation? Incidentally, is this system of inducting civil servants through examinations being practiced now in any other society?

Equitable use of public road space in urban areas.

2009-01-16T15:50:00.001+05:30

Increasingly the minuscule minority of private vehicle owners are being allowed to appropriate an undue share of the limited road space in urban areas by using the road space for parking. The pedestrians and those who depend on public transport are put to great difficulty. It is ironical that pavement vendors who eke out a livelihood are driven out while cars - which occupy much more space and which are not necessities for livelihood - are allowed to be parked, very often for a pittance of a fee, if at all a fee is charged. When public services such as education and health care are being marketed and priced to be beyond the reach of the poor, what is the rationale in allowing scarce urban space to be used by the affluent either freely or at highly subsidized rates. The following steps are urgently required: 1. All vehicles must be required to be parked off the road in self-financed multi-layered parking garages (as in the case of Western countries) and the road space restored to moving traffic and pedestrians. 2. All owners of commercial establishments must be asked to provide off-the-road-parking spaces for their customers. The number of parking spaces to be provided by them must be in consonance with their expected customer traffic. (We already have such examples: cinema theatres.). If necessary, commercial establishments in a given locality can pool their resources and build the multi-layered parking facilities in strategic locations. 3. Wherever legally required parking spaces such as those in the basement of commercial complexes have been illegally converted into shops and other establishments, the parking spaces must be restored by legal action. 4. All roads must be provided with pedestrian walkways according to international norms so that the objective of ensuring equity in the use of environment is assured. The policy makers and the lawmakers who want global standards for everything that they are interested in must try to move towards such better global practices.

Freedom of the individual versus laws and morals

2009-01-16T15:47:00.001+05:30

I came across the following argument in a post of another mail group, to which I subscribe. .."the idea of “contemporary morality” (which many seem to be impressed with) is not based on any empirical evidence of social benevolence or a set of principles but simply on the victories of special interest groups forwarding their vested agendas. Arguments can be conveniently weaved around the positions to reflect “Humanist ideology”, “progressive philosophy” or whatever other names one wishes to call, but the core reason for the existence of these moral imperatives in “contemporary pop-morality” is the victories (or losses) of the special interests and therefore logical arguments favoring/justifying them are irrelevant." The above argument set the following train of thoughts in my mind: I have always wondered about the legality of certain issues: one at a very mundane level - the legal compulsion to wear a helmet for riding a motorised two wheeler (or the need to wear seat belts while driving a car), and the other at a "higher" level - the illegality of attempting to commit suicide. I have argued that by not wearing a helmet I do not endanger anybody else (unlike drunken driving or smoking in the public places, by which one can endanger somebody else's life or health). In fact, I have come across at least one case, where a cyclist and a helmet wearing motor cyclist collided "head-on" literally and the poor cyclist got injured grievously by the hard helmet of the motorcyclist! Hence failure to wear a helmet should not be a punishable offence, especially when the state does not provide free health care facilities! Disincentives such as ineligibility for insurance compensation may be considered. I suspect that a law to punish those who ride not wearing a helmet is brought because of the interplay of a variety of forces. Some well-intentioned neuro-surgeons want to minimise head injuries and keep harping on that. The lawmakers also see an opportunity to prove that they are interested in welfare of their citizens and here can be a law that is easy to implement; the lawmakers also probably get "influenced" by the helmet manufacturers. The traffic police see the law as another "boon" - more opportunities to take some additional bribe. Thus the argument of my friend whom I quoted at the beginning is valid: Namely, what gets proscribed and what gets sanctioned at a given point of time in a given society is not a simple question of the logic of the times. You must have also heard the argument that beef eating was proscribed because the then pastoral / agrarian society depended on cows and bulls in a variety of ways. One hears all kinds of explanations for the explicit and bold "carnal" sculptures in Kajraho / Konarak and in many other ancient temples. I wonder whether these conjectures are even valid. Persons such as (late) Dr. Audiseshiah had been advocating legislation for the right to die with dignity when someone felt that he/she was not only unable to contribute to the society but was a definite burden on the near and dear. Societies do not allow that right and the attempt to take one's own life for whatever reason, if unsuccessful, is punishable - to add to the misery of the person! Yet another example: How can anybody justify a law against "compulsory" religious conversion? If any "compulsion" (blackmail, threat to life etc.) is used for any purpose, existing laws can always be used by the aggrieved person. So where is the need for a special legislation for punishing people who attempt to convert people to another religion? But these conventions / traditions / legislations are brought about with motives other than "social benevolence", at different periods in human history and some get entrenched as the quoted argument suggests. I also argue that if we accept the quoted argument, we can understand how the legal acceptance of gay marriages is a challenge. I have no problem with the stand that sexuality, just as religion, must be a private affair and not brought into public space. But we have seen how some practices get proscribed by religion or law over time. Without altering the perspectives radically we cannot expect changes that are just convenient to us. Why do we need to legally recognize the marriages – conventional or homosexual? We are told that we need that for purposes of sharing income, property, custody of children etc. In my opinion the state / legal system should interfere only to provide some protection to the children born through marriage; no need for any other intervention with respect to property, income etc. These must be decided by the partners through specific written contracts and be dealt with as any other business transaction in the event of the “marriage" breaking up. (e.g. Jacqueline – Onasis marriage?) In any case majority of the people would sort out the problems themselves; in the case of the fraction of the relationships which go sour, no great harm is done to either "spouse" if no children are involved. "Buyer be aware" must be the caveat as in the case of Indian marriages where grooms are "bought" through dowry! (Or through one's youth in the case of young women "buying" rich old men as happens in the West!). All physical abuse of "spouse" must be treated as "criminal" just as in the case of other physical attacks! Marriage licenses need to be optional. There is no need for tax concessions to facilitate married life, excepting to support children (natural or adopted) by "partners in the marriage". Without accepting such a view on marriage, crying foul on the non-acceptability of same-sex marriages by the society seems to me to be a little hypocritical.

Education and Examinations

2009-01-16T15:37:00.002+05:30

National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has suggested that examinations be dispensed with till the 10th standard and children are not detained to repeat an additional year or more because they have "failed" in the annual examination. I would go a step further and suggest that the public examinations at the end of the 10th and 12th year of school study may also be dispensed with, for the following reasons. Educationists all over the world agree that common public examinations are required not so much to maintain quality of education but to "certify" the level of competence of the examinees for purposes of exclusion or inclusion in further avenues of education or work. Just as "Quality Control" at the final output stage is being replaced by Total Quality Management in the case of industry, periodic assessments by the teachers to provide constructive feedback to the students and help them progress through the education programme will be the right approach to maintain and enhance quality of education rather than examinations to promote or detain students. There may be need for other revolutionary" reforms too: some students may be asked to do extra time for catching up in some subjects of the lower standards even while they are attending classes of a higher level for some other subjects. Of course, suggestions as above are based on the assumption that the primary purpose of school education is to "educate" children, not just produce some "graded" batches of "human resources". It is also assumed that administrative conveniences of mass examinations should not be the criteria for declaring at some specific points in the "academic calendar" that some students have become eligible for further studies / work and some have not. The schools should be empowered to declare that a student has "successfully" completed the 10-year or 12-year education at any point in time mutually convenient to the school and the student after the minimum period of study has been completed; the assessment of the teachers of various subjects may also be appended to the completion certificate. Those who want to go to university education may have to take a varietyof additional comprehensive entrance examinations conducted by a central body such as the association of Indian Universities which may berequired by some universities / colleges who have far less capacity than the number of applicants. In any case, all admissions to professional courses are now based on common entrance examinations and some elite institutions insist on their own entrance tests even for non-professional degree courses. The greatest advantage of such a system is that the majority of those who do not pursue higher education do not get branded as "failures" for not "passing" in one or two subjects. This is in fact a great confidence-builder for the poor who are the most affected by the public examinations. Many of them are branded for life as 10th-failed or12th-failed and what is crueler is that job opportunities which require completion of 10th or 12th standard of education are closed to them. Moreover, the tension that is associated with the ritual of examinations - passing and failing, not getting into the top ranks etc. - would also be eliminated at least for the majority of the students, if not for all. Children will get back some of their childhood to indulge in other activities, necessary for a holistic development as an individual. Thus the eminently sensible suggestion of NCERT must be welcomed by all those who are genuinely interested in the development of individuals and not just in pseudo certifications. In this context it may be pointed out that in the United States of America - whose practices our elite would want to emulate in a variety of spheres - the High School diploma - as they call the completion of the 12th standard - is awarded by the schools themselves. All examinations at the colleges and universities are, of course, conducted by the respective course instructors. Only professional examinations such as those for Certified Professional accountants (CPAs, equivalent to our Chartered Accountants) and Professional Engineers (PEs or Chartered Engineers as they are referred to in some countries) are conducted as common public examinations. Such a practice is definitely something we should seriously consider emulating.

Business Leadership and Critical Thinking

2009-01-16T15:31:00.002+05:30

I was sent the following link to Narayanamurthy’s (Infosys) talk about what we should learn from the West. http://www.icbs.com/iit/learn-from-west-narayan-murthy.htm My response: In the US , youngsters -10 to 12 year olds - earn pocket money by distributing newspaper in the neighbourhood. (I am talking about the times I lived in the US – almost 30 years back!) They never shirk their responsibility even if it is snowing hard. I have come across the father or an elder brother doing the chore if the boy is unable to perform his job because of sickness or his bike having broken down! Thus many of Murthy’s observations resonate with my sentiments. But, is Murthy correct in suggesting that the reason, for the current undesirable practices and attitudes of the society, is the fact that we were "under foreigners control for thousand years"? I am not comfortable with this formulation on several counts: a) The nomenclature of “foreigners”. If Mugals were the foreigners that Murthy is implying, so were Cholas to Pandyas (both reigned in different parts of ancient Tamilnadu ); Pallavas to Chalukyas (in present-day Karnataka) or Vijaynagar’s Krishnadevaraya to ancient Madurai ! Did Normans’ control of England create the same problem for the English? b) The logic of his argument that when “foreigners are ruling, people will lose the traits of self-discipline, collective social responsibility” etc. is not very convincing either. Were all the desirable traits present in the “Indian” society before the “foreigners’ control”? (If that had been the case “foreigners” would not have been successful in taking over!) In fact historians suggest that the concept of India as a united national entity happened because of the British rule, albeit inadvertently! c) Has collective good ever been the conscious and willingly accepted goal of societies anywhere in the past? The modern industrial development in a sense forced the need for "collective work" and development of "public goods" force people to cultivate the need for respecting their usefulness. One must understand that even in USA more "dog-eat-dog" practices were prevalent just 100 years back. Recall how the old and the infirm lost out in staking out land when the Western frontier (Oklahoma etc.) was opened up one morning some time in the later half of 19th century. Consider Dr. Narendra Jadhav's suggestion (Economic Times of May 2, 2006 ) that the rigid cast system could have been at the root of lack of economic development (though great strides were made in the realms of theoretical / conceptual domains) in India. A small minority bestowed with privileges and wanting everything done for them and their benefit even at the expense of the majority, probably is responsible for the current mindset in the society which is resource-crunched and has become intensely competitive! Everybody aspires to be the part of that privileged minority (a la protesters of reservations!). Oh, have I stirred the hornet's nest or opened a Pandora’s Box - whatever the appropriate adage is!

Expansion of Higher education

2009-01-16T15:18:00.004+05:30

I hear that the elite policy makers are concerned that the enrolment in of students in higher education is only 6% of the population of the relevant age group (18 to 24?). Efforts are required, it is suggested, to raise this to at least 15%. We may be charitable and appreciate the policy makers’ concern for more of our youth getting higher education. Unfortunately they are not willing to dole out the funds required for that. They want private-public partnership for higher education. One finds it difficult to understand what seems to be an inherent contradiction. I hope that the government does not compulsorily want the parents to cough up money to the education merchants (self-financing colleges) in order that we will project a better statistics. But first, let me explain what is unrealistic about the expectation of higher enrolment in university education? Hardly 20% of those who ought to complete 12th by the age of 18 do so. If that be the case, only when 75% or more of those who complete 12th pursue higher education, we will achieve the kind of enrolment ratio desired for the college-age group! Even advanced countries have not come anywhere near that figure even though most of them have achieved the 100% of relevant age group completing high school (12 years). So there is no realistic statistical basis for the expectation. But all is not lost. The access to higher education is limited because of the high cost. The high cost is largely because of the traditional requirement of classrooms (which are utilised for a few hours a day) and teachers (who are available for fewer hours!) for classes of anywhere from 20 to 90. Large number of studies from all over the world has shown the economics of Distance Education (an erstwhile vice-chancellor of a university called it Distance-less education!). Distance education of high quality, but at low cost for the student must become the logical choice of fast learners and those who can cope with some employment while studying. Personal contact programmes using part-time teachers, retired teachers and scholars pursuing M.Phil and Ph.D programmes can in fact provide better learning opportunity than institutionalized higher education. The curriculum and examinations for the regular and the distance education streams must be the same to ensure credibility. (The Education Minister of TN has recently advocated this!) Laboratory facilities in the affiliated colleges are not utilised to their full capacity. Hence, it may be possible to offer even science courses to be offered through distance mode by tying up with affiliated colleges for the lab facilities to be utilized in the evenings and week ends. This will generate more revenue for the colleges and some more employment for teachers. More poor students will be able to pursue higher education in their desired field. Computer Science, Computer Applications etc. are programmes which require lab facilities and we are already conducting programmes through distance mode for these courses. Hence it is a feasible idea. If thus the distance education mode becomes the dominant mode for those who pursue higher education – not always with any intent of specialising in a particular field by pursuing Masters and Doctoral programmes - the access can be enhanced and the flexibility of a very loosely structured curriculum to suit the specific needs of the candidates can also become possible. This of course means that the universities give up the attitude of treating distance education activity as merely a cash generating activity. All of the revenue from distance education should be spent for that activity and all efforts to strengthen and subsidize distance education must be taken. The industry may be incentiivised - I picked up the use of this term because of its usage by leading management gurus who want corporations to be incentiivised to be socially responsible - to look at the graduates from distance education as attractive by levying a cess proportional to the government's cost of the education of the employee hired by the industry and who had recived subsidized full time education.

Income from property / wage; trade /service

2009-01-16T15:12:00.002+05:30

One NRI friend of mine seemed to imply that Rs.50 for a haircut at Chennai is exorbitant. I have held a case discussion on Fair Fare for Autos, with students, management / economics teachers and of course with individuals. during all the discussions the popular middle class sentiment that the auto drivers exploit the "poor" public was dominant. Most people do not realise that a big chunk of the payments they make to the hairdresser or the auto driver in fact goes to the propertied class by way of rent, interest etc. and less than 50% is the compensation for the labour. I try to bring this out in my courses by encouraging the students to analyse the cost components in tiny business. It may be interesting in this context to compare those who set up grocery stores, fancy stores, medical shops or such other retail outlets who start out in a humble way without a huge investment. A good proportion of them you would have noticed managed to expand their business significantly, acquired the property in which they were located and in general prospered. Of course some would have gone down, largely because of mis-management, cheated by employees, outstanding customer credit etc. Now, look at a number of those who set up service outfits such as haircutting saloons, electrical/electronics repair shops, vehicle service facilities, tuition centers, small printing facilities, auto drivers etc. Have you seen a similar proportion of such service outfits significantly expanding? What should we infer? Traders always have the advantage over "producers" (of services) just as in agriculture. Is not this a tendency to be corrected by social intervention? Traders will be able to get institutional finance easily; but not the service providers. Should there not be cooperatives of service providers for each trade, to make institutional finance available? Shouldn't there be subsidized place of business on hire for these service providers, just as we have industrial estates? But a picture for the Indian economy as a whole must be available. What is the share of "income from property and investments" as opposed to "income from wages or labour" in the total national income. What percentage of the huge proportion of ‘self-employed” are in “trade” as opposed to “services”? I drew a blank from the National Institute of Public Finance. The commission on unorganized sector does not seem to have gone in depth.

Right to search those who come to search!

2009-01-16T15:04:00.001+05:30

Let us say that the police or government officials want to search the premises of a suspect or an accused. Does the person have a right to insist on a body search of all those who want to enter the premises for the purpose of the search? By offering such a right to the citizens, we can avoid the accusations that a member of the search party planted some incriminating substance such as narcotics or fake documents in the "suspect's" premise to falsely implicate the person in a crime. I do not know whether a constitutional amendment is needed for conferring such rights to the citizens!

Sops to the rich and powerful

2008-11-12T16:02:00.003+05:30

Dr. M M Singh claims that the airline industry is being bailed out since the employment angle is important. The report about Gujarat government's sops for TATAs and similar report about undisclosed terms from WB government too are justified by the respective governments from the same employment generation point of view. Are there any informed studies about the potential for employment generation through these projects in comparison to the same extent of support being given to the unorganised sector or even the organised SME sector? Are there studies, which at least compare the extent of support to the mega industries through direct and indirect subsidies with similar support for the other sectors? Isn't it time the development economists bring out such studies and disseminate to the general public most of whom are outside the ambit of employment in large scale organise sector? May be such studies are already there but in a form, which only academics can appreciate. Can I seek the indulgence of those friends who see this communication to let me have a few references?

Credibility of the Cost-Benefit Analysis of Development Projects

2008-10-02T15:35:00.001+05:30

Very often, development projects such as creation of SEZs or constructing ultra-modern airports are justified supposedly based on long-term cost-benefit analysis. Theoretically such analysis should lead to "optimal" decisions for the society as a whole, though sub-optimal for some sections, for example, those whose lands get acquired. However, we should also be aware of how such analysis always gets doctored to suit the dominant elite such that even the “global optimality” is questionable. There are enough "call girls" (a la Arthur Koestler's novel of the same title) in every academic profession to craft an analysis desired by the decision makers! Look at the Sethu Samudram project. Maritime experts seem to indicate that the dredging at such exorbitant costs is not worthwhile in terms of global shipping traffic expected, especially with ships getting bigger and bigger. But the kick-backs to be reaped in such huge projects are too much of a temptation for politicians to ignore such considerations. On the other hand there is very little interest in developing inland waterways for energy efficient transport of non-perishables or low cost passenger-commutation since the projects are likely to be scattered and small. The reason for the road transport project - golden quadrilateral - getting approved, despite such considerations may be because road travel is something the rich and the powerful also are interested in. Pardon me, if the "analysis" as above is superficial and cynical.

Land for Industrial / Infrastructure Projects

2008-10-02T15:29:00.004+05:30

If we assume that those who don’t want to give up their land for industrial projects are rational and are not being misguided by the politicians, then we can come up with terms that the land owners can not refuse. Given below is an imaginative solution, sketched by a friend of mine in the context of the Singur imbroglio, which if refined appropriately, would be salable to the sections whose land is being acquired. If the owner is assured of a regular income close enough to what he would have got out of the land and also the possibility of benefiting from “appreciation” in future, why would he refuse? The company’s continued access to the land can be ensured through suitable laws that the purchase of the title allows the purchaser to enjoy only the stream of pension and share of the capital gains if any and not to ask for the physical land. The company is not going to suffer on account of the appreciation in the value of the land just as the higher price of the share does not adversely affect the company. The company’s only objection can be that the wind fall profits that they may get at a distant future for the real estate if they close down the industry will still go to the original land holders or those who purchased the de-mat-title rather than to the shareholders of the company. Remember the controversies behind the closure of the DCM unit in Bhara Khamba, New Delhi. (The TU leader Lalith Makan allegedly got eliminated since he was a stumbling block for the closure of the mill and sale of the real estate!). Or the controversy around the land of the textile industries in Parel, Mumbai being sold consequent to the closure of those mills. Such instances of capitalist exploitation /loot can be avoided by the suggested method. So why shouldn’t the W B government explore such innovative solutions. After all, management students are urged to “think out of the box” and industry leaders do so when they want to reward themselves even while the corporations that they are running are incurring huge losses or are at the verge of bankruptcy as is evident from the recent events. ------------------------- From: "M Koteeswaran" To: "Ramki Ramakrishnan" , ge64@yahoogroups.com Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:49:09 +0530 Subject: Re: Fw: [foil] How Tata got Singur cheap Quote Perhaps there is another way to look at. Land is personal to the owner. He has a few options: 1. Keep and grow crops. 2. Keep idle. 3. Sell at the most profitable price. 4. A source for rainy day. Time increases the price and value of the land. Is it not possible to convert land into a dmat form with the transfer of ownership irreversible. A transfers to Government his land . This is irreversible. A can opt for a pension like payment with commutation facility based on its present market price. Like a person having contributed some sum through 30 years of service getting a commutation amount and a monthly pension. After ten years the commutation is restored. On the same basis why not compensation be given with a right to commute up to 100% ( if he is satisfied with the present compensation and wants to redeploy for some other business etc. ) Now this so called pension for land can be in dmat form which if he wants, he can sell to anyone at any time. Like in pension scheme, the value of the land can be readjusted (like pay commission/ DA) once in 5 years or 10 years. The total life of this pension for land could be for a maximum of say 20 or 30 years. Will this not meet all the four options a landlord has today? Of course he cannot leave land as property for his children or grandchildren. But he could leave a sharing will out of the pension for land for the balance period. Unquote

Age limit for entry to government employment.

2008-09-22T13:02:00.003+05:30

For entry to government employment there is an upper age limit which I feel is constitutionally not valid. If a person who has put in 10 years of service in a private transport company as a driver, he should in fact be preferred over a younger person for the position of a driver in a state transport undertaking. The older person even at the age of 35 or 40 would not mind starting from the bottom of the ladder in the government employment since the entry-level salary and perks are better than that for even an experienced person in the private sector in such cases. What is wrong if a 50 year old experienced driver seeks a position in the government though he might retire within the next 5 , 8 or 10 years? Similarly a homemaker once her child rearing stage is over, probably after ten years of marriage, may want to write the public services commission examinations and be gainfully employed. Why should she be denied that opportunity because of her age? After all government officials rising from the ranks are made IAS officers even at the age of 45 some times. Hence the upper age limit for most government employment must be scrapped. Unless the higher age can be shown to be a definite disadvantage such as the case may be for jobs requiring physical agility or strength, stipulating an upper age limit for entry, I feel, should be avoided. I was surprised to learn that a person just migrating in and becoming a citizen of Canada at the age of 53 is not barred from government employment as long as he/she meets the qualifications. My brother-in-law is the person I am talking about. Hence, a precedence from a developed society!

Equitable use of public road space in urban areas.

2008-09-17T16:09:00.000+05:30

A year back, corporation of Coimbatore city hiked the parking fee for bicycles, motorized two-wheelers and cars for some of the paid-parking places in the city. As usual the vocal middle class protested. What is ironical is the fact that the fee has been fixed at Re.1 for cycles; Rs.3 for motorized two-wheelers and ONLY Rs.4 for cars. A car occupies at the least the space required to park 5 to 6 two wheelers or about 10 cycles. On the basis of the space requirement the parking fee for cars must be at least 10 times that for the cycles and about 5 times that for the two-wheelers. In fact considering the eco-friendly nature of the cycles, they must be exempt totally from any parking fees. . Cars must be charged about 5 times the fee fixed for the motorised two-wheelers. Space in the commercial sections of any city is very expensive. When the current government policies are to let market prices be charged even for essential services such as health and education, why should the corporation subsidize the car owners? Should not the corporation have a policy which is fair and discourages cars coming into crowded commercial places and creating problems for the large majority of pedestrians? (Much of the curbside parking in many of the busy city roads are completely free parking is another objectionable policy.). The building rules which require underground parking space to be provided in commercial complexes are blatantly violated and that space is converted to offices and shops too. Do you think legal route will enable me to make the corporation correct its policies? Going one-step further, I find that the policy of providing parking spaces at roadsides - even for a fee –should be challenged given the congestion in all our cities. Increasingly the minuscule minority of private vehicle owners are being allowed to appropriate an undue share of the limited road space in urban areas by using the road space for parking. The pedestrians and those who depend on public transport are put to great difficulty. It is ironical that pavement vendors who eke out a livelihood are driven out while cars - which occupy much more space and which are not necessities for livelihood - are allowed to be parked, very often for a pittance of a fee; if at all, a fee is charged. What is appalling is that in Chennai many of the restaurants such as Sangeetha at CP Ramswamy Road have converted the free parking space into a drive-in and eat facility by serving in the car just the way they were doing at Woodlands drive-in!! When public services such as education and health care are being marketed and priced to be beyond the reach of the poor, what is the rationale in allowing scarce urban space to be used by the affluent either freely or at highly subsidized rates. The following steps are urgently required: 1. All vehicles must be required to be parked off the road in self-financed multi-layered parking garages (as in the case of Western countries) and the road space restored to moving traffic and pedestrians. There should be only spaces on the roadside for drop and pick up (not more than 5 minutes). 2. All owners of commercial establishments must be asked to provide off-the-road-parking spaces for their customers. The number of parking spaces to be provided by them must be in consonance with their expected customer traffic. (We already have such examples: cinema theatres.). If necessary, commercial establishments in a given locality can pool their resources and build the multi-layered parking facilities in strategic locations. 3. Wherever legally required parking spaces such as those in the basement of commercial complexes have been illegally converted into shops and other establishments, the parking spaces must be restored by legal action by the local government. 4. All roads must be provided with pedestrian walkways according to international norms so that the objective of ensuring equity in the use of environment is assured. Such good examples from the West are not picked up by our elite administrators and lawmakers who want to globalize everything.

Stop subsidizing judicial services

2008-09-14T10:39:00.002+05:30

The New Economic Policy requires that public pay for even essential services such as health care and education since the government does not have enough resources. One government "service" that is probably used largely by the rich is the judicial service for civil cases. Disputes over property, defamation, corruption, default of huge loans by the affluent to other affluent etc. are probably the cases which consume the major chunk of time of the judiciary. (e.g: Birlas vs Lodha case) Do the beneficiaries of this "service" pay adequately for this service? I am sure the required court fees etc. are measly in comparison to a) the cost incurred by the government; b) to the benefits of those in whose favour the case is decided; and c) the income earned by the lawyers of the parties concerned. Is it not necessary to study this situation carefully and increase the revenue to the government at least from those cases where the parties involved can afford to pay?

Maintenance of Public Toilets and Creating Livelihood

2008-09-14T10:30:00.002+05:30

Most of you must have experienced the pathetic condition of the public toilets in India, especially in bus stations. The contract for maintenance of public toilets in railway stations, bus stands and other such public places, must be given to co-operatives of the vendors in the campus or to service minded youth organisations in the area. The vendors being already involved in some activity in the campus would be able to devote time for the operation and management of the maintenance service. The government must facilitate such a process by not insisting on giving the contract to the highest bidder but to genuine co-operatives with roots in the locality so that some accountability is possible. This can be one strategy for creating livelihood opportunities for youth and women through self-help groups. Proper assessment of the revenue potential and costs of proper maintenance (based on fair wages to people employed) must be carried out and the license fee must be accordingly fixed. The government can surely be a little more scientific and socially sensitive in its approach to contracting out these rights to operate public facilities instead of being commercially oriented and favour the highest bidder. If there is no displacement of a particular caste group which was engaged in the maintenance activity, the youth must be encouraged to take up not just the management part but the operational part too thus promoting dignity of labour too. It may not be out of place to mention here my experience. I was sharing a room in a rooming house while I was a graduate student in Penn State University in the ‘70s. A large house was cooperatively managed by war veterans who were back to the university after meeting the compulsory military service requirements then prevalent in the U S. All the inmates had to clean the toilets of the house once in 2 weeks and the kitchen area once in 2 weeks. Thus once every week everybody I had a cleaning chore. Of course I had no diffidence in doing such cleaning jobs since I grew up tending cattle at our rural-urban home. But I find in TN many house cleaners who broom and mop your house would not clean even your modern toilets. Incidentally shouldn't one compare how much the developed countries, whom we are trying to ape, spend (not only on human resources but the associated equipment / consumables etc.) on a per capita basis on public support services such as sanitary and park-maintenance vis-vis what we do? We usually compare only expenditure on health / education. Of course we compare the number of auto mobiles per thousand population or penetration of mobile phones etc. too!

Onam-Celebration of the visit of a King of whom the Devas were jealous

2008-09-12T20:59:00.001+05:30

I understand the festival of Onam in Kerala is celebrated not in connection with a god/goddess killing an evil Asura, as is the case with many Hindu festivals. Onam is celebrated to honour the benevolent king Mahabali returning once a year to visit his people. Mahabali was "stomped out" (literally) by the god by sheer chicanery - not for any evil action but for being too good to his people! The story goes like this:

Mahabali was very benevolent and all his people liked him more than they liked the Devas whom the people were expected to worship. So the worried (or jealous?) devas appealed to the god. God went disguised as a humble brahmin boy and begged Mahabali just to give him a piece of land measured by 3 of his steps. Mahabali of course granted the request. (I concede he was dumb for a King not to smell something fishy with that kind of a request!). Immediately god took his vishwarupa and with two of his steps measured out the entire earth and something else. For his promised third step Mahabali offered his head and the god pushed him down (to pathala loka?). Mahabali, being devout himself, was happy to have had god's vishwarupa dharsan and requested that he be allowed to visit his dear people once in a year! Onam is the day he visits his beloved citizens.

Obviously god cheated. Didn't he? The terms of agreement cannot be changed all of a sudden when he assumes vishwaroopa. But god is like Uncle Sam: he makes the rules and also delivers judgment as he likes.

You can of course find many instances of such chicanery by the gods in our mythology. Even the "Naroththama" (best of men) Rama has indulged in such unsavoury practices. (See Ramayana: The Poison Tree by Renganayakamma). Of course every one of such practices is rationalised as the "war against terrorists" (a la Bush?)!

Wouldn't it be fun to identify more such "malpractices" of gods? Or would it only reinforce our "god fearing" corrupt persons to indulge in more such practices?

Discriminatory restrictions and regulations

2008-09-05T14:23:00.003+05:30

I am unable to reconcile to laws which deprive poor people from making a livelihood but does not prevent ecologically detrimental conspicuous personal consumption of the rich. I am referring to governments - in India - putting a limit on the number of cycle rikshaws, auto rickshaws or buses that can ply in cities but not limiting the number of cars that individuals and firms can operate! If preventing congestion on the roads and avoiding accidents are the objectives, the former public transport modes must in fact be given priority. They occupy less space on a per passenger basis, get utilised more intensively than private vehicles (and hence demand less parking space in an aggregate sense) and the cycle rikshaws are ecologically non-polluting. Even if accidents take place they are much less crippling to the persons involved! Of course the employment generation through public mode of transportation is another benefit. (Tongue-in-cheek, all the advocates of liberalisation and competition should welcome more public transport vehicles plying around so that the affluent customers can keep depressing the fares!). Thus if any restriction must be on transport vehicles, it must be on private vehicles and not on public transport. Similarly, I don't follow the logic of taxing vehicles used as taxies and hired limousines being levied higher road tax than the private vehicles as well as being asked to pay toll charges to travel across different states . If the objective is to tax the heavier user of the road more, it can be done by taxing the petrol / diesel with an additional component to be passed on to the highways department. On the other hand if the objective is to collect revenues from the commercial operation of the taxi / limo operator it should be the concern of the income tax authorities. Why should vehicles which encourage the better utilisation of capital and space be subjected to higher taxes? Why should the small entrepreneur who provides a public service be subject to a tax when the private owner who is more of a culprit locking up road space as well as parking space be spared? Yet another anachronistic regulation is the collection of higher prperty tax by the corporations and municipalities for house property if the property is rented rather than used by the owner. My objection is similar to what I have raised before. The income from the property must be taxed as per norms and that is all. The property tax being collected by the local body for the property must be related to the location and the size of the property which might have a bearing on the delivery of some services such as provision of road surface, water supply etc.- especially services which can not be measured directly based on usage. How can constitutional lawyers accept such discrimination which are illogical and which in some cases adversely affect the majority and favour the rich minority as in the case of road tax. Is it because lawyers also belong to the rich minority? RAMAKRISHNAN Coimbatore, India 641046

The Poor and the Rich - Using Natural Resources

2008-08-20T12:33:00.000+05:30

Recently, while my wife and I were browsing TV channels, a public service ad was broadcast on the need to save water. Two women were seen fighting over a pot of water “meraa paani”, “meraa paani” and a third woman came along singing “meraa theraa nahin; paani sabkaa” and proceeded to distribute the water to several women. Some clips showing frugal usage of water in some households followed. The ad ended with the message not to waste water. My wife commented that the ad must have shown how the rich waste water – watering golf fields, washing cars or having tub-baths in luxury hotels! I agreed. The ad has to be considered at best as stupid and at worst, arrogant or cruel considering that women who have to fight over a pot of water are the least wasteful consumers. In contrast consider the way in which the rich waste natural resources as reflected in the following episode which is a real one to which I can vouch for. A management professor needed to have a discussion with an industrialist (not one of the tycoons, mind you) for a case study. One of the metro cities which the industrialist was visiting was chosen as the meeting point for a variety of reasons. When the professor reached the airport of the meeting city, he was surprised to learn that he has to fly with the industrialist to the nation’s capital city in the company plane by which the industrialist had arrived from his headquarters since another “urgent” meeting had cropped up for the industrialist in the capital city. The flight time – roughly 90 minutes – was to be used for the discussions. After depositing the industrialist in the capital city, the professor was dropped back in the metro city where the meeting was to have taken place. The plane went back to the capital city to fetch the industrialist for his other junkets. If an industrialist, who is not necessarily a member of the billionaire club, would indulge in such extravagance, which in my opinion is wasteful and harmful considering that air planes rank high in pollution per passenger-km, imagine how other flamboyant corporate giants such as Mittals, Ambanis, Mallyas and others may be wasting natural resources just because they can afford the expense. (It would be interesting to collect the information on the flight schedules of the corporate jets. I assume that such information must be available with DGCA.) Of course, they can afford the expense because their gullible customers, shareholders and employees accept that they deserve the “rewards” of entrepreneurship and stewardship. But does such acceptance of their “worth” absolve them of social responsibility?

Life After Graduation

2008-07-31T12:46:00.000+05:30

I am posting this in lieu of an earlier one I posted in June 2005. After completing engineering degree, to my own surprise, I found myself joining Esso Eastern in the marketing function in May ’64. Learnt about the business world, dealing with petrol / kerosene dealers and selling lubricants till July ’69 when I went on study leave to IIM Ahmedabad. While at IIM, fortuitous circumstances led me to get the East-West Centre Grant of the USEFI and I continued my MBA programme in the US of A attending the University of Hawaii and other universities till early ‘72. Fighting the temptations to get lost in the West, returned to Esso. Idealistic confusions of the mind / heart led me to drift for a while with different assignments before I finally joined IIM, Bangalore as Assistant Professor in February ’74. As an escape from continuing value conflicts I again left for Penn State University in March ‘75 to pursue Ph.D. Value conflicts kept chasing me and decided to return to IIM in Oct ’78, to escape from the temptation of becoming a Green-card holder, after a stint of teaching at Bowling Green, Ohio with only an AbD instead of Ph.D. Quit IIM, Bangalore in Jul ‘80 in order to be in Tamilnadu and get involved in grass root activism. The stint at Madras Institute of Development studies with an assignment to evaluate the literacy programme, I may say, got me somewhat politically conscious! Worked closely with Tamilnadu Science Forum towards strengthening education sector. Still looking for avenues in school education. From August 1985, I was Professor of Management at Bharathiar University; shouldered the responsibility as the Director of the School of Management, as well as the Director of Distant Education for brief periods. Deputed to the Total Literacy Campaign for a couple of years. Also dabbled at the highest decision making slot - the committee looking after the functions of the vice-chancellor - for several months. After retiring in June ’04, I had to continue at the University because of a project for TN State Planning Commission. During April 2005 –Jul 2006, I enjoyed my stay in Shillong as a visiting faculty in North Eastern Hill University (NEHU). In August 2006 I assumed the responsibility as the Director of the Asian School of Business, Tiruvananthapuram, (www.asbindia.in ) in deference to the last wishes of my long time friend Dr. Nair, former Dean, IIM, Bangalore who is no more. Enjoying a free hand to indulge in my experiments in management education / training. Shyamala whom I came to know because her brother (LRS as my CEG batch mates would know him) and married in Dec ’76, is a social activist involved with helping women as well as unorganized labour. We had decided (during the courtship through snail mail between US and India!) on having no children and stick by that decision!

Nuclear Deal - Is the urgency warrented?

2008-07-08T11:46:00.000+05:30

I came across an interview by Amy Goodman with Mr. Perkins,

http://www.democracynow.org/2004/11/9/confessions_of_an_economic_hit_man

Perkins is the author of the book "Confessions of an economic hit man" which exposes the US forign policy as something guided only by the interests of US corporations headed mostly by Republican party supporters. Any one who becomes familiar with the history of US foreign policy through such exposures would wonder at the obstinacy of Dr. Singh and his party. After all, the possibility of less than 10% of total energy needs being met, that too in the long run with very uncertain cost implications, is not more in the "national interest" compared to getting gas / oil from Iran with the yet-to-be-concluded pipeline deal.

What is more intriguing is the desperate urgency that is shown by the government. If the argument is that the new government after Bush may not be favorable to help India ( assuming Bush is "helping" India and not the corporations which would supply nuclear reactors to India!), then we should be very wary of the future U S governments reneging on the deal even if signed now! After all U S governments have a record of going back on their words whenever it suits them. On the other hand if the Indian government is confident that it can convince the next U S government too then there is no need for all this hurry and temporary alliances just for the sake of the deal. One can not help wondering whether getting the nuclear deal concluded is the motivation for the present behavior of the Congress party or something else is!

The Poor, Surplus Valye, Social Security etc.

2008-06-20T12:33:00.002+05:30

Poor, Labour Surplus. Social Security etc.

When ever I see casual labourers working on the roads, digging
trenches or laying roads, I can't help think how the poor subsidize
the rich. Unfortunately we have not come up with popular economic
writing which quantifies how much the poor subsidize the rich. I am
able to understand intuitively the concept of the surplus value of
labor working in this kind of situation; but how can we get across to
the middle class who seems to think that all those who are enjoying
the benefits of the modern society have achieved them largely because
of their hard work and their intelligence and do not reckon the
contribution made historically by labor which has been exploited and
continues to be exploited.

The other notion that if somebody is not too bright he should be
helped rather than abandoned is something which does not seem to occur
to anybody naturally. If somebody is physically handicapped or
mentally challenged there seems to be some recourse, at least for
those who are lucky. But if somebody is not too bright to cope with
the demands of the modern society, he is abandoned as an incompetent
individual! We should despise only those who are willingly lazing
about or are not willing to put in their efforts at least to a
minimum extent. All the others who show any motivation to work -
should some how be given an opportunity. This is where social security
is important. If unemployment allowance is given, the recipients may
be asked to contribute by putting in a few hours of work to help
slow learning school children; take care of the elderly; regulate
traffic during rush hours and for providing such human
resources-intensive services. Of course, effective local governance
institutions can coordinate these better.

--
K. Ramakrishnan
Asian School of Business
Tiruvananthapuram
India 695581
Mobile: +919847939394

What They Don't Teach you at Business School

2008-03-23T16:10:00.001+05:30

http://www.business-standard.com/common/news_article.php?leftnm=6&subLeft=8&chklogin=Y&autono=317154&tab=r

The observations of a former student of mine published in Business Standard.
I have responded to him as below:

Yogeswaran's observations published in Business Standard are very valid but
not entirely of new vintage. I am also concerned about the implications of
such observations from a successful entrepreneur. Fortuitously, just last
week I had chosen the title of a recent article by Prof. Charles Handy -
formerly Professor at London Business School as the topic for group
discussion to the candidates seeking admission to ASB. The title of the said
article is "You Can't Learn Management in a Classroom"
(www.businessweek.com). The candidates went on seriously to say things
similar to what Yogi had said - but not so effectively. I stopped the
discussion after one round and asked each one by turn whether they would
agree or disagree with the statement as given. Surprisingly without
hesitation everyone agreed with the statement; upon which I asked them why
then were they seeking admission to a management programme. Only then they
saw the point - that too after some prodding - that it is easy to agree with
"You Can't Learn Management ONLY in a Classroom" but not so easy to agree
with the statement if the word "ONLY" were omitted.

Of course, the sentiments about what one does not learn in business school
are valid for all professions - be it medicine, law or engineering. The
successful practice of a profession is something to be cultivated over time
with experience. Even focused training programmes for performing arts and
sports would not teach everything to make the trainee a Sachin or SaruhKhan!

That is why some of us keep harping to the successive batches of management
students that what we do is to prepare them for continuous learning and
creating a mindset for management. Of course the motivation of the students
for such inculcation - as was the case with Yogesh -is a necessary
pre-requisite. I would have appreciated Yogesh's observations even better if
he had pointed out how the business school programme helps prepare one for
such continuous learning. In the absence of such an observation, the
indifference of many of the students to take the programme seriously and the
attitude to treat only the certification and the opportunity for campus
recruitment as the major goals, I am afraid, would get strengthened.

Rich and Poor

2008-02-21T15:22:00.001+05:30

Poor paying for rich : appropriation of the surplus value of labour

When ever I see casual labourers working on the roads, digging trenches or laying roads, I can't help think how the poor subsidize the rich. Unfortunately we have not come up with popular economic writing which quantifies how much the poor subsidize the rich. I am able to understand intuitively the concept of the surplus value of labor working in this kind of situation; but how can we get across to the middle class majority who seems to think that all those who are enjoying the benefits of the modern society have achieved them largely because of their hard work and their intelligence and do not reckon the contribution made historically by labor which has been exploited and continues to be exploited.

The other notion that if somebody is not too bright he should be helped rather than abandoned is something which does not seem to occur to anybody naturally. If somebody is physically handicapped or mentally challenged there seems to be some recourse, at least for those who are lucky. But if somebody is not too bright to cope with the demands of the modern society, she is abandoned as an incompetent individual! We should despise only those who are willingly lazing about or are not willing to put in their efforts at least to a minimum. All the others who show any motivation to work should some how be given an opportunity. Look at the children who do all kinds of acrobatics and then beg for a few paise; those men who traverse the muddy and hot road rolling along seeking alms, or the young women who sell all kinds of stuff at the traffic lights. Can we say that these people have no motivation to work hard? This is where we see the need for some kind of social security.

When unemployment allowance is dolled out you may ask the recipients to contribute to the society by putting in a few hours to help slow learning school children or at the hospital taking care of elderly? We must tie up with the NGOs for coordinating such human resources for constructive social work.

--
K. Ramakrishnan
Asian School of Business
Tiruvananthapuram
India 695581
Mobile: +919847939394

Indicators for comparing socities

2008-02-16T12:36:00.001+05:30

Most of the time we see economic indicators of the number of cars, telephones or internet connections per 1000 population for different countries. We can also get social / educational indicators such as enrollment ratio for different levels of education, number of hospital beds per 1000 population etc.However very little comparative information is available on the following:

Number of functional public conveniences and investment
Number of persons engaged in maintaining the streets clean and related expenditure
Annual Capital and operational expenditure on equipment utilized for sanitary operations
Number of police personnel and expenditure on personnel and equipment.
Number of police personnel exclusively for traffic management and related expenditure on personnel and equipment.
Surface area of roads dedicated for use by pedestrians in Metros

Obviously all the above must be in some form of ratios - per 1000 poulation or per 1000 vehicles etc. Expenditure will have to be in Purchasing Power Parity terms.

A number of such relevant parameters in disaggregated terms must be studied by our academics and social researchers in order to arrive at reasonable conclusions about the performance of our public systems

Public Transport corporations have at least developed indicators of productivity for personnel and fleet and inter-corporation comparisons are possible. However international comparisons are not available to my limited knowledge.

Without comparing such parameters is it fair to complain about our dirty and clogged streets and accuse the low level employees of our public systems?

If HR personnel in MNCs consider that world class performance is possible only if world class pay packages are provided, is that applicable only for the higher end of the work force?

--
K. Ramakrishnan
Asian School of Business
Tiruvananthapuram
India 695581
Mobile: +919847939394

Caste Discrimination - Reservation: Have the cake and eat it too?

2008-01-20T16:33:00.001+05:30

A letter I sent to "The Hindu" in response to letters on the issue.

--------------------------------

Dear Sir

Mr. Sadagopan asserts ( Letters, Jan 19) that "it is not fair to blame the
preent generation for centuries-old ills". Is it fair to enjoy through
inheritance the assets - material as well as non-material such as
"connections" - especially when accumulation of such assets have been
through such centuries-old ills of exploitation of labour?

While there may be some case for denying the benefits of reservation to
those who have become economically well off, extending the argument to claim
that all those who are economically deprived must be considered on equal
footing for the purposes of reservation is not reasonable. The support
mechanisms available for the economically deprived and even educationally
backward upper caste individuals are far more than that available for dalits,
adivasis etc. If one looks at most of the traditional family run
businesses -some even of the large cap category - one can not fail to see
that much of the lower level employees belong either to the community of the
owners, or to the region from where the owners hail.

We can not also forget that the system of reservation was initiated during
the British rule largely because of the nepotism practised by those who now
cry hoarse about reverse discrimination!

Yours sincerely
K.Ramakrishnan
Director, Asian School of Business
Trivandrum

--
K. Ramakrishnan
Asian School of Business
Tiruvananthapuram
India 695581
Mobile: +919847939394

Pictures that I never posted found in my blog

2007-05-25T13:25:00.000+05:30

I was disturbed to find that several posts - all were picture place holders - in my blog though I had not posted them. I have deleted all of them. However, I am concerned about this unauthorised posts in my blog. I have no clue as to how I can prevent such an occurrence. I am unable to locate any tips in the blogger help center or discussion groups. I would appreciate if somebody can tell me what I should do to ensure that others do not post in my blog. Thanks.

Government Exits Maruthi

2007-05-11T07:36:00.001+05:30

Today's The Hindu reports that GoI has sold all its shares in Maruthi Udyog, the car manufacturing undertaking.There is a general refrain from the elite intellectuals that the government should not be running commercial undertakings and that public sector undertakings must be gradually privatized. The government of the day is following this line of thought.

But, I don't see why the government should be not continue to be in commercial activities where profits can be possible in order to mobilise resources on a recurring basis. After all there will be less resistance for mobilising funds through profits from undertakings rather than taxes! Especially when such activities are not in the "essential commodities" category and therefore profitable pricing of the products are permissible. Of course, I agree that the undertaking must be run on a strictly commercial lines and should not be a monopoly.

Hence I do not comprehend the need for the government to have quit Maruthi, investment in which undertaking can provide continuous returns. The whole economic philosophy that the government must run schools, colleges, hospitals and the like without profits -- in fact incurring losses - but should not run businesses which can make profits from upper end consumers, seems to me a farce.

K. Ramakrishnan
Director, Asian School of Business
Trivandrum 695581,India
Mobile:+919847939394

Knowledge Commission Report

2007-04-08T10:37:00.000+05:30

Dear Sir

Mr. Viswanathan, while rightly draws our attention to the unfortunate fact that the "Knowledge Commission push(ed) the study of this "crucial area" of school education to the back burner", mildly observes that it is difficult to understand why. (Open Page, Apr 8, 2007). Apparently, Mr. Viswanathan does not want to articulate that there will always be sub-conscious class bias even among the erudite members of such agencies. Higher education is more important to the elites: they have opted out of public-funded school education system; depend on the system of entrance examinations for excluding the poor and disadvantaged from high quality higher education and hence do not bother about what happens in the school education. Hence the attention on higher education and even the nod for more public funds. -- K. Ramakrishnan Director, Asian School of Business Trivandrum 695581,India Mobile:+919847939394

Auto rickshaw fares - Why not leave it to market forces?

2007-02-01T17:31:00.000+05:30

I fail to understand the need for government regulation of auto / taxi fares. Compared to education, health and even legal services, services provided by autos and taxis can not be called "essential" in any sense. When the former services have been left to be priced at will by the "market" why is it that auto drivers are being harassed with government regulation. The government has not subsidized in any way the "education" of auto drivers; neither is it giving any concessions by way of easy loans to buy autos. Then where is the rationale for regulating their fare? Would the government regulate the fees to be charged by the schools, hospitals, doctors, lawyers etc. ?

While there is no limit on private vehicles that can ply in a city, the number of licenses for the socially more efficient public hire vehicles such as autos are restricted! If the government facilitates competition among autos by removing the restrictions and facilitating driver owned autos through loans, auto fares will come down. The government revenue would increase too. The argument that congestion would increase can not be sustained since more public hire vehicles which move around constantly would ease the parking space needed for the private vehicles and in fact improve the traffic conditions.

Auto fares, if at all fixed by the government, should be based on what an auto can ply in 8 hours in a city (about 200 km) of which only a part (about 100 km) can be revenue earning fare. Besides meeting the costs (rent to the owner, fuel and minor maintenance) the driver should be able to earn living wages plus contribution towards health / life insurance (since the nature of job requires that). Shouldn't the auto driver also be able to save something to finance his children's education etc.? Only if we factor in all that we can talk about a fair fare!

What is ironical is the government turning a blind eye to the illegal operation of the call taxis with subsidized cooking gas cylinders which enables them to operate the call taxis at rates competitive compared to the petrol-driven and fuel-inefficient autos.

What is needed is not a patch up solution of regulating auto fares but a thorough review of policy to promote public hire vehicles versus personal transportation.

--
Ramakrishnan
Trivandrum
9847939394

Management Education - Experiments

2006-11-16T12:25:00.000+05:30

Something I sent my professional friends.

Dear Friends

You are aware of my belief that management is better learnt by doing than through class room courses. To get that dimension, of learning by doing, to some extent in the ASB programme, we are thinking of letting students who are capable and and are willing to put in more work than for a class room course, accumulate some credits by "independent study / project" course. The practising managers who are willing to help as resource persons need to spend only about 15 to 20 hours over a period of approximately 15 weeks (during Nov - Mar) to guide the student. To begin with the the RP will assist in identifying the basic background reading, discuss now and then to clarify issues and then get the student do a live project approved jointly by the resource person and ASB. Ideally some assignment which will benefit the RP's organisation / interests will be desirable since the RP can also get something out of the project besides the not-too-glamorous compensation for the time spent with the student. The time to be spent with the student will largely be through voice chat / email responses etc. The student can visit the RP once or twice ( not a requirement though) and if one RP guides several students the RP also may be invited to visit ASB for common interactions. The culmination of the independent study will have to result in a comprehensive report by the student to be approved by the RP. May be there will be viva by ASB in-house faculty for the purpose of the ritual of awarding a grade.

For your information, when I did this course in the systems area three of my students developed an MIS for South India Viscose - Palani Oil mills.Their design of the various forms for capturing purchase / sales transactions were implemented in the organisation almost without modification. Other dimensions of their proposed MIS were starting points for the organisation's further efforts. Three other students made a comparative evaluation of the then existing accounting packages in terms of the various features of the packages. Thus even if a live project is not readily available we could generate something from the public domain.

Since I did not get any response for my mail in which I had thanked those who had offered to help and asked for specific ways in which they could contribute, I am taking this initative. I hope some of you will be able to respond positively. Please feel free on indicating what kind of compensation would be appropriate (Rs. 200 per student-hour, or some such concrete indicators).

We would also like to explore the possibility of mentoring online by professionals who are interested in interacting with the young.

We are also looking for faculty both for long term involvement and as visiting faculty. I would welcome communications of interest along with an outline of the contents of the course you propose.

Ramki

P.s. Please feel free to forward this mail to any appropriate professional -BSMED alumni or otherwise.

--
Ramakrishnan
Trivandrum

Common School System

2006-09-15T07:35:00.000+05:30

Given below are excerpts from a mail from Dr. Anil Sadgopal who is tirelessly working for the cause of a relevant and common school system of good quality for all. I am putting this in my blog to get some more coverage. But any help as requested in the last few paragraphs will be welcome. Thanks.

Ramakrishnan

Excerpts from the mail of Dr Anil Sadgopal.

Are you aware of the Bihar state initiative? At our suggestion, the state govt. has constituted a 3-member CSS Commission and duly notified it on 4^th August. Prof. Muchkund Dubey is the chairperson, myself the second member and Madan Jha the Member-Secretary. The work has started. A lot of my energy for the next 8 months will be spent in Bihar . In this light, I want to have all the details of the TN initiative – copy of notification, TORs, composition etc. Is this also a Commission or a committee? How do we establish a communication with them? HELP!

I have created a yahoogroup on CSS. I invite you (and through you other friends and supporters of CSS) to join this and start a debate. Spread the word.

The details are as follows:

Group name:

commonschoolsystem

Group home page:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/commonschoolsystem

Group email:

commonschoolsystem@yahoogroups.com

Can you help me to put the same material on some other similar groups? Or what is this thing called blogs? Is there anyone known to you who can create an interactive website for PCCSS and one in my name? What are the cost implications? How does one go about doing such a thing?

Reliance in West Bengal

2006-06-22T16:45:00.000+05:30

West Bengal's Reliance on Reliance

I find it difficult to understand that a left front government could not think in terms of a cooperative of agro farmers for retail trade of agro products instead of depending on Reliance. Even if one ignores the history of the corporate giant in alleged manipulations of governement policies to their favour and other alleged unetheical business practices, isn't it somewaht ironical that a government which should be ideologically in favour of cooperatives and decentralised small businesses, especially in the retail trade, should depend on a corporate giant which will most likely cater to the high end market? If Amul , a coperative of milk farmers, can succeed, why shouldn't a cooperative of agro farmers do so?

--
Ramakrishnan
Shillong
visit my ramblings at
www.ramkishyam.blogspot.com

Decentralised electricty generation

2006-06-19T17:28:00.000+05:30

Decentralised Electricity Generation

http://www.csicop.org/si/2005-01/energy.html

The above article talks about the need to decentralise electricity generation. Even assuming that it is cost effective, it would meet only the demand of the type where consumption is in a given place. What about the needs of Railways which I understand is one of the dominat components of electricity demand in our country?

The captive power plants of Indian Industries indicate the cost of generation in excess of Rs. 10 per kwh. Of course the way costs account for the use of capital is always a thorny issue. In any case some decentralised generation is already going on. Can we dispense with Transmission and Distribution through a grid entirely? If not, then the reduction of users for the T&D because of decentralised generation will push up the costs for the power through the grid. I am not sure whether all these issues are adequately addressed in the article.

Ramakrishnan
Shillong
visit my ramblings at
www.ramkishyam.blogspot.com

Poor get thrown out; Rich get reprieve - Class nature of the State

2006-06-10T14:22:00.000+05:30

Class Nature of the State I can not help feeling bad about the dual standards of the government, though I am by this time pretty much aware of the chicanery of the ruling class. The rich who have blatantly violated the rules and regulations of the Delhi Metro finally managed to get the demolition of the illegal constructions stopped and are being extended loans (they may even get hefty compensation if the likes of Malhotra manage to keep on shouting) to rebuild! On the other hand the poor Narmada dam affected tribals are ruthlessly evicted to benefit the land owning class and the urban rich hungry for electricity! I learnt from a friend in Mumbai who has been living in one of the old apartment buildings in the nice neighbourhood such as Matunga / King Circle that their buildings with just one or two stories, are being bought over by realtors in order that apartment blocks with 8 or 10 floors may be put up. The existing occupants are first housed in alternate accommodation identified by the realtor and after the project is completed they are given a flat in the new block. Of course, those who do not want this arrangement can get away with cash payment. But the point is that those who desire to live in the area in which thy lived, do have the option to do so without too much of inconvenience. Shouldn’t this be the model for rehabilitating those whose livelihoods are affected by the “development” projects?

Dualistic Thinking

2006-06-06T06:00:00.000+05:30

I came across an interesting article on critical thinking in a magazine called Skeptical Inquirer. I am unable to provide the link now since my laptop is dysfunctional and I am using somebody elese's machine just now. In that article, "duelistic thinking" is mentioned as one of the barriers to critical thinking; I had an opportunity to witness that in the TV programme "We the People" in NDTV. The topic: Celebrity involvement in social causes. The programme featured the journalists Nalini Singh, Tavlin Singh, some film maker called Quereshi, actor Namita something, and a few other media people. I watched the programme only during the later half but I could gather what had gone on. Apparently Nalini and Tavlin had criticized Amir Khan's statement on Narmada oustees as just publicity stunt and opined that such involvement was not only not meaningful but diverted attention from the basic issues. Their argument apparently had been that Amir Khan hardly has any knowledge on the Narmada Dam issue! Apparently the question had been raised about the knowledge of Amitab Bachan on polio or of Rahul Dravid on HIV / AID for which they do ads. Nalini and Tavlin were giving the line that those celebrities endorsed the campaigns which were based on expert research and the script had been prepared carefully by communication experts! Several interventions led to a conclusion that Nalini and Tavlin seem to support celebrity involvement if the issue is "non-controversial / apolitical" but frown on such involvement if the issue is otherwise! The compere provoked Tavlin by asking bluntly how then can celebrity endorsement of controversial products such as coke or endorsing a product without much knowledge about it (Tendulkar endorsing some motor bike was cited ) could escape their censure. Tavlin Singh without batting an eyelid said that "But they are being paid for that"! Thus Amir Khan expressing his sympathy with the displaced people without being asked for /paid for seems unacceptable while endorsing even controversial products (or without using the product regularly) is ok! That is some dualistic thinking, I thought. Ramki

Narayanamurthy on lessons from the West

2006-05-14T08:13:00.000+05:30

Lessons from the West: Narayanamurthy's Analysis

I was sent the following link to Narayanamurthy’s (Infosys) talk about what we should learn from the West. http://www.icbs.com/iit/learn-from-west-narayan-murthy.htm My response to that mail is what I have below: In the US, youngsters -10-12 year olds - earn pocket money by distributing newspaper in the neighbourhood.(I am talking about the times I lived in the US – almost 30 years back!) They never shirk their responsibility even if it is snowing hard. I have come across the father or an elder brother doing the chore if the boy is unable to perform his job on account of sickness or his bike having broken down! Thus many of Murthy’s observations resonate with my sentiments. But, is Murthy correct in suggesting that the reason, for the current undesirable practices and attitudes of the society, is the fact that we were "under foreigners control for thousand years"? I am not comfortable with this formulation on several counts: a) the problem of the nomenclature of “foreigners”. If Mugals were the foreigners that Murthy is implying, so were Cholas to Pandyas (both reigns in different parts of ancient Tamilnadu ) and Pallavas to Vathapi (in present day Karnataka) or Vijaynagar’s Krishnadevaraya to ancient Madurai! Did Normans control of England create the same problem for the English? b) The logic of the argument that when “foreigners are ruling, people will lose the traits of self-discipline, collective social responsibility etc. is not very convincing either. Were all the desirable traits present in the “Indian” society before the “foreigners control”? (If that had been the case “foreigners” wouldn’t have been successful in taking over!) In fact historians suggest that the concept of India as a united national entity happened because of the British rule, albeit inadvertently! c) Has collective good ever been the conscious and willingly accepted goal of societies anywhere in the past? The modern industrial development in a sense forced the need for "collective work" and development of "public goods" force people to cultivate the need for respecting their usefulness. One must understand that even in USA it was more "dog- eat-dog" practices that were prevalent just 100 years back. Recall how the old and the infirm lost out in staking out land when the western frontier (Oklahoma etc.) was opened up one morning some time in the later half of 19th century. Consider Dr. Narendra Jadhav's suggestion (Economic Times of May 2, 2006) that the rigid cast system could have been at the root of lack of economic development (mind you great strides were made in the realms of theoretical / conceptual domains) in India. A small minority bestowed with privileges and wanting everything done for them and their benefit even at the expense of the majority, probably is responsible for the current mindset in the society which is resource-crunched and has become intensely competitive! Everybody aspires to the part of that privileged minority (a la protesters of reservations!). Oh, have I stirred the hornet's nest or whatever that adage is! (What is an equivalent proverb in Tamil for “stirring an hornet’s nest” or opening the “Pandora’s box”?) Ramki

The City of Joy: Some Impressions

2006-03-13T06:56:00.000+05:30

Jan 28 2006: Camp – Guwahati

Kolkata: Some Impressions

Our stay at Kolkata during Jan 18 -22, 06, was  at S N Bose Institute at Salt Lake. I wish the guy at the reception desk had given us the various alternatives to get to the city centre. We ended up taking a rickety bus to esplanade (only Rs. 10 for two for a travel of almost an hour) and shelled out Rs. 30 by taxi for a 10 minute ride from where the bus dropped us to Chowranghi – now Jawaharlal Nehru Marg to meet my IIM A batch mate. He took us to lunch at the swanky fast food joint by Haldi Ram (similar to Saravana Bhavn of Chennai but with items such as Dokla, Kachauri, Roti/Rice plate etc.  instead of Dosa ./ Aappam etc.!).  Excepting for this joint there does not seem to be anything affordable for a “middle class” purse, if you want to sit down in a clean place and have something to eat. Street side eating is quite common even for those who are suited and booted. The food from the street side is quite tasty, one must admit, but one’s hang up about hygiene prevents one from indulging in that, though inevitable at times.

After roaming around Nandan complex for a while, managed to get into one of those informal transport arrangements – Rs. 10 per person in a maruthi omni for a point close to S N Bose Institute. But for some misdirection by a co-passenger, we would have walked even less to reach the institute.

The Science City. while whatever we could see of it was very good, I could not escape feeling that many more of the interactive exhibits could be working. At least there could be sign boards indicating that the exhibit is not functional, so that we don’t waste time trying to work the thing.  Also, I was struck at how even the educated young men and women did not follow the written instructions of the working interactive exhibits. May be we tend to “listen” only to audio inputs and hence the interactive exhibits must provide step by step instructions through tape recorder along with the written instructions. That way some learning will take place once the visitor interacts with the exhibit and not just “purpose less” fun alone. The amusing thing which we could not help noticing was the coin operated machine which besides giving your weight and height  provided your “horoscope too” for Rs. 5. This machine was right at the lobby of the Space Theatre!  I suppose, this is an example of the scientific establishment’s attitude for “co-existence” of science and obscurantism.

That brings me to another aspect of this “co-existence”: abject poverty right underneath a huge hoarding inviting you to “become a millionaire” by sending an SMS to one of those TV shows sponsored by some “real thing” or the other – an object of luxury consumption.  I could also not escape being hit by the enormous order of magnitude of the informal sector, which in a way allows the babulog to enjoy the luxuries of  modernization and globalization. I am unable to visualize the time when all this teeming pavement vendors and itinerant sellers of anything from “papad” (yes in the maidan one old man was selling roasted papads from a basket on his head: I wonder how much money he will make in a day selling papads!) to winter parkas, will graduate to “above poverty line” small retailers. I can not help laughing to myself at the debate on whether we should allow Wall Mart et al to provide “retail services”!

Kolkata Panorama at the Town Hall was a delightful experience. There were friendly guides giving an abridged English version of the recorded Bengali commentary that is played as you reach the exhibit.  Rabindranath Tagore’s voice recorded and played, synchronized with a dressed up  robot’s lip /mouth movements is a clever exhibit; I couldn’t reconcile to the shrill tone of his voice, which had been “imagined” by me (I can’t explain why) as robust / baritone. Remember, a TV ad which capitalized on the shrill voice of Sachin Tendulkar and showed him with a heavy voice to claim that the TV’s audio quality is something to reckon with! Why is it that we wish to associate shrill / squeaky voices only with weak / meek people and husky / heavy voices with people of “strength / power? I couldn’t believe that the tea (Rs. 2.50) from a roadside stall would be almost like the light but delightfully flavoured Darjiling tea which I love so much. I suppose the roadside stalls in this Town Hall area – which also has the High Court cater to the elite’s tastes!

To each the nearest metro station (Shoba Bazzar), from the institute share autos or cycle rickshaw partway and then share auto is the best. Costs jus Rs. 30 for two! Metro ride to Park Street took hardly 10 minutes and costs each person just Rs.4! A real boon to the residents of sprawling greater Kolkata, the innards of the metro is such a contrast to the outside world. Has any study been done in terms of the revenue / expenditure of this infra structure essentially patronized by the urban middle class? I did not see the kind of “commuters” one sees in the Mumbai and Chennai “local” trains – the pavement vendors transporting their wares; the dubbawalas etc. How do they manage to keep stragglers out – the inside of a metro station can be a great escape during the summer, even if one has to only squat on the ground since very few seats have been provided.
Another thing I seemed to miss while roaming in Kolkata is the sight of group of youth, the college crowd or even the non-affluent youth – in pairs or in small groups – loitering around. In Chennai and Mumbai one finds such groups in all parts of the city at all times!

The Indian Museum is overwhelming. I wish  some guided tour was available here too. All those who talk about “Mera Bharat Mahan” should persuade the governments to make the museums more of “learning institutions” especially to get a proper historical perspective. Is it difficult to find corporate sponsors to underwrite the expenses involved in developing and installing relevant slide / video shows preceding each major hall?

I must say I was thrilled at the bargain price at which I had a quick tour of the central Kolkata – Shyamala wanted a good look at the writers building – while getting dropped at Howrah station from Salt Lake. The yellow taxis seem a great bargain for a person from Tamil Nadu  where auto fares will be at the rate of Rs.10 per km, that too after haggling. The taxi fellow acceded for a halt at Princes gate for picture-taking, drove around BBD square, Town Hall, Chowrangi - including a halt at St. Pau’s Cathedral for pictures - and dropped us at the station, all for Rs.350. The whole trip lasted around 2 hrs. He even did some tout guide job and pointed out some more “land marks” while driving past them. The fellow was very pleasant too throughout the drive.

Incredible Indian Railways

2006-02-14T07:25:00.000+05:30

Jan 28 2006

Incredible Indian Railways:

Travel in AC sleeper comfort for less than 50 paise per km? Incredible, isn’t it. But that is what I have just done. I wonder whether it is possible in any other railway in the world. There is this not very well known offer by the Indian Railways called Circular Journey Tickets. You can make an itinerary of your choice with the proviso that your travel is in a circle staring and ending from the same station. (Of course, if you abandon your journey before reaching the end of the circle, there is no penalty excepting that you would not get refund for the unraveled portion.) No station is to be crossed more than once. Of course, when a station is a dead end like Mettupalayam /Ooty from where you can not travel in any direction excepting back to Coimbatore, you will be allowed to come back to Coimbatore to continue your circular journey. You are allowed a total of eight breaks along the circle (excluding of course the starting / ending point). There is no restriction on the time you can spend in any one halt; the restriction is only for the total time from the start to the end of the journey. That time of course depends on the total distance of the circle. Let me make things clear with what I did.

I traveled from Guwahati – Mumbai – Tiruvananthapuram – Chennai - Vijayawada – Visakapatnam – Bhubaneshwar – Kolkata – Guwahati. The total distance is 7950 km and I was given 62 days for this distance. I commenced my journey on November 23 and took the train from Kolkata to G’hati on Jan 22 a day earlier than the last date permissible. I spent a week in Mumbai and T’vm each and more than a month at Chennai. Then I spent a couple of days each at the rest of the stations with almost a week at Kolkata. The basic fare for this circular ticket was just Rs. 3600 by Air Conditioned 3 tier sleeper. That was the fare for my wife while I got a 30% discount as “senior citizen” (60 plus in the case of Railways, while it is 65 plus for air travel!). One “paper ticket” is made out before the commencement of the journey and then using that you make the required reservations as you would do normally. The reservation charges are extra as is always the case. What is also attractive is that if you don’t travel by the reserved journey, you only lose the reservation charges and the basic ticket is valid for further travel without any loss! The main attraction is that the number of breaks available without any restriction on the time for the break. If I had to do all this travel through tickets for individual tickets I would have paid at the least 2-3 times more. The “telescopic” fare structure favouring long distance travelers is the key to this attractive offer.

I have already started on planning for my next major trip.!

Legal Services by the State

2005-11-27T10:30:00.000+05:30

When I see news about Birla vs Lodha or BCCI election cases consuming the time of our courts, I am unable to resist recalling something that I wrote quite sometime back.
-----------------------------------------

We have to change our mindset to treat the judicial services of the state as something almost free (except for some nominal court fee, stamp paper etc.). We must accept that, unlike education and health , judicial services for civil cases are not “essential”. They are warranted mainly because one of the litigants is cheating wilfully, doing something wrong albeit inadvertently or just being egoistic. An analysis may also indicate that either one of the litigants (or both in many cases) are very affluent individuals or business entities. Hence there is no need for the judicial services by the state to be subsidized, especially in the current circumstances when many services provided by the state are, of late, not free - including education and health care.

Hence, whenever a civil case is filed the litigants should be asked to provide a legal undertaking that on conclusion of the case both parties will pay a percentage of the disputed amount (or the amount awarded by the court's judgement) to the state exchequer or face imprisonment for an appropriate period. For litigant-initiated adjournments and subsequent appeals, this percentage (and the period of imprisonment in case of default) must be enhanced to reflect the state’s expenditure in unproductive time spent by the judiciary.

Such a provision will make the litigants (especially the spurious ones) think twice before seeking the intervention of the courts rather than coming to some negotiated settlement through Alternative Methods of Dispute Resolution (ADR).

In this context it is interesting to note that ADR has become so much a part of the practice of law, especially in the American society, that some judges believe that attorneys who fail to discuss ADR with their clients have committed malpractice!

Freedom Expression

2005-11-27T10:25:00.000+05:30

I sent this letter to The Hindu in response to a reader's opinion on the issue of statements by actors Khushboo and Suhasini in Tamilnadu. Ramki Nallasivan says that "People should show some restraint in expressing their opinions either for or against a view that has been widely accepted" (The Hindu Letters, Nov 21). I wonder what would have been the status of this world if such an advice had been followed by all the social reformers and revolutionaries of the past. We would ( in fact occasionally we are!) still burning widows at the pyre of their husbands and wouldn't have allowed the "untouchables" to enter the temples to cite just a few examples!

Discipline with a purpose

2005-11-13T18:10:00.000+05:30

November 13, 2005

I understand that Anna University has banned camera phones, two wheelers and cars of students inside the campus. I don’t know whether this information is correct. While I wonder how anybody can monitor the possession of a cell phone, it is not difficult to monitor the presence of the vehicles. In fact, while studying in Pennsylvania State (circa AD 1975!)University, I noticed that all students had to register their vehicles if they intend to use the assigned free parking spaces inside the campus; if not only a visitor status will be applicable and parking fee will have to be paid. But the reason the Anna University is “banning” students’ vehicles inside is supposedly to prevent pollution! I would like to suggest that the clout to ban vehicles be used for a more meaningful purpose.

I have always maintained a case exists for most of the government funding for higher education to be routed as scholarships and loans to individual students rather than as grants to institutions. All institutions - government, aided or self-financing may be allowed to recover a substantial proportion of the operational cost through student fees. The deserving students - based on means criteria - must be provided full or partial scholarships; some may be provided only loans.

Whenever - in official forums or during informal discussions – I had suggested this, the immediate response will be that it is impossible to decide who financially deserves since false income certificates can easily be produced! I used to argue that one simple way of ensuring that only the deserving will seek aid by stipulating that any one who drives to the campus in a motorized vehicle will not be eligible. I further argued that no student would like to sacrifice the variety of physical and psychological pleasures of driving to the college in his vehicle for the purpose of getting a scholarship.

Of course, I added that a comprehensive assessment procedure including the scrutiny of the self-declared sources and extent of financial support for the education of the student, stringent conditions such as summary dismissal from the programme in the event of detection of false information having been provided and peer monitoring of the veracity of financial difficulties, to cite a few sample mechanisms, could be evolved to decide the deserving cases for financial aid. After all, many universities in the US (I don’t know of the rest of the world) are following such procedures for decades now. But I never succeeded in convincing the educational administrators to use the proxy measures of income such as the possession of vehicles for means assessment. When moral policing in terms of dress code or use of camera phones the very same administrators do not find it difficult to implement any measure!

West Bengal Industrialisation

2005-11-12T20:25:00.000+05:30

A letter I sent to Telegraph; don't think it was published. --------------------------- West Bengal governments thrust on industrialization even with FDI (on our terms), is welcome. But I am a little surprised that two-wheeler manufacture is getting priority. My reservations are on two counts: 1. Globally the concern is to limit personal transportation and promote public transportation to conserve energy. So why not investment in building better buses (WB buses are a sad sight!) or electric trolley buses to replace trams to gain the advantage of less pollution while increasing flexibility. I have a feeling we may already have excess capacity in the two-wheeler production. 2. Why not investment in manufacturing expensive capital goods such as CNC machines, scientific equipment or even consumer goods such as cameras, mobile phones etc. We reduce expenditure on imports and earn through exports too. If Taiwan and S. Korea can compete with Japan in these areas can't India do so?

Examination Reforms

2005-09-25T18:34:00.000+05:30

I had sent the following letter to The Hindu when this topic was in the news. It wasn’t published.
-------------------------
While the CBSE’s initiative towards examination reforms is to be welcomed, it is surprising that experts do not seem to have paid attention to the important dimension of variance of performance among students.

As a teacher in the post-graduate programme I always set the examination in such a way that the AVERAGE student will find the time limit comfortable, which means that the brighter students should be able to finish the examination well ahead of time. The time given should also take into account such as the average writing speed and time to think for each question - especially for application oriented questions.

One important reform would be to go back to a procedure of yester years whereby the examination paper indicated that about two-thirds of the paper will carry 100% marks. The current requirement to choose and answer COMPLETE questions leads to the student losing the chance of displaying his knowledge on the questions not chosen and if by some misfortune the chosen question was answered wrongly (not in the expected way?) he / she gets a lower grade. Since we are interested in assessing how much the student knows and NOT how much she does not know, the older practice of allowing any question to be answered and giving credit for the correct answers will be fair and less stressful method.

IIT Entrance

2005-09-18T15:21:00.000+05:30

Sir

Your sensible suggestion that "(T)here is a strong case for a national agency, such as the CBSE, to offer periodical aptitude tests that are acceptable to all admitting agencies" in your editorial of Aug 3 is not being seriously considered by the educational policy makers. While it is welcome that the IIT board has deferred some of the decisions, the objective of reducing the burden of getting coached for entrance examinations is not going to be realised till ranking on the basis of entrance test scores are given up. A minimum in the entrance test score as a qualifying criterion and weight to the percentile ranking in the 12th examination will achieve the twin objectives of students taking the board examination seriously and not worrying too much about the entrance test. Of course, this will require that all 12th boards should be geared to provide percentile ranking of the candidates. But that is a step that all boards should take in this era of IT and that too with our country's claim of expertise in that area!

Dress Code for College Students

2005-09-12T05:15:00.000+05:30

Anna University want to impose a derss code for students; Consortium of Private Colleges endorse the proposal and wnat to implement in all colleges. Jeans and T-shirts are to be banned. My letter to The Hindu: Only small minds can think of the importance of a dress code for promoting discipline! It is high time such cultural policing by the educational administrators are given up. One can understand, if the engineering students are asked to avoid loose / flying garments while attending science lab / workshop classes, primarily from the point of view of safety.But prohibiting jeans and to-shirts is ridiculous. As the women students point out these measures are more discriminatory towards them.

IIM at Shillong?

2005-09-12T04:35:00.000+05:30

I don't think it is a good idea that an IIM should be set up at Shillong as one way of doing good to the North East. Firstly, I don't think the government should spend any more on providing management education.The corporations should take up the management training in a big way as it used to be before the advent of IIMs. With corporations doing very well now, there is no need to subsidise the development of HR required for them. An IIM at Shillong is not going to benefit more North East students; given the current standards in North East college education, not many are likely to get into IIM at Shillong. (it will be interesting to know what proportion of NE students are in IIT, Guwahati!). The number of jobs that are created in an IIM type of institution is not very large.Thus the contribution of IIM at Shillong for the development of Meghalaya is not likely to be significant. Secondly, given the difficulty in reaching Shillong, regular interactions with professionals from outside is going to be very difficult. Getting (good) people on a permanent basis - especially the management professionals who have an eye on interaction with outside world for consultancy etc. - is going to be very difficult. If MHRD really is interested in HRD relevant to North East, they can think of setting up a very high-tech training institute for training people for information, communication and entertainment (ICE) sector opportunities. Animation artists, are in great demand all over the world. Audio engineers, videographers, telecom personnel of all kind are going to be in great demand. The training and education for these are expensive and should be subsidised if the poor should get opportunities. NE people - particularly the Meghalaya folks seem to be creatively inclined, and can utilise the training for the modern world of ICE. Other possibilities are such as that of setting up a state of the art environment study centre given the diverse geographical features of the region.

Public Examination at 10th Standard

2005-09-11T16:20:00.000+05:30

It is amusing and at the same time sad that people are so disturbed with the NCERT's suggestion to dispense with public examination at the 10th. Educationists all over the world will agree that public examinations are required not so much to maintain quality of education but to "certify" for purposes of exclusion or inclusion in further avenues of education or work. Most of these people who are protesting NCERT suggestion must be people who look up to the "most powerful" nation -the US of A and yet, are they not aware that in the US of A even the High School Diploma - as they call the completion of the 12th standard - is awarded by the schools themselves. Those who want to go to university education take a variety of additional examinations such as the Regent's Test, Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) etc. which may be required by some universities. The greatest advantage of such a system is that the majority of those who do not pursue higher education do not get branded as "failures" for not "passing" in one or two subjects and job opportunities which require completion of 10th or 12th standard of education are not closed to them. This is in fact a great confidence builder for the poor who are the most affected by the public examinations. Thus the eminently sensible suggestion of NCERT must be welcomed by all those who are genuinely interested in the development of individuals and not just in pseudo certifications.

Concern about Declining Populations -Racism?

2005-09-09T18:29:00.000+05:30

I have sent the following to the letters column to The Telegraph in which the report appeared Dear Sir Apropos your column "The More the Merrier" (Telegraph, Sep. 7), I can not but sense a tinge of racism in the desire of those nations which are worried about their declining population. When the population of the world as a whole is increasing and when these nations can easily get the cream of the members of the underdeveloped nations (whose education and training have been already taken care of) as immigrants whenever they want and on terms they want, why should they be concerned about the declining population at all? What is the difference between fascist ideas of purging "impure" races and not welcoming people from other nations which are racially different?

Poor and the Public Services

2005-09-09T05:58:00.000+05:30

Should we ignore such reports as mere "drain inspector's" report as a famous utterance of Mahathma Gandhi? I think not. I have heard of such stories about GH in Chennai, Coimbatore too. Should we form an NGO just to interface with the poor and the government services with volunteers giving time once a week or so to accompany poor patients to government hospitals. Why can't the TU cadres who want social change be drafted into such volunteering in the respective organisations or organisations similar to theirs? Ramki http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/international/asia/30bangalore.html/pagewanted=print August 30, 2005 Where a Cuddle With Your Baby Requires a Bribe By CELIA W. DUGGER BANGALORE, India - Just as the painful ordeal of childbirth finally ended and Nesam Velankanni waited for a nurse to lay her squalling newborn on her chest, the maternity hospital's ritual of extortion began. Before she even glimpsed her baby, she said, a nurse whisked the infant away and an attendant demanded a bribe. If you want to see your child, families are told, the price is $12 for a boy and $7 for a girl, a lot of money for slum dwellers scraping by on a dollar a day. The practice is common here in the city, surveys confirm. (Rest of the report is omitted.)

"Air Force One" for PM - India?

2005-09-09T05:53:00.000+05:30

Another letter to the editor. Dear Sir I must confess, that I am shocked at this extravaganza that the Indian government is going for. President ? Prime Minister of India can have "Air Force One" type planes when every one in the school-going age group is in school and we have social security as in the US! I must point out two other things: no one forces anybody to become a President or Prime Minister; it is their choice and so they should be prepared to take the risk that goes along with the job. Let us also remember that our "leaders" pay homage to Mahathma every year; Mahathma walked into NoaKali in the thick of communal riots to bring peace. Of course, his simple living has been forgotten by all in the quest for modernisation and globalisation

Industrial Democracy - Venezuala

2005-08-29T01:05:00.000+05:30

Is any discussion happening in TU circls on these kinds of interesting developments? Date:04/08/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/08/04/stories/2005080404561100.htm

Women in Parliament

2005-08-28T12:25:00.000+05:30

If the politicians want to increase the number of parliamentarians in order to reserve seats for women, they may as well go the whole hog. Why not every lok sabha constituency be represented by one male and one female MP? But they should agree to split all the perks for the MPs - office space, aids, free telephone calls etc. (excepting those such as personal travel and accommodation in New Delhi)among the two. The parliament chamber in any case is hardly ever full and therefore the question of crowding does not arise. If on rare occasions it does become full, the crush will only add seriousness (besides the excitement of course)to the proceedings since the members would want to quickly finish the business and get out. Look at how simple the seating arrangement is and how squeezed the MPs are in the British House of Commons.

Supreme Court on Reservation in "unaided" institutions

2005-08-28T12:23:00.000+05:30

I am writing on the issue so late since I was waiting to see somebody point out that there is no such thing as an unaided educational institution, barring those which coach for the various entrance examinations. Every educational institution affiliated to a university enjoys a variety of tax concessions though many of them are earning considerable profits and thus are "aided" in an indirect sense. While the efficacy of reservation as a social engineering tool may be subject to continuous debate, the learned judges of the supreme court can not ignore the technical point about the contestable nature of "unaided" institutions.

FDI in Retail Trade

2005-08-28T12:14:00.000+05:30

Manmohan singh in an interview to Mckinsey Quarterly: >I am convinced that we > can work out a package that > is fair, that entry of foreign enterprises into the > retail trade will not hurt > our small shopkeepers but will create a lot more > employment. How does he expect anybody who understands some economics to believe his response on foriegn retailers? I can understand FDI's positive role in infrastructure, manufacturing, even services sector where we have no expertise.The process of creating more assets and adding value to raw materials, will obvioisly need labour and jobs created. But in retail trade which is anyway happening, how can more jobs be created without displacing a millions in the "five&ten" stores as the Americans call them? Will the quantity of goods bought by the poulation suddenly increase, when purchasing power has not been increased, just because foriegn retailers move in? Of course, the monopsonic nature of big retailers will further depress prices for the producers, though middle calss and upward consumers will get benefits of "competitive prices". Sometimes they will have to spend more money on transport to the huge retail marts! The small traders who lose the patronage of the large volume customers, in order to be in business will further have to fleece the poor customers who buy small quantities on a daily basis since they never have enough funds to buy even a week's supply at one time! Many small retailers will of course fold up as it has happened to down town stores even in US after Wall Mart and such giants came in. Am I to believe that Singh as an economist is not aware of this dimension? Or am I getting things wrong? If R&D is to be protected by patents and royalty for the "development" of the process and "product", why can't we think of a "royalty" for giving the "developed" market to these retailers and use that for supporting small traders - low rent shops and the like - who extend credit to local poor customers and are accesible to the neighbouhoods without attendant transport costs. What Dr Singh must have talked about: What about major initiatives in developing alternate energy sources which will release us to some extent from the global vagories and at the same time create a huge number of jobs? see www.apolloalliance.org

Madras University - Banking Contraversy

2005-08-08T19:25:00.000+05:30

I was intrigued by the report (Aug 6) about the striking employees of Madras University accusing that the University was "changing banking operations from SBI to ICICI as the latter offered to waive demand draft charges, if the University agreed to maintain a minimum balance of Rs. 2 crores". I wonder whether the university authorities have taken the decision based on an objective economic analysis. It is easy to compute the expected demand draft charges per year based on past data and compare it with the loss to be incurred if Rs. 2 crores is kept as "minimum balance" (apparently in current account without interest?) as opposed to that fund being kept in long term deposits. Either the accusers should provide such concrete information or the university administration should respond with the correct picture. (It may be possible that SBI will offer the same terms if confronted with ICICI's proposal!). It does not augur well for an academic institution to be embroiled in such financial controversies.

2005-08-08T07:05:00.000+05:30

Following is a short summary of the report of the Focus Group of which I was a member and Anil Sadgopal was the convenor. This summary was prepared by the learning network people for inclusion in their newsletter. Please do take time to read the longer summary in the beginning of the report itself,(URL indicated below) and if possible, the full report (NCERT's website given beow) and pass on your comments to nfg_meeting@yahoo.co.in, preferably with a copy to me. Thanks. Chiguru, Learning Network Newsletter, Vol. 2, Issue 2 14 Sharing Corner National Focus Group Work and Education We include below a summary of the position paper with the recommendations made by the National Focus Group on Work and Education. For more information and copies of this National Focus Group report, Read the draft of the NationalCurricular Framework 2005 with recommendations from all Focus Groups created to support the curriculum review at http://www.ncert.nic.in/sites/publication/schoolcurriculum/ncfr.htm This Position Paper aims to explore and institutionalize the pedagogic role of work in education in the context of building a truly national system of education. It examines how the rich knowledge base, social insights and skills of the marginalized children in relation to their habitat, natural resources and livelihoods can become a source of their dignity and strength in the school system. Based on a detailed critique of education policy and practice, the paper reveals how socially productive work has been marginalized in the pedagogy and curriculum offered in schools. It addresses the profound problem of growing alienation of the middleupper class children from their cultural roots and the central role played by the education system in aggravating and accelerating this process. The paper contends that this can be partly challenged by utilising the knowledge base of the productive sections of society to transform the education system. The paper makes the following two-pronged recommendations Reconstructing the school curriculum From the pre-primary to senior secondary stage, productive work will be the pedagogic medium for acquiring knowledge , developing values and forming multiple skills. Work-centred pedagogy will be pursued with increasing complexity, flexibility and contextuality as the child ages. The objective is to have a common core curriculum incorporating work-based pedagogy initially until Class X and, within the foreseeable future, up to Class XII for all children. A set of work related generic competencies (Basic, Inter-personal and Systemic) will be pursued at all stages of education. The evaluation parameters, assessment system, including public examinations, will be redesigned to accomodate these competencies. Generic competencies will include critical thinking, creativity, communication skills, work ethic of collaborative functioning and entrepreneurship-cum-social accountability. The idea is to provide a firm foundation to build a programme of ‘Vocationalised Education’ (different from ‘Vocational Education’) at the secondary/ higher secondary stages Designing a Vocational Education and Training (VET) program This will be based on the bedrock of 10-12 years of work centred education. The program will be designed for all those who wish to either acquire additional skills and/or seek livelihoods through vocations as a preferred dignified option, rather than as a strategy for diverting students away from the ‘academic’ stream. The noteworthy features of the proposed VET will include: * flexible, modular certificate and diploma courses of varying durations * multiple entry and exit points with in-built credit accumulation * vertical and horizontal linkages with the academic, vocational and technical programmes * accessibility at village clusters, block and district levels, and in urban areas * provision for carving out ‘work places’ in the neighbourhood out of the existing economic activities, production and technical centres 􀁔 scope for engaging local farmers, artisans, mechanics, technicians, musicians, artists and other service providers as resource persons or invited faculty; and 􀁔 a decentralized accreditation and equivalence programme.

CBSE 's Initiative -Examination Reforms

2005-08-08T06:58:00.000+05:30

While the CBSE's initiative (The Hindu, July 13) towards examination reforms is to be welcomed, it is surprising that experts do not seem to have paid attention to the important dimension of variance of performance among students. As a teacher in the post-graduate programme I always set the examination in such a way that the AVERAGE student will find the time limit comfortable, which means that the brighter students should be able to finish the examination well ahead of time. The time given should also take into account such factors as the average writing speed and time to think for each question - especially for application oriented questions. One important reform would be to go back to a procedure of yester years whereby the examination paper indicated that about two-thirds of the paper will carry 100% marks. The current requirement to choose and answer COMPLETE questions leads to the student losing the chance of displaying his knowledge on the questions not chosen and if by some misfortune the chosen question was answered wrongly (not in the expected way?) he / she gets a lower grade. Since we are interested in assessing how much the student knows and NOT how much she does not know, the older practice of allowing any question to be answered and giving credit for the correct answers will be fair and less stressful method.

2005-08-08T06:57:00.000+05:30

TN Entrance Exams

2005-07-02T10:27:00.000+05:30

I understand that TN government has decided to appeal to the Supreme court challenging the High Court's verdict quashing the orderm to abolish the entrance exams. I am glad; whether PMK's initiative pressured the TN govt is immaterial to me. It is a pity that many progtressives too do not look at the entrance examination issue seriously, being misguided by the myth of meritocracy. I hope the following article of mine which was published in Social Scientist in an academic format and later in Business Line in a modified version, now with slight modifications to fit the current scene will convince people of the futility of this s"selection" procedure. I have put the word in quotes, as I have agued in the article, it is not a a"selction" process, but an "exclusion" process. That is where the injustice of the process lies and hence the need to do away with it. As far as my knowledge goes these type of examinations are never used anywhere in the world for purposes of ranking students and offering opportunities based on those ranks; at best they are used as one of several inputs in a holistic assesment process. I have argued that going by plus two marks also is not fair. The only fair method is to reject only those candidates who can be assessed as not capable of coping with the course and treat all the rest as EQUAL for purposes of allocaton of the "free" seats. May be a small proportion of the seats can be reserved for the state / district toppers. (Reservation for high achievers!). I am aware that what I am asking for is too radical a reform. I hope the pernicious TNPCEE is thrown out. I have also provided the inferences based on some statistical analysis and simulations on the data from TNPCEE results for engineering courses in a sepecific year - 1994. I will appreciate comments. THE MYTH OF MERIT BASED SELECTION K.Ramakrishnan INTRODUCTION The unpleasant controversy regarding a ceiling on the number of seats for CBSE students is the obverse of the equally controversial procedure of reservation of seats for certain categories of students. What we all seem to fail to recognize while taking stands on these issues, are the facts that the available opportunities(the highly subsidized ones in the government quota) are only a fraction of the number of competing candidates; and more importantly, the number who deserve to be admitted is in itself several times the number of the opportunities available. Under the circumstances, the large number of deserving candidates, who are denied admission for one reason or the other will definitely feel aggrieved and challenge the criteria for "selection". What is also not very clearly understood is that the admission procedure is not so much a 'selection' process but a process of rejection or elimination. The simplistic assumption that the appropriateness of a candidate to become a professional - be it a doctor or an engineer - is reflected in the rank that he/she obtains based on the combined scores of the 12th standard examination and the entrance examination has caught the fancy of the educational administrators. The result has been a false sense of the elusive concepts of 'merit' and 'objectivity' being upheld (or sacrificed depending on whose side is being argued) whenever ad hoc and piecemeal modifications in the selection procedures are introduced by the administrators. It is in this context we feel that the assumptions regarding the `objectivity' of these procedures require a more detailed discussion, particularly in our context where applicants for education and jobs come from widely varying backgrounds. We have already pointed out that the existing selection procedures act as eliminating mechanisms rather than as selection instruments. After all no one will claim that ALL those who are not admitted to, say, the engineering courses, are not fit for the programme. For instance, in a past year the cut off total marks for admission to engineering colleges under the open category was at 244.2. As one anguished parent pointed out, this meant that even a candidate getting 95% in the +2 examinations and 50 out of 50 in the entrance test would not have been admitted. This aspect of these procedures is crucial and has far reaching implications to the perpetuation of inequalities in the society. First we show that the scores in examinations are not necessarily good indicators for selection. We argue that the error of selecting the inappropriate candidates can not be even estimated, let alone eliminated. Hence, we suggest, that our aim should only be to reduce the other kind of error, viz. that of rejecting acceptable candidates. We would like to point out that the process of classifying candidates as `admitted' and `rejected' can be held constitutional only if such classification is based on real and substantial distinction . But do the selection procedures meet that criterion? Let us examine that question. a) The form of the examinations: Educators concur that the assessment of the same individual when tested by different tests can vary. An examination which tests the ability to mechanically absorb information and reproduce the same at the time of the examination can be advantageous to some. A test which assesses the ability of to comprehend a problem and identify an approach to solve it, based on the understanding of concepts, may favour others. The short duration multiple choice tests may assess yet another skill. So far no clear evidence seems to exist to show that a particular type of test is valid for the purpose of identifying an applicant as the most appropriate for a programme of study or for a job. Thus we have introduced an element of subjectivity through a particular choice of the form of the examination. This choice is the result of historical reasons and personal preferences of the test administrators rather than one based on objective considerations. b)Conditions of the examinations: We are all aware that in real life, problem solving does not have to take place without the benefit of consulting appropriate reference materials or under highly artificial time constraint of 2 or 3 hours for solving several problems. The ability to perform better than others under such conditions can not necessarily be equated to potential better performance on the shop floor or in the R&D laboratory or across the negotiating table. But by insisting on time limits and denying access to reference material we have the second element of subjectivity creeping into the design of the examinations: both academic as well as the entrance-type. c) Evaluation of the answer scripts: Whatever may be the efforts taken to ensure uniformity in evaluating the answer scripts of the public examinations nobody can deny that it is unrealistic to expect such uniformity across thousands of teachers who correct these scripts. In fact it is difficult to guarantee uniformity even for the bunch of scripts evaluated by a single examiner. Given such biases, which are not necessarily related to the performance by the students or the attributes needed on the job, examinations can hardly be characterised as objective. In academic parlance such tests as screening instruments may be reliable but not necessarily valid. What does this mean? VALIDITY OF SELECTION PROCEDURES CHALLENGED A screening instrument may be called reliable because of its ability to repeatedly identity the individuals with more or less similar competence or skills. However the same instrument may not necessarily be valid if these skills are not the only ones which are crucial for the performance in the programme or for the career for which selection is made. Worse still is the situation when the selection is based on some ordinal ranking according to the numerical scores in the examination. The differences in scores have no operational significance: i.e. a person, whose score in such an examination is twice the score of another person, is not twice as competent as the latter. Moreover when the difference in scores of consecutively ranked candidates is of the order of a fraction of the total (or maximum possible) score - as is usually the case when thousands of candidates take a test - it is unrealistic to decide that the higher ranked candidate is superior. We do not know much about the way in which these tests and examinations have been validated. For example, has the entrance test been administered to groups of individuals who are now performing the functions that are most likely to be expected of the graduating students? Has it at least been administered to groups of students in similar professional education programmes of other institutions whose graduates have been in the profession for a long time? Have studies indicated with reasonable level of confidence that there is some correlation between the examination scores and the job performance or career progress? While I cannot establish that such validation has not been carried out, I suspect that such is the case. On the other hand the procedures can and do lead to the denial of opportunity to many deserving candidates as outlined below. We already pointed out that a candidate's performance in an examination depends not only on the candidate's basic knowledge of the subjects and the analytical ability, but also on the skill in performing a particular type of examination. In the case of objective-type entrance tests there is yet another issue to be kept in mind. The skill to perform well in such tests is neither generally developed in the prevailing system of education, nor can be considered crucial for the performance on the job as a professional. But this skill can be acquired in the short run by being specially coached. In a society like ours, the candidates from more affluent sections can afford to spend money and be coached for the tests through any of several private coaching institutions which charge exhorbitant fees. Thus they have an unfair advantage over an otherwise equally competent individual who has never been exposed to such form of testing. The affluent ones, who succeed in the prevailing selection process on account of the special coaching, may not be the most appropriate candidates to receive the expensive professional education at society`s cost. We use the concept of appropriateness not only with reference to the ability to satisfactorily complete the programme of study, but also with respect to the propensity to continue to serve the profession and the country. But the present procedures do not help to identify such attributes of the candidates. For example, those who want to become doctors, should be capable of empathising with sick people and should not be with sick people and should not be averse to serve in rural areas. Those who want to become teachers should be willing to consider themselves life-long students of their respective disciplines. But do we have specific components in the selection procedures to objectively assess such characteristics? The fact that many of the graduating IIT students pursue further studies in other disciplines such as management or migrate to other countries may be cited as an evidence of the lack of such test components in the selection process. (Incidentally the value of brain drain on account of migration of professionals from India is estimated to be 13 billion dollars according to a study by the Center for Planning, Research and Action, New Delhi). Thus it is logical to conclude that current selection procedures can hardly be characterised as scientific or effective from the perspective of society's objectives: viz. ensuring equity even while the eligible candidates are selected for various educational programmes or jobs. In fact we have adequate reasons to perceive the present selection procedures as unconstitutional because the the classification as meritorious or otherwise is not based on real and substantial distinction; neither is there any evidence to suggest that the classification bears a reasonable and just relation to the objectives of selection, one of which is that the selected candidates would serve the Indian society subsequent to graduation. CRITERIA TO BE USED ONLY TO ELIMINATE THE MISFITS. Hence other alternatives must be explored to ensure that all those who can be considered as capable of satisfactorily completing a programme of study (or of performing a job) are given equal chance of getting selected. While exploring alternatives for such a selection process we should keep in mind the following considerations considerations which arise out of our discussions so far. 1) Correlation between the academic performance,(or the performance in a variety of selection instruments) of a candidate with his/her performance as a socially desirable professional is still not conclusively established. 2) Consequently the screening process must be designed to be efficient only from the point of view of eliminating a)those who will definitely be misfits for the profession and/or, b)who can not be expected to satisfactorily complete the programme of study under the normal circumstances. 3) The screening process as above may lead to a situation in which the number of candidates who are considered `acceptable' will be far in excess of the number of seats available. Hence an allocation mechanism will have to be employed to distribute the seats among the acceptable applicants. 4) The allocation mechanism must, a)be simple to comprehend and apply;and b)ensure that all acceptable candidates have an equal chance of being allotted a seat. Let us see how a screening and allotting mechanism be devised to meet the above considerations. Let us again consider the present system of admission to professional education as an example. First of all the academic plus the entrance-test scores of those who have already gone through the programme of study must be carefully analysed. The entrance test must be administered to practicing professionals and students in advanced stages of similar programme. Based on the pattern of the scores obtained by these groups of people, a minimum cut-off score can be identified. Only those candidates who score below this minimum should be considered as not acceptable. Since this process of identifying a valid cut off minimum, will take some time to be satisfactorily completed, we may, in the interim period allow all those who have passed the qualifying examination to participate in the entrance test and other such selection procedures. The cut-off scores for being considered as acceptable for admission may be set at the lowest scores of those who have need offered admission in the immediate past. Obviously the number of those considered as acceptable will be far in excess of the available opportunities. How we can distribute the limited opportunities is discussed in the next section. ALLOCATION OF SEATS BASED ON RANDOM DRAW The available seats must be allotted among all those found acceptable (i.e. scoring above the cut-off scores) by drawing lots, which is the only mechanism to ensure that equal chance is given to all acceptable candidates. I am aware that the idea sounds outlandish, given the reverence we have for what we call "merit". But if one calmly considers the proposition, and the current context, But if one calmly considers the proposition, and the current context, one cannot escape the conclusion that it is not such an outlandish idea after all. We have seen that institutions such as IITs and IIMs either ignore or heavily discount the past academic performance for the purpose of final selection. They use a pass(or certain minimum percentage of marks) in the qualifying examination as a cut-off device to permit or reject the applicant`s participation in the entrance tests. If all the past history of academic performance can thus be discounted, what is outlandish in suggesting that any score be used only in a similar manner. viz. to be a threshold for acceptability or otherwise? Moreover why should we find it an outlandish suggestion that the limited number of educational opportunities, (which are in any case currently being bought and sold as commodities) be distributed on the basis of chance? After all we do accept lotteries for the allotment of housing,cars and scooters! If we can accept that the entrance test and its cut-off score can be so designed that the chances of incompetent candidates being admitted are negligible, then we have several advantages in accepting a lottery system than the present ranking system. The major advantage will be that we can resolve the controversy over the reservation of seats almost completely. In order to comprehend this proposition we must understand how the demand for reservation of seats arose in the first place. When past academic performance was the major criterion for selection for a professional education, it was considered as an unfair advantage to certain castes. It seems to have been argued that the scheduled castes and the backward castes suffered on account of the fact that the educational tradition among them was of a more recent origin than among the `forward' castes whose members were cornering most of the educational opportunities. Hence it was demanded that opportunities be reserved for the `backward' castes. For the purpose of this discussion, it is not necessary to go into the details of this line of argument. What is important for us, is to understand that the problem arose largely because the past academic performance was considered as the only,or the major, criterion for the purpose of selection to the professional education. It is this aspect which has again created the controversy regarding the alleged inflation of plus 2 examination marks in the CBSE system. However, in a selection process which assures that all acceptable candidates would have equal chance of getting selected, no group will be discriminated against. Every group will have its representation in relation to its size of the population among those who meet the eligibility criterion. (Of course the expectation is that the distribution of the different class/cast groups among the population meeting the minimum eligibility criterion will not be widely different from the distribution across the general population. If it is not found to be true, a ceiling on the number of opportunities for those groups which are over represented may be considered rather than reserving opportunities for different groups.) Thus the whole controversy regarding proper criteria for backwardness or the alleged inflation of public examination marks will become irrelevant if selection among all those who are acceptable is based on chance. Moreover, those who o get selected will have no illusions about their `chosen' status and those who did not get a seat will have no inferiority complex since everyone is aware of the role of lady-luck in the selection process. However, efforts must continue to refine the screening procedures such that the cut-off score can be gradually raised to ensure that the number of candidates found `acceptable' (and thus becomes eligible to participate in the draw), is not much larger than the number required to fill up the seats. One of the ways in which the number of the `acceptable' candidates can be reduced is to use multiple criteria in each of which the candidate should cross a threshold level to become eligible for participation in the draw. The development of a variety of tests, validation of the same, and evaluation of their performance on a continuous basis, is a process we should accept as a necessary component of research in the field of higher education. They are, no doubt, slow and continuous processes; but at no time can we claim that a selection procedure can rank candidates from the most to the least appropriate. At best it can only discriminate between the appropriate and the inappropriate. Hence it is better to accept the role of chance too, rather than let inherent biases, misguided objectivity and the myth of merit perpetuate and accentuate inequalities. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Entrance test for professional courses: Analysis of results. A preliminary note for discussion K.Ramakrishnan, Coimbatore. Some basic facts: 1. Nearly 1.5 lakh students write the TNPCE exams for engineering every year before their +2 examination results are known. Applicants pay around Rs.400 for this process. 2. Only about 45000 students qualify for further consideration on account of the minimum required score in the science subjects and mathematics in the plus 2 examination. No minimum is prescribed for entrance test score. These students have to again complete a fresh application to be considered for counseling. Another fee of Rs.250 at this stage. 3. Students are admitted based on the rank of the total score computed as below: Mathematics: 100; Physics and Chemistry taken together: 100; Entrance test 100. If the student’s rank will let him get in the Open Category based on his rank, his community status is ignored. If not, the following is carried out: if he is an ST or SC candidate, the availability of seats in these categories based on the reservation norms will be checked and his admission to the appropriate category will be done. If the student belongs to MBC(Most Bckward Community), first the availability in the BC+MBC as a whole will be checked and if vacancy is available, student gets admitted in BC category; if not the sub-reservation for MBC within the BC will be checked and admission determined. Thus OC will include students of all the 5 community categories; BC will include, both BC and MBC students. SC and ST will include students belonging only to the respective communities. 4. Of the 45000+ students called for counseling, only about 27000 students attend since many decide that their chances of getting what they want are bleak based on the seats available in all the colleges put together. About 3000 students reject what was offered during counseling. 5. No estimate of the number of students who undergo coaching in any of the numerous coaching institutes and with individuals. I reckon the number will be in the order of 20000 plus. 6. Ninety-seven percent of the qualified applicants are from the plus2 of the state board stream. Rest are from CBSE and a ffew other streams such as Anglo-Indian Scl or from other state boards. Some premises: 1. An entrance test is needed when the applicants are from diverse educational streams from different regions of the country as is the case in IITs. This is not true in the case of applicants for TNPCE. Ninety-seven percent of applicants are from Tamilnadu State Board stream. 2. An entrance test may be called for as a tie-breaking mechanism to solve the problem of numerous students getting the same total score in the plus two examinations. But the problem may be solved thus: compute a new score giving 50% weight to the total plus two score, 30% to the maths component and 20% to the physical sciences component. This new score is highly unlikely to be the same for a large number of students getting the same total plus-two score. 3. An entrance test may be justified if the process leads to a significantly different set of students being admitted as compared to using the plus 2 scores alone. Later I show that this does not seem to be the case. 4. Thus the process of conducting an entrance test is a social waste and leads to the following undesirable effects. 5. The learning process in the 11th and 12th year of study becomes entrance test oriented rather than for real learning. 6. A hard working student who got very high marks in the plus2 because of sustained work might have missed a few marks in the entrance test on account of illness (or menstrual period, in the case of girls) and get pushed out. The whole year sustained study is discounted because of a two-hour test. 7. Expensive private coaching does help get a few marks more in the entrance test and the poor who have no means or opportunity for such coaching may lose out. The analysis 1. Based on the data available for the 45000+ candidates eligible for counseling, simulations were run for identifying who would have been admitted for the roughly 3000 “free” seats available in the government and aided colleges, if only plus2 scores were to be used following the standard reservation procedure. The basis on which I carried out the simulation for admission of students is the same as described earlier. Of course the final profile of admitted students will be somewhat different since students may reject the choices offered to them and similar other reasons 2. Similar simulation was done for admission based on the total score of plus2 and the entrance test taken together as per the prescribed weightages for each component. 3. Similarly the simulations were done for the 15000 “free” seats when the “free” seats available in the self-financing colleges too, were taken into consideration. 4. The number of students who lost because of the additional criterion of the entrance test score was identified. 5. The average scores of the students who were rejected on account of the entrance test rank were computed and compared with the averages of all those admitted. What the analysis reveals 1. For the top 3000 seats as well as for the top 15000 seats, the application of the entrance test criterion changes the fortunes of only 11% of the students. 2. On account of the reservation criterion and the lowering of the required minimum in the plus2 examination for the reserved category students, the average scores for ALL the students admitted are far lower than the average scores of those who were rejected on account of the entrance test criterion. 3. The differences in the average scores of those who lost out on account of the entrance test and those who gained on account of entrance test are very marginal. They do not indicate that only those who are significantly brighter than the rest are selected on account of entrance test! 4. Any apprehension that those who do not really deserve a high plus2 scores may have obtained such a score by nefarious means and that such students will be weeded out in the entrance test process does not seem to be borne out. Correlation between entrance test score and the plus two score around the same level across the whole population as well as for different groups such as the Open Category, Scheduled Tribes etc. 5. Comparing the income distribution of the students who lost on account of the entrance test it is noticed that the students from the bottom four income classes together loose out more than those in the top two income classes. Similarly those from the bottom four income classes gain less than the top two income classes. Inferences and conclusions 1. The additional process of conducting an entrance test does not greatly change the profile of the admitted students in favour of those who are extra ordinarily brilliant. 2. The fact that the minimum scores are set at lower levels for the students belonging to the reserved categories implies that the effect of the entrance test if at all has any effect will affect the students who belong to the open category. Among those admitted they in any case form only about 20% as against the 31% since the open category is also filled up by top rank students from the MBC and the OBC students. 3. Thus the tedious exercise of conducting an entrance test can be dispensed with. NO adverse consequences of the meritorious being deprived of the opportunities will result. 4. On the contrary students will be able to concentrate on real learning and also find time for some desirable extra-curricular activities of their choice. 5. Students will be much less under stress and will develop in a holistic manner. 6. Thousands of parents will be saved of the unnecessary expense for coaching. They can use this saving for imparting additional inputs such as computer education, books other than textbooks etc. I have the following data for the 45000 plus students who appeared in the entrance test. 1.Sex; 2.Qualifying examination - Tamilnadu State board or other; 3. Medium of Instruction: Tamil, English or other; 4. Community: OC, BC, MBC, SC, or ST; 5. Income code: 1 to 6, each income represents a specific income range. (I suspect the income information is not likely to be very reliable.). 6. Nativity in terms of parents’ residence: Metro, Municipality, Township, Town panchayat or Village panchayat; 6. School location in terms of the previous 5 categories. 7. Plus two score, entrance test score and the total weighted score for purposes of ranking.

Meghalaya Politics

2005-07-01T05:56:00.000+05:30

KSU Flexes its muscle - State economy suffers. Government employees and teachers too relax! The current spate of series of bandhs and pickets by the Kasi Hills Student Association (KSU) arises, it seemsto me, out of the desire for KSU to become a bigger political player likeAASU.Their demand to have the Board of Secondary school education bifurcated and create a wing in Shillong, apparently since there were some goof up by the Board during the recent public examinations, is unwarranted, I feel. The solution,as was indicated by many - both politicians and the public, lies in strengthening the Board which is now located in Tura - in another part of the state called the Garo Hills region. (In fact it is a strategy many states should follow to spread development across the state rather than concentrating all activity in the capital and creating over crowding in the capital city.). The proposal is naturally opposed by the Garo region sincemany will have to move out to Shillong and the region will obviously lose economically. Garo people are threatening that they will go for movements toask for separate state, since the language is different anyway! (Meghalaya'sofficial language is English and not any of the tribal languages spoken in the different regions - primarily Kasi, Garo and Jaintia Hills. Shillong is in Kasi Hills.)The CM who stood his ground for a while buckled and without going through the cabinet and more importantly, while the education minister Sangma, who is also the Deputy CM, was away, announced a "compromise" measure of appointing a second CEO for the Board at Shillong. The coalition cabinet has diluted thisand appointed a committee to study the feasibility of this measure.Many politicians are genuinely afraid of Garo being lost if the KSU demand is conceded, it seems. The shrunken state is not as attractive to the politicians as the larger one. Who knows Jaintia Hills people may also want a separate state. KSU should insist on strengthening the board, if necessary by some personnel to be based at Shillong and facilitating the Board at Tura rather than want a separate Board for Kasi Hills region - mainly the urban Shillong.The picketing is just another excuse to goof away. All government offices (central & state) shut their doors; commercial life continues! On the other hand bandh /road blockade affect the poor the most since the commercial activity also stops during a bandh.The acceptance of the resignation of the minister who was the past president of KSU has hurt the sentiments of the KSU leadership and cadre. That is the major reason for continued agitation. Such short-sighted political games hurt the state's economy and development in the long run. But then long run outcomes from the societal point of view has never been a priority of anyIndian politician of the current era. Jun 30, 05 P. S. From July 5 another major rally etc. is expected; few buses may also be burnt!

Life after graduation

2005-06-21T05:01:00.000+05:30

After completing engineering degree, to my own surprise, I found myself joining Esso Eastern in the marketing department in May ’64. Lived in Trichy till ’67 and in Vishakapatnam till July ’69 when I went on study leave to IIM Ahmedabad. While at IIM, fortuitous circumstances led me to get the Ease-West Center Grant of the USEFI and I continued my MBA programme in the US attending the University of Hawaii and other universities till early ‘72. Fighting the temptations to get lost in the West, returned to Esso. Idealistic confusions of the mind / heart led me to drift for a while with different assignments before I finally joined IIM, Bangalore as Assistant Professor in Feb. ’74. As an escape from value conflicts again left for Penn State University in Mar ‘75 to pursue Ph.D. Got married in Dec ’76. Value conflicts kept chasing me and again decided to return to IIM - Oct ’78 - to escape from the temptation of becoming a Green-card holder! Quit IIM, Bangalore in Jul ‘80 in order to be in Tamilnadu and worked at Madras Institute of Development studies at which place, I may say, that I got somewhat politically conscientized! From August 1985, I was Professor of Management at Bharathiar University; shouldered the responsibility as the Director of the School of Management, as well as the Director of Distant Education for brief periods of time. I even got into the highest decision making slot - the committee looking after the functions of the vice-chancellor - for several months. After retiring in June ’04, I had to hang around Bharathiar University on account of a project for TN State Planning Commission. Since April 2005, I am in Shillong – accompanied by Shyamala, my wife - as a visiting faculty in NEHU. (See separate blog.). Shyamala is a social activist involved with helping women as well as unorganized labour. We had decided on having no children and stick by that decision!

Ramakrishnan

In the beginning...

2005-06-14T12:10:00.000+05:30

Just went through the steps of creating a weblog of mine. Still trying to figure out how to utilise it fully. Afraid that a lot of time will be eaten up posting blogs! Will soon upload a picture, profile etc. (when I figure out, how to!). June 14, 05