Jay Hind! Title Track : First Look

Lyrics : Varun Grover
Sung By: Sumeet Raghvan
Music : Claver
Directed By: Abhigyan, Varun, Jeevak and Rahul

Sure a big controversy will arise and I am waiting for moral scavengers to attack on this show [Streisand_effect]. My personal reason to cheer it, off course Varun Sir and plain satiric truthfulness of opening song.

No rain drop blames itself for the flood

JRD Tata had once observed “I don’t want India to be an economic superpower. I want India to be a happy country.”

Currently, there is the alienation of students from the ground realities of India. In the race to become technologically advanced, we have given no attention to social science and the rural sector. See, everyone knows and has seen the fact that if the rich sell a gun, the poor use it to destroy them. As long as the idea of 'potential resource' is equated to power and control, development will always be about money. Never about people or real social development perhaps. Deep Joshi, Magsaysay prize winner in 2009 points out the fact that "Development work is considered intellectually inferior, unlike high science, industry or diplomacy. We want to prove that it is both a challenging and a noble choice."

The lack of social scientists is hurting the growth of India. There is a lack of serious study of economics and social science in India. Read Fractured Social Sciences for a detailed view.

There is a huge lack of awareness among youths about our own country. I once commented in desperation " When youth do not associate their identity with the social and cultural fabric of their country, nothing is going to change. People from UP do not know about Vijay Tendulkar and people from Tamilnadu do not know about Amrita Preetam. A whole English medium-oriented generation has no idea of the ‘Samporan Kranti’ movement by Jayaprakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia. They will die to see MTV Roadies or Splitsvilla but do not have heard names of Carnatic or Hindustani classic music."

The whole system has failed to equip students with either reasoning, language, or logic skills, this is the effect of putting a premium on mediocrity over the last 60 years. Indians have fallen in love with selectivity. Everyone loves rejecting everyone else. Infosys selects 1% (link), jobs paying 100 rupees a month claim 5% selectivity (link), police jobs claim less than 1% selectivity (link), and becoming a police constable in Bihar implies you belong to the top 0.7% out of 130000 applicants (link) and the list goes on. Unfortunately, no one asks what the standards of our top institutions are.

Technical growth was the main area of progress along with learning English as a medium of communication. We are ahead in the service sector more due to our efficiency with English rather than technical super skills. What we are waiting for is, for the whole of Africa to learn English and adapt to technology. Then these MNCs will switch their production and services to Africa and the third world for the search of cheap labour and we will become a leading developing country with 100 million consumers and a very tiny contribution to world trade. Our country has turned into a dustbin of MNCs as a country of mass consumption rather than mass production. This growth will not long last if we don't invest this wealth in the production/ manufacturing sector. For example: We need to create tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Adobe from the generated money through the IT industry.

There is a great paradox of what economist A.K. Shivakumar points out the children of the rich go to public universities and children of the poor go to private money-squeezing institutes. These second-rate institutes turn out second-rate students, condemning the peripheral to further periphery. The lack of scholars from our universities is stagnating our chance to grow as a developed nation. A blogger correctly pointed out the fact that:

In the humanities, we need a William Dalrymple to teach us about the history of the Deccan, or Delhi. There are many economic and social factors involved in this sad state of affairs, but one of the most prominent of these factors is the utter lack of a vibrant university system fostering unfettered interaction and exchange of ideas among people of widely disparate interests and expertise. All this affects another important part of the higher education system of the country – Graduate School. We are creating more PhDs than any other country in the world with the possible exception of China, but are our PhDs really worth the title of “Doctor of Philosophy”? I am not sure. Are our research institutes producing loads of doctorates who are nothing but highly trained technicians or are we producing leaders and thinkers who can cross boundaries of discipline and think creatively?

Another blogger makes an analytical study on social sciences in this worth-reading article. One paragraph on the liberal arts education is worth excerpting here:

Regarding education in the liberal arts, you have to admit there is a certain class element to those who choose to/can pursue serious study in its various fields. For example, someone who is a first-generation college student, i.e. first in his/her family to pursue education beyond high school, would much rather choose a ’safe’ field such as engineering or medicine or aim at clearing the IAS exam, simply because it makes the most economic sense to do so. I would even go so far as to argue that for a country to have a vibrant intellectual environment in the liberal arts, a substantial middle class is a pre-requisite; the liberal arts being a more likely choice of perhaps the 2nd or the 3rd generation college student. Now whether the second or the third generation born in India post the 1991 reforms demands better avenues for education in the liberal arts remains to be seen.

India is and has been a banana republic where organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. Our populace never felt to be really democratic; it is dishonest, corrupt, and opportunistic. The middle class has degraded to rank money making without ethics, businessmen profit without quality, and at our basic nature in the country, we are becoming aware of rights but unaware of duties. It has eventually led to politicians and bureaucrats who are liars and hypocrites with additional power-hungry nature. The increasing disparities between the rural and urban sector is creating a big vacuum in the development model. The irony is that nobody bothers about the poor anymore or needs a real change. The most basic need is urgent and inexpensive medical care. There are teachers in private schools who don't get even 4,000 a month. And so many other people working in hundreds of other unorganized sectors. A serious illness or an operation in a family is enough to give them a financial jolt for several years. As the vocal middle class has abandoned places like government hospitals and schools, nobody takes up these issues as newspapers and mass media only listen to this class of the software techie, the BPO guy, a businessman, or an IIM graduate. It is this particular section of the urban class, which constitutes less than 5% of the population, that gets disproportionate coverage. Job shredding at the airlines becomes a bigger issue than the mass suicide of farmers in our country.

We as youth are the tools of change. We have to raise voices for our countrymen who are fighting for their survival daily without any representation. And I don’t want to be a product of an environment where only no. of zeroes of your salary will reflect your potential & prestige in relatives and society. The environment of society should be balanced by giving empowerment to women and removing caste discrimination. Dalit, farmers, and women's social empowerment embedded with democratic values can only guide India towards integrated development. How India uses health care, consumes energy, and educates the next generation, the future will be determined. No raindrop blames itself for the flood, we as citizens are that rain drop...

Value of College Education

1- What a College Education Buys:

But the education kids are rewarded for may not be the same education their parents think they are paying for. Economists would say that a college degree is partly a “signaling” device — it shows not that its holder has learned something but rather that he is the kind of person who could learn something. Colleges sort as much as they teach. Even when they don’t increase a worker’s productivity, they help employers find the most productive workers

In recent decades, the biggest rewards have gone to those whose intelligence is deployable in new directions on short notice, not to those who are locked into a single marketable skill, however thoroughly learned and accredited.

2- College Education and The Placebo Effect:

The placebo effect is scientifically established, well-known effect in medicine. Basically, when doctors prescribe a sugar pill (a placebo), a good percentage of patients do get better. Note that while a placebo is just a sugar pill, the effect on the patient is very much real - patients do get better, not just imagine that they get better, so there is no quackery involved. The human mind and the human body have powerful self-healing mechanisms, and these seem to be triggered by the placebo.

3- Education Unbound:

IIT Bombay has a budget of Rs 120 crore a year, of which Rs 100 crore comes from the central government. With 5,000 students, this means a subsidy of Rs 2 lakh per student per year. This is not sustainable and is the key reason why the government system has not expanded. The private sector has to step in, and it has.

When you turn degrees into commodities and anyone can buy one from somewhere, you're going to lower the overall level of education in the population - while those with the pieces of paper hold them up as proof that they are educated. They FEEL educated. The universities are charging for their human capital as much as their teaching prowess. Yes, it is partially selling certification and there is no doubt that many schools engage in this. The value of this certification fades over time, though. The chance to be around so many people who are driven and creative and resourceful at an important time in life does not though, it pays dividends through the years.

Vichaar Shoonya + 1

From RGV's blog, a thought for the day---
Q: Can you give me an example to differentiate between knowledge, intelligence, genius and wisdom?
Ans: Knowledge is to know that a snake contains poison; intelligence is to figure out what the poison contains and how it can kill you. Genius is to create an anti venom. Wisdom is to know all this but yet not to fuck around with the snake just in case the first three go wrong.

Capital gains : A vivid, wide-ranging (and very scary) portrait of unbridled consumerism in the post-liberalisation years. [Thanks to Jai Arjun Singh]

Infamous List: To clarify, the people in these lists are/were good, honorable people. What is unpleasant/infamous about the lists are the circumstances in which these people found themselves.

Rabindranath Tagore in Conversation with H. G. Wells

Gapminder: Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view.

Free Hindi Ebooks Download.

Mentor Yourself: Five core strategies for developing a more satisfying and successful academic career.

End of an Argument. How ?

Agrippa's Trilemma :The trilemma is a breakdown of all possible proofs for a theory into three general types:

* The circular argument, in which theory and proof support each other.
* The regressive argument, in which each proof requires a further proof.
* The axiomatic argument, which rests on accepted precepts.

This Trilemma is just for giving you an idea about types of arguments and little bit of creating impression about me (:P).

We came across several heated debates on the online community, forums and blogs about any topic. In a typical argument, each person tries to prove themselves right and the other person wrong. Instead of synthesis or refining of ideas, our focus shifts to stick to our owns idea as prime and supreme one. In the end, each person only ends up either more entrenched in their views or influenced by dominant juggling of words, regardless of who seems to deliver the most rational argument. Arguments are done for the sake of progress than victory. An argument can't be won by resistance. It will only increase the stubbornness of others and a little communication of importance will be achieved. Trying to prove yourself right and the other person wrong is like making a frontal assault on an entrenched enemy position. The goal of your argument is attempting to raise the other person’s awareness while maintaining your own sense of inner peace and identity with the idea.

I wanted to know why so brilliant individuals can't agree on a small point for evolving into next level of discussion. Its major reason which I can catch was that our education system fosters competitive excellence rather than intellectual curiosity or cooperation . Also, I want to know how to conclude these arguments as per seen similar situations in much popular fish market like Group discussions (GD). Any suggestions ??????????????

For good reading purpose,

1- Tagore and his India --- Amartya Sen.

2- Leszek Kołakowski (1927- 2009)

3- Who killed the Indian University ?

4- An interview with Fatima Bhutto.

5- Recession: How Risk Models Failed Wall St. and Washington?