Thursday, June 28, 2012
Monday, June 25, 2012
At Charminar...
View from Charminar |
From top of Charminar |
A little secret to share at the foot of Charminar! |
Even Looks tasty! |
These guard the walls of Charminar |
Mango vendor on the street- adds colour and aroma to your Charminar visit |
Masjid from Charminar |
Heee, I see everything without paying ticket fare! |
It's a cool day, therefore we are here at Charminar... |
Graffiti at Charminar: Punishable, but who cares! |
Leppy- the Selfish Elephant
Once, Leppy, the elephant was walking
about in the forest searching for food. He was very hungry. It was summer and
food was not plenty. While walking, he found a banana on the road side. As he
was about to pick it up, he heard someone saying, ‘hey Leppy, I am already
eating it. If you want, take half of it’. He looked around and saw no one.
Leppy wanted the whole banana! |
But when he was about to pick the banana
up, he heard the voice again. He looked closely and saw a little ant on the
banana. He laughed and said to her, ‘haha, you tiny creature! What can you do
to me? I will kill you in one stamp! The banana is mine. I will eat it.’
The little ant kept quiet. She decided
to teach Leppy a lesson. When Leppy picked the banana, she began biting him in
his trunk. Leppy jumped up in pain and began running around. He was mad in
pain. He tried to throw the ant away, but couldn’t.
Finally he begged the ant to stop
biting. Immediately she stopped. The little ant said to Leppy, ‘Leppy, it is
not good to be proud. The food is ours- not yours or mine. It is to be shared. I
was ready to give you half of my food, but you wanted all of it. If you are
selfish, you will not be happy.’
Leppy said, ‘sorry friend. I was wrong. I
will never be selfish again.’ The little ant shared her food with Leppy. From that
day, Leppy was not selfish.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
BTec Factories
(Sorry if I sound too
negative. I couldn't help it!)
I work in an office
sandwiched between two manufacturing units. One on the left, the other on the
right. Both are multi-storey buildings in the heart of the city. The
manufacturing process starts at 8.30 in the morning, and ends at 4 in the
evening. Raw materials reach the unit from around 8 am. The one on the left has
an evening shift as well. They go on till 11 in the night, sometimes later. The
process looks- from my building, laborious and uniform on both sides. Are the
products, of good quality?
But what do they
produce? Now, that’s a good question. They don’t produce any material. Nothing
that can be seen. But they manufacture youngsters with a degree after their
names. Yes these are BTec Factories. IIT student factories. Coaching centres
cum Intermediate Colleges. Buildings with huge posters of IIT entrance rank
holders’ photos and their ‘marks’ obtained, hanging in front. BTec
manufacturing units!
In this locality, there
must be at least 10 of these institutions- Junior Colleges as they are called.
I am proud of the fact that so many of our youngsters are interested in higher
education and are actually into it. But I am sad that their interest is mostly in
one particular field of study. I wonder what is so much alluring in being an
engineer. And why and how does our country need so many engineers? Don’t we
need English scholars, fashion designers, primary teachers, merchants? Or should
they all be engineering failed candidates?
5 years ago when I was
in Chennai, I had learned that there are around 130 engineering colleges in the
city of Chennai itself. Each college will have at least 200 students in a
batch. Which means, Chennai alone ‘manufactured’ 26,000 engineers 5 years ago! Look
at Andhra’s condition. It has 847 (year 2012) engineering colleges with 3.39
lakh seats! Interestingly, no one talks about the pass percentage of these engineering
colleges. It is unofficially heard that not more than 40% pass each year! Now,
that is an interesting figure. Out of 100 engineering students, 90 buy their
engineering seats paying lakhs. And after 3 or 4 years, they gloriously fail in
their course. What a national waste!
Therefore, these
manufacturing units do not manufacture engineers alone, but loafers and thieves
and failures and dropouts and criminals and drug addicts and psychos as well.
That’s a great social service they are doing. I appreciate the pain they take.
Coming back to the
coaching centres, they do another wonderful service to the nation. That is,
they inspire a sort of ‘spirit of competition’ in students, that pulls them
down to the abyss of despair if they get one or two marks less than the
expected 95+ in the top rated subjects.
Why does this happen?
Because it is big business. Having a network of of such coaching centres in the
heart of cities is no joke. Assets in terms of land and building are huge in
magnitude. If 3 lakh students get into Engineering colleges, at least 10 lakhs
do try writing exams. The fee is enormous! And name and fame in terms of IIT
ranks they buy, is great. People say, there is a nexus between these
‘factories’ and those who set question papers for top competitive examinations.
I don’t know how much of it is true. If it is, our society has a rotten sense
of morality.
I am an ordinary man. I
don’t understand the rules of this game. But I can say this much. If the cream
of our youth goes away into these manufacturing units to become BTec bearers,
and majority comes out as BTec failures, we will only have a lopsided society.
One that is full of one kind of people. Uniform and boring. With crime levels
going up. A society that doesn’t think creatively. One that doesn’t
produce/create. A complete consumerist society (we shall fulfill the dream of
capitalists). It might take some time,
but surely something of this sort is going to happen. Let us wait to see if
parents wake up, to wake their children up from this illusion.
Saturday, June 09, 2012
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