It all ADDS up!

It all ADDS up!

Rantings against the big bad world

Rantings against the big bad world

Is it really a small world?????

In the last couple of weeks I have heard the phrase "its a small world" twice. Colleagues from different schools seem to know a common set of people. Later in the week, a colleague from my previous job knew a current colleague. This seems to be happening pretty often to me.

I know about the six degrees of separation (if everybody knows atleast 43 people than within six levels I should be knowing everybody in the world mathematically). But is really the world that small because in my specific cases the degrees seem to be one or two, at most three.

I attribute reasons for this sudden lessening to the degrees of separation in my life to Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru!!!

Let me explain.

Panditji was a great believer that Indians were capable of everything and consequently invested heavily in things like higher education and technology. Good thing, we have AIIMS, IITs and IIMs to show for that now. But unfortunately Panditji and his successors did not invest sufficiently in primary education in vast spaces of rural India. Also the successors let whatever urban schooling system we had in the government realm, collapse.

So the result is the top institutes of this country have a limited catchment area - those who can access good quality primary education, and nowadays coaching. India has about a sixth of its population of 16 and below (about 160 million). Assuming equal splits across age groups about 10-15 million kids should be in the 10th-12th standard level. Of them let us say atleast one tenth should be inclined towards engineering (assuming a quarter are scientifically oriented and amongst them about half should be try and appear for an IIT). So the largest engineering exam in the country an IIT should have about 1-1.5 million applicants atleast.

To my knowledge not in a single year have more than 200,000 students appeared in the JEE. Where have the rest of one million gone. They slipped our primary education net. Amongst these 4000-5000 made it and who were these - those with access to good schools and good coaching. And who are the ones who have that access - the ones with educated parents (they tend to value education and have the means to pay for that). Now that is a relatively small segment of people.

Another test - in my batch of IIM Calcutta 2003 about 40% of the batch belonged to Delhi (now Delhi has about 1% of India's population, but 40% is slightly obscene). And even amongst those 100 people most of their parents had similar profiles - professionals, doctors, engineers and government servants. When the catchment areas for the top institutes is so small definitely the degrees of separation would be very few.

And that is how Pt. Nehru is responsible for my keeping on hearing that it is a small world.

As an after thought - there is a lot of talk that number of places in IITs and IIMs should be enlarged. I am all for it - open more IITs and more IIMs. But more shouldn't mean a loser filter for selection. More IIT places shouldn't open up for the same catchment size of 200,000 (from our sizing above). We should look to put more of those who slipped our education net into the system. Mr Arjun Singh, we more investment in primary and secondary education and other alternate forms of schooling to put more people through the system.

Then, Sir lets open twice as many IITs and IIMs.

Man of the Year, 2005 - Ariel Sharon

You might say that the man is in a coma in a hospital in Jerusalem, that makes me all mushy eyed and sympathetic to call Ariel Sharon the "Man of the Year" for 2006. But in my world view, the most courageous decision of the year was when he risking life, limb and his political career Sharon decided to unilaterally disengage from Gaza, in the process dismantling all Jewish settlements there.

Israel is a very small country (5-6 million people max) surrounded by a sea of hostile Muslim Arabs. Their security was imperiled right from the start. And whenever they were in trouble, they looked up to one man - Ariel Sharon. He'd barks, another former general and prime minister, called him the greatest ever Israeli field commander. After soldiering for nearly three decades, Sharon entered politics. He entered politics on the right, served as Defense Minister where he possibly made the biggest mistake of his life when he invaded Lebanon. He was the overall commander when the Sabra and Shatilla massacres happened. He was also the man many hold responsible for inciting the second intifada (when he along with 900 armed soldiers visited the temple mount in 1999, or 2000) which finished off what remained of the Oslo process. He was definitely a dyed in wool, right winger.

And then he became Prime Minister. A feature which has repeatedly been mentioned about Ariel Sharon was that he as housing minister in the 1970s fathered Israel's settlement program. This is accurate and true, but the difference was for Arik the military man, the network of settlements was the first line of defense of the Jewish state in case of an Arab invasion. For him settlements were a security barrier and not the Jews reclaiming their biblical lands of Judea and Samaria. Sharon as prime minister was confronted with issues of security of the Jewish state. The intifada was raging, there were suicide bombings in Israel and in the occupied territories. His solution was two fold - the palestinian terrorists were subject to some of the heaviest Israeli repression (which at a point assasinated Sheikh Yasin, the Hamas spiritual leader and his designated successor with in a fortnight) and he commenced the building of the security barrier between Israel and the Arabs. The whole of Gaza was beyond the barrier, and all but 15% of the west bank was beyond it as well. Was it a two state solution, Arik style? Now that the man in coma, we might never know the answer.

Anyways, I think this was the two state solution on Arik's terms. There was a problem to this two state solution - settlers who were first brought in by Sharon and invariably voted for Sharon's Likud party. Sharon was willing to evict the settlers in the interest of the nation. But by then Arik was not poster boy for the Likud - he had previously unilaterally withdrawn from South Lebanon irritating the hardline Likudniks no end.

Now in which country would a politician be willing to evict his most loyal voters out of their home in the national interest. Not in India for sure, BJP opted out of VAT to appease its trader base and the Congress will kowtow to the leftists on economic reform. George Bush for one, shows flashes once in a while (Iraq and all that) but surely crawls when asked to bend by his conservative base (evolution, tax cuts, budget deficits and all that). Clinton smokes and doesn't inhale, Tony Blair is in the Clinton camp. Chinese don't have voters and even if they did, they wouldn't care two hoots about them. Junichiro Koizumi is gutsy like Arik, but then his problems are economic, more esoteric and definitely not in the consciousness of Indians. And lets not talk of the Pakis.

Arik evicted the settlers, went on TV taking full responsibility for the Gaza withdrawl (to date in India, nobody owns up economic reforms; they are sold as being a World Bank - IMF dictats) and asked the piqued settlers not to blame the soldiers as they were just obeying orders. The problem with Israeli right wingers is that they have enough deranged men and enough guns to shoot prime ministers down (remember Yitzhak Rabin). Sharon was showing a red rag to them. His Likud party were alienated by his withdrawl moves, they are a little like the Indian pols - no backbone and will crawl when asked to bend. They decided to sack him. But Arik being Israel's greatest military tactician trumped them by calling for fresh elections and forming his own party and leading the opinion polls.

For sheer courage Arik is my man of year. As mentioned earlier Koizumi comes close (he too took on conservative elements in his own LDP called an election and beat the old guard hollow). And it is a loss for Israel and middle east peace that Arik is out of the scene.

If only, we get Arik to lead India, what all can't we achieve.