Education in India

Jawaharlal Nehru had a vision in setting up the IITs . He wanted them to be colleges where the brightest of the bright students of India could study in a productive environment . Ok, so how do you know who is the brightest of the lot ? Well, that's what we got the IITJEE for .
The IITJEE is meant to separate those gifted few who are more intelligent than the others . The select few who are expected to become world leaders in their respective fields . The guys who can change our nation through their innovation and intelligence .
Not any more .
Till now, the grading system has been such that students are selected only if they clear individual cutoffs in all three- Math , Physics and Chemistry . With this year , this sytem has been changed . As of now, there exists only a total cutoff , i.e. even if u are not good in math , you can slog like an ass for a couple of years and score high enough in your chemistry section to get through to IIT . Well, what will happen IN IIT is altogether a different matter (for starters , 98 students failed in MTH101 , the most basic course in math taught at IIT Kanpur , among the most recent batch) .
The IITs have made mistakes before and still managed to keep going at the top of the race . But this one forces people to wonder if this kind of a downward trend continues , will the IITs be held in the same esteem as now by the recruiting companies ??
Apart from this , we have the usual corruption cases on some of our faculty here ; absurd amount of stupidity in handling sensitive issues like mental stress and suicides ; extra-ordinary emphasis on academics (yeah , I know....this is a technical institute) , etc. , etc. .
Our Board here had the bright idea of making our 18 week semester into a 17 week semester in order to reduce stress levels among students . Yes, you got that right ....and just that....no decrease in no. of exams or the syllabus ....this directly implies that we have more to study in lesser time ; but this somehow seems to have passed through certain thick skulls without affecting their thought process .
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On a higher note for education in India though , we have our first B school in the world top 100 and no, it's not any of the IIMs . Infact , ISB (Indian School of Business) has been ranked way,way ahead of the next Indian B school , IIM Ahmedabad . ISB stands tall at #20 , while IIMA is at around the 140's mark on the world front .

On the other hand , we have a mega university coming up in Orissa , the Vedanta University . The university, which would be entirely a not for profit venture has been gifted with an endowment of US $ 1 billion from Anil Agarwal , an Indian businessman, who heads the London based Vedanta Resources corporation . With a campus size of more than 6000 acres and an estimated campus population of 500,000 at its full strength , this will be a small town in ti's own right. Chk their site for more details .

Train of Thought

Have I any purpose ; extreme frustration .
Where am I going ; total oblivion .
You are the dirt of the world , said someone .
Or is that a foregone conclusion .

They feel the warmth of the sunlight .
And are lost in the moment's heat .
In the process, discount the future fate .
Winters in store ; stooped in defeat .

Am I to take bliss in their ignorance
be proud of my own so-called enlightenment .
Is anyone better at all than the other .
Am still sitting in silent wonder .

What do I feel? What do I say ?
I wait until the feeling goes away .

SEVERAL SPECIES OF SMALL FURRY ANIMALS GATHERED TOGETHER IN A CAVE AND GROOVING WITH A PICT

If you think the title is weird, listen to the song here with this name first .
Band : Pink Floyd
Album: UmmaGumma

Phone and Photography - Black n White

Black and white photography has got me quite hooked nowadays . I go around thinking how a specific place/thing is gonna look in a photo ; and if it will be better in B/W or colour . And sometimes , I took out my phone to verify my thoughts . Some of the better photos I clicked -


This thing I am holding in my hand is a souvenir Pranay got for me from , obviously , New York . I first tried shooting it by holding it directly against the tubelight , but it didn't work out well .


This is the view from outside my room . Found the almost parellal shadows interesting .

This is a painting on a wall at the Student's Activity Center ( it looks more like a booth bungalow than anything else ) . Though i could have cropped this foto so that the eye becomes the center , I liked this one as it is .


The last one of this post is one of those pics which you first think of in your mind and then shoot to see if it's gonna work out . I asked these two fellows to stand in the doorway in the afternoon and shot this photo , which came out exactly as it was meant to .

Phone and Photography - Skyscapes

I was playing cricket at the Marina beach on the lawns beside the lighthouse when i noticed the interesting lighting in the sky . Out came the phone , and it performed as good as ever . Though the contrast adjustment in the phone didn't allow me to get a silhouette then and there , a bit of tweaking with Picasa did the job .



This one was really weird . What you are seeing is exactly as how I saw the sky that . I went a bit early to Besant Nagar beach , in my over-enthusiasm to play frisbee and got treated to this beautiful sky . Of course, everyone around were clicking pics too . This was one time I wished I had a better camera .


Again, I had to tweak this foto and then crop it appropriately to get it to it's present state .


This was a photo I shot in Ksheera-Samudram , my native village . Surprisingly, i managed to get the silhouette effect without the help of any editing software .

My first attempt at Poetry

A couple of days , the sun shone bright
our bodies glowed , from the golden sunlight
The grounds were busy with all kinda sport
it was but , alack , short lived hope .

It came back with a vengeance
like a dark lord , back from his penance .
It is really, really cold again , here .
Damn this fucken blasted weather .

Heroes - Worshtu

Heroes is this television series that everyone here at IITK is talking about . The first season attracted an average of 14.3 million viewers in the United States and received the highest rating for any NBC drama premiere in five years.
Today , I decided to see what it was all about and started the first episode of season one . About three minutes into it , the serial shifts to a scene in " Madras, India " and goes on to become one of the worst depictions of India I have ever seen . From blazer-wearing twenty-something prof teaching genetics to a class which definitely looks elder than the prof himself , to totally accentuated english from everyone , it is so,so UN-Indian....that I wonder why the director chose India as a location for one of his heroes if he was so ignorant about the place .
We also have a guy roaming the streets wearing a coat and a.....believe it or not.....a bow-tie . And lest I forget, the streets were cobbled too....
I am now dying to see what the rest of the series has in store for me .