Yantrakaal

The new minister for  higher education in West Bengal is exploring new ways in which this sector could be improved. Here are some ideas. image of Class XII girls borrowed from Indian Patrika There could be many ways to improve the quality of higher education in Bengal. Curriculum can be redesigned, faculty can be trained or the administrative structure of universities and colleges can be changed. But without ignoring these traditional approaches, can we look for some radical, out-of-the-box ideas that could catapult Bengal to an eminent position of thought leadership ? To do so, let us begin by admitting that there is no dearth of colleges in Bengal but students do not perceive them to be very useful. This is because of (a) the poor quality of faculty and the educational services that they deliver that in turn leads to (b) the meagre job opportunities that that await students who pass out. This note explores low-cost, technology enabled approaches that can help mitiga...

Given the current confrontational mood between industry and agriculture in the matter of acquisition of scarce land for industrial development it is imperative that we look at totally new or untried models. But before we do so let us first define some boundary conditions -- the Lakshman Rekha -- that cannot be transgressed. No land must be taken by force even by invoking the principle of Eminent Domain by the State unless it is to  be used for a clear public purpose. Land for industry does not fall into the category of public purpose. Land owners, farmers or otherwise, must be paid fair market rates and must be allowed to benefit from the appreciation of prices Industry must not be penalised by extortionary, black mail practices when they decide to move into a region and seek to acquire land for legitimate economic purposes. The role of the Government is to kept to a very minimum since there is no guarantee against a move by politicians and bureaucrats to bend rules and make m...

A decade and a half ago, in the early days of outsourcing of software development, when clients in the US were sceptical about the feasibility of teams working across vast distances we had coined a term : Geography is History. What we meant to say was with the rapid advances in communication and collaboration technology, the geographic location of members of dispersed teams did not matter any more and dispersed organisations could be as productive and efficient as localised operations. In fact in an earlier blog post, I have hypothesised the possibility of actually Deconstructing the Corporation . While teleconferences, email, remote login, shared screens were all technologies that were used in these situations, the most coveted technology was video-conferencing. This was because the richness and intensity of the interaction was the highest with VC and yet because of bandwidth and other issues it was the most difficult exercise to actually execute upon. More often than not, it was th...

Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing the Pirates of the Caribbean : On Stranger Tides along with my son and was really impressed with the quality of the 3D technology. Not only was the spectacles that we used lighter but what was more important was that even with the 3D spectacles on, I did not have any difficulty in seeing the non 3D parts of the various movie trailers as well as the other people within the movie hall. Which sets me thinking -- what would happen if our normal spectacles were enhanced with this 3D capability ! Television manufacturers seem to very gung ho on 3D technology and most Japanese manufacturers ( are there any non-japanese manufacturers  ? ) have already placed their products in their market. A recent ad by Samsung claims that even non 3D content can be made into realistic 3D imagery with the press of a button and the use of the correct 3D spectacles. This could lead to an explosion of 3D content and if the success and quality of 3D movies in theatr...

When Kalyani Chaudhuri, the retired IAS officer from West Bengal started to write a book on the death of bureaucracy and governance, she thought that the Left Front Government would rule the state till the end of eternity. Her book -- When the Pendulum Stops -- recounts the depths of depravity to which a state can sink when it is ruled by one political party for a very long time. We are aware of one party dictatorships in the erstwhile USSR and in China but how is it that West Bengal with its periodic elections have had to share this fate ? Let us go back in time and look through a bit of history. The communist parties came into power on the basis of the general mis-governance perpetuated by the ruling Congress party in the 1970s and the first thing that they did to ensure their permanence in power was "Land Reforms". We have been told ad nauseum that because of these reforms the economic structure of rural Bengal was revitalised to such an extent that the generations ...

Today, when Dhoni and his band of merry men are the toast of the town after their brilliant win against the Sri Lanka, it is impossible for me to not recollect an equally brilliant win pulled of by Kapil's Devils at Lords in 1983. I have recorded my feelings of that incredible day on the silver jubilee celebration of that historic win in another post and I do not wish to repeat it once again here. But as I plumbed the nostalgic depths of my memory -- and the bottom drawer of my desk, I came across this wonderful piece of memorabilia that I wish to share with my friends and also saveit  for me and my posterity. Yes, that is Kapil Dev's autograph on a ticket for an India match at Lords but no, it is not THAT historic match. This was later, in 2004 when I had been invited by my client British Petroleum to their box at Lords and yes, India led by Sourav Ganguly did win against England that day. But the best part of the match was my meeting with the hero of my student days -- t...