Yesterday’s Failures are Today’s Successes

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Ref dost-mittar #60

[...it is my understanding that the 25% quota applies to IITs, too. I also understand that some of those admitted under reserved class do not make it into the second year.]

The admission criteria are RELAXED but not completely eliminated for SC/ST candidates and the reservation is limited to 22.5% (at least at IIT-Kharagpur) as opposed to the Mandal Commission recommendation of 50%.

Those who don`t quite cut it are given a 1-year remedial course before being admitted to the regular program at IIT-Kharagpur.

Ref FarzanaVersey #59

[I, as a Mumbaiite, find little in common with a person from Delhi.... with the same level of education, upbringing and even jingoism!]

For which you should be eternally grateful to God! ;-)

Ref ahmedmadani #58

[I have never heard about a company called ``Bharat Dynamics`` which was started by Mrs. Gandhi`s efforts as per your note. Could write few lines about this company. I know major companies from India. I have never heard about company even once. Kindly throw some information about this company.]

Bharat Dynamics is involved in manufacturing missiles for the Ministry of Defence. Established in 1970. I don`t know if they manufacture any item related to satellite launch vehicles. They make the Akash (surface to air), Nag (anti-tank) kind of missiles.

Dost Mittarji,
I`m a little late to the party and perhaps someone else has made this point already. I`m not knocking you, mind you, but you might as well make the title read Yesterday`s (successes/failures) are today`s (successes/failures) and all four combinations would be valid. Therefore, while the exercise is amusing, one learns very little from it, even with all the advantages of hindsight. Let me give you an example. India came on the scene in a big way (Tata-Unisys had been doing it for eons before that) in software contract work with the millennium thing. Cobol programmers were sought out as western companies were desperately looking to back up data from their aging machines. Where were the largest number of cobol programmers? In india, where IBM had been kicked out by the cursed socialists and where evolution in programming and computer technology had more or less stopped and ancient knowledge preserved more out of necessity. Does one conclude from this chain of events that it was a good policy that IBM had been shown the door?
Another thing is, the whole IIT mystic is heavily overblown. The IT enterpreneurs and workers in india are mostly from other institutions. Figures, since IITs don`t graduate that many engineers. For every IIT grad who makes it to Stanford, there`s several more that end up at places like University of Alabama. The power of IITs is a myth. We haven`t had breakthrough technological or scientific innovations coming out of IITs. The smart ones from IIT would be smart even without an IIT education and IITs merely act as a selection filter. For what it`s worth, two of Microsoft`s VPs are alumni of guindy engineering college/anna university, madras.
Let`s consider the other side of your argument now: Suppose Nehru had emphasized primary education. Perhaps our population growth would have slowed and we would have a few hundred million mouths to feed. That would be development...

PM#100:
``Well, now would that not have much to do with the burst IT bubble, and with an increasing preference for American workers in the job market where it is opening up (mostly national security-related). ``
Of course, it does! we are not in either-or world; it`s a multivariate world and all factors come into play, including the push factors in the US and pull factors of a more buoyant market back home.

``from my experience with young Indians in the workforce, I`d have to disagree... all the Indians I came across who hailed bigger urban centres had one dream: the Green Card.``
This is quite compatible with my hypothesis. Green card still represents significant improvement in the prospects of both the migrant and especially his children. However, this is likely to change over time - for instance, by my rough rule of thumb of purchansing power, a person now needs to have an income of $5000 per month in the US to equal an income of Rs. 30,000 per month in India after taking account of the higher deductions at source, medicare, car insurance and other such factors. As of now, many people making Rs. 30000 in India will jump at a salary of $5000 in the US but over time the reality will hit home to more people in India.

``And incidentally, I don`t know how much water your `new nationalism` theory can hold, given that each of the two groups-- the more urbanized, Westernized, Anglicized, Northerners; and their less slick Southern compatriots, would rather share a dinner table with me, a Pakistani (though probably in their view an atypical one), than with the other group.``
Two factors would explain such phenomenon, a very small sample and, secondly, the curiousity factor which would draw an Indian towards a Pakistani.

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Incidentally, dost, since we are not loathe to expressive specualtive views here, I`d like to oppose what I believe is a fundamental principle of your thesis here-- that the noveau Indian, as you call him/her, is imbued with a spirit of India-first nationalism.

In #78, you write: ``...If the news reports are to believed, more of them are now staying back [in India] and some firms are in fact recruiting in North America to take people back to India.``

Well, now would that not have much to do with the burst IT bubble, and with an increasing preference for American workers in the job market where it is opening up (mostly national security-related).

`` I believe that most people want to stay in the surroundings they grew up in (including villagers) unless they can significantly improve their or their children`s living standards. If new graduates can do that in India, they will stay there, or so I would like to think. ``

from my experience with young Indians in the workforce, I`d have to disagree... all the Indians I came across who hailed bigger urban centres had one dream: the Green Card. And many shared a disdain for most things Indian-- including, or especially, some IIT graduates I chanced to meet. On the contrary, it was the little-town folks from Madras and Karnatika that seemed more interested in returning to the motherland.

And incidentally, I don`t know how much water your `new nationalism` theory can hold, given that each of the two groups-- the more urbanized, Westernized, Anglicized, Northerners; and their less slick Southern compatriots, would rather share a dinner table with me, a Pakistani (though probably in their view an atypical one), than with the other group.

I know that these are only anecdotal observations based on a very small `sample` anyway, but that may still be a step up from much of the pure speculation flying around here.

rgds,
PM

Pankaj, re.#81
miaN, your optimism wrt free enterprise and minimalist governement intervention is a bit evocative of some other folks` pie in the sky of their perfect religion. That is, the theory, or the ideology (for it is nothing but that without demonstrated success) is one thing but the practice quite another.

To put it simply, to earn the right to be so gung-ho about the promise of the free market and laizzez faire ecomomics, you should be able to point out to the success of at least one such experiment.

However, the reality far from supports the theory of the hidden hand. In some study conducted last year (I think) it was found that the Furtune500`s top one hundred trans-national corporations ALL benefited at some point from government intervention at some point, with 20 of them being bailed out from bankruptcy with public money! (Sorry I don`t have the source, but I think it could be verufued easily enough with a little bit of `enterprising` web-searching)

So, even if you somehow consider this a success of free market enterprise, you would have to admit that it`s only possible when you have a very strong, rich, BIG nanny state to help you out when the chips are down.

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Dost-Mittarji:
Thanks for that info. I was just reading sadna`s linked document.

Re: Harimau #91

Thanks for the post but I fear logic and facts will be of no use. IIRC, macgupta and I have had that discussion before (on just how evil was the British Raj) and there is no point in trying.

ferozk#28:
``Nehru was an aristocrat and he ruled India in that mold of mind and when the aristocrats rule with the best of intentions, people suffer. ``

True! and it shows that it may be as unsafe to entrust a nation to them as to the feudals. Actually, one could perhaps argue that feudals are closer to the pulse of the masses, with whom they deal on a daily basis than the aristocrats. (the classic ``if they dont have bread, why dont they eat cake mentality!).
Nehru hated feudals and abolished zamindari, but did nothing to abolish the private schools, the breeding ground for elites/aristocracy. And he loved the darbari/sarkari thaat-baat of parlatial bungalows for the president, prime minister and ministers of his socialist utopia. Traffic on the streets in India was closed two hours before the savaari of Nawab Saheb to pass through it.

silly, faruk, ballukhan:
``I am from south but i never considered myself first as telugu and then indian. I always considered myself first as Indian and then Hindu. `` (silly)
That is very nice to know. But you must be aware that at the election time, political parties in India not only appeal to narrower loyalties but also generally take caste, religion and similar narrower loyalties into consideration while choosing a candidate. This is true even of the modern, progressive leaders like Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh.
And when I refer to this group of noveau Indians having a primarily pan-Indian identity, I do not mean that they do not have other identity or identities.

sadna#83:
Thanks for providing a useful link, as usual, even when it supports the rival viewpoint. There is another interesting graph, which shows that while inequalities decreased during the Nehruvian era, the poverty levels increased; the opposite happened in the following period, namely, that the inequalities increased during this period while poverty levels decreased. There is a moral here for Angana Chatterjees, Praful Badwais and others: live with inequality and reduce poverty; or praise equality and let the poor starve (while you deliver your khutbas from your ivory towers!).

PM:
The link provided by sadna provides an answer to the question posed by you regarding definition of poverty, which I am reproducing below:
``Often conducted annually, the survey has used consistent poverty lines (49 rupees for rural areas, and 57 rupees, both in terms of 1973-1974 prices). The poverty lines were described by the survey designers as permitting a caloric intake of 2,400 calories in rural areas and 2,100 calories in urban areas.3 The NSS provides national and state-by-state data on average consumption, share of the population in poverty, and the distribution of consumption among the population, in the form of a Gini coefficient.``

Faruk:

``This is an amazing generalization of Indians, completely different from my experience. Most Indians I have met think of themselves as Indians period. They might belong to one part of the country and may live somewhere else or should I say their ancestors belonged to some other part of the country.``

This is certainly true of my extended family. But I think this holds especially true of the members and descendants of central government employees. Millions of kids graduate from Kendriya Vidyalayas every year (I spent three years in three different ones) and they have NO identity but an Indian one.

veeresh #64:
``The one thing that has changed in India since 1947 for the rural unlettered poor who are still in the Anrez Rani/thanedaar kotwal/road rangdari tax era is the railway ticket, now computerised at some of the smallest hamlets . . . ``
Computerised train tickets are not available in the ``smallest hamlets``... a few months ago I had to book a train ticket at the railway station of a small town, and they were still handing out the small cardboard tickets. Of course, it does not make economic sense to install computers in small stations, where the volumes are not there...

Re : dost-mittar # 78
“But most Indians view themselves generally in terms of their local, caste, ethnic, language and religious identities. The group that I describe, which one might call the ``nouveau Indian`` however does think of himself/herself as primarily Indian. At the risk of raising my friend nasah`s ire, it may be compared to an earlier, nobler generation of pan-Indians who banded together to fight for the liberation of the country.”

This is an amazing generalization of Indians, completely different from my experience. Most Indians I have met think of themselves as Indians period. They might belong to one part of the country and may live somewhere else or should I say their ancestors belonged to some other part of the country. Apart from this a lot of people have parents who hail from different parts of the country, this will be more true for people of the coming generation than my generation. For these people to think of themselves in terms of their local, caste, ethnic, language and religious identities will be even harder.

Regards,

Faruk