Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Reading about B Schools

"Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind." - Walter Landor

The most critical issue in B schools today is that of quality. It is because of aspirations for “quality” education variously perceived by different social classes where MBA degree is often equated with “good education” by most parents as a social status symbol. The exponential growth of b-schools happened during 1995-2011 and resulted in the increased supply of MBAs or PGDMs, far in excess of actual industry demand.

As a MBA student, you end up learning several theoretical concepts through case studies, projects and field assignments. Beyond this grades will be left behind and work experience starts to matter more and more. Vijay Govindrajan, professor at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, says even in the US a majority of CEOs have MBA degrees. "There are three main rationales for getting an MBA: intellectual capital (knowledge), social capital (network), and legitimacy (brand name). All the three propel the best of the MBAs to reach the top," he says.

There are some changes coming in the B School world that are reported in mainstream news.

1- IIM-A Needs to Step Out Into the Real World. Read more:

2- Truth about astronomical IIM packages. Read more:

3- Never released official placement report for 2012 batch, says DMS IIT Delhi in RTI reply. Read more:

4- How do you choose a b-school when the top 10 choices seem out of reach. Read more:

5- Placements at IIMs are not an entitlement, determined by mood in corporate India. Read more:

6- Placement season: Companies prefer to recruit from top-tier B-schools than lower-ranked IIMs. Read more:

7- B School bubble burst. Read more:

Only complain that i have - Students fail to appreciate the socio-environmental issues as impacting Businesses, is because there are very few academic social science inputs in the course-work. While “Economics” (which provides a grounding in enhancing financial wealth creation) is taught, there is no “social science” dept., which provides a grounding in subjects like Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, etc. This is particularly important in India, where increasingly most students come with a science/ engineering degrees, and increasingly solving business problems requires grounding in social science disciplines.

Just for fun :- A layman’s guide to classifying MBAs!

Sunday, February 19, 2012

EPW Readings

1- Accessing Institutional Finance: A Demand Side Story for Rural India

Under the Reserve Bank of India’s “financial inclusion” campaign, the provision of institutional finance has been progressing at differential rates across the country. However, when we pair administrative banking data on availability of bank branches in a state with the All India Debt and Investment Survey (2002-03) capturing both institutional and non-institutional borrowing by households, we find that states with the most access to institutional finance, or supply, are not necessarily the ones with the most demand for finance. Looking at household level data within each state we identify determinants of institutional borrowing, and some of the strongest predictors for accessing institutional finance. A number of empirical regularities emerge in terms of the importance of having assets like land for borrowing, which undermines the basic philosophy of financial inclusion.

2- Crop Insurance in India : Scope for Improvement

The National Agricultural Insurance Scheme is vital for providing insurance cover to farmers, across regions, across seasons and across crops. This paper comprehensively reviews the NAIS and suggests changes to make it more effective. The paper is based on a detailed analysis of exhaustive data for 11 crop seasons, covering the rabi season of 1999-2000 onwards up to the same in 2004-05. Field investigations were also conducted in Haryana, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat to assess the response of farmers, bankers and other stakeholders. The authors also rely on discussions with knowledgeable persons like government functionaries from the department of agriculture, bankers, academicians and farmer representatives in Nagpur, Jaipur and Hyderabad.

3- Case for Caste-based : Quotas in Higher Education

The roots of discrimination in India go so deep that social and economic disparities are deeply intertwined, although in increasingly complex ways. We still need reservations for different groups in higher education, not because they are the perfect instruments to rectify long-standing discrimination, but because they are the most workable method to move in this direction. The nature of Indian society ensures that without such measures, social discrimination and exclusion will only persist and be strengthened.

4- Can We De-Stigmatise Reservations in India?

The “politics of recognition” that Other Backward Classes have set into motion has its own set of terms and dynamics that contrast well with that of the dalits’ political discourse. The politics of obcs have now brought into the public domain issues that are likely to change the very terms of discourse in which the debate on reservations was pursued for the last three decades. The obc discourse on reservations has de-stigmatised policy; obcs have also articulated their demands beyond community concerns by bringing up issues related to regionalism and linguistic assertion. These can influence the very grounds on which public institutions, policy and political processes have, so far, been perceived and pursued in Indian politics.

5- Caste, Politics and Public Good Distribution in India: Evidence from NREGS in Andhra Pradesh

This paper attempts to measure the effect of castereservation policies on the provision of public goods and services in gram panchayats in Andhra Pradesh using data from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The investigation finds that the effect of reservation varies tremendously in different social, political, and institutional contexts, shedding light on the conflicting results of similar studies. It provides important lessons for future research and policy about the caste-political conditions in which reservation can produce positive or perverse results.

6- Understanding the Andhra : Crop Holiday Movement
Why would farmers keep their own land fallow as part of a voluntary “crop holiday protest movement” in a part of Andhra Pradesh is a question that has puzzled many. A field visit to the Konaseema region reveals that the dynamics of class contradictions in the area are also responsible for the nature of the movement that goes beyond the issue of remunerative prices.

7- Developmental Crisis and Dialectics of Protest Politics : Presenting the Absent and Absenting the Present

There is not just a crisis of development today, but also a crisis of ideas for emancipatory forms of development. What is needed from progressives is a rigorous theory that must acknowledge what is present (class exploitation, imperialism, national and social oppression, profit-driven ecological destruction, gross commercialisation of all spheres of human life including  culture and social relations) but also what is absent (collective democratic control over our lives, our planet, our bodies, our destiny, our culture). That should be the start of the process of bringing about fundamental changes in the status quo.

8- Building a Creative Freedom : J C Kumarappa and His Economic Philosophy

Joseph Cornelius Kumarappa (1892-1960) was a pioneering economic philosopher and architect of the Gandhian rural economics programme. Largely forgotten today, Kumarappa’s life-work constitutes a large body of writings and a rich record of public service, both of profound significance. A critical intellectual engagement with his life-work can shed new light on some of the most fundamental constituents of the human economic predicament, and also contribute to a more nuanced understanding of one of the most fecund periods in modern Indian history.

9- Diary of a Moneylender

Debates about the role of the moneylender in the rural credit scenario tackle two conflicting images. One sees the moneylender as a resilient entity calling for his future involvement in the process of rural development, and the other sees him as an exploiter to be slowly weeded out. To get a more nuanced account of his role, a diary kept by a moneylender operating in a village in the Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh is analysed here. Even a cursory reading of this diary gives rich details on the scale and importance of the transactions carried out by the moneylender. Through this diary, formal lending agencies, be they banks or microfinance institutions, which have plans to supplant the moneylender will gain rich insights into the role played by this ubiquitous entity.

10- Critique of the Common Service Centre Scheme

The Common Service Centre scheme aims to establish nearly three lakh rural internet kiosks across India. A recent evaluation study, however, found poor demand among users and delayed roll-out of government-to consumer services, causing losses and attrition among private operators of the scheme. There is space, therefore, for greater engineering of public good outcomes by tying financial incentives to computer education goals.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Ten Issues - 16

1- Great compilation of cultural article at BBC Hindi : Enjoy Reading about Hindustani Tahzeeb

2- ऑन स्‍क्रीन ऑफ स्‍क्रीन : बहुरुपिया का माडर्न अवतार आमिर खान

3-Death by Dialogue By Trisha Gupta : What does it mean for the future of Hindi cinema if most films are now in fact conceived, thrashed out and largely executed not in Hindi but in English? Will filmmakers only tell the stories of a minuscule section of the population?

4-National Film Awards : The absurdity of censorship - An open letter to Hon’ble Minister for Information & Broadcasting on July 14, 2005 by Rakesh Sharma, a prominent Indian documentary film-maker.

5- Paradoxes of memory by Helmut König: Lasting peace agreements after wars and civil wars were for a long time considered to be conditional upon damnatio memoriae – the deliberate and reciprocal forgetting of violence and injustice. However, the established amnesty clause is only realistic where certain rules were not broken during war. The First World War is beyond its scope of applicability, the extermination war of the National Socialists even more so. Where forgetting is impossible, remembering is all that remains. Such remembrance is inextricably and paradoxically linked to forgetting: only what has been remembered can actively be forgotten.

6- Fighting Mr Smith : The Indian Murdochs will not apologise. Nor will the Indian Rebekah Brooks resign. Mr Smith has spread rapidly in Indian media. There are no Neos here to challenge him. PADMAJA SHAW says the Indian ecosystem of news has imbibed some of the negatives of Murdoch’s news empire but is not about to admit culpability.

7- Philadelphia University Commencement Speech – May 15th 2011 : Steve Blank is a Silicon Valley-based retired serial entrepreneur, founding and/or part of 8 startup companies in California’s Silicon Valley.

8- Am I A Product Of The Institutions I Attended? Unstructured learning in structured learning environments: A personal view of Amitabha Bagchi

9- From Technologist to Philosopher : Why you should quit your technology job and get a Ph.D. in the humanities By Damon Horowitz. Thank You Namit Sir.

10- The Brain on Trial by David Eagleman : Today, neuroimaging is a crude technology, unable to explain the details of individual behavior. We can detect only large-scale problems, but within the coming decades, we will be able to detect patterns at unimaginably small levels of the microcircuitry that correlate with behavioral problems.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Two Videos and Five Points Observed

Derek Sivers: How to start a movement

With help from some surprising footage, Derek Sivers explains how movements really get started. (Hint: it takes two.) A pioneer with courage has just to stand up and do it first :)TED Video



There were five points that I came across in recent days. Each of them opened a new door of analysing the world and mine life in different manner.

1- One question recently bumped me off : Am I A Product Of The Institutions I Attended? I am caught in the web of traditional outlook of liberal, conservative, socialist, anarchist or even fascist. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That is the human nature emerges as a complex patterns out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.

Much of learning is not done in the confined environment of the institute. Institutes are just facilitator for providing suitable environment for the growth of an individual. But an institution should balance insanity and genius activity of the individual. Institution that reduces risk taking ability of the student as per trade off of the luxury harms overall welfare of the society. Here, the catch is that the idea of 'luxury' and 'necessities' is subjective in nature. Institutions end up in becoming one's brand/identity for lifetime that holds opposite of the development of an individual.

2- A question is not a test of memory, but a test of understanding. That should be an ideal way of learning about new field. Exams are more oriented towards memory cramping rather than understanding. Open book test gives better idea of genius in the class :)

3- The most marketable skill in India today is the ability to abandon your identity and slip into someone else's. The loss of one's identity so easily for economic reasons appears a complex issue to me. On one hand, it proves adaptability while on other, an unsustainable way of development.

4- All heroic acts are foolish to your contemporaries! The acts may be original rather than research but society gives importance to mediocrity at any moment of time. The people who have been understood are third rate. They are understood because they are saying the same things that you already believe in. It is always better to be Socrates rather than Gandhi at any moment of life for me. It will land great part of your life in loneliness but that is another story of different aspect.

5- Decorum is linked to policing in India. Yes, the study of Indian Government will prove this right.

Why You Need to Fail - by Derek Sivers

The video shows the importance of failure - for effective learning, growth mindset, and quality through experimentation. The message of the video is inspiring and worth remembering : Doing what you know is fun, but doesn't improve you.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Ten Issues - 14

1- How China reports the Arab world :- In a post made to his Chinese-language weblog on April 15, Ezzat Shahrour, chief correspondent for al-Jazeera Arabic in Beijing, voiced his frustration with Chinese state media reporting on the upheaval in the Arab world this year.

2- The rules of entrapment :- The noise against Tehelka after last week’s cover story was to be expected. Much more surprising was the confusion over the ethics of political baiting.

3- Haaretz prides itself on being the conscience of Israel. Does it have a future? :- by David Remnick

4- James Gosling joins Google, what can startups learn? :- Cultivating talent is not about hiring only those people who will work on assignments or wait on benches for projects that are in the sales pipeline. You also require people who are not in the thick of daily grind; those who can think up new paradigms and new ways to doing things without the pressure of how it will impact the company's next quarter's bottom-line.

5- Should you drop out to become an entrepreneur? Posted by Nikhil Kulkarni

6- What’s Left of the Left: Paul Krugman’s lonely crusade. By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

7- Top 10 Reasons Ayn Rand was Dead Wrong By Geoffrey James

8- Ambedkar, the forgotten free-market economist in Perspective by B Chandrasekaran

9- P. R. Brahmananda Memorial Lecture by Stanley Fischer Governor, Bank of Israel :- Central Bank Lessons from the Global Crisis

10- Kaushik Basu has suggested a radical solution: Paying bribes should be legal [PDF] and opposition of Jean Drèze to this idea in The bribing game.

Quote of the Day : “When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions; that is the heart of science.” - Carl Sagan

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Arbit Collection

Salman Khan: Let's use video to reinvent education



Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. [TED Talk Link Here]

So, we can see here the advantage of the online availability of learning material. That will clearly break the monopoly of the universities as a center of  knowledge.

2- A paragraph in the Review of The Namesake by Roger Ebert attracted me lot : “The Namesake” tells a story that is the story of all immigrant groups in America: Parents of great daring arriving with dreams, children growing up in a way that makes them almost strangers, the old culture merging with the new. It has been said that all modern Russian literature came out of Gogol’s “Overcoat.” In the same way, all of us came out of the overcoat of this same immigrant experience.

3-  I liked the praise of Uttar Pradesh in the words of Nida Fazli  : भारत में उत्तर प्रदेश हिंदी-उर्दू साहित्य की दृष्टि से बड़ा अमीर प्रांत है.  इसके हर नगर की मिट्टी में वह इतिहास सोया हुआ है, जिसको जाने बग़ैर न देश की सियासत को समझा जा सकता है और न इसकी संस्कृति विरासत को समझा जा सकता है.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Ten Common Errors When Building a New World-Class University

ITBHU has always owe much of their success to the exceptional leadership qualities of the founder Madan Mohan Malviya: who inspired, mobilized and showed the way to the establishment of BHU with a vision. Over the long run, however, this element of strength has devolved into a limiting factor. Our institution had not make provisions for orderly transition procedures with changing times and funding of grants. hence have been pushed back by new colleges.

Achieving the ambitious result of launching a high quality is easier said than done. Conversion of IT BHU to IIT will surely give college huge fund. Almost all the structure is established one and need only few bureaucratic changes in administration. So if the entire working culture is same, then what is the difference in new IIT -BHU and old ITBHU ? Jamil Salmi's paper on Ten Common Errors When Building a New World-Class University is presented as blog post here as it is the urgent need of time to rebuild the mission and structure of  the ITBHU at par with the best institutes of the world.

1. Build a magnificent campus; expect magic to happen. The physical infrastructure is obviously the most visible part of a new university. A lot of care is usually given to the design and construction of impressive, state-of-the-art facilities, and rightly so. Good academic infrastructure is certainly an important part of the education experience of students, and researchers need adequate laboratories to carry out leading-edge scientific inquiries. But, without an appropriate governance set-up, a strong leadership team, a well-thought curriculum, and highly qualified academics, the beautiful campus will remain little more than an empty shell that embodies a waste of valuable resources. Remember the Tower of Babel!

2. Design the curriculum after constructing the facilities. It is often assumed that teaching and learning can easily adapt to the physical environment of the institution. This may be true for traditional lecture-based teaching, but innovative pedagogical practices often require equally innovative facilities.For example, interactive approaches, problem-based learning or pedagogical methods relying heavily on teamwork and peer learning are constrained by the physical limitations of conventional lecture halls or even classrooms.

Libraries and laboratories have evolved dramatically in recent years due to changes in technology. The promoters of a new university should refrain from launching into the architectural design stage of their institution until they have established not only a clear definition of the vision and mission of the new institution but have also determined some of the specific content of teaching and research. It is particularly essential (and most prudent) to prepare the academic plan of the new institution ahead of the construction of the physical infrastructure and to tailor the latter to the requirements of the former rather than the other way around. At the very least, the academic staff should be given the opportunity to influence the design of the pedagogical and research spaces of the new institution.

3. Import content from somewhere else. Why reinvent the wheel? The teams in charge of establishing new universities tend to look almost exclusively at the top-ranked institutions in industrial countries to buy or copy elements of their curriculum instead of going through the more labor-intensive process of custom designing their own programs. While this may seem expedient and practical, it is not the most effective way of building the academic culture of a new university that aims to reach high standards. The Harvards and Oxfords of this world are unique institutions that have evolved over centuries, and it is unrealistic to think that reproducing their distinctive academic model is possible or even desirable. And it is impractical to envision shopping around and bringing curricular fragments from a variety of top notch institutions across different countries / cultures, assuming that everything could easily gel together and fall in place to create an authentic learning and research culture in the new university. Curriculum development is demanding work, but it is the main mechanism that can allow a unique and innovative organizational culture to emerge.

4. Design with an OECD ecosystem in mind, implement elsewhere. Replicating the three key features that make flagship universities in industrial countries successful—concentration of talent, abundant resources and favorable governance—is a fundamental requirement, but it does not encompass the full complement of operational conditions that underpin the authorizing environment of a successful world-class institution. It is difficult if not impossible to create and maintain thriving universities when the tertiary education ecosystem within which they operate is not fully supportive. Some potentially important dimensions of a favorable ecosystem include leadership at the national level (existence of a vision about the future of tertiary education, capacity to implement reforms), the regulatory framework (legal provisions, governance structure and management processes at the national and institutional levels), the quality assurance framework, the mechanisms and pathways integrating the various types of tertiary education institutions, the financial resources and incentives, along with the digital and telecommunications infrastructure. To operate adequately, all of these require an overarching set of conditions which have to do with political and economic stability, the rule of law, the existence of basic freedoms, and a favorable location from the viewpoint of the spatial environment in which the new tertiary education institution is meant to operate (local economic, social and cultural life). The absence of even only one of these elements or the lack of alignment among these various dimensions is likely to compromise the ability of new universities to progress and endure.

Among other things, these errors point to the importance of developing an original academic and institutional culture that fits well into the local environment.

5. Delay putting in place the board and appointing the leadership team. The resolution to establish a new university is often a political decision reflecting a visionary ambition at the highest levels that a ministry or a technical project team is then charged with putting into action. This typically leads to a centrally managed design and implementation process.

Given that the establishment of a new university requires passion and drive to create a new organizational culture, it cannot be built by a disinterested committee. A project of such magnitude must be fully owned and carried out by a dynamic leadership team, working under the authority of an independent board with the capacity to offer guidance and empowerment. The first order of business of the new board has to be the identification, selection and installation of institutional leadership. Putting in place an appropriate governance framework from the outset is a key factor of success.

6. Stack the board with political appointees. Founders need to choose a governing board that brings together a range of essential expertise that can evolve over time. The governing board should start out small and grow very gradually to accommodate more expertise as needed. The common oversight is that people are appointed to boards on the assumption that they "represent" their institution or represent a constituency, when really they should represent an area of expertise needed in the management of the new and growing institution (legal expert, financial expert, infrastructure expert, academic experts, retired institutional leaders, etc.). Another, related misstep is to appoint governing board members who have too little time. It is better to have the board skewed toward recently retired university presidents or experts than to have too many members with too little time and dedication to the endeavor.

7. Plan for up-front capital costs, but pay little attention to long-term financial sustainability. The promoters of a new university usually announce with enthusiasm the huge endowment dedicated to the establishment of the new institution, but the initial capital investment is only one part of the total project. It is essential to provide adequately for the first few years of operation and to establish a thoughtful business model that allows the new institution to grow and endure in a financially sustainable manner.

The common errors presented today highlight the importance leadership along with proper sequencing in designing and implementing a new tertiary education institution.

8. Be too ambitious in enrollment targets. The leaders of new institutions sometimes think that they can rapidly enroll large numbers of students, often in the tens of thousands. This is rarely achieved without sacrificing quality. In the 1970s, E.F. Schumacher wrote in his famous book “Small is Beautiful” that successful development projects were preferably of a small size.

Small is still beautiful today, especially when it applies to setting up a new college or university. It is usually a better idea to begin with a small number of programs and student body if quality is a priority. It allows the new institution to deploy resources more prudently, to take time to develop its new academic culture, and to give precedence to quality factors over everything else. Once a strong academic culture is in place, it is easier to scale up from there.

9. Think that everything can be accomplished in eighteen months. A variant of over-ambitious planning is assuming that a new institution can be launched in a matter of months and that high quality teaching and research can be accomplished within a few years of establishing a new university. In reality, rushing through the initial phase of design and implementation can often only lead to hasty decisions that can have an adverse effect on the quality and cost of the project. Furthermore, institution-building is a long-term process that requires stable leadership, continuous improvement, and patience. This is especially true when it comes to developing the robust scientific traditions needed to produce leading edge research and technological applications.

10. Rely exclusively on foreign academics without building up local capacity. Hiring foreign academics is common practice to accelerate the launch of a new university in a country with limited capacity. Indeed, it makes good sense to bring experienced instructors and researchers to help put new programs in place; it can also be a very effective capacity-building strategy when an important part of the mission of the foreign academics is to train younger, less experienced academics from the host country. On the other hand, it can be a risky and counter-productive approach in the absence of systematic efforts to attract and retain qualified national academics. As with most plans that include reliance on outside actors and forces, the strategy of bringing on foreign academic staff should be one that complements the more fundamental aim of local capacity building.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Education System and Media

The real apathy and indifference lies in the awareness of the complexity of the problem. Slogans and emotions can never replace facts. The clearer awareness that the world is more than mere a construction of words is lacking all around.

The education model needs to be transformed from teacher-centric to a learning-centric. The student navigates through a process in learning model that recognizes these two basic truths: the universe is connected, and every student is unique. The dire need of texts that make children excited about the social and cultural diversity that they encounter in their ethos gives an idea of monumental crisis. The education that fails to impart the urge to read as a matter of habit leads to the irrational reasoning in public debate and abysmal government policies.

The good thing about a democracy is that you avoid major disasters since every issue is discussed and debated quite a lot. But, an uninformed public, press and their representatives may fall in the trenches due to ignorance even if every issue is discussed and debated quite a lot. If hooliganism and slogan is what it takes to run government, the administration will move slowly onto the hired hardened criminals and not mere qualifiers as custodians of law, justice and order. Only Press and colleges have the ability to encourage people to discuss deep-seated problems and then analyze the problems logically.

Education :
Presently, elite schools mostly focus and prepare managers for work rather than giving training to entrepreneurs. There is a great danger lurking with the thinking of well intentioned and close brain persons without humility to accept their ignorance in their specialized areas. Even great intellectuals act by falling in the trap of the belief that they possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to their liking.

The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility against complexity. This will guard an individual against becoming an accomplice in human's fatal striving to control society.

“Only the working masses can change society; but they will not do that spontaneously, on their own. They can rock capitalism back onto its heels but they will only knock it out if they have the organisation, the socialist party, which can show the way to a new, socialist order of society. Such a party does not just emerge. It can only be built out of the day-to-day struggles of working people.” –Why you should be a socialist (1977). Paul Foot

Press and Media:
Most of our  leaders even highly educated ones are not thinkers but only holders of power, not its critics; Hence, our mainstream journalist and public looks like unaware of the different aspects of problem. This power centered model of education changes the relationship between authority and the press that must necessarily be adversarial if the latter is to fulfill its professional and moral obligation to the public.

"I see the journalist's role as both reporter and crusader. In a civilization that seems to be regressing into new holocausts, we must seek and speak the truth, for we are the voice of voiceless millions. Having chosen this profession, we cannot be afraid to speak the truth no matter what the cost. And by speaking, I personally believe we can change the world." - Razia Bhatti (IWMF Courage in Journalism award ceremony, 1994)

WTF in India ?

I will reproduce here Statement and opinion of Justice Ms. Sheela Khanna, the Chairperson of Madhya Pradesh State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, made to the AHRC staff members during a visit to the Commission in October 2010). ---- “It is true that too many children die from malnutrition each year in this country. Some of their parents also die from starvation and hunger. But the children are more vulnerable … one of the reasons is the widespread ‘irregularity’ in the state and central government services … the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh state is a very kind person … the Nutrition Rehabilitation Centres is not a solution for the millions of malnourished children. These centres are not cost effective. But now that the centres are there we must effectively use them. My suggestion is to appoint a Brahmin priest in each of these centres and require the priest to verify the horoscope of every child brought to the centre. After studying a child’s horoscope if the priest is of the opinion that the child will grow into a good citizen of this country, it must be provided treatment at the centre. For the rest, I would say, let us just leave them to their fate …if not where do we stop? … We cannot spend government money like this…

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Ten Issues - 10

1- Let a thousand heretics bloom : Liberal education is a sustained and controlled matter, where practicality is directly related to searching analyses and the fecundity of thought processes. Sadly, the flag-bearers of a new India have no clue about such a pedigree of liberalism.

2- A Case of Conscience: Shiv Viswanathan writes to Manmohan Singh on the conviction of Binayak Sen.

3- Our phony economy By Jonathan Rowe : From testimony delivered March 12 before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Subcommittee on Interstate Commerce. Rowe is codirector of West Marin Commons, a community-organizing group, in California.

4- Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 11, 1974 by Friedrich August von Hayek. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1974 was awarded jointly to Gunnar Myrdal and Friedrich August von Hayek "for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena"

5- K. Sudarshan, RSS Ideology and Scandalous Statements By Ram Puniyani.

6- NEW POVERTY LINE: A CRITIQUE By Prof. H.S.Shylendra, Institute of Rural Management, Anand.

7- IRMA may expand focus to include small-town economy – Prof Vivek Bhandari, Director of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand tells Pagalguy.com that the institute is planning to expand in a big way this year – this includes new centers and schools as well as large-scale expansions along the country.

8- A Physicist Solves the City : Geoffrey West, has worked for decades as a physicist at Stanford University and Los Alamos National Laboratory. And so West set out to solve the City. As he points out, this is an intellectual problem with immense practical implications.

9- PESA, Left-Wing Extremism and Governance: Concerns and Challenges in India’s Tribal Districts. [pdf]

10- Rural India :Different Meaning to Different People. A discussion paper (pdf)

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Making learning fun

Problem arrives in a society when educated people have got a world view that is completely disconnected from reality due to their education. These individuals are manufactured in most of the universities in India. The curriculum enforces a particular world view on it’s students instead of helping the students to gather information from real world, analyze them and understand how or why something happens. That is why a good teacher comes into the role for each scholar.

Administration: It is one thing to not have choices and make the best of what is available in India. But to be at top institutes, i.e. at the shores of a virtual ocean of choices and not to utilize those choices is tragic. To provide a successful framework for dialogue, you need specific places where people can discuss and argue with one another, meet and exchange ideas. To facilitate not only basic infrastructure but an positive environment by showing dynamism in bureaucratic work makes an administration cheer worthy.

Teaching : Creativity cannot be taught but it can be killed off by the system. Creativity feeds off on stuff that can indeed be taught in the institution. A professor is very much like an entrepreneur. Unlike research labs where the research problems a scientists is to work on may be guided by the problems facing the government or the industry, the research agenda for a professor is largely unconstrained and left to the imagination, creativity, and passion of the individual. Economist Avinash Dixit is praised for his teaching style as he illustrate key concepts with tales from films, books, and real life.

Dani Rodrik, professor of international political economy at Harvard, says Dixit was the best classroom teacher he ever had—he never treated anything as silly or obvious. “No matter how stupid a question seemed, he would stop, raise his hand to his chin, narrow his eyes, and think a long time about it, while the rest of us in the classroom would roll our eyes at the stupidity of the questioner,” said Rodrik. “Then he would say, “Ah, I see what you have in mind . . . ,” and he would roll out an answer to a deep and interesting question the student had no idea he had asked.”

“What makes him special,” says former student Kala Krishna, now an economics professor at Penn State, “is that more than anyone else I know, he sees economics as an inescapable part of life: from books, movies, negotiating with a taxi driver—everything has economic content. He truly loves economics, and you can see how much he is enjoying himself doing it.” [Source]


Research: To execute the research agenda, professor has to build a team of researchers from across the nation, industries, and students, who will become tomorrow’s expert, get trained in the process. Quite often, they end up working with the best minds in the respective disciplines. Funding is usually available at high levels to support the procurement of resources and supporting students who will work on the research projects.

Talent Myth: Talent compromise of the essence, existence of emptiness and qualities that are missing. The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it's the other way around. Are smart people overrated? at New Yorker will navigate in this topic.

We have to ask a very important question to us. "How does a community progress?" The answer lies in the dreams pf youth - "It is taken forward by idealists who want to serve others…”. Only a teacher can help them by arming them with  the tools of understandings to achieve and even surpass their dreams. An idealist will not create followers but create and nourish more like oneself. Let the people take charge of their lives, as they know best about their needs in each situations.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Ten Issues - 9

1- India's Telecom Scam: How Can a Corrupt System Be Cleaned? : The telecom scam that recently forced the resignation of telecom minister A. Raja defrauded the country to the tune of nearly US$40 billion. Since telecom is an industry that links backward and forward to several others, the total economic cost could well be hundreds of billions of dollars. This scandal shows that corruption has deep roots in Indian society, but informed voters and the democratic process can help eradicate it, argues Rajesh Jain, managing director of Mumbai-based Netcore Solutions, in this opinion piece.

2- Audre Lorde’s quote “anger is loaded with information” ; When you are at the wrong end of the unjust societies, many truths that are clear to you come out loaded with information. Read complete 6 page essay on Uses of Anger. Thanks to Anu.

3-The narcissism of the neurotic by P Sainath : The Commonwealth Games were no showcase, but a mirror of India 2010. If they presented anything, it was this — Indian crony, casino capitalism at its most vigorous.

4- This is not a panel discussion : Meet four Adivasi intellectuals whose lives have changed the politics and conversations about indigenous people, says G VISHNU

5-The Burden Of Knowing By Charles Hugh Smith: Knowing what lies ahead is a great emotional burden. The knowledge that the present is unsustainable is, for many of us, a great emotional burden. It troubles our sleep, our minds, and our basic emotional well-being. Knowledge, like memory, cannot be erased at will, and thus it runs in the background of our lives, unseen by others but deeply troubling to the knower.

6- Religious Excuse of barbarity by Johann Hari: If you are engaged in an act of cruelty, there is an easy, effective way to silence your critics and snatch some space to carry on. Tell us all that your religion requires you to do it, and you are "offended" by any critical response. Erect an electric wire fence around your nastiest actions and call it "respect".

7- Microfinance is under attack. Even the normally reticent pink newspapers have now begun to bring out the inherent flaws in the microfinance model.Check some facts here- MFIs: Profiteering from poverty and Five myths about microfinance.

8- When girls fear school by Kalpana Sharma: The reasons for the high drop-out rate of girls are simple: Fear of corporal punishment, sexual abuse and the lack of basic amenities like toilets in schools.

9- Valerie Plame, YES! Wikileaks, NO! : It is the American people who should be outraged that its government has transformed a nation with a reputation for freedom, justice, tolerance and respect for human rights into a backwater that revels in its criminality, cover-ups, injustices and hypocrisies.

So savor the Wikileaks documents while you can, because soon they'll be gone. And for the government criminals of the world, and for those who protect them, it will again be business as usual.
10- Meet Dr. Dani: One of the unsung heroes of our public service institutions : . Yet, there are people such as Dani in many of the small hospitals in the country, whose toils go unheard, and whose stories go unsaid.

Thought of the Day :
Julian Assange writes in his blog: “True belief is when a voice booms ‘the prisoner shall now rise’ and no one else in the room stands”.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Ten Issues - 8

1- Media and mobs – Arundhati Roy versus the terrorists by Razarumi.

2- Fables of Nationalism by Razarumi.

3- Why Marxism Has Failed , And Why Zombie-Marxism Cannot Die & Zombie-Marxism : What Marx Got Right by Alex Knight.

What Marx Got Right : Class Analysis, Base and Superstructure, Alienation of Labor, Need for Growth, Inevitability of Crisis and A Counter-Hegemonic World-view.

What Marx Got Wrong: Linear March of History, Europe as Liberator, Mysticism of the Proletariat, The State and A Secular Dogma.

4- Copyleft and the theory of property: A bitter battle is underway between the supporters of intellectual property and those who defend the notion of the commons. Legal historian Mikhail Xifaras traces the history of the concept of "exclusive rights" and evaluates the emancipatory claims of the copyleft movement today.

5- Unlikely Stories, or the Making of an Afghan News Agency :Reporting is a challenge in Afghanistan, where power brokers are skilled at crafting politically expedient stories

6- On Social Networking: Three essays worth reading on online social networking—how it is transforming us and what to make of it.

7- Professors (and Learners) of the Year :It’s probably not unusual for junior professors to hear they should devote their time to research rather than waste it on teaching. What may be more uncommon is for one of them to do the opposite.

8- The Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode has doubled its core faculty and augmented its executive education and distance learning programmes with a vision to globalise Indian thought and showcase a humane B-school that churns out competent and compassionate managers, says its Director Debashis Chatterjee in an interview to G. KRISHNAKUMAR.

9- Land largesse for corporate universities :- When the Orissa High Court on Tuesday described the Vedanta Group’s acquisition of 6,892 acres for its university project in Puri “illegal and void”, the judges were merely articulating a widespread concern.

10- Ironies of the Left by Gurcharandas.

Quotes of the Day:
-He who reforms himself has done more toward reforming the public than a crowd of noisy, impotent patriots. – Johann Kaspar Lavater

-The good life means cherishing freedom -- in the knowledge that it is an interval between anarchy and tyranny -John N. Gray

-“For hatred is corrosive of a person’s wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation’s spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and block a nation’s progress to freedom and democracy. I hope therefore to be able to transcend my personal vicissitudes in understanding the development of the state and changes in society, to counter the hostility of the regime with the best of intentions, and defuse hate with love.

Freedom of expression is the basis of human rights, the source of humanity and the mother of truth. To block freedom of speech is to trample on human rights, to strangle humanity and to suppress the truth. I do not feel guilty for following my constitutional right to freedom of expression, for fulfilling my social responsibility as a Chinese citizen. Even if accused of it, I would have no complaints. Thank you!” – Liu Xiaobo (excerpts from his “Final Statement”).

Monday, October 25, 2010

The Bigger Picture

We need role models who can bravely give voice to what people had been wishing- but not daring to say for many a year. My intention Is not so much to ‘assess' the society and civilization in few words, but to understand what the our traditions might mean concretely to its protagonists. If you don’t know the why, you can forget about figuring out the how.

A true questioning spirit is usually introspective in nature, not accusatory. Verified doubt is scientific and it lays the foundation for merit-based trust. The advantage of a questioning spirit is that it is the opposite of an inquisition. Huge majority of society have internalized the myth that the authority is capable — and willing — to solve to problem of poverty. This is one of the greatest binding assumptions that imprisons the development. To become free from this notion is hard because it is in the interest of those in authority and few in power to perpetuate these false beliefs. People, an individual changes the world for better, not the other way round.

Bigger Picture By Sharmista Chaudhury: Inclusive growth is the new buzzword in B-School curricula.

"Bad Management Theories are destroying good management practices". by Sumantra Ghosal.

Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment by Sushil Yadav

India should accept climate change flow obligations, ask for superfund: Jagdish Bhagwati

The Management Myth : Most of management theory is inane, writes our correspondent, the founder of a consulting firm. If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead

RISC — Rural Infrastructure & Services Commons : RISC proposes the establishment of rural hubs with established infrastructure and fee-based user services that would be sustained by patronage from many surrounding villages, accessible by bicycle. Each hub would provide economic opportunities for India's rural population and the potential to seed a larger urban center.

The Logic Behind RISC and RISC at XIMB

Special Parliament Session to Debate Poverty (Must Read Article)

It is useful to remember Finagle’s Law, a corollary to Murphy’s Law. It says that when a job is fouled up by someone, anything they do to make it better only makes things worse. The government is the last agency to figure out what went wrong and why. And in the end, when they try to fix the problem, even if well-intentioned, they just make it a great deal worse. (Via Atanu dey)

Friday, October 22, 2010

On Education

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity



Richard Dreyfuss on Education



George Carlin - Education and the Elite

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Changing Times

A Day Trip to My Alma Mater : One of the best memoir and evaluation done by alumni on IIT system.

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education : Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers. - By William Deresiewicz

what do *you* want to do?! -- Author points correctly that forget science, everyone should be prioritizing their activities and asking themselves - is this *really* something *I* want to do?!

Amusing Ourselves To Death : PBH: Huxley Vs. Orwell: Infinite Distractions Or Government Oppression?

My Wishlist of Reading : Yayaver on Flipkart

Reality is both good and bad depending on our view. Torture, suicide and terrorism are the three blind mice of our era with no one knowing clearly which of them is leading us astray. And all of them are born out of religion. They have played a major role in the grisly battle between terror and retribution. Similarly, prostitution is only product of repressed sexuality and marriage without love.

What happens in the initiative of an individual to change society ? First people will ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they feel insulted and fight you, then you win.

Graveyard is a place is full of people who thought that the world can’t do without them. But the world goes on with new ideas and lives. It will go without me also. The black sheep was waiting for turning into suddenly the dark horse. The ambition disappeared and with that black sheep will remain true to its natural form.

Fierce critical interrogation is sometimes the only practice that can pierce the wall of denial consumers of images construct so as not to face that the real world of image-making is political - that politics of domination inform the way the vast majority of images we consume are constructed and marketed.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Passing thoughts on Higher Education

I always have a idealism that education brings erudition and clarity in ideas; empathise and understand, lead and act to bring changes. And educational institutes catalyses this happening. I feel privileged to become a part of the ITBHU in 2004. It was feeling of eliteness and ecstasy of qualifying IIT JEE after dropping out 2 years post intermediate. Now, IT BHU is on the verge of conversion into IIT. ITBHU has potential and it will always have potential if the attitude of authority remains same despite of effective converted into IIT.  BHU is ranked as top most university in India and IT BHU ranks in top 10 technical college of the country. Still, I can see the slow and orthodox behaviour of the authorities in day to day work. I started thinking about institutional aging and condition of universities in India.

Intellectual license permit raj is there in our all universities that is why we are out of world rankings based on any parameters. Universities are merely a passing-by station for most of the students. Our educational institutes has a large shortfall of teachers and a lacklustre administration. Indian college are social slums of the intellectual where action is resisted in favour of status. Initiative and experiment may led to wrong results, that is the way administration of the colleges are run overall. Andre Betellei notes, this approach has turned or universities into mere ABC factories, degree giving institutions whose primary focus is not education but conducting exams.

The truth is that the desire for change has to come from the top of the institutional pyramid. A rule of thumb for efficiency standards is that they should be 'tough' but not panic inducing'. Time and space is needed to react with new initiatives. When the best will not accommodate for inclusive policies and behave like elite branded model for market economy, its decay starts at the moment only. Flexibility to adopt new academic models and inclusion of lesser social and economical privileged scholars have to be incepted in our educational institute.

Let us go ahead and make our universities with Asian first and world latter in the similarity of Bologna movement that shake up the European academic centers. Latin America has 1980's as its lost decade due to bad policies despite of having a quite young population; India has large young population. The shortage of job is most combustible driver for social change. The failure to meet the needs of a vast young population can lead to instability and political rebellion against government. The push factor of economic forces with the pull factor of education can bring a lot of change to our educational institutions.

Knowledge and University :

The prime task of the university is to ensure the radical autonomy of the practice of knowledge. Without the autonomy of knowledge and education, the social world would necessarily be limited to the brutal reproduction of power and economic coercion. In other words, the university must be driven by political logic and not by economic logic.This means the radical autonomy of education.

Knowledge without education is impossible. Education without institutions is impossible. And knowledge is also impossible without an ethos of knowledge, without freedom of thought and a community of thought. Is there a contradiction between these axiomatic conditions? Is it possible to strike a balance between education and the common work of conception, co-thinking and invention? In other words, can we find the right balance between the "community" of knowledge and the "institution" of knowledge? In a philosophical critique of the pragmatic reduction of knowledge, Boyan Manchev defines the university as "locus of the unconditionally political". Read further in Theses on education and the experience of critical thought.

Three Weblinks on Higher Education:

1- The Unsecret Shopper Goes Shopping: Iowa State University - The idea of “shopping” for a college or university seems pretentious on the surface, unless you’re Bill Gates or Kate Gosselin, both of whom could buy Drake; Look at universities fees and their offerings as they are retail stores.

2-The Science Network (TSN): Its mission is to build an online science and society agora, or public square, dedicated to the discussion of issues at the intersection of science and social policy. By engaging a diverse community of concerned constituencies in conversation, on and offline through signature meetings, video programming, and in developing partnerships with public television stations, TSN is creating a scientific no-spin zone - a trusted destination free from the tyranny of the sound bite.

3- Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission? : College should be a cultural journey, an intellectual expedition, a voyage confronting new ideas and information. But as Tuition charges at both public and private colleges have rising high, admissions are becoming tough for common man.

Thought of the Day:

Our society, throughout school, college, and life, conditions people to treat failing as something to be ashamed of, not as a learning experience. This breeds a subconscious but intense fear of failure, since it's now associated with shame/humiliation. This obviously leads to risk-aversion in the vast majority of the population. The key message here is, 'failure is a stepping stone, not a tombstone'.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Ten Issues - 6

1- Transparency and Poverty in India:  It is interview of Aruna Roy a prominent leader of the Right to Information movement and and Nikhil Dey.

2- Indian Culture: How does one define “Indian Culture”? And more importantly, why is “Indian Culture” always defined in terms of what women should and should not do?

3-A World Split Apart by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University published June 1978. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a writer and Through his writings he helped to make the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, two of his best-known works.

4- Food security - of APL, BPL and IPL : The official line is simple. Since we cannot afford to feed all the hungry, there must only be as many hungry as we can afford to feed. The truth is the government seeks ways to spend less and less on the very food security it talks about, writes P Sainath.

5- The Longest Take of Their Lives: This is related to much talked movie Peepli Live making news due to Amir Khan marketing skill. This article is about director Anusha Rizvi and her casting and co-director husband Mahmood Farooqui. Their families wounded each other from opposite sides of the literary wars. Now with their debut film Peepli Live, Anusha Rizvi and Mahmood Farooqui are ready to take the fight to low culture.

6- Central Bureau of Investigation : It is Central Bureau of Investigation in JK, Elsewhere, Congress Bureau of Investigation. Hard question asked by Reporter on the credibility of CBI.

7-For the Children : For a parent, there is a lot to learn too – understanding the underpinnings of Hindu mythology and more importantly how to introduce children to it. Dr. Pattanaik gives a elegant answers to all.

8- India Today: Cultural Intolerance among Fundamentalist Hindus.

9- Why Adding Followers Alone Won’t Build Your Community : Understanding about social media following where the evidence is clear: the quality of the communities you build is much more important than the size of your following.

10- Knowledge is not a shovel: The primary aim of education, however one understands it, must be to nurture the ability to reflect, to develop new ideas, and to implement these collectively, writes Gesine Schwan. Cognitive multilingualism is the only way to prevent the specialization of knowledge narrowing our horizons to an extent that results in structural irresponsibility.

Quote of the Day: Bush's foreign policy was very simple: fuck the world. Obama's is very simple, too: talk pretty and do nothing. -by Evert Cilliers (aka Adam Ash)

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Ten Issues - 3

1- The Dance of Indian Democracy covers about a democratic form of governance, a liberal constitution, and secular public institutions in India since 1947.

2- The email Interview with Anupama Rao is largely about her new book, The Caste Question: Dalits and The Politics of Modern India. Anupama Rao is an Associate Professor of South Asian History at Barnard College, New York.

3-The Southasian Idea debates intensly on Development and Violence: Some Clues? : How does one characterize the Indian state and understand its actions on the issues of development.

4- Over at An Academic View of India, Vikram highlights key differences between the US and India in the way their higher ed institutions interact with the community at large . Extending the discussion with more opinions by Prof. Abi at nanopolitan and Rahul Siddharthan at Universities and cities ;

5-Contract Workers at IITK: A Response to Commonly Held Misconceptions : Rahul Verman is attempting to understand various aspects of the problem about Contract Workers at IITK and what can be the possible ways of addressing them as have understood personally with all its biases and limitations.

6-One Country, many Worlds..and a forgotten Manipur: There is a state in India that is hit by 60 days blockade and government is unable to do anything. And our fellow patriotic countrymen haven't even noticed this issue seriously. Also check Living in a Blockade: A first-hand account from Manipur for getting a non political view on the problem faced by Manipuri people. Added Late: Economic Blockade In Manipur State.

7- Sick Man Walking: Satyam’s Raju has been in hospital for nine months, evading trial even via video conferencing. Pushp Sharma got himself admitted into the same hospital and found the former IT czar ill, but fit for trial.

8- David Brooks voices his opinion in History for Dollars on the positive side of study of humanities. Studying the humanities will give us a wealth of analogies....

9- Britain: The Disgrace of the Universities: Author has an argument that Slow scholarship—like Slow Food—is deeper and richer and more nourishing than the fast stuff. But it takes longer to make, and to do it properly, you have to employ eccentric people who insist on doing things their way.

10- The Global University in Crisis-I: Knowledge Struggles in Europe and USA : This is the first part of on the politics of global higher education today. In the first part, it is a discussion of the Euro-US movements against the University.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Ten Issues - 1

The first step in solving any issue is accepting the presence of the problem. A man convinced against will is of the same opinion still. So let us broadened our opinions about issues here -

1- Before the home ministry raises new paramilitary battalions, it needs to ask why the old ones are quitting in droves. raman kirpal reports on a brewing crisis : Soldiers of Misfortune .

2- Taking offense an be a competitive sport. Islam is forefront runner in this game : Not Even in South Park?

3- Opposition to reservations for women in Parliament have centred on at least four points. Step by step Vaijayanti Gupta rebuts the arguments and re-iterates the case for reservations. Women’s reservation Bill – the 2010 story .

4- Need tribal voices for their rights to counter corporate propagandist nationalism. The Fall Out Of Dantewada By Vidya Bhushan Rawat.

5- David Mumford reviews Kim Plofker's Mathematics in India ;

6- In this interesting paper [PDF], Lant Pritchett argues that India, despite its economic strides and democracy, is a "flailing" state:

7- Micro-foundations of Inclusive Growth [PDF]: The aim of this chapter is to go beyond these short-term and sector-specific concerns to broader questions of policy making in India and, at the same time, to focus on the relatively neglected subject of the micro-foundations of macroeconomic policy.

8- Remedial Education : Research by J-PAL affiliates has shown that providing remedial tutoring for children who have fallen behind academically can improve learning outcomes. Evidence from their study has contributed to the scale-up of NGO Pratham's Read India program in 19 states in India. In 2008-09, 33 million children benefited from remedial education through the Read India program.

9- Dropout engineering a hundred orphan dreams. Society needs person like Rajesh Singh as their role model. Thanks Vivek Padmanabham for the weblink.

10- Selections from Dalit Writing ; Let me close 10th section with an old Indian tale which maybe has some insights. A father used to read his child bedtime stories. One day the child asked the father, ‘Dad, how come in all the stories you read, the hunter always bags the tiger.’ The father thought for a moment and replied, ‘When the tiger learns to write you will hear that story.’

Thought of the Day: Conversations have three levels : people, incidents and ideas. The lowest form of conversation is about people. When we go up one rung we reach incidents which have a slightly larger spectrum than talking about people. But the conversation which really matters is when we talk about ideas, because they are universal and live beyond time and space. - Javed Akhtar

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Vichaar Shoonya + 5

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. [Part of Speech by Theodore Roosevelt at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910.]

1- Delhi's Commonwealth Games slave labour shame : CHILDREN are slaving away at work on building sites in New Delhi as the Indian capital struggles to get ready for this year's Commonwealth Games.

2- The Song That Is Irresistible: How the State Leads People to Their Own Destruction : Robert Higgs's Schlarbaum Award Acceptance Speech, delivered on October 12, 2007, at the Mises Institute's 25th Anniversary Celebration.

3- The Grandmaster Experiment : The queen is the most powerful piece on the chessboard. Yet in the ultra-elite ranks of chess, a woman who can hold her own is the rarest of creatures. How, then, did one family produce three of the most successful female chess champions ever?

4- Vanishing Wisdom : A report on water management in Uttarakhand where traditional systems do the disappearing act.

5- Microfinanace in Macro Mess : Corporate entry threatens the very idea on which microfinance institutions were set up. How will the dispossessed be affected.

6- Lilavati's Daughters: The Women Scientists of India

7- Deterring Internet Piracy : A burning debated between Cinephiles

8- How Harvard Gets its Best and Brightest : Sure, students work hard to get into this elite college. But so does the admissions committee.

9- Burma : The political Black Hole (pdf format)

10- The structure and silence of the cognitariat: Only a small "creative class" achieves the creativity and freedom attributed by stereotype to all knowledge workers, writes Christopher Newfield. Below this elite exist far more numerous "perma-temps", who are highly qualified yet interchangeable.

11- How to Create Ideas that Evolve.