India Dairy: Rise of the women!

One week hence, as I am coming to terms with the unpleasant summer climate in much of India, an interesting phenomenon came to my observation yesterday, which I shall refer to as 'The husband identity'. My hometown is up for elections to the local corporation and the post of Mayor next Tuesday, and as they say, any election in India is vigorously contested, if nothing else than to distract the masses from the real issues. Sample the presidential election, where a clear victor has already emerged, and yet the media is boomeranging about the possibilities in the 2014 General elections.

Based on our system of caste-based reservation of electoral constituencies, Jhansi has been reserved as a 'Women-backward' seat, implying that only female candidates belonging to a classified backward caste can contest for the post of Mayor. And the same is true for our local ward. As campaign fliers piled up, some of the stuff mentioned therein caught my attention due to a multitude of reasons:

• Every candidate's picture is placed alongside an equally large picture of her husband. Just so that the masses do not get confused, the billing goes as 'Candidate name-wife of so-and-so'. Reservation for women is a sensitive issue in India, still hanging on the margins after umpteen attempts to get it passed, and a shameful one at that, considering the head of India's ruling political establishment, the leader of opposition in the Lower House, and the outgoing President of India, are all women!
• Newspaper interviews and advertisements begin with an appeal to voters to reward the 'good work' done by the candidate's husband, or in some cases, father-in-law. The only plausible way to construe this is to believe that the candidate has no identity of her own in the public sphere, and her candidature has materialized due to the chance falling of the contested seat in the reserved category.
• A rather interesting note is that some candidates have listed their caste in parenthesis, and yet appeal to the voters to ignore their caste or religion as a criteria for casting their vote. Paradoxical some would say!

With voting to be held on July 4, and this being my first official vote of any kind in India, I am looking forward to it. 

PS: Fantastic movie, if you haven't seen it already.

India diary: You know you are in Gurgaon when the crowd never seems to grow old!

Finally arriving in India for a brief sojourn, I was half-excited, half-skeptical. Being a graduate student warrants its own set of curious acquaintances in India. And the testy Monsoon weather so far left me scratching my head as to my decision to brave the summer heat again after being in Arizona for a full year. But then, I was going to see my family after a prolonged gap, and meet friends from IIT who were scattered in MNC boroughs of sovereign India. I will try and write when I can, about my experience so far and the changes/constants I have seen.

First things first, haters can complain all they want, but the IGI T3 is head-and-shoulders above some of the busiest airports I have seen, both in terms of scale and management. Ironically, while I was still marveling at the rare organizational success of GoI, a stray dog ran across the road and put me firmly in place with the realities of India. Watching a dog not on leash after 11 months can surprise you as much as an English victory in a penalty shootout! Umpteen flyovers and an efficient suburban metro system aside, Delhi is still plagued by an infusion of more and more vehicles everyday.  The scale of pollution can be judged by the fact that the city is enveloped by a constant haze of dust, leaving the sun a faint yellow ball a la a science fiction movie. What was a saving grace once again was the rather hassle-free travel once you get to the arterial roads. 1 jam in 2 days was not bad, compared to my visits 6 years ago, when getting to Central Delhi from Noida or South-Ex used to be a horrendous travel. The CWG games may have been a mess, but the infrastructural benefits are for all to see.

Gurgaon is Gurgaon, a never-ending sea of employed young men and women interspersed with out-of-place policemen and cycle rickshaws. My overnight stay at my best friend's apartment reminded me of the luxuries available to the paying crowd in the metropolis, even as large swathes of the country face power outages and simmering heat. However, Delhi could do better when it comes to their autowallahs. Myself being a rather spoilt user of these, especially after living in Mumbai where they were both a matter of scorn (inside the  IIT campus), and an object of convenience (outside the campus), I was left thinking about the perils of arguing with an autowallah regarding the merits of using his meter, which in most cases is left there like an unwanted appendage. Considering that I'll be back in the same setup in 16 days, I might just get the opportunity. 

Stay tuned for more....

PS: Can 'Shirt da button' be the new 'Pani da rang'? Well Ayushmaan Khurana is definitely more 'hero-like' compared to Reitesh and Tusshar in my humble opinion. 

One exam, One big commotion!

They say that nobody does anything these days that does not curry favor with the benefactor. After our honorable HRD minister, Mr. Kapil Sibal's inglorious daydream of having the JEE abandoned abruptly in the favor of a single entrance examination to the IITs, NITs, and IIITs, ran into rough weather with the senates of 6 out of 7 IITs rejecting the proposal unequivocally, we are now headed for murkier scrapings amongst the IITs themselves. While the rather radical proposal of doing away with the keystone of the IITs has one staunch supporter in the IITG director, IITKgp's director, Damodar Acharya, came out in support of the proposal today against the wishes of the institute's senate. As expected, the IIT faculty association rebuked the director's isolated move strongly. Nothing like a fractured house when dealing with an issue having a bearing on approximately 1.5 million youngsters of this country!

Now Dr. Acharya is a rather interesting person to head the oldest IIT in the system. Normally, you would not associate the post of directorship of the IITs with somebody who is under investigation for shortcomings in running the governing body for techincal education in India. He has been indicted by the CBI for misgivings in approving technical institutes. This, in a country where private engineering colleges have sprouted like mushrooms in a forest, should be a grievous offence in itself. Dr. Acharya also bears the distinguished reputation of resigning in the face of widespread student protests that engulfed the Kgp campus following the death of an undergrad owing to lacking medical facilities. Obviously, nothing came out of the protests and he was back to the job in no time. 

This short description of Dr. Acharya's escapades in the last 6 years is by no means exact or complete. But this should have been reason enough to set the alarm bells ringing in the echelons of the HRD ministry. However, suspecting the surreptitious dreams of its minister, the ministry perhaps kept mum and kept its man on the job. Now Acharya has kicked-off another storm in this end-of-the-JEE debate, one that will most likely shift the focus from the examination to the internal functioning of the IITs. While the IIT act empowers these institutes to be autonomous in deciding upon the criteria of admission, it is all but certain that the directives of the ministry shall be forced upon them (Anybody remembers the overnight establishment of 5 new IITs, some of whom are still to move to their own campus?). Maybe its time to look to the west. Follow the American higher education pattern, where heads of departments and presidents are contractually employed, armed with a missive to raise the profile of their respective institutions. It often helps to have people who have prior experience of governing an institute. This kind of hiring would not only serve as a catalyst for shaking up the sedentary system, but also make the heads accountable for any shortcomings under their authority. 

It is certain that a big change in the entrance methodology is looming. Whether its the one-nation, one-exam proposal, or the model proposal by IITK to have its own entrance exam, students are facing an uncertain time regarding their future prospects, and more importantly, dreams. They could do without infighting!


PS: These videos keep getting better.