SLOG: Uneducated Literates

SLOG: Uneducated Literates
SLOG means Small bLOG

Mr. S is my roommate, a nice guy, about to complete his bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering in next one month. One day during talk I asked how his project work was going. He replied that he, like other guys, had paid INR 18,000 to some company which would create a project for him, work on it and before the presentation; they would finish the project and give the software with document and presentation to him. All he would need to do is read through the presentation during the seminar.

On asking the knowledge of this fact to the professors he replied that everyone knows and all the students do this.

I had got burned from my top to bottom listening this, but after giving a thought I found out that this phenomenon is almost omnipresent in India. The education is just a tag; it is not a meter of knowledge. And for the developing country like India, it is job what matters at the end of the day. And for a job you do not need to perspire on a useless project that is, anyways, going to be assumed to be a fake owing to the massive fake CV culture.

We don’t have massive demand of technical guys at R and D level for the reason that we are not at technological forefront as a country, so we don’t have companies doing research. All we have is companies that buy the technology and they need technical guys who can just take care of the process as an inspector. For doing so, you don’t need a project to be done. In fact, you don’t even need a technical degree; a diploma would be just as fine. So what is the purpose of going through night outs for a lousy worthless project?

I do not understand why we have so many degree colleges, especially in technical fields when all we need is diplomas. We need persons who can understand technology and work on them effectively. This requirement is completely fulfilled by a diploma holder. And a diploma gives you early job opportunity. After your high school (std 10), go for a three year diploma course. Done, you are a jobseeker at the age at the age as low as 17 years.

I do not understand why even after knowing the reality we don’t change, why education is more like a blind man showing path to another blind man or rather it behaves like a herd of sheep or perhaps, thousands of penguins at the edge of iceberg.

SLOG: To Mr. Tharoor

SLOG: To Mr. Tharoor
SLOG means Small bLOG

March 30^th, 2008, in Sunday Times in his column, Mr. Shashi Throor writes a fiction, “An IIT graduate walks near a pond, gets a speaking frog that requests and then begs to kiss it so that it can turn into a real beautiful loving princes. The IITian guy replies that he has got no time for girls but a talking frog is cool.” [Rephrased from: Why some engineers become terrorist]

For your kind information, Mr. Tharoor, engineers are frustrated variety of human being. A kind of people, who get frustrated when everything is the way as they wanted, for the reasons why everything have to be in their way; and the other way, they have got reasonable reason.

They are frustrated. If there is no work, they feel wasting life, if too much work then a slave. And in case there is good work-life balance, then they feel making no positive impact on the world by living like any other Tom, Dick or Harry.

Mr. Tharoor, frustration is the 47^th chromosome that an engineer adds up in its DNA during education. This chromosome pairs up with 48^th chromosome as terrorism in later phase of its life. Now, depending on dominating circumstances, either the engineer turns into more common spouse torturer or less common terrorist.

I am pretty much sure that you must have never been to pond for a walk. If you go, you may find some engineer catching every second frog and kissing to get a possible princess convertible frog.

-Nishant