Education is changing times

We have great minds at work in India to enhance the educational infrastructure and methods to teach. But why are we still lagging behind in generating innovators who wants to serve the nation? I know this is very sensitive theme I have chosen to right about, but the people can always argue about few things:

1. They complain about lack of good facilities in the institutes and for research scholars, equipments, red tapisim so on and so forth and every one who choose to study abroad give this as a reason.


2. Finally, we blame politics and politicians for everything we are not able to do. I know some states are very progressive where as some states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Orrisa, West Bengal are fighting poverty and politicians rule the states.

My take on these two things is different. I am not convinced that educational system in India is bad. It is really good and if you have will and resources to support, it is very competitive and that is why we see many Indians excel outside India as well as within India - otherwise why would IITs, IIMs and NITs would have good name.

Second, it all depends on individual's will to do something good for their own country and wish to stay back in India. I am proud of those who decide to stay back and work towards the betterment of India and Indian society by at least paying taxes to Indian goverment (whether tax money goes to real cause or not, that it different), but at least they are not paying money to U.S. or Europe to fund the war on so called "War on terror".

Third, it is really the bureaucracy who is dragging the nation behind..politicians come and go, die and take birth..but it is our civil servants and top decision and policy makers who have let us down for so many years..The main reason is their strong lobby and inner circle which is difficult to penetrate and lack of accountability towards the Indian public. Not all politicians are so greatly educated (since our electoral system does not put education as requirement to contest an election) and so busy to save their power that they don't have time to look into common public problems. Gone are the days when we used to have strong will powered leaders like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Lal Bahadur Shastri etc. But mostly current politicians are the tools to our IAS and PCS officials.

I am very frustrated by the fact that so many IITians/Engineers/Medicos opt for IAS and do not plan to make India a place for innovation. Water, energy, green, food conservation ideas are so much needed than anything else. When you are in such a higher up post and with all the resources at disposal (I know you will say you have your own bosses - lame excuse), you are the people who can move the things faster than any politicians can do (as they come and go by). They can identify the talent pool, create future team of visionaries, innovators and for these you have to reform the educational system in such a way that we not only generate innovators and great thinkers, but who wish to stay back. Not people who complete M.Tech./Research by the Indian tax payers money and then go abroad to pay taxes to foreign countries.

My request is with our bureaurocrats who can turn the things around by listening to the people of India who have ideas to offer and use the talent pool and resource we have at our disposal. What else do we need????? The current politicians will go away one fine day anyway and we need to move forward..

IBM Leads in promoting IT related education in within India

The first and foremost requirement for any country to be successful is their youths and children. If they are educated, then the nation succeeds. By education, I don't mean everyone attending the classrooms or schools, but be responsible, be knowledgeable and be aware of surroundings.

These days, with the advent of IT, IT education is becoming part of most of the educational systems. IT education for children should not be limited to mere having ability to play games and remain in the home hooked up to the internet; nor giving them tools to help them complete their homeworks. But, it should be in such a way that the best can be brought of their young minds. What are they thinking, how well they behave?

I think, IBM is doing better than many other IT companies in India to promote IT education at multiple level. Some of my colleagues are taking personal interest to enable rural students in IT and I think that is a great work as long as the direction is right and out come is positive.

Need for better, cheaper and affordable education in India

Supreme Court has been trying hard to convey this to educational institutes, but it does not seem to bother the private educational bodies who are busy minting money and sharing the profit too with those who help them continue.

Making schooling free till 8th grade in government schools will do good a lot on rural areas, but that will not help maintain the standards in the education. That requires lot of work from the educational ministry and government. If teachers do not get incentives and salary in time, what will motivate them. If teachers do not upgrade themselves, they can not broaden the minds of young generation. That is why it is important for government to impose some rules on private (educational) bodies to give back to less fortunates.

The difference between priviledged and not so privilledged can be lessened by this form of social service. The examples are in the form of doctors. Doctors in India have to perform services in rural areas for some time in their careers, so why not teachers in so called private schools/colleges. Isn't this is their responsibility to raise to the occassion? Similarly, technical institutes like NITs and IITs must be encouraged to visit the villages to share their wisdom with children of those villages to promote education.

Integrating Lotus Learning Management System (LMS) with Lotus Bluehouse

With the advent of SaaS and IBM'e initiatives of offering Web Conferencing Service (Sametime Unyte), Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr as SaaS (in Lotus Bluehome [http://bluehouse.lotus.com], it opens up another avenue which was ignored.

IBM has another Lotus brand of product for Corporates/Universities/Colleges/Schools named Lotus Learning Management System (LMS) [http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/learning-management-system/]. This is really cool product which provides ability to the institutes set up their coursewares, conduct trainings and a lot about learning. I am very keen to see if LMS can be offered as SaaS within Lotus Bluehouse. The advantages (plenty) (ok, I will talk from the perspective of customers - IBM can think of revenues)

1. All the offering that SaaS model provides (QoS parameters including better security and responsibility lies to SaaS provider, but site administration can still be done by the customers.
2. LMS along with the collaboration tools, a great mix - do we need classrooms still :-) - Yes, classrooms are best place for the regular students to be in..but for distant learning courses (where many US varisities conducting off-shore classes from India, this could be vital)..Currently, many research scholars (or college students doing project work rely on public social networking tools such as Orkut, YouTube, MySpace and other Project Management or file storage tools, they can get benefits. They can conduct conferencing with their peers or guides. Teachers can setup blogs for various topics and we have collaborative learning and experiences.
3. Many people may not be good speakers (and hence politicans), but they may have great writing skills and providing these tools in a controlled environment is such an easy way to encourage them to speak out to concerned audiences and not going public this way.
4. VERY good tool in Indian context - why: In Europe and Americas, they already are technologically advanced and students are exposed to good and bad part of Internet. But in India, with these tools, we will encourage them to adopt to these (read Lotus Bluehouse + LMS) and we have still huge number of people, who don't know these tools exists in the world. Educational institutes are a great way to popularize these tools among the generation next - and we have people, who don't want to listen to this and want to think about immediate revenue and profit - which is good for the H1/H2 quantitative figures, but bad for the people who may benefit by using those - well they can still still use open source it they wish, but that is not controlled and no one is really responsible for those. But if they some how be able to adopt to Bluehouse, it is well controlled environment, and they can collaborate better and secured..

I hope for the best of the Indian people...