Getting involved

Getting involved is the concept of citizens participating in social-governmental processes on a part time basis for the benefit of the society .

In India, such a concept is really lacking, and to an extent that even such an expectation generates sharp disagreements. The only instance I can give of such a thing being implemented is the rule that medical students should be doing internships in villages as a part of their curriculum. Not surprisingly, it was received with sufficient angst and negativity from the students. Apart from other reason that they gave, the most understandable is "why only us?"

That gives us the idea of "yes, why only them, why not other students too". Broadening this further, why just the students, why not everybody else (who is educated and capable). Sure everyone's skills might not be as badly needed as a doctor's skill, still there is no dearth of work for educated young men and women in the country.

So what I suggest is, every educated citizen of the country spend some time doing government duty. And every graduate student does this duty as a part of his curriculum. Time can be anything convenient - 15 days, 30 days, 20 weekends - anything. The benefits shall come back to us as a society. Below are listed problem areas in which the benefits can be clearly seen.

- Lack of teachers: Rural India lacks lacks trained teachers. The deficit can be hugely filled by short (may be monthly/fortnightly) teaching internships by all graduate students in villages/small towns.

- Lack of experts/professionals in rural India: doctors, lawyers, computer trainers, business managers, are examples of professionals that can be utilized for specialized needs. Other ideas to improve the health care in India.

- Election duty: till now this is a nightmare only for government employees. Private citizens are not asked to contribute to maintain fairness. But with changed times, a stronger election commission and use of technology, a fair election is not just dependent on the election officers' honesty. Imagine how smooth and cheap the whole democratic process would become if there were more hands to share the burden.

- Courts: The Indian judicial system is almost crumbling under the pressure of the huge volume of cases it has to handle. We can lend a helping hand by providing non-expert manpower support (as we all don't qualify to be judges or lawyers). But a more important contribution is jury duty.

Jury duty -
Instead of having just one judge decide the case, have a jury of say dozen people. Let them sit through the entire hearing process and listen. And then, ask them to decide, along with the judge. Let the judge hold the veto, so no illiterate judgments can pass. This is a practice in many countries (like US) and was in India until a bad instance had it stopped. I see two big benefits of this. One, making corruption costly - its now 13 times costlier to have it decided in your favor by bribing. Two, education - it will create a vast pool of 'legally literate' individuals who can be used as judges when they become sufficiently qualified.

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The most important condition for any of these ideas to work is having a system of stakes and incentives in place. If people are forced to do it, they find corrupt ways to get away. For example, if I have chances to become a judge one day by doing consistent and sincere jury duty, I might be very interested to do it, and do it well. But the idea is not purely about incentives. It is about people getting involved to make things better.

fixing education-3

Observations and review (cont)

This is a short critical review of higher education in India. Higher education includes graduate and higher studies. This comprises of the simple, obvious and mostly useless (career wise) science and arts studies, and professional studies like engineering and medical. The scenario works differently for both.

First the non-professional higher studies. You pass 10+2, so the next step is to go for graduation (if you are not too poor, otherwise you would be a laborer by now). Till now, the education has been unable to give you any significant livelihood earning skills. So you choose any college in close vicinity, and any course that remains trouble free. So it could be commerce, sociology, maths, botany, whatever. You don't expect to get any career out of this course, and a slow-decent pace of study, may be with some coaching, takes you through. After graduation, you start applying for various government sector jobs, and for higher studies. As the former doesn't exist much now, and needs a big bribe, a post-graduation is a good option. If its professional (MBA/MTech/MCA) a career can be hoped. If not, you go into research-teaching, or something else (which can include an unrelated job/business, or preparing for competitive exams for government jobs)

Professional education. If you have enough awareness (or enough money), you could work hard to earn a ticket to short cut routes to great careers. After 10+2, you could secure admission to a good (so called) engineering or a medical college. After graduation, you could go for something like a CAT entrance or the UPSC exam. Shortcuts to glory-career- and everything else you don't need. Most boys and girls who have the awareness, make the brave choice of trying for the shortcuts. In some regions of the country, taking multiple year drops for them is also popular.

Higher education is a bit less unequal than primary and secondary. Merit and hard-work works to some extent, though you can have a unfair advantage if you are rich or belong to reserved category. Professional education works event better. Engineering and MBA work best, because of an activity called 'campus recruitment'. IITs and IIMs are the best among the bests, and that is arguably, only because they have at their disposal, a huge talent pool fighting for admissions.

The one that works best is professional education, from a decent institute. But the problem is the huge demand supply gap (-a hundred competitors per seat is common) and is mostly too expensive for the average Indian (who earns the per-capita income, 30k right now)

The next parts talk about the wish-list and practical solutions.

being unelectable

Nandan Nilekani thinks he is 'unelectable' (Imagining India, page 3). So do most of the educated-corporatized-professional-elite-decent men in the country.

Why so?

A look into what comprises the 'electable' might reveal. The following lot takes a plunge into politics,
- Son / daughter of a political biggie.
- Descendant of some erstwhile royal family.
- People who chose politics as a 'career', mostly after having earned enough through corrupt businesses to invest in the 'career'
- People with proven musclemen-leadership skills - goonda commanders.

The first two kinds have the natural advantage of easily acquired visibility, and existing organizations at work. But the other two are better contenders. They know the tricks of all trades, know how to get it done. If money buys them party tickets, money can make the rest easy. But they lack good reputation, and charm, and formal-communication skills, and media attention, and proper agenda, and more often, intelligence.

You have money. You have some visibility. You are intelligent. You know how to compete. What's the problem then?

You are ignorant. You are the rich guy of this country who thinks the problem of this country is the bad road that gives you a bumpy ride when you travel from your air-conditioned home to your air-conditioned office in your air-conditioned car.

You are indifferent. This country's system never expects you to get involved. And you never get involved.

You are wrong. You are actually NOT unelectable. Give it a try. You can win. You can figure out how.

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Second thoughts -

The problems I stated above, no 1 and no 2, are a little too harsh and somewhat unfair to Nandan Nilekani. The intent is not actually to criticize Nandan himself, for whom the comments may actually be completely wrong. It is about the previously mentioned educated-corporatized-professional-elite-decent men of our country.

Elections have ended, and all such men (and women), who tried contesting and getting involved, have lost. What is the reason and what does this indicate ? Among others, the obvious looking 'the public resentment against politicians is on a high, and we urgently need alternatives' theory propagated mostly by media, has to face scrutiny. This belief, however true or false, can not be taken to infer that the alternatives (however good) shall find it easy to gain credibility among the voter masses.

combating terrorism and cockroaches

I was suffering from a weird problem at my new house in Bangalore- Small size cockroaches. They started with a small number, coming sneaked in somewhere in my suitcase handle. Initially, small size and harmless nature earned them enough ignorance from me - I made no effort to get rid of them.

What has this to do with terrorism ?

Within a few months, I realized that I was paying for my ignorance. They stationed and settled themselves in the kitchen, and multiplied. Kept multiplying the way humans do. They were mostly harmless, but thousands of harmless little cockroaches can become a big nuisance. And they were everywhere in the kitchen, and every time I pick something up, there runs the tiny little thing. And they were occasionally expanding their territory out of the kitchen too, and that raised the alarm. They were a threat now.

Tried using Mortien and other pesticides on them, but no use. There is almost a 50 percent chance that the little creature dies if you are spraying the venom on its head. The other ways to mitigate the situation were - buy a refrigerator - as they can enter any utensil, buy a cot (I used to sleep on the ground) - as they will easily climb on you at night, or, kill them all, one by one, manually.

After everything else failed, I tried the last resort. For hours together, using my slippers, I'm doing the massacre. I was as cruel as needed, and determined to kill every last one of them (Just as Sri Lankan Army is to LTTE). But I still failed. There were just too many of them. And unless I make them completely extinct, all they need to do to bug me more is breed more, the one thing they do easily.

But right now, there is not a single one of them left. As my sister gets transfered, the kitchen is left unused for a few months (I used to eat out). And after those few months, I notice they have all disappeared. Not even corpses left behind. Migrated ? died ? - no idea. The cause to this effect is the essential, life-sustaining supply of food material being cut off all this time. No cooking, so no atta-crumbles, no random rice grains, and no garbage. Nothing to eat. Over.

I have been toying with the idea of applying this to a bigger scenario - the biggest threat and nuisance to human (at least Indian) life - terrorism. We (as a country) want to get rid of terrorism and terrorists, no second thoughts/arguments on that. We have already made the mistake of not curbing it in its infancy, probably, and rather ignoring it initially too. Now we want to fight them. We have tried strong defense, tight security, and want to try offense to. We might want to KILL THEM ALL, dismantle and destroy and annihilate all the terror related infrastructure and people and nations supporting them.

We have tried some, and can try most or all of the above. But, by common sense, how can you win over a fidayeen by killing him? Fighting is what they want, fighting is what we give them. Nothing against that, because fighting is what we are left to do.

But not only fighting. Fighting and dying is the only purposes they are there for, but not for us. We are a civilization, we have to fight to win, not to fight to get destroyed. The terror eco-system has its own supply chains. We must cut those supply lines ALSO. No, I'm not hinting at the more abstract end-poverty-and-injustice rhetoric. Terrorism thrives on religious-racist extremism, on emotion, which flows in terror money (illegal trade and donations). Find some ways to curb them too. Find ways to hit some or all of the supply chains of the eco-system.

The idea appears endorsed by a recent Times of India Article (editorial 23 April 2009).