That seems to the prevailing principle in the corridors of power in New Delhi these days. Whether it is some sort of perverse, reverse socialist reactionary attitude to the ‘imperial’ US designs is difficult to tell as upfront the persons trying to re-calibrate working, proven, Indian systems and plans all seem to be educated, liberal and practical people.
- First the US President Obama praised the Indian schooling system and an year later was apprehensive that Indian schooling system will take away ‘future jobs’ from America.
- Promptly we move away from the Indian system of ‘marks’ and adopt the US system of ‘grades’ for exams. In the bargain, no one raised the basic question - where do grades come from? Do they just fall out of students’ mouths or teachers’ pens? Grades follow marks. What would happen is answer sheets are given marks and then the marks obtained are converted into grades. Why increase the work and increase the confusion?
- To do one better, we also move to abolish the board exams for the 10 standard in Central Schools from this academic year (2011) - so a student wouldn’t know how good or bad he/she is in a subject in relation to the national average, until 2 years later. 2 years later, when he/she will sit down for All India Competitive Exams.
- From next year (2012) they propose an All India Common Entrance Test for Medical colleges - what it translates to is that if a student from Chattisgarh is slightly behind a student from Delhi at Class 10 level, he/she will never know it, until it is too late to do anything about it. In the existing system, he/she has 2 years to try and catch up with the leaders.
- 2 days back, SecState Clinton, visiting my hometown of Chennai, called the Indian Electoral System as the ‘global gold standard’ for holding polls.
- So, 2 days from now, the Election Commission of India is going to trial modified Electronic Voting Machines, which would produce a paper proof of to whom one has voted for - which again is an US requirement and dangerous in Indian environment.
- One, the EVM’s were invented to economize the Indian Elections by putting stop to paper guzzling, reducing the counting time. Now we reintroduce paper and soon parties will ask for such paper votes to be counted too!
- Two, EVMs maintain secrecy of the ballot (and its alter-ego, prevent Ballot-stuffing). Once there is a paper trial/proof, who is to stop a Political party from asking for proof of voting from a voter?
- Three, the hilarity (no pun intended) is that the party which was making such a hue and cry about tampering and hackability of EVMs, the ADMK, won the Tamil Nadu elections and has to hold its peace forever - because of the landslide win. They can’t have it both ways - If they win, the EVMs are good and if they lose, the EVM’s are suspect!
- Four, the Election Commission wants to trial this stupid idea, when the reality is that it requires Court intervention to stop Police from investigating a voter for his voting preferences.
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