Issued in public interest by …

Elections are round the corner and the Jaago re, Badlaav and Youth for change and all such initiatives start cropping up in numbers and soon teem the media space all over.

But do these organisations & initiatives help in achieving the change? Will increased participation of the youth in the elections solve all the problems?

I don’t think so.

I strongly believe that these awareness campaigns, even though a noble effort, pathetically fail against the rampant corruption, bullying by the political powerhouses and unethical emotional foul play that appeals to the irrational emotional sentiments of the masses.

Just imagine yourself in a position of an educated and informed youth from Dharavi, who is well informed about the fallacy of the contesting political party. And you are resolute to vote for the best and cleanest collar in the upcoming elections.

Then just as your resolution becomes contagious, you are confronted with a juicy offer. A fortune that you just can’t refuse in exchange for a vote. And all the resolutions are washed away.

Or, a threatening to you & your family.

Or being brain-washed into religious injustice / humbugs of minority and all other bull shit and abetted into wrong doings.

Well, the avenues for breaking your resolutions are larger than you think and more powerful than we perceive.

These initiatives aims to create public awareness and a positive movement for betterment of the society spend fortunes on advertising campaigns, promotions and events. Good for the cause. The footnote in these advertisements, ‘Issue in Public Interest’ also lends a positive to the suspecting wicked in me.

Then what can we do? Sit back and relax? Mera kya jata hain attitude? Yeh India hain, yaha kuch nahi ho sakta?

There is a way. Resort to Guerrilla warfare and we can sustain and improve the situation.

Consider these metros as the targets of these political powerhouses. These centres are thoroughly permeated with the infectious worms and their reign is very strong in these areas. These are the foci of infections and will gradually spread to more vulnerable areas, the tier-II and tier-III cities.

Rather than attacking the source of infection, the focus of foul play, the metros, the political powerhouses, we must protect the peripheries and vulnerable towns from these ravagers. Start with the rural areas, which are farthest from the focus of infection. Empower them and improve its immunity to such an extent that they become resistant to these infections.

Then move towards the centre, one level up, in the tier-III cities and then sequentially to tier-II cities. Make the peripheries so strong that they gradually encroach the centre and stifle the foci of infections.

Well, visualize it and it looks perfectly feasible, isn’t it? It does, yeah!

Implementation isn’t too difficult too. Move away from the focus and focus on the unfocussed. Participate in rural upliftment and empowering the hinterlands.

How can we do this?

• Educate – Teach in village schools for free, a voluntary act.
• Listen to them and be sympathetic towards their problems
• Tackle each situation one by one and patiently
• Get to the basics, be humanitarian
• Inform them of the current affairs and update them on the need of the hour
• Enlighten them about the positives that the future beholds for them with just few informed actions
• Help them in decision making
• Instill a sense of confidence and righteousness that will render them impermeable to the corrupt practices rampant at the focus

There are many more things that can be done. Just think and rack your grey cells. You will better the above mentioned crap and come out with smarter ideas.

Undergraduate Specialisation Degree Courses – Yes or No?

Times of India (TOI) today featured a front page article on why market driven undergraduate specialisation courses are defunct and of minimal value to the students.

Three premier institutes for science and research in India, namely The National Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and Indian Academy of Sciences are of the view that courses in highly specialised subjects should not be allowed at school and undergraduate levels.

These institutes have written to HRD minister Kapil Sibal and recommended that these courses be scrapped.

Reason? Before taking up courses in such highly specialised streams the students must get their basics right and go through the drills of a composite B.Sc. course. Argument being that one cannot study biotechnology without a thorough understanding of biology and so on.

They explained that students are half baked cookies, with good knowledge of neither the basic sciences nor the specialised subjects. They also pointed out that these specialised courses are more expensive than plain B.Sc. courses.

The proposal has just been tabled and a final decision is awaited. However, even before the decision is made, some universities across the country have started re-designing their course cirricullums.

So far so good. However, dichotomy of perspectives always stand at cross-roads and presents a different view point. Agreed that such specialisation courses don’t render a student as excellent and top-brass professional in the field of scientific research. However, these courses render them industry ready and help them to land up in a decent job as a second / third rung professional.

We cannot hope to churn our science geniuses from one in every 100 individuals. If  plain B.Sc. course without any fancy tags attached, like Bioinformatics, Forensics, Biotechnology, IT and so on cannot assure a decent job to an individual then what does building a sound grounding of basic sciences provide to its takers?

The pattern of industry recruitment shows that students gradutating of such specialised courses secure a better demand in the industry than the ones who graduate with a composite B.Sc degree. The specialised courses will definitely not render a student well equipped to churn our scientific inventions and file patents, but it will definitely ensure him with a better job prospect in the industry.

While it is a novel dream to have more patents and more inventions in the field of cutting edge technology with an Indian tag attatched, it is also important to realise that nearly 30 percent of our total population is living below poverty line and there are nearly 300 million of unemployed youth. In these circumstances focussing on the cutting edge and over-the-top achievements cannot take prominence over fulfilling the necessities of employment avenues.

If you ask an unemployed he seeks employment. If you ask head of Indian Academy of Sciences and such institutes, they seek more patents and research papers. Neither are incorrect from their standpoint, albeit apart from the fact that both of them nurture a slightly narrower perspective . The trick here is, Kapil Sibal, as an union HRD minister cannot fall prey to individual perspectives as he has a much wider canvas to paint.

Academically a very sound suggestion, practically.. aahh.. I am afraid to say not so much.

You can also see what Reforming Education has to say about this particular issue.

About Reforming Education:
Reforming Education is a blog that focusses on the education sector and brings to the fore the plight of the system. It also pitches in to give it’s honest recommendations for the betterment of education sector in India.

Reforming Education is run by a team of keen observers of the education sector. The team also happen to work for the global education company, Aptech.