All Is Not Well..!!

As soon as I gave the morning newspaper a look, an advertisement on the front page caught my attention. It read, “Fresh vegetables!.. Rates per Kg…Potato-Rs 260/-, Onion- Rs 340/-, Tomato- Rs380/-..”Further it said, “Cost of living is rising and it might be harder to cope with once you retire. Here’s a pension plan for you.”Finding it quite fascinating but true and assured of the credibility of the life insurance plan, it sold, I turned pages... 
After a few more pages, came another advertisement which said, “Yellow Peas Dal, only at Rs 26 per Kg!”After a few more details was written in hideous fonts, “Available in select,” and also written conspicuously was, “Jago Grahak Jago.”

INDIA: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

Clad in tattered pieces of rags, with eyes desperately searching for some useful in the heap of garbage. With shaggy hair eclipsing the eyes, they ran barefoot on the unbearable sun hot metalled road. Within a couple of minutes, there came a group of fashionably dressed guys and gals (as they say it) in an ac car. Carefree they marched into a multistorey mall with all the fun and enjoyment. Standing under the shade of a tree at the nearby road was I, imagining and differentiating the two lifestyles, the people there and more importantly the consequences that might have lead to such a deep void.


This sight is not a big thing in countries like India where in addition to culture and language, social and economical class is the biggest divide. My recent visits to Gurgoan and my perception of life in such cosmopolitan and metropolitan cities, led me to conclude that the skyscrapers do make us feel that we (India) are progressing but we tend to forget that those (people) who sustain the lives of the riches (talking about the domestic helps and servants) are still in rags. Governments come and go but the tall claims at the time of voting are seldom fulfilled. The blame game never ends and if ever the government logically thinks of its own loopholes, “global recession” is where they find the escape route.

Education Falcified

While setting up the foundation of higher education post independence, professor Yashpal, a distinguished physicist and the former chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC), had very honestly revered a “university” as an institution for holistic education and knowledge. But he had not thought in the worst of his dreams that after six decades the concept will mutate completely and they’ll become a money-minting machine for the vested interests of some unscrupulous men.

In order to provide education at higher level some 36 universities and deemed universities, which provided quality education in sciences and technical fields as well as facilities for research, were set up in India from 1956 to 1995. The trend continued but quality deteriorated. The condition today is such that there is a college providing technical education in almost every city and village, affiliate to one or the other university but many with dubious credentials.