Sunday, July 03, 2011

Oh, No. Not again.


WTF Headline of the Week:

Kakodkar to Review Functioning of 30 NITs.

2 Comments:

  1. Dheeraj Sanghi said...

    when the current HRD Minister initiated his so-called reform agenda (none of which has been approved by the parliament yet), there was an op-ed piece I read in some newspaper. I should have saved it. What it essentially said was that if you look at the members of various committees that Mr. Sibal is forming, they are the same set of people who were members of various committees that Mr. Arjun Singh had set up. If Mr. Sibal is claiming that everything that Mr. Arjun Singh did was wrong, then blame for that should go to these advisers. Why does Mr. Sibal think that the same set of people who are responsible for destruction of education, will now advise him to re-construct education sector. At the very least, he could have chosen a different set of advisers.

    So, once again, if MHRD feels that Mr. Kakodkar report on reforming IITs cannot be accepted (and there are good reasons for that, as you have pointed out earlier), then how come the same person is being considered to review NITs.

    I think what the government is doing is to create so many committees and get so many reports that anything it wants to do will be there as a recommendation in one of those reports.

    I read in one standards conference on a T-shirt: The greatest thing about standards is that there are so many to chose from.

    I think we can say the same thing about committees and their reports. There are so many of them to chose from.

  2. Ungrateful Alive said...

    @dheeraj --- Even inside any IIT you find ample instances of committees with the express charter of scuttling the issue. Such committees are nice if you are done with your research and teaching career and need to justify your oxygen intake. It is safe to say that Sibal's effect on IITXs has been uniformly negative. He has enough power to screw your life, but at least you can save a little time by not discussing him.