IIT JEE theatrics

Kapil Sibbal minced no words when he made his intentions clear for JEE eligibility. Mr. Sibbal has made it clear that the reason for this change is mushrooming of coaching centres throughout the country. His logic is simple. Coaching institutes train students and hence they (students) don't pay attention to class 12th exams. This in my opinion is a flawed assumption.

Most students in IITs (at least IIT Kanpur) have more than 80% marks in class 12th. Many of those who don't score more than 80% are from state boards who will go above 80 once the marks are normalized( I hope sanity will prevail). And add to it the fact that most of them have come from coaching institutes. Last time they changed the rules, apparently targeting coaching centres from a particular city, the results were not encouraging. Those institutes have grown from strength to strength in last 3 years. It appears those rules only helped them. I am sure these rules too will have no effect. What can you do if these institutes are able to attract cream of the country? The students they have in their premier batches are quite capable of scoring over 80% without much effort. Giving more weightage to class 12th will only dilute the quality inside campus.

Diwali Lights

Today is Diwali. It is the only festival which I 'celebrate' apart from Navratra. I have put quotes because notion of celebration varies to a great extent from person to person. It's not that I don't like other festivals. In fact I like Ganesha Chaturthi as much as Diwali but I feel more happy during Diwali. Perhaps, this is because of the weather at this time of the year. Latter part of October and early November are the best part of year for me. I like these two months very much, ostensibly because the chill in atmosphere is perfect to have a sound sleep. Morning sunlight appears to be bliss of God.

This Diwali is about to pass. The celebration was muted. Very few friends are here compared to last year. One of my friends dressed for the occasion reminding of the auspiciousness of the occasion. Some have preferred to celebrate Diwali at their respective homes which would have been usual course for me too had there been few more days off from regular schedule. As I write a lot of crackers are creating the din I hate most about this festival. Despite knowing the hazards these crackers pose to environment and to those who have respiratory problems, people continue to rejoice this way. All those laws about decibel levels and noise pollution seem to exist only in Uttar Pradesh pollution Control Board Advertisement which was published in today's newspaper. Some of these same guys (Yes I am referring to the IIT guys) will go and settle in West. There they will do all these things in a very controlled way (of course if they get any chance to do these things), but here it doesn't bothers them. Same thing is being done to Ganges. Under the garb of spirituality and tradition we keep on dumping our filth into Ganges. It is a travesty of sorts that we refer to Ganges as 'mother'. When I was kid environmental issues were choicest problem for essay writing on pressing issues. It seems in future they will be source of information for geologists working on ascertaining causes of disappearance of glacier fed rivers like Ganges.

The Game of Nations

The 60th anniversary of 'democracy', as the communists will have us to believe, was celebrated with much fervor and show of strength. China is rising as a world power and its GDP is expected to overtake that of the US in coming decades. They have ambition to be a superpower. And when your aspirations that pretty high, you don't want your neighbor to be as strong as you or even able to challenge you. That is where the India-China problem begins.

Tensions have heightened courtesy some 'incursions' and some really stupid statements in media on both sides. Add to it the statements made by chiefs of armed forces of India. These have combined to induce paranoia in minds of those who are concerned about India's hawkish neighbor. After going through a lot of articles related to this subject written by experts in defence and diplomacy I have found one thing common to all of them. They all acknowledge the superiority of armed forces of China but add that China wont attack India if sanity prevails over them. Considering that there is so much at stake (in terms of economy) and India of 2009 is much different from India in 1962 (even if fusion was fizzle fission is sufficient to be deterrent). China may have advantage as far as military might is concerned but the difference between military strengths of the two nations is not so much as to decimate India and lave China with minor scars. As one article puts it, "China of today is not the Maoist country that argued that power grew out of the barrel of a gun and that even if 300 million Chinese perished in a nuclear war 300 million would survive to build a glorious civilisation. Times have changed since the ideology of countryside surrounding the cities was advanced during the Cultural Revolution". However, India needs to increase its defence budget in order to match China's strength. This would act as deterrent and also remind China that we are not cowed down by its vacuous threats. Also, we should try to address our economic problems and combine together to achieve double digit growth in coming decade. On diplomatic fronts we should take up the border dispute issues with Chinese government. If Vietnam can stand up to them why can't India? Again quoting from the article, "There can be firmness in dealing with the LoAC or other issues where there are attempts at exploiting unequal advantages in situations. India has arrived at a stage in international politics when it has to demonstrate maturity in playing the game of nations".

In God's name

I remember a scene from 'Merchant of Venice' where Antonio, an altruist, castigates Shylock, a mean money lender for justifying his soulless and savage conditions by invoking religious scriptures. So many times in history religion has been used as a tool to achieve ulterior motives.

Be it Osama Bin Laden or closer home Mr. Jinnah or closer in time Varun Gandhi. However, it is not that religion is always used to achieve political gains. In Pakistan blasphemy laws have been blatantly abused to acquire properties of minority communities. In India as this editorial shows they are proving to be hindrance in infrastructure development.

It is appalling that we have more 'places of worship' than 'places of learning'. I am not saying that one does not learns anything in places of worship. In fact if we follow teachings of our respective religions in proper manner this bird named 'Utopia' would be found on earth. But what we have done is that some people planning to grab lands and other properties, public or private, are able to do so defying law in name of religion. We have 60,000 such illegal structures in New Delhi alone. Some of these obstruct construction of roads. You must have noticed worship places in middle of road. The demands of economy say that we must develop our infrastructure quickly if we want to be one of the developed nations in the world. These obstacles slow the pace of development and in the process increase the cost of project. I know religious sentiments must not be hurt for blind development but no one demolishes these structures. They are relocated. It is up to you to view it as demolition or relocation.

Let us put our country first. Don't be a drag in our nation's progress.