ISSUES AND CONCERNS

BEDI’S BURDEN Just the other day, anchor Rahul Kawal of Headlines To-day, a TV channel, was grilling Arvind Kejriwal pressing him hard to comment that Kiran Bedi, ‘did in fact committed a wrong’ in the “L ‘affair Air Ticket’. But Kejriwal, a former IRS was too slippery for the over-smart Rahul Kawal. These anchors, whether Rahul Kawal, or Karan Thapar, or Rajdeep Sardesai, Barkha Dutt, Sagarika Ghosh or Arnab Goswami of Times Now, are all very intellectually endowed. They do carry a wealth of knowledge to their job, but unfortunately they are also very over-bearing. Although they are supposed to be interviewing the given person, at a time, they, more often than not, do not allow the other person to complete the statement. They keep bombarding them with all kinds of questions, to be continuously one-up, on them. It looks, many times, that they are trying to show off their professional prowess, rather than contribute to a serious content output, for public domain. In the case between Rah...

Friends When we crossed 10 years in the print media, after multiple highs and lows, we indeed felt justifiably very excited. Now that we have turned 11 last month, we are more relaxed, although mildly excited, all the same. Looking back over the shoulders, the labyrinth that we traversed had all the makings of trekking in woods with its own cliffs and valleys. Yes, thank God we remained reasonably unscathed. And going ahead with renewed vigour with the help of our patrons, friends and well wishers. Yes, coming to the participative readership, we go back to what Dr K. N. Prabhu in Sept. 11 issue had suggested and echoed by Dr K V Venkataramana in Oct. 11 issue. Hence we have decided to stop all present life subscription at 15 years instead of the 25 years we had proposed initially. Hope our valued readers wouldn’t mind this change, forced purely on economic reason. The change shall be effective from Nov. 2011. Of course, for those who insist that we must keep our promise of 25 years, we...

“I disapprove of what you say, But your right to say it, I will defend until my death”, said Voltaire, the French philosopher. In an India of over 1200 million people with myriad kinds of dogmas, practices and beliefs, what Voltaire said centuries ago, always stood its test of time. Tolerance of one’s speech, practices and beliefs has always been the corner stone of the ‘Idea of India’. The debate on ‘Idea of India’ has been going on at different points of time almost continuously. Only because, there is no country like India in the entire world. There have been rightly many thinkers, not just Indians, but from across the global spectrum, who wrote, at times with disdain and more often with pleasure, at the exasperating diversity called India. While quoting Rudyard Kipling may be out of place in the present context, there are others who have been more kindly-critical and some very approbative. Writing on India, John Keay writes “India challenges the visitor like no other country. Vast,...

GANG LEADER FOR A DAY Black and Blue Of all the relationship I’d developed during my time at Robert Taylor, a turned out that the strongest one by far was my bond with J.T. As unusual and as morally murky as this relationship may have been, it was also undeniably powerful. Our years together had produced a close relationship. This bond would become even more intimate, to the point that J.T. felt personally indebted to me, when I had the opportunity to help save the life of one of his closest friends. It was a classic Chicago summer afternoon: a cloudless sky, the muggy air broken occasionally by a soft lake breeze. I was hanging around at Robert Taylor, outside J.T’s building, along with perhaps a hundred other people. Tenants were barbecuing, playing softball, and taking comfort in the cool shadow of the building. Few apartments had a working air conditioner, so on a day like this the lawn got more and more crowded as the day wore on. I was sitting on the lawn next to Darryl Young, on...

Slightly high BP raises chances of stroke Washington: Even if your blood pressure (BP) is slightly elevated, you may be prone to a stroke, new research says. Prehypertension is a clinical category to describe patients whose BP is elevated but still considered within normal range. People with prehypertension have a 55 percent higher chance of experiencing a stroke than people without it, University of California School of Medicine noted. That hypertension or abnormally high BP is a major risk for cardiovascular diseases and strokes is well-known, but much less is known about the dangers of prehypertension, the journal Neurology reports. A stroke is a condition where a blood clot or ruptured artery or blood vessel interrupts blood flow to the brain. A lack of oxygen and glucose (sugar) flowing to the blood leads to brain damage, causing impairment in speech, movement and memory. Hands-free computer for disabled Washington: An innovative technology that could enable people to operate a co...

When a spelling mistake can turn you into a blasphemer Islamabad: A teenage Pakistani Christian girl, who misspelt a word while answering a question on a poem written in praise of Prophet Mohammed, was accused of blasphemy and expelled from school, according to a media report. Faryal Batti, an eighth grade student at Sir Sayed Girls’ High School in the Pakistan ordnance Factories colony at Havelian near Abbottabad, misspelt the word in an Urdu examination. While answering the question on a poem written in praise of Prophet Mohammed, Bhatti misspelt the word ‘naat’(hymn) as ‘laanat’ (curse). This was an easy error for a child to make as the written versions of the words are similar, ‘The Express Tribune’ daily reported. The error led to accusations of blasphemy against Bhatti and upproar among local religious leaders. According to the school’s administration and religious leaders, who took exception to the student’s mistake, the error was ‘’serious’’ enough to fall within the realm of...

Solidarity in learning A personal computer was connected to the internet and embedded into a brick wall around an informal playground nest to a residential slum in New Delhi. Within a few days it was noticed that groups of slum children aged eight to fourteen years were able to use the computer without any instruction. And taking the experiment forward, across the country, it was noticed that given adequate resources, groups of children were able to acquire computing skills without adult intervention. Thus, the first ‘hole-in-the-wall’ experiment in 1999 has, today, lead to open 84 such learning stations across rural centres in the country, with 45 others in process and a few in the offing abroad in countries like Cambodia and Africa. “This raised a question,” says Parimala Inmadar. Head Design Lab, Center for Research in Cognitive Systems & Group Consultant at NIIT LTD, who was the Assistant Professor at the Center for Research in Cognitive Systems, the NIIT Institute of Informati...

SOCIO-ECONOMIC RELEVANCE OF POPULATION IN INDIA Dr.K.Shanker Shetty Human capital plays cardinal functional role in the socio-economic growth of a developing nation like India, is an understatement. Relevance and challenges of demographic factor always haunted India in recent decades incessantly. It can neither control the population under coercion like China did, nor allow the acceleration of the growth unabated. Though, India has recovered from the worst recession with marginal bruise there has been a shift of economic power from the west to the east and accordingly Asia and India are flourishing with huge flow of capital, manufacturing activities, software networks and enhanced standard of living. However, Asia in general and India in particular, inspite of huge population face the shortage of human capital, specially leaders in business. There is dearth of policy makers, leaders and industrial captains to lead the country into the new phase of greater power status. In the meanwh...