2008 JEE results

The results of JEE-2008 were announced yesterday. Here are a few key points (comparisons with the 2007 results use data from my posts from last year):

• The Big Picture: 311,258 students took the exam; 8,652 have got a JEE rank, representing a 'strike rate' of 2.8 percent. Last year, over 243,029 students competed for 7209 ranks, with a strike rate of almost 3 percent.

  Thus, ranks have seen a 20 percent hike (8652 vs. 7209), while the number of seats at the IITs and their associates (IT-BHU, ISM-Dhanbad) is up by 24 percent (6872 vs 5537).

  The 24 percent increase in IIT seats is due to both the first phase of OBC reservation in the existing IITs and their associates, and the full 27 percent OBC reservation in the six new IITs (AP, Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Orissa and Punjab).

• Women: Over 78,000 women took the JEE this year, about 44 percent increase over last year, and 840 of them got a rank, representing an increase of 43 percent.

  Here's a different way of looking at women's performance. Among the exam takers, women formed nearly 26 percent this year, while they formed 22 percent last year.

  Among the rank-holders, women form 9.7 percent this year; last year, they formed 8.1 percent.

  Finally, here's the most dramatic metric for the kind of advantage men enjoy in in JEE: they are over three times (3.1 times, to be more precise) as likely as women to get through JEE. This advantage is the same (3.2 times) as it was last year.

  The top ranker among women had a JEE rank of 14 this year (N. Vasuki of Bangalore, who also topped the Karnataka CET), a considerable improvement over last year's 55th rank scored by Ankita Sharma of Mumbai.

  [A quick aside: It turns out that Vasuki is from SRN Adarsh College, whose Principal, Prof. Sukanya Chattopadhyay, happens to be a good friend of ours! This must be a proud moment for Sukanya and her colleagues. Another noteworthy fact is that it's not a CBSE school; it belongs to the Karnataka Pre-University Board.]

• Scheduled Castes and Tribes: SC and ST students. Out of 28,393 SC candidates (36 percent over last year's 20892), 690 qualified (16 percent over last year's 594). In terms of success ratio, this year's 2.4 percent is lower than last year's 2.8 percent.

  For the ST candidates, the figures are: 8,514 took the exam (44 % increase over 5,909 last year), and 159 cleared (46 percent increase over 109). Success ratio is about 1.9 percent, roughly the same as last year.

• Other Backward Classes: Out of 72,116 OBC candidates (up 58 % from last year's 45,576), 1,134 have qualified (up 15 % from 990). They formed 23 percent of the exam takers, but were only 13 percent among the rank-holders.

  Last year, there was no reservation for OBC students; since IITs had collected the data, they released it. However, this year, there is some reservation, which implies that OBC students would have benefited from some relaxation in the cut-offs. Thus, in spite of this benefit, the strike rate for OBC students this year (1.6 percent) is lower than that for last year (2.1 percent).

IITs have not released more fine grained data. In particular, it would be great to have disaggregated data for men and women in general as well as in OBC, SC and ST categories. Further, IITs relax the cut-off marks for students in the reserved categories. Thus, if they release data separately for the numbers of OBC men and women, SC men and women, ST men and women, and general category women who make it through the general category cut-off, we'll have a clearer and more realistic idea of the extent of the respective gaps that exist. [What would be even better is the distribution of ranks -- and even better, distribution of marks -- for all these eight categories!]

* * *

An interesting thing you notice when you check Google News for JEE results is the number of newspaper stories celebrating JEE rank-holders (and not just the top rankers) from their cities and towns. While some are just interesting, quite a few are so heart-warming.

A smart move by Gujarat, Orissa and Punjab governments

As per the original plan (advertised on the IIT-JEE site), the new IITs in AP, Bihar and Rajasthan were to start their academic programs this year, and admit their first batch of students this August. In an interesting new move, the IITs in Gujarat, Punjab and Orissa have also asked for, and obtained, the go ahead for taking students this August. The interesting thing is this: in the name of 'mentoring', the students of these new IITs will be taught at one of the existing IITs (see also) this year. So, extra students and extra work for those IIT professors teaching first year courses!

I would say the governments of Gujarat, Orissa and Punjab have made a very smart move, which makes "their" IITs a reality. They seem to have realized that the announcement about the IITs in those states was just that: an announcement. Those who remember the fate of IISER - Bhubaneswar and IISER - Chennai would know what I'm talking about.

By acting quickly to get their IITs off the ground, Gujarat, Orissa and Punjab have eliminated the possibility of nasty surprises.

Rules of romance for academic tourists

The 'romance' in the title refers to intarnational partnership between universities, and the 'academic tourists' are the university representatives -- usually high officials and a few high profile professors -- who travel to far away places in search of 'suitors' with whom such 'partnerships' are clinched; there are way too many of these tourists, particularly during winter months in the West.

As you can guess, I have a pretty grim view of this sort of stuff. Research partnerships and collaborations are best left to individuals and their research groups. This is the only thing that works. When university officials start giving excited powerpoint presentations about mutuality and synergy, it usually means a huge time sink for those in the 'partner' institution being wooed.

Anyways, the content of this Inside Higher Ed story would sound very familiar to people in many institutions in India; it is the source of the metaphors of romance and tourists (when you combine the two, the result is too awful to even contemplate ;-). This paragraph is so true that it hurts:

Nico Joste, director of international education at Nelson Mandela [Metropolitan University], ... spoke from a somewhat unique vantage point. After South Africa’s education system opened to the world in 1994, it opened too to “so-called academic tourists.… The first thing presidents and vice chancellors said was, ‘Let’s sign an agreement,’ ” Joste said. “Hundreds of agreements were signed and very little happened.”

Experimental verification of foundations of economics

This Guardian profile of Dan Ariely has a section that's just too delicious (via Brayden King, whose post also has an interesting comments thread):

Do mainstream economists really approach shopping and life with such clear and cold eyes? Listen to the story of Oz Brownlee, late professor at the University of Minnesota. One Friday, he and a colleague stopped to buy some steaks. Finding a long queue, they offered cash to the person in front to swap places. The shopper was dumbstruck - which the academics took as a bargaining ploy, so they raised the price. As news spread down the line, other customers turned hostile. The Minnesota department of economics alumni newsletter goes on: "Attempts to explain that they were ... trying to ascertain whether there was a mutually beneficial trade of time for money that might improve their welfare and that of the next person in line without disadvantaging others met with little success." The economists left without any steak.

Brownlee's mistake was to put into practice something that worked only in theory. That, Ariely and other critics say, is the point: conventional economics tries to make the man fit the model, rather than the other way around.

Update: The story, "perhaps apocryphal", is recounted in this obituary of Oz Brownlee (pdf).

Evolutionary explanation for women's superior memory

A study finds that women do better than men when it comes to remembering faces (and more particularly, women's faces). Here's a possible explanation:

[...]These findings may have an evolutionary explanation that is rooted in female-female competition, says David C. Geary, a psychologist at the University of Missouri–Columbia who was not involved with the study. “Women certainly fought and continue to fight over the best guys ... those with good genes and resources to invest in kids,” Geary says. Remembering details of personal experiences is important for monitoring and maneuvering relationships, including disrupting the social and romantic ties of other women who are competitors, he says. [...]

Whoa!

On a not entirely unrelated note, have you seen this?

HHMI's grants to individual researchers

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is "a non-profit medical research organization that ranks as one of the nation's largest philanthropies, [and] plays a powerful role in advancing biomedical research and science education in the U.S." It announced yesterday the selection of 56 HHMI Investigators.

What's so special about this particular version of HHMI grants?

1. First, it's the amount of money that's involved: US $ 600 million in all! Over 10 million dollars, on average, per HHMI investigator. This is big money, even by American standards. A far better comparison for us in India is with the total support for scientific research (through individual, competitive research grants, and excluding direct, bulk, institutional grants) in our universities from our government agencies. A while ago, I estimated this to be about US $500 million.

2. And second, these are direct grants to individuals, without tying them down to specific projects. Here's the relevant part of the press release:

   HHMI values innovation and encourages its investigators to extend the boundaries of science. By appointing scientists as Hughes investigators — rather than awarding research grants — HHMI is guided by the principle of “people, not projects.” HHMI investigators have the freedom to explore and, if necessary, to change direction in their research. Moreover, they have support to follow their ideas through to fruition — even if that process takes many years.

In other words, the HHMI Investigator awards are essentially like the MacArthur Fellowships -- aka 'Genius' awards -- except that HHMI awards are specific to biomedical research.

The take-home message, at least for me, is this: modern research -- particularly in the highly promising biomedical fields -- is expensive. If we want to nurture our faculty members, we should be willing to spend big money to support their research. Our leaders do us all a huge disservice when they keep whining only about faculty salaries without doing anything to address their very real and very vital needs: adequate grants that will take care of their equipment needs, day-to-day running of their labs, and travel to several conferences a year.

And these needs are the most acute during the very early stages of their careers. What our institutions offer them, instead, are puny start-up grants!

The closest thing to HHMI awards we have got are the Swarnajayanti awards; but there are just a dozen such awards (covering all of science and engineering) made every year, and the support tends to be limited to about 10 million rupees (or, US $250,000).

Abhijit Banerjee on the merits of universal public services

The MIT economist seems to be in India, with the result that business newspapers have profiled and interviewed him. Here he is, talking about the importance of aligning interests of the middle class with those of the poorer classes:

In one sense, the system is not designed to work, i.e., deliver the goods, as employees are the top priority of the system. Political will needs to be generated, and that can happen when the interests of the middle class coincide with those of the poor. If there is demand from the non-poor, the likelihood of the administration taking action is greater.

For instance, availability of railway tickets gets a priority over streamlining the public distribution system (PDS). If concerns of the poor can be tied up with that of a segment that can complain, government will respond faster.

At another place, he talks about how targeting services just to the poor is inferior to universalization of the same services:

Targeting does not work. It leads to corruption. Universalising is more effective. I favour direct cash transfer to people. Technology should be used more aggressively. The administration of the old age pension system in South Africa is an example of cash transfer system that has worked with active use of technology. The government should not shy away from giving money.

It makes more sense to get rid of all the schemes and programmes for poverty removal, stop topping up expenditure on existing schemes and instead give money to people directly. ...

Among the bloggers I read, Kuffir has been a strong and passionate advocate of shutting down a whole bunch of (leaky and corruption-ridden) 'poverty alleviation' programs in favor of a direct dole. [See his posts here and here and the links therein].

* * *

Related: Earlier posts on Abhijit Banerjee's work (with links).

Four-year bachelor's program in the sciences

India's three science academies -- the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, and the National Academy of Sciences, India -- came together to organize a meeting at IISc last Saturday to discuss this topic.

Participation was by invitation; while I wasn't among the invitees, my colleague Prof. Ranganathan alerted me about this event and encouraged me to attend it.

* * *

Sidebar

The Academies' position paper on the need for a four-year BS program is not available online. However, a couple of things mentioned in it are. The first one is a column by D. Balasubramanian (President, IAS) in The Hindu last July. The other one is a letter to the editor of Current Science by Tushar Chakraborty of IICT.

* * *

The meeting started with statements from the Presidents of the three academies -- Prof. D. Balasubramanian (IAS, Bangalore), Prof. M. Vijayan (INSA, New Delhi) and Prof. Ashok Misra (NASI, Allahabad). All of them said they liked the idea (phew, that's a relief!). Then, there were four talks: Prof. S.C. Lakhotia (Professor of Zoology at the Banaras Hindu University) outlined the reasons why there is a need for this program, its advantages and (potential) disadvantages. Then, Prof. V. Balaji took the audience through several different models of undergraduate programs that are in actual practice: Harvard, Oxford, National University of Singapore and University of Toronto. Two IISER directors, Prof. N. Sathyamurthy (Mohali) and Prof. S. Dattagupta (Kolkata), spoke about how their 5-year MS programs are structured, and the philosophy behind their choices. Both emphasized that the MS programs could be thought of as a combination of a 4-year BS program and an additional year of masters thesis research.

* * *

Two years ago, I liked this idea so much that I felt that IISERs missed a great opportunity to introduce this program; they chose a 5-year MS program instead. I still like the idea, and it is worth pursuing. I think institutions with a strong research footprint -- IISERs, IITs, and Central Universities, in particular -- are best positioned to introduce it.

We should resist the urge to impose One National Curriculum on all the institutions. During the meeting, it was made clear that we have a wide variety of institutions, ranging from tightly focused schools such as the CMI, through IISERs with their science programs, IITs with their programs in both science and engineering, all the way to research universities with programs in many fields. While a program that has a broad base in humanities, natural and social sciences (such as that in Harvard) is feasible in our universities, it would be impossible at CMI. Thus, each institution should have the freedom to choose a curriculum that plays to its strengths.

For a large fraction of our students, a bachelor's degree is just a stepping stone for other things in life: a job, an MBA, or a masters in computer applications or History. While these students may also benefit from a 4-year BS program, they would probably prefer the current 3-year program to continue. .

Given that colleges cater to more than 90 percent of our UG population, and given that not all of them are likely to be able to offer the BS program, the BS and BSc programs will need to coexist for a long time to come!

From the structure of the MS programs at IISERs, it appears that they are a combination of a 4-year BS program and a one year of thesis research. In other words, they are like the dual degree programs in the IITs. Thus, in principle, IISERs could easily switch to what the IITs currently do: admit students into both the 4-year BS and the 5-year MS programs (perhaps in the ratio of 60 percent to 40 percent). While the institutions benefit from the MS students' research, they will be able to satisfy the country's need for a greater number of well trained science graduates.

* * *

Finally, a couple of observations about the meeting; specifically, about the people that were missing at the meeting.

1. I got the impression that there were just a few professors from our colleges (where over 90 percent of our students study). Their views -- particularly about the possible pitfalls in implementing the BS program in our universities and colleges -- would have been helpful at this stage.
2. Another jarring absence was that of professors from humanities and social sciences. Surely a change in the UG program's structure in the sciences cannot happen (easily) without a corresponding change in the other fields? Getting these folks on board at an early stage would be a good idea, no?

Big Day for IISc

Yes, our Institute -- the Indian Institute of Science -- enters its Centenary Year today.

The year-long celebrations are being kicked off today, with the inauguration of the first of a series of Centenary conferences: Managing Complexity in a Distributed World. Christened MCDES-2008, this conference is organized by the Institute's Electrical Sciences Division which has under its wing the formidable departments of Electrical Engineering, Electrical Communication Engineering, and Computer Science and Automation, and the Centre for Electronic Design and Technology.

The inaugural lecture of MCDES -- The Foundations of a Digital Wireless World by Prof. Andrew Viterbi of the University of Southern California -- will also double up as the Institute's second Centenary Lecture. [I blogged about the first Lecture by Prof. C.N.R. Rao].

The Centenary year will feature quite a few events -- conferences, public lectures, focused seminars, and panel discussions. If you are an Institute alumnus / alumna (or, if you know one), you'll be interested in the flagship event the year: The IISc Centenary Conference (13-16 December 2008).

* * *

Among the newspapers, the Hindu carried an op-ed piece by Gopal Raj to mark the Centenary Celebrations with a focus on the Institute's pre-history.

Links ...

Leslie Kaufman's profile of Jill Bolte Taylor: A Superhighway to Bliss: A stroke leads a brain scientist to a new spirituality. [Taylor's TED talk is a must see!]

Barack Obama's Commencement Address at Wesleyan.

* * *

Now, a couple of fun links:

Chris Clark in Creek Running North: Belief in Evolutionary Psychology May Be Hardwired, Study Says [via Allison, the Economic Woman]:

A new study, published in today’s issue of the German publication Unwirklichen Genetikjournal, ... [suggests] that some men may be genetically predisposed to believe in evolutionary psychology, a finding that may well suggest future methods of treatment of the psychological malady.

Believers in evolutionary psychology maintain that feminism sets itself in opposition to millions of years of anthropoid evolution, and is thus futile and inhumane to men. Allegations made by believers include references to putative differences in math skills between men and women, a supposedly irresistible but entirely non-visually stimulated female attraction toward powerful and/or arrogant males, and the existence of a genetically preordained male right to multiple female sexual partners.

Finally, the girlfriend in today's xkcd cartoon makes a deep observation: "You have to get out either more or less. I can't decide." Don't you want to know what made her say that?

McGrath on one of the defining moments in IPL

In a guest column for The Week, Glenn McGrath says:

For me, the defining moment of the DLF Indian Premier League was at the Eden Gardens on May 13, when Kolkata Knight Riders bowler Shoaib Akhtar dismissed Delhi Daredevils captain Virender Sehwag. The cheer around the stadium was deafening even though an Indian batsman had just got out to a Pakistani bowler. In April, I had written that it will take city loyalties a bit of time to take root in the IPL circuit, but it has happened sooner than anybody imagined, and the sight at Eden Gardens encapsulated the intensity of these loyalties. Country affiliations have been suspended for a bit, and right now I am as much of a Dilliwala as Viru!

I'm sure this thought -- about a very partisan Indian audience (remember World Cup semis in 1996?) cheering a Pakistani bowler against one of our own -- has occurred to a lot of us. But it's still nice to see it articulated in print.

* * *

Following Badri (one of the founders of Cricinfo.com), I too have a confession to make: I'm hooked on IPL! While the Bangalore Royal Challengers haven't done much to cheer us, the other team we are rooting for -- the one from the very hot Chennai with a very cool captain -- is still in the race to reach the semis. My inner Chennaiyan will be rooting for Rajasthan Royals against the Mumbai team tomorrow. I know it's shady to wish for someone else's downfall so your favorite gets ahead, but I figured, all's fair in war and cricket ...

* * *

Update: Rahul Basu has a post about the Royals vs. Super Kings match he went to in Chennai, where the fans tend to be significantly less partisan (I still remember the time -- several years ago -- when they cheered the Pakistani team celebrating a comprehensive win over India with a victory lap!). When Rahul says (see his comment below) the fans had a good time despite the Chennai Super Kings's loss, it's consistent with the Chennai fans' past behaviour.

Yogesh Upadhyaya on India's initiatives in technical education

Yogesh Upadhyaya, a fellow IT-BHU alumnus and a long-distance friend, has two articles summarizing the current status of different proposals for the creation of new IITs and NITs, conversion of IT-BHU into an IIT, and of several engineering colleges into IIESTs. He covers a several other related things, such as the legislative changes that are required to see these initiatives through, and the funding patterns these institutions may expect. And yes, he gives us an estimate of the faculty shortage, too!

As usual, Yogesh packs these two articles with a lot of very useful info and data that are quite difficult to find; I've bookmarked them for future reference.

The academic side of Al Quaeda

Lawrence Wright has an article in the New Yorker about the 'transformation' of "Dr. Fadl", an Al Qaeda mastermind. Fadl, we learn, wrote a book in the nineties -- The Compendium of the Pursuit of Divine Knowledge -- that provided "religio-intellectual" legitimacy to that organization's terrorist tactics -- particularly those involving suicide attacks; his current, 'revised' views -- which appeared in Rationalizing Jihad in Egypt and the World (2007) -- have raised serious questions about terrorism as a jihadi tactic. Wright uses Fadl's two books as a backdrop for the kinds of arguments that have been going on among radical jihadists in Egypt (primarily) and elsewhere. Along the way, he also traces the history of some of the (Egypt-based) radical Islamic movements and the personalities -- and personal rivalries -- that shaped them.

When thousand-page books and 200-page rebuttals have a go at each other, the discussion is bound to assume an academic tone, with each side citing religious scholars, sometimes going all the way back to the Prophet himself. Here's Wright writing about Zawahiri's rebuttal to Fadl's second book:

Some of Zawahiri’s commentary may seem comically academic, as in this citation in support of the need for Muslims to prepare for jihad: “Imam Ahmad said: ‘We heard from Harun bin Ma’ruf, citing Abu Wahab, who quoted Amru bin al-Harith citing Abu Ali Tamamah bin Shafi that he heard Uqbah bin Amir saying, “I heard the Prophet say from the pulpit: ‘Against them make ready your strength.’ ” ’ Strength refers to shooting arrows and other projectiles from instruments of war.”

When the discussion takes a decidedly academic turn, (a) it tends to cover all bases, and (b) the underlying issue (in this case, terror) becomes, well, academic. The effect is eerily comical. In the example below, Fadl invokes sanctity of contracts as an argument against the 9/11 attacks, and Zawahiri has a pointed response.

The most original argument in the book and the interview is Fadl’s assertion that the hijackers of 9/11 “betrayed the enemy,” because they had been given U.S. visas, which are a contract of protection. “The followers of bin Laden entered the United States with his knowledge, and on his orders double-crossed its population, killing and destroying,” Fadl continues. “The Prophet—God’s prayer and peace be upon him—said, ‘On the Day of Judgment, every double-crosser will have a banner up his anus proportionate to his treachery.’ ” ...

When Zawahiri questions the sanctity of a visa, which Fadl equates with a mutual contract of safe passage, he consults an English dictionary and finds in the definition of “visa” no mention of a guarantee of protection. “Even if the contract is based on international agreements, we are not bound by these agreements,” Zawahiri claims, citing two radical clerics who support his view.

Go read the whole thing.

* * *

While we are on this subject, let me point you to the NYRB article titled Jihadi Suicide Bombers: The New Wave in which Ahmed Rashid reviews a bunch of books on Al Quaeda.

Quick update on the Hellinga story

Just to follow up on this post: the Nature story is available (pdf) at the author's website. Like I said, do read it.

Thanks to the author, Erika Check Hayden, for the alert, and for making it available for free.

Educating S. Prasannarajan

In a quasi-editorial in India Today on the recent terrorist attacks in Jaipur, S. Prasannarajan says:

We may not have to go to the extent of Guantanamo and other extremities but, in the age of the jihadist martyrdom chic, giving up a little bit of civil liberty for the common good is not the same as giving in to the paranoia of a totalitarian state.

The Government killed POTA because it was “draconian”, but what has it got as an alternative? It is as if this Government’s humanism abhors any law that violates the fundamental rights of the terrorist.

Clearly, Prasannarajan thinks POTA -- The Prevention of Terrorism Act (2002) -- is what India needs for taking on the terrorists. Perhaps he needs some education about how "effectively" it took on the terrorists was when it was in force.

Here are just a couple of examples from this report (of The People’s Tribunal on POTA and Other Security Legislation, Delhi, March 13-14, 2004).

Bhagat Singh and Prabhakaran, both teenagers, were arrested by Tamil Nadu police and charged under POTA. Why? Because the police couldn’t find their fathers, the boys were picked up as proxies for their absent fathers. ...

Are Bhagat Singh and Prabhakaran terrorists, Mr. Prasannarajan? Do you want them to "[give] up a little bit of civil liberty for the common good? Have they given you enough of their civil liberties, or do you want more? Have you talked to Vaiko, Mr. Prasannarajan?

Here's more from the same report, for Prasannarajan's benefit:

POTA detainees include writers and thinkers who wrote or thought things with which the State disagreed. For instance, in Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Valeti Arvind Kumar, who writes under the pen name "Rivera," was found in possession of literature deemed revolutionary and was arrested. Others detained under POTA in Andhra included poor tailors, a photographer and a doctor. K. Balagopal commented, "These statutes claim to be legal instruments for counter insurgency. They are, in fact, political instruments of the Indian states’ policies of counter insurgency dressed up as legislative instruments… the only method that the Indian State has had of meeting this challenge is to attack the social base — the communities or classes of society — in whom, among whom, and purportedly for whom, these activities take place. This is a policy that should be unacceptable to any notion of democracy." [...]

As one of the Tribunal panellists, Ms. Syeda Hameed, observed, "Listening to the victims through the two days, it struck me that with the exception of the politicians from Tamil Nadu, every person who deposed before the Bench was ragged and wretched." Ms. Hameed pointed out that the State’s view seems to be that "terror is spread only by the poor and marginalised. The rich and famous, by definition, are peace-loving loyalists while the poor, by the same definition, are anti–national terrorists…"

Not only are the individual testimonies heard by the Tribunal compelling, their combined effect is so chilling that we are all forced to ask ourselves if we have been so driven over the edge by our fears that instruments of the State that exist to protect its citizenry have really been used to target the powerless in society, including religious minorities, because they make such convenient scapegoats.

Perhaps Prasannarajan will benefit from this paragraph as well:

Experience has shown that anti-terrorist laws like TADA or POTA have neither prevented the occurrence of terrorist acts nor acted as deterrents to the use of violence for dispute resolution. The conviction rate for TADA cases was less than two per cent. Ironically, political organisations led by the BJP were at the forefront of the opposition to TADA, even during the height of violence in Punjab. A review of the testimonies of the accused under POTA heard by the Tribunal reveals the same pattern as was prevalent in the widespread abuse of the universally discredited TADA. Innocent people, rather than terrorists, have once again been the victims. We do not believe that such laws can be reformed or ‘improved upon’. They must be repealed lock, stock and barrel. POTA, in particular, should be repealed retrospectively, deleting all charges framed under it. [Bold emphasis added].

Why is it, Mr. Prasannarajan, that you don't acknowledge the real reasons behind the repeal of POTA? Why should your wet dreams about how POTA will make India safe take precedence over the horrible reality of how it actually functioned? What, in other words, makes you so sure that POTA is what India needs?

Finally, aren't you being such a demagogue when you equate opposition to POTA to a concern for 'fundamental rights of terrorists'?

Where is your concern, Mr. Prasannarajan, for the fundamental rights of what all our national pledge calls 'my brothers and sisters'-- all Indians?

* * *

As for how India can become better at combating terrorism on its soil, Mr. Prasannarajan should read what some of his own colleagues have to say. POTA and other such ideas come late in their article (with some qualifications), but the first things that they talk about are basic things: better intelligence gathering, better coordination among our law enforcement agencies, more cops on the ground, etc. Even the use of bigger, better, more expensive hi-tech gadgets gets a higher billing in their article than POTA!