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.
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.
posted by Dinkar at 7:15 PM
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