An interesting counterpoint to the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's decision to ban management quota in Delhi Schools is that it attacks autonomy, and also that it reduces incentive for private players to open schools. This old article on RTE gives similar arguments for that law as well. https://realitycheck.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/delhi-nursery-admissions-meets-the-rte/ "Is it not likely that by taking away private incentives to open schools, in which the management quota is one attraction, he too will end up closing more schools than making the admissions process more rational. Even laws like  RTE will shrink capacity, undermine property rights, equal protection, and freedom of occupation." However, the point to ponder is that by allowing elite 'Ivy league' schools to have huge management quotas, aren't we allowing the principle of equality to be breached? Having said that, would you be comfortable to allow your kid to be educated alongside

The photograph below is a scene from the incredibly buzzing and busy Tier 2 city - Ujjain - in India; a center of religious tourism in central India. The precise location - a service lane to a otherwise important highway connecting the city of Ujjain to three other nearby cities of Bhopal, Indore and Gwalior. A marriage procession ( Baraat, बारात ) on its way blocking the whole road while the car (silver grey, Maruti Suzuki WagonR) patiently awaits passage. An impatient lady on the scooter tries to manoeuvre from the gap on the side, when an unchivalrous biker coming from the opposite end blocks her way. While in this logjam, the lady's mobile phone rings and without regard for the cacophony she is in, she decides to take the call. Moments later the procession will move on, the car will find its way forward and both the woman and the biker shall hurry towards their respective destinations. The ensemble cast in this photo will reach their respective destinations and discuss

Seeing a lot of people ridiculing Laloo's son Tejashwi Prasad Yadav for merely being a 9th grade pass - in my view this is an insult to the democratic institutions we live in and a complete misunderstanding of the educated gentry! Education is not the right barometer for intelligence! Steve jobs was not even a graduate, neither was Edison. But in the western society which is driven by technology, they are both paragons of hi-tech for their respective generations. The Indian society is a typical eastern society where relations and not technology define your social status, and the Yadav family has just shown us a brilliant use of their political brains to win in this relationship based society. What is despicable is that Laloo and may be his family are going to use this power not for the upliftment of Bihar but for their personal gains. If you want to oppose that, you have a right to do so - but do not scoff at Tejashwi Prasad Yadav merely because the traditional educational s

Watched PK today on Sony TV; I hadn't seen the movie when it was released. Firstly, I haven't been watching new releases of late anyway, secondly I had gotten bored of patronizing tone of Raju Hirani's movies. But on watching the movie, here are my thoughts. Overall, an average movie for 3 reasons: 1. Predictable story: the movie takes the same twists as Munnabhai MBBS, all the way down to the style and positioning of the climax. 2. Poor and unrealistic storyline; blatant directorial missouts. This is surprising as Hirani's previous productions have never had directorial missouts. The movie also lacks the depth of Munnabhai series; the sub-plots are poorly researched and realism which marked earlier ones is missing. 3. Blatant copying of the core concept from Paresh Rawal's "Oh My God!". Before I end, a praise for Anushka Sharma for her work; Amir doesn't need praise - he played the part well; the others were all cast in the same type of characters

In my previous post , I outlined why the bookstore, even if inefficient in selling books, has reasons to exist beyond mere 'sales'. If the bookstore is to continue to exist, without the inherent value of selling books, it needs to find other ways of generating cash flow, and that too while it serves the other purposes outlined. But let me first recap the purposes which a book store should serve: Serendipity and discoverability of books  Browse a book before buying  Meet like minded people One key element which is implicit to the above is quiet surroundings. The list sounds more like the requirements we have from community libraries than from bookstores, but indeed good bookstores are no less than libraries! So let's start in the reverse order: To satisfy #3, the bookshop needs to have sufficient real estate which should be utilized through a combination of large seating area - preferably a coffee shop - and enough room between the aisles for customers to

Indie book stores have seen a revival around the world; In US, numbers increased from 1,651 in 2009 to 2,094 in 2014 http://t.co/gWKLGZCiIQ — Nikhil Kulkarni (@kulkarninikhil) September 12, 2015 This article in Mint  made me think of the dying trade of bookstores, which as a bibliophile pains me.  Independent book stores have been downing shutters for a few years now - Borders the iconic bookstore chain - its Oxford street store was a landmark (even tourist attraction for Bibliophile Asians like me where I have spent couple of Sundays just reading) - shut shop in 2009 ; Fact & Fiction a similar iconic store in Delhi shut shop  recently. Some non-bibliophiles wonder why are bookstores needed when you can buy any book online much cheaper? Well, (at the risk of sounding politically incorrect) any woman would tell you why - the pleasures of Window shopping! Yes indeed - for bibliophiles, bookstores offer the same pleasures of serendipity - discovering a new book in a compl

I was listening the radio day before and heard legendary actor Manoj Kumar describing his first experience of India's independence. The anecdote he related has been one of the best stories of freedom; I would hence like to record it here on my blog. I am trying to reproduce his words as much verbatim as I can remember: चौदह अगस्त की रात को मेरे चाचा का देहांत हो गया । मेरी माँ उस समय घर पर बीमार थी । अगले दिन सुबह मेरे पिताजी ने मुझे उठाया और नहाने धोने के बाद मुझे कहा, चलो हम लाल क़िले जा रहे हैं । वहां पहुचने के लिए उस वक्त, जिस रेफ्यूजी कैंप में हम रहते थे, वहां से २ घंटे की एक बस पकड़नी पड़ती थी। हम बस से लाल क़िले पहुंचे और उस भीड़ में खड़े मैंने देखा की लाल क़िले की प्राचीर पर एक शख्स सफ़ेद कपडे पहने खड़ा है।  बाबूजी ने मुझे बताया की वे नेहरू जी हैं।  नेहरू जी का नाम सुना था मैंने, पता था वो कौन हैं। खैर, नेहरू जी ने अपना भाषण दिया और आखिर में नारे लगाये । सारे क़िले में खड़ी भीड़ नें भी नारे लगाये, बाबूजी भी इनमें शामिल थे। तब पहली बार में मुझे लगा की कोई तो चीज़ होगी ये आज़ादी,

This post is co-authored by Hemantkumar Jain who writes on the shoOOonya Blog . Personal Computing is probably a word from the 90s, not quite apt for the post iPad era. The reason we use it though is because, this post starts with a recap of a discussion from 2006. As the news spread about Flipkart.com and its affiliate Myntra.com moving to mobile only websites - our minds went back to a discussion we had in 2006 which started at Hemant's apartment in Geneva and continued for next 5 days through our train journeys across Switzerland . The 80GB iPod had just been released, and Hemant mentioned that at the end of the day, the iPod which fits the pocket had hard drive space and a processor. So all we needed now was to load a light weight OS on it, connect it to a monitor, keyboard/mouse and you have a personal computer ready. Today, the relevance of the personal computer is almost lost in context of tablets and mobile phones. The question is - will this 'mobile-only

Steve Jobs didn't let his kids use iPads (as per  this website ) - even though he invented them himself. A lot of parents might want to follow him. " Especially in Silicon Valley, there is actually a trend of tech execs and engineers who shield their kids from technology." The claim is that technological addiction prevents kids minds from becoming creative " setting up our children for incomplete, handicapped lives devoid of imagination, creativity and wonder when we hook them onto technology at an early age. " To me this is an extremely biased and dystopian view of technology exposure - though it is nothing new - the same type of concerns were raised few decades ago for TV and before that even for newspapers. My view is that it depends on how and what kind of exposure you give your kids. For ex. kids today already know the whole ABC, 123, almost all poems by the age of two. This is all thanks to nicely made kids rhyme videos which you can play in ab

Narendra Modi's Swatch Barat campaign faces lot of hurdles - changing people's mentalities, overcoming the chronic issues of open defecation, lack of cleanliness infrastructure (starting from dustbins to garbage collection trucks) etc. But one problem faced by it is indeed the no-man's-land syndrome also known as not-my-problem syndrome or outside my zone problem :-). Check out the image - the house owner has cemented the ramp up from the road to his porch and the municipality has made a cement road right upto the pavement; yet a short portion between the two cemented portions is left out for mud and water to accumulate. I must admit that this picture was taken a day after the festival of Holi , so the muck of mud and water is more dirty than usual with remains of water balloons and color from previous day's holi celebrations. Nevertheless, this does not take away the problem - the fact that our systems fail at boundaries. This manifests across levels of o

Mint editorial has the following to say in response to induction of Kiran Bedi by BJP in Delhi CM race. Bedi is being seen as the answer to Arvind Kejriwal. If faces could change governance, then Bedi and Kejriwal would have made all the difference to Delhi. Delhi is a megalopolis with problems that don’t have easy solutions. Its consumption of water and electricity is way beyond what it produces. Every summer, their shortage creates a crisis-like situation. None of the parties has a clear idea of how to solve this. An election campaign that is so focused on personalities is unlikely to pay attention to the problems. As in other elections in India, the emphasis is to win first and think later. Read more at: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/Lo4XZPg9qejrwpK9jQVrJK/The-battle-of-faces.html I disagree. If the mere problem of good governance was solving issues 'at hand' then a bureaucracy would have sufficed to run a country. And that was the precise mistake we made in th

I was at a workshop last week conducted by Prof Ashish Nanda [ 1 ] and Prof Biju Varkkey [ 2 ] - and it was an enlightening experience. There was one thought which came from them towards the end of the session which has been reverberating in my mind ever since. This was about the future of the workplace. In response to a question about handling the 'new generation' Prof Nanda mentioned that most of the theories and media talk about the Millennials or Next Generation being different and changing the workplace is bunkum; but what he said next was insightful - the workplace of the future will not be influenced so much by the entry or the new generation but by 3 factors: Women in the workforce - for the first time in the history of mankind we are going to have a large number of women who would have spent more than 30 years at Corporate and Academic careers. Many of them have reached or are reaching leadership positions and the workplace is going to be far different with so

A couple of years ago, an NGO started a campaign called 'Bell Bajao' against domestic violence. The concept was simple, if you are an audience to (i.e. overhear) domestic violence in the neighborhood, don't intervene directly - but make the perpetrator of this violence aware that someone is hearing / watching - social pressure of being watched will compel the perpetrator to stop. The video below illustrates, where the neighbor simply rings the bell to stop the domestic quarrel but when the door opens, he asks for Milk.  This is a very effective mechanism - I am intrigued if this can only be applied to domestic violence - why can't it be applied to international diplomacy to reduce crimes against humanity such as the ghastly events at Peshawar? As much as one is pained by the events and acts of Taliban, the larger pain is the apathy shown by most of the world's Governments including India. Just a message of condolence, a statement condemning the attac

One of the most popular posts on this blog has been this one , co-authored by me and Shubham while we were still students at NITIE. Even after 10 years, the post has stood the test of time and continues to guide new aspirants to take a right decision choosing between taking up a placement offer vs. going for an MBA. This post however is dated and also leaves some key questions unanswered. One such question is as to what is the ideal work experience prior to an MBA. One visitor to this blog asked me this question on email and while I was replying to him, I realized that the answer may benefit several others who visit this blog. Hence reproducing a generalized summary of my reply to the reader here. If you look at it from perspective of jump in salary that you get before and after an MBA , then, the earlier you do an MBA, the better it is. For example, if you are a fresher, as an engineer you'll end up with a package of 3-4 Lakhs, while after an MBA may be 6-8 Lakhs. If you

Continued from here Sadly, with what I witnessed in the decay of the Sports facility is an indication that we have not only lost the infrastructure, but also lost the spirit. The fall of PSU towns like Bhilai, Bhopal, Rourkela and rise of IT towns like Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad has led to a breakdown of the self-contained ecosystem of work and life which was built in these towns - and fall of Sporting facilities and Sporting spirit is a collateral victim of this tectonic shift in lifestyles.  This is actually quite ironical given that the newfangled IT crowd happily pays tens of thousands every quarter even to gyms housed in a 2 BHK apartments and would also possibly pay similar sums for Sports facilities of the scale of the BHEL Sports Complex. In fact, Bhopal city itself which has grown all round the BHEL Township, would have people who would be ready to pay for membership in the Sports complex if  it was maintained properly. There are several of these medium and super-ric

This interview with Sports Authority of India Director General - Jiji Thomson - highlights almost everything that is wrong with the Sports administration in India. Thankfully, Thomson seems to be aware of all the lacunae himself and is taking on each issue head-on; and while it seems that the new government at the Center is being more proactive, he still needs more executive support. I want to relate my personal experience in this regard. I am not a sports person - so much so that I have never enjoyed playing any sport (with exception of swimming perhaps) - in fact I don't enjoy watching sports as well. However, being brought up in a PSU township at BHEL Bhopal, I had the privilege of enjoying some of the best sporting facilities then available in India. So, even a non-enthusiast like me spent a lot of time playing badminton in a professional covered court, football in a well organized ground (unlike the uneven patches most people get to play in) and had my tryst with learnin

Flickr image by  sayan51 I was listening to my grandma and my uncle talk about the nonsense they show on TV nowadays, about how Children in TV are shown to be arrogant or uttering things which do not suit their age, and then the topic turned to how there is too much 'freedom' given to today's youth, the fact that they are not bound by cultural ethos is making them directionless achievers; and as the discussion got accented, there was a hint that the world needs a dictatorial order - how youth need to be disciplined and made to act within the 'bounds' of our culture, how this will result in a more fruitful generation. This, I am sure, is a common debate in many households in India and even elsewhere; the conclusion of course is very typical of the rightist philosophy bordering on, though not absolutely, vigilante approach. I agree and disagree. Yes, freedom is a double edged sword, but absolute freedom does not have an alternative irrespective of its blemish

Continued from here The root cause with several nations such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or even Pakistan, is that they are still kingdoms, and have not transformed themselves into modern democratic nations. There remains no way to govern them apart from a totalitarian and dictatorial government. [The fact that Pakistan is a kingdom, not a nation unequivocally explains why Pakistan’s history has been marred with coups and why the nation goes into tizzies of instability every time a ‘democratic’ government rules it.] The problem with kingdoms is that kingdoms cannot be multipolar, they exist because there is supremacy of one and only one force at any time - as Jean Bodin's concept of absolute sovereign commands. If that force is not a monarch or military dictator, there ensues a war between various factions to become that 'one force' which would govern the kingdom. One of the reasons why Pakistan has seen so many bloody coups is that it was not gifted with the visi

Continued from here  The consolidation the territorial boundaries was only half the job done – what was in the hands of the provisional government in 1947-49 was just a kingdom and not a Nation. The forging of a nation from this kingdom required visionary wisdom and unflinching determination to principle of ‘multi-cultural’ nationalism. Operationally, the issue of sub-nationalities was resolved by instituting a pseudo-federal governance system. ‘Pseudo’ because unlike an ideal federal system, the ‘union’ or whole was not made up of the smaller ‘states’. Upholding the original territories (some of them governed by Royalties) and ‘combining’ them to form the nation would have been disastrous. It would have meant allowing each state to have its own territorial borders, and a deluge of pacts and negotiations to freeze them – which would have broken down time and again, sinking the region into perpetual strife. Instead, the first step was, to consolidate all military power with

Continued from here  When the British marched into India – the geopolitical landscape wasn’t much different than that of the then Europe – several small and big kingdoms dotted the subcontinent, and treaties, alliances and assurances balanced power among them.  During the Raj, the British did make some efforts to unify the whole mass in some ways (like establishing railway and postal systems), primarily to suit their commercial needs, but the basic fabric remained as divided till 1947 as it was in 1857. In words of Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India under the British Raj,”The political system of India is neither feudalism nor federation. It is embodied in no constitution and bears no resemblance to a league.” In fact, before leaving, the British gashed a new divide within the subcontinent - the ‘two nation theory’. If the partition was an injury, several more potential wounds lay ahead of independent India in 1947. With the region left in a fragmented mess of erstwhile royalt