:O

Science writer, atheist, teacher, reformist, rational thinker, story teller, social activist, Kannada’s encyclopedia – Prof. G T Narayana Rao passed away in early hours of the morning.

Image courtesy : Chandan B N

I was informed by Ravi.

I deeply regret that I couldn’t hand over my half baked writeup on his auto-biography “MugiyaDa payaNa”, which he had handed over to me before I left to the US as per his request. I honestly didn’t know what to comment. It was one of the brutally inspiring, motivational, frank, honest books I had ever read.

He wrote in his book that after his death, the news of his death should not be spread and requested for his body to be donated to Mysore’s JSS hospital. He also requested his sons and relatives not to undergo the religious rites normally prevalent in Hindu deaths.

May his soul rest in peace.

Press References:
1. http://www.starofmysore.com/main.asp?type=news&item=17143
2. http://sampada.net/article/9534

The controversial Kannada channel TV-9, who says they are there for a better society, seems to be like a start-up involving top news anchors who’d worked previously for ETV-Kannada. Some of them seem to have been elevated to higher statuses like interviewing VIPS (MLAs, Netas etc etc) in a cnn-ibnish style than just news anchoring.

And, the Mungaru MaLe star Ganesh, seems to like the Channel very much.

I’m on Twitter here. And, as Jace says – “small is cool” has become the fad these days. Howler for fraandship!

If the statistics and data in the reference urls are pretty accurate and can be believed, then this article makes sense. Some facts are pretty informative and mind-boggling – esp the points on Internet, food storage systems and renewable energies.

Hat tip: To Casanova.

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The Goldman Sachs predicts that India will be #2 super power by 2050 along with other BRIC bloc countries. Will I live till then, I do not know. But if this is going to be true, then I hope so. There are already some instant criticisms here and there on this report. Dissect the report at your own convenience.

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Adam: So, can you clearly communicate what clever canine conundrum you’re currently concocting?
Jamie: What?
Adam: What’s the myth?

mindryin has some kick-ass kannaDa and English satire videos on Youtube. Do watch them.

As I switched the news channels after getting bored of the India-Pakistan cricket match, the news trickled in about a farmer’s death in Haveri. These kind of incidents aren’t new to us. But I’m writing about the incident because it has been branded as an atrocities by the men in khaaki by the hopeless media.

So the question here is what makes the police in India commit stuffs like these. We are all reading shocking stories everyday on how the cops are misusing their power and bringing a shame to their daily functioning. The Haveri golibaar incident isn’t an isolated issue of Karnataka state police. One thing apparent from that incident is how low police forces all over the nation are scooping to these days. Why ?

History of Indian police:

The first ever police force in India came into existence in the colonial raj days. The Britishers established a force that worked for them, by keeping the people under subjugation of the British colonial lords. The police force picked few indians who in turn joined the forces to earn out a livelihood. They weren’t ashamed of committing atrocities on their own people when the rulers issued out orders. The British inculcated a system that gave unlimited authority for police to suppress any dissent against the protesters. This culture seeped in sort of into the police machinery as years flew.

Britishers are responsible for the hierarchies that you see in Indian administration these days. Almost all of Indian administration has titles that were invented by the Britishers and the shades of the colonial raj continues even these days. The Indian police force also has a depth based hierarchy that trickles down into constables who are lowly paid as those in the hey days of the administration. In fact the police act of 1861 is still the basis of Indian police machinery these days.

Corruption in the police forces:

So the Britishers left in 1947, and Indians began heading the police force. The concepts brought in by the Britishers were drafted into the rulebooks. The colonial lords were replaced by the local regional influential politicians who wanted to control respective regions for their vested interests. The corruption has been pervasive right from the rank of the police constable to the higher ranked chief of police throughout the country. The colonial mentality still reigns in the administrative measures taken by the police these days. The states governments in India also hold penetrable authorities over the police forces these days. An average salary of the Indian police constable is very low and he is an easy target for the vested interests in the political parties that want to shed the opposite party in bad light.

Politics of self-interests:

The blaming that happens in political circles is nothing new to all of us. The Haveri golibaar incident witnessed the usual political blamewar, with the stupid Congress and appa-maga factory accusing the state BJP government as sleeping over the government formation. The loquacious Siddaramaih even said in KannaDa, “sarkarakke baroDu maja maadoDakke aLLa” ( coming to govt. is not to have fun). In fact, Siddaramaiah’s followers from congress had engaged in similar rowdy play in Jayapura in Mysore ages ago. However all the political parties have their share of mal-administration and it is known how low they scoop to inflict bad image on other parties. One easy target for them is the police. I won’t be surprised if some sane committee investigates the haveri golibaar incident and concurs that the constable who shot the farmer had been paid by some vested interests to commit that blunder.

How to set it all right ?

The deeply ingrained corruption in Indian administrative circles will need decades of cleansing. The police are also humans like us. It is unfair to blame them for every mistakes of theirs’ without delving into the socio-cultural scars that the colonial British have left on them.

1. The chief minister is answerable to all the corruption in the state. He either sits idle and lets his sub-ordinate ministers take advantage of the police or he himself directs police to do unfathomable activities. So it is upto the chief ministers of states to be fair and impartial in administration.

2. The political parties and the media need to think straight in the brain and desist from pressures on the police forces. Example: Noida twin murders.

3. The union government is responsible for corruption at the center level. Point 1 applies to the prime minister and the union cabinet.

4. There are talks about the police act being revised since 2005. The flaws of the age old colonial police system needs to be rectified and revised.

5. Police is seen as an authority not answerable to the public if they want. On basis of the Right to the Information act, they should start mingling a lot with the society, and this helps both parties understand the problems closely. Some good samaritan officers in the police industry are blogging these days that might reach the urban population readers well. At rural levels, the police/political chiefs should lead the way by incorporating monthly visits and conducting a Janta darbar frequently and report back to their superiors and the media. The haveri incident could have been avoided if such a darbar had been incorporated by the officials.

6. The average pay of police services, most importantly that of the constables need to be improved significantly. Sixth Pay Commission has relegated the leadership of police services to a band of utterly demoralized officers and wholly denigrated it’s rank, scale, and promotional avenues – vis-à-vis other all-India and the central Services.

7. Infrastructure in the police station needs to be uplifted. Most of the stations do not even have decent vehicles, cars, bikes and a library, internet etc.

8. Lead by example at highest levels. The highest ranks in Indian police service undergo rigorous IPS exam and subsequent training at Sardar vallabh bhai patel academy upon selections. They should try to bring in knowledge transfer at lower ranks which may not be highly educated and rational like them. The high chiefs should discard the politics, greed for money and lead by example.

9. I dont think that the CBI is fully clean, but they seem to be more impartial than the police forces. The CBI was brought in much later after the colonial rule and they keep revising their policies. The CBI measures can be slowly injected to the police services.

There might be more important points, but I’m not able to get them right now. So I will stop here and hope that the police machinery is reformed in decades.

References:

1. To serve and protect from indiatogether.org [ http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/jan/gov-policeact.htm ]
2. http://www.pay-commission.com/
3. http://www.cbi.gov.in/history/hist.php
4. http://karnatakastatepolice.org/karnatakastatepolice/

One year ago, I wrote a nonsensical entry for the school magazine, that was convoluted and not quite upto the point I wanted it to be. Atanu Dey got it all right when he wrote a piece on laptops and learning. He says:

Would we have become better educated if we had access to laptops and the internet? Arguably yes. At least some of us would have had a richer educational experience. Strictly speaking for myself, I would have probably flunked. I would have surfed the web for god alone knows what, I would have played computer games (I once spent an entire year playing Solitaire on my laptop), I would have wasted all my time socializing on the web. In short, I am grateful that I got access to the internet only after my basic education was complete. Even now, as a grown up and presumed responsible person, I find that my work suffers when I start surfing the web. I am sure that if my internet privileges are not restricted, I will probably never finish the work I am supposed to do and I fear that I will get fired.

So when I wrote that piece, critics led by the venerable Gowda told me that technology and internet is admissible to a certain extent only. I too had thought like them, but had failed to get the flow right back then in my article. I didn’t want to submit the crap that I had assembled in less than an hour. But the magazine badly needed an alumnus to write a piece and given the paucity of other alumni to write an article, my article was published. My piece was to be concerned regarding internet and technology in the life of the hearing impaired children, and how I benefited from it. However I ended up bragging about my life there. And more importantly, I forgot to put the point that the technology and internet cannot be differentiators un-till the basic primary enlightenment stage is reached and there lies the flaw in that article. Let us forget that article for now.

However if I were to go back and write the piece wrt todays children and their learning, I think I would have struggled to write it the exactly the way Atanu has written. Atanu points out how schemes like OLPC are superficial and in reality such stuffs do not work. You go to some village in India and give them a laptop and come back after a year – nothing will have changed. The reality of the education is grossly divided these days between urban kids and the rural kids. While the urban kids get significantly greater resources for their perusal, my experiences have led me to note that they almost end up not utilising most of stuffs. Rural kids in contrast tend to grab even tiniest chances offered to them and end up being successful if provided with proper guidance.

However coming to the point, I feel that the provision of internet and laptops to the kids today needs to be allowable to a certain stage. How to enforce this strategy ? Let us take the schools. Most of the schools in India do not even have a decent library. Try doing a quiz and you will know how much is the lack of the current affairs. Having dedicated internet centers for fixed hours daily along with a resource person who can guide how exactly to use the internet and the laptop can be extremely beneficial in these cases. In urban areas I do not think implementing this will be much of a problem depending on the schools managements. Coming to the rural areas, all of us are from one or the other village. Each one of us can go to our villages monthly and try spending some time with the kids to guide them, brush up their knowledge and guide their careers. Once you are assured they do not go to the way that they end up mis-managing the resources provided to them, you can ask the kid’s parents to go for internet at their house. A problem with this proposal is I’m not sure how feasible is affordability of the internet. The rates for broadband are costly, forget dialup. The emergence of telecommunication in India is sort of promising and I hope that it will alleviate the affordability issues as it reaches the aam-aadmi in coming months. Another issue is I do not know if the kids can stay focused as they plunge them into the information highway.

I will stop here now, and try to pen more thoughts on this. But for now, I think the OLPC India wiki has deep fundas and insights on the problems of technology deployment in India. Think about it.