Indian Education System

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 02 Jun 2013 22:44

Actuarial science is in math dept. here in my town. The job of an actuary has come out on top as the bhestesht job - flashed on tv a cpl of days back. Very little interaction with people leading to little stress and pay is not bad. Whatever decisions one makes are not going to bite them in their lifetime. So no accountability

Only downside is to have to deal with morbid (literally) subject matter.

VKumar · Post by **VKumar** » 02 Jun 2013 23:25

My son is studying FOOD TECHNOLOGY at ICT (formerly UDCT). He wants to do a masters abroad - US or EU in Food Tech/Food Engg/Food Sc. Will appreciate suggestions/guidance. Scholarship/assistantship will help but not essential.
Thanks in advance!

Vipul · Post by **Vipul** » 19 Jun 2013 03:16

A million engineers in India struggling to get placed in an extremely challenging market.

Somewhere between a fifth to a third of the million students graduating out of India's engineering colleges run the risk of being unemployed. Others will take jobs well below their technical qualifications in a market where there are few jobs for India's overflowing technical talent pool. Beset by a flood of institutes (offering a varying degree of education) and a shrinking market for their skills, India's engineers are struggling to subsist in an extremely challenging market.

According to multiple estimates, India trains around 1.5 million engineers, which is more than the US and China combined. However, two key industries hiring these engineers -- information technology and manufacturing -- are actually hiring fewer people than before.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 19 Jun 2013 07:12

freshers are desperately looking for any job. any walk-in interview in blr means a line about a 1 km long outside the place. you can see it yourself on any weekend morning near the IT offices. those with means are hoping to get a outlet through GRE. but millions are not so blessed.

vivek_v · Post by **vivek_v** » 19 Jun 2013 08:57

Singha wrote:freshers are desperately looking for any job. any walk-in interview in blr means a line about a 1 km long outside the place. you can see it yourself on any weekend morning near the IT offices. those with means are hoping to get a outlet through GRE. but millions are not so blessed.

The issue with GRE outlet is that with Rs:58 to a dollar the required educational loan will be around 25-30 Lakhs. In the current scenario universities does not offer much of aid at the outset and it is difficult to convince the visa counseller that TA/RA positions would be available after you join the course.

The maximum loan which is offered is only around 20Lakhs which means that even with means are finding it difficult and some universities needs proof of funding during application stage itself. This means that nowadays people only with 'extremely' good means could afford the GRE route. I hope that the ruling government is happy since they managed to close even the only avenue available for many middle class family's aspirations for their sons/daughters and everyone now can be an aam aadmi.

Then again freshers themselves also need to take some portion of the blame. In my days (only 11 years ago, i am still very young by BR standards

) probably 10%-15% of the batch would have got placed and even there had some very tough cutoff conditions like above 70% throughout the academic carrier, no arrears, very good technical knowledge, at-least reasonable communication skills ....etc. I still remember the days and nights spent reading 'C', Pointers, Data structures, Assembly/Firmware programming, Java collections...etc needed to clear one interview plus the usual suspects (Rs.agarval,Shakuntala devi puzzles) .

The probability of mass recruitment's, if above a certain percentage then hired with just a HR round (yes it is true...i guess it was HCL or TCS do not remember clearly), getting placed in 3rd year, getting hired in IT without any knowledge or aptitude towards programming, 20% hike every year like it was a commandment from god...etc was something which could have never lasted for long. I would say that things are not very bad and are still in around like it was a decade ago (i.e) With sufficient knowledge of programming one can still get placed without too much difficulty and can make a good carrier in IT.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 19 Jun 2013 12:12

>> still remember the days and nights spent reading 'C', Pointers, Data structures, Assembly/Firmware programming, Java collections...

yes I agree. too many have fallen into the trap of downloading solutions and code fragments off the web, without the hard work of slogging through the problems themselves. assignment copying is also a epidemic with hardly a few doing it and rest copying.

all boils down to hunger to learn and personal ethics. even with all such temptations of the dark side, good students are holding to the straight path and doing well.

one proof of over supply is back in 1998 my gross was around 1.8-2.1 L and today also avg fresher salary is like that after nearly 15 yrs.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 19 Jun 2013 23:07

....and at the same time India faces a dire shortage of civil engineers will to work for middling level pay that construction companies can afford to pay Rs10,000-Rs15,000 pm. Recently my dads company advertised for civil engineering jobs for a project near chinnasalem. They needed about 80 engineers for 3 years minimum. Typical rotation 6 weeks in field 2 weeks home. Several hundred showed up for interview. After 'consulting with family' only 20 or so signed up and even that was not the better candidates. What does one do....

There are only so many a/c comfort jobs in a place like India.

Makes me nostalgic for my nomadic days wandering the wilds of Karnatak & TN & Kerala, kicked around like football by higher ups. There was a 3 month period where I did not see a single phone to call back home. Riots in Dharwad, Monks in Tibetan Mundgod, Rain in Haliyal, Oh! my god the rain...

I think this surplus of educated folks is good. System will sort itself out soon enough. Not everyone will be an engineer, only the better ones.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 20 Jun 2013 00:27

> Just reviewed some ICSE math books.

Are they available on flipcart or amazon india?

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 20 Jun 2013 03:14

Theo_Fidel wrote:....and at the same time India faces a dire shortage of civil engineers will to work for middling level pay that construction companies can afford to pay Rs10,000-Rs15,000 pm. Recently my dads company advertised for civil engineering jobs for a project near chinnasalem. They needed about 80 engineers for 3 years minimum. Typical rotation 6 weeks in field 2 weeks home. Several hundred showed up for interview. After 'consulting with family' only 20 or so signed up and even that was not the better candidates. What does one do....

There are only so many a/c comfort jobs in a place like India.

Makes me nostalgic for my nomadic days wandering the wilds of Karnatak & TN & Kerala, kicked around like football by higher ups. There was a 3 month period where I did not see a single phone to call back home. Riots in Dharwad, Monks in Tibetan Mundgod, Rain in Haliyal, Oh! my god the rain...

I think this surplus of educated folks is good. System will sort itself out soon enough. Not everyone will be an engineer, only the better ones.

Similarly, there is a real lack of commercial/industrial electricians as well. These could be good paying jobs, but nobody want to do it. Talking to my youngest nieces and nephews, all they want to do is IT or finance MBA and get a job in a bank. The service sector does not create all jobs. You've got to make and build stuff.

SriKumar · Post by **SriKumar** » 20 Jun 2013 06:54

Theo_Fidel wrote:....and at the same time India faces a dire shortage of civil engineers will to work for middling level pay that construction companies can afford to pay Rs10,000-Rs15,000 pm. Recently my dads company advertised for civil engineering jobs for a project near chinnasalem.

Dire shortage...? So what prevents them from upping the wage from a basic 10K level to something more competitive? Perhaps the company can get by with a small fraction of their engineer requirement?? Or perhaps the field itself is somehow immune to/protected from market forces? It seems very odd given that it is such a basic field, and one would think (and hope and pray) that the activity is being supervised/directed by competent engineers, and yet the salaries are low (relatively).

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 20 Jun 2013 07:35

pandyan wrote:Just reviewed some ICSE math books. The quality of ICSE books are outstanding. I sometimes wonder if I would have learned bit better if I had access to these books.

my son in grade3 ICSE. I was happy to note this science book isnt just a collection of facts about plants and animal life, but from chapter1 itself they are supposed to
- form teams
- design experiments to compare plants deprived of water and sun with normal ones
- make predictions what will happen
- learn how to vary only one factor and keep rest equal
- compare findings with predictions
- come to the conclusion of the experiment

every chapter is on those lines. so while the book is not thick, there is plenty of scope to use the brain cells if people are interested.

some exam oriented parents on the lookout for "Scoring subjects" complain about the constant project oriented nature of ICSE curriculum though

I am not one of them ...my son also loves the "learning by doing approach" .... give him rote type mugging work and he usually cannot sit in one place to do it, he will take off his shirt and sometimes his shorts , stand on one leg on the table and do it like that just out of boredom.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 20 Jun 2013 11:06

flipkart has many such books. I dont think all icse schools follow same books, there is some freedom to decide which one to pick.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 20 Jun 2013 15:13

icse was always this way it seems. my wife studied in that board and reports the same thing from mid 90s high school era.

cbse is also tracking along the same lines ?

its some of the state board which lag behind. in response, the better schools are wholesale abandoning the state boards even in "tier 2" states like assam. my school (don bosco) and many other shifted to cbse a while back.

in metros we already see this happened decades ago....none of the good english medium unaided schools in blr follow state board.

prahaar · Post by **prahaar** » 20 Jun 2013 18:17

Does switching out of a state board reduce the amount of seats available for professional courses in the state? Or does it not matter any more with the need for a separate engineering entrance test and medical entrance test at state level?

At least during my time in high school that was a "drawback" if you were not an IIT/JEE type.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 20 Jun 2013 21:17

I did CBSE back in the day and switched to State for my boards. No doubt about it CBSE text books are much better written and easy to read through. But… …the textbooks themselves were never enough….

The CBSE exams were brutal. ICSE was supposed to be even harder. All kind of stuff not in the textbook would show up. Impossible to get above 90%. For my State syllabus folks who routinely score 100% this was a joke! All can sit for the state boards CBSE, ICSE, etc does not matter. What sort of score you get is another matter.

IIRC there have been specific court cases that now say questions in board exams cannot come from outside the text book. This has changed the entire structure of the exam to mugging up and has also changed the structure of textbooks to question+answer style. Personally none of it mattered as the state syllabus types were just as brilliant IME. In fact the same group would often top both state syllabus and IIT-JEE at least back in the 80’s. Though later JEE folks started going their own way.

csaurabh · Post by **csaurabh** » 05 Jul 2013 10:17

JEE destroyed. Kapil Sibbal gets his revenge.

From facebook

So Mr Sibbal completes his mission of completely destroying JEE. We all know that a not so good compromise was achieved due to political reasons and now they have achieved the original agenda by using a bizarre normalization method.

Two students score same marks 291 in JEE advanced but end having ranks of 127 and 1260 because their board marks were different by 3 % (95 and 92 respectively).

Another person I know score 88% in CBSE and 278 in JEE. His rank is in 6000+.

The problem is that they are calculating the percentiles from the two exams and linearly adding them. However the distribution of marks in boards and JEE is completely different. Both are positively skewed distributions but completely different in their tails. So effectively even if one person scores 15% more marks in JEE advanced as compared to some other guy the JEE percentile difference between the two of them can be easily offset by scoring 2% higher board marks. Which to me is a complete joke.
- What was the need to rush this decision before doing any proper checks on the method in order to put in some common sense.

If I get the data I will be able to prove whats going on however from the above 2 and some other examples I have got to know, its pretty clear to me about whats going on.

geeth · Post by **geeth** » 05 Jul 2013 17:39

JEE ADVANCED is the old JEE and is used for admission to IITs. JEE MAIN is the old AIEEE and used for admission to NITs. Only JEE Main uses Board marks for calculation of rank list for admission to NITs. IIT rank list does not consider board marks in their calculation, except that the first 20 Percentile from respective boards only will be eligible for admission. So some one has a good JEE advance score, but doesn't come within the first 20 percentile, he cannot get admission to IIT. Based on last year performance, anyone getting 78% marks in CBSE would fall within the 20 Percentile of CBSE board.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 06 Jul 2013 04:17

I can very much see why job market for niche and other basis path engineering life sucks on salary for many. The reason is we don't have standards, and we cheat the system encouraging only the cream and rich to get richer. In the RE sector, where the scam and black money can be converted to a well engineered setup, a better setup, encourages kids to seek diverse studies. The market demand aspect is one side, but illegal money squandering, and spoiling an industry and market area is the long side effect of corruption and correction-less society.

Sorry, but I had to mention when you guys took the salary route. We have no measures on what values to be given, relative to other fields. In massa, a civil engineer would not get sucked in salary issues in 1:10 scale but not more than 1:2 scale max. now start thinking about corrections for the future.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 06 Jul 2013 06:02

geeth wrote:JEE ADVANCED is the old JEE and is used for admission to IITs. JEE MAIN is the old AIEEE and used for admission to NITs. Only JEE Main uses Board marks for calculation of rank list for admission to NITs. IIT rank list does not consider board marks in their calculation, except that the first 20 Percentile from respective boards only will be eligible for admission. So some one has a good JEE advance score, but doesn't come within the first 20 percentile, he cannot get admission to IIT. Based on last year performance, anyone getting 78% marks in CBSE would fall within the 20 Percentile of CBSE board.

Thanks for a fact based post. So, things are not as dire as they are made out to be on the facebook.

chaanakya · Post by **chaanakya** » 06 Jul 2013 15:36

Well , Normalisation formula may be skewed and imperfect. but I dont see a reason to reject Board exam marks for which students study two years and is culmination of 12 years of schooling. Just by getting specialised coaching foe JEE advanced and Main and scoring high marks in that does not guarantee a good engineer. And if the high ranker in JEE advanced was so good why did he score less in School. These exams encourages coaching systems for which guardians pay through their noses and students undergo unnatural level of stress. The better proposition is to strengthen schooling system. And this is a stem , controversial one, but in right direction. Now they would give more importance to Schools rather than Coaching institutes which produce dumb intelligence.

csaurabh · Post by **csaurabh** » 11 Jul 2013 10:51

chaanakya wrote:Well , Normalisation formula may be skewed and imperfect. but I dont see a reason to reject Board exam marks for which students study two years and is culmination of 12 years of schooling. Just by getting specialised coaching foe JEE advanced and Main and scoring high marks in that does not guarantee a good engineer. And if the high ranker in JEE advanced was so good why did he score less in School. These exams encourages coaching systems for which guardians pay through their noses and students undergo unnatural level of stress. The better proposition is to strengthen schooling system. And this is a stem , controversial one, but in right direction. Now they would give more importance to Schools rather than Coaching institutes which produce dumb intelligence.

It is nice in theory but terrible in practice. All boards are not equal, and there is blatant copying/cheating/grace marks

See also

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home ... 011760.cms

http://updates.highereducationinindia.c ... -12977.php

Arjun · Post by **Arjun** » 11 Jul 2013 13:08

If about 18.5% of IIT entrants are from Andhra state board, and assuming a further 20% (is this too low ? too high?) of the entire CBSE entrants into IIT are from Andhra - that implies close to 30% of IIT intake is from that one state.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 11 Jul 2013 15:01

is that due to huge success of Ramaiah classes or something excellent in the AP state board?

Virupaksha · Post by **Virupaksha** » 11 Jul 2013 16:07

Singha wrote:is that due to huge success of Ramaiah classes or something excellent in the AP state board?

the ramaiah classes built up the ecosystem in the 80-early 90s, it graduated into a few cloner classes around hyderabad.

Guntur/krishna delta area was/is a huge educational center. In 90s Private colleges for intermediate from there went corporate and started building campuses in all parts of andhra pradesh. When they came to hyderabad, they latched onto that IIT trend. Today there are multiple corporate colleges each having more than 2-5000 studying intermediate in those colleges with emphasis for IIT. I know of students from Tamil Nadu and karnataka who come to study in them. The seeds were put in just before the IT trend started in andhra.

An example of such a corporate college. Sri chaitanya has a total of 35 campuses in hyderabad alone (of them few specialize in IIT training.)
http://www.srichaitanya.net/contactus.html

Students are really put through the grinder in them and unfortunately due to that stress, suicides are not uncommon.

Virupaksha · Post by **Virupaksha** » 11 Jul 2013 16:17

Arjun wrote:If about 18.5% of IIT entrants are from Andhra state board, and assuming a further 20% (is this too low ? too high?) of the entire CBSE entrants into IIT are from Andhra - that implies close to 30% of IIT intake is from that one state.

Arjun,

20% from cbse is too high. Around 10 years, not more than 1-2% of andhra used to take CBSE, mostly the rich and outsiders. 20-30% intake in IITs from Andhra has been a trend since atleast a decade.

Andhra has a half decent syllabus since a long time, maths in particular, social was very weak. In my day, the toppers could do say 10th CBSE math in 8th or 9th.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 11 Jul 2013 20:43

This is what the Indian Education system is producing for the future. These hooligans should adore a permanent facebook hall of shame to make sure no future employers will ever hire them.

http://newindianexpress.com/photos/nati ... 676836.ece

Sachin · Post by **Sachin** » 12 Jul 2013 15:12

Bade wrote:This is what the Indian Education system is producing for the future. These hooligans should adore a permanent facebook hall of shame to make sure no future employers will ever hire them.

. I actually double-checked to see if this was you who posted the link

. For the benefit of all, the images were taken during the recently held "revolution" in Kerala. The revolutionaries are from the SFI brand of thugs. They were fighting over an issue, which has no real relevance to education. Off late I have also noticed two more trends in the SFI orgy of violence. The usage of "petrol bombs" against police personnel. People covering/masking their faces. So from a student political unit, the move to a more criminal minded organization is clearly visible. The only solace is that police is also going "extra strong" against these Che Guevera clones.

Bade, I am sure none of these fellows would really seek employment in any private firms. They would now join the "PSC Exam writers Association" and start writing PSC exams for the next 15 years in order to get a government job. Not for the love for the people, but the government job is one way to continue with the thuggery. Student politics, especially the brand used by the commies have pretty much destroyed public education system in Kerala. Even teachers in govt. colleges and schools (who get a pretty neat govt. salary + pension) send their kids to Private/Christian Missionary managed schools (most of them English medium).

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 12 Jul 2013 19:06

My policy is clear, cane the turds who indulge in any politics while in University. I could care less if they are SFI, DYFI, KSU, ABVP. They should put an end to this rubbish. There are other ways to develop leadership skills, what we lack in India are not leaders, IT-VIty experience must tell you already that

we still lack creative people but have plenty of fast talkers and other circus artistes.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 12 Jul 2013 19:55

My question is simple, how do these wastrel ding dongs manage to get into college?
During college days 3 kerala folk transferred to CEG to my class. Political.
So they fooled around and did the usual casualness. Failed all their classes.
Next thing we knew they were organizing a strike. They got a couple of rural types to join them in raising flags at the main gate.
The local pandu went down and lathi charged them and they ran away.
They failed the next semester as well and CEG rusticated them. Never heard from again.
In Chennai Pachiapa's is known for this goonda giri. But with the extreme competition to get spots even that has wound down quite a bit.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 12 Jul 2013 21:34

Theo, it is not just the failures who indulge in this. I have had the misfortune to witness very good students who are brain washed into such activities. It is not just the SFI ones as Sachin portrays, some of the KSU aligned ones used to be equally notorious in the Kerala context. Political affiliations and other activities should be banned from Indian campuses. They are the internal rot that has destroyed many a good university even more than rote learning and coaching classes. Politically aligned elections should be first banned in high schools where it all begins and the cancer spreads to college level. For many in that age group it is to show arrival as an adult or some trip like that. It needs to be nipped in the bud.

Virupaksha · Post by **Virupaksha** » 12 Jul 2013 21:42

Bade,

There is a flip side to that. Without the lateral entry into politics as students, no new crop of politicians will come up. Only beta-bhatija of well established ones will rise up. Most of the non-dynastic politicians of today started out as student politicians. In Andhra Pradesh, student politics except for telangana have died down. Today most of the young politicians in andhra are rich sobs or beta-bhatijas. That is not good in the long run for the politics of the country.

Radicalism is the seed of most political changes. It requires a level of "dont care whatever happens to me", which is only possible in the young ages.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 13 Jul 2013 01:19

With the present setup only the hooligans amongst the students are going to laterally enter the political parties. I do not see a level of maturity needed in Indian students to enter politics at that stage of their lives. They end up as easy cannon balls for others to use. The level headed ones who do go up in life, use these idiots to further their personal goals.

One can be rebellious and a radical without joining a bandwagon. You have to tread the lonely path. If many do that then we can make a difference in the long run. The argument you make sound logical, but it ends up feeding the same monsters or creating new ones.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 13 Jul 2013 01:21

how can a hooligan become a politician. Politicians are supposed to be peace-makers, relatively even tempered and folks who can take the abuse. It is the commie's who turned politics into a khusthi sport, politics used to be about exchange of ideas and seeing which one got you further down the road.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 13 Jul 2013 01:26

You mean to say DMK/AIADMK folks are not hooligans.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 13 Jul 2013 01:38

Touche.

Still commies are a different category....

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 13 Jul 2013 01:46

I have found all kinds equally noxious.

I know many here want to give a clean chit to their favorites.

shaardula · Post by **shaardula** » 13 Jul 2013 05:49

imo, college is a great all round development experience. plus if there is any age for people to experiment it is this age. and young kids prolly have greater imagination unwieghted by other burdens. universities should always be a fount of ferment. without that imo it becomes a sterile sarkari environment. Brilliant guys are a different breed. but education is about realizing the potential of and expanding the horizon of the average joe.

the other side to this is, i think western education system that is universal now, kids spend an inordinate amount of time without responsibility. Juggling logic etc they can do, but cant articulate a problem.

DMK/AIDMK are nothing. messers seeman, nedumaran, sathyaraj et al, are the ig kahunas in this space. that level of day-to-day hate mongering, and not just on srilankan issues, even on internal TN issues, anybody else in india would have been hauled on coals. not these guys. kettale shudder-uvom. more shocking is that there are people standing and egging on these idiots. its a good thing rest of the country does not understand these guys. bala saheb, owaisi et al are kittens in front of these guys. how much bile, how much venom and what language in public speaking!!

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 13 Jul 2013 05:57

I personally do not mind intellectual masturbation of the kind that goes on in places like Berkeley, Wisconsin or maybe even our JNU as long as it does not cross over into wanton violence. Debating politics and philosophy is all part of education in the confines of a University and essentially why you go there other than to get practical skills. But all those nice things one gets to do on the side should not come at the cost of developing those very skills that matter in the long run. This is where US universities and the western ones in general have succeeded. There is debate but not at the cost of practical matters. In India it is the opposite, debates and violence that flows from it supercedes all other goals...maybe the exception is IIT and IISc and a few other old campuses.

shaardula · Post by **shaardula** » 13 Jul 2013 06:10

makes sense bade. but you cant make it a fake experience. it should feel real with real consequences, no for it to be worth while? and how do you make it feel real without real trade-offs?

violence i agree. that is the basic thing. not tolerable.

for me the flip side experience is private univ kids in the US, going through life self absorbed without a concern. there used to be only one kid evangelizing for ron paul. the other places in us, i was had never seen such apathy.

Sachin · Post by **Sachin** » 13 Jul 2013 11:31

Bade wrote:There are other ways to develop leadership skills, what we lack in India are not leaders

To be very honest many of the present politicians in Kerala entered this field mainly as being student union leaders. So in that way I find that perhaps it has a positive effect that young blood comes in. But what I feel is that "leadership" skill is slowly getting converted to "leadership in doing criminal activities", rioting and arson. Even a goonda does require some leadership skills, but it would not be of any value to the society in general. The student leaders of today are basically having the goonda-mode of leadership, IMHO.

It is not just the SFI ones as Sachin portrays, some of the KSU aligned ones used to be equally notorious in the Kerala context

Beg to differ. SFI in Kerala are the most violence prone student union. A close second is ABVP. The KSU folks are compartively mild, but guess they are also improving their expertise. Remember the KSU students buring an effigy and getting burnt themselves?

(check Youtube). And SFI has pretty much taken a stance that violence would be part of their regular activities ("struggle", "revolution" and all that non-sense). The photos you posted here, I had seen them in Facebook as well. Not even a single SFI goon has said this was bad. They all repeatedly stated that SFI would use thuggery as a way to prove their point.

Politically aligned elections should be first banned in high schools where it all begins and the cancer spreads to college level. For many in that age group it is to show arrival as an adult or some trip like that

Earlier the rot used to set in right from High School. Infact that was one reason why Kerala saw a large number of private/X'ian missionary managed schools coming in. None of the political parties favoured it, because after all they are losing the next set of monkeys to join their cadre. When school politics was banned, the next set of monkeys were recruited from the PDC (Pre-Degree courses) level. Many of the bright students joined the political gangs at this period, and messed up their future bright prospects. Now in Kerala PDC has been replaced with +2 (which is at schools only). Infact what surprises me is that the number of "students" still available with SFI etc. to indulge in mass rioting. How many seats are there in a typical Arts & Science college? And even there every one won't be available for rioting. I wont be surprised that many of these "students" may be from the senior gang of thugs, the DYFI. This face covering business, and petrol bombs etc. some how makes me think in those lines.

Theo_Fidel wrote:My question is simple, how do these wastrel ding dongs manage to get into college?

Many of them get in using the reservation/quota system prevalent. During my college days, I personally knew folks who would come in to college for two things 1. To collect the monetary grant which is given as part of the reservation scheme 2. to be part of strikes. These folks really had no inclination to study at all. Being Kerala, most of them moved to the Middle East and one of them is now working as a labourer. During those days Engineering and Medical college seats were limited, so folks who landed up their generally focused on their studies. The Arts & Science colleges had a much more varity of people around. Some of them who did focus on studies, some of them who honed their leadership skills. And many who just loitered around the place with no sense of direction. It was these riff-raffs who did the maximum rioting.

The local pandu went down and lathi charged them and they ran away.

During my college days there was a stupid rule which said Police could not enter a college campus without the permission from the Principal. The Principal was most likely a commie intellectual who has pipe dreams of being another Che Guevera or Karl Marx. The result was that the students would use the college as a refuge to hide in. The police could only wait outside the college gates.