Month: June 2009

Unwelcome Competition in Education

An addendum to the previous post on “Education and Corruption.” Here’s a story that I recently heard which illustrates the engineering of scarcity in education and the resultant bribes and low quality. No names are mentioned because the people involved are powerful people in the government.
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Education and Corruption

The Indian education sector is in distress. How does one explain the lack of outrage among the population at something which affects them so forcefully? Could it be because they are not aware of how dysfunctional the system is? That must at least partly explain the apathy. Perhaps they know but accept it with the fatalistic resignation of the type that accepts corruption among public officials? Perhaps they mistakenly consider pervasive corruption as normal. But how can they not see that government control of education, the rampant corruption, and the crippled education system are all of a piece?

Here’s a news item which reports that medical post graduate studies involve bribes of up to Rs 2 crores (around $ 400,000.)
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BBC and the Attack of the ASSes

Attack of the Advanced Self-propelled Screwdrivers

BBC News reports that, “In one of the recent attacks in Melbourne, a student was critically injured by a screwdriver.” Wonders of this modern world, don’t you know. Automatic self-willed screwdrivers on a rampage. The student was injured by a screwdriver, and not “A student was attacked by someone with a screwdriver.”
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New Commenting System

Today I installed a new commenting system — IntenseDebate. Therefore now you really don’t have to register to comment; you can just comment as “guest.” Also it allows you to get email updates of followup comments to the post or even the entire blog. But there are some things that need to be ironed out. For instance, I notice that some genuine comments are ending up in the spam queue even though before they would have gotten through. In any case, do give me feedback on this change. Also, if you comment and you see that the comment is not showing up, please drop me a note atanudey at gmail. Cheers!

Update: (1 PM IST)

There were problems with the intensedebate commenting. Some comments were not getting through. So for now we are back to square one and the commenting system will be as before. Sorry for the inconvenience.