Hyper-Media

The role of media, especially television is so commendable these days. The news channels in particular provide us with the latest update of events occurring in the most isolated part of our country. We come to know about the celebrations that create a jocular mood among the public or the deadly terror attacks that leave people maiming and their relatives in a sullen mood. We get to know about the stock rates at the share markets and views of educationists on various critical issues. All these services from our visual media make one doss their hats in respect. But, there is yet another issue that sometimes, can tarnish the image of these media enabled services. That's none other than going 'hyper' over the issues.

To get clearly what the term 'hyper' really means when we throw accusation at the media, the recent coverage of Mumbai terror attacks can be taken as the impeccable exempli-gratia. We, the citizens of India were deeply drowned in sorrow on viewing those harrowing attacks on our fellow countrymen and we really appreciated the media lens men for getting the glimpse of the happenings, in real time. But, this note of praise soon ended when the news channels started dealing with news as 'commodity' as a well known national daily rightly quoted. The channels started flashing sophomore news on the screens terming it as 'breaking news', even as the officials were waiting for confirmation from the personnel inside the action points.

Each channel wanted to prove its supremacy over the other and in the race failed to bring in the feeling of national sensation into the minds of citizens rather made them irritated with half-baked news that were later stated as false by the same media that reported it. The news correspondents at one point even questioned the rescued hostages who obviously had had a gruelling experience. This showed the media's hunt for news that made them go mad at the hostages. I duly respect the news correspondents who spent hours covering the events of terror attacks, even risking their lives. At one point, the media started reporting the commando plans even! This portrayed their cursory act towards news coverage and how unmindful they were of the consequences of revealing the very sensitive army plans. The message is simple. India is a democratic country where everyone has fundamental rights to his/her own credit. The media has the full freedom to write or telecast anything they wished. It would be more sensible if this freedom is used for what it is intended for, of course with minimal recklessness and maximum enlightenment!

Solitude

In this busy world most of the children are forced to experience solitude or loneliness. This pushes them to extremism of boredom leading to depressed minds. Often this may lead to detachment from life and may impose a negative impact about life in to the young minds. They may turn shy and become less sociable. But, does solitude have any positive influence? Well, like two sides for a coin, benefits of solitude are aplenty! First and foremost we get to know the challenges of maintaining the house. It's not an easy task to look after your living place. You need to answer people of diverse disciplines from electricity to dairy. These experiences will lend us the helping hand in our future. These minutes of direct interaction with these people are otherwise unavailable.

Many feel that being alone drives your mind towards deleterious thoughts that may affect your intellect. The wise uses it the other way. We can use our solitude as a blessing in disguise, an environment that is calm enough for one to think on. A noisy place is not ideal if one wants answers to his questions, be it scientific or spiritual. Yet another impact of solitude is the confidence that it leaves on the person it affects. Devoid of people to help, a solitary being plunges in to activities all alone with the only weapon 'confidence'. When we get constant pushing from friends and well wishers in solving our issues we only become too much dependent upon them. This by no way means that the help they render is useless, it only highlights the conducive nature of solitude. Thus, next time when you feel lonely be proud of it since it has greater benefits of leaving you undisturbed from gossips and at the same time be sociable.

When fishes go fishing

Terrorism has spread its wings so wide all over the world that nobody has got any clues as to how to suppress it! The major flaw lies in trying to eradicate the effects of terror every time rather than taking measures to uproot the prime cause of this ugly act. Nobody has ever thought as to why most youth resort to this deadly act of massacring people. The cause needs to be analyzed from the destitute point of view to get a clear understanding of the reason as to why these youth fall prey to terror groups. As always, survival is the key for any human being in this world and everyone looks for a chance to edge over the other. In this race for supremacy, the brainy community enjoys the top luxury and amasses most of the available wealth through business. The poor go poorer. This is not a imposed stature on the poor but it's their only option as they have no other means of livelihood.


From where do the so called terrorists spring from? They are initially one among the billions in this big world and trying to earn their living as everyone do. But, these youth have a family that is unable to sponsor them a day's meal. Under the pressure to live in this world somehow these youth resort to some illegal activities in their childhood. Their minds, from then on refuses to cooperate for any productive activity in life. A sort of addiction. The already existing terror groups look for these kind of hapless young men and mesmerize them with offers such as compensation for family and canvassing in the name of religion. As these men are already in a sullen mood they immediately yield to the bait of those illicit groups and start working for them as suicide bombers!

The leaders of the world who have great care in reviving this only living place in this Universe so far, must try to find all these young minds with anger on life and try to relieve them off their poverty. It's human nature to look out for obvious means of earning wealth, not fearing of the consequences. These minds must be ignited with good thoughts of peace and also they need to be convinced that prosperity springs from peace. This can also be done on a humanitarian basis, educating those juvenile criminals about the ill effects of taking a weapon that will ultimately end as noose for their own neck! This cannot be called a novel way of eliminating terror as it'd been carried out for sometime in the past time, must be done on a full fledged basis. It's high time for us now to prevent these maniacs from hunting men as some fishes go for the kill of fellow fishes. In both the cases, the result is adverse

Indian Pot-Pouri

Why is it so difficult in a country like India, where taking some crucial decisions by any leader always beckons criticism? Why is that any measure or an act finds colossal time to get itself implemented despite its immediate allocation of resources? Well, this one is best answered by analyzing the people of India rather than its administration. India is a land of people who are from variety of races and religion. They speak multifarious languages and follow a myriad of customs. They have plethora of cuisines and piebald of clothing. In a country of such diversity it becomes extremely difficult to arrive at one single conclusion before imposing an act as part of the constitution.


Any decision taken in our country must not affect the sentiments of the masses. The sentiments may be religious, customs performed throughout time or their aesthetics. When several of these factors contribute to the glory of particular group of people it becomes mandatory for the leaders of our country to take decisions such that none of the groups get agonized or feel that their glory is being tarnished. Each state in India has got its own tradition and none of them, of course would like to give up their prosperity, under any case whatsoever. This is not an accusation thrown at the organization of our country, but a description of the demographic layout of our nation. Leaders taking strategic decisions in country like India must analyze the consequences in terms of mentality of all the groups of people who would be affected.



Yet another conflict that arises during decision making is due to the large population of our land. This huge population count has led to various economic classes. The leaders have additional burden of making sure that their decision suits all those classes and none of them is dissatisfied. India is the biggest democratic country in the world and its constitution is so big only to make the law benefit all the classes of people. So, lets not simply accuse our leaders for not taking the most accurate decision for the very first time since it may also due to the fact that they might have come to that conclusion, excluding a class of people by mistake. By this point I by no way support politicians who take crude decisions. Its only an observation that would corroborate good leaders who take strategic decisions. For other reckless leaders, the preliminary task is to first understand that they have been elected to work for the people.

Love out of(f) life....

It was drizzling outside and Ryan was watching over the window that provided a graceful view of the beautiful pathway in front of Ryan's house. It looked as if it was a path leading to heaven. So magnificent it was in the drizzling rain. As Ryan was looking through the window, drops of raindrops were pouring over his head and trickled down through his lips into the floor. Ryan tasted those fresh raindrops and was enjoying the rain when the water turned salty. Ryan wondered if the ocean went over the sky, though it sounded crazy. But, Ryan realized that it was not the result of ocean over the sky or of any supernatural phenomenon, those were his tears that rolled down his cheeks and into his lips. Ryan was surprised that his emotions over powered his intellect that they expressed themselves as burst of tears. But, Ryan was not so surprised of this emotional outburst!

Well, Ryan is like any other ten year old living with his working parents in an apartment in Utopia. Both of his parents were working and they leave home by 7 am and Ryan sees them only at 7 pm. Ryan always got the best in his life, best house, best food, best education and everything that a 10 year old needs. But, Ryan missed out the parental love, which Ryan has rated as his prime requirement. He wanted to be with his mom, wanted her to teach him lessons and feed him food. He started feeling that life is full of sacrifices where loss of one leads to gain of another. His parents used to convince him saying that earning now will provide him a better future. They used to say him about the financial burden. Ryan is so intelligent that he understood all these factors.


Inside Ryan was this longing mind, that even though it was convinced that his parents are working hard only for his wellness and the ultimate benefits are only for him, the need for that emotional comfort kept haunting his mind and made him a wistful creature. He was not sure if the trend in global education is the cause for all these increased burden on his parents. The world was initially with men working hard to earn the family's living and the mother takes pains in bringing up her child. She gets immense joy in seeing her child grow in front of her eyes. But, the race for survival in today's world has made even that holy heart (mom) to hurry towards office. Ryan was upset at his mother's pains in working too.

But, what will this ten year old do? He was eagerly awaiting a change in his family. Ryan also knew that the change is to be brought all over the world. Distribution of wealth rather accumulation, elimination of black money, terminating education as a business commodity and so forth. But, this little mind, not want of killing his joy of enjoying rain, slowly subsided to the window pane again and once again looked at that heavenly pathway. He was still confused as whether his parent's efforts to bring the love out 'of' his life to him, leading to taking the love out 'off' his life! Drops trickled down his cheeks this time too, but were not salty as those salty ones had had their emotions!

Vox Populi

The people of America have spoken out (vox populi). Its "Election America" and finally the race to White House has ended with a spectacular showdown with Barack Hussein Obama becoming the 44th President of the United States. The leader in himself has an excellent orator, a powerful lawyer and a strategic leader. The America that 'was' when he started his election campaign bore no resemblance with the one it is currently in! Lets put aside Obamian tactics and the disconcerted situation that Americans are facing now. The focus of this post is to analyze the attitude of the two candidates for the Presidential election that was expected to be a tight finish but it proved the other way with Obama getting the clean chit!

The famous speech that fetched Obama this scintillating victory was delivered by him at Illinois, the constituency from where he was elected. His speech clearly enunciated his background i.e, who and what his parents were, about his education and his entry into the US Senate. The comparison can be started right away from this point. Indian politics has its own flavors. Each one accusing every other candidate. Obama never accused McCain publicly, instead he insisted on how his principles and ideologies will take America to a new dimension both in terms of wealth and intellectual enrichment. Politicians in every level, in India concentrate mainly on acquiring crowd and make impossible promises. The decency that Obama and McCain maintained during public campaigns is worth emulating.

The post electoral reactions from these two candidates was even more amazing. McCain calling up Obama and wishing him good luck in his tenure! Never can we imagine such a noble gesture from a single politician in India, how nobler he may be in other spheres of life. Politics in India is simply considered as a race to power and not as an opportunity to take the lead in improving the nation's prospects with immediate involvement. McCain announced that he would render full support for the decisions that Obama would be taking in the future. Such is the trust of an opposition on the ruling party. Indian politics and politicians must learn a lot of moral lessons from one of the finest elections and these lessons are worth learning too.

Rejuvenate admissions

Admissions for most educational institutes, if not for all in India are based purely on the higher secondary school examination marks and the entrance test scores. One good aspect of this metric is that students with high problem solving skills enter into the institutes. But, there is the darker side of this procedure. Students with not so good attitude enter into institutes and violate the very purpose for which the institutes have been established. Mere numerical abilities don't command an excellent character from the student. These abilities can be acquired by anyone through rigorous preparation and regular practice. To be more precise these abilities are not inborn but imparted.

Then what's that thing that is unique or which distinguishes one from the other? Its the passion for study and the future goal the students wish to achieve through their course. Studying high speed databases to steal money would be of no use to society and would go to trashes! The motive behind study is all the most important. In this aspect, its better we learn from other nations. Countries like the USA and almost every European nation adopts this policy where they require a letter written entirely by the student stating his purpose of study. This letter will speak one's heart and any artificial manipulations will be easily found out by the evaluation team. Numerical scores are also taken into account by the selection team and an overall criteria is established which determines the student's admission into the university.

Yet another policy that is outstanding with foreign universities is their selective appraisal of undergraduate courses for admission into graduate courses. For example, if one plans to do an MS in Computer Science and submits his undergraduate score sheet, the evaluation team evaluates his/her performance in courses pertaining to computer science only and give lesser importance to courses not so related to computer science. This method of evaluation clearly filters out students who have a zeal for computers. Similar methods can be adopted for other engineering disciplines. Still, the post graduate admissions for IITs follow the entirely mark based metric and it must be revamped. It would be a sea change if this procedure is adopted for undergraduate courses whose admissions strictly command a high numerical score and not measure of other required skills. This all round evaluation of candidate avoids future complexities like lack of required skills during job interviews, where the candidate is required to take up special soft skill classes. Research oriented minds can also be found out with ease if multiple criteria are established. Lets hope for this method to get established in India in the earliest possible time.