Terrorists and Maoists – Is there any difference ?

On April 22, Maoists in Chhattisgarh kidnapped the District Collector of Sukhna, Alex Menon an Indian Administrative Services Officer and the senior most bureaucrat in the area.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/maoists-abduct-ias-officer-205806755.html

This follows the recent kidnapping of 2 Italian citizens and later an MLA from Orissa. All the 3 have since been released, but only after the Orissa Government gave into multiple demands including release of dozens of Maoists in jail either sentenced or awaiting trials.

There are several Television debates on the subject of Maoists and their demands. There are several intellectuals who are in support of the Maoist cause and in agreement with their demands. The logic being given mainly revolves around the injustice meted to them over the years, illegal takeover of their lands, mining rights given to MNC’s, lack of development and lack of representation in decision making that affects them.

Whilst all of the above sounds reasonable, the question that is not being asked is, “Does this give the right to kidnap ?”, “and Murder”. The Maoists have killed 100’s of policemen as part of the guerrilla war that they are raging. As an example during the kidnapping of Alex Menon, his two bodyguards were shot dead in cold blood. The Maoists sympathizers further insist that the Indian Government should not go on the offensive and should not involve the Armed Forces as it’s an internal disturbance and not an external aggression.

I have two simple points to be made. All terrorists, including those targeting India and the US, all have political goals and believe that injustice has been done to them and are attempting to get justice for their people. How are the Maoists different. The nobility of the cause is irrelevant. If the methods used are those of terrorism, the response has to be similar. There should be a Zero Tolerance and Zero Negotiation Policy. Yes, a few innocent lives will be lost. But the fact of the matter remains that by negotiating, 100’s more innocent lives are being lost.

The second is that either the Maoists and their sympathizers believe in the Indian Constitution and Judicial System or they do not. If they do not, they are no longer part of an internal issue, but separatists who need to be dealt with accordingly. And if they are part of the India system, then they can and should try and get the wrongs corrected by a combination of engaging with the Government, the Judiciary and the Executive.

The Chhattisgarh Chief Minister, Raman Singh has called for a Indian Federal Policy on dealing with separatists and kidnappings. Hopefully the Center will respond with a tough and pragmatic policy that is fair but not weak. And gives justice to all. Including the most important policemen who are the innocent sacrificial lambs in this war.

Intolerance in Society

Wednesday morning, I hear my daughters talking to each other about a student who died. It seems like he was in the same standard in Podar school and apparently, some classmates had beaten him up. I check how they know and apparently it’s all over their groups in the social media. I tell them its nonsense and to stop believing all the stuff they read on the social media.

Until I see the papers. And it’s filled with the incident of 16 year old Ansh Agarwal murdered by his classmates and his friends also teenagers. The reason is over a few alleged inappropriate SMS’s (Text messages) sent to a female classmate.  The police arrest 12 of the persons involved. There may be more to come.

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/eight-teenagers-arrested-for-beating-college-student-to-death-199212

It seems like we are becoming increasingly intolerant as a Society. We lose our temper over trivial issues, and scenes of road rage, and public fights is becoming quite frequent. I’m not sure what the reasons are, but it possibly has to do with our new found prosperity. A large number of urban residents are relatively rich and have a lot of disposable income. The money seems to give some kind of a power and an arrogance derived from it.

Police reports suggested that the teenager responsible for the murder of Anksh, actually called up his father, since his friends were a little scared of the consequences. The father, instead of cautioning his son against doing anything stupid, gave him the go ahead, with the assurance that he knew people high up who would handle any issue that might crop up. Such is the arrogance of our derived power, the root of which is new found money.

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/article/2/20120421201204212156305461c3846b6/Father-of-main-accused-in-Ansh-Agarwal-murder-held.html

It seems like Money Corrupts, More Money Corrupts More. We are fast losing any moral values we may have. And when we encourage our children to take short cuts and set an example of “money can buy anything”, can we blame the kids for taking it to the next level. If we want our kids to become better human beings than us, and emulate our parents’ generation, then its high time that we the middle class society take a long hard introspective look and change our way of dealing with life.

Or leave behind a lawless jungle raj for our kids.

The Art of Assessment

One of the biggest challenges that faces modern society is in selecting individuals for an extremely small group of available positions from a large number of interested applicants. A similar challenge is also faced when evaluating or assessing people for the purpose of determining that a certain learning objective has been achieved.

I was pleasantly surprised when I co-incidentally found in a matter of a week how 3 different organizations had managed to meaningfully solve the problem in an effective, impartial and exceedingly fair way.

The 3 organizations were the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT’s), BITS (Birla Institute of Technology) and ToI Group (Times of India). And all 3 were for completely different purposes. The IIT’s was for their entrance exam to the undergraduate program. BITS was for their assessment for their post graduate distance education examinations, and the ToI was for selection as trainee journalists.

The IIT’s have over 500,000 students applying for under 5000 open category seats. And they need to have a way to select the best and brightest. To make it fair it needs to be objective and not dependent on a human examiner, who is likely to have personal biases and convert responses based on subjective interpretations. When the difference between students is minuscule this minor aberration is likely to be unfair to some.  The solution is an MCQ examination. And the level of the questions is such that the difference in marks at the highest level could be as much as 20+ or 5%. This means that ability and knowledge start splaying a far larger role than luck. The IIT’s have gone several steps ahead in terms of transparency and fairness. The students are allowed to take away a carbon copy of their answer sheets. The answer key is published on the IIT site. And to top it all, in what I think is a first in the world, the answer papers along with the assigned marks will be published online. Giving every candidate an opportunity to verify that no errors have been made and to rectify them, should they have been made.
http://www.jee.iitb.ac.in/

The BITS postgraduate distance education courses have a slightly different challenge. How does one assess that the students, many of them working professionals on whether they have adequately learnt and understood the course. Since the expectation is not to know things by rote, but to have the ability to understand they conduct an open book exam. And the questions are on the application of the lessons learnt. As an example, in “Algorithms” the question could be about what the end result would be if a combination of defined algorithms were used. The books can provide clues, but if you haven’t understood each of the algorithms in the question, the books in the given time will be unable to help you solve the problem. This approach ensures that the evaluations and assessment methodology ensures that only students who have understood and learnt go to the next level.
http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/index.aspx

The Times of India group recently wanted some junior editors. And used what seemed like a simple test. All applicants were required to submit an original article on one of a few given topics. These were evaluated by the editorial team and those selected were then asked to answer a test at their offices. The paper was interestingly created. It had several articles to be written on the spot, with themes as varied as interviews to obituaries. The next levels were Group Discussions and then Personal Interviews. The complete assessment was based on the ability to do and demonstrate that which would be required by the job profile.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

What’s interesting about all the 3 processes was that they were simple, transparent and ensured fairness to all participants. The processes implemented ensured that “If you weren’t  good, you definitely didn’t make it.”. More importantly, “If you were good the probability of you making it, was as close to 100% as it get”.

Death reveals all

Death has a strange way of catching up. Until December 2011, I hadn’t attended a single funeral in around 10 years. In the last 4 months, I’ve already attended 5, including 2 on the same day. It probably means I’m getting old, since the people you only met at weddings, you now meet only at funerals.

I noticed a few interesting things at these events. And each of them offered varying insights into how different people react in similar circumstances. The reaction of each of the 4 families was hugely different. It was but natural that all of the families were sad and grieving. But the levels of acceptance and reactions were strikingly different.

In the first case, my grandmother had lived a full life. The atmosphere was one of acceptance of the inevitable. In the second case, there were mixed feelings. Whilst one sibling kept his grief personal and appeared outwardly calm, the other expressed her grief vocally in powerful words. In the third case, the teenage daughter was inconsolable and her grief could be felt by all attending and brought tears to many a grown eye. The fourth the grief was more subdued and there were no tears shed, just fond goodbyes. The fifth was a combination of grief and fond goodbyes.

There were several similarities at the events. At each of these a member of the family or a close friend said a few words. And that’s where the similarity ended. Different families used different formats. A couple had a friend talk about the person and their family, like a resume. A couple had friends recollect a few personal moments. And one that stuck was a niece’s recollection of her uncle’s life. But the one that stuck a chord was that at the end of the tribute, a son walked up and thanked the doctors, neighbors and friends, and ended with, “Last but not the least, Dad we love you and will always miss you”. It was from the heart. Simple but very meaningful and real.

The second was the number of people who attend the final rites. You would expect that all of your relatives, friends, neighbors, colleagues would be present. Surprisingly very few people find the time to make it. You can expect around 20 – 40 % of the number of people who attended your wedding. The even stranger thing is that half of those who attend hadn’t or wouldn’t have been invited to your wedding.

The one realization that did hit me when I attended these funerals was the realization of the limited time we have here. And I'll be careful to try and invite all the people likely to attend my funeral to my kids weddings, should I be fortunate enough to be around.It may also be a good idea to use that time wisely. And to spend it having fun with the people you love. Or even just like. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Sachin’s 100 100’s

On March 16, Sachin Tendulkar scored yet another century against Bangladesh in Dhaka. What made this special is that it was his 100th 100. A feat that a billion plus Indians were waiting for. And the wait had been long. More than a year, i.e. since March 12, 2011 when he scored his 99th century against South Africa during the World Cup.

His feat was lauded all over the world and several newspapers and magazines covered it. An interesting article was in the Mirror, published in the UK. "King of centurions: 100 facts about Sachin Tendulkar". It highlighted 100 interesting facts about the Little Maestro. You can read that at:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/cricket/sachin-tendulkars-100th-100-100-763750

Everything that can be said or written about Sachin Tendulkar has already been said or written. There was a party thrown in his honor by Mukesh and Nita Ambani, owners of Reliance and the Captain until last season of their IPL team Mumbai Indians. The party had celebrities across the 3 most powerful sections of Indian Society, viz.: Politics, Bollywood and Cricket. Aamir's comments as is typical centered around himself, Salman was also typical and funny. And Nita gave Mukesh credit for the 100 100's. You can see the highlights of the function at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCi9pAp9pn0

What makes Sachin Tendulkar different from other celebrities is his ability to remain non controversial. One would naturally assume that he did not have any controversies and has hence managed to remain non controversial. That's not completely true. He has had several controversies but somehow has managed to overshadow them. Amongst the several controversies, there have been two major ones.

The first was when he was found guilty of ball tampering in Australia. The TV footage seems to clearly indict him. Nevertheless the Indian public were unable to accept the reality and went on a protest burning effigies of the match referee, Mike Denness being burnt and the powerful BCCI sanctioning the referee and trying to ensure that he does not participate in Indian matches. The 2nd was when he was presented a Ferrari by the auto maker. He asked for a waiver of customs duty and the Government was happy to oblige, even though the rules didn't allow it. Finally, the auto major paid. He has also fared very poorly as India's captain in the 2 stints he did. And had thereafter steadfastly refused to take on the responsibility.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachin_Tendulkar

In spite of all this, he has managed to do his bat do all the talking. His records, many of which are unlikely to be broken in the near future say it all. He has stayed away from politics, by staying close and equidistant from all political parties.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/india/content/player/35320.html

In my mind, the one thing that makes Sachin, Sachin is his dedication. After over 22 years of playing international cricket since his debut against Pakistan in Nov. 1989, he still believes he has something to learn. And works harder than any other player in the team. Be it his batting or even bowling. It seems like his career proves the point that "Hard work pays". And he has managed to achieve all this while being an ideal family man.

Sachin himself summarizes very well what he does, and what we should do if we want to succeed. In cricket and in Life.
"I just keep it simple. Watch the ball and play it on merit."