E-ducation in India: time for the big takeoff
Perspectives change. Sometimes by something as small as a little hyphen. Education in India is surely poised to be e-ducation now! With the growing influx of the internet, a global perspective to the education values as they exist in India, is a reality that must necessarily be navigated and simply cannot be ignored. But before all...
Education is for ediots
Let me say at the outset that education has single-handedly pushed humanity into a vicious cycle where we’re going round and round in circles that are stacked on top of each other. By this definition we should be high enough to watch even the Everest look alarmingly up as we merrily trot on our circular...
Passion, Pain, and Possibility
The year was 1994. Specky, my wife, came in and said, ‘I’ve won the scholarship.’ That’s it. Nothing more. But I didn’t need any more information. I knew exactly what she meant. She had just been awarded the Commonwealth Scholarship to go and get her DPhil from the UK. So this is how I got...
Biting bits and bytes
The digital age is here and will stay. It is quite possible that very soon we will start having the effigies and idols of our Gods and Goddesses too with both the traditional instruments of learning and their new-age version. Just image Lord Ganesha with one of her hands holding the palm-leaf scriptures hard-bound with...
The fine art of photocopying
I really did not know that there was artistry involved in photocopying until I met ManMohan Singh. No, not our honourable Prime Minister, this guy is a delivery boy working with a photocopier somewhere in the North Campus of Delhi University. I saw him struggling near the lift in our block of flats, with a...
A fantasy called a technical course
Euphemistically or otherwise, the way we humans describe technology is ‘down-to-earth’, ‘objective’, ‘practical’, and ‘useful’. The paradox is that good and sound technology always emerges out of the fantasy thinking of a dreamer… but it is rightly said that even these dreams need to be laced with facts and figures. So what is technology really?...
The choice is between being a strategist or a schemer
The most important battle for a student is when he stands face-to-face with a situation and does not really know if his actions will make him a strategist or a mere schemer. Winning is a very real objective to his mind and the route that he adopts is what will have the firmness of a...
The rings of confidence
The Olympic motto is the hendiatris Citius, Altius, Fortius, which in plain English means “Faster, Higher, Stronger”. Most of us will also know that the five-ringed symbol “represents the union of the five continents and the meeting of athletes from throughout the world at the Olympic Games.” What most of us need to know is...
Does a Degree make you a Success?
Not everyone with a degree is successful, not every dropout is a failure. We all know this very well, we subscribe to this opinion, and yet we go and run after degrees at the slightest pretext. Is it a mere degree that will fetch us the crown called success? Is such a success real… or...
The truth is in our thoughts
There is a lot of real and unreal that has become a part of what we call education in today’s context. There are facts that exist on paper but are otherwise non-existent, there are stories of unbelievable success that go unrecorded, truths that are whispered and then forgotten, false triumphs that remain embedded in files…...
Who’s afraid of social media?
The other day when I met a friend from my school, all we discussed was how well we were connected and how fast we were able to reach out to our friends when needed. And I am talking of the seventies here. Surprised? Well, you should be, considering the way technology has redefined communication. With...
Run and jump to woo the world
‘Even looking at this piece of art on the wall makes me breathless,’ she said. ‘Then you should be jogging every morning.’ ‘No, I don’t mean breathless in that sense…’ ‘The sense doesn’t matter,’ I replied cutting her mid-sentence, ‘What matters is that you are fit enough to stand the entire day looking at paintings...
