Ugly Family Secrets

A disturbing article ( Ugly Family Secrets ) about child abuse that will help bring awareness about a taboo topic in India. The article was written by a friend, Jane, who has a blog called cribmaestro.

Minority reservation for IITs, IIMs

If you've been following NDTV or reading The Telegraph, you probably heard this already. A couple of paragraphs from the Telegraph:

A committee set up by the human resource development ministry has recommended reservation for minority students in professional institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Management and Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.

In its report, the committee says: "The number of minority students is falling in prestigious institutions like IIT, IIM, IIFT (institute of foreign trade), etc. The committee is of the opinion that reservations may be made for admission of minority students in such institutions."

You can read the full article here.

While this is only a recommendation, I'm still disturbed. What is the criteria for judging minorities? Religion? State-wise or the country as a whole? What if a person was born into a certain religion but doesn't practice the religion? What if they convert two years before taking the JEE or CAT? What about the RECs and the state funded colleges? Will they be next?

The current reservation system hasn't exactly been a spectacular success. If this recommendation is accepted, I think that it's going to create more problems than it's going to solve, if it's going to solve any problems that is.

It makes more sense to provide all students, irrespective of religion or caste, with proper education up to class 12 and ensure that the quality of education is improved at the primary and secondary levels. Most of you will not even think about admitting their children in a government school. Why is that? Because the quality of education and the infrastructure is poor.

Why don't we improve the schools? Why don't we increase the salaries of teachers who impact the formative years of children and work hard in a tough job?

It's one thing to look for solutions and quite another to be satisfied with quick-fix solutions. Then again, it's easier to find quick-fix solutions.

A tribute to President K R Narayanan

The former president K R Narayanan passed away this week. P Sainath, a fantastic journalist, has written a wonderful article about the former president. If you, like me, didn't know much about the former president, then you must read this article.

Another piece to read is the former president's Republic Day speech in 2000. Brilliant and relevant, even today. Here are some excerpts:

While Government must be held responsible for environmental and human consequences of mega projects, the responsibility for environmental protection cannot however lie with Government alone. It must also be borne by civil society.

There is need to improve the tone of our social and economic life through improved work ethic and environmental behavior. Far too many of us lack the professional pride to see a task well performed, a responsibility well borne. Accountability in the delivery of public services is shockingly low. One reason why our infrastructure remains weak is that the quality of civil work executed is poor - compromised by sub-standard materials, corrupt practices and sloppy supervision.

If on an occasion like this golden jubilee of our Republic we ponder some of these issues, it would be the better for us. While there is need to be honest with ourselves, I must emphasize, we must act, not despair.

In moments of crisis we rise gloriously to the occasion as few societies do. The late war in Kargil showed it; the cyclone in Orissa did so too. And, even more recently, the stoic fortitude with which the nearly 170 passengers and crew aboard the hijacked plane showed how we are capable of the highest endurance, calm, fortitude and human care.

But we do not have to reserve our best qualities for national or natural calamities; they should manifest themselves in our daily life.

Easy answers

Imagine this scenario: A relative commits suicide. When you go to get the body, the cop asks you to pay a bribe. You pay up and cremate the body. Then cop then asks for more money. You contact NDTV and they catch the cop on camera. The cop is first suspended and then dismissed. (If you're not familiar with this story, you can read about it here.)

What has been lost in this story is the question of why the person committed suicide. Because, his shop wasn't doing well. And, he was unable to make the installment payments for his motorcycle. The family alleges that the bank hired men who came to his house and harassed them for the installments. Then, they took away the motorcycle. A few days later he killed himself.

While there has been indignation about what the cop did and what the family had to go through, not much attention has been focused on the bank. I'm not suggesting that the bank is to blame for the suicide. That would be oversimplifying it.

However, you have to question how the bank sanctioned a loan in the first place. The motorcycle was bought in June. The bank took back the vehicle in October. That's four months. In four months, the bank went from giving a loan to taking back the vehicle. Isn't that strange?

Maybe not, given that it's SO easy to get a loan now-a-days. I get calls every other day offering me cash loans, I get letters from my bank offering loans, and everywhere you go, you can see advertisements for loans. Easy, fast, these are the buzz words you see in loan advertisements. It's all about granting loans and getting people hooked.

But, when you give a loan, you expect payments. When the payments don't come, what does the bank do? Hire people to recover the loans. What sort of people? The kind that can convince you with their brawn. Heck, I've heard of telecom companies who do this when they have to collect bills.

These collectors probably aren't hired directly but through a "collection agency", so that the companies can claim that they don't know that this was going on.

That's the story within the story.

The questions beg to be asked: What if there hadn't been harassment for the payments? What if the bank had suggested an alternative payment plan? What if...?

We've found the easy answer: Nail the cop and talk about corruption in the police force. It works, but only partially, because the loan trouble and the harassment, it could happen again to someone else.

Maybe answers shouldn't be so easy.

The second Kashmir tragedy

Kalpana Sharma starts her column (The Other Half) in The Hindu this week with the following words:

Even as you sit down to read this, a child in Kashmir will die. He or she survived the killer quake of October 8, 2005. But exposure to the cold will snatch away life from someone who has barely lived it.

Later in the column, she refers to an article in Counter Currents, where the writer, Yoginder Sikand, writes:

A neighbour in Bangalore had virtually slammed the door on my face when I approached him for clothes that we were collecting for the victims of the Kashmir quake. 'They are all Muslims, so it is not our problem', he told me, shamelessly. I heard similar explanations from several other people I had approached, who all uniformly declined my appeal.

Here's more "logic":

One of my neighbours was so brutally frank as to tell me that the quake victims deserved their fate for allegedly supporting terrorism and advocating secession from India.

Oh brother. How is this tragedy is different from the earthquake in Bhuj, or the Tsunami? People lost homes, people lost lives, property and we responded then. We must respond now to prevent an avoidable tragedy.

If you haven't done so already, donate whatever you can for the relief effort. Here's a couple of places that accept donations: AID and Prime Minister's National Relief Fund.

You can also find a list of the NGOs working in the earthquake-affected areas here.

FOSS.IN 2005

FOSS.IN, the event formerly known as Linux Bangalore, is going to be held from 29th of November to 2nd of December, 2005 at Bangalore Palace. I'm not sure if I'll attend, but if you're a developer and interested in Free and Open Source Software, it might be worth your while. Check out the website for details about the schedule and registration. The website is http://foss.in/2005/.

Here's some basic information from the website:

All delegates need to formally register before attending this event. Registering yourself on the web is encouraged.

...you effectively pay for Conference T-Shirt and food coupons for all four days. You pay Rs.500 to attend the event if you have registered online (you would present the valid registration code you are given when you register online) and Rs.750 if you register at the venue. Payment is to be made at the venue only.

And while you're checking out websites, check out the National Portal of India, which apparently runs on Linux and PHP, as this post tells you.

Great Indian October Fest & TAAQ

The Great Indian October Fest 2005, which is incidentally being held in November, is on this weekend. It was postponed because of the rains.

Thermal and A Quarter is playing there on Sunday. Here are the details from their TAAQ mailing list:

Catch Thermal And A Quarter live on Sunday, November 13, 7 pm onwards. It's a long evening and we have a lot of great stuff lined up for you.

Local band Lounge Piranha will warm you up.

Don't miss it for all de beer in the world.

IN A NUTSHELL:
Thermal And A Quarter live
The Great Indian October Fest
Sunday, November 13, 2005
7 pm onwards
Palace Grounds
Entry from Freeway 19

Cover charge Rs. 350/- (inclusive of beer, discount coupons, etc.)

The festival is from Friday through to Sunday, at Palace Grounds. For details, click here.

Live music at the Unwind Center

Unwind Center (yes, it's the American spelling) is a place that opened up pretty recently in Bangalore. They are in Wilson Garden, right in front of the post-office. For more on the centre, see their website.

Two bands played yesterday: Old Jungle Saying from Bangalore and Psychomotor from Mumbai. Listening to two bands set you back by Rs. 100. Apart from the music, you got a wrist tag as your ticket.

The Unwind Center cafe, which is where the music is played, looks good. You have the cafe near the entrance, with chairs and tables and the stage is at the other end. The wooden flooring gives the place a polished look. The interesting part of the place is the billboards which are on the ceiling and have music-related information on them. The difficult part is that you have to crane your neck to read the information. Innovative, but difficult to read. There are rafters/benches, closer to the stage, where you can sit and enjoy the music.

Old Jungle Saying was up first. They started off with a song by Faith No More. Then they did an own composition, which I'm neutral about. The song that I did like was Maroon 5's Harder to Breathe. (If you haven't heard of Maroon 5, they might be worth a listen.)

Old Jungle Saying did a couple of more covers, two by Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and one by Rage Against The Machine, and a couple of their own compositions, Third String, and Old Jungle Saying. The band is relatively new, only been together a month or two, but the band gels together quite well. The only complaint that I had was that their sound was not mixed well. They were too loud and the vocals could not be heard much, except on a couple of songs; a pity because the vocalist was good. Bit of trivia: The vocalist sings in another band called Synaps. Old Jungle Saying's music is funk-rockish.

The second band to play, after a fifteen minute break, was Psychomotor, from Mumbai. Psychomotor played only one own composition, the rest were all covers. They played Deep Purple's Black Night, Hush, Metallica's wherever I May Roam, one Megadeath song, and a couple of others, ending with Another Brick In the Wall. The song that I liked best was Sunshine of Your Love (Cream). Psychomotor's version had a nice hard-rock edge to it and for me it was the song that rocked the most.

Psychomotor's pretty much a metal band, though they flirt with hardish rock sometimes. Their sound was much better and you could actually hear the vocalist, who was pretty decent. The lead guitarist, who played what looked like an Ibanez, was really good and nailed all the riffs, while adding a different flavour here and there.

The next acts to play at the Unwind Center are Ministry of Blues and Neil Mukherji, on 26 November, at 7 pm.