What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean the one who has flung herself
out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

- The Summer Day by Marry Oliver

Marathons for a cause

These days I have been regularly following on whats happening in around the city. Last week a friend of mine informed me about a marathon, being organised by an NGO. I was really excited to take part in the run. So started preparing for it...called as many people as I could and finally formed a team of 7 friends.

Few things which I really liked about mass running or marathon.

1. When you are running for a cause like "Green City" or "Caste free India", you do feel for awhile that it was worth attending and of course running with 100 odd people together is a memorable expriences of sorts.

2. Ah !.. you get your health quotient improved. Burning calories and testing your perseverance for a long run.

3. Meeting new people ...yeah you meet people from diverse backgrounds. I have met some amazing people in the last marathon.

Also there is whole lot of fun and excitement before the run begins...with the crowd dancing and singing to the tunes of songs and well known celebrities making their way to start the run.

Some thoughts on RTI

The best legislation that our ministers have ever passed in the parliament is RTI act. It is one of the most powerful acts, which gives direct power to the people to raise queries and get answers. I think we should really thank the civil society members, ministers and the bureacrats involved in passing the historic act.

With all due respect to RTI act, I would like to critic few parts of this legislation which looks uncomfortable and getting too much into details (atleast for me personally). So here it goes.

Privacy:

Recently President Pratibha patil was in news for her exorbitant foreign travel bills. Her foreign visits have caused around Rs. 205 crores to the exchequer. I think as President she is required to travel different countries and meet different people. She is the first citizen of India, the highest authority in Indian government and needs to carry that image with her, where ever she goes. Comeon she represents India and has to spend money for that. Now who was this gentle man who wanted to know the details of her travelogue and bills. Isnt this getting too much into the personal detials. And look at media, they are ready to post about this at full length with all minute details. Privacy is something which each of us demand and its our right to hide few aspects of our life. We need not disclose everything about ourselves to people. RTI is a wonderful act and should be used sanely. People should use RTI to get relevant information and not about personal details about people in adminstration or government.

Temples and Masjids:

Recently I came across a few news articles which mentioned about temples, masjids and churches coming under RTI act. As far as the legislation goes I believe only public institutions and few other allied instiutions come under RTI act. Is it really necessary to get temples and masjids under RTI.

In India people donate lakhs of rupees to god being anonymous. There are some special bhakts who gift kiritams and what not to impress the Lord. Do you think RTI will work here?.

Transparency is good. Giving access to information is great, but there needs to be a balance between privacy and transparency which RTI act should bring, as it evolves.

General VK Singh's drama

Todays newspapers spoke at length with big and bold headlines about General VK singh disclosing to the media,  that he was offered bribe of Rs. 14 crores by an Ex Army person. The story goes like this, some months back India's Chief of Army was offered bribe to buy sub-standard vehicles. It seems that the lobbyist came to General VK Singh's room to make the deal. And General Sahab was shocked and could not understand what was going on. He was so upset with the event that ..he kept quiet and informed about this event to the Defence minister a few days later. Oh come on Sir, are you joking?. I cant really understand why media is talking about this incident now.  I have some serious doubts about this incident.

Firstly, General VK singh, has been working in Army from several years and is aware of the system ,its practices and policies more than anyone. He has been serving as the Chief of Army from past 2 years.During his tenure in Army which spans for more than 30 years, he might have come across several such incidents directly or indirectly. There was no complaint about being offered bribe to him or his officials/sub-ordinates previously. Why so ?

Secondly, people are not that fool to listen to General VK Singh,when he says that "I was shocked", "I could not understand what to do"... Oh comeon you are the Chief of Army ....You have the supreme powers to take him(lobbyist) to court or take him to jail . With your experience in Army and the powers that you have as the Chief of Army , you can at the very instant when the lobbyist came to you to offer bribe, take some action against him.

The whole incident looks like a planned one. "Thehindu" comes out with a neatly drafted column on the issue and by afternoon, BJP shows its opposition power in the Parliament. TRP ratings of  news channels go up and BJP has new agenda to talk and suspend the question hour in Parliament. Congress has one more reason to worry. Looks like we are hearing about such stories every day.

Reporting from hyd

Posting this song from chicago cafe,hyderabad.

Perfect ambience with a classy super sweet irani chai ... I'm loving it !

~ "nee lo vundey naa pranam adi neeku telusunaa.."

Wish List

Finally a post on my wish list, I was planning to write about it from past few days. Here it goes !!. Actually the very idea of starting the blog was from wish list. Okay, I will not deviate from the topic, the story behind wish list and blog will be told in new post in near future (hopefully :-)).

I am going to complete MBA in next two months, thoughts like what to do next, which job, which location etc etc popup in my mind daily before I sleep.  These are few things which worry every MBA grad when he is about to leave the B-school.

Last night I was going through my personal diary, wherein I had written a full page about my wish list. I had written it during my under grad days, 4 new lines were added to the list during my stay at Bangalore. Its time to revisit and add some (in fact many) lines.

Never talked about my wish list with anyone... only a very few close ones know about it.

I will post my wish list some time soon.

Teaching History Vs Teaching Sciences

Finally here I am with one of my favourite topics, "Teaching history Vs Teaching Sciences". So what do you think, should there be any difference in teaching history and other practices. I find teaching history in a class room setup is like making a student ideologically similarly to the one who teaches you.  Hmm sounds like a very strong statement ..let me help you in proving my hypothesis.

Personally I feel history is more of inferences and making conclusions than teaching facts. People make a lots of inferences and conclusions based on simple facts which they might have heard or learnt from some source.

Lets take an example of class 5 student, who doesnt have any prior knowledge of history and sciences.  I am assuming class 5 is pretty nascent stage and the student is in the state of absorbing facts and to some extent questioning or reasoning the facts.

Enters the science professor into the class, teaching newton's laws and concepts of gravitational force to the student. An average student would question and get all his doubts cleared and would accept all these newtons laws as facts of the nature. An intelligent student might go home and do some work ..but finally he would also agree with the facts and accept them. In the science class, student can use his capability to think and question the facts told to him. He can also make correct inferences which would work. His wrong inferences and conclusion can be easily dealt by a good teacher.

Now imagine a history professor in the class to teach students about ancient history of India. Now just imagine the class room setup and being in the shoes of the teacher for awhile. To recollect and teach students ..what do you do ...you try to remember all the facts about a particular incident and teach and help students understand the topic more succinctly...  as a teacher you would also make some inferences (from the facts you might be aware) to teach students ( remember you are making inferences from the facts you have learnt).  For the student sitting on the other side, everything which the teachers says would be facts and something which he needs to remember.  Also for a class 5 student, there would hardly be any other proper source to learn (neglecting exceptional cases of erudite parents).

So facts+inferences of the teacher become facts for the students in History class, whereas in a science class facts+inferences of the teacher makes students capable of thinking, questioning and not merely accepting as facts, morever the student gets capability of making inferences.

Problem with this method of teaching history is that, if the student is repeatedly taught by the same teacher..then the impact of the teacher on the student would be huge. Student might also become ideologically similar to the teacher.

I will continue discussion on this topic in my next post .

~Happy Republic day !!