Rumi Nations

Here's a random list of things. 1.             Indians sometimes prefer to abort a fetus if they find out that it's female. (Or they just kill the new born baby after it's born.) 2.             There are more than 20 million babies born in India. EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. 3.             Child labor is so commonplace in India that few notice it or consider it out of the ordinary. Kids work as waiters or dishwashers in roadside restaurants. Sometimes, kids ferry tea to the local police station from a nearby roadside tea stall. 4.             Massive numbers of kids and younger and adult women are employed as maids in middle class to rich households. Middle class houses might pay 200 rupees to a female who comes and washes the dishes. Rich houses might employ women per...

Education provides a ticket to get out of the dehumanizing poverty which is still a reality for many Indians. In the case of the IITs, it's a passport to prosperity for the vast majority of middle-class Indians. Very few HRD ministers seem capable of resisting the desire to meddle with the IIT JEE. The latest move to give more weightage to scores in Class 12 seems designed to reduce the role of the coaching institutes. Teachers in some of these institutes get a whopping 2 crores per annum. That was quite an eye-opener. But, it's just capitalism at work - meritocracy in full bloom. So, nothing wrong with that. Although, one might argue that the skill to enable someone to qualify through the JEE should not be valued so much. It just shows how much competition there is in India to try and get into these institutions and thereby ensure a prosperous life. It's a complex web of events indeed.