I was on my way travelling from Chennai to Tanjavur today. We decided to break with tradition and travel by car. We took the national highway NH 45 from Chennai to Trichy and my what a national highway it was.
I have to admit, I had slightly low expectations of what a road would be like between two cities in India. This was based on my experience on an earlier trip to Thirupathi.
The moment we think of roads in India, we instantly conjure up images of potholes and ditches and lanes no better than muddy pathways on which vehicles are expected to tread safely. There are no dividers and each vehicle is free to move in any direction it wishes (or others wish). It is expected that there will be all kinds of traffic from dusty bullock carts trudging along under the command of the farmer's whip to the swanky new Mercedes Mr. X would have just brought in from his relatives in the Gulf. You'd have entropy at its best. Such is the character Ive seen.
But on this particular highway, I swear i couldn't tell that I was actually in India. The road was wide, with 4 lanes and neatly drawn lane dvidiers. In the middle was a divider wlined with a series of colourful if not exotic plants, all in bloom. On either side was the thin green haze of planted trees with thin stems with finely trimmed green grass, interspersed with red, ash and yellow.
The road itself had regular parking stops for travellers to rest, with adequate facilities to relieve themselves. The restrooms in these areas were with tiled roofs and gardens on either sides.
And yes, the scenery would alternate between paddy fields just done with the previous harvest or green hills with clearly visible steps cut out from rocks and the odd temple or two at their peak. The road would wind up and down, with crossings being made in flyovers, to ensure smooth flow of traffic.
At regular intervals were green signboards elevated at the right height, neatly displaying in white the location of the 3 nearest cities in kilometers. Power lines regularly crisscrossing, in addition to railroad tracks. Vehicles actually followed lane rules with signals being applied to stop whenever they required.
If I thought the day was good, the night was even better, luckily for us, we were blessed with a full moon. The shimmering pale light, glanced gently upon us and everything else, as trucks carrying sugarcane stems and chopped wood crossed us, causing a minor tremor on the roads. Although the window was closed I swear I could detect a waif of the scent of freshly cleaned rice and molasses, in a rather heady cocktail.
I can't help but feel, this is so non stereotypical of my view. I have to change. We are progressing, its just that we have to look outside and see. The road did stop and I did return to a more conventional road type (rollercoaster ride and all), but I was amazed at the power of what we and the government can achieve. Its a question of time, money, resources, patience, human resource management, people regulation, discipline and many other factors I feel. It is however, definitely possible, to evolve ourselves into a nation which can have global standards in roads and infrastructure. Its upto us, to streamline this and make it more smooth.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Of Positives and Actions
Affirmative action or positive discrimination, is a policy or a program of giving certain preferences to certain (usually under-represented) groups. This typically focuses on education, employment, government contracts, health care, or social welfare.
There is much debate concerning claims that it fails to achieve its desired goal, and that it has unintended and undesirable side-effects. There are also claims that the practice is itself racist or sexist.
Affirmative action began as a corrective measure for governmental and social injustices against demographic groups that have been subjected to prejudice. Such groups are characterized most commonly by race, gender, or ethnicity. Affirmative action seeks to increase the representation of these demographic groups in fields of study and work in which they have traditionally been underrepresented.
A certain group or gender may be less proportionately represented in an area, often employment or education, due predominantly, in the view of proponents, to past or ongoing discrimination against members of the group. The theory is that a simple adoption of meritocratic principles along the lines of race-blindness or gender-blindness will not suffice to change the situation for several reasons:
* Discrimination practices of the past preclude the acquisition of 'merit' by limiting access to educational opportunities and job experiences.
* Ostensible measures of 'merit' may well be biased toward the same groups who are already empowered.
* Regardless of overt principles, people already in positions of power are likely to hire people they already know, and/or people from similar backgrounds.
The terms "affirmative action" and "positive discrimination" originate in law, where it is common for lawyers to speak of "affirmative" or "positive" remedies that command the wrongdoer to do something. In contrast, "negative" remedies command the wrongdoer not to do something or to stop doing something.
In 1962, James Farmer, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, held a meeting with then vice president Lyndon B. Johnson.
Farmer proposed that a program that he called Compensatory Preferential Treatment should be put in place in order to advance the equality of the black race. In 1965, Johnson (then president) renamed Compensatory Preferential Treatment "affirmative action" in a famous speech at Howard University, which became the national justification for moving the country beyond nondiscrimination to a more vigorous effort to improve the status of black Americans.
It was a counter-argument to the previously prevailing notion of meritocracy. The skills that merit-based admission rewards are cultivated in children by parents with money. Affirmative action was to be a method by which minorities could eventually develop those skills in their own children.
In the 1960s and 1970s, affirmative action became overwhelmingly popular on campuses across America as mass student protests spurred schools to actively recruit minority applicants.
In the U.S., the most prominent form of affirmative action centers on access to education, particularly admission to universities and other forms of tertiary instruction. Race, ethnicity, native language, social class, geographical origin, parental attendance of the university in question (legacy admissions), and/or gender are often taken into account when assessing the meaning of an applicant's grades and test scores.
For example, the college admission chances of a female university student will tend to be equal to that of a male student with SAT scores fifty points higher than hers. Individuals can also be awarded scholarships and have fees paid on the basis of criteria listed above.
Affirmative action programs at universities benefit mostly African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans and women (in engineering and the physical sciences). Asian Americans, although a racial minority, do not benefit at most colleges because the rate of college education among Asian Americans is higher than the other racial groups (including whites).
The following are problems with affirmative action based on a review[11] of Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study (ISBN 0-30010-199-6, 2004) by economist Dr. Thomas Sowell, himself African-American:
* They encourage non-preferred groups to designate themselves as members of preferred groups [i.e. primary beneficiary of affirmative action] to take advantage of group preference policies;
* They tend to benefit primarily the most fortunate among the preferred group (e.g. black millionaires), oftentimes to the detriment of the least fortunate among the non-preferred groups (e.g. poor whites);
* They reduce the incentives of both the preferred and non-preferred to perform at their best — the former because doing so is unnecessary and the latter because it can prove futile — thereby resulting in net losses for society as a whole; and
* They engender animosity toward preferred groups as well as on the part of preferred groups themselves, whose main problem in some cases has been their own inadequacy combined with their resentment of non-preferred groups who — without preferences — consistently
Critics often object to the use of racial quotas and gender quotas in affirmative action. However, quotas are ILLEGAL in the United States, except when a judge issues an order for a specific institution to make up for extreme past discrimination.
There is dispute over whether this de jure illegality prevents de facto quotas. Much time has been spent attempting to show that these "goals" are not quotas.
An increasingly assertive opposition movement argues that the battle to guarantee equal rights for all citizens has been fought and won – and that favoring members of one group over another simply goes against the American grain.
The debate in the US still continues, is affirmative action applicable or not?
--Compiled From Various Sources by Berhael
There is much debate concerning claims that it fails to achieve its desired goal, and that it has unintended and undesirable side-effects. There are also claims that the practice is itself racist or sexist.
Affirmative action began as a corrective measure for governmental and social injustices against demographic groups that have been subjected to prejudice. Such groups are characterized most commonly by race, gender, or ethnicity. Affirmative action seeks to increase the representation of these demographic groups in fields of study and work in which they have traditionally been underrepresented.
A certain group or gender may be less proportionately represented in an area, often employment or education, due predominantly, in the view of proponents, to past or ongoing discrimination against members of the group. The theory is that a simple adoption of meritocratic principles along the lines of race-blindness or gender-blindness will not suffice to change the situation for several reasons:
* Discrimination practices of the past preclude the acquisition of 'merit' by limiting access to educational opportunities and job experiences.
* Ostensible measures of 'merit' may well be biased toward the same groups who are already empowered.
* Regardless of overt principles, people already in positions of power are likely to hire people they already know, and/or people from similar backgrounds.
The terms "affirmative action" and "positive discrimination" originate in law, where it is common for lawyers to speak of "affirmative" or "positive" remedies that command the wrongdoer to do something. In contrast, "negative" remedies command the wrongdoer not to do something or to stop doing something.
In 1962, James Farmer, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, held a meeting with then vice president Lyndon B. Johnson.
Farmer proposed that a program that he called Compensatory Preferential Treatment should be put in place in order to advance the equality of the black race. In 1965, Johnson (then president) renamed Compensatory Preferential Treatment "affirmative action" in a famous speech at Howard University, which became the national justification for moving the country beyond nondiscrimination to a more vigorous effort to improve the status of black Americans.
It was a counter-argument to the previously prevailing notion of meritocracy. The skills that merit-based admission rewards are cultivated in children by parents with money. Affirmative action was to be a method by which minorities could eventually develop those skills in their own children.
In the 1960s and 1970s, affirmative action became overwhelmingly popular on campuses across America as mass student protests spurred schools to actively recruit minority applicants.
In the U.S., the most prominent form of affirmative action centers on access to education, particularly admission to universities and other forms of tertiary instruction. Race, ethnicity, native language, social class, geographical origin, parental attendance of the university in question (legacy admissions), and/or gender are often taken into account when assessing the meaning of an applicant's grades and test scores.
For example, the college admission chances of a female university student will tend to be equal to that of a male student with SAT scores fifty points higher than hers. Individuals can also be awarded scholarships and have fees paid on the basis of criteria listed above.
Affirmative action programs at universities benefit mostly African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans and women (in engineering and the physical sciences). Asian Americans, although a racial minority, do not benefit at most colleges because the rate of college education among Asian Americans is higher than the other racial groups (including whites).
The following are problems with affirmative action based on a review[11] of Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study (ISBN 0-30010-199-6, 2004) by economist Dr. Thomas Sowell, himself African-American:
* They encourage non-preferred groups to designate themselves as members of preferred groups [i.e. primary beneficiary of affirmative action] to take advantage of group preference policies;
* They tend to benefit primarily the most fortunate among the preferred group (e.g. black millionaires), oftentimes to the detriment of the least fortunate among the non-preferred groups (e.g. poor whites);
* They reduce the incentives of both the preferred and non-preferred to perform at their best — the former because doing so is unnecessary and the latter because it can prove futile — thereby resulting in net losses for society as a whole; and
* They engender animosity toward preferred groups as well as on the part of preferred groups themselves, whose main problem in some cases has been their own inadequacy combined with their resentment of non-preferred groups who — without preferences — consistently
Critics often object to the use of racial quotas and gender quotas in affirmative action. However, quotas are ILLEGAL in the United States, except when a judge issues an order for a specific institution to make up for extreme past discrimination.
There is dispute over whether this de jure illegality prevents de facto quotas. Much time has been spent attempting to show that these "goals" are not quotas.
An increasingly assertive opposition movement argues that the battle to guarantee equal rights for all citizens has been fought and won – and that favoring members of one group over another simply goes against the American grain.
The debate in the US still continues, is affirmative action applicable or not?
--Compiled From Various Sources by Berhael
Friday, May 05, 2006
Of Frost and Favourites
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
-- Robert Frost
Robert Frost was born on March 26 in San Francisco, first child of Isabelle Moodie and William Prescott Frost Jr. Named after Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
His first published poem, "La Noche Triste," based on episode in Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, appeared in the Lawrence High School Bulletin in April, 1890; a second poem, "The Song of the Wave," appeared in the Bulletin in May, in the same year.
He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for New Hampshire in May, 1924., A Further Range, 1937, A Winter Tree, 1942.
He passed away on January 29, 1963.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
