State of education in India - Part 1

The focus in this part is on actually children attending primary school.
Today, one of my friends suggested creating a forum, where we spend some money every month to help in educating some needy children. He was ready to take responsibility of finding needy children and ensuring that money is spent on education only. Of course, I agreed its a good idea and we can pursue it. It will take sometime before we actually will be able to start it. On another note, with the disease I have that of thinking too much my mind went off in direction of is this the right problem we are solving? Is the biggest problem we have for education in India is that of inability to pay for education? And sadly the answer was an emphatic "No". We need to get bottom of this as primary education for all is one of the most influencing factors for development and betterment of any country. (Sorry being lazy and not having access to all my books currently, I am not giving any references here, But I am sure there is strong argument on this in the book "The Great Indian Middleclass" by Pavan Varma)
We have enormous education infrastructure (I agrees it is still inadequate and significant percentage of villages in India are still without any schools, but again I am not sure my friends will be going to such remote villages to help children), we have government funded schools, we have schools by municipalities in every city, we have schools by zilla parishad in districts. All these schools have very nominal fees (in many cases even below poverty line people also can afford it), education for girls is free in these schools; then surely tuition fees are not the problem. Also the problem of primary education has two dimensions, one is that of enrolling itself and the other is that of not completing it. The statistics show that percentage children especially in rural areas enrolling but not completing their primary education is staggering (Once again pardon me for researching actual numbers and including them here). There are many reasons, lets try to see them one by one,
1. Poverty: Don't blame me for making stupid arguments, I know making statement that paying tuition fees is not the problem but poverty is the problem sounds stupid, but that's the fact. The fact that many families in villages and very poor families in cities and towns look at the children as much needed helping hand for bread earning prevents then from sending their children to school. Though this situation of is changing rapidly with poor parents understanding importance of education, it is still not enough and in some cases poverty really do make then helpless.
2. Fictitious non-existent schools: This is especially the problem in rural areas. With highly corrupt government system, there are many schools only on the paper. According to government records many areas have schools and students studying in them, but in reality both the schools and students are non-existent.
3. Corruption: Corruption is highly rampant most of the education institutes in India. It starts from taking donations for admissions (some companies in Mumbai, offer special loans or allowances to their employees for paying these donations), to forcing children to buy books, uniforms, from the school itself, exorbitant travel expenses. What right does a school have to force children to buy books and uniforms from school itself? Its outright illegal. But, parents can't do anything after all future of their children is in hands of teachers of very same school. Unless every parent revolts against it, their children are going to get targeted and typically rich parents consider it waste of time to get into these issues. Sorry, I am going away from the problem in focus. But, corruption also exists in different forms even in the funded Government, Municipality, and ZP schools. The schools keep finding some or the other way of taking money. I wouldn't be surprised if it is one of the major reasons for poor children dropping out of schools in urban areas.
3. Lack of teachers: yes, it is hard to believe it that in a country like India which has millions of graduates passing every year and high rate of unemployment, there are not enough teachers for primary education. The roots here are more due to social perception in India. In today's India, teacher is one who hasn't got any other job. It is considered as last option by most of the young generation. Coupled with the fact that hardly anyone from urban areas wants to got rural areas the situation becomes disastrous for rural areas, especially the remote villages. Lack of teachers leads to lack of any motivation and environment for children as well as feasibility of having schools.
4. Lack of motivation and environment for education: Due to bad quality of schools, teachers absence, demand of money and sadly many times total neglect by teachers towards their students leads to many children not wanting to continue their education or their minds getting diverted to everything else but education. Neglect from school and teacher's side can be horrible. I remember, once on request of one house helper my mother started teaching a poor boy and to her horror she found that this boy who is supposed to have passed 8th standard from a Municipality school, could not do even simple addition and subtraction and could hardly spell his name. Also if parents are not enthusiastic about their child's education and/or they illiterate, that also sometime becomes barrier for children's primary education. This robs them of proper environment to appreciate their efforts and guidance if school is not providing it. Of course, there are plenty of examples of children to very poor and illiterate parents doing wonderful in studies and go on to become successful in life. But, these are exceptions, average children cannot overcome circumstances to that extent.

I am sure there is more to this problem than I have been able to put so far. We need to present poor children India with opportunity to have at least proper primary education (Yes, Proper is very important word here, there is no use having children passed 4th standard on paper, but can't even write their name). Some of us need to go into areas where such needy children are there and teach them informally for free. If schools are not doing it and politicians are more interested in feeling their pockets, we so called sophisticated nice people must do it. Is any one within us ready? Sadly, we all have money to spare, time to blog (like I am doing), we have time to go movies, pubs, etc. but we don't have time and patience to teach these children. Well, leave about teaching ourselves, it is really time consuming, can we at least find some honest and sincere people who are willing to do it, can we support these people? We need to do something and do it fast. Can we all sensible :) people come together and build a corruption free system independent of Government to make opportunity of primary education available to millions of poor children across India? Can we come together and at least change the perception about being a teacher so that future generation won't consider becoming a teacher as last option?

Something I must remember all the time

When faced with uncertainty, cost of not taking action outweighs cost of taking action

I am irritated

Well, I am irritated too many times, but today is something special.

I don’t want to be an academic researcher, that’s for sure. I don’t want to spend my life working on minuscule problems, writing papers on those problems which nobody bothers to read with some obscure mathematics, which nobody understands or at least the people who are supposed to use my ideas don’t understand. I don’t care if my ideas can not be expressed with some formal notations, hell with the notations if they are inadequate to express my ideas. What is more important is that the idea makes sense to the people in Industries or society (whoever are intended users of ideas), then it will get used. I want my ideas to be used, I don’t care of some stupid academic community. I don’t want to write papers with flowery language, politically correct statements, obscure mathematics and spend years on gathering data on pointless detailed experiments to prove myself to the academic community. I don’t want to make any contribution to these buggers, who stay away from actual work, except from doing some experiments in between to prove their work; I want to make contribution to people actually work. Fog god’s sake, I am doing research on business and management area, not fundamental science. My research is directly supposed to make difference, either minor or profound way, not like fundamental science where effect is more often indirect.

Someday I wish to...

• Talk without any inhibitions (without caring about what somebody will think or say or get hurt) and without getting twisted from anyone including my boss.
• Say "I Love You" to a girl and hear "I love you, too" in return.
  
• Sing in a huge audience (though after two minutes there might not be any audience left)
• Own a library of my own with all my favorite books arranged in an order
• Make a flamboyant speech in front  of a big crowd and get appreciated
• Play tabla  with a  mastero

I am sure there are more, but that's what I can think of for now...

What do I like about my job?

• Research – Challenging work, feels like I am actually trying to do something not just some manipulation with current ideas
• Very good guides for the work, the kind of people I love to work with.
• Freedom on the content of work
• My seniors don’t have stupid conceptions like only if I am working late in the office, or coming to office on Saturday or Sunday then only I am working.
• My seniors do understand that there is something called personal life beyond the routine job life.

What do I hate about my job?

• Very Low salary, internally as well as compared to other companies
• Responsibility without authority. Only thing I have some control on is content of my research work that too because I am stubborn and arrogant, well! My bosses do understand that I need some freedom to do research.
• My position is one of the biggest hurdles for me to do my work effectively. No one listens to me. Or of they are listening, they stop moment they know, I am just an ASE.
• Lack of understanding and support from seniors for difficulties other than work in the job
• Total darkness about how I am going to take forward what I am doing and my career
• Feeling of stranded in the middle of the ocean on support of a single wooden log and absolutely no idea of which way to go.
• There are no roads to travel; I have to build my own roads while traveling towards destination.
• Amazing amount of hypocrisy; lack of ethics, morals, and professionalism in the company and the industry in which I work.

Hmm.... such a long time, not that I have anything to write even today. I am mentally just drained to think of something nice to write down. All the things in my mind are just too damn negative to write down here. Struggling with myself. In a situation where I must make some tough decisions about my professional life and whatever decision I take I am going to be the loser. It's fascinating what amount of frustrations one has to go to chase his dreams, to do what he likes. Three years I wouldn't have thought I would be able to survive so much of a psychological pressure, but somehow I am surviving.
So much for thinking of writing down something nice.... what bullshit!

The not so golden silence

My dear friend, don’t ever take virtue of silence from me. In today’s world silence is cursed. It is mistaken as dumbness; it is mistaken as lack of knowledge. Though a person keeping silence is more likely to be a better listener than who don’t, his/her silence is most likely to be taken as lack of interest than his ability to listen. Often your communication abilities are considered directly proportional to your ability talk more and more. Pointless talker is likely to be considered better at communication than a person who can explain idea effectively in few simple sentences. Listening is effective when you understand a person the way he/she wants you to understand him/her than the way you want to understand him/her. Some wise person has said that ‘Description is not described’. Even in Businesses, in presentations and meetings where essential purpose of communication is conveying the idea effectively, the same thing can be observed. Very few people understand that talking is only a part of communication and often talking more than necessary can actually make the communication ineffective. Silence gives one more time to think but that also seems to ignore in this world. So my friend, I repeat again world is of those who talk, and not those who consider silence as a virtue.

Man as an animal - 2

Continuing to what I wrote before, I am of strong opinion that animals also think, they also learn and they also have consciousness. The reason why we as a humankind have been able to achieve so much that we crossed a certain threshold of 'intelligence' and 'communication' combined. We are definitely more intelligent than other animals what supports us in achieving all this is communication. Our ability to speak with so many different sounds allows us to form very comprehensive languages and communicate all sorts of ideas to other humans. In other animals such communication of ideas is very restricted. Once I had read one article where it was said that Neanderthals though may be were more intelligent than us were restricted in their communication since their structure didn't allow them to speak as well as humans. They were very weak in communication compared to homo sapiens (us). While this may or may not be true the point of communication is worth noting down.
The reason I used word threshold in the second line in above paragraph is because most of you must know when some characteristic of any system is increased beyond certain threshold it alters behaviour of the system very significantly. Those of you who are familiar with cybernetics or systems theory can imagine a positive feedback loop which is primarily weak becoming very strong due to a certain factor becoming extremely strong.
What supports my arguments above is:

• What we have achieved is through thousands of years of learning and not overnight.

• Whatever science ,technology, philosophy, etc. we are so proud of today (and which is the basis of all the achievements of human kind today along with its experiential learning ) is through some wise and very intelligent people who came up with ideas and the ones who could implement these ideas, all others have just adopted these ideas through the very rich communication we have.

Optimistic me: (Looking like some one having nervous breakdown, lost his heart, very grim face, all the circumstances are against him; however probably the most influential part of me who has driven all my life) Don't lose heart my dear, this is just another obstacle, you find a way to overcome it and success is all yours.
Pessimistic me: (with broad smile on his face) see, I told you, I warned you so many times, this is what is going to happen, but you won't listen to me; you always listen to that stupid optimistic guy, he has no sense of reality. You have put yourself into deep hole, with no hopes to come out. You have managed to effectively ruin all your career prospects. You have not just made miserable yourself but also in turn will make your family miserable. You are a loser.

Man as an animal

Some great thinkers in the world believe that what separates humans from animals is consciousness, i.e. man knows what he knows but animals don’t. I don’t believe that, I think we are just too arrogant to accept, we are just epitome (I am not sure of this also) of a continuous process of evolution of millions of years of earth. We are just another animal who is more evolved than any other, and it has nothing to do with consciousness. Do we want to mean that suddenly when humans evolved from let’s say Bonobos (our closet brothers in the evolution chain) who have 99 point something percent DNA same as human we suddenly gained consciousness. If animals don’t have consciousness then every damn decision they take or every damn thing they do should be instinctive and there shouldn’t be any rationalism to it. If one does not have consciousness then every situation one faces must be new for him/her/it. Should we then say animals can’t learn, oh hell! But then I guess the n number of researchers on animal behavior will surely disagree on it. If any decision taken by an animal is instinctive then I must say we have lost great deal of instinctive powers (well, I think though we may not have lost; we have certainly forgotten our instinctive powers due to our obsession for rationalism and reasoning). Don’t think I am against rationalism, it is very essential for e.g. I can not write this post, by just saying that I suddenly realized that man is also just an animal and so accept it, but what I want to say is we are obsessed with rationalism and forget that rationalism is just medium through which we express our instincts. First we realize something and then we explain it through rationalism. Well, sorry to go off the topic, let’s come back to we as an animal. Though I am not a scientist in animal behavior, having seen 26 years of real life, enough National Geographic Channel and Discovery channel that there are if not millions there are at least thousand of example where animals show perfect consciousness about the situation they are in and what they can do in that situation.

It is very interesting how I stumbled upon this thought. Very often I have imaginary conversations in my mind with people, and in one such conversation today on movies where I was imagining a conversation with my friend, we (I) came to conclusion that “people like to see in movies what they can not do and what they don’t or cannot have but they want to do and want to have. And what sells most is action and sex, so is it that most people by instinct want to be physically strong (wanted to say violent actually ;)) and like sex a lot. Isn’t those instincts same as any other animal in the world?” Here I suddenly went into this tangent of these so called efforts by great thinkers to differentiate between man and animal.

More things you want to do faster the time goes

I guess almost everyone will agree on that line. Whenever you have plenty of things to do, you find less and less time to do those things. You keep doing one thing, and then suddenly, day ends, month ends, year ends, and you wonder, what the hell happened? where the hell has all the time gone? I am still to do so and so things. But that's what happens, and that's how life goes.

I know many people will be eager to give advice on planning, timetables, etc. etc. That works only to some extent. Anybody says more about managing work, that's all bullshit. Come on, show me a person for whom everything goes according to plan. I believe people for whom plans work perfectly, either they are horribly unambitious about what they can achieve or they are extremely lucky. I know, I know that planning is about being prepared but hell, but just being prepared doesn't get things done, you actually have to do the things.

Job: name of thy evil

Well, I know job is not a bad thing as such but then why do I don't find anyone who is really happy with his/her job. In my friend circle, even those who joined with their favourite work and outstanding salaries, have got bored of there jobs and looking for new challenging opportunities.
Others, are thoroughly frustrated that the job is not what they like to do or their boss or amount of work or something else. Why is it so difficult to be satisfied in a job? There are some people for whom work is the only good thing about their job, their salary is low, company culture is bad, etc. etc.
Some may blame dissatisfaction to human nature of always asking more, but is that really the reason? It may be the small part but not certainly the main reason. The way jobs are designed in most organizations make them boring. By very nature, most jobs are boring. I know I am making very strong statement but that's what I feel when I see around. Only people who seem to be happy are those who are extraordinary enough that they can progress fast enough so that they are on new challenges before they get bored with the old things. By very design is job is for a particular set of activities and when a person as identified and established for that job keep doing the same or expected to do the same, that being his recognised competency.
Though one might say this is how it is there from ages of human existence, I feel it is not so. Simply because though one has expertise in only one area how to handle that area has entirely left to the person, and like for everything decisions were in his hand. This act of taking decisions in all kinds of situations is often what gives satisfaction of facing challenges. Though there is nice theory of empowerment in Industry (at least in manufacturing industry) it is often seen that the constraints put on employees in terms of directives and process guidelines are such that the empowerment has absolutely no meaning. Most people hate doing same things over and over again and jobs seems to stress on that aspect very strongly.
We need jobs which consider human oriented approach. We need to wake up and do something about it. The arguments here are not yet complete but will come up with more thoughts at some later time.

No matter how good are you; you don’t get what you deserve unless you ask for it and people who keep asking even when they don’t deserve always get more than those who deserve – this is my observation from many years and I am sure you also must have experienced this at least at some point of time. Why is the world so? And what is more disturbing is that even most just people you find seem to make this mistake. Of course, I am not talking here about people who are good but don’t work towards their goal; they don’t deserve but what about those who are good, who work hard towards their goals, do all the work with utmost sincerity but just don’t bother to ask for what they deserve?
I know what you are going to say, either you are going to say “It’s their mistake if they don’t ask,” or you are going to say “Life is unfair”. But these arguments don’t work; asking is exactly what most such people don’t like and putting everything on destiny is probably worst thing to do. Does anyone has any solution?

Some relief finally....

Had a wonderful one week vacation touring Goa and spending some time at my home sweet home. Finally got some relief from the boring routine I had been in. Its long time since I wanted to run away from Hyderabad for at least a week. However I still think one moth would be better but impossible to get one month. Still hoping to be refreshed for the work.

Most of the air travel I have done in night, at that time, cities look very good due to their lighting and all. However this time I started around 2 in the afternoon and the city looked terrible. Stupid concrete buildings everywhere and nothing else, absolutely ugly it was. On the contrary as I was reaching Goa, everything on the ground looking green, small houses inside the green, rivers flowing in between. It was marvelous; immediately I felt like my tour to Goa is going to be worth it. Actually it is not the usual time to visit Goa; monsoon is supposed to be off-season to visit Goa but then I like Goa in monsoon, it was just too good. In fact, being off-season there was very less crowd and we could enjoy more places in less time and like that fact very much. Also being at the rough sea in the monsoon time is a different pleasure in itself.

One thing I desperately need is some place where I can every now and then and the place allows me to relax, forget the world around me and be myself, not the stupid constrained individual who is always worried about how he can accomplish what he wants to achieve while satisfying all the stupid material constraints put by the world on him.

Me and Philisophy???????

Yesterday in a conversation one my friend commented to me, “Nik, you are in danger of becoming philosopher.” Well I just smiled but in my mind I started thinking, “Holy Shit!, is that true?” Well I know that’s happening to me but is the influence getting so strong. Despite all the things in my life are not going well, I am trying to be cool and calm. Probably because over the last few years I have become optimistic (and also lost the ability to understand seriousness of few things) or is it that become philosophical. My optimism is actually has come from some good things that happened when I was in bad situation so somehow I believe that no matter how bad situation gets something good will come out of it. However I seem to have conveniently forgotten that when good things happened I was actually in total down in the dumps, I had lost all the hope that I could do something good. Rather than forgotten, the very hope that something good will happen is not letting me go in down in the dumps. Now, I don’t know whether that is good or bad. Now, if you are wondering where philosophy is coming here, I guess apart from optimism the other thing that is keeping me cool and calm is my moot acceptance that things will go only the way they are supposed to, I can not fight all the things and I should be happy with what I get and try to enjoy that. Looks like, I am taking all the wrong things from philosophy. I don’t know from when I am started accepting such things, that urge to change the things by my own is vanishing and I have to act, act fast.
I was kind of conscious about my patience moving towards danger zone, but my friend’s comment has made it explicit. Probably, as first measure as my friend does I must remember each time I read a book by some great personality or ‘systems thinking’ book or any other book which contains influential philosophical thoughts, that I am reading it for pure pleasure and not be very serious about it.

Today started with Mr. Murphy striking, the gas cylinder in our room finished. It always finsihes on Monday so that either me or my roomies can't do anything till friday. Being proud (?) memebers of the so called IT industry (Labour shops), none of us can get home in time to go and bring new cylinder, but that's life and that's how it is supposed to go on.
I came to office and followed ritual of checking mails and some news. In the news section couldn't find anything new exciting, only serious news was the grenade blast in Jammu. Somehow, the frequency of public joking of politicians have reduced nowadays. Newspapers are still following the rahul mahajan heroics, Arcelor's refusal to Mittal and so on. Football worldcup is not yet making big headlines, of course it is just first round and all the exciting matches yet to come. In between Federer despite all his amazing tennis skills has lost to Nadal in french open. I thought he might win this time. This guy Roger Federer never fails to amaze me with his skills; in each of his match there will be some shots on which you will say "where the hell did that come from?".
No no, I am not using this blog as summary of news, it was just few things went through my mind quickly. Probably it was an effort to prove that though I don't write much on social or political issues I am very well aware of them and follow them regularly ;)
After the ritual of mails and news I stumled upon the big question which also like a ritual I stumble upon every day, i.e. "what to do?", I am unusual researcher with 5-6 diferent activities related to each other in abig picture, but where to start is always puzzling. I started with sending mail to our academica collborators as a start and then wondering which book should I read for my work.
If you hapen to be reader of this blog :)) and if you are wondering why am I writing about my boring day actiites the answer is simple, " i don't know what to write about", well actually while writing this I realized there are at least 3-4 things in my daily life I can write about. I guess but at the moment I will save the the elctronic words from the bytes of my words.

Increasing blog visits

So, few months ago, I started this blog with extreme enthusiasm and though the enthusiasm still persists, the things around me have started taking toll on my writing activities. Suddenly, I am finding n number of other things that I have to complete before I write something and being as lazy as I am I don't have to tell anyone that I normally not able to complete these 'n' things and hence sit to write something (I am not saying writing good and as it is completely different question).
Meanwhile I few times I went through the statistics on who visits my blogs and not to my surprise I found that hardly anybody visits my blogs but as a good engineer I analysed how to get lots of visits to my blog. There are always two ways to achieve success one is by manipulation to turn things in your favour and one by being good in whatever you do. No need to tell further that in real life most people choose the former way. So, when it comes to writing blogs you must be either very good like greatbong and others or use some of the following techniques. Though these techniques won't give you success like greatbong but will definitely have the capability put you in a decent position...

1. always write on current and preferably controversial topics and doing so do not forget to include some controversial or famous names related to the topic or issue
2. Leave comments (take care to be among the first few to be doing so) on the blogs which are already famous, it doesn't matter whether you really read the blog or have an opinion, you can always post comments like "hey, me first!" or some such comments which have nothing to so with the blog.
3. give some cross-references to some news articles or famous bloggers in your blogs, so that people searching for the news, or the famous bloggers looking who visits their blogs can bump on to your blog.

As you might have noticed that all the above three are primarily possible because of the google power and statistics counters. Though 3 seems to inadequate number as the points explaining technique for increasing your blog visits, try these first, I am sure you will be surprised with the result. Some more will be added later, If I happen to attract some people to read my blogs or some unfortunate souls bump into my blogs through some google searches and so.

Anyways, If you are good writer, you can also register at some bloggers' sites which ranks blogs and bloggers, it is a virtuous cycle as you get more visits your rank improves and as your rank improves more people visit your blog; of course only upto a limit after which quality of your blog dictates your rank and blog visits.

Hmm… it happened again; while I was going for dinner I met this young lad. As a true andhraite he first spoke in Telugu. Some of andhraites have such a strong accent that even if they are speaking Hindi or English, it feels like they are speaking Telugu. So, after carefully hearing him twice or thrice, I determined that he is speaking Telugu and asked him to speak Hindi. So, this guy told me that he has lost his purse and needs some money to go to his place. At first he asked 80 rupees and then said needs at least 40 rupees (as I was unaware of the place he mentioned he has to go, I couldn’t figure out myself home much he might need) adding that if I give address, he will come tomorrow morning and give the money back to me. He looked genuine but then my recent previous such incident came to my mind and I told him that I don’t have money; maximum I can help him is 10 rupees, gave him that and proceeded. Unfortunately, with me things don’t end such way, that guy had gone but as it always happens to me my conscience started killing me when I started waiting for my dinner at the mess. I started thinking, well if he looked genuine to me, why the hell I didn’t give him money, even if he would have cheated me, I can certainly afford losing 40 rupees. If he was genuine my money would have helped him a lot. What is more important, that somebody got help or I don’t get cheated? Ideally it should be the former one, but as most humans do the latter had become important for me. The very concept that I am getting cheated and the money is not being used as you would have likde it to be psyches me out. Well, I started feeling bad about the whole incident. I could have asked some more questions, as one friend do in such situations so that he is certain of his conclusion no matter whether the conclusion is actually true. That way, at least his conscience doesn’t trouble him. In my case, actually even then my conscience will trouble me if I haven’t helped or later I find out that I had been cheated. In this case, I hoped with 10 rupees at least he can call somebody he knows and ask for help.
I don’t know, why but such incidents happen to me at quite a good rate, as I remember correctly almost once in a two weeks. Now, probably you will understand why I was such a skeptic even when I though the guy was genuine. I don’t understand this rate, is there something written on my head like “this guy will help you” or “you can easily fool this guy”. In Hyderabad largest percentage of such people asking for help will be those who went for Tirupati and lost or finished their money in between. And even after so much experience with such people I haven’t yet been able to decide whether most of these are crooks or genuine. Once I met one unique fellow, I came to know about his crookedness since one my of my roommates also happened to be asked for help by this guy. This person tells people that he is former government employee and then something happened for which he has filed some petition and then takes out a huge bundle of money and says he already has collected some money and needs last 10 rupees. I doubted him and didn’t give him money, but just a minute late saw one person giving money; and this guy asked my friend money 2 days after that.
I don't know what to do, but life is not easy anyways.

Bizarre...

Reservation issue is getting bizarre day by day. At one end there is Mr. Arjun Singh and government, who want to change everything except their decision, suggesting bizarre solutions like increasing seats in all the collages. Already most education institutes are facing faculty problems on the top of that there hardly any educational institutes who have money to expand their infrastructure and these people suggesting seats increase, how much funnier can it get? I read again in the newspapers today, that it might take 3-4 years, to increase seats, but is it really possible, and what about the overall quality of education? Of course, I agree higher education must get more and more prominent as years go by, but it can not happen just like that, it needs to be done through some major reforms in the entire educational system and not just focusing on increasing the seats.
On the other end students doing hunger strikes and all, I definitely understand protests but making the public suffer for the protests is what I don't understand. I have the same objection as I have to strikes of government servants, teachers (I have real grudge against them, as they always strike just before board exams), airport employees, etc. I got message yesterday from somebody that one person died in hunger strike, what is going on? What the heck are people trying to do? What we need is more and more support from students from all educational institutes than strikes.
Mr. Arjun Singh has absolutely no clue as to what he is talking about and how his decision is going to affect the country? If you read his interview here, you can see he seems to have no clue about background of his decision, how he is going to implement the decision and so on...
It is also very clear, that the parliament is not clear whether the reservations are needed at all?
I wish there is someone who can take wise decisions on such issues and more importantly has the authority to do so.