Well thought of Philantrophy

Azim Premji has given to India much more than his money.His $2 Billion donation has to be appreciated for more than its financial value.He deserves an additional applause not for the 'How much' but for the 'How' of his outpouring.

The $2 Billion which he donated will be given to the Azim Premji Foundation.It will be used among other things,to set up and nurture the Azim Premji University .The focus of this foundation and also of the university is primary and school education. If you search,you'll find that the only programs that are offered are those related to bolstering the reach of India's primary education.

The programs offered are Masters in Education,Masters in Teacher Education and Masters in Development. No, none of these programs produce ready to employ people for India booming IT sector neither do they aim to create tomorrows corporate hotshots. The effort addresses just one grave need ;the need for every child in India to have the opportunity to a quality education.The Right to education for all children below 14 years of age is promised by our Constitution but our politicians have guaranteed that even 60 years after Independence only the privileged or lucky kids get an education worth talking about.

Our education system sucks from top to bottom.Even the best colleges in India struggle hard to compete globally.But to get to college you have to get past school and that for the average Indian is the trickier part.We have excellent schools in our cities but step into the countryside and suddenly you find rampant absenteeism amongst teachers,forged marks,poor education standards,etc.Some studies have shown that kids in rural schools in the 10th grade scored as much as the urban kids did in the 4th grade.This is more than clear sign of how the quality how education suffers as we enter rural India.

Well,primary education isn't the only area where our education system falls behind but it is the the one that hurts the most.Many reports indicate that many graduates from India's numerous engineering colleges lack sufficient skills to be directly employed.But the good part is that the corporates themselves make up for this lack of quality.Well, MNC's want cheap employees and if they cant find them,they will create them.A good example would be the Infosys Global Education Center in Mysore.A huge machine which will produce cut and dried employees ready for hire.

But Azim Premji has decided to look the other way.He has left any vested corporate interests behind.By singularly focusing on primary education he has decided to take on the harsh challenge of improving the quality of India's primary education system,the level of education at which any shortcoming severely restricts a persons choices in life.

Kudos to Azim Premji because he put both his money and his mind where his heart is .

Of Man and his friend

A long time ago ,I remember my aunt describing to me a scene she had witnessed on her way back home from her workplace.

She was travelling on a bus back home,when the bus had stopped in traffic.The bus happened to be standing right next to the walkway alongside.This afforded my aunt,who was sitting near the window , a good view of the scene outside.She noticed a rather plump lady walking her dog on the street outside.The street was an unpaved and muddy path. Now, those of you who have been a bit observant may have realized that ‘walking’ the dog is just the correct way of saying that you’re taking your dog out to answer nature’s call. As my aunt looked outside, she saw the dog restlessly sniffing the ground and straining his leash. The dog was agitatedly sniffing around looking for something. As he was doing this, his owner kept pulling him in the opposite direction.While pulling the dog ,the lady kept saying to the dog,“Come here Come here, its not dirty here”. As my aunt came to realize after sometime, the street outside was a regular ‘walking’ spot for the dog. Also, every time the dog came here, he always sniffed around till he found a spot on which he had not ‘walked over’ previously and set out to work ,walking all over it.

Darn dog! I thought,when i heard this story.Comes here everyday and uses the heightened of smell he has to find a clean spot so that he can now make it dirty!

With this thought of the dogs stupidity, this story left my conscious mind and was buried deep in there for a couple of years till a funny coincidence brought it up.

I happened to be staying in a dormitory where we had a bathing area at the intersection of two corridors. This bathing area consisted of a four bathrooms built in a manner such that two of them faced the other two.Out of these four bathrooms; because of reasons like a better water flow or more sunlight, I happened to be regularly bathing in just two of those bathrooms.One of these two regular bathrooms is closer to the entrance than the other.One evening I was in a hurry as I went for a bath, so I automatically looked in the bathroom closer to the entrance to see if i felt like having a bath there. On looking in ,I found that someone had just taken a bath there, the floor was wet, water droplets were splashed all along the wall and the bathroom felt a bit warmer too. Immediately, I turned and took a look into my other regular bathroom. To my delight, I found it completely dry, no smell, no water splashed anywhere, nothing. Perfect, I thought.

That’s when it hit me, I had just behaved exactly as the dog i had darned. The poor dog whom i had declared stupid, had he been standing here would have cried ‘Hypocrite! Hypocrite!’. Though my situation wasn't completely the same as that of the dog’s(It wasn't me who had dirtied the first bathroom!).It was too similar for me to pass it by. I too had searched for a clean spot so that I could make it dirty!

Developing a Rational Instinct

As we journey through life , we are but rarely in a state of happiness.But apart from the few of us who may really be unfortunate enough to repeatedly face difficulties in life,most of us are in a situation that is mostly neither good nor bad .. life just is what it is.Well,if we look at the overall picture,it may actually be pretty good, the fact that you’ve lived up to this age may be regarded as an achievement in itself .But the problem with the human mind is that we tend focus our attention(or should i say our Tension) on the Now.The latest problem at hand is often the only thing on our mind.We tend forget all that we are ,all that we’ve ever learned when ,all of our experiences that make us wiser and work in a sort of survivalist mode,constantly pondering how to get past the problem at hand.What we then end up doing is acting totally based on instinct.This method of unthinkingly racing towards any means to get rid of a problem works most of the time(in fact, almost all of the time);this is because the problem that we faced wasn’t that big a deal to begin with.You may think that you may have been extremely lucky or fortunate to get rid of your previous problem but the fact is that if you managed to get rid of the problem,there is no greater proof of the fact that you always had the ability to solve the problem.

What i want to bring to your attention is that instead of relying on instinct , if we constantly step back,constantly rationalize and move towards our problems with a definite plan ,with a definite objective (however much of a compromise this objective may be,given the immensity of the situation at hand ) , we will always come out satisfied with the outcome whatever it ends up being.Being in control ,executing a set of actions that you’ve thought about before rather that doing whatever comes to your mind first will naturally produce a much better result in any situation.

The worst part is that we may implement the above strategy once, but once this article is out of your mind we will again fall prey to our instinctual reactions because that is what evolution has made us do. Hence,we need to change our instinct itself and develop it into a more controlled rational artifice.

This change wont happen automatically ,it must begin with some changes in our environment that remind us of our commitment towards this goal of reacting rationally.It could be anything that catches your attention constantly like your desktop wallpaper, a note on the wall,etc.

Another thing we must remember is to not ignore what that wallpaper or note stands for. Every time we see that note we must ask ourselves what it really stands for and how am i going to implement that today.This constant reminder of rationality ,we must hope will slowly grow into an instinct of rationality.