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"Real" Dream - 2

Everybody has a dream. Only a few go on to reach their dream, but they have to undergo various difficulties to attain them. Don't think your dreams are over. Its not, if you can put in that extra effort you can achieve your dreams.

I wanted to be an electronics engineer. I was amazed at the Electronics chapter which we had to study during our Twelfth standard. I was deluged in all the fascination about how I am going to study in electronic scale about working of a radio, TV, etc... As a matter of fact, I didn't study those stuff nor I am working in my field of interest.

I would say four factors that would affect you destiny,

1. Good Education / Institution:

We have a post in our blog stating the education system in India. The educational system should be upgraded as it is outdated. I found that people where teaching vaccum tubes when there is already a revolution in Transistors and MoSFETs. It also depends on the socio-economic class of the student. If he can afford money then he can get admission in good institution.

The education system has become more of a business nowadays. People who have the money power (and muscle power) have started to build institutions and are gaining profit from them. I dont want them to provide education for free (after all they need money to survive), but they could atleast stop the huge amount of donation they claim from those poor parents. I have seen colleges collecting hefty fines and defaulters were made to stand outside the directors office (Like a Watchman!!!) or sometimes suspended. They dont care about the welfare of students anymore . All they care about is money. I am not blaming all of them. We can find some people who have that conscience (or pity) to help the students in their studies and not hinder them.

In the early 20th century, people donated their wealth in order to build educational institutions and help the people in need. In modern days, its the other way round, you take the money from the people to build more educational institutions in order to acquire wealth.

The sad part is even the government are not interfering in these matters. They dont want any trouble from those hotshots (as some of the educational institutions are run by people who are prominent in either the ruling party or the opposition party). They dont care a damn about education to poor, all they care is free TV for the poor when there in energy shortage.

2. Parents:

The role of parents is very important in making you dream come true (or rather their dream come true). Now honestly how many parents would love their child to be an artist, lyricist,etc.. They (some of them) want to impress (or exceed other children) their relatives and friends, so they try to push in their ambitions into our mind. They dont allow you to settle in your minds. They constantly come up and say to you what they want us to become, they dont listen what we want to become. If the kid wants to become something other than what their parents want to be, they are brain washed.

Parents should be supportive of their kids, they have understand what the child wants and not what they want from the child. These days , the interaction time between the parents and the kids are dwindling at an alarming rate. In most of the middle class families, both the parents are working and they come home only by 7.30 pm and the kid is under the supervision of a servant or he will be in some tution class. The kid arrives at 8.00 pm or he is already tired of these classes , so he takes his dinner and goes to sleep. People should listen to what the kid has done in the school, they should follow their activity, spend time with them and thats how the bond between the parents and kid will become stronger. Richard Feynman admired his father, you can find references of his father teaching him in some of his books. Maybe thats why he decided to become a world renown scientist. The interaction between a child and his parent may shape his ambition/career.

Again, if you see from the parents' point of view, they are quite helpless, they want their kids to be in repectable job rather than risking his career for some other profession. Most of them struggle to raise their kids and they expect some payback from child. They think if somehow he/she becomes engineer or doctor, he/she can continue to serve the family. So they are apprehensive of sending their son/daughter to their area of interest which may put the entire family at risk. They are really constricted to some ideas (their ideal world), they dont want to think outside that world.

3. Teacher:

The teacher plays an important role in making one career. Most of the teachers are sub standard,Why? The reason is something to do with the topic of the post. Most of them dont pursue their dream, but forced to come into teaching profession becuase of their family circumstances or due to lack of jobs of their interest. There have been some really good teachers, who have dedicated their lives to teaching, but we need some real gems to force the talet out of the child when a parent fails to do so.

4. The Students:

I would say that the students also play an important role in ruining their ambition/career. Let's for example take engineering, we have been provided facilities (atleast some) when some children could only dream about. Most of the people are forced into engioneering, but there are some people whose ambition is to study engineering. Does all the guys/girls who do engineering study properly? No, I dont think so. We can go about complaining that the facilities weren't there, the teachers weren't good, did we improvise? No. All we did was having fun all the time (maybe sometimes we studied), enjoying life and lost our opportunity to learn more when we had the facility (little facility). We were enjoying with our friends when we should have deluged ourselves in the library books, but we rarely did that, when we did that it was mostly to skip classes and to pass time without much ado.

People dont want to explore the subject, they want to be spoon fed by the teachers. All they want is to score good grades (which is actually important) without actually knowing anything. People have to explore beyond what they have been taught. Its time the students change their attitude, they have internet. Even if they are not taught well, they can go browse the net and actually learn the stuff rather than complaining.

It also takes immense courage to pursue your ambition. It may include going against tradition, parents wishes etc. There are some people who have done it. I knew personally some of the people. I salute them for their courage and reflect upon my cowardice and try to find a workaround for it.

I agree there are exceptions in all the four points I have mentioned above. Finally, I leave you with these two examples to ponder about. One from the past and one from the present.

i) Leonardo Da Vinci - Illegitimate son of a wealthy man. He didnt have education like us or the facility that we have now. Look at him, he did everything - he was a painter, sculptor, engineer, mechanic, designer, scientist,etc... He did everything he wanted to do and succeeded in it.

ii) http://xlalumni.blogspot.com/2007/11/xlri-homecoming-07-idli-boy-steals-show.html

No excuses for any of us. If he can do it, we can do it. We still have time to pursue our dreams. Who's Game?

Running after your "real" dream.

Hi all,

Imagine what Da Vinci, Zidane, James Hetfield, Godel or whomever great you can imagine would have wanted to become. By becoming something does not mean only our profession but our ambition. I tend to stutter here because I could not make out the difference between career and ambition. This might be the case for many as we are born in India - I suppose.

People, try flying by your past and recollect what you fantasized to be and what you are now. Now that we are mature and we tend to acclimatize our dream or maybe try forget our dream as we can safely say "I made a smart and realistic decision".

What might stop one from becoming a great poet or a painter or a musician. Let me list out some.
1. Fear of inquisition that we might recieve from society.
2. Fear of survival.
And many other list of fears that haunt us. Or I might say that drive us to run in an opposite direction.

Take some time off for introspection. Lets do some reverse engineering. I'll take my own case. I'm an CSE Engineer. What drove me to become one? Fantasy surrounding computers, was interested in maths, heard from someone that CSE has lots of maths and logic- which gave my conscience all clear to choose CSE.

This point is where i strongly feel something is missing. Did I do the research about computer engineering, if it is good or not? No. Is that because I was not exposed to computers much. Is our educational foundation not balanced? Or that I just did not care what I want to be?

I think even now, in this age many just dont know what they want to do in future.. Or what they want to be in future.. People just wait for the jigsaw puzzle to get over all by itself.... they dont go in search of the pieces that help them to solve the puzzle. Once you have the location of the pieces then you can think about the plan of action on how you can solve it.

Do you have the pieces that solve the puzzle or you in search of the pieces or just that you dont know you are in the middle of a puzzle?

I want this to be an open dicussion. Please comment.

Thanks,
Gnanesh.(Poonai)

Beyond old Kollywood

This is another posting about movies.I couldnt resist posting this from The Hindu,

“Kalloori” is the finest Tamil film of the year. After “Kadhal”, Balaji Sakthivel could have easily made an ambitious film with big stars, but he chose instead to do something smaller, on a more intimate scale. You have to admire him for it. There are few false notes in “Kalloori”, a film about three years in the life of nine college friends. Character, plot and dialogue are flawlessly rendered, staying faithful to its small town roots, never once betraying its authentic rural sensibility. The actors look uncompromisingly South Indian: every face here reminds us of real people and there’s no attempt to airbrush the actors and make them movie-handsome. Sakthivel maintains a fine, calibrated balance between the formulaic and the artistic.

“Kalloori” is only one example among several recent Tamil films that point to a very quiet but exciting revolution taking place in contemporary Tamil cinema: an unexpected, astonishing move towards realistic, intelligent, strongly scripted storytelling. Ram’s “Kattradhu Tamil” and Ameer’s “Paruthiveeran” are also remarkable instances of a new kind of movie in Tamil. What is just as remarkable is their modest success at the box office. In some ways, a film like “Kalloori”, deftly weaving Kollywood and realism, is more ambitious and more entertaining than a big budget film with stars. Is this the new Kollywood?

New wave

What these new wave of Tamil films seem to be doing is to fuse the energy and entertainment of a mainstream film (without its formulaic excesses) with the complexity and sensitivity of an art film (minus the excessive artiness). Mani Ratnam invented it in “Nayagan” and perfected it in “Aayitha Ezhuthu”, but it took all these decades for a newer generation of filmmakers to follow his genius. Other recent examples in this new wave are: Thankar Bachchan’s “Pallikoodam” and “Onbadhu Roobai Nottu”, Vetrimaran’s “Polladhavan”, Nishikant Kamat’s “Evano Oruvan”, Padma Magan’s “Ammuvaagiya Naan”, Gnana Rajasekharan’s “Periyar”, Vasanta Balan’s “Veyil”, Selvaraghavan’s “Pudupettai” and Cheran’s “Thavamai Thavamirunthu”.

Suddenly, it seems there is a new Tamil audience, a young audience, willing to see new things. The big Deepavali releases, “Azhagiya Tamil Magan”, “Vel” and “Machakarran” for instance, seem un-entertaining and even tame to a new Tamil audience now used to a cinema that is more inventive.

The Tamil New Wave is also characterised by style, personal filmmaking, a minimum song soundtrack (with songs in the background rather than lip synched and danced to) a shorter running time, no parallel comedy track (the comedy arises instead from within the plot) and themes that are sharply observed, tough-minded explorations of rural life and life on the mean streets. The characters here are rooted in family, culture and tradition but are forced to break with everything because of their personal choices — usually love or ambition.

The significance of these films is not for Tamil cinema alone. Their influence is already being felt through the rest of Indian cinema, signalling to filmmakers that our formulaic movies can be reinvented.

Already paralleling the Tamil revolution is a new kind of Hindi movie, evidenced by “Hazaaron Khwashien Aisi”, “Black Friday”, “Omkara”, “Iqbal”, “Page 3”, “Mixed Doubles”, “Rang de Basanti”, “Dus Kahaniya”, “Khoya Khoya Chand” etc. Except their themes are urban, looking at sex, adultery, relationships, work pressure, crime and everything else that contemporary living throws up. If Tamil movies depend too much on a rustic milieu, Hindi movies lean too much on the urban. Both cinemas need to crossover.

How exactly did this new cinema come about? Had its young audience, now exposed to better cinema from around the world, begun to tire of the more formulaic, fantasy-driven films? Or was it the young directors themselves who now desired to tell new stories in new ways?

The frontrunners

It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when this film revolution in contemporary Tamil cinema started, but I’d like to mark two films as possibly having inspired and kick started this new wave:” Autograph” and “Kaadhal”. Both films were artistically made, entertaining, and — most crucially — huge box office hits. It must have startled the Kodambakkam industry to see two intimate love stories with no stars winning such a huge audience.

Balaji Sakthivel’s “Kaadhal” and Cheran’s “Autograph” signalled two things to Kollywood’s aspiring younger directors — that there was an audience for character-driven, strongly scripted, low budget movies, and that there were bold producers and passionate filmmakers willing to risk telling more realistic, intelligent, personal stories.

Sakthivel brings a documentary naturalness to the acting in “Kalloori”, especially with Hemlatha as Kayal, who can actually make you forget she’s acting. He coaxes an achingly beautiful performance from Tamanna; a complex, intense performance I have not been able get out of my head, one that heralds a major star. “Kalloori” is admirably restrained, subtly humorous and scene-by-scene enjoyable.

Ameer’s “Paruthiveeran” stunned an audience with a brutally detailed depiction of clan wars in rural Tamil Nadu. The first Tamil film to evoke small town life precisely: the festivals, rituals, locale, characters, and dialect. Its strongest character, fascinatingly, is a woman, Muthazhagu (an audacious performance by Priyamani), the heroine who fiercely knows her mind and heart. The scene where she eats with a ravishing appetite just after being sickeningly beaten by her father reverses everything we’ve seen in our movies about women and patriarchy.

Unpredictable

If “Kalloori” is the best Tamil movie of the year, “Kattradhu Tamil” is the most underrated. Ram’s film is original, unpredictable, disturbing and provocative. Prabhakar (Jeeva scorching as a bearded Dostoyevskian hero) has an M.A. in Tamil but it gets him nowhere. He runs into classmates half as bright as him doing fabulously well working for BPOs, while those with a degree in the arts and humanities are marginalised into obscurity. Working as a young Tamil teacher in Chennai for a poor school, Prabhkar narrates his terrifying journey (to Karunas, usually a comic sidekick, who does a superb about turn as a character actor) from idealism and rage to madness and oblivion.

What this postgraduate in Tamil has to say about how irrelevant those who have given themselves to Tamil culture and literature have become in an increasingly Anglicised society feels alarmingly true and painfully ironic. “Kattradhu Tamil” is uneven, dark, and violent but also full of conviction with an uncompromising vision.

The only aspect that slightly mars many of these offbeat Tamil films is their tendency for dark, morbid, violent endings. They seem to interpret any realistic portrayal as necessarily ending in tragedy, almost to say: realism equals tragedy. “Paruthiveeran”, “Kattradhu Tamil” and “Kalloori” also make this error. What they don’t realise is that after soaking in the despair and struggles of these characters, what we in the audience want to see is the triumph of these characters (however small that might be) over their fate. We want to see is Veeran and Muthazhagu, Muthuchelvan and Shobana, Prabhakar and Anandi take flight, escape the past and find a new life. Surely they’ve earned it.

Through the last decade and a half there have been other one-off films that were also intelligent and artful, but because they popped up sporadically and were not, unlike the new Tamil movie phenomenon, part of a gathering movement, they never achieved sufficient momentum to make a strong impact and change the idiom of contemporary Tamil cinema. But they nudged the revolution closer: Films such as Durai’s “Mugavari”, Susi Ganesan’s” Five Star” (his “Thiruttu Payale” is also noteworthy for the way its dark hero stays faithfully in character right up to the end) Suhasini Maniratnam’s “Indira”, and Ameer’s “Raam”. And then, more recently, there have been these other little, deft entertainers — romantic dramas and comedies where the emphasis is not on being realistic or authentic but in being charming and believable: Priya’s “Kanda Naal Mudhal”, Azhagham Permual’s “Dum, Dum, Dum”, Radha Mohan’s “Azhagiya Theeyae” and “Mozhi”, Vasanth’s “Yei Nee Romba Azhaga Irrukkai” and “Poovellam Kettupaar”, and Cheran’s “Mayakannadi”.

Smart and stylish

Even the new wave of Tamil gangster films — “Pudupettai”, Mishkin’s “Chithiram Pesuthadi”, Linguswamy’s “Sandakozi”, Vishnuvardhan’s “Pattiyal” and Vetrimaran’s “Polladhavan” — and thrillers — Gautham Menon’s “Kaaka Kaaka” and “Pachaikilli Muthucharam”, Igor’s underrated “Kalaba Kadhalan”, Vasanth’s “Satham Podaathey” — have a new grittiness and edge to them, and are smartly written and stylishly crafted.

There is plenty that is still disturbing about even new Tamil cinema: endless violence, obnoxious attitude to women, and ingratiating tropes. What is cause for celebration, though, is that this vibrant new cinema in Tamil is not at its culmination but is just beginning. Already in “Kalloori” there is no violence, no caste politics, and no item numbers. It certainly feels like Tamil cinema has finally grownup, turned a corner, and gone beyond old Kollywood.

You can also check the story at , http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/01/13/stories/2008011350150500.htm

Let us talk about Consumerism

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While Jan Cecil's friends and neighbors thronged the malls on Friday, filling their shopping bags with sweater sets, video games and aromatherapy candles, she spent the day outdoors with her family.
Cecil, a Berkeley resident who works as a systems analyst, is part of a small but increasingly visible movement dedicated to buying and using less -- less fossil fuel, less processed food, fewer gifts.
In contrast with the orgy of shopping that consumes much of the country from late November through early January, several adult members of Cecil's family have agreed not to exchange gifts this year. (Kids will still get presents.)
"I'm realizing that by giving people things, you're in some ways burdening them," Cecil said. "We have so much stuff that, in a way, it's a wonderful feeling of lightness to lessen it."
The day after Thanksgiving, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, has become the focus of the growing anti-consumerism movement. This year, "Buy Nothing Day" activities are planned in 40 countries, said Kalle Lasn, a Vancouver activist who helped launch the first Buy Nothing Day in 1993.
While some of the more in-your-face adherents carry signs and chant anti- capitalistic slogans in shopping districts like San Francisco's Union Square, others decide to hike, play with their kids or simply do something other than shop.
De-emphasizing shopping "lets me keep my focus on what's more important in life, like spending time with my daughter," said Joseph Beckenbach of San Jose, a software consultant.
Of course, many other Americans find fulfillment in gift giving and look forward to their annual shopping forays.
"We love Christmas shopping!" said Sue Tiesiera, who wore candy cane earrings and a cherry-red jacket while shopping in San Francisco on Friday. "I love the hustle and bustle."
Tiesiera and her daughter Tiffany had amassed six large shopping bags by 2: 30 p.m. on Friday. They had left their home in Hilmar, in the Central Valley, at 7:30 a.m. for a full day of shopping. "It's been a family tradition for many years," said Sue Tiesiera.
On a macro level, people like the Tiesieras seem to more than compensate for any dent in spending the anti-consumerism movement might be making.
General merchandise sales have grown an average of 4.8 percent annually in the last 10 years. Despite a slowing economy, the average U.S. household plans to spend $1,684 on gifts, travel, entertainment decorations and food this holiday season, according to a survey by American Express.
Nevertheless, the anti-consumerism movement is gaining ground, particularly among left-leaning people who are predisposed to a simple-living philosophy. While some non-leftists have also signed on, the issue has become a rallying point for virtually every progressive cause, including environmentalism, social justice and labor.
Over consumption "can be seen as the root of most evils," said Joe Hill, an organizer of this year's Buy Nothing Day activities on Union Square. "Products that have horrible effects on the environment are created for corporations to make money. Unions are busted so people can have cheaper products (from overseas). It spans all the different issues."
Groups involved in the Union Square demonstration this year included East Bay Food Not Bombs, Global Exchange, Art and Revolution, Hill's Reclaim the Streets and assorted individuals. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Save the Redwoods -- Boycott the Gap Campaign also protested individual stores.
So -- Retailer beware? Well, that's probably premature.
Lasn, the editor of Adbusters magazine, estimates that about 1 million people observed Buy Nothing Day last year. On a planet of more than 6 billion residents, that's barely a blip.
But adherents say the philosophy of living with less is spreading through a combination of word of mouth, a pair of seminal books and the Internet.
Buy Nothing Day activities all over the world are coordinated through www. adbusters.org, for example. People interested in exploring less consumption- oriented lifestyles can sign up for local discussion groups called "simplicity circles" at www.simpleliving.net.
Anti-consumerism has even popped up in mainstream media, most notably Time Inc.'s Real Simple magazine, which was launched this year with articles on topics like knitting and organizing one's kitchen.
IT ALL STARTED WITH THOREAU
Of course, the idea of living with less is hardly new. Henry David Thoreau's "Walden," an American classic, details the two years that Thoreau spent living off the land in a tiny cabin in the mid-1840s. In the 1960s, Duane Elgin's "Voluntary Simplicity" gained a small but devoted following.
But with the stresses of contemporary life mounting, the twin concepts of buying and working less appeal to more and more people, movement organizers believe.
"I think deep down there is a feeling that even though we're living in this moment of incredible prosperity, at the same time there's something wrong," said Lasn, whose magazine is a leading mouthpiece of the anti-consumerism movement.
"We're not as happy as we should be," he said. "We wonder, 'Why is my wife so anxious and why does she go shopping so often and why am I feeling dissatisfied?' This dark side of our consumer culture is what's fueling this movement."
Many who prefer the simple life have found their way into the movement through the book "Your Money or Your Life" by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez. The book has sold some 750,000 copies and appeared on the New York Times best seller's list.
Robin and her New Road Map Foundation (www.newroad
map.org) in Seattle have parlayed the book into a network of voluntary advisers who help consumers reorganize their finances to get out of debt and spend less money.
When "Your Money or Your Life" was published in 1992, "living lightly was a marginal activity," said Robin, who has been featured in Time magazine and on Oprah. "Now groups all over the country are looking at it. This thing has absolutely mushroomed."
Hundreds of simplicity circles have popped up around the country, including about a half-dozen in the Bay Area. In addition to "Your Money or Your Life," a book called "Circle of Simplicity" by Cecile Andrews is a common guidebook for these groups. (Andrews is a visiting professor at Stanford University.)
Whether the anti-consumerism movement will ever be embraced by the broad mainstream is an open question.
With retail sales heading up, up, up -- along with the size of SUVs, the incidence of childhood obesity and other consumption-oriented indicators -- many Americans don't seem terribly interested in cutting back.
PESSIMISTIC VIEW
But some activists believe our millennial buying spree is bound to come to an end -- if not voluntarily, then by some cataclysmic event just over the horizon.
"We cannot continue to sustain our current levels of consumption, where 5 percent of the world, Canadians and Americans, consume over 33 percent of the world's resources and spew out over one-third of the greenhouse gases and toxic waste while our TVs hype us up to ever-greater feats of consumption," said Lasn.
He foresees another 1929, complete with bread lines. "I'm ready for it," said Lasn. "I'm cultivating a beautiful garden."
Alex Molnar, director of the Center for Analysis of Commercialism in Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is less apocalyptic.
While he agrees that current levels of consumption are unsustainable ecologically, he believes an impending credit crunch will change mainstream consumption habits well before some environmental disaster brings the planet to its knees.
"We have a modern wage slave here, with four credit cards all charged to the max and people declaring bankruptcy at record rates," said Molnar.
"Do I think what we're doing now is sustainable for even another half century? Probably not. On the other hand, the human capacity for ignoring unwanted information is extraordinary."
Not surprisingly, retailers and marketers are not happy being branded the bad guys. "I take issue with these alarmist charges being leveled at retail," said Pam Rucker a spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation in Washington.
Consumerism is "dangerous to whom?" she asked. "Dangerous to the people whose livelihoods depend on consumption? To people who work in retail?"
Rucker noted that growth in retail sales has moderated this year as the economy has slowed, evidence that there is nothing unsustainable about consumer spending.
"People consume at a pace at which they feel comfortable," she said

LA Times.

Please share your views about consumerism in the comments section .

Welcome Nano !

The much awaited people's car from Tata, Nano launched amidst a big cheering crowd yesterday at the Delhi annual auto show. priced at a sweet one lakh rupees wonly tag, it sure has caught not only the country but around the world, as media is spreading the news of the cute car's arrival almost everywhere... the cheapest car in the world...Time dubbed it an "upstart econobox'' And Popular Mechanics headlined its story "Nano Is the $2500 Car That Might Change the World," before the reporter hits the brakes..

too much for their optimism, some consider this sixth in the line of cars that changed the world - Ford Model T (1908 -the first mass car), Willys-Overland Jeep (1941- that 'won' the 2WWar),BMC Mini (1959- fun driving starts),Saab 93 (1958- protection ergonomics) Toyota Corolla (1966- reliability and radio on board)

and Tata Nano! to be sixth??! thrilling for us, the first from namma India.

this sure has made a lot of thoughts running in my mind which i would like to put it down here for discussion.

the pluses first :

the car is a boon for the rising middle-class of the country, definitely no doubt about it. millions of families riding dangerously as fours and fives! on motorbikes can now find this a big relief since it is now within reach. will reduce traveling stress of a big mass of people.. again, no doubt college goers (most would want it for the next academic year! paavam parents!) , IT/IT-ES employees, government servants, shop owners, small agricultural families, NGOs, foreign tourists on short stays, small travel firms, sales groups... everybody would love to get one.

it has all the basic features of a small car, comfortable, (in fact more space than M800), 20k/l and electronic controlled engine for smoother preformance and still more, 92% of M800's size.. cool.

Just a margin more than an enfield, many would think its a better deal and go for it in future. safer still, it is robust for its make, have passed collision tests and Bharat stage 3 and european emission norms. give them innum konjam cash, you can have A/C, power steering and ABS in the forth-coming deluxe models.

so much goodness and optimism in everyone... even rivals as M&M top execs who took a look at the car praised it to the press.

Mr.Ratan Tata would be so very happy and satisfied.. now that his dream came true at last. he made his word a deed braving all odds, rolling the car out of its plant in Singur, WB. the car would be spotted on roads this coming september.

now the consequences to face:

the car could easily break all sales records in the next decade to come and also cover a very wide market in regions like BRIC, african, asian and other south american countries too, in its expected overseas entry soon. Tata has always been very good as a Business house overseas, which could be advantageous in breaking market barriers and getting it on roads around the world.

the perspective in three levels : global, Indian and local

first, global :

the world is guzzling too much of oil.. too much... this car would only add to the smoke. millions of bikers switching to this car implies > oil demand, price rise, shortage, pollution rise... Co2 levels....

Environmentalists are very concerned about the mini bug's arrival. Greenpeace is already planning protests... so is, Mr. Pachauri ponravargaL...

Indian :

local transportation always being a sad failure or at most, a miserable excuse in most cities (Mumbai BEST and Chennai MTC more bearable) People would buy nano in big numbers... and Arasiyalvaadhis will not give a damn about speedy measures in improving the public buses and now can relax for a while in resorts and say everybody,

''Bus la vara mudiyalanaa, car la pongadaa... athaan oru lakshathukku vikkiraayngaLe..
apparamenna? athaan aayirakaNakkula sambaathikreengaLe.. namakku vera naraiyya vela irukku paa... pakistan theevravaathis oda orey ka(u)shtamappaa... athukku mela vivasaayees, industries, IT deals signings,womens issues, goondas... naan romba bisee... aduttha therthal vanthaa paappom... "

but they very well know AC MTC buses are a wasteful addition, much to attract the hip crowd... nyaayama speaking, we can always have two normal buses than a AC sinfaansee bus.arasiyal vaazhkaila ithellaam sagajamappaa...

Local Perspective:
we already are stifling under the worsestest road conditions. potholes, broken speedbreakers, blocked waterways, drains, absolutely insufficient parking spaces, non-existing flyovers where it is supposed to be, too many apartment buildings, too much of too muchs... adadadaaa... ithula ithu verayaa? mothalla road a ozhunga podungappaa.. apram pleasure car la pogalaam... naansans...

more to talk about... rather, discuss. come on !, what do you all guys think?

Why Ponting's heroes just don't appeal to me

I DON'T like cheats. And I don't like this Australian cricket team.

When Andrew Symonds bowled a straight one on the last day of the SCG Test to Rahul Dravid, who padded up, deflecting the ball into the gloves of Adam Gilchrist, did any of the Australians really think it was out? I doubt it. No one watching on TV thought it was out. It wasn't out. Ricky Ponting and his cohorts knew it. Dravid's bat was behind his pad. To appeal when you know the batsman is not out is, to my mind, cheating.

It's the Australian way. Has been for years. Gilchrist's predecessor, Ian Healy, enunciated the rationale perfectly while commentating — he appealed when he thought the batsman was out, or when he thought the umpire might give it out. That is, he would appeal if knew it was not out but thought the umpire might give it out. As I said, cheating.

The heroes of this Australian team say that in cricket you cop the good with the bad. That's exactly what captain Ponting conspicuously failed to do in this Test. In the first innings he was given not out when clearly out. Quite some runs later he was given out when he was not out. Did he cop it? No, he stood and glared at the umpire. He should have been fined for dissent. He should have acknowledged it was an easy mistake to make, given the bat was next to the pad, making the deflection all but imperceptible. And it wasn't just the heat of the moment: the tantrum continued at the dressing-room. He should have been ashamed of himself. Back to the Bourbon and Beefsteak, mate.

But Ponting is not ashamed. "I really can't see how we have done anything wrong by the spirit of the game," he said when the furore blew up. I can. So can a lot of others.

The Australians have just equalled the game's longest winning streak. Next week in Perth they should better it. Then go one better again in Adelaide. Who knows where it might end. Well, they can stick their streak where they can stick their 3 mobile. After this effort, I couldn't care less.

Which is a pity. There was much to like in this contest. Brad Hogg an unlikely saviour in the first-innings revival. The Indian response was better still: Dravid's doggedness, Laxman's elegance, Tendulkar's mastery. Even Ponting's properness in declining to appeal for a line-ball low-down take. But the match was marred and entered the halls of infamy by the poorest of umpiring, Australian petulance — and Harbhajan's Singh's wrongdoing. If, that is, you accept the Australians' version of events and not his.

But when the Australians stand at the crease when they edge the ball to first slip and appeal when the batsmen is clearly not out — well, why then would you believe anything they say?

The lack of good grace marked the Australians throughout this match. And series — what a cheek of Matthew Hayden to say that Anil Kumble "stole" five wickets in Melbourne. You could say Hayden has stolen 29 Test centuries, having barely faced one decent fast bowler in all that time. The lack of grace was there when Ponting motioned to the commentary box after the game, from where Tony Greig had dared to criticise the timing of his declaration. And it was there at the post-match media conference when he blasted an Indian reporter for daring to question him.

Ricky, time to have some KFC and calm down. Me, I think I need a bucket.

You know what I mean.

Michael Epis writing for THE AGE

Kalloori and other contemporary World cinema

I recently went for the Tamil movie "Kalloori" directed by Balaji Shakthivel. I entered the theater thinking that it will be yet another movie about college. It had all the elements like friendship and love which you can expect in a Tamil movie which is based on college life. The climax was a shocker, we didn't expect the movie to end this way. The director has portrayed the bus burning incident that happened 4 years back in Dharmapuri when three of the student lost their precious life.

I have seen movies that portray real life incidents (sufferings) or the internal problem of people in a particular society (for e.g., No Man's Land , Paradise Now, Kannathil Muthamittal, etc..). Most of the people in the world are not aware of these kind of sufferings that's happening every moment in some part of the world.

Directors from all over the world have started to show the "real" situation in which people around the world has suffered ( Schindler's list, Hotel Rwanda, Blood Diamond) or suffering (Paradise Now, No Man's Land). Cinema is a powerful media where you can send powerful message to people but unfortunately Indian directors are far behind in this kind of sensitive subject. All the producers and directors want to portray a hero as a larger than life hero and pocket millions. The actors also expect the same from the directors, they don't want to portray sensitive things, they want to enhance their image in front of their fans.

Its high time our actors and directors turn to the social issues plaguing our society. India is the second largest movie producer in the world and most of the movies that are started are not finished and some of the movies are finished with heavy financial backing (and with no story) and only the actors and directors are benefited by this and not the society.

The day after watching kalloori, the 3 accused in the Dharmapuri were sentenced to death (The sentence was nothing to do with the movie) and I thought it was perfect to end this way. Alas, today the court have stayed the sentence. Like the ending of the movie, we will never know if the accused will be brought to justice.

Directors like Vittoria De Sica, Kieslowski, Fellini, Satyajith Ray were daring enough to show the "real" human conditions and emotions. Will we ever see a period like that in Tamil Nadu if not in India? Thats a question for which we will never know when we will find answers.

"The politicians want to see it as black and white, good and evil, and art wants to see it as a human thing." -- Hany Abu-Assad

Edward Said -The tallest intellectual of our time.

I would like to thank Gautam for bringing in Said into the discussion and i will continue from where he left .


Edward Said remained as the voice of the voice less from almost half a century .His orientalism laid the foundation for most the intellectual debate about the Orient. Let me begin by dispensing certain definitions for a better understanding of the article.

The Orient signifies a system of representations framed by political forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and Western empire. The Orient exists for the West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West. It is a mirror image of what is inferior and alien ("Other") to the West.

Orientalism is "a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient." It is the image of the 'Orient' expressed as an entire system of thought and scholarship.

The first 'Orientalists' were 19th century scholars who translated the writings of 'the Orient' into English, based on the assumption that a truly effective colonial conquest required knowledge of the conquered peoples. This idea of knowledge as power is present throughout Said's critique. By knowing the Orient, the West came to own it. The Orient became the studied, the seen, the observed, the object; Orientalist scholars were the students, the seers, the observers, the subject. The Orient was passive; the West was active.

The western argument was very simple. East should be dominated and west shows it by conquering them.West knows what is right for the east because it knows its culture right from the dawn of civilization (as in Egypt) through scholarship (learning; knowledge acquired by study).So the west knows what is right for the east .

What is considered the Orient is a vast region, one that spreads across a myriad of cultures and countries. It includes most of Asia as well as the Middle East. The depiction of this single 'Orient' which can be studied as a cohesive whole is one of the most powerful accomplishments of Orientalist scholars. It essentializes an image of a prototypical Oriental--a biological inferior that is culturally backward, peculiar, and unchanging--to be depicted in dominating and sexual terms. The discourse and visual imagery of Orientalism is laced with notions of power and superiority, formulated initially to facilitate a colonizing mission on the part of the West and perpetuated through a wide variety of discourses and policies. The language is critical to the construction. The feminine and weak Orient awaits the dominance of the West; it is a defenseless and unintelligent whole that exists for, and in terms of, its Western counterpart. The importance of such a construction is that it creates a single subject matter where none existed, a compilation of previously unspoken notions of the Other. Since the notion of the Orient is created by the Orientalist, it exists solely for him or her. Its identity is defined by the scholar who gives it life.

Said argues that Orientalism can be found in current Western depictions of "Arab" cultures. The depictions of "the Arab" as irrational, menacing, untrustworthy, anti-Western, dishonest, and--perhaps most importantly--prototypical, are ideas into which Orientalist scholarship has evolved. These notions are trusted as foundations for both ideologies and policies developed by the Occident. Said writes: "The hold these instruments have on the mind is increased by the institutions built around them. For every Orientalist, quite literally, there is a support system of staggering power, considering the ephemerality of the myths that Orientalism propagates. The system now culminates into the very institutions of the state. To write about the Arab Oriental world, therefore, is to write with the authority of a nation, and not with the affirmation of a strident ideology but with the unquestioning certainty of absolute truth backed by absolute force.

The implications of this understanding can take us very far in our understanding of cultures and respecting Nations' sovereignty .This attitude of the west has not changed much of the last century even though the empire is no more.But the dirty things it left behind still lives on in the form of Palestine , Iraq and may be Iran in the future,and much of the impoverished Africa.

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.
Suggestion:
One of the best books i ever laid my hands on was After The Last Sky by Said and another Photo Journalist Mohr A very personal text, and a very moving one, about an internal struggle: the anguish of living with displacement, with exile. The most beautiful piece of prose about what it means to be a Palestinian.

On Humanism

Please read through this review by Terry Eagleton of humanist Edward W. Said's collected lectures in Humanism and Democratic Criticism. I believe this has a lot to do about what we are really trying to achieve here.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040510/eagleton

The Need for Constructive Journalism

I watched Taare Zameen Par a few days back. I am not going to try and write a formal review. It is a beautifully written, craftily directed film by Aamir Khan that touches upon some important issues faced by children today. Although it is a film centered on a dyslexic kid Ishaan, it is precisely not one about dyslexic kids.

Aamir Khan conveys the very important fact that children are very impressionable at a tender age and they should be cared after a lot of deliberation and caution. Kids, particularly kids in India are under extreme pressure right from their kindergarten to perform well. The rat race of which they become a part of sooner or later teaches them certain lowly values that seriously have a negative effect on their attitude towards life itself.

Mayil anna had pointed out in his previous post about the importance of teachers today and I totally concur with him. Good teachers are few and far between these days and the values and thoughts these young minds are exposed to at a tender age is totally contingent on the teachers handling them at a very young age. But I find most in this generation enamoured to the materialistic realm of things only and not many have a 'the life of the mind'. It is all about video games, cars, consumerized life style, the glitz and glamour of being a corporeal being, the flaunting of money etc.

And after feeling good about the fact that this film has addressed a much important issue, I was shocked to see some critics writing that this film had a number of fundamental flaws and it has fallen short on a number of areas. I beg to differ from them because I think this is heights of cynicism because these very critics give good reviews to a 'typical' Shahrukh commercial. ( I understand that the primary task of a critic is to be critical of anything and everything thrown at him)

Although some might argue that making films and being an actor is artistic in demeanor, it just doesn't end there. I am trying to make a point about sensible journalism. Aamir has made a admirable effort in trying to get us notice a very important issue that has pretty scary repercussions. Films are an amazingly potent medium to convey ideas that can change the way we think and improve the lives of our subalterns. But the problem is that sensible journalism is really rare and hard to find. People are more interested in absolute gossip than a million other issues that are throwing lives of innumerable lives in disarray. And the film medium particularly is so bloody corrupt with wrong values and priorities.

Coming to media in general, you find the paparazzi hassling the Beckhams and Shetty's for a snap. The media just doesn't care for thousands displaced due to the Sardar Sarovar Project. Recently, Arvind Kejriwal was awarded the Ramon Magsasay award for his stellar contribution to society. Here is a journalist that believes journalism should be all about a process of a larger constructive social change. Unlike our journalists "J" who believe they are doing a great job when they go get a snap with some mediocre cine star, this man has shown the way for propective journalists.

I patronize this film so strongly because it has been something which can give so many of us a vicarious experience and also illuminates us of one thing that is absolutely important for this country; Kids. I can only think of Kamalhassan and a few others who think they are viewing Films as an avenue for an artist who can make his ideas tell; And ideas need not be revolutionary. Even a mundane thought expressed in the right way can make a difference.

The Continuing Possibilities of Land Reform

There was a long period during which land reforms had completely dropped from the national policy agenda, and even from the policy discussions of most state governments. Not only were there seemingly insuperable barriers, but it was made to appear that land reforms were unlikely to deliver much in terms of growth or productivity. Also, land reforms were typically seen as essentially taking the form of land redistribution, which is generally regarded as politically so difficult as to be next to impossible.

The more recent crisis in agriculture has created a new and different sort of cynicism about land reforms: it is being argued that since peasant cultivation is barely viable given the increasing costs and uncertain prices, it is in any case pointless to try and provide small amounts of land to peasants.

All these arguments ignore the range of possibilities of changes in land relations which remain not only necessary but even essential for ensuring viable conditions of farming. While land distribution is doubtless important, it is not the only kind of institutional change that can affect the peasantry. Indeed, there are large problems in farming today because of poor recording of land rights, inadequate official recognition of tenants,

The experience of West Bengal shows very clearly how even relatively limited land reforms such as tenancy reform and distribution of vested land can play very important roles in improving agricultural productivity, generating a range of complementary economic activities in the countryside, and generally enabling a small-producer led pattern of growth at least for some time. Therefore, it is important to consider how even small changes in legislation - and in some cases - the mere enforcement of existing legislation - can transform the conditions facing a large proportion of small farmers.

Since land reforms are essentially a State subject in the Indian constitution, it is more useful to consider the possibilities in any one state. In this article, we focus on Andhra Pradesh, a state which has been experiencing agrarian crisis for some time now, and where the need for major policy changes has been recognised also by the state government.

Land relations in Andhra Pradesh are extremely complicated and this complexity has contributed significantly to the problems facing actual cultivators in the state. Because of the fact that in many areas (especially Telengana) the names of the current holders and actual cultivators are not recorded in the land registers, such cultivators are not eligible for institutional finance and a range of other public benefits such as subsidised inputs from public agencies, compensation in the event of natural calamities, and so on.

In addition, some regions (especially in more irrigated areas) have a high proportion of tenancy, which is typically unrecorded, and tenant farmers face similar difficulties in accessing bank loans and other benefits. They are therefore all driven to the informal credit market, which supplies loans at very high rates of interest, which in turn adds greatly to their cost of cultivation. In tribal areas there are even more difficult issues of land entitlement, and tribal people are typically being denied their land rights through encroachment and lack of official protection.

Recording of land rights

In large parts of Andhra Pradesh - as , indeed, in many other states - the state, the existing land records do not accurately portray the actual position with respect to land holding and cultivation. Subdivision and fragmentation of holdings over generations, consequent upon household division, are not reflected in the land records, which sometimes continue to list the names of deceased holders, etc. This problem is especially acute in Telengana. The settlement of revenue records is meant to take place every ten years because of such processes of changing ownership and cultivation holdings; however, in Andhra Pradesh, the revenue records have not been altered for more than fifty years. (This is not uncommon - in most states, land records have not been altered for several decades.) This has meant increased disputes related to land and insecurity of holding, especially for small farmers.

Additionally, women cultivators are rarely if ever listed as the owners of land, even when they are the actual cultivators. This is despite the fact that the state's own Land Revenue Act of 1999 makes it the responsibility of the state government to enter the name or names of the actual cultivators in the Record of Rights.

It is obvious that several things can be done to resolve these problems without embarking on any legislation at all, and simply implementing the provisions of existing legislation such as the Land Revenue Act of 1999. To begin with, a fresh settlement of revenue records is imperative. This requires a major administrative drive to record the actual cultivators. While this has to be undertaken by the state government, it will obviously require the assistance of local panchayats and other agencies, since it can of course urn out to be a complicated process.

The state government had tried to bypass the problem of poor and inadequate revenue records through the provision of pattadar passbooks to all cultivators. However, as can be expected, this process was flawed in the absence of adequate proof, and many farmers have not received such passbooks. Once again, a concerted administrative drive would ensure that pattadar passbooks are provided to all cultivators. A special focus on recognising women farmers would ensure that women cultivators also receive passbooks. In addition, the land rights of tribal populations need to be clearly recognised and tribal farmers should also be issued pattadar passbooks.

Recognising tenancy

In Andhra Pradesh there are no records and therefore no official statistics on the extent of tenancy. But reliable estimates suggest that tenancy is quite high, amounting to around one-third of the cultivated land and often a larger proportion of farmers. It has been seen that, in addition to completely landless cultivators, many small farmers who own very small plots also tend to lease in additional land. The incidence of tenancy tends to be higher in irrigated tracts and in regions where rainfall is more plentiful, in other words, where there is more assured water supply.

The increasing extent of tenancy in this state over the past few decades has been associated with a shift away from sharecropping to fixed rent tenancy. Earlier, sharecropping tenancy dominated, with the crop being shared on a 50:50 basis. However, most tenancy contracts are now fixed rent contracts. The fixed rent systems are of two kinds: those which involve an advance of working capital from the landlord, and those which involve no such advance. The latter type of tenancy contracts tend to be more common.

Tenant farmers face a range of problems, dominantly stemming from the lack of official recognition of tenancy and the fact that their status as actual cultivators is nowhere recorded. This continues despite the fact that the Land Revenue Act 1999 stipulates that the names of tenants should be recorded in the revenue records. This lack of recognition effectively denies tenant farmers all access to institutional finance such as bank credit and crop insurance. In addition, they cannot benefit from any of the government schemes directed to farmers, or get any assistance or compensation at times of natural calamity, since such benefits go to the registered owner of the land. Nor do they receive any of the free or subsidised inputs which are distributed to owner cultivators from the state government, such as seeds, subsidised fertilisers and pesticides and implements.

Cash rent rates in rural Andhra Pradesh are typically quite high, ranging from Rs. 3,000 per acres in unirrigated and less fertile areas (such as in parts of Anantapur district) to as much as Rs. 7,000-9,000 per acre in irrigated areas of higher soil fertility (such as in Guntur). In the fertile south coastal Andhra region, rents can go up to as much as Rs. 15,000 per acre. These rates are in direct contravention of existing legislation (such as the AP Tenancy Act of 1956 and its 1974 amendment) under which land rents are controlled. Of course, such legislation has been so totally ignored that it is now effectively forgotten, and so neither landlords nor tenants pay much attention to such limits. In actual practice, tenant farmers are currently paying more than 3 or 4 times the rents stipulated in this Act.

It is fairly clear that some measures would immediately remedy the situation. For example, obviously the names of tenant farmers (including also women) should be recorded in the revenue records. Of course, this is not likely to be simple - it is not only politically difficult, it is also hard to record cash rent tenancies that may change with every season. The administrative costs are likely to be very large, especially in the absence of a properly functioning system of panchayati raj. But that may be yet another reason to make sure that panchayats are representative and function effectively.

Once tenant farmers are recognised as actual cultivators, they should automatically be entitled to the various benefits provided by government to other farmers, including subsidised inputs, compensation for losses, etc. This will require careful separation of owners from tenants and clearly establishing who is actually cultivating any piece of land, which means continuous monitoring by some local body.

Land distribution

Land ceiling laws have been relatively ineffective in Andhra Pradesh - only 5.1 lakhs of surplus land have been acquired in total, which suggests that the laws have been counteracted on the ground by benami transactions and distribution of large ownership holdings among family members. In addition, in the recent past there appears to have been substantial corporate acquisition of land. Much greater regulation of land grabbing of public or common land by corporations or powerful individuals is obviously required. In addition, of course, stricter enforcement of land ceilings would make available much more vested land for redistribution among the landless population.

Despite this relative lack of implementation of land ceilings, operational holdings have become much less concentrated. The data in Table 1 suggest that there has been a decline in the absolute number and area covered by large and medium holdings since 1971. There is therefore an increase in ''peasant'' holdings compared to large holdings, and it is evident that many of these must be held under tenancy contracts. The substantial increase in marginal holdings, which accounted for more than half of farmers in the early 1990s, is likely to have contributed to the difficulties of ensuring that cultivation provides a reasonable livelihood.


There is also substantial landlessness in rural Andhra Pradesh. The NSS data of Table 2 show that AP has the second highest extent of landlessness among rural households, after Punjab. Some of this landlessness is itself the result of the growing difficulties of cultivation, as indebted small and marginal farmers have been forced to sell or give up their land because of the inability to repay their debts through the proceeds of farming. It is also the case that landlessness is heavily concentrated among the Dalit and tribal populations. This high degree of landlessness is why agricultural labourers outnumber cultivators by nearly two times according to the 2001 census.


Land Degradation

Once problem that is inadequately recognised across rural India is the decline in soil fertility that has in some areas quite dramatically affected agricultural productivity. Even in Andhra Pradesh, there are increasing problems of soil degradation and fallow land.


As is evident from the chart, the proportion of waste and fallow land has increased significantly since the early 1990s. This has actually meant a decline in cultivated area. While adverse weather and rainfall conditions have certainly been associated with this, it is true that cultivation practices have eroded soil qualities over time. The problem is especially acute in certain areas of Rayalseema and northern Telengana, where cropping pattern shifts and greater use of chemical inputs have led to declining soil fertility and even forced fallows.

In other areas, the increase in current fallows also reflects the lack of viability of cultivation, as small farmers migrate in search of other incomes rather than cultivating their fields at a loss. Obviously, a focus on strategies for land regeneration, such as soil regeneration practices which can be part of a rural employment programme, would be important for dealing with such concerns.

While these may be achievable - and even necessary - policy goals, there is no doubt that they cannot be achieved without strong political will. In West Bengal, the land reforms were an outcome of decades of peasant struggle which eventually brought to power a state government committed to these reforms. Even in other states, similar motivation and social pressure will be necessary, even to make sure that the existing laws are actually implemented.

C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh

The Farce of ''School Choice''

Anyone who knows even a little bit about school education in India knows that it is largely about exclusion. Only a tiny minority of children in our country get anything resembling a decent schooling - the rest are either excluded altogether, or provided very poor quality education with weak infrastructure and inadequate pedagogic attention, which in turn encourages high rates of dropout.

As with so much else in Indian society, the reasons for such exclusion are dominantly, but not exclusively economic. Of course the poor everywhere are adversely affected, because they cannot afford expensive private schools and must suffer whatever conditions prevail in government-run schools in their areas of residence. Those living in backward regions are affected because they often simply do not have school near enough for the children to attend regularly. But in addition, a wide range of various forms of social discrimination operate to exclude children from particular castes of communities, or linguistic categories, or other groups, even when the schooling is ostensibly open to all.

The sheer extent of the exclusion from schooling is evident from the official data relating to schooling. Of around 200 million children in the age-group 6-14 years, 30 million never enrol at all. Of those who do join school, 36 per cent drop out at the primary stage, by Class 5. By Class 8 the drop out rate is 52 per cent. This means that less than half of the children under 14 years actually get the minimum schooling of 8 years mandated by the Constitution.

Some of this is because the physical infrastructure for schooling is still completely inadequate in our country. Around 30 per cent of our villages do not have a primary school within the village; another 16 per cent do not have one within 3 km of the village. Even in urban areas, there are many slum settlements without access to schools. One-fifth of the primary schools in India function without a proper building; another one-fifth operate out of only one room for all the five classes, and many do not have electricity connections. Facilities such as separate toilets for girls and boys and clean drinking water are rare.

Even where the physical infrastructure is better, teachers in many parts of the country have to deal with huge and multi-grade classes. They are often forced to teach subjects for which they are pedagogically not prepared, with only the barest minimum of basic teaching aids. They have to deal with syllabi which are out of tune with their students’ experienced reality and aspirations. So it is not particularly surprising that the quality of education in such circumstances is sub-standard. Clearly, substantially increased public spending in such areas is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for improving the quality of education.

But of course that is still not the only reason for exclusion, or for having to experience poor quality education. It will be no surprise to any reader that most of the children excluded from schooling are poor, or that the majority of them are girls, or that they are dominantly from marginalised and deprived social groups such as Dalits, tribals, backward castes and certain religious minorities. Explicit and implicit social discrimination remains a potent factor in depriving such children of good education.

In this matter of discrimination, private schools in India (except for a few run by certain charitable organisations and well-meaning NGOs) have typically been even worse than government run schools. Quite apart from anecdotal evidence, there is confirmation of this from the spate of legal judgements condemning various private schools in the major metros for not conforming to the required criteria of admission, so as to exclude children from disadvantaged background.

Given all this, it is quite remarkable to find that proponents of a voucher system for school education are claiming that the purpose of such a scheme is ''to empower poor students so that they can attend a school of their choice.'' A voucher system is essentially one whereby parents are allowed to choose the school to which they send their children (private or government) and get reimbursed for the expenses partly or fully by the government.

Votaries of this scheme have been getting louder in recent times. The typical arguments presented in favour of this scheme are that it would lead to increased choice for parents and students, especially among the poor, and it would force schools to improve quality in the competition to attract students. It is argued that such a scheme would therefore deal with both the problems of poor quality and limited access that currently plague our schooling.

Such schemes have been tried in certain states of the US, as well as in modified form in other countries. In some developing countries, because of shortage of funds, vouchers are not supplied to all children but to a subset (in Bangladesh to girls from defined poor families; in Colombia through a random allocation to thirty per cent of students).

Even votaries of the system admit that it presumes a great deal of institutional capacity. Obviously, such schemes only make sense when there are sufficient schools in the local area to create a real possibility of ''choice''; when it is possible for parents and children to make informed judgements about quality on the basis of easily accessible information; when schools are not allowed to discriminate between students on non-financial grounds; and so on.

Even when such conditions do exist, the actual experience with vouchers has been mixed at best, with varying assessments of whether there has been improvement in school quality and access as a result. But it should be completely obvious that where such conditions do not exist - which is clearly the case in most of India - the chances are that a voucher scheme would simply shift resources away from a public education system that is already desperately underfunded, and continue to exclude disadvantaged children.

In any case, as we have seen, given the overall context of social discrimination, private schools in India will continue to exclude children from deprived and marginalised sections unless they are forced to do so. The voucher system has no element of compulsion for schools, only supposedly ''free choice'' for all.

The problem of quality in our schools is complex and multi-dimensional, related to resources and to a range of institutional features. It is far too simplistic to believe that it can be dealt with merely by increasing competition across schools. A voucher system would not only divert much-needed resources, it would also divert our attention from addressing the real issues involved in improving quality in school education.