blog@Yantrajaal

I have always been fascinated by the possibility of high volume education delivery and the immense potential this has to transform the country ... without taking recourse to divisive tactics like reservation. My first attempt to articulate this was in 1999 when I participated in the CSIR sponsored New Millenium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative and proposed the idea of Shikshaajaal . The proposal, like most proposals sent to the government went -- i suppose -- straight into some bureaucratic dustbin. My second attempt was in the CII Eastern Region Meeting on Talent Management in 2007 where I delivered the keynote address and presented the idea once again ... but all to no avail. The distinguished delegates, had their lunch, dozed through the lecture and went back to their mundane existence. My third attempt was directed at Big Idea Contest that asked participants to send in ONE Big Idea that can change the face of the country and to articulate this in less than 50...

Mediocrity has finally triumphed over Merit. The Supreme Court of India -- led by the Chief Justice who has been a direct beneficiary of the politics of reservation -- has sided with our politicians and have declared that in India, the search for Excellence is over. From now on we should be in search of Irrelevance. The IITs and IIMs , that last, albeit shaky bastion, of the intellectual elite has fallen to the powers of the Dark Lord of Venal Populism ... from the depths of despair the citizen cries out What Next ? For all such anguished souls ... all that we can say is Take Heart. This is not the first and shall certainly not be the last ... Let us go back in time and reexamine the painful journey that the people of this hapless land have had to travel .. and how they have fared. Those of you who have been born and brought up in Calcutta in the late sixties and early seventies may recollect an organisation called Haringhata Diary, owned and mismanaged by the Government of West Ben...