Yantrakaal

Presidency college has plans for  a tough, new, two-tier entrance examination to select high quality students for its UG and PG courses. This is funny, considering the fact that IITs -- that had pioneered the concept of an exclusive entrance examination through the JEE -- are hoping to dilute them strongly in the near future. A quick review of the rise and fall of the JEE is very instructive in this context.   image from http://dreamylives.blogspot.in/2010/11/how-to-solve-multiple-choice-questions.html Despite their many failings, the five original IITs have played a stellar role in redefining the educational landscape of the country. While IIT engineers may have played some role in building the nation, their main contribution was to build a mystique around “Indian Brilliance” particularly in the United States, a country that recognised their worth far more than their own nation ever did ! In fact, before the IT industry pushed India into the international limelight, i...

Baitanik -- a cultural organisation that believes that culture can be a source of livelihood in India's rural heartland -- has a bi-weekly event every other Sunday, where Neepabithi Ghosh and her team of Chau Dancers put up an excellent performance today. Here are some pictures of the event. While Neepabithi Ghosh is an established and renowned singer in her own right, what stole the show was the way she blended a different genres of Bangla music -- from Tagore through folk and right up to contemporary tunes -- with the traditional Chau dance of Balarampur and Baghmundi, from the Purulia district. In fact the anthem of the football World Cup, Waka Waka by Shakira, was also blended in very beautifully with this traditional art form of Bengal. Thanks to Baitanik for a wonderful evening and all the best to Neepabithi and her Chau project

  as shot on my Sony Cybershot click to expand to full size

People working in the private corporate sector are familiar with the process of annual appraisal and know that annual increments and bonuses are directly linked to this exercise. There may be some disappointment with the way that these appraisals are conducted but (a) no corporate has found an alternative to the process and (b) despite all its faults, companies have not collapsed and died because of appraisals -- in general they have done well. Net-net this means that the strategy of deciding on annual increments and bonuses on the basis of an appraisal process has stood the test of time and reliability in India. Strangely enough, this concept is totally absent in state and central government departments and institutions. The salary structure for all government employees is determined by the Pay Commission and both pay and annual increments are cast in stone. So there is no direct and transparent way to recognise good performance and reward the same. Neither is there any way to ident...

Unless you are Rip Van Winkle who has just woken up from long sleep, it is very unlikely that you would be unaware of how social media frenzy has been and is sweeping through the ecosystem. Facebook, Twitter and Youtube is the new trinity that everyone is interested in, not the Brahma-Vishnu-Maheshwar or the Father-Son-HolyGhost that our ancestor talked about. While usage and consumption of social media is what most of us are interested in, social scientists and market research professionals have a deeper interest in this amazing phenomenon. In the past, such research was carried out through traditional tools like questionnaires but given the vast quantity of data and the speed with which it changes we need newer and better tools. As a part of the curriculum of the MBA program at the Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur students were required to explore and present newer tools -- that are legitimately available at no cost -- for extracting and analysing social media da...

Tax free bonds have always been very popular in India. In the good old days of the distant past we had RBI “Relief Bonds” that offered up to 10% tax free income but it was never quite sure for whose relief the bonds were for -- perhaps for the Indian tax payer! That was then. Now we have similar bonds floated by  IIFCL and NHAI, albeit at far lower rates that vary between 6.5% and 8.3% but even these have garnered Rs 30,000 crores in FY 11-12. Carried away by this appetite for tax free bonds, the finance minister has proposed to float similar bonds to the tune of Rs 60,000 crores in the next fiscal. But where could or should this money be used ? The NHAI has of course been building roads but I think there is another piece of critical infrastructure that can be funded through this route -- education ! Why ? Because education is the mother of all infrastructure that this country needs very badly.. For a variety of reasons not directly attributable to government ...