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Showing posts from 2006
A vacation journey D.Dhanuraj As Christmas has been nearing, I wanted to be in Cochin to complete some of my works pending. It has been one week in Chennai. I looked at the Indian Railway site for tickets. There is no ticket in any of the trains going to Kerala for next couple of weeks. Then I spent an afternoon searching for the private buses (illegally run) for tickets. They said the same story as in the railway website. Then I tried any ticket to Coimbatore instead to Cochin directly. No way I could expect a ticket. Then I tried with Tamil Nadu state transport. Finally I had to end up with a ticket to Salem in TN state bus. The reasons for the rush are; Holidays and Sabarimala piligirimage. I wondered how much money is pouring into this God's own country from Tamil Nadu only at this fag end of the year. If the former showed the vast contigent of Malayali emigrants in Tamil Nadu ( there are five trains running to Kerala every day including one special train these days), the la
A hartal day D.Dhanuraj On the day of the hartal, I cannot resist working. Not because I want to oppose terhe Hartal but beacuse I have been given a deadline on the project that we are working on ' Justice V R Krishna Iyer - a living legend' documentary on Justice V R Krishna Iyer. The second editing has been going on. The editor and the director wanted my presence in the studio. Since I am leaving for Chennai next day, I have been asked to be present on the hartal day itself. I was deinite that even Justice Krishna Iyer - a member in the first communist ministry - would not oppose my move to work on that day. Whenever we met he emphasised the need for a work culture and the importance of hardwork When I drove with the director, first i felt hartal has not much impact on that day. 20 km drive from my home to studio in the morning showed up a number of two wheelers in the road. Since th studio was in upsatirs, once we entered the studio we were not all disturned by the happen
Kerala - a state of pardox Dhanuraj Why crimes and harassment against women are so high in our state? I wonder our society is so closed. Out of 30 million population, 2.5 million are gulf emigrants. There is a huge Diaspora of malayalees in Europe, Africa and America. Lastly, within India we can call an influential NRK (Non Resident Keralites) population across the country. So the number of families got separated are in millions. At the same time, Socio Cultural Revolution in the late 19th and early 20th centuries appeared to have worked on the malayali mindset to a model moral place. The struggle against feudalism and social inequality succeeded very much but the resent on the upper class still runs trough the malayalees still???? The latter part of the 20th century, Kerala witnessed the emergence of middle class which identified with the upper class or the separation between the two is very narrow, so the struggle continues against the middle class. Don’t you think these factors pla
What a state is it? D.Dhanuraj Kerala, the land with ravishing beauty and unparallel resources boasts of hundred percentage literacy. For the last two decades, the annual inflow income money is more than 700 crores which equaled the one of the highest net inflow in the pre globalization time. We have an enrolment of 85% of students in the primary level and our health indices are comparable to the developed countries. Distribution of health is very much in this state in terms of mansions, bungalows and multi storied buildings puffed with Italian marbles and granites. This is the first state where the first communist government came into the power through ballot. We have seen Naxalism and emergency at various degress compared to other parts of the country. We sent our sisters and brothers to toil in the deserts because we were reluctant to submit the failure of our policies. The communal organizations caught the imagination of the majority of the people even while they preached Marx’s fa
Evaluation time D.Dhnauraj This is the time to evaluate and analyze the contributions of all these governments in the last fifty years. Suppose one come out with an Index positioning the performance and contribution of each government since 57 and on the other side the contribution of different sects of Kerala society and then compare both. What will be the outcome? There are decisions and legislations which had a direct as well as indirect impact on the development of the state. Usually they say land reforms, education bill, golden period between 71 to 75 etc. Again, evaluate the outcome of these reforms. From 1805 onwards, Kerala has been one of the main centre’s of education. Christian missionaries started schools while in Malabar; it is the local administration initiated the proceedings. Trend is continued ven today even though the regulations and legislations on education sector over the time influenced the sector. This is clearly explained in the paper A review of 1957 Education
Islamic Terrorism - a facy word to politicking D.Dhanuraj HI, This is a comment to the article on ‘ Pakistani terrorism faces manpower crunch; starts new strategy ’ I denounce the phrase Islamic terrorism. Any reader of this article who happened to be an Islam by birth cannot be mollified by any other pleasing gimmicks by the Government of the day to retain their vote bank when elections are around. How come terrorism can be attributed to one and only single group/ community in this world? LTTE is not an Islamic force nor is Northern Ireland group. In India, there are many small and big organizations that do not have any link with Islam but having pronounced allegiance to Hindu and Christian groups terrorize the state. Then, why Islam only? There is an increased identification of all the actions of any society or an individual with any of the religion in the recent times. There is a concerted effort also from some quarters to visualize the developments along the restricted and confi
Who won the Election? Another round of elections, whether it is General Elections or By polls, Kerala spends a lot of time watching the Political theatre set for the idiotic warm up games. There is no permanent enemy in Politics; this statement may not have been verified with such an authenticity and vilification nowhere else than in Kerala. This is such a deeply disoriented society in a hyper political atmosphere. Alas, the hope is not lost. The margin of the victory of the present ruling party candidate indicates that voters of Kerala (or at least those in Thiruvambadi) are looking for alternatives and they are highly disappointed with both the political forces in Kerala. They do not find any difference among the political forces in Kerala. In an election where 84% o the voters cast their franchise, the margin of the victory (246 votes) champions the democratic principles enshrined in the constitution but it also reflects the mood of electorate. Is there any vision statement on the
Frame Guidelines on Advt involving poiticians New Delhi: The supreme court on Friday directed the government to lay the guidelines for regulating the expenditure by its various departments on advertisements glorifying political leaders at the cost of tax payers’ money. A bench comprising Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal and Justices C K Thakker and R V Raveendran said if the government did not come out with any decision on the issue by December, the court will then proceed to frame some guidelines and listed the matter for further hearing in first week of January. The order to this effect was passed after additional solicitor general (ASG) Amrender Sharan said the information and broadcasting ministry, which is the nodal agency, has convened a meeting of all departments and states in the first week of December to discuss the matter at length. The meeting will be held under the chairmanship of the ministry’s secretary, the ASG said. The bench, which wanted the matter to be considere
Scrap the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Bibek Debroy / New Delhi September 04, 2006 After talking of the need for accountability, the Draft Approach Paper ignores this. Let me begin with a quote from the Draft Approach Paper to the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-12). “The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and National Rural Health Mission are ambitious programmes for providing primary education and primary health services universally. All these programmes are meant to give a new deal to rural India.” In subsequent sections, the Draft mentions the 2 per cent education cess imposed in 2004-05, “earmarked for the SSA which aims at useful and relevant elementary education to all children in the age group 6-14 by 2010.” Whether the cess was earmarked for elementary education is a moot point, but the Planning Commission presumably knows best. We are told that “near 100 per cent” enrolment of 6-14 year olds is likely to be achieved by the end of the 10th Plan (2007), but that the dropout rate in primar
Stalling Parliament costs taxpayers Rs 20,000 a minute George Iype August 09, 2006India loses nearly Rs 20,000 (about $400) every minute when politicians stall proceedings in Parliament. read at http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/aug/09spec1.htm
The best way forward is to put the force of competition to use in the labour market. by Subir Gokarn A set of proposals was jointly submitted to the government by Assocham and the CII last week, suggesting a series of initiatives to be taken by the business to increase economic opportunities for members of the scheduled castes and tribes. The proposals essentially involve interventions at all levels of the education system by way of setting up of coaching centres for preparation for admission to and endowment of scholarships at premier institutions. They also visualise mentoring programmes for the development of entrepreneurs from these communities. These initiatives are all based on voluntary action by members of the two associations and compliance would be entirely self-regulatory. The associations propose a code of conduct, which would guide their members’ actions, reinforced by the regular disclosure by companies on their individual contributions. The submission was, not surprisi
Growing demand prompts B`lore to promote dual use of water Aravind Gowda With the population of Bangalore crossing the 7-million mark and the demand for water reaching 1.2 billion litres per day (BLD), the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) has proposed the dual use of water – laying separate pipelines for supplying drinking water and recycling water for non-drinking purposes. Initially, the focus will be on industries. At present, BWSSB supplies recycled water containing ‘biological oxygen demand’(BOD) between 20 per cent and 30 per cent (considered fit for washing, gardening and industrial purposes) to major industries around the city. Similarly, it has worked out a plan with the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) for laying separate pipelines to supply both drinking and recycled water under the dual water supply policy in new residential townships like Visvesvaraya Layout and Arkavathy Layout. “Owing to the rapid expansion of the city, especially on the outskirts,
10 things I hate about India by Claude Arpi 1. Power cuts: While typing this article, the electricity board cut off the power supply. The reason -- a storm last night which lasted for 15 to 20 minutes. 'As a precautionary measure' the officials very compassionately disconnected vast areas from the network in the night and the following morning. Being in rural Tamil Nadu, these officials want to protect us from broken wires due to fallen trees (it could electrocute passersby, they say). While I appreciate their reasoning, I was surprised to see that during the cyclonic rains in New Orleans last year, though thousands perished, electricity was not switched off. Indian officials will tell you that the US is a rich and developed country, not comparable to India. Where is the connection? 2. Indian babus: One could write volumes on the famous babus of India. They run one of the largest bureaucracies in the world, but have not been able to change their mindset. A particularly bothers
Education Voucher - a policy statement NCERT Director, Prof. Krishna Kumar, has resolutely rebuked the voucher system of funding education on several grounds. He claims that vouchers may in fact be ‘sold’ for cash by needy parents. Firstly, vouchers do not involve cash transactions. The parent in whose child’s name the voucher has been issued deposits the voucher in her school of choice. The school’s bank debits the government for that amount on admission of the child. Eleven countries, so far, have adopted the voucher system in some form or the other. Many of those vouchers have catered to populations with similar demographics as India. Countries, however, have not faced a problem where the poor sell their vouchers for cash. To tackle malpractices, one would have to evolve mechanisms and implement them in a way that makes the system foolproof. Secondly, poor parents in India are realising the importance of good education to life. They are willing to impinge on their meagre resources
Employment exchanges spend Rs 20 crore to fill 902 vacancies Ila Patnaik NEW DELHI, MAY 2:Amid May Day celebrations, here’s a wake-up call from the government’s employment exchanges. A recent report on these exchanges in Delhi shows that in the last five years, only 902 of the 5 lakh candidates who registered have got jobs through them. The 902 placements were made at a total cost of Rs 20 crore—in other words, each placement cost the government Rs 2.3 lakh. The report on the State of Governance in Delhi, by the Centre for Civil Society, covers the 20 employment exchanges in Delhi from the period 2000 to 2004. The 250 government officials who work in these exchanges made 123 placements in 2000, followed by 48 in 2001. The number rose to 138 in 2002, but after a spike in 2003 to 426, placements fell to 167 in 2004. On an average, every staff member barely managed one placement a year. The blame, of course, doesn’t lie with the staff. In an era where government enterprises manage their
LESSONS IN IDENTIFYING EFFECTIVE TEACHERS Parul Sharma Government schools in India are host to a problem that afflicts public schools in several parts of the world today: poor teaching standards and consequent low academic performance coupled with high drop out rates. These trends in public schools stand in stark contrast to trends in private schools. Thus, going by the simplest indicator of academic performance, in 2004 the pass percentage of students in Delhi’s government schools in the Secondary Examination was 50% while that for private schools was 80%. Teachers constitute the single largest group of educated and professionally qualified workers in India. Regular teachers are government employees with assured lifetime tenure, pension, medical and other welfare benefits. They are governed by strict entry and qualification norms (one to twelve years of general education and minimum two years of diploma or degree in education). Low teaching standards and accompanying problems prevail
OBC Reservations: An IIT Faculty Member's View Prof. M. Balakrishnan, IIT Delhi Nearly six decades after independence, this country is planning to announce that majority of its population is backward and does not have equal opportunity to pursue education and employment. Along with this, it is going to open up a Pandora's Box by various caste groups to be classified as "backward". What an interesting way to begin the 21st century when finally India was beginning to emerge as a serious player in the new knowledge economy! The major carrot that is being doled out is the seats in the elite medical, engineering and management Institutes. What bothers me is no one is interested in even consulting the people who have built these Institutions and brought them to this stature. I have strong views on efficacy of reservations in general but here I would confine myself to the issues concerning IITs. At least here with my three decade long association, I can claim to know som
The Delhi High Court has banned private schools from holding interviews to their nursery classes. But in an attempt to laud this decision that saves parents the stress of admissions, we ought not to overlook the larger picture. There is a dearth of schools in this country. According to most private schools, the fairest attempt to cap the multitude of applicants is to test their merit, talent, intelligence, presence of mind, etc. One may argue that judging young children on the basis of these skills is probably not as just as it seems. After all, the economic and social conditions of the family do play an important role in moulding those qualities at a young age. While banning interviews may equalize access to good education for all children in the interim, it does not stand as a long term solution to the problem. The problem, here, is the lack of good schools. The solution to that problem would be to assuage the mound of laws and rules restraining new schools to be set up. The Delhi go
A Ticket to a Better Education: Philippines Education Voucher Scheme Philippines public schools have been riddled with high teacher-pupil ratios and poor infrastructure facilities. In spite of having the advantage of an English speaking population and an enviable literacy rate of about 93 per cent, they have been slower in building their knowledge economy status as compared to their Asian counterparts. This is largely attributed to the depreciating quality of public school education in Philippines. In the recent years to address the demand for good quality education, the supply of private education has increased. While public school education is free, private elementary and high school education in the Philippines can cost anywhere between 2000 to 5000 pesos per year. A large number of Filipino children who cannot afford better quality private education continue to slump with free public education. To bridge this disparity in the quality of education between the haves and the have-nots
Now, Delhi Govt clears way for more schools Neha Singh New Delhi, May 4: TO tackle the huge demand for admissions, the Delhi government has paved the way for setting up more schools. In a significant move, the Education Department has lifted the cap on the number of ‘‘essentiality certificates’’ that are granted to each district. As per the rules, any application for starting a new school must be accompanied by an ‘‘essentiality certificate’’, granted after surveying the needs of the district. So far, there was a fixed cap on the number of these certificates issued per district, varying according to the population. But the new rule means that anyone who wants to start a new school can do so, regardless of the number of existing schools in the district. Of course, the proposed school will have to meet the other basic criteria — budget, teaching staff, structured transportation and registration with the land agency concerned. There are approximately 12 lakh children out of schools in De
Floating school: Education delivered at home Tejeswi Pratima Saturday, March 11, 2006 (Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh): Educationists in Andhra Pradesh hit upon the idea of a floating school to draw children who would otherwise be helping parents at work.A perennial problem in rural India is of parents refusing to send their children to school. So a team of enterprising educationists in Andhra Pradesh took the school to where the children are. Every morning at nine, a special boat comes to pick up fishermen's children who otherwise remain busy helping their parents. Now they spend the day the boat school near Kakinada, in Andhra Pradesh's East Godavari district. "I used to go for fishing with my parents. Now I want to study," said Sita, a student.Home deliveryThe fishing community here was reluctant to send their children to school and preferred that they helped them at work. So the administration under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme decided to take the school to th
Education still a distant dream for street children Express News Service Kolkata, April 19: In a recent survey by some NGOs in Kolkata it has ben revealed that education amongst the homeless, or rather the street children, is on the back burner. Even though elementary education for children in India is a fundamental right, it is noticed that many of the homeless or street children are being continuously deprived of this right. Says Shabir Ahmed of Calcutta Samaritans, an NGO that works in projects concerning the pavement dwellers, “Elementary education is a fundamental right and it is guaranteed in the Constitution of India. But reports show that many street children or homeless children are not receiving the basic education.” Generally the parents shy away from sending their wards to the local schools but Ahmed emphasises that it is not the reason for such high percentage of street children not receiving elementary education. There are two primary reasons for the discrepancy. “The ma
AICTE will not issue any directions to deemed universities V.Jayanth and A.Subramani As the legal battle over the role of the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) in respect of deemed universities rages in the Madras High Court, the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development on Wednesday issued a notification empowering the deemed universities. "It is not a pre-requisite for an institution notified as a `Deemed-to-be-University' to obtain the approval of the AICTE to start any programme in technical or management education leading to an award, including degrees in disciplines covered under the AICTE Act 1987. However, institutions notified as `Deemed-to-be-University' are required to ensure the maintenance of the minimum standards prescribed by the AICTE for various courses that come under the jurisdiction of the said Council. It is expected that the institutions notified as `Deemed-to-be-University' maintain their standards of education higher than t
Shut liquor shops near school: Lucknow HC Courtesy: Times News Network LUCKNOW: The high court here on Thursday ordered forthwith closure of 53 liquor shops situated within 100 metres of educational institutions in the city. The court also sought a report from excise commissioner and the district excise officer within four weeks as to how many other liquor shops were situated within 100 metres of any hospitals, religious places, temples and residential areas. The above order was passed by a Division Bench comprising Justice AK Yog and Justice RP Yadav on twin PILs moved by Ramu Sanyal and Manoj Kumar Diwvedi. The court passed the above order in pursuance of the provisions incorporated under Rule 5 of Excise Act. The rule restricts any liquor shop within a radius of 100 metres from the educational, residential, temple, hospital premises etc, the court observed. The court also directed the government to return the licence fee to such 53 liquor licencees. However, it was made clear that
Desalination in Chennai - What about the poor and environment Gregor Meerganz von Medeazza In 1961, US president John F Kennedy noted that if humanity could find an inexpensive way to get fresh water from the oceans, that achievement would dwarf any other scientific accomplishment. Desalination technology embodies this hope, and has been increasingly perceived over the past 30 years as a feasible solution to meet growing freshwater demands. Reverse osmosis (RO) technologies in particular are increasingly popular. Daily production capacity in the 17,350 desalination plants operating worldwide has grown to 37 million cubic metres, supplying about 160 million people. However, the desalination technology is adopted primarily in the water-poor and energy-rich nations of the Persian-Arabian Gulf, where it accounts for 40 per cent of the municipal and industrial water used. The Tamil Nadu government has called for the construction of a 100 million litres per day (MLD) seawater desalination pl