blog@Yantrajaal

An open letter to ... Mr Kapil Sibal, Minister for Human Resources Development Government of India Dear Sir, Mr Sibal Your thoughts on the abolition of Class X examinations and the introduction of a single nationwide Class XII examination are like the winds of change that should blow away the cobwebs from the stultifying and claustrophobic classrooms to which we in India have condemned our children. You would of course know that in the United States, a similar system is in place with students – if they wish to join college – having to take only the SAT examination. Our Class X examinations serve no purpose but to allow students to enter Class XI. Our Class XII examinations are no better – they merely serve as entry portals to colleges and in the case of engineering colleges, even this nominal and residual value is ignored because every college has its own entrance examination – nobody trusts the Class XII results. So no tears should be shed if these two examinations are consigned to ...

A slightly modified version of this interview has appeared in today's edition of the Economic Times. What is Cloud Computing ? Cloud Computing is less about any particular technology and more about how we use technology to reduce costs and improve efficiency. In Cloud Computing you move your data - and the programs that operate on this data - from private machines - desktop PCs or corporate servers - to machines owned by vendors. How does this help ? It reduces cost - both capital and operating, through economies of scale. It is like replacing the electricity generator in your home by plugging into the electricity supply : the cost and nuisance value of generating power at home is far more than having it supplied from a central utility. When a vendor supports a hundred customers with his bank of servers and support staff the cost to each individual customer goes down. An intriguing concept, but does it work ? Many of us are already using Cloud Computing without being aware of...

Web 2.0 in general and social networks, like Orkut and Facebook in particular, have emerged as very powerful models of social interaction ... so much so that Iran is trying to quell its election related insurrection by trying to block Facebook and the US Government convinced Twitter to defer its scheduled downtime so as to allow Iranian thought processes to play out to their full potential !! While Orkut and Facebook are privately owned public platforms, we know that similar ( if not identical ) platforms are available to build own's one private social networks. For example we at the Praxis Business School, in Calcutta have our own platform, the Kollaborative Klassroom ( see http://kk.praxis.ac.in ... to know what i mean ) that we have customised to reflect our own organisation ( courses and departments defined as "communities" and "friendships" that delineate relationships between individuals) Currently employees of the government operate on a diverse set of p...

Refugees have traditionally been associated with political upheavals. We have had Jews seeking refuge from Nazi Germany, dissidents seeking refuge from Russia, China and other totalitarian communist nations and closer home we have had Bengalis seeking refuge from the murderous regime in erstwhile East Pakistan. Then we had economic refugees who sought to flee their homeland not because of political persecution but because of economic need. One cannot argue with an empty stomach and their are parts of the world where an empty stomach is rule rather than an exception. This explains the exodus from South and Central America towards the land of milk and honey to the North. So is the case of economic refugees fleeing Africa for Europe and closer home we once again have had people from Bangladesh coming across the border into India and West Bengal. But political refugees and economic refugees are now old news … The latest development in field of human misery and migration is that of the envi...

Pratap Bhanu Mehta's article in the Indian Express on the devil being in the detail of educational reforms is very interesting. It makes us look around for successful models and one that strikes the eye is obviously the Stock Exchange mechanism -- that is perhaps one of the most successful model that has emerged from Indian reform process. To see if this model can be used as a reference, let us see some of the regulatory issues that a "company" needs to address before it can transact business and earn money. At its minimum, a company must adhere to the conditions of the Companies Act and register itself with the Registrar of Companies. We note that the RoC does not really approve or reject the application on the basis of the quality of the companies products or that of its promoters. All that the RoC ensures is that the company meets certain basic disclosure norms in terms of ownership and financial issues. The focus is on accurate disclosure -- or transparency -...