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.

Prediction

Solving a problem requires good professional skills but predicting a problem in prior needs extremely good analytical skills. Predicting problems early helps us to plan the solution in advance so that the problem can be solved with less side effects. A good example would be the kathiapara project. The traffic at kathiapara has been heavy for a quite long years. Had we anticipated this traffic a bit early, the project could have been implemented without the traffic chaos that has been affecting commuters through the junction. The analysis could have been made using the data such as number of vehicles in the city, the purchase ability of people i.e., if the purchase ability is more, more people would buy vehicles and therefore will lead to increase in traffic and similar other factors.


Predicting problems also has many other advantages like adequate planning of resources, developing an accurate plan, establishment of an efficient implementation team, creating a co-ordination among team members (which is otherwise impossible, since we would be concentrating more on the problem rather than team co-ordination). A separate team can be dedicated for prediction of possible threats and problems, the team must be provided with the necessary details from all departments to derive out the possible problems in the future. Software industry also requires anticipation of problems in the software. It is better to predict the possible bugs that may creep in or possible points of system crash. This will help in embedding proper recovery measures into the software. But, its always better to be cautious that we don't predict too much and create unwanted complexities. A good planner will anticipate problems that will occur in near future with high probability and solving which will benefit most number of customers.

Fostering research

This article suggests an idea to foster research at professional educational institutes.  This suggestion is an amalgamation of solutions that will finally produce the tendency of research amongst the students and professors.  The problem, first with the professors in colleges is that they are satisfied with the salaries they get and don't take the risk of investing time into projects that command more time and resources.  The other problem in which the professors are involved is the state where they are payed minimal salary.  When the professors are provided with a salary that is not in par with their work, they naturally lose interest with the institution they work in and in the end have absolutely no interest towards research.

Not to blame the professors all the time, students on their part also are a major cause for research not being done at colleges.  Students look for enjoyment all the time and when it comes to project, they do it for name sake or some even make an "outright purchase!!".  When one student of a class does this, it spreads to everyone in the class and the whole class gets infected by this syndrome and no body does a worthy project "on their own!".  One way to encourage research among students is to award good cash prizes for outstanding research done.  But, the originality of project must be taken into account.  Only through pure commitment from professors and students can a good research project evolve and this is entirely a collaborated work rather than a success of an individual!

Touch of socialism

Graduates of engineering studies are nowadays eyeing at starting their own companies in other words wishing to become entrepreneurs. This is a good sign which will contribute towards nation building. But for the business to succeed what do you think is the most essential ingredient? Of course, the first option that comes strikingly forward is the "love for money". This quality is the most important because without a want for money, you can never make a successful business. Fine, but to keep the business surging ahead there is yet another feature that needs to be embedded in the business process. Guess what? Its socialism or love for customers!!


This may sound a bit too excessive for the one who wishes to do a lucrative business. Believe me, without loving your customers you can never bring improvements in your business. Trade must be customer centric, whatever changes you bring to your business see to that it benefits your customers ultimately. Care for customers can be brought into products that you deliver by maintaining good quality raw materials and ensuring long term usage. This quality applies to both software and manufacturing industry products. Retaining your customers is also possible only when your customers realize that you care for them.


World famous industries like Reliance, Microsoft, Apple, General Electrical, Ford all have succeeded only after realizing what their customers want and producing the products that conform to customer satisfaction. So, whenever you plan a change for your business process first study customer reaction to your existing process and try to predict the effects of customers that would result from the change you plan to bring in your business. No product, that is technically precocious, but less customer friendly manages to bring valuable returns for your business. So, young tycoons realize this golden trick, I might call it, that caring for your customers is the prime virtue that will keep your business rolling for many a years.

Animated Learning

The topic by itself is too interesting to discuss. Some of us are actually following it, for others here is this post which throws light on this beautiful form of learning. Every subject in the educational field has got its own domain of knowledge. The knowledge of each subject is inculcated into student's mind through books, audio clips and video strips. But, in our country education is mostly text oriented with exception on some parts where audio and video content may be used.



Plunging into the topic, animating what you learn is nothing but remembering what you read or hear as a sequence of events. When you study some complex text, say about psychology of human beings, it would be very hard to remember the text as such and may lead to easy deletion from memory. On the contrary, if the psychology note describes different characteristics of humans and if the student imagines these features in terms of pictures of human faces showing similar characteristics then it would never be forgotten. Similar justification applies all science subjects like Physics, which of course requires lot of imagination, Biology, Chemistry and Math.


Engineering could also be made so enthusiastic if one studies everything in correspondence to real world happenings. A good example of one such methodology is the object oriented programming in computer science, wherein the real world objects are converted into logical objects into the system. Such is the educational process and it would be highly successful with much more animation being done in remembering things. Animated learning also greatly helps in remembering what you hear for a longer period than just remembering things as such, particularly when the listening period is short and the content you hear is complex. Competitive exams that have listening skills test how accurate the students are in recollecting what they hear. Under these circumstances it is better to form still images of what we hear and believe me this surely helps you score better than taking notes of what you hear! So, animated learning is a magical tool that helps you learn better, faster and more importantly retain whatever you learn for longer time!!

Emotional Needs

This post is dedicated to all those people who have been wistful in their early childhood for want of emotional comfort. Emotional need, like any other needs like material and physical is a vital entity in shaping a child's future. A child under the watchful eyes of a strict father grows out to be an obedient, calm and a being with no love for socialism. Being strict on the parent's part is good unless it doesn't affect the child's emotional balance. A child in its early stages looks out for comforting gestures from his/her parents. The emotional gesture will help in creating a confidence in the kid's mind that there is someone who will support him/her in all endeavors.

Satisfying a child's emotional needs include talking to him in a friendly manner, taking time in listening to his problems and giving him advices that boost his morale rather than tarnish his confidence. Bringing up a child on purely a academic note will make him handicapped on other spheres of life which include moving with society and facing different challenges. Criticizing a child too much would too affect his emotions leading to a inferiority complex. Guidance to children must be such that the child must feel that he/she must do what his parents say out of love, not by force or through intimidation. Threatening a child with harsh punishments will help parents get the things done by the child, but the results will be poor and also this will only be transient. Though I am too young to comment on this aspect, this post is no literary script but a result of careful observation and analysis.