Rifts, Fissures, Cracks, Gaping Holes

can the author please interact????

Revathy has raised important issues that hinder progress of India. Even though she did not state any solution(s) but we can discuss it here. Dont know how many ideas will be used.
Education is a ticket out of poverty in India. It is important if you want to move ahead.
Its important that India has reservations even though I dont like the quota system. But after 60 years of it one needs to look back and see what progress have been made. What are its benefits and more importantly what is wrong with it.
Reservations should have limited use i.e. a person of SC, ST or BC should not be using it everytime. Maybe once to get in college and once to get a job. After that, for promotions and other opportunities he should compete on a regular turf.
With schools, the teachers needs to be held responsible for the success of students. If not completely atleast partially. We have teachers in government school that dont teach at all. It would be wonderful if a part of their salary can be tied to success of students. This is were perhaps the commie bashing comes in picture because of the teachers union.
The most important would be somehow to publish a report card for each government minister both at state and center. Hopefully some independent authority similar to election commission so that we can know what a particular minister or MP or MLA is doing with his time.
Private sector will play more important role as the economy opens up. If we can ask private companies to atleast let us know how many BC, SC or ST applied for a job and the reason for them not accepting them then one can know what is impeding the lower caste. This should not just be applied to caste but also religion and gender. The government census for religion is a good idea. It should not be politicized but the results should be understood how more muslims, women, backward caste people can be given more opportunities without discriminating against middle or upper class.

we all a fighting over the education system but i think the author has her own doubts about it.

she is not sure whether education cirriculum is sufficient to raise a man or woman to the elevated ranks of learning and culture and a balanced world view.

hence i think we are discussing something that the author is least bothered about.

Re: # 51
Education might not be sufficient reason but it is an important reason to elevate ranks of learning, culture and balanced view. It tries to teach a person to be able to think for himself.
When revathy asks question in her last para, the probable solution could be education. Hopefully that is why we are discussing it.

Re: # 41
mohar11:

There are silver linings of course.... but after 60 years of self-rule, if you still have something like 500 million unwashed poor roaming around - what do you call that? Most people will call that a ``disaster``....


``Education`` is mostly in the state list, and different states have had differing success rates. The literacy rate according to the last census is somewhere in the 65%, though the standard for what they mean literacy is very low..

But it`s a great improvement if you compared with the statistics of 1947. I think it was around 10%..If you think govt. spending on primary education is a commie policy, i need more of it..

What is needed from the govt. is not to cut back spending, but to introduce accountability and make the school management accountable.. Private schools are not paragons of virtue..They maintain higher standards in order to attract students and make money.. There are very few private schools with noble motives..

It is not that govt. school teachers are less paid. They get very good salaries compared to what you get in private schools.. It is the lack of accountability that gets the bad name for govt. schools..

``So Talking about problems is ``commie way of whining`` in Indianspeak.
Interesting folks of the fantasyland of India..... ``

Yup. India is a fantasyland where Commies create problems and then cry about it.

First screw India, and then talk about how India is screwed = Leftists.

Re: # 53 masan
[...If you think govt. spending on primary education is a commie policy, i need more of it....]

Where did you get that?... no way - I am saying exactly opposite - I am asking the govt` to spend more - ``massive`` was my word.... And the money has to come from somewhere - and that source would be PSU divestment.... but that`s where commies come in and screw up....

the second part - like you said - is accountability... the current delivety mechanism will not work - it has to be revamped....

Re: # 54 stuka

exactly....

Re: # 55

mohar:

``And the money has to come from somewhere - and that source would be PSU divestment.... ``

other source could have been the money earmarked for ``100 days employment`` programme. everyone knows where that money is going to end up.

this huge amount could have been used for productive outcomes like primary education. but who the hell cares, politics comes first, national priorities last.

Re: # 55

mohar:

Where did you get that?... no way - I am saying exactly opposite - I am asking the govt` to spend more - ``massive`` was my word.... And the money has to come from somewhere - and that source would be PSU divestment.... but that`s where commies come in and screw up....

the second part - like you said - is accountability... the current delivety mechanism will not work - it has to be revamped....


I agree with that..

Netizen, Mrs. Gopal is in india where it is pre dawn..

If I may interject, I went to government schools in rural tamil nadu where classes were often held under a banyan tree. We had a mix of teachers, some dedicated and very good, but for some others this was just a govt job with guaranteed salary and pension that also gave access to students who would come to their after-school coaching classes. Teachers running coaching classes ranked among the richest. They could afford to buy land and would be gone missing for days during harvesting, transplanting, etc. They also were usually knee deep in party politics.
In contrast, it was the poor, low-caste students who had to be absent from school for days during important crop seasons for that`s when you help out your family financially by working the fields.
If the infrastructure of the schools was bad then, it`s much worse now. The government seems to have abandoned primary education to the private sector.

Mohar,

The desi commies need to be sent to china and interact with the chinku commies to learn about free market economics. But the real problem is the state of West Bengal. If it were not for Bengal, there wouldnt be enough commies at the center who could influence policy.

One way out is for the rest of the country to punish West Bengal and Bengalis for this nuisance. There must be a national level movement of non-cooperation to boycott Bengal and Bengalis until they stop voting for commies. There needs to be a concerted national action focused on making the bongs change their ways.

All industrialists should move out their operations and close whatever investment is going on there as long as those fools keep voting the commies to power. Also other states must discourage bongs resident in West Bengal to apply and get jobs out of state. You vote for commies, you live with them and enjoy their magnificent system. Dont try to get out of Bengal and enjoy a good life outside, when your choices are screwing up the nation.

In one sense the Pakis are lucky....they got rid of their Bongs in 1971. If only, we could let them go and join Bangladesh, we would have 10% growth in rest of India and conquer the poverty issues

Calling china a communist country is insult to communism. Its a dictatorship headed by a small group of people.

re: this article
A nice article
There is no doubt caste system is a big curse in India. It is a legacy of a mental sickness that pervaded the Hindu society in the past.
My hope is that with globalisation, caste system will become irrelevant.
Already, the strict hierarchial rule of the caste (where a carpenter`s son can only become a carpenter etc) has broken down completely at least in big cities, towns. In villges, old system prevails but will break down once globalisation spreads there.
Sridhar

re: private schools
I think private schools have ushered in a slow revolution in education in India. Even poor familes are sending their children to these schools where quality of education seems to be better than any govt schools.
This NY Times article talks about such a revolution.
( In this democracy of more than one billion people, an educational revolution is under way, its telltale signs the small children everywhere in uniforms and ties. From slums to villages, the march to private education, once reserved for the elite, is on.

On the four-mile stretch of road between this village in Bihar State, in the north, and the district capital, Hajipur, there are 17 private schools)
(``If anything should be free, it is primary education,`` said Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. No developed country, whether France or Japan, had educated itself using private schools, he noted.

A recent census in the slums of Hyderabad, in Andhra Pradesh, found that of 1,000 schools identified, two-thirds were private, according to James Tooley, a professor at the University of Newcastle in England who oversaw the research.

``In big cities, it`s more or less over,`` an economist, Jean Drèze, who helped write a national assessment of education in 1999, said of government primary education, although rural students depend heavily on government schooling. ``Within 10 to 15 years, government schools will be almost wiped out.``)

(But it has neglected elementary education. India spends only about 1.7 percent of gross domestic product on primary education, and 3.4 percent for education overall (compared with about 5 percent for Brazil). Up to 40 million children are out of school, something the government hopes will be remedied by a law passed in 2002 that made free and compulsory education a fundamental right for children up to 14.)
Sridhar