Enlighten Yourself

100 percent ! Well, not enough !!

2015-07-11T19:59:00.001+05:30

The high cutoffs for admissions in various Delhi University colleges have been an issue for many years now. For some of the colleges it has soared to the mark of 100 percent. More than 70 thousand students scored 90 percent and above in CBSE board examinations this year. All of them are now looking for seats in some of the best institutions of higher learning in our country. But unfortunately the number of seats in such colleges are limited and therefore many deserving students are denied admission. Every year during this time, almost every news channel conduct debates on this issue. Some of the most well known educators sit in these debates and crib about the present education system and its menacing effects on the students. Yet, they do not come up with any substantial measure that can do away with this system.

Some of the solutions that can be pondered upon are :

1. We can go for a system similar to that in US. In American colleges, admissions are taken care by the admission committees. These committees look at the various aspects of any applicant before admitting them. They look at the SAT/GRE scores, recommendations, essays, family background and other such aspects that gauge into the applicant's background, aspirations and capabilities. The Ministry of Human Resource Development can make it happen with proper caveats in place.

2. Increasing the number of seats in colleges or increasing the number of colleges itself. Most of the educators advocate this solution. The government is following this solution and opening more and more colleges like the IITs and IIMs. Although it seems to be a plausible solution, we need to take into account the decline in the level of education with the increase in the number of colleges. It has been reported that the average faculty shortage in IITs is 32%, while it is 31% in IIITs, 22% at IIMs. Many of the new IITs and IIMs do not have campuses and are operating from the campuses of the older IITs and IIMs. The government needs to consider the infrastructural constraints before announcing new colleges. Fervently giving out UGC and AICTE approvals to private universities would further downgrade the level of education.

There can be many other solutions. The government needs to rethink its approach on this issue, or else many deserving students would be deprived of a career of their choice.

2015-07-08T11:40:00.001+05:30

Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj is an Independent Journalist, Documentary Filmmaker and a Social Activist. Her first documentary ‘Gramin Dak Sevak’ was Jeevika All Asia Livelihood Film Festival 2009, student film winner. Her second documentary ‘Youth Count’ was broadcast on India’s leading News channel NDTV 24x7. Her third project ‘Garima’ was a commissioned, short documentary film by USAID and Counterpart International. She has also made several films for Sarthak, an NGO based in Delhi that works for employment of People with Disabilities. A software engineer turned Journalist, she was one of the ten media professionals selected from around the world for ‘Future Media Leaders Course’ conducted by Thomson Foundation, UK. A strong believer in documentaries as a powerful medium of communication, she draws her inspiration from Late Mr. Brent Hurd, her documentary professor at Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media. She is currently busy with her first independent documentary feature film 'Martyrs of Marriage' on misuse of 498A.

Ideation to Action (ITA) got a chance to interview her. Here is the excerpt from the interview.

ITA: You have advocated dilution of section 498A of the IPC. Although the situation of women has changed for good in urban centers, they are still discriminated against in the rural areas. Don't you think dilution of 498A would affect these rural women negatively?

Deepika: I admit that women are subjected to violence and discrimination, but at the same time the Indian Penal Code provides enough recourses to any individual who is a victim of violence. However with other sections you need evidence for your claims while section 498A can be invoked without any. The law criminalizes domestic violence and cruelty only by a man and not by a woman. So, the law is absolutely gender biased in the first place. Secondly, the demand for dilution of section 498A would not have come into picture if government had done anything to control its misuse in a stringent way despite such an overwhelming evidence of it’s misuse. During my research I got to know that the misuse of this law is prevalent not only in the urban areas but also in the rural areas. This section has reduced down to being a harassment tool that is basically used to arrive at a settlement in case of a matrimonial dispute due to any reasons and not necessarily violence or dowry demand. This has defeated the purpose of this law. There is a strong need to curtail misuse of this law and punishment to those using this as an extortion tool if the law has to stay on the statute else voices against it would only grow louder. Time and again the Supreme Court has come up with judgments where they have said that the misuse of such laws needs to be curbed.

ITA: In July last year the Supreme Court diluted section 498A (provision of immediate arrest). Has it resulted in any reduction in harassment of distraught men?

Deepika: I have a problem with identifying Arnesh Kumar vs State of Bihar judgment as dilution of the law. In no way has the judgment diluted the provisions of the law. All that the Court has done is to stress upon what the law was in the first place – investigate and then take action. For years Police has done the opposite – first arrest and then investigate (if at all) causing immense harassment to lacs and lacs of innocent men, women and also children (more than 25 lac people including 5.2 lac women and 7000 children have been arrested under the law in last decade and a half as per NCRB – National Crime Records Bureau)

However, the judgment has definitely led to things getting a bit better. We would get the exact picture once 2014 crime statistics are released by NCRB. Having said that, one needs to understand section 498A not only in the perspective of immediate arrests. It is a criminal offence. It takes years and years for a criminal trial to conclude in India and thus proving your innocence despite having done no wrong. A false 498A causes trauma not only to you but your entire family since everyone’s name is included in the FIR and then you lose your job, money, peace and everything. After the Arnesh Judgment, the police might not go for automatic arrests, but still an FIR registered on vague allegations can cause havoc to personal and professional life. I am not saying that domestic violence complaints should not be registered, but everyone should get a chance to be heard. I just filed an RTI for details on 498A for 2014. I haven’t got the complete data but arrests seem to have come down. The effect of the judgment would take some time to trickle down pan India.

ITA: What are your views on positive discrimination / reservation for women. Is it required?

Deepika: As an individual I don't approve of it. My parents have brought me up well and that’s true for a lot of women who I see surging ahead in every sphere of life. I am educated, I work and I know how to go about things. I don't feel weaker than a man in any way. Then why ask for reservation? I am against any special privilege being given to women just because they are women. But if economic concerns are taken into account, like in the case where there is a girl who is the daughter of a rickshaw puller or daughter of a maid, then in such cases reservations can be considered fair. In fact if that’s the case then for boys too. I would ask for reservation on economic status than gender any day. It takes extraordinary determination and courage to fight adversities that come with poverty.

ITA: Do you think there is any need of a law/ body to support distraught men who are victimized by their wives?

Deepika: The first thing is that the Domestic Violence Act needs to be made gender neutral. As of now, a man has no provision to report to the authorities that his wife has subjected him to violence or seek protection from the same. Many husbands have shared with me how their wives subjected them to violence but when they went to the Police station to complain, they were laughed at and not listened to. We have Women Commission, National Commission for Women and many other such bodies for women. But we don't have any such body for men. The government is capable of creating one in a structured way. Instead of referring every case to the courts, we could have government approved family counseling centers, where people can get their issues sorted. The marriage counselors that we have today are not affordable to many families, especially lower middle income families. Therefore, there should be a government body, which could hear the other side of the story, register complaints and after considering the facts of the matter, summon the parties involved. Since there is no body to listen to the woes of men, many resort to extreme steps like suicide and sometimes murder and then suicide too. Off late there have been many suicides where men left suicide notes writing how laws are only for women and not for men. It is a sorry state.

Rich and Poor !!!!

2013-11-03T22:47:00.000+05:30

Its not new if I say that India is a nation with huge economic disparity. Some people can afford extravagant lifestyle while others cannot even fulfill their basic necessities. In almost every city of India we can find slums and on the other hand we can also find colonies with palatial bungalows. Moreover, this disparity is also evident if one travels from airport (mostly used by upper class Indians) of any city to the railway station (mostly used by middle class and lower class Indians) of the same city. Indian Government has been trying to bridge this gap by enacting various schemes which sought to empower the poor, but to no avail. The below factors are playing a very important role in maintaining/ widening this economic disparity.

1. More emphasis on service sector : India used to be an agrarian economy before Independence, but soon after Independence it took a leap and is now a service sector economy. We never went into the manufacturing phase. Poor population can't afford good education and as a result of it most of them remain illiterate or semi-literate. These people could not be employed by the service sector companies whereas they could be easily employed by manufacturing sector companies after a little training. Thus,manufacturing sector is important for empowerment and upliftment of poor laborers.

2. According to reports of various International agencies, starting a business in India is not easy. This creates an environment where it is not easy for new entrants in the world of business to grow above a certain level. This is what keeps them poor whereas those who inherit big businesses can harness the power of money and venture into a diverse set of areas, enhancing their financial condition further, therefore leading to widening of the economic disparity.

3. Due to widespread corruption, the money which is allocated for various Government schemes never reach the poor. This makes the Ministers, bureaucrats, etc more rich whereas common man becomes more poor.
I have discussed 3 factors which are resulting in the widening of the economic disparity. However, we can curb this by some measures as listed below :

1. The Government should promote manufacturing by giving subsidies and tax rebates. Small and medium scale enterprises should also be promoted.
2. India should get rid of stringent red taping. We should have conductive environment for startups.
3. Corruption should be curbed in all its form and the Government should make sure that the schemes are carried out in such a way so that the poor are benefited from it.

Centralization vs Decentralization !!!!

2013-02-13T19:47:00.002+05:30

India is a federation of states. All the states are different from each other and therefore people residing in different states are linguistically and culturally different. They have different social and economic needs and desires. Therefore in order to cater such diverse needs, decentralization of power has been devised and is being implemented in the name of Panchayati Raj since the 73rd and 74th amendments. But is this decentralization of power beneficial for India?

Arvind Kejriwal has been advocating the need for further decentralization of power to such an extent that the local bodies could take social and economic decisions independently. These independent decisions and subsequent actions are also diverse in nature and does not allow unified thinking in all parts of the country. India is facing acute current account deficit. In such times, it can be envisaged that decentralization would lead to loss of focus and common approach to nation building. Instead, common central programmes would be better and these common central programmes are only possible with centralization of decision making and coming together of the different factions of Indian population.

On the contrary, China being a communist nation, has a single centralized decision making body which has unified its efforts and channelized it towards a common set of goals. This has helped China and currently it is sitting on a 3000 billion USD foreign exchange reserve which is approximately ten times to that of India. Therefore the question persists, should we go for decentralization?

During the days of Indian National Movement for freedom, Congress also had factions ( example - left wing, right wing, moderates, Muslim League, etc.) , but it envisaged one common goal of freedom over all other factional goals which in a way led to overthrow of the imperial government.

From the above stated facts, it can be inferred that centralization is better than decentralization but ultimately it all depends on how the people of a country move forward inspite of differences among themselves.

Google all the way !!!!

2011-11-17T12:03:00.000+05:30

Some days back internet giant Google acquired Apture and Katango which could be boon for their browser chrome and social networking site Google+. Its great to have such services but if we have a look at what google has been growing into, then we can foretell the future of World Wide Web.

Google started as a search engine and soon became the biggest player in the internet space. No doubt they have page rank algorithm which simulates the user browsing demeanor using probability functions. Soon they became the world leader in search technology leaving yahoo and other such portals way back. They started getting huge investments by venture capitalist firms and a large number of advertisements, all thanks to their innovative marketing strategies. It did not take long enough for Larry and Sergey to understand that their business can be more pervasive by just venturing into new markets and therefore they started many other services such as blogs, news, maps, images etc. As Google grew they hired best minds around, no need to mention that most of them were ivy league pass-outs. As a result of all these efforts, Google was valued the biggest online player when it released its first IPO.

In around 2004 Facebook came into existence and soon it acquired the position of the most used social networking site defeating Google's Orkut. But this was not the end, Google launched another social networking site Google+ to compete with Facebook. Google also acquired online video rendering service YouTube when it saw that YouTube's customer base was expanding at a great rate. Gmail started providing large space for emails and people forgot yahoomail and rediffmail in no time. In all, google acquired 100 small and big organisations in past 10 years, which is enough to determine its success and pervasiveness.

As the internet space grew, it also became more and more user friendly. Mobile Internet was the next big market and it was for sure that Google could not have left this oppurtunity, so it came up with Android, which is also termed as the next generation mobile OS. It also acquired Motorola and thus entered the hardware market.

And now Google has started its music service, may be to compete with spotify and napster. Google has grown into a mammoth and no doubt, it is the biggest player, not only in the internet space but also in advertising, mobile software and hardware industries.

I also had a Startup Idea..!!!

2011-10-12T20:09:00.000+05:30

I am inspired by some startup entrepreneurs, they are not Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page, rather some Indians in the market of great competition and uncertainty. India surely doesn't have the venture capitalist culture, but even then start ups are budding and in some cases flourishing. Being a student in my final year of engineering I have lots of dot com ideas. It's "dot com" because they require little initial capital and are pervasive in nature. In the past four months I have read a lot about startups and their probability to succeed, but my thoughts rambled a lot. Many of the ideas which I thought, are either already implemented or not feasible technologically or otherwise. I will share one of my idea with you, but before that let us see why some of my so called ideas were not implemented. India has a copy paste culture. We like to imitate a lot. For example, please go through these ventures:

1. www.groupon.com and its indian copy www.snapdeal.com

2. www.glassdoor.com and its indian copy www.hamaraguru.com

and there are many more such sites. I never wanted to be one of those imitators.

Now let us see my startup idea, but before that let me state it pretty clearly that i am not working on this idea currently and i have no objection to your imitation of this idea. There are sites which enable us to share our skills and pictures, for example skillshare.com and flickr.com. But they are for the masses and not specific for professional sharing and viewing ( i am talking about the same difference as between facebook and linkedin).

My idea was to make such a site which would enable budding as well as skilled artists to share their art work with none other than connoisseurs of their respective fields. This would enable them to have a wide audience and their work could also be appreciated and even noted. This site would have different profiles for the artists and the critics. Any critic would be able to look for the kind of art he is interested in, uploaded by different artists and could comment as well as rate them. These rating and comments would be visible to the artists and would be a source of encouragement to them.

I wouldn't go into the depth of this idea, even i didn't go that deep because it can be implemented in many different ways and i didn't get any time to refine and converge those ways. But please contact me if any of you find it interesting .

Disclaimer:

I am not going to charge anything from the sites I mentioned as a return for advertisement ( if they are not offended). And if they are offended, then let me make it clear that we are not subject to any legal action.

The next big startup..!!

2011-09-15T23:30:00.000+05:30

Startup is the buzz word nowadays. There are many young people thinking of their own ventures and some taking their thinking process forward to implementation and even to revenue generation. The pervasiveness of Internet has made it possible for people to publicize their ventures or startups to a mass no. of people.

Coming to the point, I myself was browsing through some innovative and creative ideas and found that most of them have been implemented. Some of the sites which i found, catering specific services, and therefore calling themselves startups are listed below:

1. SkillShare.com

2. Pinterest.com

3. dontalk.com

4. myguidie.com

5. shownd.com

6. groupon.com (snapdeal.com is the indian lookalike)

7. airbnb.com (inspired me a lot....simple idea but really mindblowing)

8. inmobilelabs.com

9. sourcebits.com

10. scopial.com

11. pearltrees.com

12. likeourselves.com

All these startups have simple yet great ideas behind them. I am not so sure about their business or revenue sources apart from online advertisements but they can attract many users. I doubt their success as big as google or facebook, but that is just the matter of time and publicity.

Please go through the sites i stated, some of them can be useful and at the same time inspirational for budding entrepreneurs.

learning by doing.....self learning...please watch.

2011-09-01T22:13:00.000+05:30

Indian Education Experience!!!!

2011-07-30T22:27:00.000+05:30

Its pathetic, yup it sounds a lot weird but its a truth. We read everything yet we forget everything, this is just because we just read everything. Learning by doing is the most important aspect that our education system lacks in. When we are in schools, we sit in confined classrooms and watch teachers saying about the environment, the nature. Then comes the college life where whatever we do is for the sake of placements. Why don't we Indians do something new, something innovative? Why is it such that all great startups are started by Harvard and Stanford students? No Doubt, we have great minds here but we are all entangled in our own hardships of life. We don't dare to think big, and unless we think big we cannot make it big.