The Better Team Won

Today, we lost the world cup match to Australia. I was afraid of this result but hoped that we can beat the Australians. At least the last 3-4 matches suggested that we have got the momentum.

The victory against South Africa was the main reason behind for this hope. We outplayed South Africa in that match. South Africa  is a great team and beating them was no small achievement. But South African bowling and batting both did not click in that match. Nothing like that happened today.

Our weaknesses were exploited and our strengths were tested. We have been blessed with some remarkable individual performances in this world cup from our top 4 batsmen but there was always a concern that against a good bowling attack our lower order will of now use.

Raina and Jadeja are great players in Indian subcontinent and against average bowling. But they have too many weaknesses against genuine pace attack. It is difficult for them to score at quick pace without playing risky shots. When their aggression works, they are hero but against a team like Australia it is difficult to score if you have weaknesses against short ball and rising deliveries. Jadeja is not a dependable lower order bat outside Indian subcontinent.

Dhoni, one of our most experienced and trusted players in crunch situation often has the tendency to leave things for last minute. Many times this has worked but I can recall several matches where he let the required run rate go beyond the manageable limit and succumbed to unrealistic demand of scoring 50-60 runs on 15-20 balls. He is a great runner and great hitter of the ball but he too depends too much on aggressive shots for making quick runs.

Anyway, this is a young team and this would be a great experience for Sharma, Dhawan and Rahane. We hope that this long Australian trip has given them the lessons that will make them win big matches in Australia and England in forthcoming tours.

The sorry state of education in Bihar

An examination centre in Bihar (image source :BBC)

Mass cheating in secondary school examination in Bihar may surprise some people but for those who are from Bihar or lived in Bihar it is a routine affair. Post 1991-92 there were some improvements and mass copying reduced for a while but cheating in examination never stopped. Cheating, mass copying, question paper leaks these are very common. In fact, these have got acceptance very much like dowry practice in these areas. Most people do not see anything wrong in it.

Mass copying and cheating are in most cases happen with full cognizance of the invigilators, teachers and other officials involved in the process. During the 10th and 10th examinations in Bihar, parents are more stressed than students. They try their best to get more marks for their kids. Sometime by helping them in copying, sometime by bribing the answer sheet evaluators, and sometime by getting the question papers leaked.

This seriously ruins the reputation of many hardworking and honest Bihari students who work as hard as any other student to do well in examinations. In fact, due to mass copying and cheating going in examination, most of the evaluators assume that every one has copied and evaluate the answer sheets with this assumption. In such cases, students get less marks than what their written responses deserve. So an honest student always suffers. An honest student is considered a fool by other students and often ridiculed.

These malpractices have ensured that those who can enroll their students in CBSE and ICSE (Bihar School Examination Board conducted examinations are usually suffer more from this practice) affiliated schools do not enroll their student in Bihar School Examination Board affiliated schools. Unfortunately, CBSE and ICSE affiliated schools are mainly in district headquarters or bigger towns. So there are not many options available for good students coming out from rural areas. The result is they get poor marks in 10th and 12th examinations. A quick comparison of the percentile and percentage marks obtained by the students appearing in these three different examination systems (ICSE, CBSE and BSEB) will reveal that the top 1 percentile of BSEB students hardly score more than 80% (despite all the copying and cheating!!) of marks, while top 1 percentile of ICSE and CBSE get more than 95-98% in these examinations.

I would like to remind that these practices are in no way any indication of diligence and intelligence of these students. Most of the students who either go out for higher education or compete in other competitive examinations (where malpractices in examinations are not possible) perform at par with other state students or often outperform them.

Personally, I believe that as a society we are not devaluing honesty and integrity day by day. In some places it is more conspicuous in some it is concealed. The key factors are not absolute belief in these values but social acceptability. If something is dishonest, unethical but socially acceptable we do not see any harm in doing it.

Shame on Us!

I just watched this interview of the lawyer who is defending accused of Nirbhaya’s rape case.  To say the least, this is utterly disgusting to here his views on rape and women.

The lawyer is obviously justifying his asinine opinions of woman and sex through his imbecile arguments that are based his contorted understanding of what he calls Indian culture. Unfortunately, the lawyer is not alone in putting the blame on rape victims (he explicitly mentions that there is no rape without a girl/woman’s consent), his views have been reflected by many of our politicians, policemen and godmen.

This is a more serious concern that despite all the education,exposure and media campaigns, women are still seen in a very demeaning and cruel way in the society which ironically asserts “Yatra Naryastu Pujyante, Ramante Tatra Devata (Where women are worshiped, divinity resides there)”. We, as a society too, have been able to force change this thinking where women are seen as sex-objects, not equal to men and several stupid stereotypes that men creates.

Somewhere I see failure of our education system and social sanctions that have not made people discard these kind of thinking. I wish along with pointing out what is wrong with our society we also start seriously focusing on how to change the situation.

Is AAP an idea that has failed?

The recent events in the political environment of the country have saddened me immensely. AAP as a party garnered support from some unexpected corners because of its promise of providing clean and effective politics. However, it can be safely said that it has failed on many fronts and is being perceived by many more people as no-different than other political parties.

We can presume several reasons for AAP turbulent existence and the way it has been damaging its own credentials consistently. Unlike other political parties, AAP is a very interesting mix of young people with zero political experience and ideologies that are significantly different from those of our earlier generation politicians. Furthermore, the approach, and social mobilisation strategy resorted to modern technology and intensive connect with the common people; this gave it a significant political dividend but also magnified its errors. It also failed in vetting its key members’ profile to ascertain their suitability for various roles which required separate skills and attitude. Also, AAP’s success became a magnet to all kind of opportunists who were looking to start a political career to garner money, power and fame.

All organisations and movements go through a chaotic process before they get stabilised. AAP is going through the same process. The leadership needs to ascertain that the chaotic process should not result in destruction of the core values and transform the whole idea into another run of the mill political party.

Arvind Kejriwal has the propensity of taking decision which are not based on a thorough analysis of all the factors and forces in play. What aggravates the situation more is his style of leadership which has some resemblance to dictatorial  leadership. All of these are ignored if things are moving well but these get magnified once things go wrong. Arvind Kejriwal need to reinvent himself as a leader.

We all are hoping that AAP as an experiment evolves, cleanse itself of all the pernicious elements and remould itself into what it promised to many supporters: an honest, transparent and effective political party.

A Bibliophile and bookshops

Harmony Bookshop in Varanasi

The digital bookshops are not only giving us discounts and enormous amount convenience but also robbing us from the pleasure of being in a physical bookshop. For last 4 years, since I started using Kindle I made a decent balance between buying physical books and digital books. But, I did not change my habit of visiting bookshops.

Every time I see a bookshop I want to walk in and spend some time exploring books, being surrounded by the racks full of immortal words.The bookshops have been described using many superlative analogies but for me the bookshops are an emotional thing. Books transformed me and the bookshops/library provided me the perfect place to gift some quality time to myself.

The charm of bookshops is beyond the setup,interiors and the number of books that it contained, yet old bookshops in a small cities are special. Places like Varanasi, Rishikesh, Jaipur, Bhopal, Pune all have a one or two bookshops that every bibliophile is nostalgic about. Recently, I was in Varanasi and got a chance to know about the bookshops in Varanasi. Varanasi, the most ancient living city on the planet and the must visit city for any tourist with interest in spirituality, Indian culture or religion, has a number of bookshops that are special.

I found a number of bookshops that are an attraction to bibliophile and tourists here. Each of these bookshops have a rich collection of titles on one or other topic. But, for anyone interested in Hindu religion, Indology, Buddhism, Samskrit, Hindi Sahyitya these bookshops may have the best collection in India. Most of the bookshops are now also have a publication unit and publish books on niche topics. The shopkeepers are knowledgeable and have good understanding of the topics they specialize in.

I stumbled upon some of the rare books on Varanasi, Samskrit and folk-tales. And, several books in vernacular that I never saw anywhere else. The big bookshops based in the malls usually ignore the vernacular books. Good vernacular books are now being confined to book fares and libraries. This has posed a serious threat to our vernacular classic. I found a book on Varanasi in English which is a translation of a Hindi book. I immediately asked for the original Hindi book. The shopkeeper informed that there are no copies of that book available now. The shopkeeper was himself looking for the original copy so that they can run a reprint. He informed me that there are several such books whose original copies in vernacular are lost and we are selling the translated version.

I bought quite a number of them. I love my books and I love even more when I get a book in my mother tongue: Hindi. The bookshops in Varanasi have a good collection of Hindi books. I wish bookshops in metros should give more space to vernacular literature.