Why one must feel sorry for Kapil Sibal/Education system

One must feel sorry for Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal.

When Sibal became Union HRD minister, he brought a new thrust to the ministry at least on the outset. He talked of expanding the number of education-providers, improving the quality of education, giving autonomy to colleges/universities. But before he could bring in that much-needed change in the education scenario of the country, the party high command thought Sibal’s calculation skills could be better utilised to challenge (even if vaguely) the proficiency of the CAG in the infamous 2G spectrum scam. So, he was given additional charge of Telecom Ministry by Prime Minister manmohan singh (read SONIA GANDHI).

The next we heard from Sibal was not on the issue of providing interest subsidy on educational loans or abolition of Class X board exams. But on how the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) had been ‘utterly erroneous’ in his estimation of a loss of Rs. 1.76 lakh crore in the 2G spectrum allocation.

However, by this time the 2G scam was being investigated by CBI under the supervision of the apex court and A Raja’s involvement in the lapses was almost certain.

Reacting to Sibal’s comment, Supreme Court reprimanded him and asked the Minister to behave with ‘some sense of responsibility’. Sibal’s reply could well have been: I am behaving responsibly. After all, this is the responsibility that I have been assigned – to save Congress’ face in the 2G spectrum scam.

But, Sibal cannot not even do that. That is why we should feel sorry for him.

When CBI arrested A Raja and Kapil Sibal was reminded of his comment that ‘2G allocation had not caused any loss to the country’, the Telecom Minister had nothing to say. He told media persons to ‘go and ask CBI’.

Now when he is asked if he is a reluctant telecom minister, Sibal replies – If the prime minister (read SONIA GANDHI) wants me to do a job, I do it.

Meanwhile, public education system continues to languish. Statistics, that only half the children of Class V can read Class II textbooks, is a shame for any government. We cannot but feel sorry for the public education system.

REMINISCENT NOTE:  Excerpts from Rahul Gandhi’s maiden speech in Parliament in 2006 that spun higher education dreams: “I walked to the children in village schools "Beta bade hokar kya bano ge?"  The silent stare I got in reply disturbed me. In school after school, I have asked this question and got no answer.

Well.. Mr Rahul Gandhi will go to villages and find out about the rotten education system, only to use the anecdotes to pepper his speech in the Parliament.  

Mr Gandhi, may we tell you – your silence is more disturbing than the child who could not answer: Beta bada hokar kya banoge?

conciousdipu@gmail.com

Facebook Vs Wikileaks

Pick the odd man out - Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, Mark Zuckerberg.

The answer may not be difficult to guess: Mark Zuckerberg.

Now the similarity. All of them including the facebook creator have been TIME persons of the year - 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 respectively.

Vladimir Putin, the man responsible for bringing Russia back to the great game of geopolitics after it was almost on the verge of becoming a failed state.

Barack Obama, who won a historic American election to become the 44th President of the United States and the first African American to do this. A year later he won the Nobel Peace Prize (2009) "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.”

Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of Federal Reserve (the central bank of the U.S) who prevented an economic catastrophe. In 2009, Bernanke hurled unprecedented amounts of money into the banking system in different ways, which lay the groundwork for the Fed's eventual return to normality.

It is here that one is forced to stop and think before moving on to the next candidate in the list. Mark Zukerberg’s online directory ‘Facebook’ that connects people through social network may have blossomed beyond 500 million in 2010 with a movie, The Social Network, made about the early days of Facebook. And it may be true that one out of every dozen people on planet now has a Facebook account.

But, when seen in the light of Zukerberg’s predecessors that the esteemed TIME magazine has honoured, his contribution seems insignificant.

TIME Magazine's Person of the Year, is the award given since 1927 to the most influential person in the world in that year.

2010 was a year when Julian Assange founder of whistleblower website WikiLeaks captured headlines of almost all mainstream dailies around the world and his revelations were debated in Parliaments of most democracies.

According to a report in the Canada based The Gazette (Montreal) Julian Assange was voted top newsmaker of the year 2010 by senior editors at Postmedia Network newspapers and canada.com.

The social networking business

Facebook's core business is social networking – something that has already been tasted and enjoyed by other players in the field.

Take the examples of AOL, Tripod, Friendster, Orkut, MySpace or LinkedIn. You might have believed the same thing about any one of those social networks as you do now about Facebook.

AOL was considered ubiquitous and invincible. And yet it saw its downfall just like the other aforementioned social networks did. MySpace was described as one of the most wildly successful sites in 2006 when it had amassed 124 million profiles in its two and a half years of existence. 

So it is wrong if we say AOL, Orkut or MySpace lost and Facebook won. The more appropriate statement will be MySpace won first and Facebook won next. And something else will follow.

Interestingly, Julian Assange won the most votes in TIME magazine’s 2010 Person of the Year poll. While Assange was148,383 votes over the silver medalist, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister of Turkey, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg came in 10^th.

TIME’s editor played safe by picking a less-controversial figure. However, the choice itself became a controversy with numerous journalists and commentators alleging that the magazine went with the safer choice, opting for the 26-year-old billionaire over the Australian hacker-turned-anti-secrecy advocate now targeted by the U.S. Justice Department. 

A TIME reader comments on TIME’s cover story of its Person of the Year 2010 issue: “Guys, I’ve got a guy here working at TIME, who tells me that Zuckerberg paid to get his face on the cover. He also tells me, things like this are not unusual.”

conciousdipu@gmail.com

'Obsession with politics blurs the vision'

Union Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal’s remark that ‘obsession with politics blurs the vision’, must not be looked only in the context that the minister assigned.

Kapil Sibal’s context – broadly on the opposition’s continued demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the 2G spectrum allocation scam and specifically on Arun Jaitley’s remark that the manner in which a judicial probe into the 2G spectrum allocation scam was announced may invite breach of Parliamentary privilege.

A little introspection into Kapil Sibal’s own party in another recent episode will betray how obsession with politics has blurred the vision of the Congress party too.

The Congress general secretary, Digvijay Singh’s claim that the ex-Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare had called him two hours before 26/11 attacks to say that his life was in danger, is bound to shock anyone. Digvijay saidthat his initial reaction on hearing about Karkare’s death was, 'Oh God, they have killed him'.

It may be another thing that Hemant Karkare’s widow has accused Digvijay Singh of playing politics with her husband’s death.

A little background about Digvijay’s statement: Karkare was investigating the Malegaon bomb blast allegedly carried out by Hindu extremists. Days after Karkare’s death, the then minority affairs minister AR Antulay made an unsubstantiated statement: Karkare could have been a victim of “terrorism or terrorism plus something”.

Rejecting Digvijay’s entire claim, Kavita Karkare (Hemant Karkare’s wife) ascertained (on Dec’ 12) that if her husband felt threatened by anyone, she would have known. She said that her husband did not get any threat calls and Hindu extremists did not have anything to do with the death of her husband.

Interestingly, the latest disclosures by WikiLeaks point that secret cables sent to United States after a month of the Mumbai attacks revealed, the United States thought that the Congress ‘implicitly endorsed the conspiracy theory’ after initially distancing itself from its own party man AR Antulay’s ‘completely unsubstantiated claims’. And US reportedly feels that the Congress backed the conspiracy theory to please Muslims.

There may be another reason behind Digvijay Singh playing the Muslim card now. The Congress earlier this month appointed Digvijay Singh as in-charge of the party's affairs in Assam, a state which has a high population of Muslims and no political party in the state can think of forming the government without their support.

Now, the Congress party is trying to distance itself from the party general secretary’s controversial remark calling it the leader's personal statement. Had it been any other party which gives its leaders freedom to express their views, it would have been easier to believe this. But not with the Congress.

In a significant revelation, Ms. Kavita Karkare has reportedly denied that Digvijay Singh knew her husband personally, contrary to the defense that the Congress later tried to put.

What is of more significance is Ms. Karkare revealation that during the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections (2009), she was approached by political parties who offered her money to speak to the media and make statements that suited them.

Off course Ms. Kavita Karkare was very clear and said, “no such questions would be entertained.”

High on whitener, low on health

As the three kids entered the crowded bus in New Delhi railway station, the conductor at once grabbed them for tickets. Their untidy clothes and blank faces made him guess that they were ticketless passengers. The boys, ages 10 to 14, looked unaffected. They seemed accustomed to the rough handling. Closer scrutiny revealed that they were in some kind of stupor. 

The youngest who was bare-chested held his shirt close to his mouth constantly inhaling from it. The eldest after the brief scuffle with the conductor joined his partner taking out a folded handkerchief from his pocket. It contained the intoxicant. All through their half-hour journey from New Delhi Railway station to Nizamudin, they kept their pieces of cloths close to their mouths. As if it was their life. 

The other passengers in the bus seemed unconcerned. One of the boys who felt that the effect had lessened took out a white tube from his pocket and squeezed some transparent liquid on his piece of cloth, quickly slipping the tube back to his pocket. 

The tube contained whitener - a white fluid used to erase errors in handwritten, printed papers. It is increasingly being used by street children as an addiction. The addicts who are mostly adolescents sniff it. 

I could no longer hold myself and I enquired about their whereabouts. The eldest who seemed their head called himself Yasin. He said that he lived in Nizamudin in South Delhi with his elder brother who was a rickshaw-puller. His two friends were his neighbours. His voice was hoarse and manly unsuited to his age. And he spoke with a lot of effort. 

He revealed that the piece of cloth contained whitener which they bought from Nizammudin. For the people living in the capital, the sight of poor street urchins is not a very uncommon one. Many among them are also aware of the addictions that these people get into very early in life. 

What is more worrying is that whitener addiction in juveniles is increasingly being associated with crimes. 

300% more harmful than alcohol

Inhaling the substance is many times more harmful than alcohol, say health experts.

Dr Dnyaneshwari Patharkar of Go India Foundation says that inhaling whiteners is 300 per cent more harmful than regular alcohol because it directly affects the nervous system and hampers functioning of lungs, brain and kidneys.

 

Interestingly, the substance is not covered under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act and therefore the police are finding it difficult to tackle this menace. The police cannot stop it sale as it is a stationery product that is easily available in the market. It is the shopkeepers who have to limit its sale to students and office-goers.

A 15 ml bottle of whitener along with a diluter of the same quantity costs around Rs 25-30.

Will India produce the next globally innovative product

When Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria asks if the Indian IT industry is aiming to give the world the next Google, Facebook or Twitter, we don't have an answer. This, in spite of the fact that IT is one industry that we pride ourselves in. In fact, most other industries too have failed to provide a globally innovative product. One reason for this is Indian companies aim to cater to a demand led market to get faster return on their investment.

For this reason and for many others the average engineer or IT professional in India fails to think beyond a hefty paying job. The mentality of the society is also such that it forces Indians even with efficient skills and ability to play safe. The government and corporates should have the foresight to encourage young minds by investing in R & D to drive innovation. Otherwise India will continue to be looked at as a centre for very basic IT work and for routine customer requirement.