Who let the Dogs out ?

Continuing with my first post, professional courses entrance exams in india-this edition will focus on Tamil Nadu alone. As always tamil nadu is special and notorious in its own ways. We have toppled central govt’s at our whims and fancies.

I will go in reverse chronological order, starting with this year’s CET episode. HaHaHa, Tamil Nadu is so so dynamic, just when I begin to write this blog, I read that there will be a new common exam conducted on Aug 6 and 7 for all the management quota seats in tamil nadu. This is to be conducted by Consortium of self financing colleges. Oh god... I hope some one will teach us what the word common means. How many uncommon, common entrance exams can we have for the same college?? I wish I knew the answer.

Okay now back to the old CET episode, the reason cited by government that is 'discrimination of rural students’. Hello, what the f* is this?? Okay boss, if you where so dam concerned about the rural students what the f* where you doing all through the year? What kept you holding back this long? TNPCEE has been going on for quite some time now, and with good success I must add. If you where so really concerned you could have taken a decision long back in January, why wait till June?? How many educationalists did you consult before taking this decision?? At least did you try speaking with the vice chancellors of Madras and Anna Universities?

Ok Ok…I agree that we are so very concerned about rural students. But, can’t we think that any student, rural, urban, human, inane, insane, or whomsoever, is going to be affected by this kind of uncertainty in the admission system?? I still remember what my sister went through last year when the pilani speculated and later changed their admission from board marks to AIEEE. I am sure most of her batch mates when through the same emotional trauma. It was only when the BITS admission was reverted back to the usual admission method, there was some respite. What’s your answer to this question? Fine, I am sure you will answer this question to us!!!

We made a claim that TNPCEE (I am a bit perplexed when TNPCEE was renamed to CET? Or is it our 4th estate that did the christening this time? ) discriminates rural students. In order to understand how we are using TNPCEE to discriminate rural students, we must firstly understand the fundamentals of 12^th standard state board exams. There is only one thing I wish to highlight; it’s about question choices in the question paper. The paper is superfluous with choices that, a student can make a 200/200 in physics without knowing what Newton’s laws of motion are. The simple reason being I can always read the other part which will come in the choice and leave Newton’s laws. Why do we care about Newton and his falling apples!! If we are going to make life easy for students this way, what values are we imparting to them? TNPCEE was the only sanity in the whole DOTE process. It at least forced us to look into falling apples, just for the heck of getting into engineering! Who cares about falling apples any more! We are in the IT age!! We want to understand only Zero’s and ones.

Finally, I think I am correct, but really not sure about this, please correct me if I am wrong. I think there exists a reservation for rural students in DOTE. If they have a reservation already, why consider wreaking TNPCEE?

I must admit, there is no logic whatsoever in this novel experiment with students and parents anxiety, and may be they are trying to create more jobs for physiatrist. But for the patriotic and educated few occupying our high courts and Supreme courts, we would have a live in hell.

No room for LEFT !!

India is bound to become one of the biggest consumer markets in the near future. It is imperative to plan our future policies with care and caution. Our reliance on computers for day to day activities is bound to rise exponentially. It is not long before most of our home appliances get integrated with a PC. New Technology is going to create a whole new repertoire of products. Yes, we all know that technology is will obviously generate new applications and products.

India has really proven itself in the services sector. We have out beaten china so far. China with their strong manufacturing base can easily compete with indian firms in the near future. The Chinese govt. though is a part of the elite left, is bullish about disinvestment of state owned firms. Recently Bank of America has taken over 9% of China construction bank, and many more such companies in the queue for taking. But the Left’s sitting in india are doing the exact opposite of what is considered sane.

Disinvestment is good for any organization, especially for indian public sector companies, as they lack aggression and ambition to compete with the best. When an investor takes over a firm or buys a part of it, he does it with the sole goal of earning profits for the money put in. There will always be this pressure on the company to perform well, increase efficiency, increase profitability and increase its value on the secondary markets. This will drive company’s growth, increase competitiveness- finally india is going to gain a lot, in the form of increased revenue from taxes, increase in direct and indirect employment, and the initial capital the government gets when selling public firms. It’s a lot of money that the govt. can put to very effective use to improve indian infrastructure.

I am sure we are going to have a lot of mid air accidents in india if we are not going to update our airport technologies and infrastructure. Good airport infrastructure is going to create room for increase in air traffic, which again translates into more money, honey!

Why cant the left see such obvious things. We must admit, india has moved a long way from socialistic economy, and now to slow down our transformation to a capitalistic economy, clearly indicates the lack of vision. If we try and ask the question, why is the LEFT against privatization? Simple, the answer is again the heart of vote politics. Who are the people Left is advertising too? It’s obviously out of the fear of loosing its hand over trade unions and labor unions in public sector firms. Trade, labor union’s members form the major constituent of LEFTS electoral vote bank. By privatization left has a feeling that lot of them (working people) will be thrown out of their jobs (obvious, public sector firms are over sized ) more blue collar jobs will be replaced with white collar jobs.

If the left is really dam concerned about these people it should act like a cushion for the people thrown out of jobs, and guide them to other opportunities, train them with newer skills or help them to start their own small business. This way LEFT can build a good brand image with the younger generation.

But if these oldies stick with their old ways of thinking , I am sure they are going to get kicked out of the UPA. Change or perish!! Atleast imitate China’s left…Or shut up and Sit down.(thera number kabhi nahi ayega !! )

Who cares ?

I took my engineering exams in 2000, if I am correct I gave 10 engineering entrance examinations. JEE, Rorkee, TNPCEE, IIIT’s (each one had a separate entrance exam), CECRI, BIT-Ranchi and so on. I gave like 10 exams in a span of 3-4 weeks. It was the worst periods of my life. I am so great full that AIEEE has consolidated all the admission exams into one exam.

AIEEE is the brain child of the previous government (NDA). It was something that has been due for ages now. How can our society demand a 17 year old kid to give 10 competitive entrance exams in a span of one –two months? Do our politicians ever care about our day to day lives? We must seriously ask this question to our inner self, or probably we all know that our politician’s do nothing at all and we have accepted it.

Looking at the medical entrance examination scenario in the country, it’s still in the prehistoric ages. CBSE conducts the all India medical entrance examination for only 15% of the seats in most of the colleges in India, with the exception of A P. The Rest 85% of the seats is through state examinations. JIPMER AIMS and CMC have their own separate entrance examinations.

Irrespective of the field of study, the caste based reservation pattern in center run examinations are 15% for schedule caste and 7.5% for Schedule tribes, leaving the remaining 77.5 % for open competition. This is a very reasonable percentage of reservation. But the state admission systems have their own modus operandi. Some of the states have a system, some don’t, and some keep changing the systems at their whims and fancies. After all why the political system should be bothered about us?

I am not against the caste based quota system, but it is over done just for the heck of getting “caste” votes.Even the above is Ok…acceptable… because even with reservation , a student at needs 90% aggregate to get into the top state run engineering colleges.. But what I really can’t digest is the chief minister’s quota for seats in govt. colleges. :@#@%@ In simple plain English , chief minister’s quota implies , the govt. can give a percentage of seats to whom ever they want too.

So who gets these seats, I am sure you all will guess (what is there to guess. its obvious) the answer correct.. It’s the politicians and beaurcrats kin and kith!!!

The educational admission system has been framed with just electoral votes in mind and not whats best for the society as a whole.This way I get the feeling how different are we ruling ourselves when compared to the british raj ?? They where a great architects of “divide and rule” policy so are we. They did it to make their position stable in India. Our super hero’s are doing it make sure they get votes... The means have changed but the purpose is still the same.

As an Indian the only thing I can do is to make noise and express my views. I hope some one out there is watching all this.