The Cluster-Fu*k Chakra

Inspired by the latest news that the US will fund Saudi Arabia to “train and arm moderate rebels to fight the ISIS.”

 

Introducing, the world’s largest geronto-pluto-goondacracy

Guess what: India’s newest Parliament - and strongest  in 30 years, is also its oldest,  wealthiest and most criminal. India is not just the world’s largest democracy, but also the world’s largest gerontocracy, plutocracy and goondacracy, as statistics from the National Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reform show.

One-third of our MPs are accused of being criminals. Some of the most goondacratic parties, in terms of percentage of criminal-charge-facing MPs, are the RJD in Bihar, the Shiv Sena and the NCP in Maharashtra. In the ruling party, the BJP, over a fifth of its 282 MPs face criminal charges. But hold on a second – does this mean the Congress is relatively clean? Why is the Congress, equally notorious for the criminal tendencies of its MPs, not even come into the picture here? Well, the answer to that is, fortunately, the Congress got trounced in these elections leaving many of its criminal candidates happily free of the onerous  - and increasingly dangerous - responsibility of sitting in Parliament.

It becomes even more scary when looking at those who could have made it in. Of 8,163 candidates for 543 seats, 27% - or 950 candidates – are millionaires (up from 16% in 2009), and 17% face criminal charges. Here the Congress leads the list for the number of millionaire candidates followed by the BJP. And surprise, surprise, the ‘Common Man’s Party’, the AAP, is not to be left out. The AAP is led by self-professed Gandhian Arvind Kejriwal who, in his campaign, emphasized the selection of candidates who would represent the common man. However, 40% of the AAP candidates in the state of Madhya Pradesh have criminal cases in court. I am sure the common man would resent this implication.  And of all these 8163 representatives of the people, 889 had serious criminal charges against them – i.e. murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping, theft and criminal intimidation.

There is another delicious irony here. Dr. Manmohan Singh, India’s out-going PM, was widely seen as being an upright and outstanding individual surrounded by a brazenly corrupt and criminal establishment. A key attraction of the to-be PM Narendra Modi is his image as a clean politician. As it turns out he is going to find himself in a situation very similar to Dr. Singh. It remains to be seen if he will be able/willing to keep the corrupt and the criminal under check.

Oh, I almost forgot - India’s Parliament is steadily getting older, with over 45% of its MPs on the better side of 55. There is, paradoxically, a bright side to this – the majority of these ossified oligarchs, by the very nature of their jobs, will have a limited political shelf-life. Being a criminal takes energy and being an MP demands even more. Doing both at the same time, one could imagine, requires considerable vigour. While the new PM himself is a youthful 63, with a healthy 56-inch chest, the oldest oligarch is well over the 80 mark. Meanwhile, over half the country’s population is under 25. But more worrying than this generation gap – yes, I am afraid there’s more – are the trends. The numbers have been steadily going up on all fronts. India has long been progressing towards an increasingly gerontocratic government. But now, with our political parties becoming truly inclusive and secular towards all forms of -cracies, goondacratic and plutocratic tendencies are also on the rise. Since 2004, when it was made mandatory for candidates to declare criminal charges along with financial assets, these trends have been going up steadily.

Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe the best, at any rate, the most entertaining, thing to do with a criminal millionaire is to put him in a large room filled with other criminal millionaires and handy, loose items of furniture, and let them fight amongst themselves in a televised reality show.

Of course, the only way to prevent these fights from spilling out into the countryside around New Delhi is to place these corrupt criminals under the watch of an exceptionally strong and incorruptible leader. Which is exactly what the electorate has thoughtfully and resoundingly done.

Did someone say, “world’s largest autocracy”?

 

Technorati Tags: India,democracy,2014 Lok Sabha,MPs,criminal

Engineering colleges in India out of reach for many

 

Caste, location, economic status and an English-language education can determine whether a student in India will end up in an engineering college, according to a study by Anirudh Krishna at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague.

Analysing the results of a questionnaire-based survey of 876 students across engineering colleges of varying quality across the country, the author finds that the more rural one is, the lower are his/her chances of gaining admission into an engineering college. The lack of a knowledge of English severely reduces the chance of admission to all but the lowest tier of colleges. A combination of a rural background with a Scheduled Caste (SC) / Scheduled Tribe (ST) handicap virtually eliminated these chances.

India produces more than 600,000 engineering graduates annually. Though the engineering education system itself is faulty with the majority of graduates unemployable, the opportunity for admission to these ‘gateway institutions’ is the key to upward social mobility. The study conducted with the support of Aspiring Minds, a national employment agency, ranks 6 engineering colleges based on various factors such as the educational qualifications of their faculty and the employability of their graduates. These rankings are combined with data on the backgrounds of the individual students to identify the key factors that drive the rural-urban divide in engineering college admissions in the country. The students were asked to provide information on several parameters such as their caste, the degree of ‘rural-ness’ of their upbringing, their medium of education, their parents’ level of education and economic status, and the available sources of information and advice.

The worst possible combination for a child was to be poor and belong to an ST – the surveyed students did not include anyone that was poor and an ST. Affirmative action (reservation of seats) for SC/ STs in public engineering colleges is high but it is clearly not doing enough in this regard. Just as bad, was to be poor and from a rural background with agriculturist parents. An in-depth analysis of these issues also reveals the lack of information and advice on pathways to opportunity as hindering the mobility of the rural poor towards an engineering education. Among those who made it into an engineering college against the odds the chance help of a motivated/ rich relative, teacher or friend was, in almost all cases, the determining factor.

The lack of penetration of English in rural schools – arguably closely related to the often abysmal quality of these schools was another key determining factor. 70 - 80% of the students in the Tier 1 colleges had their secondary education in English while for the Tier 6 colleges this figure was less than 50%. The merits of an English-medium education are a debated topic in India. However the fact remains that the structure of higher ‘gateway’ education in India today necessitates a working knowledge of English.

Yet, it is not all gloomy. The study showed positive trends in social mobility for women and SC’s. Stories of individuals who made it against the odds also offer hope and more importantly, indicators of what sort of action is needed to address this divide. For instance the study describes the case of a poor girl in Delhi who gained admission into an engineering college thanks to directed effort and funding by the Delhi state government towards a high-quality school for the under-privileged.

There are bright minds out there in India’s villages waiting to be educated. Tragically, many of these children may spend their lifetimes completely unaware of the opportunities that exist and how these may be grasped.  Rural and under-privileged families in India need to be provided with an English education, and with information, counselling and role models that encourage and instruct them about the opportunities available to them. Admittedly, this study only looks at engineering colleges and does not consider other disciplines. Also, differences between states on these indicators are not investigated here. Nevertheless, this is an important and revealing facet of the rural-urban divide in the country: it is disheartening for the world’s largest democracy to leave the education of its most deprived to chance. India desperately needs more directed, coordinated efforts to address the pressing issue of social immobility and injustice in higher education.

Guardian Gyaan on Being a Science Journalist

I paid 40 pounds to attend the Guardian Masterclass on Science Journalism in London, to find out that

1. There are no jobs in print journalism for anybody, let alone print journalists.

2. You cannot become a freelance journalist – you must already be one.

3. Want to be a science journalist? Then you better have a brother-in-law in the labs.

4. Nobody wants to read what you write – that is assuming you can write.

5. The Guardian is the awesomest paper ever. And when I say ever I mean, ever.

Just kidding. Well… kinda. If you’re still reading, you probably do have a chance in print science journalism. I actually picked up a lot of useful tips in a very interesting 3 hour session conducted by James Randerson, editor of the Guardian Science Desk. For instance, I learnt that a shortened version of my intro here, in a news article, would be called a dropped intro – something that is playful, heightens drama, and is never supposed to be used in a well-written science article. Oops. The class was held in The Guardian’s impressive glass and steel office near King’s Place. I had expected around 20 other participants but was mildly shocked by the number of wannabe science journalists – all 100 places had been sold out!

James started off the talk with a mention of Tim Radford, the former editor on the Science desk and some of his tips. James reinforced Tim’s point that nowadays, the biggest pitfall in science journalism is writing that is not readable… or worse, not read. The most important person in a science news article, surprisingly enough, is you – the reader. Not the science.

Second most common pitfall? Overestimating the reader’s knowledge… and underestimating his intelligence. A typical science news story follows the inverted triangle concept – it starts off with the most newsworthy information, followed on by some details and finishing off with the background. The polar opposite of what a journal paper would do, though, in fact, very similar to the structure of an abstract. The topline hints at the specifics, but – and this was actually quite revealing – the topline of a science news story is 90% of the time a straightforward introduction to the subject of the story, not a dramatic introduction. So what makes a good science story?

There was a reason this class was advertised with a focus on health and environmental science stories. For a science story to work as news it should fulfill one of two basic criteria –

a) It should be relevant to me/my family/my friends (e.g., health stories – any number, such as the current series on running, potential cures for diseases, the list is endless)

b) Or, the story should have a ‘wow’ factor. Like the one about the meteorite in Russia. Or the discovery of the underwater lava lake by Southampton oceanography scientists.

In the second session we were given an insight into how a story makes it from a reported finding to the newspaper – a dreary drip-feed driven by press releases and news feeds from scientific journals. The whole shenanigans seems so dependent on the scientific community that it begs the question – do newspapers only ever publish stories that the scientists want them to? In fact, I had several questions bouncing around in my head, clamouring to be asked – are journalists doing a good job in communicating uncertain findings? Do the public have a right to know what’s going on in the labs, or are they merely interested?... but this talk was not a philosophical debate on the ethics of science and science journalism, so I told my questions to shut up.

Occasionally, Mr. Randerson (say that in an Agent-Smith-like voice if you’re bored) would plug the Guardian (“Contrast our responsible science publishing with the irresponsible rubbish printed by the tabloids”) but that was to be expected and did not detract from the more useful information and tips he gave us – so, forgiven.

The last bit of the talk was the most interesting, for – prepare to be shocked - unsolicited emails from individuals pitching science news stories ARE READ! Apparently this is how he got noticed. Among other things, a basic pitch should contain a topline, a peg (why now?), 50-100 words of context, a very brief summary of who you are… and if you have it, the story itself. Don’t expect a reply, let alone feedback – editors are ludicrously busy. But equally, don’t be shy to call up and harass them to atleast read your email.

Finally – tell them something they don’t know – avoid press releases and publications, and avoid regular journals – the press has these already. Oh – and in case you didn’t know - the Wellcome Trust Science Writing Contest is on.

Before I finish, I’d like to mention an interesting aside – I got talking to the guy next to me and we were both convinced that atleast 25 of the 100 participants that day were final-year PhD students, clutching at straws for their future careers. Funny image, that.

If you’re a journalist, I have nothing to say, except… watch out for those PhD students. If you’re a PhD student however… Go forth, and shine light into the murky world of science on behalf of all those lab coats in there struggling to communicate!

HTH.