Saturday, December 19, 2009

Vacuous and Verbose-11

Chetan Bhagat has an op-ed titled “Indian Institute of Idiots’ in the TOI in which he not only identifies the fundamental flaws in the Indian education system but goes on to proffer amazingly simple and elegant solutions.

The first problem, as he brilliantly explains, is that there is a serious short supply of good college seats. He then gives an awesome solution that this shortage can be overcome by the simple expedient of building more colleges and more Universities and inducting more professors and teachers. Voila, there will be more seats! He provides an astoundingly splendid example: The Govt can easily buy up acres and acres of land on the outskirts of Gurgaon and create a University that is four times the present size of Delhi University.

Where will the Govt find the funds for such Universities? Here, Chetan Bhagat excels himself. When funds can be found for miles and miles of malls, why not for these colleges? Duh?

The second problem, as he enlightens us, is to do with the course content. It is quite irrelevant in today’s world, he pinpoints wonderfully. Unlike other critics who merely keep cribbing about the system, Chetan has an extraordinary solution for this problem, one that no one has thought of before - which is that the HRD Minister must take note and do something.

For this insightful piece, I am sure Chetan deserves every rupee that TOI would have paid him. What an eye-opener. What breathtaking ideas to radically overhaul the moribund system.

After his stint at IIT, Chetan seems to have become a real doer. As the crossword buffs would say, an anagram of a 5-letter word formed by adding IIT to ‘do’, perfectly describes him.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:07 PM

    By writing the kind of books he has written Chetan Bhagat has revealed what an idiot he is. By writing this article he has confirmed it. Does he even know that changes are being made at policy level in school education scenario?
    He is busy creating call centre heros. Where does he have the time or inclination to know or understand more or bother to think beyond the BPOs that he knows of.
    Boooo

    Shalini

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  2. Anonymous11:11 PM

    To add on

    From when have corporates started designing course content?
    Has he heard of the word Academicians?


    Shalini

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  3. Shalini, he thinks that the responsibility of lifting the education system out of the 'morass' rests on his broad shoulders and his alone. This anagram of "IIT do" has been apparently giving motivational speeches in educational institutions.

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  4. Anonymous4:23 PM

    I am thoroughly appalled. God save the children/youth from such ogres.
    What has happened to the heads of our educational institutions? Can they not differentiate the wheat from the Chaff? Apologies for the cliché.:)

    Motivational speeches to become morons like him?

    shalini

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  5. Chetan's article by itself was a cliché :)

    ReplyDelete