Aug

19

The origin of the deceptive species

August 19, 2009 posted by indiatime | 7 Comments

A non-resident friend visiting India recently wrote to me about how during his 3-week short trip to his homeland, he felt mugged, stolen from or deceived every step of the way. From the 3-wheeler autos to local vegetable markets to tourist attractions, he said he constantly felt that more money was taken from him, with locals using this or that ruse.

So yesterday I sent my friend this new research on robots where the researchers found their robots learning the art of deception by hiding food from other robots.

Swiss researchers recently programmed robots with some basic thought process and biological communications (artificial neural networks) abilities. They then had these robots compete for food in an enclosed space. The robots had to shine a specific colored light if they were close to a food. The robots went thru several generations (as other species would) where the scientists copied the patterns in the most successful robots to the next generation.

By the 50th generation of these robots, the researchers found that some of the robots were not shining the light when they were close to food (these robots didn’t want the other robots to know where the food was). And after a few hundred generations, most of the robots had completely stopped signalling when they were close to food. Meaning, that they had learnt the art of deception as a survival mechanism when they had to compete with others in a crowded environment.

Since we in India are definitely in some multiple of some thousandth generation, it suddenly seems obvious why many of us, end up learning to cheat or deceive. Actually, I am amazed that there are many who still haven’t taken to corruption and still do try to do the right thing day in and day out. And I’m sure, in some distant universe or some faraway galaxy, a team of God’s researchers must be wondering why.

Aug

17

India’s moral compass

August 17, 2009 posted by indiatime | 12 Comments

Epidemics, communal discontent, dirty politics, reality television, bollywood and cricket. That would have been my stock answer to anyone asking me about the current state of the Indian union. But a state of the nation poll by CNN-Hindustan Times, has results that may surprise many. India’s moral compass, the survey concludes, is somewhere in between taboo and modernity, and that there are a lot of ifs and buts in the Indian concept of freedom and personal liberty.

The following results pertain to those who were surveyed, but do show a slice and sample of Indian minds without any supposed survey bias.

1. 73% Indians feel homosexuality should be considered illegal

2. 79% Indians feel that rape and sexual harassment are linked to the way women dress

3. 41% Indians feel there should be a dress code in public

4. 59% Indians believe people should be free to wear what they want

5. 56% Indians believe it is untrue that women cannot undertake tough tasks

6. 67% Indians think women make better bosses at the workplace

7. 60% Indians regard homosexuality as a disease

8. 63% Indian men believe bride’s virginity is not an issue for them

9. 69% Indians support schools banning students from wearing Western clothes

10. 69% Indian men would feel uncomfortable if their wife or sister works till late in office.

The specter of modernity vs morality was best represented by a dramatic exchange between Sambhavana Seth, one of Bollywood’s many vamps and Baba Ramdev, Indian TV’s yoga guru and herbal doctor-general to the nation. Here’s the interesting exchange:

Sambhavna Seth: I don’t find anything wrong with gays. My friend is gay. I will send him to your ashram. It remains to be seen if you can cure him. Let’s hope you don’t become one.

Baba Ramdev: Gays are mentally sick and I do not support them. I can never change. And I have cured all major illnesses, including cancer.

Sambhavna Seth: Why are you always talking about sex and sambhog? Where did you learn all this?

Baba Ramdev: (Stays mum)

Sambhavna Seth: Is your beard and hair natural? Do you colour them?

Baba Ramdev: They are absolutely natural.

Sambhavna Seth: I have immense respect for you but I don’t agree with everything that you say.

Baba Ramdev: Thank you.

Actually, I am not a fan of either of these two. I am not much for Sambhavan’s gyroscope and I don’t believe Baba is the only one who knows where India’s north star is. But I think these two magnetic personalities perfectly embody the two extremes of India’s moral compass. As much as it may appear to be all skewed and screwed, to those on this side of the planet, the current moral state of the union seems to be a topic that is desirably more chewable than manikchand jarda. Cheers to all the corrupt bastards and happy immoralizing until the next moral survey.

Aug

4

Swine flu claims one, threatens many in India

August 4, 2009 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

Swine flu has now officially claimed its first victim in India. 14-year old Riya Sheikh died yesterday, 2 weeks after her parents first took her to a physician, and one week after being admitted to Jehangir Nursing Home, a prestigious health care clinic. In spite of the entire world knowing about swine flu for months now, many family physicians in India and the government in particular seem to be rather oblivious and somewhat casual in their approach to this endemic danger.

Officially, more than 500 Indian citizens are said to be infected by swine flu, out of whom 20% are in the state of Maharashtra out of which 80% have been located in the city of Pune. The H1N1 strain of the swine flu virus is now known to have transmitted from humans to humans, and has also hit about a dozen health care workers in cities across Maharashtra state.

Ghulam Nabi Azad, India’s new health minister, opined on the country’s first swine flu death yet, blaming the local physicians for their late diagnosis. But his own and his agency’s leadership failure along with strangely casual local networks, are far more evident now that the word has gotten out on an even worse danger lurking ahead. Riya Sheikh is said to have attended school for 2 days after being discharged from the private clinic. This, while she was still actively infected and perhaps transmitting the swine flu. But the ball was dropped at multiple levels -

1. The head of joint coordination task force is now saying he was unaware of a swine flu victim being admitted toa private hospital

2. Riya’s school is saying it was not informed by the state’s health department that one of the school’s students had gotten swine flu.

3. The state health department is accusing the National Institute of Virology (NIV) of not informing the state about a swine flu sample request from a private hospital

4. The Maharashtra state’s health secretary complained that people weren’t taking the government’s instructions about getting admitted to government hospitals seriously.

The Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta has several guidelines for people’s benefit and is the best resource for all the latest information. Here are the warning signs that should raise alarm when someone you know is showing symptoms of flu:

In children:
* Fast breathing or trouble breathing
* Bluish or gray skin color
* Not drinking enough fluids
* Severe or persistent vomiting
* Not waking up or not interacting
* Being so irritable that the child does not want to be held
* Flu-like symptoms improve but then return with fever and worse cough

In adults:
* Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
* Pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen
* Sudden dizziness
* Confusion
* Severe or persistent vomiting
* Flu-like symptoms improve but then return with fever and worse cough

An in case of even the slightest doubt, it is imperative to get tested for swine flu. One in 4 suspected cases tested in India have been found to be positive for H1N1. (550-plus positive H1N1 in 2200 tested nationwide).

And here’s the Indian government’s information page for swine flu, with specific guidelines for schools and educational institutions.

Jul

30

Sanjeev Sharma, a teacher from the state of Madhya Pradesh, is now under investigation for having asked his female students to disrobe so he could take measurements for their uniforms. The incident occurred in the town of Ganj Basoda (in the Madhya Pradesh-Rajasthan border district of Tyonda near Vidisha) on July 24th, at the Nurpur Education Guarantee Scheme School.

8 girl students from the same class complained to their parents that teacher Sharma called them in his office one by one and ordered them to disrobe so he could measure them up for their new uniforms. And since he didn’t have any measuring tape, the teacher is said to have measured the young girls with his fingers. The girls further alleged that the teacher misbehaved with them after measuring them with his fingers.

Later in the day, the parents of the victims marched to the school, but found that the teacher had already left. They then went to the local administrative officer for the district. Kiran Badbade (yes, but he turned out to be a good guy), the officer, immediately found the teacher guilty in his preliminary investigation, and teacher Sharma was immediately dismissed. No word yet on if and when Sharmaji himself will be donning the prison uniform.

Incidentally, Ganj Basoda, the town where the shameful incident occurred, is the birthplace of Yoga. Patanjali, who wrote Yogasutra, the book on Yoga, was born in Ganj Basoda around 150 BC. Patanjali’s Yoga comprised of eight major systems of yoga, the first and foremost of which is called yama or restraint.

So, two thousand years after Patanjali, Ganj Basoda is in the news again for that same yama (restraint). The lack of it, rather.

Further readings:
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

Jul

15

Indian students fly high at the NASA competition

July 15, 2009 posted by indiatime | 4 Comments

NASA has now declared the names of winners in its supersonic airliner concept contest, an international competition that attracts star talent from all around the world. Students of Indian origin dominated the competition in the high school category and did exceedingly well at the college level as well.

This year’s competition focused on conceptualizing a practical and environment-friendly supersonic airliner. In the US high school category, 2 Indian-origin students were part of the team that took the third prize in the team competition with the design of a supersonic viking transport (SVT) equipped with variable swept wings to reduce the sonic boom. In the non-US category, however, all three individual prizes were claimed by Indian-origin students, two from Singapore and one from Hydrerabad. Sidharth Krishnan aced the category with his V-3, which he thinks will be a realistic goal by year 2020. Sainyam Gautam’s Sonicliner with swept-back wings placed second and Hyderabad’s Kulkarni placed third with his innovative ideas on ease of manufacturing.

In the Non-US college category, two students of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel Institute in Gujarat, placed third with their innovative concept named ‘Rastofust’.

Here’s what intrigues me most. With indigenous engineering talent of that caliber hanging around in our schools and families, how is it that the adults amongst us can’t build a 2-bit railway bridge or a design a well-paved street or come up with some direly needed innovations in public sanitation?

The answer may lie in the fact that none of the Indian students were affected or influenced by any governmental entity. There is news that India’s state-run airline is almost bankrupt and wants to defer its loan payments, reduce its employee privileges, and is in the negative by almost a billion dollars. Air India’s best bet may be to let some of our school-going kids manage the enterprize. Their management skills may be just as sharp or even better than their math.

Jul

14

A teacher’s killers walk free

July 14, 2009 posted by indiatime | 2 Comments

The Nagpur high court yesterday acquitted all six student activists accused of beating a professor to death. Almost three years ago, Professor Sabharwal of Madhav College, Ujjain, was pummeled to death by the activists of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a student body long aligned with right wing nationalist parties.

The Supreme court had ordered the case to be tried in Nagpur after the victim’s son requested the case be transferred outside of Ujjain. Unfortunately for the victim family, the transfer of the case to Nagpur did not provide much relief, and the eye witnesses to the case turned hostile one after the other, leaving the prosecution’s case looking ridiculous and hopeless.

Although not intended by the victim professor’s family, the transfer of the case to Nagpur may actually have helped the accused who have pretty strong connections in Nagpur, the capital of ABVP’s parent organization. Additionally, the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh himself surely did not leave any stone unturned in helping the accused. He is known to have personally met and chatted with the main murder accused on the pretext of paying a surprize visit to that hospital, an astonishing thing to do for a head of a state.

In Nagpur and in Maharashtra yesterday, student activists celebrated the acquittal of their colleagues from the neighboring state, with firecrackers and dances on the streets. “…Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything…” read a message on the local ABVP chapter’s facebook site. Quite an ironical statement coming from an organization some of whose supporters sacrificed a professor in front of a crowd of hundreds and a few TV cameras.

There was a time student organizations like ABVP were known for their volunteerism and dedicated and selfless acts in times of national emergencies like droughts and earthquakes and floods. What a pity, that an organization whose followers once made it credible by some incredible volunteer work, is now willing to put everything on line to save and protect some rogue elements who probably do not care a hoot about the ideals once set by its founders.

Jul

9

One of the gifts Hillary Clinton needs to bring when she visits India next week, is some common-sense about the US immigration policy for Indians.

1. For last about ten years, Indian students visiting the United States for higher studies, have suffered terribly at the hands of American bureaucracy, paying a ridiculously high price in spite of being aptly qualified to enter the American immigration system. Many tax-paying law-abiding Indian American wannabe immigrants still stand in the long line to become permanent residents, now for almost a decade or more.

That is in direct contrast to what new immigrants from most other countries go through. In fact, Indians, singularly suffer and have to wait the most, of all the other countries on the planet. Where a student of some other country can become a permanent resident in a year or so, Indian students have had to wait for years just to be able to file applications to become residnets of their new land.

Surprizingly, students or professionals from those countries which sent 9/11 terrorists to the United States, can become permanent residents in days or weeks, a hundredth of the time that is needed for Indian students or professionals.

2. Although the visa lines at the US consulates in India look way better than they used to years ago, there is little sense in keeping following the same old traditional visa process for short-term, especially tourist visas. With better ways and better technology to track individuals, US should feel a lot more comfortable in allowing Indian passport holders to travel without restriction, on a temporary basis, say for a 30 or a 60-day stay. And so as not to lose the financial incentive of the visa fees, the tourist fees could be simply tacked together with the airline tickets or something, easing much of the red tape surrounding the tourist visa processes.

3. Obama administration can easily find several novel ways to further ease restrictions for other immigrant-type visas such as the investor visa which currently allows permanent residency for those who invest a million dollars in the US economy (half a million for rural areas). Easing the investor visas further, or simply putting a temporary home-ownership clause on employment visas will bring in a much needed boost to the US economy and will also ease the long lines for Indian immigrants.

4. The maximum number of Indians that can be allowed to become permanent residents in one year is still the same that it used to be years ago. If that isn’t upgraded in the near future, future Indian students hoping to settle in the US could be looking at 50 or 100-year waits to become eligible for their green cards, restricting their own prospects as well has strangling the US economy.

Jun

23

Who exactly doesn’t teach animosity?

June 23, 2009 posted by indiatime | 8 Comments

Six teachers and a teacher’s aide have now been suspended in the state of Kerala, after a textbook was found to include the wrong version of a revered patriotic poem.

The famous poem ‘Sare Jahaan se achcha‘ (aka Tarana-e-Hindi), written by once proudly patriotic Indian poet Allama Iqbal, was originally meant to say this -

Religion doesn’t teach animosity (or ill-will)
We are Indians (Hindi), India (Hindustan) is our homeland…

‘Sare Jahaan se achcha’, the patriotic poem first published in 1904, is one of the most widely known and liked pieces of patriotic poetry in India. Kerala’s board of education was aghast, however, when the Malayalam (local language) version of the famous poem changed the most famous lines in the poem at the most important word. The six teachers and their aide, mistakenly (big mistake, they know now) replaced the word ‘religion’ by the name of prophet Muhammad.

The mistake was exposed by a teacher from the Kozhikode district, and is soon slated to be withdrawn from the textbook. The teachers have now been suspended and an investigation has begun into how the word ‘religion’ was replaced.

Interestingly, only a few years after he wrote the Tarana-e-Hindi (Song of India) however, poet Iqbal changed into a much less secular version of his former self, writing a patriotic song for an Islamic homeland, a song called ‘Tarana-e-Milli’.

Back in 1984, when asked by his prime minister how India appeared from space, Rakesh Sharma, India’s first man in space replied, ‘Sare Jahan se Achcha‘ meaning ‘The best in the world‘. Whenever India decides on the first man/woman to walk on the moon, none of the seven teachers from Kerala will be making the list. Who knows what they will say when Rahul Gandhi asks them that same question in 2015.

Jun

20

Fast, industrious and innovative

June 20, 2009 posted by indiatime | 3 Comments

With a week, back to back, yet another new car gets introduced to the Indian market. Last week it was Honda Jazz. This week it is Fiat’s Grande Punto. The automobile market, already overflowing the infrastructural restraints, is about to explode even more within the next few years, as India is seen as an especially big and emerging market for cars.

But much more exciting than that, is a story about student hobbyists in India, designing and building new cars. All over India, small groups of students from local engineering colleges seem to be getting into the act. RV College of Engineering in Bangalore, MM college of Engineering in Ambala, Amity College of Engineering in Delhi, have recently produced students who have designed, produced and built model cars that could almost be considered roadworthy. Almost.

Earlier this year, Sramana Mitra wrote in the Forbes about the ‘big change’ in the Indian mindset whereby ’secure servitude’ in working with the government was replaced by the newly growing outsourcing servitude, stemming the tide of Indian innovation in the bud. A few years ago, in a series of detailed articles, Arindam Banerji wrote about India’s innovation hopes and obstacles, outlining the disruptive ways innovation happens or doesn’t in India.

One good thing about the car designing hobbyists is that it doesn’t take much to keep a young student interested in designing cars. It’s much, much harder to keep the students interested in some basic research that can cure a disease a hundred years later or work on something that has no immediate rewards or satisfactions. And although so far the only reward seems to be a good job offer at some automotive company, a little extra effort and a little extra mile can probably go a long way for some of these folks who are venturing out of the ordinary rigors of education.

It used to be that one would have to be a prime minister’s or an industrialist’s son to launch a car company in India. Not any more, hopefully.

Jun

17

Naked man in Kolkata school sparks mass fainting

June 17, 2009 posted by indiatime | 9 Comments

…Many girls fainted and others are still traumatized….The girls returned home and complained to their parents. Some are still complaining of dizziness….Some girls apparently passed out while a few vomited……

It wasn’t toxic gas fumes. It wasn’t food poisoning. And it wasn’t UFOs. The Kolkata school girls had just witnessed a young man who had walked in their all-girls school’s corridor, removed his clothes right in the school corridor and made gestures at the girls and their teacher.

The miscreant entered the school around noon yesterday, walked towards the class X on the second floor, and then once in front of the class X, calmly and ‘unhurriedly’ took off his clothes, watching the girls and their teacher faint and vomit and turn dizzy.

Later, concerned parents showed up at the school, and met with the principal, demanding an explanation and an apology from her. The principal summoned the security guard who opined that it wasn’t possible to keep tabs on everyone entering the school.

The school authorities labeled it an act of a ‘deranged man’, but a local psychologist opined that mentally deranged individuals would not take off their clothes after entering classrooms, contending that the act was the result of increasing frustration and stress. The psychologist, however, did not offer any explanation for the mass fainting and vomiting by the school girls.

But there isn’t going to be any investigation of the matter, since the offending miscreant ran away and the shocked and traumatized school authorities haven’t filed any charges. Some parents, however are demanding that the Biology teacher be fired, blaming her for the girls’ shock and awe.

Jun

4

The results of the end of grade examinations for the 10th and 12th grade students would have been pouring in from all over and the high percentage of marks achieved by the toppers would make think that India must have the most outstanding student population on the planet. Whether it is CBSE exams or the 10th/12th grade exams from individual states, the toppers are typically topping with high nineties, seemingly acing every question.

For more than a decade now, an obscure town in Maharashtra has continually amazed the state with extraordinary numbers for its resident students. The ‘Latur Pattern’, as is it known, is an educational pattern that has suddenly catapulted a small town into the toppers’ lists with unfailing consistency, year after year. The pattern consists of continuous and methodical practice of a model set of question papers a few months before the actual exams. Nothing new, you would think, for students preparing for big examinations.

Well, there is news today that there were riots and protests on the streets of this ‘educational’ town, where parents, students and political activists went on a rampage. They were demanding that the authorities ’shelve’ the inquiry into alleged mass-copying by the area students. ‘The rampaging mob pelted stones, damaged furniture and manhandled the HSC board officials and teachers’.

Now, this so-called Latur pattern had been successfully going on for years, producing toppers year after year, making the rest of the state look like dummies and idiots. So what has changed this year? For one thing, the state’s former chief minister Deshmukh, Latur’s local boy, is not the chief minister anymore. He was dismissed late last year, when he couldn’t handle the terrorists in a big city. With a new chief minister in Mumbai, Latur’s fortunes seem to have changed dramatically. And the educational pattern that had been producing the brightest and bestest students, is now shown to be a mass-copying capital where students apparently were given the actual question papers weeks, if not months in advance.

Today the president of India spoke about innovation and education, but she missed mentioning how her own home state had been innovating the education patterns by favoring the chief minister’s constituency and rigging the results on a massive scale. People often speak about overhauling India’s education system, but there’s little mention of the rigging of the examinations and the corruption, criminalization and politicization of the entire educational system, from KG to 12th grade and further to the degree colleges and universities.

A few days ago, a national TV channel interviewed a girl who had apparently topped the CBSE exams. It was horrifying to hear this young girl speak in broken grammar. She couldn’t speak one sentence straight in Hindi or English. If this is the student who topped the national school board, how bad is everyone else then, I thought. But then, hearing the president make her own rehearsed speech, I realized that it doesn’t matter much. We have long thrown out the criteria for merit in education. And everywhere else as well.

May

31

Nations that live in glass houses…

May 31, 2009 posted by indiatime | 7 Comments

Increasing incidents of violence against Indian students in Australia are prompting widespread condemnation and outrage in India. Some have even called for UN intervention (come on now), and others have temporarily protested by turning down stupid honors by Australian universities (I promise you they all will eventually accept those honors).

While such outrages seem to temporarily unite fractious populations, they seldom work towards removing the divisions and fractures that divide those fractious populations in the first place. e.g. amidst all the outcries about discrimination in Australia, India’s newly elected government chose the speaker of the parliament based on, you guessed it, caste. In a few weeks, a new batch of Indian students will begin their educational curriculum in India for the academic year 2010, and the most important criteria all those students had to go through was, yet again, caste and religion. Even the so-called elite institutions in India routinely practice a caste-based entrance system, which has now become a fixture in India, and about to get only worse. Most government jobs and placements, too, go through similar caste-based filters, and the most important and the most critical line on the resume is one that describes the caste or the religion.

So my question is this. If India’s own laws and India’s own government and India’s own educational institutions happily and merrily practice racism and casteism, why blame other countries when elements from those countries behave on the same lines? And what about attacks on foreign tourists in India?

And what about rapes and murders of German and Russian and British women in Goa? What about the incessant invisible muggings that outsiders routinely go through at the hands of beggars?

And forget the outsiders, for a moment. What about our own babies getting killed by our own mothers? What about our own women getting attacked and killed by greedy in-laws and abusive husbands? What about our own public getting duped and tricked by our own politicians? What about our own schoolchildren getting mauled over by city buses in our own capital? What about criminals routinely getting elected despite active pending cases? Man, I can give a thousand examples of racist crimes happening within India, perpetrated by Indians against Indians, just within the first 5 months of 2009.

So stop the hypocrisy, folks. India is a glass house and a huge one at that. Let’s not pretend that racism is just an Australian issue. Are some Australians racist? I’m sure, they are. Do the Indian students need some protection? Of course there needs to be a way to deal with such hate crimes. But long before all that, India needs to clean its own house and get real about race and caste issues. Nations that live in glass houses cannot and should not throw stones at others.

Apr

18

Bend it like chicken and die

April 18, 2009 posted by indiatime | 4 Comments

Shano Khan, an 11-year old youngster studying in a Delhi school, has died after spending 2 days in coma, a complication from a heat stroke she suffered. Failing to translate a word in English, Shano’s 27-year old teacher - ‘Manju Madam’, beat her up and then made Shano stand in Delhi’s hot sun for hours, until little Shano fainted in the intense heat.

“…Her school had reopened after 15 days and she must have forgotten bits of what she had learnt…I cannot believe that the teacher killed my daughter over one word…”, cried Mohammad Ayub Khan, Shano’s grieving father.

But Delhi’s municipal corporation denied the incident, telling the press that Shano died not as a result of the punishment, but because she was prone to seizures. The city government claimed that the little girl had been absent from her classes because of fits and the teacher had nothing to do with the incident. The city government did not say why Shano was standing in the scorching heat, bent like a chicken with heavy bricks on her shoulders, as the rest of her classmates were sitting inside the class learning English alphabets.

What should be done with this stupid teacher? Here are a few suggestions :

1. Shano’s classmates get to throw eggs in the teacher’s face

2. Teacher goes to jail where the other inmates make her stand like a chicken

3. Teacher stands like a chicken and Shano’s parents kick the chicken’s ass

4. Teacher bends like a chicken and does 10 rounds of the 400 meters track.

5. Teacher sits in solitary with no sun in sight for a month

Mar

21

Music teacher hurls slipper at supreme court judge

March 21, 2009 posted by indiatime | 4 Comments

supreme court judge arijit pasayatYesterday, Arijit Pasayat, a supreme court judge, barely missed a slipper thrown at him by a Mumbai teacher, in a strange case involving contempt charges against the teacher and her colleagues. Judge Pasayat was unhurt as he managed to duck the teacher’s angry attack. Needless to say, the contempt charges that were being discussed got a fast-track ruling getting the women an immediate 3-month jail term.

The teachers in question are a group of music teachers who have been advocating apparently modern methods of education at the Boss School of Music in Vasai, a northern suburb of Mumbai. The school was shut down a few years ago, when some parents alleged of black magic, prostitution and strange things going on at the school. The teachers tried to seek help from the Mumbai court, but it shut down the school for good, and ordered psychiatric tests of every student and teacher at the school. This evoked a very angry reaction from the Boss school management and the teachers, who initially accused the judiciary, the government and the law-enforcement of harassing them. Eventually, the music teachers sharpened their attacks and have recently been equating their plight with ‘genocide’.

The music school remains closed, but it has continued its angry campaign against the system on its website, dedicating more than half of the website to bringing the judiciary down, going to the extent of asking capital punishment for high court and supreme court judges. The contempt proceedings in question were brought up last year. In a response to a contempt notice, the music teachers compared the members of the supreme court bench to Osama Bin Laden. That strange response in defense of a contempt notice sealed the fate of the music teachers, making them stand a contempt trial. Now, six months after that incident, this slipper-throwing has left little doubt that the music teachers do indeed feel contempt towards the supreme court.

The teachers had some new system music school going on in Mumbai for a long time. Somewhere along the way, they landed themselves in some political trouble with some big shots. It may have been a land deal gone wrong, a money-related matter or some other political trouble. But that seemed to uproot the music school, putting the music teachers out of their blooming education business.

But then there’s something so not right about music teachers being so angry at something. Music itself is supposed to soothe the soul and temper the anger inside. Being labeled witches and prostitutes is surely libelous, but calling that a genocide is a beyond the pale. Whatever their original grievance, these music teachers have themselves cast a doubt on their educational methods by letting their anger speak. The greatest works of art and religion in human history have come out of pain and injustice and tears and hard times. Had humans resorted to throwing shoes and slippers as the only response to their anger, humanity would still be walking barefoot in the jungles.

Mar

15

Amann movement : zero tolerance to ragging

March 15, 2009 posted by indiatime | 6 Comments

Friends and family of Amann Kachroo, the young medical student who fell victim to a ragging (hazing) incident at a prestigious medical school, joined hands yesterday, beginning a zero tolerance drive to end the scourge of ragging in India’s schools and universities. They gathered at Jantar Mantar, a place in the capital, built centuries ago, to study astronomical entities. Their task a little ambitious if not astronomically impossible, the gathering included Amann’s grieving family, who have chosen the most graceful way of expressing their displeasure and anger and helplessness at the system, by deciding to change it for the better.

Amongst other things, the drive calls for speedier trials and swift justice in ragging-related deaths, and a seed change in the psychology of students, starting from grade school up, to put an end to the violent hazing practices and uproot the evil from the student life.

One of the less talked-about topics in the field of education, is the deep extent to which politics has metastasized inside Indian schools and universities. Not just at the management level, that much is a given. But every major political party in India has a student wing with its members contesting schoolwide elections and vying for power within the walls of temples of education, turning sacred places of learning into campaign offices for political parties. A staggering amount of money is poured into such student wings, feeding an army of misled dreamers who quickly turn into goons and muscle for their political party, towing the leaders’ wishes, ever-so-ready to spread unrest.

The almost-criminal nexus between the political world and the education world is the biggest hurdle that stands in way of eliminating ills such as ragging. The criminal minds who indulge in such ghastly acts aren’t daredevils or ready-to-die soldiers that they pretend to be. In fact, they are the most insecure, the dumbest, and the sissiest weaklings in those places. But backed by political establishments and empowered by the local law-enforcements, they turn into the teflon dons inside the school walls, knowing that their political backers will be ready to bail them out within seconds of any already-unlikely arrests.

So maybe the right way to go about this would be

1. to target the political backers who cover for such criminals and enact laws that will brand the guilty politicians as accomplices in ragging murders.

2. to mandatorily replace the entire management or school board if there is a ragging death. Even more, to make the entire school board members stand trial as accomplices in the ragging murders.

3. to mandatorily replace the chief minister and the home minister of the state where such an incident occurs.

Greater goons need to be targeted for greater good. Period.

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Dr Singh is no Dr King
Lesser Known Indians
The Most ‘Nobel’ Teacher of Them All
The third Indian revered in China
A little Poland in India
The vanishing of Indian languages
The looting of Chandigarh’s treasures
Bharat, Pakistan and Hindustan, Indiana
Welcome to India, Steve!
Top 5 explanations for the president’s gesture
An IIT on every street, an IIM on every block
Pakistan, Jinnah, Wadias and the American anthem
An IAS officer’s nightmare of lustful, lascivious stares comes true