Review of Foreign Stints and Few Uplifting Insights.

                           Well, the regular routine is filled with lot of activity these days. Since the past few months, I have been working with religious tenacity. The consequence of these actions is I has entered another burn-out phase. In the midst of all the burning out and grinding, I miss the purpose sometimes and just go through the routines mechanically. All these acts should not be for mere salary. Though salary is important there must be a higher motive as well. Among the many motives including writing this blog, one of the motive which keeps me amused as well is teaching. Teaching or giving a session works for me and I work for teaching.

                           While going through this line sometime back, I accidentally came upon training kids for a program called NMMS. To give little bit of backdrop, NMMS is central government sponsored program for funding under privileged children from class 9 to class 12. There is an examination to select kids as beneficiaries and I trained the kids to crack that test. This program is intended for meritorious students of economically weaker sections to arrest their drop-out at higher class and encourage them to continue study. This scheme is launched in May 2008 and a scholarship of Rs 6000 per annum or 500 per month is awarded to selected students every year. It is proposed to award a total of 1,00,000 scholarships to the meritorious students. Students whose parental income is not more than Rs 1,50,000 from all sources are eligible to avail the scholarship. These scholarships are most wanted and will be like oasis in the desert considering the people it caters to. These are limited to government schools and if you know who study in these schools – the poorest and most vulnerable students go to these schools. In many cases the circumstances force the kids to drop out from high schools and earn for living.

                           There might be minimal deviations, but it is generally considered that the students in government schools are economically very backward. Yet 65% of all the school-going children in 20 states, about 11.3 crore continue to get their education from government schools. These are not any ordinary numbers since there are many countries whose entire population is far less than the poor 11 or 12 crore.  Of these, around 1.2 crore get their class 9 education and a mere 1 lakh students get the scholarship. The children who get the aid is less than 1% of total students. These incentives for education for all till class 12 will be much more meaningful when they are disbursed for all the economically backward children and not just meritorious. When you are grown as a leader with a big net you can get as many people under its reach as possible. While there is no caveat to this, there is a point to remember as far as government spending in education is concerned. An example is – despite a Rs 1.16 lakh crore ($ 17.7 billion) spent on Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) – the national programme for universal elementary education – the quality of learning declined between 2009 and 2014, as per a report in March 2016. However, the task at hand does not compare to this huge exercise and the metrics will also point out that the spending is fruitful.

                           Time and again, I remind myself through this space that I am a mere Test Analyst and not a Prime Minister of the nation. It may sound weird and loose that I am comparing with a PM but I cannot hide the truth as well. I had been working with as much performance and regularity since the last many months. I cannot hijack someone else’s position and render their duties because it will cripple the more qualified person from making a mark of his own. It is better if each one does his/her duties and does not interfere in others jurisdiction. I am yet to ascertain how long this will continue and have little hopes of lessening the severity of the ‘evil’ spell. On the other side of the coin, if every individual thinks and acts so highly, there is no need of heroes to pull the society up. Every citizen of the nation must feel responsible and feel empowered and live day to day life with high standards of excellence. I strive to drive for setting up these standards.  If there is ignition towards this end and the heat is on, it does not take more than a decade for places to change, states to change and country to move on the path to development.

                             It is that time of the year and every year since last few years I had been in U.S. Thanks to my U.S trips, I am never exposed to harsh summer in India for three years. It even caused vitamin D deficiency in my body. I am about to overcome this deficiency in a month or two. Many a times, I feel nostalgic about my presence in U.S. All the places I visited, people I met, long walks, self-cooking etc. come to my mind every now and then and very disturbing. My negativity and claims in the last post are just a perspective and mostly baseless allegations. I went to U.S. at a time when getting a job is next to impossible based on my situation. I somehow rallied there, maintained my stature and failed in my pursuit which is all perfectly acceptable. But I did not just failed myself but failed an entire nation. All the ground work for my present position is done in U.S. Hence the effort did not go in vain but turned out to be a worthy experience.

                             After all the history, I again get questions when I am flying back again. The answer is first of all, I am technically not permitted to travel. Secondly, there are many issues which add weight to the decision. But clearing the first hurdle will clear the second one as well. There are many out there who still believe my foreign expeditions as pleasure trips. Even though it ought to be that way, I never intended as such from beginning. I felt considerable amount of stress and strain during each trip and I worked as much harder as I was in India.

                             There are many significant happenings around and one of those is announcement by two most prominent actors to come into politics and contest elections in the state of Tamil Nadu. With the turn of events in the recent past, there is a clear vacuum for someone with credibility to pitch in and become the people’s representative. Not one but two of them responded to people’s wishes and it would be interesting to see the future state of politics. It once again reiterates that the reel super stars are also real super stars, at least in the southern part of India.