Of Ohio State, Columbus and Chennai

I’m living a countdown. With every night I come one day closer to leaving for college. The college isn’t a hundred or even thousand miles away, but ten thousand; a different country. Right now the full enormity hasn’t sunk in. It’s exciting, fun even with the shopping and all, but its also a bit confusing. I don’t have many qualms about traveling or moving on. I have changed more schools than most people change cell phones during their entire lives. I’m a Hindu but I love chili (ground beef) just as any Texan or bacon as any English. I guess my problem comes more from the fear or uncertainty after leaving the country than anything else.

This time next month I’ll be in my dorm at Ohio State. I would have met more than a hundred new people. The prospects exciting but there are so many nuances that keep on bothering me. I’ll be taking an AT&T connection with a hi-fi LG Smart-phone, which apparently won’t have wireless. To get a wireless in the US I need to take a separate data plan, despite the fact that I can use the free wireless network on campus. Another thing is the way prices keep changing from one day to another; they just won’t keep still!
The good things are well obvious. Cheap food at good ol’ MacDonald’s and excellent infrastructure (high speed internet, transport the works). The people are obviously the biggest cause of worry. What are mid western Americans like? The internet tells me that they have the best of both east and west coasters but seeing is believing, right?

Finally there is the fear of a patriot that my feelings towards this country might change. I am a modernist and I favor Globalism over nationalism and yet as a person there can be but one home. India has lots to grow, a long way to go and lot of work to get there. I want to be a part of this journey, granted as I am a privileged position by birth. Maybe the beginning of a strong overture to globalism will be amongst co operation between nations like the United States and India. The research, innovation in the states can help the poor of India. India with its technical skill, large market and innovation to serve the masses might be a valuable target for the US industries. To close at the last point, about innovation to serve the masses, it always has been India’s challenge to produce at high quantity and low cost. America can derive tremendous benefit should it chose to work with India on this.
As for me (includes other people who bother reading more than text books), I wonder if I can be the middle man. An Indian, I will be educated in the west to become a global human being. I become global not through the degree at Ohio state but by remembering all that I have seen and heard here (India) and all that I will learn there. I know the problems of the world, I have the know how to fix them. Let’s work!

Why study in the United States?

This question has become a cliche and so have the answers. The truth is that many people are irresistibly drawn to the US without grasping how the that helps them to achieve their end. The States is one amongst the many rich and developed English speaking nations. Why is it the preferred hub for students?

Earlier it was common to complete the undergrad in India and get the Masters done from the US. While with time the brain drain has decreased, with increased affluence and wealth a surprising new trend is emerging. In 2009 the rate of growth of international undergraduate students in the US surpassed that of graduate students. This is accentuated by a slow decline of students from India intending to get a masters but not undergrad courses.

Analysis

The prediction is of course closely related to the financial crisis. As the US job market takes a hit, students who intended to go to America to earn big bucks and live a good life move elsewhere. As that happens we find that new answers are being given to the old cliched question, "Why the USA?".

Answers like, "For great research opportunities" or "to become better entrepreneurs" or even "to get a global exposure" are on the rise and this is a good sign; both for the USA and India. Different students have different aims and outlooks. One is to earn good money and get stability. Others might prefer to lead an easy and fun life within means. Finally there are those who are inclined towards creativity and entrepreneurship . We are seeing a resurgence of the second and third category of students.

I think I belong to the third class and I will support their cause in my blog. A country as large and economically connected as the United States of America cannot go under. In fact this void of economic stability provides a chance for new opportunities. Research done now can create products which will gain enormous market value as the economy recharges itself. The third breed of students are essentially pioneers. Rather than simply follow an established system, they should try to better it.

There are few places in the world where technical education is so closely tied with industry demands. The United States' hands on or practically oriented education is compatible to the needs of the incoming students. This ensures that ideas are created and find a hope of sustenance as long as they provide a use. The success of an idea is the success of the student. Isn't it?

Information beyond IT

How valuable is Information?

Information is power. The IT industry for example is one of the prime reasons why India can claim to be a fast growing global economic power. Yet the lack of proper dissemination of this information can lead to great loss and waste of resources. Take the town of Pondicherry, where I grew up as a kid. Many of my friends there are persevering and successful students. Yet they will not leave their town because of their prejudiced ideas of what lies outside. This inhibition is a barrier to their progress. Looking around I realize how ubiquitous this problem really is.

A large number of students choose to become engineers and doctors. Partly thanks to the IT success there seems to be no shortage of people willing to choose the former career. India does however have a shortage of nearly ten million workers in teaching, medical and allied fields. We have a shortage of trained and experienced faculty to teach the budding engineers. We have a shortage of nurses to protect us from the rising health risks. We have a shortage of scientists, researchers to further development. We have few capable administrators to run this country. The opportunities available in these fields do not make it through to the masses drowned in the race to become engineers and the lucrative offers of the IT industry.
If even a small percentage of these bright people could choose careers beyond the precedent fields then they would register a phenomenal change on the country.

Getting this to happen will not be easy in a nation as massive as India. The government alone cannot take all the necessary steps. Firstly the concept of choice should be made clear to the people. That is, one need not choose between merely two professions to succeed in life. There are whole arrays of careers just waiting to be explored. As people we need to cast off the suspicions and nervousness that envelopes career choice. We need to widen our minds and guess how we do that? By getting and spreading more information! And so the cycle continues.

I strongly believe that as long as humanity remains a dynamic species there will be no break from this cycle. In the second world the absence of this cycle in certain areas is a sign of stagnation or hangover from the third world experiences. I strongly believe in the intellectual vitality of the people of India. As the scars of past sufferings slowly heal away we will build a new society with broader mindsets and ensure better information is available to the people. That is how we will grow.

Knowledge in India, Past and Present

Lets start simple. What is knowledge? I prefer Oxford and this is what they’ve got to say: “knowledge is expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education”. The reader might question this definition but I doubt he would question the need to obtain knowledge.

The debate on whether one should obtain knowledge is clearly one sided. Not so for a debate that questions the motive behind the arduous venture. The truth behind an individual’s desire to seek knowledge is a question that provokes different answer at different stages of one’s life and no two people has the same thing to say. When this question is applied to the cohesive whole such as humanity, it is possible to give abstruse replies such as, “to find the light” or “to seek the truth”. For an individual to answer so would make him in the eyes of a common man, either a pompous ass or a man in league with the greatest philosophers of the world.

I chose India specifically for two reasons. Firstly it’s my home, and my own native curiosity just gets the better of me. Secondly and more importantly the country has a society that has valued education continuously for thousands of years.

The earliest example of knowledge being passed comes to us from the Vedas. An ancient work dated to 1000 BC. The Vedas mention ashrams, where the students lived a simple hard life in the teacher’s house. Instruction was often given through spoken word or activity. The important feature of this knowledge is that it was aimed at sharpening basic skills and eventually enlightens the mind. Knowledge was a mean to transcend into a higher state of mental being. Students were taught the use of weapons, scriptures, philosophy, science and morals. The greater purpose was to make the student a better human.

As of the year 2000 AD, a vast majority of India’s student population chose engineering as their profession. India has more engineers than the Unite States by a factor of four. Despite this two interlinked issues emerged. Firstly there is a large pool of low quality of engineers and secondly, the low research output and efficiency. While there are many factors that can be attributed to the issue if they were to occur separately, their simultaneous nature reduces the range of probabilities. The final reason is simple yet alarming. A sizeable number of these engineers lacked the will or the aptitude to do engineering. The root of the problem lies not in policy but in the fallout of colonialism.

As a colony India had been brutally exploited and economically ruined. From the time of the company till the 1990s the shattered economy made Indian education a feeder system. Education was used to enter the workforce get paid and build a stable life. Education became the biggest profit making investment for an individual. Pay the least tuition by going to the smaller college and you can still take home many times more the money you spent. From the 1970s technical schools of various nature and quality sprouted unchecked providing innumerable degrees. Anyone could be an engineer and for that moment everyone wanted to be. The shock and fear of destitution caused people to choose either by will or by pressure the established professions as a safe route. Eventually this became tradition and deeply integrated itself in the conservative south of the country.

Moving to the issue of research. Unusually research was segregated from university education from the very start in India. Universities were used to produce manpower for industries and research was carried out in separate government sponsored units. Even today, despite numerous home grown companies’ research is given a low priority in the Indian education system, generally even by students. Teaching the theory rather than the practical application of it is the aim of the university. The two reasons for this I have already mentioned, namely lack of talented or motivated manpower or lack of suitable monetary remuneration.

The third reason is shunning the influence of the liberal arts and dampening of the spirit of enterprise. In the attempt to provide efficient and low cost education to students to work in a profession, that is minimum input for maximum gain, we have forgotten the powers of the liberal arts. As the source of our most ancient knowledge, the arts can widen minds and allow the spawning of fantastic new ideas. This view of education is strictly taboo in a middle class family. This is no more due to the hardship they face as thinks have got much better. The reason is because of the hardships they had faced which ingrained within them the conservative ideas.

The new generation however is changing these ways. Gradually through change or youth’s rebelling against career choices new inroads are being made to hitherto untapped fields of work and study. With the liberalizing of the economy greater opportunities, both in quantity and variety are being made available in India. It is ironical that the form of education one’s espoused by the west, namely the strict roman system is the one that modern India has adopted. Instead the ancient Indian way of learning, with its diversity, choices and continuous search of enlightenment (research) has made western education system stronger, though not without its own fallacies.