Let me define knowledge by knowing the meaning of something.
"I know the meaning of knowledge"
Random thoughts do strike one's mind when one is emptying his/her bowels, especially when it’s after an exam and with no exam in the horizon, which means that you can dwell on thoughts which are not academic (although this is academic for me as I have a philosophy course which covers a bit of epistemology, I never considered it a serious course anyway). The recurrence in the above statement is pretty amusing, but after a while it gets boring and you get on with life (and get outside the bathroom).
Anyway, coming back to the real world, life has been really generous with me these days, with almost everything going right, risks paying off, and most of all, inner satisfaction which arises from eating a grand meal off someone else's pocket. Also, I have been able to utilize time more fully, thanks to constant retrospection. Last semester I had vowed to watch more movies, because sometimes I really felt out of a conversation, and being made a complete dumbass of in the Lit Soc Main Quiz due to a question on Pulp Fiction didn't help either. This semester I finally got down to working towards reducing that deficit by watching at least one movie in 2 days from the list that I had prepared. I keep updating the list at intervals.
Lit Soc started off pretty well for our hostel, with we garnering decent amount of points in Fine Arts (although there was some weird business in some event where the judge apparently didn’t evaluate some themes at all, we aren’t complaining – it’s of absolutely no use). Queen of Sheeba was awesome this year, with our hostel coming first. Queen of Sheeba is this event where you are given a list of assorted items (some are really tough to find). Some of the items from this year’s list were-
Photo of guy with a unibrow, ship in a bottle, scabbard, cracked cell phone, light up shoes, diary from 1996, broken pair of Bose headphones
Now obviously the people who prepare this list, even unknowingly, will give an undue advantage to their hostel. Last year another hostel had 2 coordinators, and they won. This year we had a coord, we won. So whatever defense we try to put up against the allegations of cheating heaped upon us, other hostels won’t back down from their moral ‘high ground’, so I didn’t bother putting up one against my friends. However, the coord in our hostel told me how they had prepared the list, and trying to be as just as possible, I felt it was pretty fair for all hostels, and the advantage of the coord’s hostel is nullified to an extent. For very obvious reasons, I wouldn't want to disclose it here, or anywhere.
Choreo Nite (the inter hostel group dance event) was a shock, because the judge said he couldn’t give our hostel a position in the top 4 because its last sequence was copied from a dance video on the net. That to me seemed unfair, but I really don’t have the sufficient knowledge to comment on that. When a hostel band covers some actual band’s songs, it is not penalized for it. It might be different for dance, but it was really unfortunate because the team had put in a lot of effort and the plagiarism accusation notwithstanding, they were pretty amazing and definitely deserved a place in the top 3, even according to the judge. But still, from a guy who has quite a few left feet, the top 4 performances were pretty good.
Mono-acting was an event in which we didn’t have any high hopes on, and needless to say, we didn’t get anything from it. But it was a fun event to watch, with the last performance going through the ceiling and far far above, in terms of entertainment. If by some weird luck you ever get the chance to hear the musings of an eccentric hardcore Communist Mallu who has a huge grudge against someone and doesn’t need alcohol to lose inhibitions, please don’t miss it.
Next on the agenda is sports. Liverpool’s woeful form continues, which seriously makes you wonder why Liverpool have traditionally always had poor bench strength. Maybe that is the reason they haven’t been able to win the Premier League which requires good performances every weekend, unlike European League which comes only once a month on an average. Also, Lucas is definitely not a good replacement for Xabi Alonso, and until Aquilani starts playing, Liverpool are going to remain in their current state. According to me, Chelsea has the best squad in the league, and from being 4th on my list of favourite clubs in the EPL, it now is 2nd, demoting Arsenal to 3rd. Manchester United will remain 20th on my list, although Ryan Giggs is the awesomest left footed football player I have ever seen, and my dream is to run down the flanks with the ease of Giggs, and put a perfect cross into the box. As usual, I haven’t been following cricket, mainly because of the TV being in a common room, where going frequently doesn’t appease to my lazy side.
I won’t bore whatever readership I have left with further mundane details of my life. Consider it to be more of an update post, than one on something solid. I have been trying for a long time to write a post on the objectivity of morality, even more after this –
Me: Sir, I think morality is subjective, like almost everything else in the world.
Prof: I promise to take this up some time later, and making you say with your own mouth that morality is objective.
Interesting.
Post Script. Any comments on the fairness of Queen of Sheeba are not welcome from people with whom I have chatted directly. It is a very pointless argument going nowhere, and we would rather not start it than start it and leave it unfinished. Comments on anything else are welcome.
St. Augustine's Problem of Evil
I know it's been a long time, but won't go into the details. Lethargy and inertia are the main culprits. This is an essay I submitted as an assignment for my humanities course - Introduction to European Philosophy. I must say that trying to understand other people's philosophies, keeping in mind the timeline, is rather engrossing.
The problem of evil has been a longstanding problem in the history of philosophy. To quote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable for anyone to believe in the existence of God”. In simple terms, if God exists, why is there so much evil in the world. This essay is to understand St. Augustine’s approach and interpretation of the problem of evil, but for that, we first need to understand what the problem is.
To understand this self contradiction, we first need to define the term God. God has been interpreted in many ways since time immemorial by different schools of thought, and broadly we can divide them into two categories. One is a straightforward interpretation, adopted by most of the religions, that God is an omnipotent, omniscient being, whose existence is to satiate the basic human beliefs that good wins over evil, truth over lies. The other definition of God is a metaphysical one, where God is the prime cause for everything in this world, the driving force, and the ultimate reality to which we cannot apply our concepts and perceptions of the world. Now the problem of evil arises in the first definition of God, and very simply it can be stated as follows – If God exists as an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect being-
1. He knows of the existence of evil because he is omniscient.
2. He is powerful enough to remove all evil.
3. He would want to remove all evil, because he is morally perfect.
4. Hence, evil should not exist, because God would have removed it.
However, that is not the case, thus bringing a huge question mark in front of the existence of God or rather, proving that God doesn’t exist! Thus the problem of evil puzzles many.
St. Augustine’s views revolved around the basic fact that without good, there is no evil – without darkness, there is no light. One analogy he used for this is as follows-
What happens to vices when they are not in the human body? Evil is not something that is fully real but something that is dependent on something more real, for there can’t be any disease (evil) without a body (good).
Initially, when Augustine was associated with the Manicheans, he perceived evil as a tangible material substance, with its foul and shapeless mass. However, as he increasingly distanced himself from the Manicheans over the years and embraced Christianity, he formed a view that God, who is supremely good, created all things, and though they are not supremely good, they are good when taken individually. But taken together, they are really good, because they encompass the universe which is a creation of God. In other words, evil doesn’t exist in the physical world. This transition is explained in detail.
According to the Manicheans, good and evil existed in this world individually, and it was the fight between good and the evil, and the balance between them which resulted in any action, or physical consequences. Everything that happened in this world was for maintaining the balance between good and evil. This was the first point where Augustine disagreed with the Manicheans. He said that the very fact that there is a struggle between the good and the evil shows that God isn’t omnipotent, something he very vigorously believed in. That evil could, in some way, spoil the clean white clothes of God was absolutely unacceptable to him. Also, since God created everything, he would not have created any evil, because he was supremely good.
The next point where he disagreed with the Manicheans was when they said that it was not your material substance that was doing the evil. Rather, it was more like your material substance was suffering from evil. So you had no control over your sins, as everything was part of the cosmic balance. Augustine was a strong advocate of free will, saying that humans were responsible for all their actions. The major difference in this theory and the Manichean’s theory is that while Manicheans point to God as the source of evil, Augustine points to himself as the reason for all his sins, as a result of his free will. This was a radical departure from the Manicheans, and eventually he left the unorthodox Manichean sect for the more orthodox Christianity, under the Bishop of Milan. Augustine says, "when I willed or did not will something, I was utterly certain that none other than myself was willing or not willing" -- that is, that any evil that came about as a result of his actions was his fault alone, as he was the one who made the decisions that preceded and resulted in the wrongdoing. However, this raises the even more difficult question that why is it that we have the power to reject good and adopt evil. Why has God given us such a power, when he would have wanted good all over the place in the universe? It is here that we get to know Augustine’s actual views on evil, and how he perceived it. He first asserts that anything that can be evil is good, because only good things will be liable to corruption. If something is not good, there will be nothing to corrupt. If evil were a substance, then it would have had to been good, and since evil as a substance cannot have any good associated with it (as Manicheans said), it cannot exist as something tangible.
In conclusion, St. Augustine says that his earlier theory of evil was built on flimsy grounds, and it pointed fingers at God’s omnipotence and omniscience, something that he believed in. Hence evil, instead of being something tangible, should be something more corporeal, and rather than being the complete opposite of good, it is just a lesser good. Also, God is supreme, and all the evil in the universe arises from us, due to the power accorded in us by God in the form of free will.
In my humble opinion, I concur with Augustine’s theory in saying that Manicheans’ theory of evil was wrong. Also, all evil in the world arises out of free will. But according to me, this is unavoidable because good cannot exist in this world without evil. At one point of time, one will face a choice between a good and a lesser good, and the moment that happens, the lesser good will be termed as evil. It is impossible that good is uniformly spread over the world – such an extreme utopia doesn’t exist. However, I agree with the Manicheans when they say that every action is a result of the struggle between good and evil, with a minor difference. It is not that good is fighting against evil, it’s just an individual who has to choose between good and evil, and the struggle in the thought process behind that decision.
Acknowledgements-
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
www.everything2.com
www.wikipedia.com
www.google.com
History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
p.s. My latest addiction is the DOS Game Zatacka, or Achtung Die Kurve
The problem of evil has been a longstanding problem in the history of philosophy. To quote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable for anyone to believe in the existence of God”. In simple terms, if God exists, why is there so much evil in the world. This essay is to understand St. Augustine’s approach and interpretation of the problem of evil, but for that, we first need to understand what the problem is.
To understand this self contradiction, we first need to define the term God. God has been interpreted in many ways since time immemorial by different schools of thought, and broadly we can divide them into two categories. One is a straightforward interpretation, adopted by most of the religions, that God is an omnipotent, omniscient being, whose existence is to satiate the basic human beliefs that good wins over evil, truth over lies. The other definition of God is a metaphysical one, where God is the prime cause for everything in this world, the driving force, and the ultimate reality to which we cannot apply our concepts and perceptions of the world. Now the problem of evil arises in the first definition of God, and very simply it can be stated as follows – If God exists as an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect being-
1. He knows of the existence of evil because he is omniscient.
2. He is powerful enough to remove all evil.
3. He would want to remove all evil, because he is morally perfect.
4. Hence, evil should not exist, because God would have removed it.
However, that is not the case, thus bringing a huge question mark in front of the existence of God or rather, proving that God doesn’t exist! Thus the problem of evil puzzles many.
St. Augustine’s views revolved around the basic fact that without good, there is no evil – without darkness, there is no light. One analogy he used for this is as follows-
What happens to vices when they are not in the human body? Evil is not something that is fully real but something that is dependent on something more real, for there can’t be any disease (evil) without a body (good).
Initially, when Augustine was associated with the Manicheans, he perceived evil as a tangible material substance, with its foul and shapeless mass. However, as he increasingly distanced himself from the Manicheans over the years and embraced Christianity, he formed a view that God, who is supremely good, created all things, and though they are not supremely good, they are good when taken individually. But taken together, they are really good, because they encompass the universe which is a creation of God. In other words, evil doesn’t exist in the physical world. This transition is explained in detail.
According to the Manicheans, good and evil existed in this world individually, and it was the fight between good and the evil, and the balance between them which resulted in any action, or physical consequences. Everything that happened in this world was for maintaining the balance between good and evil. This was the first point where Augustine disagreed with the Manicheans. He said that the very fact that there is a struggle between the good and the evil shows that God isn’t omnipotent, something he very vigorously believed in. That evil could, in some way, spoil the clean white clothes of God was absolutely unacceptable to him. Also, since God created everything, he would not have created any evil, because he was supremely good.
The next point where he disagreed with the Manicheans was when they said that it was not your material substance that was doing the evil. Rather, it was more like your material substance was suffering from evil. So you had no control over your sins, as everything was part of the cosmic balance. Augustine was a strong advocate of free will, saying that humans were responsible for all their actions. The major difference in this theory and the Manichean’s theory is that while Manicheans point to God as the source of evil, Augustine points to himself as the reason for all his sins, as a result of his free will. This was a radical departure from the Manicheans, and eventually he left the unorthodox Manichean sect for the more orthodox Christianity, under the Bishop of Milan. Augustine says, "when I willed or did not will something, I was utterly certain that none other than myself was willing or not willing" -- that is, that any evil that came about as a result of his actions was his fault alone, as he was the one who made the decisions that preceded and resulted in the wrongdoing. However, this raises the even more difficult question that why is it that we have the power to reject good and adopt evil. Why has God given us such a power, when he would have wanted good all over the place in the universe? It is here that we get to know Augustine’s actual views on evil, and how he perceived it. He first asserts that anything that can be evil is good, because only good things will be liable to corruption. If something is not good, there will be nothing to corrupt. If evil were a substance, then it would have had to been good, and since evil as a substance cannot have any good associated with it (as Manicheans said), it cannot exist as something tangible.
In conclusion, St. Augustine says that his earlier theory of evil was built on flimsy grounds, and it pointed fingers at God’s omnipotence and omniscience, something that he believed in. Hence evil, instead of being something tangible, should be something more corporeal, and rather than being the complete opposite of good, it is just a lesser good. Also, God is supreme, and all the evil in the universe arises from us, due to the power accorded in us by God in the form of free will.
In my humble opinion, I concur with Augustine’s theory in saying that Manicheans’ theory of evil was wrong. Also, all evil in the world arises out of free will. But according to me, this is unavoidable because good cannot exist in this world without evil. At one point of time, one will face a choice between a good and a lesser good, and the moment that happens, the lesser good will be termed as evil. It is impossible that good is uniformly spread over the world – such an extreme utopia doesn’t exist. However, I agree with the Manicheans when they say that every action is a result of the struggle between good and evil, with a minor difference. It is not that good is fighting against evil, it’s just an individual who has to choose between good and evil, and the struggle in the thought process behind that decision.
Acknowledgements-
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
www.everything2.com
www.wikipedia.com
www.google.com
History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
p.s. My latest addiction is the DOS Game Zatacka, or Achtung Die Kurve
2
comments
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Reservation for Women Bill – How it is not double standards
The Bill for reservation of seats in the Parliament for women has been there in the Parliament for an enormous amount of time, but nothing solid has been achieved upon it as it has been thrown around, delayed, thrown some more, and delayed a lot more. It has elicited a lot of public opinion, many NDTV Big Fights would have been held on this, and similar to this, many blog-posts would have been written. It basically says that one-third of the seats in the Parliament should be reserved for women, because of the current woeful representation(59). Some politicians like Sharad Yadav have made it clear that ingesting poison would be better than passing this bill.
The idea for writing on this came from a post my friend made here. Now if you read his opinion, the point which he makes is that the same liberals, who oppose reservation on the basis of caste, have no qualms reserving 33 % of the Parliament for women. Now, from this statement, my first conclusion is that since I agree to this, I am defined a liberal. And as a justification for my argument, I would say that I am not opposed to reservation on the basis of caste as such. During the Arjun Singh fiasco, when he introduced reservations for OBCs in educational institutions, I was not aghast at reservations being introduced in “premier” institutions like IITs and IIMs. I was rather against the fact that reservations are still needed, when they were supposed to be phased out after implementation in two 5-year plans, i.e. if this was 1950, I would not be against reservation on the basis of caste. Even now, reservation on the basis of financial status, albeit a little lesser than 50 % is fine with me, it is almost equivalent to giving scholarships to people who need it so that they can study. But reservation on the basis of caste now, I am against it simply because it has lost its status as a means for supposedly lower-caste people to join the mainstream and has become a shortcut for ‘affluent’ ‘lower-caste’ people to good education and jobs. I mean, the Gujjars were creating a riot 2 years back because they wanted to be declared as a ‘backward’ caste! Is that signs of a successful reservation system? I don’t think so.
Now coming to the reservation for women in the Parliament, I support it because of the same reason that I would have supported caste-based reservation in 1950 or financial status based reservation now – the representation of women in the Parliament is low, and it needs to increase. Now people may say that since this is a democracy, everyone has an equal right to being a representative of the people, and there should be no reservation in the Parliament. I disagree. I say, that would have been true, if ours was a perfect democracy, and women were treated here like they are anywhere else in the world. Since that is definitely not the case, hence rules for a perfect democracy cannot and should not be applied to India. Instead, we should bend the rules a little bit, so that India moves towards that dream democracy that it is not, but is trying to be. My idea is, reservation for women should be introduced, but with a clause. It should be phased out after 5 elections. Hopefully, in the course of these 5 elections, women will start getting adequate representation in the Parliament, things will start working out better for women in the country, and then, we should remove the quota in phases to find that the no. of women doesn’t substantially change, even though the quota is gone. This was the basic idea behind caste-based reservation way back in the 50s, and hence I support both of them.
There are some people who are saying that caste-based quota should be introduced within the women’s reservation in the Parliament. But as there is no caste-based reservation for the men in the Parliament, why is there such a need for women. Also, caste and vote bank politics ensures that welfare of ‘lower caste’ is adequately represented in the House. Ergo, I am against that too.
Bottom line is, I believe that supporting reservation for women in the Parliament while opposing caste-based quota in educational institutions and jobs is not hypocrisy. The Women’s Reservation Bill is long overdue in the Parliament, and I believe it should be passed.
The idea for writing on this came from a post my friend made here. Now if you read his opinion, the point which he makes is that the same liberals, who oppose reservation on the basis of caste, have no qualms reserving 33 % of the Parliament for women. Now, from this statement, my first conclusion is that since I agree to this, I am defined a liberal. And as a justification for my argument, I would say that I am not opposed to reservation on the basis of caste as such. During the Arjun Singh fiasco, when he introduced reservations for OBCs in educational institutions, I was not aghast at reservations being introduced in “premier” institutions like IITs and IIMs. I was rather against the fact that reservations are still needed, when they were supposed to be phased out after implementation in two 5-year plans, i.e. if this was 1950, I would not be against reservation on the basis of caste. Even now, reservation on the basis of financial status, albeit a little lesser than 50 % is fine with me, it is almost equivalent to giving scholarships to people who need it so that they can study. But reservation on the basis of caste now, I am against it simply because it has lost its status as a means for supposedly lower-caste people to join the mainstream and has become a shortcut for ‘affluent’ ‘lower-caste’ people to good education and jobs. I mean, the Gujjars were creating a riot 2 years back because they wanted to be declared as a ‘backward’ caste! Is that signs of a successful reservation system? I don’t think so.
Now coming to the reservation for women in the Parliament, I support it because of the same reason that I would have supported caste-based reservation in 1950 or financial status based reservation now – the representation of women in the Parliament is low, and it needs to increase. Now people may say that since this is a democracy, everyone has an equal right to being a representative of the people, and there should be no reservation in the Parliament. I disagree. I say, that would have been true, if ours was a perfect democracy, and women were treated here like they are anywhere else in the world. Since that is definitely not the case, hence rules for a perfect democracy cannot and should not be applied to India. Instead, we should bend the rules a little bit, so that India moves towards that dream democracy that it is not, but is trying to be. My idea is, reservation for women should be introduced, but with a clause. It should be phased out after 5 elections. Hopefully, in the course of these 5 elections, women will start getting adequate representation in the Parliament, things will start working out better for women in the country, and then, we should remove the quota in phases to find that the no. of women doesn’t substantially change, even though the quota is gone. This was the basic idea behind caste-based reservation way back in the 50s, and hence I support both of them.
There are some people who are saying that caste-based quota should be introduced within the women’s reservation in the Parliament. But as there is no caste-based reservation for the men in the Parliament, why is there such a need for women. Also, caste and vote bank politics ensures that welfare of ‘lower caste’ is adequately represented in the House. Ergo, I am against that too.
Bottom line is, I believe that supporting reservation for women in the Parliament while opposing caste-based quota in educational institutions and jobs is not hypocrisy. The Women’s Reservation Bill is long overdue in the Parliament, and I believe it should be passed.
7
comments
Monday, July 13, 2009
Nothing Else Matters
Labels:
music
My piano cover of Nothing Else Matters by Metallica. This version is heavily inspired from the performance of Saras Hostel in our inter hostel WM Group Competition in LitSoc 2009 (especially the interlude). Its on a KORG SP200 and the weird camera angle is because i wanted it closest to the amp. I have a made quite a few mistakes here and there, and need to improve my pedalling.
3
comments
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Should IITs be expanded?
Read this-
IITs to introduce medical and law courses
Kapil Sibal’s recent announcements as the HRD minister have evoked a lot of response, especially from the student community. First of all, I would like to say that compared to Arjun Singh, he seems a lot better and for once I think we will see more of people-centric decisions than caste or vote bank appeasing ones.
Coming to the announcement of IITs to become universities offering medical, law and other courses, I feel that it is unnecessary more than useful/harmful. I mean, it won’t do any harm, but it won’t do any good either. Just associating with the IIT doesn’t mean that the quality of the courses will by default be good. Besides, it’s an Indian Institute of Technology and if the above move takes place, we would have to rename it. (though that is of least concern possible)
The logic behind this move seems that since IIT is a premier institute when it comes to engineering, people will automatically think that a law (purely for the sake of example) course from an IIT is also good and hence we can go on creating top-level courses for each discipline by just offering it in an IIT. This is flawed according to me, and I can give an example for that. IIT Madras offers a 5-year MA course, through the entrance exam HSE. Currently, only a small fraction of the students studying humanities (students mainly studying in South India) write this exam, even though I am sure that this course is pretty good. The reason that it is not popular is because it will take some time for its reputation to build. Its first batch is yet to pass out. The same applies to what the HRD Minister is suggesting – even though it will be offered from a premier institution, any course will take some time to become popular among students as one of the best in the country. If this is the case, then you need not club it with IIT as a university – you can as well start a new college or like IITs, a number of colleges for, say medicine or law (for which you can increase the number of National Law Schools, which are to law as IITs are to engineering). The reason for saying that IIT should offer courses is pretty much bunk, is what I am trying to say. Instead of starting new IITs all over, the government can do a favour to students by starting medical colleges on the lines of IITs, because I remember even when I was in 10th, people intending to go to the medicine field were meticulously told by family and friends, that the number of colleges in the country is low, but on the other hand engineering students are always told –“kahin pe to ho hi jaayega” (which translates to – “you will get into some college or the other”) because of the surplus engineering colleges in the country. That is the reason why engineering has become the foremost option in any parent’s mind when it comes to their child’s career.
When I was discussing this with my friend, he argued that this decision was good because slowly people will start treating humanities and commerce students on par with science students. This is pretty baseless according to me because of two reasons. One, this consequence is based upon the assumption (rather fact) that parents of students today are crazy just about the brand IIT, whatever the course may be. And two, I agree commerce and humanities are treated with disdain and there is an urgent need to remove this bias, but I feel this is not the right way. For example, would you compare a literature or economics student from Oxford or Cambridge with an engineering graduate from MIT or CalTech? You simply cannot, because they are just different, as different as apples and oranges. We should aim for a similar educational structure with world-class institutions established for all fields. Does MIT have a bachelor’s course in literature? If it has, would you be as awed as you would be of an engineering graduate from MIT? So instead of offering other courses in IITs, let us create new premier institutes for these courses. In fact, this should have been done long ago. If they are anyway planning to open new IITs, they can instead open IIMSs (Indian Institute of Medical Sciences, for example) instead.
Even in terms of infrastructure, the present IITs are almost exploding with students, struggling to cope with the increase in intake of students every year. I have the privilege of living in the campus of an IIT myself, and I have seen and appreciated the flora and fauna of the campus. In most of the cities where IITs are situated, the IIT is located in one of the greenest areas of the city. Expanding an IIT would mean that a lot of trees would have to be cut down, as a result of which an IIT loses one of its charms.
Bottom line is, instead of exploiting the people’s love for the word IIT by opening a lot of them, why don’t you try diverting it to IIMS or NLS? This will do good to a lot of students who would have otherwise ruined their life taking up engineering simply because there aren’t enough opportunities for them to pursue their higher studies in the field of their choice in a premier institute.
P.S. I have never intended to discriminate between students of any stream/discipline or treat a law/commerce/humanities student with contempt. Please don’t treat this as the high-handed rant of an IITian, just treat this as a commoners viewpoint on such a move. If this has caused offence to anyone, I apologize.
IITs to introduce medical and law courses
Kapil Sibal’s recent announcements as the HRD minister have evoked a lot of response, especially from the student community. First of all, I would like to say that compared to Arjun Singh, he seems a lot better and for once I think we will see more of people-centric decisions than caste or vote bank appeasing ones.
Coming to the announcement of IITs to become universities offering medical, law and other courses, I feel that it is unnecessary more than useful/harmful. I mean, it won’t do any harm, but it won’t do any good either. Just associating with the IIT doesn’t mean that the quality of the courses will by default be good. Besides, it’s an Indian Institute of Technology and if the above move takes place, we would have to rename it. (though that is of least concern possible)
The logic behind this move seems that since IIT is a premier institute when it comes to engineering, people will automatically think that a law (purely for the sake of example) course from an IIT is also good and hence we can go on creating top-level courses for each discipline by just offering it in an IIT. This is flawed according to me, and I can give an example for that. IIT Madras offers a 5-year MA course, through the entrance exam HSE. Currently, only a small fraction of the students studying humanities (students mainly studying in South India) write this exam, even though I am sure that this course is pretty good. The reason that it is not popular is because it will take some time for its reputation to build. Its first batch is yet to pass out. The same applies to what the HRD Minister is suggesting – even though it will be offered from a premier institution, any course will take some time to become popular among students as one of the best in the country. If this is the case, then you need not club it with IIT as a university – you can as well start a new college or like IITs, a number of colleges for, say medicine or law (for which you can increase the number of National Law Schools, which are to law as IITs are to engineering). The reason for saying that IIT should offer courses is pretty much bunk, is what I am trying to say. Instead of starting new IITs all over, the government can do a favour to students by starting medical colleges on the lines of IITs, because I remember even when I was in 10th, people intending to go to the medicine field were meticulously told by family and friends, that the number of colleges in the country is low, but on the other hand engineering students are always told –“kahin pe to ho hi jaayega” (which translates to – “you will get into some college or the other”) because of the surplus engineering colleges in the country. That is the reason why engineering has become the foremost option in any parent’s mind when it comes to their child’s career.
When I was discussing this with my friend, he argued that this decision was good because slowly people will start treating humanities and commerce students on par with science students. This is pretty baseless according to me because of two reasons. One, this consequence is based upon the assumption (rather fact) that parents of students today are crazy just about the brand IIT, whatever the course may be. And two, I agree commerce and humanities are treated with disdain and there is an urgent need to remove this bias, but I feel this is not the right way. For example, would you compare a literature or economics student from Oxford or Cambridge with an engineering graduate from MIT or CalTech? You simply cannot, because they are just different, as different as apples and oranges. We should aim for a similar educational structure with world-class institutions established for all fields. Does MIT have a bachelor’s course in literature? If it has, would you be as awed as you would be of an engineering graduate from MIT? So instead of offering other courses in IITs, let us create new premier institutes for these courses. In fact, this should have been done long ago. If they are anyway planning to open new IITs, they can instead open IIMSs (Indian Institute of Medical Sciences, for example) instead.
Even in terms of infrastructure, the present IITs are almost exploding with students, struggling to cope with the increase in intake of students every year. I have the privilege of living in the campus of an IIT myself, and I have seen and appreciated the flora and fauna of the campus. In most of the cities where IITs are situated, the IIT is located in one of the greenest areas of the city. Expanding an IIT would mean that a lot of trees would have to be cut down, as a result of which an IIT loses one of its charms.
Bottom line is, instead of exploiting the people’s love for the word IIT by opening a lot of them, why don’t you try diverting it to IIMS or NLS? This will do good to a lot of students who would have otherwise ruined their life taking up engineering simply because there aren’t enough opportunities for them to pursue their higher studies in the field of their choice in a premier institute.
P.S. I have never intended to discriminate between students of any stream/discipline or treat a law/commerce/humanities student with contempt. Please don’t treat this as the high-handed rant of an IITian, just treat this as a commoners viewpoint on such a move. If this has caused offence to anyone, I apologize.
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Saturday, July 4, 2009
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