Class 10 exam scrapped.. What lies ahead?

Well with all the big ticket reforms shaping up the Indian economy, the education sector was more or less ignored until last week. Last week the HRD ministry came with a brave plan to scrap the class 10 exam at national level. This was something which was discussed or I should say churned by the educational pundits. The decision was condemned, appraised, discarded, regarded the best and what not......

But finally the future is here. The decision has finally been made and the class 10 exams have been scrapped. The decision has been taken by ministry of HRD and there is no challenge to it. People who were part of the traditional educational system may find it hard to digest but the decision really stands out from the normal government jargaon and will benefit India in real terms.

The traditional system was very good when it was introduced. It provided the means to differentiate the talent and allow the students access to various fields of their interest. The system started gaining weight when the population of India started increasing. More and more people started competing and the competition became so called "cut-throat" at a point of time. The education system was now-a-days used to provide the access to very limited source of higher education. India has taken a big leap in providing the basic education. With the schemes like mid-day meals for students, employment guarantee for the parents of students etc, the government attracted large number of students and the states clocked literacy rates of around 60%.
The elite section of higher education however failed miserably to match the ever increasing need of educated population. The class 10 exam in a way became a filter to give admissions to only the best of the best. So every parent started forcing his child to learn / mug up and produce results. This pressure took its toll and suicides were reported from the student section. Every little child was bogged down by this pressure to score and get admission to the higher education courses.

This thing was fueled by the misconception that India has least number of higher education institutes which is good as its increasing the competition and allowing India compete with the developed nations like US, UK etc. I don't know when will the Indian government understand that those (US etc) who have the national level competitions of maths puzzle can't even thinking of competing with nations like India where every daily newspaper runs the maths puzzles just for entertainment. The need of the hour is to allow the real profit making institutes to make a foray into the field of higher education rather than allowing the current pseudo charitable ones to control the whole field. This will not only allow students to have varied set of opportunities but will also fetch the forex for India.

The ending of class 10 exam in a way symbolizes many things. It suggests the end of mugging up era and it also allows the real talented students to forecast their talent in various competitive exams where one has to understand and answer rather than mugging up. The new system suggests taking the comprehensive exams every 2 months. These will be objective kind of exams and will focus on talent of the student as one has to understand the concept so that he can mark the correct option.

The exam will take a lot of burden out of shoulders from young citizens of India and will allow them to pursue their hobbies. This will transform students into balanced and talented personnel. This will help in a nation building process rather than creating the army of bookworms who lack common-sense. Well the decision is to be appraised. Only daunting which remains is to allow the army of well talented an access to higher education which in turn will help the nation grow. The change has already begun. Its just a wait and watch phase to see if it bears fruits...........

Challenge before the Middle Finger

Indian democracy is one of its kind. A kind of unique yet managed democracy.

Now the word "Managed" has to meanings. One is a bit simpler and easy to understand. The other is a bit complex and complicated. The country has still retained its "Unity in Diversity" tagline proudly and looks as if it will maintain the same for years to come. The Indian economy has came out of recession and growing at a rate so that it can become the world's second biggest economy. Population of billions of people is sustaining and happy (By the way India comes on 4th rank in world's happiest countries). India is showing signs of development with all the new technologies coming to India; name a brand and its here. Audi, BMW, GM, Toyota, Mittal, Google, Microsoft and all the worlds leading brands. The metro is here, flyovers are here, super fast trains are here, bullet train will be here shortly.

India has taken a great leap in technology sector with its flagship IT sector leading the world, ISRO launching all sort of satellites even for other countries and planning to send a man on moon. DRDO coming up with tejas aircraft, arjun tank, brahmos missile and going on for the worlds biggest power sector deal. Nuclear R&D sector launching the arihant; India's first nuclear sub-marine, designed and built completely in India.

Talk about the common man, there are world class hospitals present with their 24*7 service. All international mutual funds are here to provide high returns on investment. The Nano is here to fulfill the dreams of lakhs to own a car. Suzuki Hayabusa is also here to quench the thirst of power hungry Indians. "Right to Information" is here to empower the common man. It pledges to bring in the transparency and reduce the efforts (and bribe amount) by common man to get the work done. The offices are all inter-connected with vast network of wired and wireless networks. Information is available at finger tips.

These are the things one finds in party manifesto of a political party. They really make one feel that you are witnessing the transformation of a country which was not even independent 70 years ago and is now poised to take over the world. But as every coin has the other side, the growth story also has brought its own challenges.

Looking at the elections statistics, it becomes an evident fact that 50% of the Indians consider voting as a holiday and do not venture out of their houses to cast their vote. Elections campaigns are more of an entertainment than being an informative trip for the voters. The candidates give only promises and they keep on repeating the same year on year. The target for all these elections to lure the rather uneducated and poor class of voters.

Let me quote on incidence here. When there were elections last time in India, one of my roomie happened to ask the house maid whether she voted or not. She happily showed the Ink on finger as the proof of voting. She happily told about the process taught to her and all the women in her colony. The "XYZ" party candidate told all of them how to handle the new machine for voting. The process goes as "Press first button so that red light flashes and a beep sound comes. Then press the button in front of the candidate for whom you have to vote and done..... Your vote is registered." Poor lady. Little did she knew about the machines and voted happily. No prizes for guessing that the first button to so called "turn on" the machine was actually the button to vote for "XYZ" party candidate. The guy won with thumping majority. And now the candidate will serve those people whom he cheated already. Better nothing said about it.

There is much apathy about joining the main stream in so called educated people of India. According to the latest survey of Times, approximately 38% of politicians in India have not even passed 10th standard exam. This is the crowd that decides policies to be followed by Harward, stanford MBA'a and business tycoons. These are the guys that decide who does what and how the hard earned tax amount will be spent. No need to mention about how much will be kept by the Babus themselves.

The same set of people support the government which decides Indian foreign policies, tax structure, defense strategy, education system, law and order management structure, Farming policies, Import / export policies and all those things which affect one's day to day life.

The challenge is to select those people who believe in democracy. Those who do not love to safeguard their vote bank by playing caste politics. The regionalism and minorities are not their weapons to garner sympathy. They do not abuse the talented ones by implementing the reservations everywhere to increase their fan following. The ones who are ready to declare their assets to display the clean character. They do not believe n VVIP culture and running on the roads with their sirened ambassador running at speeds compared to flight.

This can be implemented when the educated ones come to out and vote for the good. They should participate as good citizens to educate others who do not have privileges. The politicos can play around the illiterate but the dream should be to become the worst nightmare for the politicos who are even worthy of calling themselves the Citizen of world's 4th largest economic power. The dream should be to do one simple thing... VOTE. To make the middle finger proud some day.....

The 62 years of confusion

Scene 1 - Place - Wagha Border (India)
Screams.... "Bharat Mata Ki Jay"

Scene 2 - Place - Attari Border (Pakistan)
Screams.... "Pakistan Zindabaad"

Scene 3 - Place - Patriotic Movie in any theater in India
Screams.... "Doodh Maango Kheer denge.. Kashmir maango cheer denge"

Scene 4 - Place - Any cricket stadium in pakistan with pakistan almost to India
Screams.... "Ye match tumhara par poora kashmir hamara hai"

Some of the very common sites in both the countries....... A combined population of 1.5 billion, successful in confusing self for 62 years and still enjoying the same. Both of them claiming Kashmir to be theirs and fighting for it vigorously. Spamming orkut, facebook, twitter, youtube or any public forum for that matter. Hacking into each others sites. Governments spending probably the biggest chunk on defense purchases(leave aside the share of politicians and middlemen). Testing nuclear weapons, launching nuclear sub-marines, missiles, Indians coming up with biggest military defense deal ever in history..... All this only for one cause. To save each other from each other and fighting for kashmir. Children in both the countries learn K for Kashmir to keep the patriotism going.

But who really owns kashmir which was once called as HeavenOn Earth or Switzerland on India. Is it the oh so non violent Indians, so called failed state pakistan? The views are diverse and there is justification for everything and from everyone. One line of experts (loll) search the pages of history and claim that kashmir belongs to India. Other experts claim that pakistan won the kashmir in 1947 war (to which Indians love to refer as Insurgency). so both the sides are in a stalemate. but the reality is twisted and partially hidden.

Kashmir was as independent as India and Pakistan when it was formed during the partition. India and Pakistan parted their ways and Kashmir joined none. It was under king Hari Singh, the ruler of Kashmir at that time. He was pretty confident or may be overconfident about his abilities to run a state without help from India or Pakistan. His confidence was short lived as Pakistani army entered Kashmir and ran through Hari Singh's army to reach Srinagar. Hari Singh knew that his time was up and he surrendered Kashmir to India. Pandit Nehru was quick to use Indian army and the insurgents were pushed away from kashmir but not completely. Before the insurgents from whole kashmir could be cleared, the newly formed Republic of India made a vital mistake. They asked UN to intervene and accepted the cease fire decision. So Pakistanis stayed where they were on the day of cease fire and Indians occupied the remaining part. India declared Kashmir as special state and made it a special child. Later India and Pakistan fought many wars and accepted that Line of Control is the border. Issue solved???

Not at all. It just began. Pakistan claimed again. Hari singh was not the ruler of Kashmir when he signed the papers for merging Kashmir into India. Its as good as selling a house when the bank already took it over or Hitler merging Germany into China when Russian and NATO forces were in Berlin. So according to this theory, India was morally and legally incorrect when they attacked pakistani forces. India on the other side claims to have got the signature on merger papers before complete fall of kashmir. So pakistan has no rights on Kashmir. So again a stalemate.

Even though both the countries have internationally accepted the Line of Control as border, nobody allows their citizens to do the same. Indians still call the pakistani side of Kashmir as POK(Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) and take objection to pakistan calling Indian side as IOK. The first and only agenda for any pakistani leader has been kashmir. The leaders know they can't have kashmir but still keep fooling poor pakistani fellows and so do Indian leaders by claiming to join POK to kashmir to form "Akhand Bharat". So what's the solution???

The simple solution is to accept everything that as decided after the war with complete faith and follow it loyally. This will help both the countries cut down defense budget and help them grow faster. The home grown conflicts like Terrorism, parallel economy etc will be completely eliminated and so will be eliminated the election manifestos, big long speeches of politicos, the reasons to ask votes every election, reasons to earn money from every defense deal, reasons to get and praise martyrs, reasons to shout during cricket matches, reason of digging grounds before India-Pak matches and reasons to get confused. These same reasons have forced the politicians from both sides to let the issue be where it is for 62 years which could have been solved in less than 6.2 minutes if solved willingly.

The "FLU"ent business

Once upon a time, say 100 years ago when the USA was still a racial country, "THEY" said that the day a black man becomes US president, pigs will fly. Well that wasn't completely false either. Exactly 100 days after Obama rule, the swine FLU. Hot mexicans and the mighty US started it. UK followed the trend as a loyal supporter. They reported 50k cases every week. So the world was now witnessing a pandemic and since US was experiencing it, it was a worldwide tragedy :).

So how will the next superpower, the great democracy "INDIA" will stay behind. India also shared the pride and the IT hub of India started reporting the flu cases. 300 cases a week. Whooaaaa. A big number compared to the others. 1 death and pune pressed the panic button. The multiplexes went silent, festivals seized to be the fun, malls went quiet and the ever so buzzing streets witnesses the self declared curfew. Media went frenzy. Every person who sneezed was now a potential swine flu threat. Every sneeze would make the person skip a beat. The atmosphere became scary. Everyone was scared.

Or I should, "THEY" scared everyone and they were very successful. First relief came when the news came out that the normal mask will save from the swine flu. People saw the god is mask. The never ending queues were seen at the medical shops. The mask was available for everyone. First day for rs 5 then 10 then 25 and so on. People never cared for it. Our life is more important than money right....... So the greed grew and it in turn helped the panic situation. now there was not much profit in the normal mask. So came the other news, normal mask helps only for one day. So you have to buy it everyday. Now that made the sense. The sales volumes increased.

But a day came when people thought that everyday buying the mask was not working. The government authorities declared that the normal masks are not of any use. "THEY" again became happy. Now the rush for N95 mask started. This was a "GOOD" mask and quality comes for a cost. So the cost started from 50 and reached 400 faster than the blink of the eye. Everyone was looking like a swine with the new and more protective mask. So the mask industry had its share of profit.

Then came the traditional Ayurveda sector lead by the great baba Ramdev. The solutions included Nilgiri oil, Tulsi, Guduchi and what not. SMS's spread like the wild fire. The NIV denied the story of Nilgiri oil but people were not listening. They just wanted to be safe. So nilgiri oil reached the all time high rates. Spreading SMS's made sure that mobile companies came out of recession faster than they expected. They all started CALL XYXYZ helplines to let people know more about swine flu. All the experts were giving different opinions for different telephone operators. :)

The most benefited sector was the medicine companies. The "TamiFlu" was being looked at as the only life saver in the world. The company shares rose by 18% daily as the sales rose 100% daily. Everyone was buying it and stocking it. Other companies launched Virenza, CureFlu etc. So everybody got their share of profit. So everybody was happy and so was the common man because he was SAVED.

People wonder what is the cure for swine flu. I think it can only end when media gets some hot topic for breaking news and they divert from swine flu. This will allow people to calm down. The mad rushes for testing will reduce to a great extent and the labs will get time to test the vaccine rather than the throat swab samples. The stage is wide open......