Sunday Posts

I always wanted to be involved in higher education in India, but all my attempts so far have ended in disappointments. Sure, there is something in what I want and also who I am speaking with and people who speak with me often have a limited objective in mind: A British accreditation of some sort! But I am beginning to suspect that the special place of college in India may have a role in this failure to imagine college to be anything more than a place to get a piece of paper. My hypothesis is that this difference has something to do with the history of college in India. Its peculiarity - a colonial institution enabling social mobility within the colonial context - is well entrenched in the Indian higher education policy and how the middle classes see the college. In Britain and Western Europe, colleges were conceived as training grounds for clergy and lawyers, residential institutions which not only attended to academic requirements (which was very few in most cases) but also served as ...

Stayzilla, an Indian start-up which offered homestays, like AirBnB, is in the news, for wrong reasons. That Stayzilla decided to down shutters would have made it to the trade press, and further, would have signalled to the start-up community that the age of easy investor money is well and truly over. However, the reason why Stayzilla is making national headlines though is because one of its founders has been arrested by the police, for unpaid bills to one of its vendors, and the big ticket start-up entrepreneurs have requested for intervention from the Central Government as this indicates 'India is no place for start-ups'. In the meantime, evidence emerged that the Stayzilla founders threatened the aggrieved vendors with 'dire consequences' if they pursue them and the Court has refused bail to the accused, creating a bigger furore. ( See story here ) There are always many sides of stories such as these, and it is best not to hazard guesses about what really happen...

I was in the United States when the news of US Supreme Court disallowing gay marriage bans hit the wire. I did not follow all the developments, but picked up the news dinnertime while looking at the TV in the dinner hall of the hotel. Delighted, I turned to colleagues sitting at the dinner table and declared my joy at such a landmark judgement. The two other non-Americans present at the table obviously agreed, but only American colleague present shook his head in dismay - I am shocked! he said. In the ensuing discussion, I picked up the reasons for his objection, stemming from his belief, some perfectly justifiable ones once you accept the basis - the religious belief - to be valid. And, I do, as I am aware that my delight is also informed by my own preference (and belief) that people should be free to choose who they want to marry! The fact that I continue to believe my colleague is a perfectly decent, rational and reasonable individual, even if he disagrees with what I think one of...

It may be a cliche to say this, but common sense was increasingly uncommon. As Thomas Piketty maintained, the current approach to Greek debt is driven by astonishing ignorance of history ( see here ). The fact that Germany has actually never paid its debt - not after the First World War (when it started another war not to pay) and after the Second (when rest of the world saw sense in not imposing austerity) - is important, despite the claims that German debt was different ( see here ). History is indeed the big elephant in the room. However, for many people, the question of debt is a moral one. But this, the moral question, is less straight-forward than it appears. Historian and TV Presenter Simon Schama, after the Greek vote, went on Twitter to say that he might as well vote not to repay his Credit Card debt and ask the banks to restructure it. Even allowing for British humour, this is a surprisingly ill-informed view. A country is not a person, even though Margaret Thatcher and...

One of the key functions of a modern university should be promote a Secular Morality. However, by turning technocratic, this often becomes the missing piece, the point that universities relegate to private sphere, rather than an active value that they need to promote. The reason for this is obvious. We have three kinds of universities. The State-sponsored ones, while nominally secular in most countries, define secularism as equal sponsorship of all religious ideas. Their secularism is non-discriminatory, rather than an idea in itself. The other kind, private, charitable ones, often backed by religious founders or organisations, exist to promote one or the other religious ideal, or at the least, exist because of the religion-inspired social obligations of its founder. For these universities, the only kind of morality possible is inspired by religion, and indeed, their kind of religion. The third type of university is the For-Profit ones, set up as businesses to serve people who do...

Education, to be modern, it is generally assumed, should be overtly technical and value neutral. The pursuit is not of values and beliefs, but rather of 'quality', which, in a self-fulfilling way, is defined to be meeting the proclaimed objectives.  Morality, one could almost anticipate the argument, is not about day to day lives. It is one of those big things that the student-as-a-worker may not need to concern with. However, if one benefit of modern life is expansion of choices, the flip side of it is an expansion of responsibility: Suddenly, what we eat or what we wear, not to mention how we travel or where we bank, have a moral implication. The more control we have on our lives, the more power we have over nature - the very gifts of modernity we celebrate - expands our moral involvement.  The fact that a technocratic education, which most people tend to receive, seek to leave such questions out - and yet those questions keep coming up - create two different realm...

Tiger Woods has finally addressed the TV Camera and said sorry. No questions were allowed and the whole Press Event was a tightly managed affair, but it was still something which opened up the possibilities of his redemption. It will hopefully stop the circus in the media, all the digging of details and speculations more sordid than facts, and the act of saying sorry will start the process of atonement of this very talented individual. Whether it is right or wrong to let him get away with what he has done is a question for his family and it is best left at that. Those who ponder the moral aspects of allowing a very talented and very wealthy man to use a carefully orchestrated show of penitence to gloss over his past misdeeds, will have a lot to debate on. Yes, it may have been a carefully scripted statement by an army of PR specialists, but that does not take anything away from the pain of standing in the public view saying sorry for private affairs. It may all be a charade, but still...

First things first. Be rich or be human? This rhetorical question isn't meant to be a moral one, but rather a practical one raised by Paul Saffo , formerly of Institute for The Future. His point is that with access to biotechnology innovations, the rich may soon become a different species. This is similar to other predictions made by scientists recently, the American scientist Ray Kurzweil in particular, that, with the advancement of nano -technology, immortality may be possible in a few generations. So, the dream of creating an ageless super-race isn't an impractical dream anymore. Indeed, whether this will happen is a matter of futurists, whose job is to weigh in various possibilities and make responsible predictions. Paul Saffo has been particularly prescient in the past and his ideas count in the Silicon Valley, where most of the research projects which can make this vision come true are being undertaken. However, since the thought has entered the realm of possibility, i...