Dont pity on poverty!!

The other day after writing the previous blog, i was wondering why am i always cynical about the conditions in India. There are many good things to write about, so why am i always critical. I then decided that my next blog would be something positive about our country. And i was on the lookout for some such incident.
I watched Slumdog Millionaire and read about the controversy relating to the movie. Amitabh Bachchan wrote in his blog that he was disappointed by the way the foreigners market poverty in India for their advantage. I found the statement to be true upto a certain extent. There are many examples for that. There are many movies and books on this topic which have been highly acclaimed abroad. Arvind Adiga's "The White Tiger", Salman Rushdie's "The Midnight Children", "Salaam Bombay", "Mother India", etc. are some of the examples of this genre of artwork. But isn't this also a reality. Should these kind of movies not motivate us to improve the conditions in our country so that the next time when somebody decides to pity on India, he is not able to find a valid issue. Well, this depends on your perception. This is truly subjective to each person as to how he takes it.
I personally believe that though the poverty here is marketed, we should not keep complaining on that and rather take steps to improve the conditions here. Taking a slightly different view, i have seen and experienced this thing that the people in slums are more happier than the so called civilized people burning midnights oil to achieve success and with the final aim "to be happy". So, why not to show that to the world. Of course, the conditions should be improved and they should be given equal share of rights, but don't pity on them. Compare them on the factor of happiness, and you will find yourself to be as poor as them or rather them to be as rich as you.

The changing face of Education industry

Education in India has become one of the most profit making venture today. It is very unfortunate that today it is seen as a business opportunity rather than being a noble profession. And this industry is such huge that it will surpass the GDP of most of the developing countries quite easily. Be it schools, colleges or the coaching classes, everybody is seeing this as the best way to earn white money. And this is one industry which will be least affected by recession.
Children as small as 3 year old are being targeted by the coaching classes. According to one survey, only the coaching classes amount to about more than Rs. 400 millions. And this is just the recognized coaching classes. If we take into account the private tuition classes, then this amount will rise 5 times at least. So, why this madness? Does a 3 year old child really need an instructor outside the school to learn things? Didn't our previous generation achieved the successes without these private tutors?
According to me, the teachers in the schools are not as sincere nowadays as they used to be earlier. And they are not alone to blame. The entire scenario is such that in order to survive in this competitive market, they have to resort to other means of earning than just the schools. Almost every teacher in school has some connection with the coaching classes or he/she is taking private tuition. And when they can earn more than 2 times they earn in schools and that too by spending half the time, why wont they be inclined to do that.
This was about the schools. But the case with private Universities is even worse. Most of the private colleges charge huge amounts from the students apart from the enormous aid they receive from the Government and the alumni. But, they are never able to show their respective spending. I would like to quote one personal incident that occurred a few days back.
I appeared for the SNAP test which is one of the few entrance examination for MBA. SNAP is a management entrance test for admissions to Symbiosis group of colleges. The test took place on the 21st Dec 2008. Like previous years, this year too loads of students took this test And as it is the case with all the popular entrance tests, all the management coaching institutions published their answer keys on their respective sites for SNAP too. So after appearing in the exam, like all the students, i also verified my answers with the answer keys of the popular classes like IMS, TIME and Career Launcher. And when i calculated the marks i was getting marks in the range of 83-87. And so i was elated, since that would have cleared my way for admission to the reputed institutes like Symbiosis. I also bought forms of two colleges, which costed me Rs. 2550. But, something very strange occurred when the results were declared on the 10th of Jan. When i checked out the result, i was getting just 66.5...
There are four sections in SNAP - quantitative aptitude and data interpretation, logical reasoning, verbal ability and general awareness. If the classes predict wrong answers for English, then we can understand, because the questions are sometimes ambiguous, but how can anybody predict wrong in maths, logical reasoning and general awareness. How can 1+1 be 2 for somebody and something else for somebody else. And not only me, but there are hundreds of students like me who had lost marks in the range of 5-25 from what they were expecting. Since this was the case, we expected that the cut-offs would go lower this year and so there was a ray of hope. The last date for filling up the forms for the colleges was 9th Jan. But, to our sheer horror, they changed the last date to 15th. Now, this was clearly done to encourage more students to buy the forms. We reported all these to the test takers and requested them to at least publish their answer keys. But there was no response from them, as was expected. Many people told me after that that this has been going on since years with the private colleges. Some also said that they do so to increase their intake of management seats at the cost of more eligible candidates.

There are so many cases to talk about on this topic, which i will write in other posts some other day. Signing off with a hope that things will change and education will remain a noble ethical profession as it should be.

The Fountainhead

I have just finished reading Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" and believe me it was simply superb. The imagination, the thinking, the imagery stuff, the kind of characters, etc portrayed in the book seem to be simply out of this world. The concepts mentioned in the book are absolutely refreshing and give a completely new view of the world and its people.
It is difficult to imagine how a single person can have such a powerful imagination. Really, hats off to Ayn Rand for such a beautiful creation and as she mentions in the book, the creator, by being an egotist, is always doing service to mankind in the best manner possible.
Among all the books that i have read previously, this one was a completely new and different kind of book. One has to be in that kind of mood to read such a book. The little things mentioned in the book, sometimes even in the casual manner makes us think very deeply about the subject.
I loved all the main characters portrayed in the book. Of course, like everybody else who have read this book, Howard Roark was my favorite too. But when you see in the present world such people are impossible to find anywhere. He represents the kind of people who are completely unaffected by what the other people think about them, the people who don't try and affect anybody, the people who think they can serve mankind by serving themselves, the people who can go to any extent to honor their independent thinking, the people who neither love everybody nor hate everybody, etc are an impossible occurrence in today's wicked world.
Then comes Ellsworth Toohey. Though he has been given a negative image in the end, but his thoughts were the most thought provoking and required a very deep understanding of the facts. The speech in which he confesses his crime in front of Peter Keating was quite superb. The way he uses Peter Keating and other people in various fields was really cool.
Similarly, Dominique's and Wynand's characters have been portrayed very beautifully. Peter Keating's character seems to resemble the normal human beings seen everywhere around us. There seems to be a Peter in everybody of us.
So this was all about the fountainhead. I think it is very necessary to learn a certain things from the book. There are many good things, other than the ones mentioned by me above that can be learnt from this book, but these are all subjective to the readers. Looking forward to having a similar or even better experience in Atlas Shrugged. But i doubt whether i am in that kind of mood, especially after reading Fountainhead for the last one and a half month.