Some Solutions!

All right, am back with another important post. In the past I have criticized a lot about the flaws in the Indian education system, etc etc. Now I believe it’s time we take a look at the plausible solutions for improving our education system, rather than just remain passive lookers and blamers.

I am listing down a few things which can be done, and these are definitely not ALL the things which need to be done, but just a few important things which can be done. And they are not arranged in order of importance.

1) Funds: Obviously, the number one thing which comes to our mind is allocation of funds. Reservation for education has been usually 3 percent of the total budget or less. Which is clearly not enough. The Government has ignored the Education sector for over 40 years. Its high time it looked forward to improving the quality of the poorly managed government schools and colleges. Infrastructure is also important. It is very important to build facilities for drinking water and toilets for both boys and girls. Many schools don’t even have such basic amenities. As a result, even the poor prefer to send their children to private schools. Then there is again the problem of absenteeism. It is estimated that 50% of the teachers don’t even turn up most of the time. Lots of other problems can come in this factor.

2) Autonomy: It is ironic that at one hand, thousands of dubious private colleges are duping people into joining their institutes, and the genuine colleges are being over-burdened with useless tasks related to bureaucracy. Even the IITs and IIMs do not have ultimate autonomy to take their own decisions. The Government, by interfering into the private decisions of the colleges is making things even worse. The colleges should be free to design their own curriculum and to allocate the faculty they deem fit.

3) Curriculum: Most schools and colleges follow an outdated curriculum which is hardly related to contemporary events. For example in Engineering, many colleges still teach courses which may no longer be relevant or required in todays workplace. A complete overhaul needs to be done. Latest equipment and other facilities should be procured, so that Indian students can do research in India itself, rather than leaving the country never to return.

4) Rote Learning: This archaic age old idiotic practice should be banned. I find it hard to believe that this is still practiced widely almost everywhere in India, starting from schools to colleges to even PhD. Most students are encouraged to just memorize whatever is written in the textbooks and vomit it during exams, for the sole purpose of getting good marks and beating the fellow student. There is very little scope for independent or creative, out-of-the-box thinking. Neither teachers nor parents are interested to encourage the child to try out something different or to pursue his/her passion. All they can think about is to force the child to become an Engineer, Doctor, etc so that he can get a job[which he will almost surely hate]. This mentality of avoiding risk, especially in middle class is also a cause for the downfall of creativity. People still rely on books for all of their knowledge, and hardly any importance is given to vocational training and practical implementation of ideas. Thus we should focus on a more industry oriented curriculum and one which encourages lateral thinking.

5) Killing of Passion: In India, there is market for only a few traditional streams: Engineering, Medicine, MBA, etc. It is comparatively easier for a student to get a job under these traditional streams, than to get a job after doing say, Philosophy or Geology, etc. Hence most parents force their children to sacrifice their passion or interest and to get into a stream which will ensure that they get a job. And considering that there are more than 700 million poor in India who do not even get food to eat every day, getting a job may mean everything for an average Indian student. This has resulted in one of the biggest catastrophes, according to me, in the Indian education system. Instead of getting decent painters, singers, dancers, sportsmen, athletes, chefs, psychologists, astronomers, biotechnologists, botanists, photographers, or even bird watchers, we get instead a million useless engineers produced each year, most of them unemployable and almost all of them frustrated with their lives. We need proper career counseling not only for students but also for parents. Parents are inadvertently spoiling the careers of their children, and not helping them.

These are some of the remedy measures that can be taken. More on the education system in future posts.

Game On!

Am back after a while.
Today’s topic is Sports. Well, not exactly. It’s more about India’s dismal performance in almost all sports, in any international event.

I will try not to go into the Cricket Vs. Rest of the Sports debate, as that topic itself is quite descriptive. But its quite obvious, that almost everyone in India, including the Government endorses cricket, while brutally ignoring and neglecting other sports, and events. A top Indian cricketer earns more money via a single match and advertisements than a hockey player earns in his entire sporting career.

Everyday, when I turn to the Sports column in any newspaper, I almost always find the same news. ‘Indian players disappoint. So and so fail to qualify. So and so, exited in the first round itself. India loses yet again. Indian players give a miserable performance at so and so.’ And so on and so forth, this news continues. Every single day. Apart from cricket, India has hardly demonstrated any adroitness in any sporting event, at the international level. We always perform disastrously in the Olympics, we have yet to qualify for the FIFA World Cup, and our once unbeatable hockey team has gone down the dumps. Not even to mention events such as athletics, swimming, golf, etc, in which India hardly has any eminent player to talk about.

Why is this so? Why does a country with a billion plus population fail to produce even a few good sportsmen, when it comes to sports apart from cricket? Do we lack the potential? Or the financial resources? Or is it due to politics and corruption? Let us now delve into this problem deeply.

First of all, India has always been a poor country since Independence. Even till date, almost half its population is below the poverty line. So when people were not even getting food to eat and a house to stay, it’s quite evident that they would hardly be bothered to take sports seriously. And quite frankly, the Government has never really promoted any sport. Sports has always taken the back seat, whenever political issues were discussed. There is no permanent autonomous Sports Organization in our country, which handles all sporting events(am not talking about cricket, and BCCI is more famous for controversies than anything else). As a result, we lack the necessary financial resources, and the capital to build world class training institutes, and to induct qualified professional trainers. Most of the training institutes are paltry buildings and the trainers themselves have little idea about the sport.

India is not short of talent. We have immense potential, when it comes to sports. There are millions of budding athletes in our country. But unless they have political connections, or unless they are rich, they keep facing one hurdle after the other, when it comes to progressing in sports.

Corruption is another factor. There are many corrupt selectors throughout the country. They select their own preferred candidates (who often bribe them) to represent their team, for any event, instead of selecting a better candidate. Favoritism has diluted the efficacy of sports. For example, in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, all the people sent to represent India, in sporting events, were linked to the Railways. Why this discrepancy? Does it mean that people from outside this nexus, are inefficient in sports? Obviously not.

Finally, one last factor I would like to mention is the attitude and mentality of the Indian people themselves. In many households, parents want their kids to study hard and always come first in class. Sports always take the least importance. Scarcely if ever, is a child encouraged to participate and excel in sports. All parents want is a 90% mark in their child’s report card. Apart from this, most children prefer playing cricket and football, limiting themselves to these two games. Very few(compared to rest) opt for tennis, polo, hockey, athletics, sword-fighting, fencing, skating, martial arts etc. I have seen many budding sportsmen/sportswomen being forced to abandon playing the sport they loved, and forced to become engineers and managers by their hypocritical parents, who believe that forceful studying is the only way to success.

The main problem is that many people don’t take sporting events seriously. They only take it up as a leisure activity, something to kill time with, or to enjoy with their friends. And with this casual outlook, no wonder, so few prominent sportsmen are coming up nowadays, in our country. We should take a page out of some other countries books. Like China or Australia, who in spite of lagging behind in the past, have produced some of the Worlds best sportsmen, and now they excel in numerous sports. They have not remained unidirectional like India has, by focusing on only one sport.

There are quite a few more factors that I have not mentioned, like politics. But I feel this post has become too long, and I will stop now.

I assume, sometime in your childhood, you must have heard this saying, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’ Well, even if your name is not Jack, its high time you took this saying seriously.

Take care, folks. And thanks for reading.

Happy Independence Day

All right, Happy Independence Day to all(Indians) of you, folks. Let us celebrate our 62nd Independence Anniversary with pride. While the country may still be plagued by a host of problems, India has nevertheless risen to quite a high position in the past 60 plus years. We have witnessed lots of technological progress, including the rise of the IT sector. Literacy rate has risen from 30% to over 60%. Infant and maternal mortality rate has fallen. Our GDP is growing at a stable rate. Millions of villages have obtained electricity and water supply. India produces some of the Worlds best leaders, doctors, engineers, etc. We will soon have the maximum number of billionaires in the world.
Mobile and internet connections have penetrated the entire landmass.
United we Stand, in the Worlds Largest Democratic Republic.

Yet, in spite of all this progress, we have faced innumerous impediments in our path. So many nefarious and parasitic problems remain. I will now, divide them into some questions, which I ask to the general public and the Government, both.

Q)1) Why, even after 62 years of Independence, are so many people (over one-third of the population) still so destitute that they are even unable to afford a daily meal?
What happened to the ‘Garibi Bhagao Abhiyaan’? The number of poor has increased, and so has the number of slum dwellers. The disparity in wealth is quite evident.

Q)2) Why has the Education and Infrastructure sections been neglected so badly over the past 50 years?

I believe these 2 fields are of prime importance for any country’s development, yet it is precisely these 2 fields which we have utterly neglected. So many million people are still illiterate. India produces the largest number of school dropouts every year. And Female Education is still ostracized. India has the Worlds Largest Road connection, but most of the villages(and even some cities) are still inaccessible via road networks. Most projects get delayed in red-tape. And the condition of the Roads and Railways is deteriorating every day. India can boast of having the worst public transport system in the world. See the condition of our normal buses and non-reserved train bogies, and one will get a decent idea.

Q)3) Why has the Government failed to check the unprecedented growth of population in the country?

India has almost reached the state of hyper-population. Forget un-employment. There are so many people, that all the resources are falling scarce. Including crops, and other food items. In fact, almost every problem that India faces, can be linked directly or indirectly to over-population. From shortage of college seats, to lack of jobs, discomfort everywhere, etc. The poor, even today, prefer to have around 5-6 children, on an average. Proper awareness needs to be generated and adequate measures to be taken, before the situation goes totally out of control.

Q)4) Why has the Government done practically nothing to get rid of the worm called corruption?

India has the uncanny reputation of being one of the most corrupt countries in the world. And it has done nothing to prevent it. It’s the political parties and various thousands of unions, which decide what is to be done, and rarely the common man. Oppose them, and you can get killed. This is hardly in accordance with the ‘By the People, For the People’ tagline. The situation has become so perverted, that its next to impossible to find an honest person affiliated to politics. Even the police is corrupt. The security system is almost non-existent. Terrorism is rampant.

Q)5) Why do we still have one of the worst Law Systems in the World?


Justice delayed is Justice denied, they say. Yet in India, the average litigation period is around 15 years. Compare that to less than 1 year in other developed countries, including China, and you can get the scenario. First of all, due to a highly in-efficient system, people in India rarely if ever, get true justice. The political leaders see to that. Secondly, almost all cases are delayed by un-necessary red-tape and favoritism, to the extent that the hapless victim can do nothing but watch, as the culprit goes scott free. The police is just as inefficient. They are under-paid and rely on black money, which they obtain from underworld dons. Bribe is as common as sweet distribution.


I could go on and on, with India’s never ending problems, whole day. But I will prefer to end this post here. I hope to see the Government take steps regarding these infirmities, in future, to create a fully developed Super Power nation, with an infinite potential. We have identified the problem. Now we need to put an end to all evils and threats.

Jai Hind.

Killer Flu

All right, this topic is so much ubiquitous nowadays that I simply had to write about it. And as usual, the reference will be towards India.


As of now (when I am typing this), already 6 people have become victims of this deadly disease in India, Swine Flu. As most of you must be aware, it is caused by the H1N1 virus, and there is no complete cure of it, as of now, though scientists are on their way in developing a successful vaccine for it. Already around 800 recorded victims in India, the number stealthily rises every day, almost like an exponential graph, ever increasing.


Globally, over a lakh people have been infected, and thousands have died as a result. In fact, the WHO estimates that within the next 2 years, the number of infected people can climb to over 2 Billion. That’s around one-third of the total World Population. Swine Flu has already become a Global Pandemic, and unless adequate steps are taken to control and curb it, the results can be very disastrous indeed.


The only known drug for Swine Flu, is Oseltamivir, or in short Tamiflu, as it is more popularly known. It is effective, only when it is supplied in the early stages. In Later stages, it becomes useless.


Currently, Swine Flu is spreading like wildfire, even in India. And the attitude of the Government towards it, is shocking, not to say the least. The health minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, recently remarked, that the number of cases, is very small , when compared to the total population of India. So that is why we should not panic. So what he means to say, is that we should calmly sit back and watch while the total number of cases, crosses the million mark, and then blatantly state that the situation has become out of Government’s control, as it’s simply impossible to cure so many people, and prevent further penetration of Swine Flu. This situation could become a fact, if no adequate measures are taken NOW.


The situation is not very different, over 2 decades ago, when AIDS was exposed to India. Naturally, it spread like havoc, while in the meantime, both the Government and the people, remained totally nescient about it. In fact, the lackadaisical attitude of the Government towards AIDS, was quite appalling. It made almost no attempt to prevent the spreading of the disease, or to educate the general mass, about the causes of it. Within a few years, millions of people had become infected with AIDS. And with no actual cure, millions began to die as well. Still, the Government promptly kept on sleeping, and till date, it has hardly done anything effective or worthwhile in stopping AIDS. The situation will probably be similar for Swine Flu as well.


Why is the Health Sector neglected so badly in India? The Government Hospitals are awfully managed, and the less said about them, the better. The private ones may not be as shabby, but charge an exorbitant sum, usually way beyond the reach of most people. The Government allocates just around 5 percent of the total GDP for Health. Whereas in USA, it is closer to 16 percent. It’s no wonder, that so many people are suffering from ill health, yet have nowhere to go for their treatment. There are very few good doctors in India, and the cost for procuring a medical degree is sky rocketing.


In fact, I have seen that there are so many aspiring medical students, who simply do not get a chance to pursue medicine, due to dearth of seats. These students usually get into Engineering, and waste their careers. Instead of having so many people competing for a handful of seats(AIIMS, Delhi has around 70 seats), we should demand for more medical seats.


The Government needs to wake up, and wake up NOW, before its too late. We certainly should not panic about Swine Flu, but that does not mean that we should just sit back, and do nothing. Follow the instructions, given by the Government about staying 6 feet away from the victim, donning protection masks, etc. Make sure to wash your hands properly. Spread awareness amongst others, especially the poor. Remember, every single thing you do, will have a repercussion. Its up to you to see that’s a good one.


Combat Swine Flu. Stay Healthy.

See ya guys… thanks for reading.