Month: April 2011

You are an only child, and as such have the concomitant benefits. But you also have no shortage of kids around you – Siddharth and Maya (my sister’s kids who are 9 and 7 years, respectively) next-door ensure you don’t miss the presence of siblings as you grow up. Siddharth is your idol and you learn an incredible number of things from him.

At school, you have made some very good friends. One of them, Vibhav, stands out. The positive about your school is that being co-ed you are growing up with a healthy respect for girls! Given your still-somewhat-mild manner in school, everyone is your friend!

Talking of school, it is good  that your handwriting has improved dramatically, along with some progress on the drawing front. Many months ago, tired of waiting for accolades in class from the teacher, you asked me to take some stamps that you could give yourself at home. The titles – Fantastic, Keep It Up, Excellent, Fabulous, Very Good, and your favourite and most sought after, Neat Work.

Continued tomorrow.

Until a few months ago, your likes included trains and aeroplanes, cash registers to play with, Geronimo Stilton books to read every morning and stories from Jainism. Few of those interests remain. Now, you are a walking encyclopedia on beyblades and mobile phones. One of our regular conversations is which model should be my next mobile phone. You have become my research assistant!

Over the past six-odd months, the soft, quiet baby has become an aggressive, boisterous kid. You are willing to answer back – and have sharp replies ready for every occasion. Your inventive brain has become very good at making excuses when they are needed and justifying errors when they happen. You even question and argue with your Mom – so much so that she sometimes rues the loss of innocence.

Of course, that was to be expected. That world was fun while it lasted. And we better get used to a new, improved kid at home!

Continued tomorrow.

Dear Abhishek,

This Tuesday on April 19, you will be six. I have used every one of your birthdays to write a letter to you capturing key transitions in your life and my own impressions watching you grow.

Now that you are older and can understand much more, I told you about my letter and asked what I should write about your likes. Here is your list from a couple weeks ago: beyblades, 3D puzzles/models, Angry Birds on the iPad, taking photos on my Nokia E71, mobiles, skylines, Juju biya (the thin yellow blanket that you sleep with), Govinda pizza, doing aarti at home every night and Mummy’s thapthap (light patting so you can fall asleep).

It didn’t take much time for you to rattle that off. If I had asked you the same question at the start of the year, there would probably have been no more than an item or two common. And I guess I can say the same for how things will be a year from now – or even a few months from now. That’s how fast your world changes.

Continued tomorrow.

From a post a year ago:

If there was ONE thing you could Change about India, what would it be?

Middle India Apathy towards the nation. It is almost as if most of us in Middle India (young, educated in urban India) have switched off from trying to make a difference to what we see happening around us. It reflects in the voting percentages in urban areas, in the quality of candidates that we see contesting for elections, in the deteriorating quality of life in cities in India, and in the debates that we have for what India needs to become.

What is India’s Greatest Asset?

I also think that Middle India is the country’s greatest asset — if it can get its act together. The Rich don’t really care to bring about Change — they are beneficiaries of the existing system so status quo is good enough for them. The Poor cannot bring about Change. It is we in the Middle who are the country’s hope. We have the benefits of education, growing incomes, material benefits that are more than what our parents had. We need to get more engaged in defining our country’s future.

This week’s links:

• How to get a real education: “Forget art history and calculus. Most students need to learn how to run a business, says Scott Adams.”
• Weak government, subverted state: by Kanchan Gupta. “What India needs is sweeping governance reforms that will take away discretionary powers from politicians and make bureaucrats accountable…This sense of anger is better directed at how we, the people, are to blame for the present state of affairs. But for us, A Raja and his ilk would not be elected to office. But for our reluctance to go out and vote, undeserving candidates would not win elections.” Also see: Anna Hazare goes to New Delhi by Atanu Dey.
• 10 most innovative companies in Education: from Fast Company. Also see: Technology Review’s list of 50 most innovative companies.
• 21 awesome DIY projects: from Wired. Among them: “High-power LED bike light: Inexpensive and easy to make, this project delivers a rugged LED bicycle light with three settings.”

Information availability is a key component of decision-making in any institution – be they corporations or governments. The Indian government has hoarded information. This asymmetry loads the dice against citizens and their participation in the decision-making process.

The Right to Information Act passed in 2005 tries to prise out information from government. Is that the best way forward? Is there an alternative that is possible towards achieving greater transparency and better governance?

Contest Overview.

PS: This is the last of the Big Ideas questions. I will announce the 10 winners in the week of April 25 on the blog. Thanks to all for participating!

India’s transportation sector needs rapid change. For many decades, we barely built quality roads or added to the train network. Over the past few years, the slight momentum in road-building at the turn of the century has also slowed.While air travel has boomed with competition in the sector leading to increased availability and lower prices, congestion at airports is also increasing. Traffic jams are a daily affair in most urban areas of India.

What should the underlying framework be for mass transportation of passengers and goods across India? Should we construct more roads or build more airports or grow the train infrastructure?

Contest Overview.

One of the more stark indicators of India’s health challenges is that half of India’s kids below five years of age suffer from malnourishment.Together with education, health is the other social sector that needs urgent attention. With costs of healthcare rising and insurance still not widespread, there is a crying need to ensure that there is as much focus on prevention as on cure. That a large percentage of India still lives in rural areas compounds the problem since making available quality healthcare at a reasonable cost across the country becomes a logistical challenge.

What should India do to address the healthcare challenge?

Contest Overview.

No social sector has been harmed by the government’s action as much as education. Near complete control of the sector coupled with a disregard for the quality of education has set India back substantially in the development process. Manufacturing needs an educated workforce. Neither is India getting education, and nor are people getting the right kind of jobs.

One could argue that literacy in India is now reaching 74%. That is only happening because the bar for considering a person literate has been lowered substantially through the years. In reality, a large percentage of fifth grade kids don’t even have the skills that an educated second standard kid should have. This early deficiency ends up continuing through life.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have so-called graduates who are unable to get jobs because the skills needed by employers are missing. And yet, a parallel coaching class industry sucks away tens of thousands of crores as parents spend to get their children into the limited number of seats in engineering and medical colleges.

If there is one sector that needs a complete transformation, it is education. The question is: where do we begin? What are the set of changes that are needed to radically overhaul India’s education sector to ensure the demographic dividend?

Contest Overview.

India has a large rural population of about 700+ million people. Living in one of India’s 600,000 villages is tough – with the large majority facing the dual challenges of low incomes and the lack of availability of basic services that we take so much for granted in urban India.

There is a need to get past the romanticism of village life. Villages cannot be the self-sufficient islands that Gandhi envisioned. If India has to develop, the pain of daily life in India’s villages has to be eased.

What is the future of India’s villages? Urbanising the bulk of India’s rural population will take a long time. In the interim, there is a need to make life much more livable in the rural areas. What can be done for provisioning services in rural India?

Contest Overview.