HI
in case you happen to accidentally get into this blog of mine, you are fortunate – since i have discarded this blog and so you can go scotfree without reading any further. waht a relief it could be for you. a lucky guy, you are!
and for those poor bretheren who intentionally came here, then a word for you people: i have changed from this wordpress to blogspot and my present blog is: http://sixth-finger.blogspot.com . see you there!!
This is a piece written a year back and it is as good for this day as it was. Last year, TN Government brought about some changes in the common entrance exams for the professional colleges in the State and brought tension and havoc in the minds of the students and parents and the problem is yet to be settled. Whatever the “noble” ideas propounded by the government the modus operandi, as in many cases, smacks populism and it keeps everyone on tenter hooks.
Written last year this time:
“What should have been done…? ” – this could be always a possible interesting pastime for any easy chair-critic to keep one criticism after another on any move taken by others. But the present regime in Tamilnadu always gives ample chances even to serious critics since many of its decisions are either so sudden and unexpected or matters of serious contention. The present policy decision on CET for professional colleges came as a shock to many.
Leave alone the merits and demerits of the issue, it is so ill timed. Had this policy been taken for the coming academic year, the problems facing this policy now in courts of law would have been surmountable and fewer. Instead, now it has created a big legal tussle between the government and many aspiring students. Whether there is justification or not in CET score, whether there is any discrepancy in between urban and rural students in CET scores, the students as a whole should have been given the advantage of being what is in store for them in the coming days and on what they have to lay their hopes and all that. If they knew that there would not be any entrance exams they could have concentrated more on their final XII exams. Had they known that improvement marks are not to be considered at all, who would have toiled hard so much in vain and wasted a year for nothing. It is not a question whether the CET favors urban students; it is not a question whether those who sit for improvement exams get any undue advantage over the first timers; the question is why not the students – lakhs of them – and their parents were not given the chance to know what await them before hand?
There may be truth in the fear of the government that entrance exams make the chances of urban students better, though it is out rightly denied by many. Or the government might have given this argument as a vote-catching sentiment. But comes along with this statement one another fact: the XII exam pattern favors those with good rote learning and not those with analytical skills. Testing the analytical skills of the students is so far done through entrance exams. The government should have given some serious thinking on this and steps should have been taken to add at least 20% of such analytical and challenging questions in the regular final exams from next year. This should prepare the schools and teachers to make their approach and strategy different to suit this changed scenario. When tuition centers could prepare the students for such analytical questions within a month – the time between the final exams and the entrance exams – teachers and schools should be able to achieve it also.
Another factor to have been given good consideration is the fate of CBSE students. Right parameters should have been evolved to judge their performances at par with the XII stream students.
As is the custom with the present government, do we need some by-elections or something of that sort for rolling back this decision too ?
Post-script: Years roll by…different political parties head the governments… But what remains is the same: political decisions are taken in education without any educationists in the decision making. When would our politicians give due participation of the right people in their decision-making?
In the fiction ‘The Negotiator’, by Fredrick Forsyth when in the last pages the hostage is blasted by a remote control, it made a chill pass through my body. It all sounded so scary. But within few days from reading such a fictitious account, in the very same way Rajiv Gandhi was brutally assassinated. When details of the assassination came to light what surprised me was how can anybody be motivated to push the trigger to explode oneself. Moreover during investigations almost everyday there was the photograph of Dhanu, the human bomb, clicked just a few seconds before she pushed or pulled the trigger. She was all smiles in those snaps. There is no tinge of fear or shadow of death on her face. She looked so cheerful.AdvertisementClick here to know more about our Data entry Company located in India How is it possible for a person to be so cheerful when facing death so close? Would they have been doped? A person selected for such a crucial mission cannot be served with dope and so that is ruled out. Then what could be the other factors? Brain washing is another theory. Even when some one might have gone through great ordeals, just for revenge will anyone kill themselves? Assuming that Dhanu, the assassin was personally affected by India’s IPKF, assuming that she lost all she held dear to her because of IPKF and assuming that all her anger and animosity was nurtured against the Prime Minister of India, still can a person’s vengeance could go beyond ones own life. And, when one is so sure that he or she is going to die in a few more seconds how can he or she be so normal? So what triggers such people to push the fatal button of ultimate self destruction? It is an enigma.
In the7/7 London explosions, all the three ‘live detonators’ were from a normal background. No precedence of criminal behavior in their records. Just a short sojourn to Pakistan. Now, within such a short span how could they be molded so differently to convert themselves as human bombs. Are human minds so meek to be changed so thoroughly? Can any body’s religiosity be whipped up so much making them so fanatic in a jiffy. It all surprises me.
Of course now all of us have gone to the next stage of accepting these instances as regular features in our daily lives. It could be anywhere in the world. Only if you don’t get a news item in the front page of your daily about any such bombing in any part of the world is a news now. 9/11 has become one of the most important dates in the history of mankind. And the dates of such importance are to be followed, it seems. If 7/7 is followed by 9/11, will the next be far beyond? Where will all this lead us to?
It was quite past midnight; should be about 1.30 to 2 am. I was
tracking back to my room after a party. I have to be careful, I thought. Since
in the evening on the way to the party I missed my way. Though it was a
small village of 8000 as its total population, that too, nearly 75% of
them being local college students, with straight roads and by lanes
cutting at right angles, with large trees on the sides of the roads,
individual houses were not easily visible or identifiable with lot of
vegetation covering every house. So when I ventured a little in the previous
evening to while away a few minutes – I wanted to be right in time for
the party and not before time – I missed my way and was lost for some
time. I don’t want that to happen now late in the night. So I was
trudging carefully- the path was also very moist with snow – back home. At
last I arrived the main downtown-area. This was a well lit area with four
roads radiating. The automatic signals were on. When I reached the
junction there was a car waiting for the change of signal. The little
inebriation I had evaporated at the sight of it. Because the whole area was
deserted; no vehicles or anything on sight but still the man behind the
wheels was waiting for the signal before proceeding.
This thing happened in a village, Oberlin, Ohio, U.S., 2 years back.
And on another day I was waiting in another signal. The place is Saidapet
intersection, Chennai, India. Time was 9.20 am.
In the morning peak hour there was a heavy rush and at the junction I
was waiting for the green signal. The automatic digital clock showed 100
and so I put off the engine of my vehicle. When the clock read 10 I
ignited my machine and thought I have another full 10 second count-down.
Voila! Even when 7 seconds remaining, vehicles started moving at mad
pace and though I wanted to wait for green signal, with blaring and
threatening movements from behind I had to jump light to avoid getting jumped
over!
Laws will be there. But two things are necessary: one, the will of the
people to have at least a modicum of respect for the law of the land;
and second: the executors of the laws should do what they have to.
WELCOME TO MY ENGLISH BLOG
for those of you who have walked into this trap inadvertently or willingly.
I cannot wish you “A HAPPY READING” since this blog is going to have my personal ramblings, ramblings of an oldie. Any skeletal frame of an oldie would make a lot of sounds; it would whimper and whine; creak and croon. When these sounds may not even be pleasing for the individual himself, I wonder, how is it going to be the one sitting next. So could be going thru this blog. But do you think I can help it
I had an English blog for some time and after starting one another in my mother tongue, Tamil all my time and energy went into that, orphaning the first one. Now, since a new compiler, BLOGDESAM has come into being, I thought I would rejuvenate the earlier one and stuff this new blog with my old contents and keep adding further with the ‘vast’ experience I have acquired with my Tamil blog standing behind me!
Let me have a gala time ‘at your expense’ a little! Right…
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