A letter to Karnataka State Primary Education Minister

Dear Suresh Kumar sir,

My name is Prakash Nyamagouda and come from small village in Karnataka by the name Chikkapadasalagi. I am currently working and living in Germany.

During a recent trip to my native, I visited couple of government schools and as well a private Kannada medium school near by my village. The fact is that I have also studied in government school and very little has changed compare to my time and now.

I made some pics while interacting with students so that I can explain you my thoughts better by referring to these pics.

Pic 1: 7th grade class room (government school)

Pic 2: Toile in government primary school

Pic 3: 7th grade class room - private Kannada medium school

Please note that I am not taking school name to just avoid undue attention to this government school. But the fact is most of the schools have similar issues which I would like to bring it to your attention.

Number of class rooms: The schools have less number of class rooms compared to the number of grades that the schools run. In the particular school that I visited has only 3 class rooms compared to the 1 – 7^th classes that they have to run. Which means there is a scarcity of 4 class rooms.

Sitting on the floor: This was the case during our time and unfortunate that even now the government school students need to sit on the floor and listen to the classes. Though I have been told that few government schools are being provided with benches (at least for 7^th grade) but I am not sure how many schools really have benches for 1 to 7^th grade.

Toilets: Our beloved prime minister started a very ambitious and much needed program (Swatch Bharat Abhiyan)  but if you look at the pic 2, it makes me feel very sad. In most of the schools the toilets are in such a pathetic condition, its impossible for children to use it. The question is whether each school has toilets; if they have then do they have them in adequate numbers and maintained the toilets clean? Sir, when we say that ‘ಇಂದಿನ ಮಕ್ಕಳು ನಮ್ಮ ದೇಶದ ಮುಂದಿನ ಪ್ರಜ್ಞಾವಂತ ಪ್ರಜೆಗಳು’, its highly important that we teach them about cleanliness from very young age so that they become the ambassadors of change.

Mid-day meal: Though mid-day meal is a very good concept and I understand the intent behind this great program. But this also has a very negative impact on the teaching staff as it adds lots of administrative effort while they have scarcity of teaching staff. Either we need to add a non-administrative staff to take care of all the tasks so that teaching staff can solely focus on academics. Otherwise, this can be discontinued and instead food grains can be distributed as a ration depending on the attendance.

Sir, I am writing this to you with great respect and I am sure you will look at long term measures to improve the quality of primary schools in Karnataka. I fail to understand why there is so less focus (infrastructure and academics) on primary education while this is the foundation and if the foundation is not strong then how can we expect quality among student community.

Sir, there is a need to make strategic investment into primary school education to create better citizens for our country. I request you to invest your department energy to collect real data and derive long-term and short-term measures. As an individual I am trying to help in our taluk by talking to BEOs but I am sure there is a lot that could be done at government level.

If I needed I can find volunteers from each district so that we can work hand-in-hand with your government officials and support them with in whatever way if it can help.

Looking forward to hear your feedback.

Prakash Nyamagouda

e-mail: pnyamagouda@gmail.com

When will the life of middle class farmers change?

We know that Agriculture is the backbone of Indian economy and many industries depend on the raw materials supplied from the farmers. There are very few industries that can run without raw materials required from agriculture sector. 

On the other side, we have seen phenomenal growth in the agriculture sector in the last few years.  Farmers contribute close to 16% for national GDP, exports of agricultural products are expected to cross US$ 22 billion mark by 2014. In the recent past there are many MOUs that have been signed in agro-technology industry from different agricultural sectors like crops, horticulture, food technology, veterinary, agri-engineering, agri-inputs and fisheries. 

Even then life of a middle class farmer has not changed yet. They struggle day-in and day-out and at the end get only peanuts. On one side, farmers are beleaguered by middle man and other side government’s policy paralysis. These two put together have compounded the farmers problems.

Just to give an example – my brother had produced few quintal of onion. I was excited and told him that it has come at right in time and asked him to rush to the market to sell it off. To my surprise, the price we got in the wholesale market was only Rs. 25/- per KG where in the price in our state capital was Rs. 80/- per KG. This shows how these traders really play with demand and supply and cheat the farmers.

When it comes to politicians they need farmers only for the votes. They never want to solve farmer’s problems. If the farmers are given enough water supply, electricity and conducive market facility to sell their products they will never look back to politicians for subsidies/schemes/loan waiver..etc.

The world has made so much progress in the technology; hardly the Indian farmers get any such benefit from it. As we know, due to global warming the rains are never on time. Our farmers still do the cultivation of crops with old calendar method wherein they are severely hit by inconsistent rain. I did witness it this time when my brother cultivated maize (in Kannada mekke jola). He was estimating the yield to be around 120 quintal. He would have been happy man at the end there been one good rain! Unfortunately the rain god didn’t open his eyes and estimated yield came down to 20 quintal which didn’t even give the return on investment. 

Its time now, government and concerned departments should work towards educating our farmer’s on rain patterns, weather condition the possible crop to grow. Otherwise farmer can no more stand as backbone of our country and at the end all of us will suffer!

All our farmers should lead a little bit of luxury life and stand in position to give a good education for their children.  

Time for government/society to think of girl babies

The Indian budget for 2011-12 runs into several trillion rupees where as the scams in India equally compete with the budget numbers. There are many rich people in India and we have many poor people as well. We are at the 21st century and the whole world looks at India as an amazingly developing country. Unfortunately we have so many issues which the poor people are facing in our country are not being properly addressed by the government/society. I would like to bring your attention to a recent incident in Karnataka where in a baby girl of few days old was killed by her mom. The reason was that she was the 2nd baby girl and her husband is a drunkard. The mother found it difficult to manage two baby girls with their earnings and decided to kill the innocent infant.

It is not just the ONLY case but I am sure we all have heard/come across many such cases. The reasons could be many but the truth remains that the lots poor Indian parents still think that giving birth to baby girl is a SIN.

My question is can our 21st century India still live with this cruel act?

We know that there is already a significant decline in the ratio of boys to girls. We know the result of this and the social imbalance it can create. The governments are putting lots of effort where in they have introduced several programs for child development. Details on programs can be found at below website maintained by Department of Women and Child development, Karnataka govt.

http://dwcdkar.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=114&lang=en

But I am not sure how far the government officials are able to reach to common man with these programs. The only way we can eradicate this social menace is through proper education and bringing the awareness among the common man. With this in mind, I am planning to write a letter to Department of Women and Child development to implement the following;

When a mother gives birth to a baby girl, the government officials should visit the parents of the baby and explain them the various programs which the government has undertaken for girl child development. Properly counsel them and explain that with the given facilities provided by govt, it is now easy to up bring the baby girls and they shouldn’t worry about their future. If the parents are still hesitant to keep the baby then the government can adopt the baby or join the baby to an orphanage run by many NGO’s. I believe, this to an extent can save several infant baby girls.

For the better future of India, it is important to have a social balance and hence it is important save the lives of baby girls.

If you have any better suggestions, please write them in the comment section and I will consolidate and send across to the department of Women and Child Development.

Can our government school students compete with the private school students?

Just to give you some data; according to current estimates, 80% of all schools are government schools making the government the major provider of education. However, because of poor quality of public education, 27% of Indian children are privately educated.

If we start questioning; why is quality of teaching that bad in government schools? I see following reasons:

1. Number of students too high

2. Poor level of teacher training

3. Not so committed teaching faculty (doesn’t apply to all the teachers)

4. For many schools; no proper infrastructure to run the schools

When the student population is too high, teachers can only spend their time to just control them. When I was in the primary school, we had only 4 class rooms and 5 teachers. 1st and 2nd standard students were combined and similarly 3rd and 4th. For each class there were at least 70-80 students and imagine how can a teacher deliver his duty? Though government has spent enough money to build extra class rooms and to hire new faculty the substantial increase in the number of students has kept the quality of education at the same level.

On the other side; there is a scarcity for quality teachers. This is due to the fact teachers training is not up to the mark and also the dedication and commitment of many teachers is questionable when it comes to learning new things to enhance their teaching ability.

The other important aspect is; in most of the government schools, given the cultural and linguistic diversity of India, students are taught in their regional language (some central govt run schools like Navodaya.. teach in English but it is an exception) and this is the differentiating factor while getting high profile jobs.

Contrary to this; private schools have better infrastructure, good teaching faculty and most of the private schools teach in English language and offer CBSE and ICSE syllabus. It has been pointed out that private schools cover the entire curriculum and offer extra-curricular activities. This basically makes the private school students competent enough.
 
One can argue that we had seen many people in India who have studied in the government schools and attained highest job. But the fact is that the % is too low and maybe it was fine in the past where in there were not many private schools and the quality of education was almost same for all.

I have no idea how we can bridge this gap in future!

Do we see a chance of current CORRUPT political system being changed in the near future”?

I held myself back couple of times but this time I couldn’t and decided to write about the corrupt political system and the kind of people entering into the politics. My question is “do we see a chance of current CORRUPT political system being changed in the near future”?


Before I touch upon the core issue would like to make a disclaimer : My views are not in favor/against any person or a political party. If I refer to a party or an individual it is just based on my limited knowledge and I could be wrong as well.

In the last few months we hear a lot about corruption and the politicians involvement in it. For me it looks there is no boundary for corruption; it is there in all the political parties no matter whether they are in power or out of power. May be the ratio is less if they are not in power. There are few people who still have some values and are trying not to be corrupt (like Sureshkumar, a minister in the current govt). If we recall the recent incidents in Karnataka, I get a feeling that is this the state which was ruled by a politician like Sri S Nijalingappa who couldn’t even afford to construct a house for his own? Many of the current politician talks only in terms of crores and we have seen many of the MLAs selling themselves for 50-60 Cr.

Scams which are currently being exposed are in the tune of thousands of crores and there is no limit to it. We now know where the tax payers money is going. It is either with politicians or with bureaucrats. If this is not being stopped then I don’t see a chance that a common man get into politics/government jobs.

Just to give two examples from the recent elections which I have seen closely. Gramapanchayat elections were held few months ago and most of the candidates contested were in the age bracket of 25-32 years old. These guys have neither studied properly nor struggled in their life at least to earn some bucks. They just spent the hard earned money of their parents, some guys lost the election and some guys won. I asked the guys who have won the election, their single point of agenda is to make some money. It hurts a lot if you listen the way “National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme” is being miss used by these guys. In future these guys will move from grampanchayat to district level and then to state and national level. Do you expect anything better from these guys when they become MLAs/MPs?

To quote from the recent BBMP election; if you had followed the BBMP election and most importantly the candidate selection. It was such a tough competition and tickets were literally sold. Most candidates (men/women) are involved in real-estate and they made hell lot of money through illegal land grabbing. I am personally very close (don’t want to name them) to two of the candidates who won the BBMP election; both were/are into real estate and I tried to closely observe them to see how they make money; first thing they do is, get the project sanctioned and award them to their family member/friend companies. Secondly they identify all the govt land and buy a piece of property nearby and grab the portion of govt land illegally. There are several other ways they make money and keep it ready for next elections.

Since people join politics with the lust of making money and to expand their legacy; there is no chance that the system could be improved. I hope that the media plays a bigger role in the coming years and expose every illegal activities of politicians so that they run away from politics as they can't face voters!

Just to say thank you to my friends......

There are two reasons why I am sharing this information through my blog;

1. To thank all my friends who supported me in this social cause
2. To spread what we did!! may be you can do the same as well!!

Without spending too much effort on re-writing the whole story, I would like to take you directly to the part of e-mail which i sent across to my friends seeking their help for my initiative.

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Dearest Friends,

It was on 24th June I visited my native place (Chickapadasalagi) after a gap of 3 months. Most of you already know about my village and it doesn’t require any introduction. However I would like mention few facts that it has around 3000+ electoral population and there are 1000+(not all from my village but few come from neighboring villages) students studying from class 1st to 10th.

On the way to my native I was thinking on to do something in the village which should benefit the young and bright student community. During my four days of stay I noticed that there was only 2 hours of power supply per day and which took me to my old school days. You guys don’t believe the way we use to struggle because of power cut and how we managed to study during night. Each one of us had our own lantern (use to make it using medicine bottle and putting a thread into it and finally fill with kerosene). The lantern use to omit so much of carbon that the next day morning we could notice the carbon deposit on the dresses which we wore. Can you guys imagine the amount of carbon dioxide we were inhaling every day? This was not the case of one day but at least for the whole summer that’s our peak exam season.

Believe me even now the situation is same and students use the same kind of lantern. Finally an idea flashed on to my mind thinking whether it makes sense if we provide a solar lighting system.

I met a solar lighting system dealer and enquired about the same. He said a system which can support up to 4 bulbs would cost 16 to 18K. There are two schools (1st std to 7th std and 8th to 10th) and may be to begin with we can provide it for high school (8th to 10th) students.

Now coming to the point, since 16-18K is quite a big amount which I can’t afford on my own. With a hesitant mind I would like to ask you guys to contribute some amount which I am planning to do for the social cause. Kindly note that I have not taken this initiative for my personal gain, I promise do it with utmost transparency and commitment.

If this is successful then my future idea is to start a charity where in we all will be members and at least due to this we might get a chance to see each other to do some charity work. But this might take few months as it involves lots of administrative work but mean time we can form a group and start discussing and what can be the road map..etc.

Also if the student community finds it good then we can meet the Government of Karnataka officials and explain the benefits of this initiative. We can request them to implement this initiative state wide under government umbrella.

Guys, this is my first initiative and I hope you all will support me and be part of this initiative. I have discussed this with Hareesh(Dumma) and he told me its good initiative and we should do it.

'If people like us don't do something for society, who will?

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As a result of this e-mail, within a week we were able to collect the required money to install the solar lamp and we did this in the month of February which was very crucial for students to prepare for the exams.

After the installation, i visited the hostel and I was happy to see students studying under the lamps provided by us.

Currently there are around 30-40 students (studying from 1 to 10th, ITI, DEd) who are getting benefited with this.

You might think, there are many companies who are into social activity and we can contribute directly to them. But I don't beleive that they can go to every corner of the country. The way to do is; if you come across any such need in any place you are from, just see what best you can do and try to help the people who are in need. I HOPE YOU ALL WILL DO SOMETHING!!

May be with our earnings we can't eliminate the poverty but at least we can be happy that GOD has given us an opportuinty to serve fellow human being to an extent.

Before I close my blog, I would like to thank my friends who stood by me and helped this initiative.

Umesh S R
Umesh M R
Gautham
Hemanth J
Sandeep L R
Sachidanand Prabhu
Shreekanth Acharya
Akhil S
Hareesh K

Corruption in Employment; we are responsible for it!!!

Recently an incident happened in Karnataka wherein a minister has to resign due to irregularities while recruiting staff for medical colleges. When we debate on “who is responsible for corruption” it is chicken and egg story. We common people always say, it’s the politicians and bureaucrats who are corrupt. On the other side we forget that we(people) also have equal share in it.


I would like to narrate an incident which happened 1.5 years back; a cousin of mine applied for a job (Line man) in HESCOM or one of the power companies in Karnataka ( I don’t remember exactly). He has done ITI in Electrical with very good marks (around 78%) and was a very able candidate. Usually in our family everyone asks for my advice and my cousin as well called me up and informed that he has applied for this job. Especially people in north Karnataka respect govt jobs a lot and they go to any extent (in terms of bribe) to get it, I am bit embarrassed to say this but it’s the TRUTH . I have seen this closely in my native and as well from nearby villages and very well aware how it works.

As soon as they apply for the job, first thing they do is find out some agents and check out the possibilities and make a deal. These agents are some political party workers who have not even seen the schools in their life (maybe there are few who are studied but not passed the exams) and imagine they deal the jobs even up to KAS level. They dress up very nicely and walk with files all the time. Literally speaking; it’s their full time job.

Now coming back to my cousin incident, like most of his friends he was also negotiating with an agent and they had made a deal for Rs 100, 000. If he doesn’t get a job then the agent has agreed to return rupee Rs 95, 000 keeping Rs 5,000 as operational cost. Assuming an agent makes a deal with hundred guys and he earns 5 lakhs as part of operational cost  that too non taxable . Before making a payment my cousin called me up and told that he is giving money to such and such guy. I asked my cousin to wait for few days and told him that I will talk to my friend father who was in a very good position in HESCOM. I walked into their house asking for an opinion and if there is any chance that he can help. Uncle told me that, the agents will cheat and asked me not to pay the money. He also said, it’s very transparent process now and no bribe works. He took the application number and interview dates and I left their house. I made a call to my cousin and told him not to pay the money. Whereas a friend of his went ahead and made the payment. Also my concern was that, cousin family is poor and his parents work as daily laborers and arranging 1L was a big deal for them. And it’s not easy to get the money back from these agents, they give you a hell lot of trouble before they return the money. I know some people who even left the money with agents as they couldn’t catch them ( a close friend of mine has lost almost 3.2L, he was trying for a govt job after engineering).

The selection procedure was like; they first do a physical round, short list the candidates based on the academic marks and then call for a final round of mock interview which carries 25 marks. These 25 marks makes difference because it’s in the bureaucrats hand and they can award the marks whatever the way they want. I think they keep some loop wholes like this which increases the possibility of bribe. After a wait of six months the results were published in the internet and unfortunately my cousin was not selected but his friend name was there in the list. I am not sure if that guy got selected because he went through an agent but it was evident that my cousin had better marks than this guy in the academics but he failed to get the job. I felt bad for my decision and after that decided not to advice anyone.

Now we have an environment where in we have to compete with the money and not with the marks/skills to land in govt job. I feel until we(people) change our mindset, I don’t see any chance of eradicating corruption. Instead of blaming politicians/bureaucrats, if we decide not to bribe then the whole system will change and it helps to create a better society. I speak about this a lot and try to create awareness among people whenever I get a chance to address public gatherings in my native. I request you all to do the same whenever you get an opportunity. This is what the max we educated can do I believe.