blog@Yantrajaal

In an earlier post on de-stressing higher education , I had argued about the irrelevance of the JEE / AIEEE as instruments of selection for entrance to higher education and the Damodar Acharya committee has recommended that the JEE should be scrapped . This is good. But the proposal to replace the same with a SAT style aptitude test is not a good solution either. These aptitude tests -- earlier referred to as IQ tests -- have been found to be rather flawed because they seem to measure one aspect of what is known as "intelligence" or "aptitude" and would again be another strain on the students. Instead, let us focus on one examination and let that be the CBSE XII. Why do I say this ? Because the cost and effort involved in managing the logistics of two nationwide examinations is better utilised in making sure that one examination is managed better. Second,  by making the process more broad based, we will be able to iron out the vagaries and uncertainties of perfo...

Some people look at the world around them and wonder why - Creative folks look around and wonder why NOT ? We have had corrossion resistant steel and pest resistant Bt-cotton, so why can we not have institutional systems that are corruption resistant by design ? In my youth and childhood, when I was a consultant in an earlier professional avatar, I have had the opportunity to work with Indian and foreign companies and with some agencies of the government to design processes and systems that meet certain organisational goals. Some of our ideas were successful and some where not and when I look back on these assignments, the one common thread that spans across all successful assignments was the fact the organisation concerned, or at least some significant individuals, were committed to a successful implementation and worked with us to introduce the changes required for our ideas to be successful. Unfortunately this is not so in most government assignments. Government agencies in...

  from Merely Online to Viral with a Vengeance Print media is fast losing out to its online cousin -- at least that is the story in the more developed societies. Actually the word developed has a rather embarrassing connotation to the extent that it implies that we in the non-developed world are somehow barbaric, but if we can swallow our pride on this then it is a fact there is a gulf of difference between the markets of North America, Western Europe and some pockets in the Far East on one hand the rest of the world on the other. What is this difference ? First per capita income and buying power and what is most important for the purpose of this article, broadband penetration. Broadband penetration translates into a change in lifestyle -- eCommerce, net banking, social media and of course in the way we consume information, and it is this last change that is cause of much grief in the upper echelons of media ownership. Print media is feeling the heat as it loses ma...

"You can lead a horse to the water, but you cannot make it drink" In the context of enhancing the delivery capabilities of the education system, we should perhaps rephrase the statement as "You should lead a horse to the water, but desist from spoon feeding it" As it is, those who manage to get into IIT -- either at the UG or the PG level -- have their originality and creativity ironed out of them, or at least significantly degraded, by the coaching classes that tutor them for the entrance examination. To compensate for this, teachers in IIT must go the extra mile to erase the effect of cramming and learning by rote -- the hall mark of a successful coaching class -- and awaken in their students a sense of wonder about the world of knowledge and instill in them the confidence of stepping out of their zone of comfort and address intellectual challenges of the highest degree. What this could mean in practice is a reduction in the importance of the text book an...

Have you ever wondered what "they" are talking about "out" there in the social media ? What are they talking about more ? Google ? Microsoft ? or IBM ?   Now you can have all the answers from Omgili.com with charts like these .. or coming back to India who is more popular in the network Katrina Kaif ? or Priyanka Chopra ? or Shilpa Shetty ? Check it out, it is fun.

I am a power-user of the Internet and have been evangelising its usage in almost every field of activity but the funny thing is that despite this deep attachment to the digital media, I never, ever give up a chance to grab a magazine and curl up with it on a sofa ! Why is this ? Because it is simply so much more comfortable to do so. Does that mean that I do not read stuff off the web ? Not at all – I read it all the time, and in fact most of the important things that I have read have been off the web, but that does not mean that I like to sit hunched up in front of screen. So why do I do so ? Because no print magazine can ever give me either the diversity of reach that I can get on the web nor will it ever be customised to exactly the kind of stuff that I care to read. Net-net, I am willing to tolerate the physical discomfort because I care for the reach and the degree of customisation. Is there a way out of this problem ? What if someone were to come out with a system that allows m...

A rare poster image of Ritwik Ghatak's 1958 movie Ajantrik . I like this image because it shows the intimate and essential interaction between man and machine which I believe is inevitable in the future.

Why do universities exist ? At the most abstract level, academic institutions are supported because it is believed that new thoughts and ideas that emerge from them will lead to better standards of life and living in the the civil society that funds the creation and sustenance of these institutions. These thoughts and ideas are in the form of new knowledge that is both created and disseminated in an efficient manner and this dual role, namely creation and dissemination, is structured as research and teaching. Hence the faculty of an academic institution is expected to generate new thoughts and ideas through original research and ensure that not only these ideas, but other equally useful ideas generated elsewhere, at other institutions, is communicated to the students in a lucid and interesting manner. Hence a good academician is expected to contribute both to research as well as to teaching -- plus of course the inevitable overhead of adminstrating a complex institution so that it can ...

This image represents a cloud of ideas, or rather words, that appear in my book, The Road to pSingularity. Click on the image to get a bigger view and understand how you can also build images of your own

James Cameron's blockbuster movie, Avatar, about which I have written about in an earlier post , might have unconsciously sparked off a flurry of interest in the Hindu concept of Avatar, which can be loosely translated as a manifestation of -- usually -- the Divine in human form. But the term Avatar first entered the modern, techno-savvy, non-Hindu lexicon through its usage in Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) like Everquest, World of Warcraft and 3D Virtual Worlds like Second Life. The MMORPG eco-system -- players and builders alike -- treats an Avatar as a digital extension of a conscious human entity, the player, and is used to "manifest" the player's personality and behaviour,  however imperfectly, in the game domain. So there are two domains -- the virtual, digital domain inhabited by the Avatar and the real, physical domain inhabited by the human player -- and these are connected through the "magic" of the MMORPG hardware and sof...

Hey, Prithwis sent you a video mail and a short note: "recorded and sent directly through www.tokbox.com idea learnt from Gagandeep Sapra's article Tech2.0 in the Indian Express" To watch it, simply click on the link below or copy and paste it in to your browser http://www.tokbox.com/vm/h3yna07gckp5 You can make video calls and send video mails to your friends and family on TokBox. It's simple to use and absolutely free. Sign up now Thanks, The TokBox Team If you'd rather not get these emails from us visit http://www.tokbox.com/view/unsubscribe&encEmail=eWFudHJhamFhbC5kYWFrcG9zdEBibG9nZ2VyLmNvbQ==&hash=cd6307dc6a88e23e51ae8123299fec5c&type=2 to unsubscribe from this email notification. If you really want to make sure you get these emails from us, add messages@tokbox.com to your address book. If you need more help getting start...

James Cameron's Avatar is old wine in a brand new and spectacularly brilliant bottle. There is nothing new in the plot -- especially for those of us in India who have been following land acquisition battles in the tribal belt -- that pits the indigenous people as the underdogs who are battling to save their forest-based way of life from the clutches of a global ( universal ?) megacorp. Latched on to this main plot is a cameo sub-plot of a cute little love story between two individuals Jake Scully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) from the two opposing camps, which again is nothing to write home about. But what makes the movie remarkable and memorable is the concept of transferring identity and consciousness ( "soul" ? ) across two bodies -- one of which is a genuine human and the other a synthetic Na'vi humanoid. Cameron has referred to this synthetic humanoid as an Avatar which periodically receives -- and is animated by -- the hero, Jake's soul. The...

With the debacle of the CAT getting out of the bag and the rubbish of it being attacked by a virus being bandied around by semi-literate experts, I thought of digging deep into the innards of my laptop and locating a very simple tool that I had built a long time ago to automate the evaluation of examination scripts. Despite all the progress made in telecom, internet connectivity remains a challenge especially when you have to consider users who are not only geographically dispersed but who have to operate in conditions that an American company like Prometric/ETS really cannot envisage. A design for India has to factor in a breakdown of communications and this is where the store-and-forward technology [ first used in the now defunct Lotus Notes product ] can provide a good model. KwizAuto - the tool that I had built while teaching at the Praxis Business School, Calcutta is based on Excel and it works like this : Have KwizAuto available on the test machine or download it from...

Many professionals in the corporate sector, who enjoy handsome take home salaries today dream of early retirement. The thought of being free from client and performance pressures and the lure of chasing down all those hobbies that one had to sacrifice at the alter of the corporate employer is extremely seductive. But an early retirement would mean that one should have a corpus of money that should be enough to cover the household expenses for the rest of ones life and that of the spouse. So how much money must one have on retirement day so as to sustain the lifestyle that one is accustomed to ?  How should one calculate what is required ? Consider the following points Inflation will increase your household expenses every year ? And this increase is not a simple linear expenses. It will follow the compound interest law.  Your corpus will also grow as per the compound interest law. Interest rates are corelated to inflation. When inflation goes up, so does interest rates...

Now that I have grabbed your attention with a couple of big and high sounding words let me justify their use in the title of this post. In any discussion of the Indian State, the first image that pops into our mind is that of the parade with which our armed forces salute the State -- through the person of the President -- on Republic Day. The spectacular nature of this parade, the precision with which the contingents -- both military and civilian ones -- walk, move, act and enact various scenarios is of course something to be proud of but the tragedy of the parade lies in the fact that it has no relation to the way the State actually works outside the parade route. Were we to move away from Rajpath and step into the dungeons of any sarkari daftar , the reality that will confront us is terrifying. Decrepit and stained with betel juice and with piles of dusty files covering innumerable empty desks, government offices -- whether central, state, municipal, panchayat or public sector ...

With an obsession with placements , Business schools in India -- IIMs not excluded -- have degenerated into thinly disguised placement agencies or at best glorified vocational schools. The compartmentalisation of B-school curriculum into the four principal management functions, namely Finance, Marketing, Human Resources and Systems and Operations reflects this mindset. These are the four principal kinds of tasks that a manager is expected to perform and B-schools pat themselves on the back if they can teach these four skills to the satisfaction of the recruiting companies. [ Though in reality, companies that hire from B-Schools do not seem to care for even this skill ...] Unfortunately, this puts B-schools in the category of vocational schools or V-schools If we draw an analogy with engineering schools, this approach would mean that students are taught workshop practice -- chipping, fitting, foundry, welding -- assembling circuit boards or laying out wires for electrical circuits ...

Why do students queue up to get into B-Schools, especially the more well known ones ? And why are some B-Schools more well known than the others ? Both questions are in fact two sides of a more fundamental question - what value does a B-School bring to the table ? and the answer to both questions can be found in the placement history of B-Schools in general and specific schools in particular. Students join B-Schools because they believe -- and in many cases, quite rightly, that it is a ticket to a high paying job and some B-Schools are more well known than others because their students end up with more, better or higher-paying jobs. But why blame B-Schools for this trend. In the 70s, 80s and even as late as the 90s when unemployment was the dominant feature of the economic landscape of India, students would throng the gates of the Engineering schools because because that was seen as the most sure shot ticket to a good job. Students who had neither the inclination nor the aptitude...

Sandhi puja is perhaps the most significant event in the entire sequence of rituals that constitute the autumnal adoration of the Goddess -- the Durga Puja, but not too many are aware of the legends that have invested this event with the aura of extreme sanctity. Sandhi means junction and in this case it is the junction between the eighth and ninth lunar day after the first new moon that occurs after the sun moves into Virgo -- as per the Hindu zodiac, which lags the Christian zodiac by the Ayanamsa value of around 23 degrees. That is why the ritual is performed in the last 24 mins of the Ashtami ( the 8th lunar day ) and the first 24 mins of Navami (the 9th lunar day). Legend says the Goddess in her manifestation of the Mahishasur-mardini, the destroyer of the evil ogre who took the form of a buffalo or Mahish, performed her deed at this precise moment and so at this auspicious hour the manifestation of divinity is at its peak in the clay image that is generally used to represent...

Maureen Dowd in her op-ed article -- Blue is the new Black -- published in the New York Times has referred to a survey that, if really true, should force us to seriously rethink the outcome of the War of Civilisations. But first what is this survey all about ? " According to the General Social Survey, which has tracked Americans’ mood since 1972, and five other major studies around the world, women are getting gloomier and men are getting happier " .... First there is no further reference to this General Social Survey and to the five other major studies ... but we shall let that pass and focus what appears to be the core of Dowd's hypothesis. The reason that women are getting gloomier is because they have more choice today ! In the past, before feminist activism unshackled women from petty domesticity, women lived lives that were tightly controlled by the men in the family -- father, husband, father-in-law and son. They basically did what they were told to do ... and tha...

The evening of Mahasaptami at Sonartoree, Prantik, Birbhum