HIGHER EDUCATION IN INDIA - OPEN THE DEADLOCK

When it comes to the quality of higher education in India the mushrooming of medical colleges, engineering colleges and management schools has certainly not provided a solution and the products they continue to push out at the end of every academic session are neither employable nor useful for nation building. If this is the state of affairs in these new institutions then what are the old and established ones doing? Are they any better? Do they stand a chance to compete with the best in the world? Let us get a reality check.

India has five institutions in the top 50 and nine in the top 100 among the top 350 Universities across 17 countries, as per the QS University Rankings Asia 2016. In the BRICS Rankings 2016, India continues to hold its position in the top 10 with IISC at Rank No. 6. India has eight institutions in the top 50 which is the same as Russia and one more than Brazil. From 31 institutions in the rankings last year, India today has 44 institutions in the top 250 of the QS BRICS Rankings 2016. The University of Delhi has taken a lead by rising from 46 last year to 41 this year.

So, the established institutions are not exactly trail blazing success stories. The question is ‘Why’? We have poured in resources but why have we not got the value for our money? Our past Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh summed up our higher education system as sea of institutionalized mediocrity with a few islands of excellence. I cannot agree more. The problem is multi-dimensional and there are four factors which need our attention – students, teachers, syllabus and the system.

Students: The students who are graduating from our primary and secondary education system are either a product of mass copying and cheating or experts in cramming up and regurgitating for examinations.  Rote learning still plagues our system, students study only to score marks in exams, and sometimes to crack exams like IIT JEE, AIIMS or CLAT. The colonial masters introduced education systems in India to create clerks and civil servants, and we have not deviated much from that pattern till today. If once the youngsters prepared en masse for civil services and bank officers exams, they now prepare to become engineers, doctors and lawyers. The mind numbing competition and rote learning do not only crush the creativity and originality of millions of Indian students every year; it also drives brilliant students to commit suicide.

Teachers: Teachers are Nation builders but do they get the recognition for being that. In a materialistic world, where success is gauged only by the size of the bank balance, where is the poor teacher today? Money, power and position in society have all bypassed him/her and barring a few exceptions, he / she stands stripped of all dignity and prestige. If we continue to pay our teachers peanuts we will only attract monkeys for these jobs. Gone are the days of Prof. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan and Prof. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the best in a class aspire to be administrative officers, engineers, doctors but not teachers any more. Higher education is heavily dependent of excellent teachers, who can guide high quality research, and it is not surprising to find that in this system ‘research’ is the worst victim. If teachers cannot imagine it their students will never become it and so it is absolutely essential to attract the very best in this profession. Good teachers need not be restricted to their own small institutions, we can, in this day and age of internet, share them not only with all those institutions which lack good teachers, but virtually with the rest of the world! We need leaders, entrepreneurs in teaching positions, not salaried people trying to hold on to their jobs by marking their attendance.

Syllabus: What we teach today will decide how we compete tomorrow. The syllabus should have two distinct parts – a fixed section of hard core basics and an ever changing section of what the market demands. The market is dynamic, it is always changing and if the graduate programme is unaware of the market place it will invariably produce a bunch of unemployables. The goal of our new syllabus should be to create entrepreneurs, innovators, artists, scientists, thinkers and writers who can establish the foundation of a knowledge based economy rather than the low-quality service provider nation that we are turning into. Why should we be happy Bangaloring jobs from the U.S? When will we start outsourcing our not so smart jobs to the not so smart countries? Why do we spend billions of dollars buying ammunitions, fighter jets and radars from U.S, France, U.K and Israel? How come their syllabus and their system taught them to make all these smart stuff, while our system was busy in campus politics and succeeded in producing only ‘netas’?

System: Education system in India is failing because of more intrinsic reasons. We live in a country where the people see education as the means of climbing the social and economic ladder. My tailor has paid Rs. 21 lacs for a degree in dental sciences for his daughter, not to make her practice dentistry but to make her more eligible for marriage. If the education system is failing – then it is certainly not due to lack of demand for good education, or because a market for education does not exist. There are systemic faults that do not let our demand for good education translate into a great marketplace with excellent education services.

We may have the most number of engineering graduates in the world, but that certainly has not translated into much technological innovation here. Rather, we are busy running the call centres of the rest of the world – that is where our engineering skills end. This is not excellence. We have set the bar so low that we will never be able to compete with the world. Until and unless we encourage innovation and research, creativity and originality and go out hunting for patents we will remain copiers and assembly workers for the world. We have to encourage risk takers, they will not succeed always, but when they will they can create Internet, Smart phones, Facebook and Hotmail!

Still India is in the top 10 Research producing nations globally. In a decade and a half, India has produced over 1.4 million Research Papers attracting a massive 8.5 million citations (7.4 citations per paper). During the same period, the Indian Scientific Community filed 4.6 Lacs Patent applications. A total of 1, 29,481 scientific papers were published by Indian authors in 2015, but the question is of quality......how many of them were path breaking?

We have tolerated mediocrity for far too long. Our education system will remain sub-par or mediocre until we make it clear that it is not ok to be mediocre. If we want excellence, mediocrity cannot be tolerated. Mediocrity has to be discarded as an option. We have to put some fire under the seat of mediocre students and mediocre teachers and make them function to their fullest potential. Accountability should be non-negotiable. With internet reaching our villages, for a country as big and as varied as India, distant learning is the way to go ahead. This will make good education, imparted by good educators, universally available and this is the only way reservation will become irrelevant. If a religious preacher in Middle East, by his hateful teachings can pollute the minds and hearts of so many young men and women in this sub-continent using distant learning of sorts, why can’t the good, the useful, the precious use the same medium and make India more imaginative, more inquisitive, more purposeful and more educated?

President Pronob Mukherjee is of the opinion that "Education as the alchemy can bring India its next golden age," Our first citizen has given us the key to the key to the next golden age, are we going to use it to open the deadlock?

ACID ATTACK - AN ABHORRENT CRIME

ACID ATTACK – AN ABHORRENT CRIME

Acid attack or Vitriolage is the most heinous crime known to mankind. The victim usually does not die because of the criminal act but is cursed to live a life of misery, shame and agony. The villainous act is enacted to disfigure, mime, torture and kill the victim socially, psychologically and economically bit by bit every day. The perpetrator usually does not want to kill the victim, but wants to do something worse than murder – make the victim suffer forever.

Vitriolage as a phenomenon is firmly rooted in the crucible of ages bygone. Historically its purpose was vitriol, i.e., hatred, then and now too it is no different. Its scope has nevertheless widened with the passage of time. Innovation is never in short supply when it comes to cruelty. Corrosive acid has now become the weapon of choice for a wide range of individuals determined to inflict life-long suffering on their victims. Acid attacks have been documented in different parts of the world, including Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Italy, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Uganda, UK, USA, and Vietnam. However, incidences in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Cambodia and Uganda are much higher and are on the rise.

Acid attacks, like other forms of violence against women, are not random or natural phenomena. They are social phenomena deeply embedded in a gender order that has historically privileged patriarchal control over women and justified the use of violence to “keep women in their places.” Acid attacks in India are a crime of passion. Acid attacks in India have ravaged the lives of thousands of young women whose only fault was that they

ú   Repudiated marriage proposals

ú   Rejected sexual advances from men they didn’t fancy

ú   Were caught in the crossfire of domestic disputes

ú   Conflicts over land and property

ú   Gang violence and rivalry

ú   Socially, politically and religiously motivated

When we try to analyze why acid attacks are so common in our sub-continent three factors stand out prominently:

1.     Gender discrimination - Women allegedly or actually transgress hegemonic gender norms and roles that discriminate against women and keep them in subordinated positions.

2.     Easy availability of Acids - Acid is easily and cheaply available, and no licenses or customer identification is required

3.     Feeble laws - The laxity of certain sections of the law and the delay in delivery of justice allow the offenders to walk away with minimal punishment

The Acid Survivors Trust International (ASTI), a London-based charity, tentatively estimates that some 1,000 acid attacks occur every year in India. However, in the absence of official statistics, campaigners put the true figure even higher: at roughly 400 every month. Governments do not keep data of acid attack. Bangladesh – Acid Survivor Foundation (ASF) recorded 3000 attacks between 1999 and 2013. In India news paper reported 153 attacks between Jan 2002 to October 2010 and only God knows how many go unreported. In Cambodia the Cambodian Acid Survivor Charity reported 271 attacks between 1985 and 2010. When we try to understand why is it that there is so little genuine data we are faced by a bunch of causes: lack of funding for research, hard to gain access to interview the victims, victims are ashamed and may not want to see or talk to anyone other than their doctors or social workers, their refusal to talk about their traumatic experiences to strangers or they are too disabled to participate in any survey.

The problems encountered by these unfortunate victims are medical, psychological and social. Medical problems include horrific disfigurement of facial features – scalp, skull, eyelids, nose, ears, lips, mouth, face and neck and often blindness. Psychologically they suffer from anxiety, depression, loss of self esteem, suicidal tendencies, and distress due to concern for their appearance and increased self consciousness. Socially  they  depend on others for day to day work, are not able to find suitable work, due to impaired vision, physical handicap, lack of social acceptance and the routinely have difficulties with social interactions. There is a negative economic impact on families, frequent divorce or abandonment by their spouse and most of the women are shunned and ostracized by the society.

To combat acid violence, we the people and our governments should address the root cause – inequality and discrimination against women. Every other step is secondary if the individuality and dignity of a woman is not respected. We can then go on and enact laws to

ú  Limit the availability of acid by effectively regulating  the production, distribution, use, sale, handling,  storage, labeling, transfer, and disposal of acid by manufacturers, distributors, and other business and individual users of acid in order to deter the unauthorized use of acid

ú  Unlicensed, over-the-counter sale of acids should be banned immediately and the origin of the chemical should be traced and the vendors prosecuted. Buyer of acids must provide a photo identity card to any retailer when they make a purchase. The retailers must register the name and address of the buyer.

ú  Regulate the safe-handling, appropriately punish perpetrators by enacting and implementing laws that specifically tackle this problem effectively and swiftly.

ú  Support women’s empowerment to enhance their self-confidence and ability to sustain independent livelihoods.

ú  Provide redress to victims, including compensation for healthcare costs.

Often these victims need multiple stages of painstaking reconstructive surgeries and a prolonged professional, personal and social rehabilitation program. For all this they need continuous financial support. Insufficient infrastructural support at most of the remote and non metropolitan cities, does not allow the victims of acid attack to get the quality expertise, which otherwise would reduce not only the complexities of deformities but also help save some of the vital functions like vision, etc. as well as improve the quality of life. This gender based violence against women is so horrific that it is an insult to our nation and we Indians need to take it up very seriously.

HAPPY EID - AN OCCASION TO CONTEMPLATE AND CHANGE COURSE

May I and my family wish you and your family everywhere in the worls a very happy Eid! May the choicest blessings of God be with you, irrespective of your religion, caste and nationality, and may you be blessed with health and prosperity, love and affection, and success in every sphere of life! I do so no only because you are my friend but because I am about to give you a back-breaking burden of responsibility.

This is one world that God has created for us all and it is His desire that we share its bounty and live in peace and harmony. But are we doing so? We are living in difficult times. These are the times that the Prophet described as the times of fitan; crises coming one after another; crises that shake our faith and test our patience. In these difficult times we need to keep alive the spirit and lessons of Ramadan: lessons of self-restraint, patience, forbearance and compassion.

The ignorant will often tell you that the Muslim world is passing through a deep crisis, little realizing that it is no different world than the one in which they too are living. So problems that are raising their ugly head today anywhere in the world are our problems not anyone else’s.

There are two types of challenges facing us today. First and foremost, we are faced with ignorance and extremism. I put them together because they go hand in hand. This has given the opportunity to the affluent west to target us. We know that Islam is peace and yet the actions of many among us show otherwise; we say Islam is mercy and yet there are our brothers who don't hesitate to kill each other as if they were flies. We say Islam is discipline and self-restraint and yet we easily become impatient. Extremism is a disease we must deal with. And this can only be done through education. Our children and youth need to be educated in the morals, character and virtues of our religion – Hinduism, Christianity or Islam; we need to make them exemplars of mercy and compassion. We need to teach them values and principles; we need to nurture them as leaders who shall stand forth as witnesses of justice and compassion for all humanity.

Second and equally disturbing is the silence of the ‘good’. How can we become good Hindus and good Muslims and good Christians if we do not raise our voice against injustice and oppression irrespective of the religion of the perpetrator? How can we allow a handful of mad men and women taint our religion, our culture and our centuries of civilization? When the teaming majority is for humanity, peace and peaceful coexistence then can we remain silent any longer and let these lunatics turn Islam into a faith that is against the world. In face of increasing Islamophobia we need to reach out to all other communities in a true spirit of good will and cooperation on projects of virtue and compassion. We need to demonstrate through our actions that we are for living in peace, in mutual respect with all the people. This is our Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, we are products of this society, how can we let offenders, irrespective of their religion, get away with murder, butchery and destruction of our way of life!

Let us all become instruments of peace and good will in a world torn apart by wars, antagonism, racism, and xenophobia. The stage is set for people of this subcontinent to show leadership and broker peace in the world. The usual peace makers have failed miserably, let us do it now!

Dear friend, on this Eid I invite you to be the new ambassador of peace.

TOGETHER WE CAN DO IT!

Today is World Environment Day. Today I wish to make an earnest request to all my friends. You all have an impulse habit of presenting floral bouquets to friends and relatives on all occasions - birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, promotions and other celebrations. Every conference, every function has bouquets which once the occasion passes, are of no use and lie scattered, unattended and unsung. Friends, flowers look best in trees and plants, not when bunched together and suffocated in cellophane. Let us in the next 5 years change this trend of presenting floral bouquets and replace them with saplings of green trees and flowering plants. This way we will all contribute towards making our planet green again. It will be the social responsibility of the conference organizers, the wedding planners, the host family to pass on these saplings to professional gardeners for their plantation and upkeep.

Can you imagine what would be the scale of this movement if you personally agree and make others see the true value of re-greening our planet? You will post yourself in the forefront of battle against Climate change and not remain a complaining spectator any more. Let us start this movement from our doorsteps. Merely passing on this message will not help. Your active cooperation and untiring efforts are needed to change a useless habit into a useful game changer. I welcome you all to the Climate change army! Together we can do it!!               

JOBS NEVER RETURN – THEY CHANGE

Will the horse and the buggy ever return to our roads? Riding on a tanga was a great fun in childhood, but they all faded away with our childhood. The manual rickshaw is getting replaced by the E-rickshaw and the three wheelers. Now if the tanga-walas and the rickshaw-walas complain that automation is killing us and starving our children to death, is it a fair criticism? When the world was changing, those who were intelligent enough saw it as an opportunity to progress in life and took to the change as fish takes to water, but those who chose to stay as complaining bystanders then are marginalized and poor today! Who is at fault for their plight? Surely not development! And those obsolete jobs are never going to come back. People have to modify their skills to learn to do new things that are in demand in the job market or they have to learn a whole new set of skills.

So when the Left and Left of Centre Thinkdom (LLCT) laments that the government of the day is not creating new jobs and across seven seas Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders sing the same tune and shout from every available rooftop that they will bring back the jobs to America, they are missing the big picture. Those jobs are never going to come back………..simply because they are of no use.   

In economics, productivity—the amount of economic value created for a given unit of input, such as an hour of labor—is a crucial indicator of growth and wealth creation. When productivity and employment are plotted on a graph the two lines historically closely tracked each other, with increases in jobs corresponding to increases in productivity. The pattern was clear: as businesses generated more value from their workers, the country as a whole became richer, which fueled more economic activity and created even more jobs. Then, beginning in 2000, the lines diverged; productivity continued to rise robustly, but employment suddenly wilted. By 2011, a significant gap appears between the two lines, showing economic growth with no parallel increase in job creation. Brynjolfsson and McAfee of the U.S. call it the “great decoupling.” And Brynjolfsson says he is confident that technology is behind both the healthy growth in productivity and the weak growth in jobs.

So has rapid technological change been destroying jobs faster than it is creating them, contributing to the stagnation of median income and the growth of inequality in the world today? If the answer to this is yes  then what do we do? Do we stop technological advances for the sake of retaining jobs? Surely not. We need to learn newer skills, which will be in demand in the new world.

People are falling behind because technology is advancing so fast that our skills and our organizations aren’t keeping up. While in India we do not find robots replacing factory workers regularly, but changes are happening all around us. A less dramatic change, but one with a potentially far larger impact on employment, is taking place in clerical work and professional services. Technologies like the Web, artificial intelligence, big data, and improved analytics—all made possible by the ever increasing availability of cheap computing power and storage capacity—are automating many routine tasks. Countless traditional white-collar jobs, such as many in the post office and in customer service, have disappeared.

Globalization – the process by which ideas, people, money, goods and services cross borders at unprecedented speed, has fired the second salvo. It has allowed industries in the developed world to shift their manufacturing units to the developing countries where labour is comparatively cheaper. This has resulted in drying out of the blue collared factory jobs of the ‘drone class’ in the industrialized west and given a shot in the arm of developing economies whose workers today enjoy a better standard of living. But what is palpably missing is any attempt by the so called developed world to re-train their now idle work force to learn newer and useful skills. Environment is the biggest challenge to the very existence of our being today, and the industrialized nations have the largest carbon footprints. When automobile, textile and pharmaceautical factories were shutting down and the economy was staring down the crater of yet another depression then instead of exploiting this environmental challenge and becoming world leaders in Sun and Wind and Water energy by high quality research, Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Sander’s predecessors chose to sell bogus home loans to the those who would never be able to repay and allow fat bonuses for the corrupt bank honchos. What did the U.P.A do in India? They sold national assets – coal, land, spectrum etc for peanuts and pocketed huge kickbacks!

The fact is that unimaginative governments are hollowing out the middle class. Computers have increasingly taken over such tasks as bookkeeping, clerical work, and repetitive production jobs in manufacturing—all of which typically provided middle-class pay. At the same time, higher-paying jobs requiring creativity and problem-solving skills, often aided by computers, have proliferated. So have low-skill jobs: demand has increased for restaurant workers, janitors, home health aides, and others doing service work that is nearly impossible to automate. Even if today’s digital technologies are holding down job creation, history suggests that it is most likely a temporary, albeit painful, shock; as workers adjust their skills. Good and responsive governments are expected to aid, assist and nurture this process and also help entrepreneurs create opportunities based on the new technologies. Only then will the number of jobs rebound.

The silver lining is that higher productivity will eventually deliver cheaper goods and higher disposable incomes, as it did during the Industrial Revolution. Automation will allow for new technologies to develop and allow workers to utilise their inborn human skills, their computing skills and their newly acquired job skills to advantages in ways that are currently unimaginable. Just as we could not imagine what jobs would emerge when the cars replaced the horses, or when computers replaced office workers, so too are we blind to the jobs that will come into existence thanks to 3D printing or artificial intelligence. The global warming will have to be met with a host of all new skills and all these are jobs in the making.

If we remove our bias-tinted glasses and try to see the facts technology has actually been a great job creating machine. Your lone neighbourhood barber shop employing two has been replaced by a hair styling salon, with perhaps a spa and a sauna employing eight people in two shifts!  Hard, dangerous and dull jobs are on decline like in agriculture but and manufacturing but they are being more than offset by rapid growth in the caring, creative, technology and business services sectors. But then again…..these skills have to be learnt.  Weavers, knitters, typists, secretaries have fewer options today but teachers, domestic helpers, welfare, housing, youth and community workers – electricians, plumbers, furnishers are all in high demand!

Our educational system is not adequately preparing us for work of the future, and our political and economic institutions were, till recently, poorly equipped to handle these hard choices. This needs urgent attention. Driven by revolutions in education and in technology, the very nature of work will have changed radically—but only in economies that have chosen to invest in education, technology, and related infrastructure. Hence the success of ‘Skill India’ is non negotiable.

We need a holistic action plan that covers every base — one that includes a skilling and re-skilling programme to increase employability and productivity, incentives for smaller enterprises that absorb a greater number of workers, and the embedding of job generation in the massive infrastructure upgrade that India requires. Jobs must be the pivot for social and economic policy and key to the promised ‘Acche Din’!

SOCIAL MEDIA – NOT EVERYTHING IS HUNKY DORY

There are only a few technology-loving, mind-stimulating and idea-generating individuals out there who are still unplugged from social media. I am sure those too will join soon as well since social media is not just a platform for easy online marketing and aimless gossips, it is also the stand alone revolution of our century!

But is it actually ‘sugar and spice and everything nice’? One of my colleagues exclaimed the other day that she feels totally exhausted and drained out and is going for a month long break. I thought she is contemplating a vacation but when I inquired where she intended to go she said “nowhere, just unplugging myself from the social media”!

 The social media has completely changed our way of life from what it was only twenty years ago. Now, there is a dramatic decrease in face-to-face communication, which reduces our generation’s ability to interact with others on a speaking level. The youngsters, in particular, enjoy the cloak of anonymity provided by the social media and the not so young, instead of putting their mind and their experience to a problem in hand, they take the short-cut refuge of the social media. During our childhood when our parents read the Ramayana or the Mahabharata to us, each one of us had an imaginary Ajodhya and a Hastinapur in our mind. We could vividly dream of Gulliver in the land of Lilliputs and experience the thrills of Sinbad as sailed the unknown seas. It is this imagination which became the first victim of television, the forefather of social media.

Multiple social networks, from Twitter and Google+ to Orkut and MySpace create an information overload that is difficult to manage. People juggling between these sites have trouble processing all the information making the whole exercise excessively taxing. A 2009 study by three Stanford University professors on cognitive control concluded that chronic media multi-taskers are more susceptible to distraction.

True, I will be the first to admit that had it not been for Facebook and WhatsApp we would have perhaps never known where our long lost school mates and college pals are in life. These virtual reunions have rekindled our friendships and stimulated us towards real life reunions, this time with our spouses and children and this has added the long lost colours to our tapestry of life. But this joy has come with a price tag that cannot be denied. 

Over the years I have noticed that social media can easily reach out and touch people’s emotions. That is why it is important that it provokes the correct type of emotions. Posts that invoke amazement, joy, surprise and positive vibes are great but those which provoke anger, hate and anxiety are certainly not so. Anger is a unique emotion and needs to be handled with care. Well managed it can lead to the Arab Spring and ‘Abki baar Modi Sarkar’ but poorly managed it can precipitate violent riots, communal disharmony and threat to nationhood. Bloggers may, by their blogs and posts grab attention to evoke anger or capitalize on the anger their audience is already experiencing about a certain topic. These can often go hand in hand with social movements and protest of issues directly impacting society at large. But again, this can go out of hand and cause disaster. The conglomeration of hundreds of mourners at the burial of convicted terrorist and traitors is also courtesy social media!

Naturally when a far reaching medium such as the internet brings us social networking sites that spice up our lives a little, it also attracts the fractious few of society. Disasters are for individuals, for companies and for nations.

Individuals:

1.       Hacking: Incidents of profiles and accounts being hacked into are commonplace. While this could be restricted to simply playing a practical joke on a friend, it sometimes leads to the more serious misdemeanor of identity theft.

2.       Likes that do not mean anything: Social networking often can help create something which does not exist or may not be as good as it is presented. Thus a hundred ‘likes’ can be manufactured for products of sub-optimal quality and doubtful use. The same illusion is created for personal lives of people. Just posting happy and party pictures do not mean one is actually happy!

3.       Lack of emotional connect: The quality of a conversation using social media is awful because one cannot sense the emotion or enthusiasm from the other person. It makes one wonder if they actually mean what they say.

4.       Gives license to be hurtful: Some comments are offensive to the point of getting hurtful when the writers forget that there are real people at the receiving end. Suicides have resulted from such hurtful comments!

5.       Conveys inauthentic expressions and feelings: ‘Hah-hah’ and ‘LOL’ are feelings which are no match to a bear hug, an embrace or a full throttle laugh.

6.       Face to face interaction suffers: When I see my friends on their phones and I am around them, I feel disconnected even though we are only two feet apart….. In fact English language has a new word for ignoring the person in front of you in favour of one’s smart phone…..fubbing! The world is more connected but we as individuals are getting disconnected!

7.       Facilitates laziness: Social media is a fantastic way of doing nothing. It causes laziness because instead of running to your friends you can message them. Or instead of walking upstairs to notify the family of dinner you can WhatsApp them as they all are online!

8.       Creates a skewed self image: We all develop this perfect image of ourselves and some of us actually try to rely on this imaginative thought we have of ourselves instead of staying true to who we are.

9.       Distraction is maximum: Smart phones distract you from every other thing - watching television doing homework and even spending time with friends and family. The number of accidents that have occurred on the roads and at work because of smart phones is mind boggling.

10.   Pictures and videos posted can be morphed photo-shopped and doctored and used for blackmailing, defamation and cyber bullying.

11.   Defense personnel, national project engineers and scientist face an added disadvantage of hackers misusing any leaked classified information. Any unintended slip of information could have serious ramifications and jeopardize national security if it falls into the wrong hands.

12.   Imposters: Social media provides anonymity to many imposters. There have been so many cases in developing countries where people fall in love over social media website and end up being cheated financially, emotionally and physically.

13.   There is an extensive range of mental and health problems known to be associated with spending too much time on social media. In addition to reducing productivity, creating distractions and increasing burnouts, they can cause some serious medical issues like to stroke, blood pressure, colds, dementia and cognitive problems.

Companies:  Viruses and malware also pose a serious threat to the safety of the IT systems. Numerous applications available through Facebook are potential sources for these Social networking at workplace can also cause confidentiality issues. An angry employee can use these sites to leak sensitive information to public causing financial and credibility loss for a company. Employee infighting, dissent against the management can come out in the open. Employees posting bad comments about the company out of momentary indiscretion can create a negative image (even if false) can hurt business prospects.

Nations: Social networking websites have, at times, been used for the purpose of furthering political agendas. This has proved to be significant disadvantage of social networking at many places. China’s blocking of Twitter and YouTube before the 20th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre, or the use of Facebook as a medium for instigating and spreading the message that led to riots in London, have been questioned. Criticizing the Union of India, it’s President and its Supreme Court by a bunch from the Left and Left of Centre thinkdom (LLCT) following the hanging of convicted terrorists is still fresh in our mind and was certainly not the best use of social media! 

Social media has brought to the world a common medium for thoughts, words and expression. However its correct and efficient usage is completely dependent on how it is managed. Being aware of the risks and vulnerabilities that we are exposed to through these media only empowers us further to use them in a positive way. It is up to us to make sure that social networking does not turn into social dysfunction.

MARIO MIRANDA – FONDLY REMEMBERING A GENIUS

Google today reminded us all of this genius who could bring a smile in every face, every day when we opened the Times of India or The Illustrated Weekly of India or the Economic Times or even the Femina. By honouring Mario Miranda on his 90^th birthday with a special doodle featuring naturally a rainy Mumbai tableau, drawn by artist Aaron Renier, who like Miranda is also known for portraying crowded cityscapes, Google reminded us of this great genius. Mario’s slice-of-life style represented the layered view that people saw every day. His portraits were always bustling and teeming with characters, each of whom seemed to have a mind of their own. His creations, such as Miss Nimbupani and Miss Fonseca were all so well known to us that we could pick them up in any crowd anywhere!

Mário João Carlos do Rosário de Brito Miranda (2 May 1926–11 December 2011), popularly known as Mario Miranda or Mario de Miranda, was a cartoonist and painter par excellence. He was based in Loutolim in Goa from where he created history. It all started in Daman, then in Portuguese India, where he was born to Goan Catholic parents. At an early age when his mother saw him drawing on the walls of his home she brought him a blank book, which he called his "Diary". He got into trouble for sketching the caricature of Catholic priests in school. Mario Miranda's early cartoons presented vignettes of Goan village life, a theme he is best known for even today.

He studied at St. Joseph's Boys' High School, Bangalore and then did a B.A. in History at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai and tried studying architecture but soon lost interest. He started his career in an advertising studio, where he worked for four years, before taking up cartooning full-time. Illustrated Weekly of India was his first stop, then Current magazine and soon after was a regular with the Times of India.

Miranda's big break came in 1974, when, at the invitation of the United States Information Services, he travelled to the U.S, which enabled him to promote his art and interact with other cartoonists there. He got a chance to work with Charles M. Schulz, the creator of Peanuts and interacted with Herblock, the editorial cartoonist of the Washington Post. He held solo exhibitions in over 22 countries, including the United States, Japan, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, France, Yugoslavia, and Portugal.

The Nation awarded him the Padma Shri in 1988, the Padma Bhushan in 2002. The All India Cartoonists's Association, Bangalore, honoured him with a lifetime achievement award. The King of Spain, Juan Carlos, conferred on Mario the highest civilian honour of "Cross of the Order of Isabel the Catholic" which was presented to him on 11 November 2009 at his family home in Loutulim by Don Miguel Nieto Sandoval and on 29 December 2009 Portugal, under the President of the Republic Aníbal António Cavaco Silva, made him "Commander of the Order of Prince Henry", a Portuguese National Order of knighthood. Mario Miranda was posthumously awarded the Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award in the Republic of India, by the President on 4 April 2012.

Immortalized even after his death Mario’s cartoons grace the walls of one of South Mumbai's most famous hotspots, Cafe Mondegar, in Colaba and his caricatures are also seen in the municipal market of Panjim, Goa. Besides cartooning, Miranda's murals are present on various buildings in Goa and other parts of India. As if that was not enough, he took to painting later in life and excelled once again!

He had published several books - Laugh it Off, Goa with Love, and Germany in Winter time and he illustrated books by Dom Moraes (A Journey to Goa), Manohar Malgaonkar (Inside Goa) and Mario Cabral e Sá's (Legends of Goa). He also illustrated many children's books of Uma Anand including Dul-Dul, The Magic Clay Horse (1968), The Adventures of Pilla the Pup (1969), and Lumbdoom and The Long-Tailed Langoor (1968).

Mario Miranda's sly sense of humour was evident in all of his illustrations which spoke so much about the society, in fact much more than words could ever do justice! On his death Vijay Seth, a fellow cartoonist, who considered Mario as his mentor, paid a fitting tribute: “With pen & ink that were at his command to churn out lines that every nib would be jealous of, he brushed aside the old school of cartooning using the brush, and set a new norm to use the nib pen and to master it for this branch of art. Mario created characters that gave his daily audience their quota of a smile without malice. His trips around the globe produced subtle close observations of the local musings – a fitting example of how far can one stretch the parameters of this branch of neglected art.”

An outstanding Indian, whom I remember fondly seeing in the morning news paper every day sang ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara’ on behalf of all of us. Indeed I miss his ‘sur’ today!