Exam system drives kids to suicide

[Desi Cartman]

and that ends my rant with obsessive compulsive use of "****"

I think till year X its pretty good. Thanks to reading those books I have knowledge about bio gas , how cars work , how parliament works , how to do basic math , etc PS: Painting and Sanskrit was crap though .. I don't understand why was I FORCED to learn Sanskrit

[CC1981]

yes its a concern but Japan has higher population per sq km than India and is still a developed country

Japan's population is 170 million, India's is over 1 billion. Population density means squat when you are dealing with empirical numbers so huge. A population density of 5000 people per sq km is easily sustainable when its the size of a city. A population density of 1000 people per sq km is catastrophic when its a country the size of bangladesh, nevermind India. Japan is 1/10th the size of India and has 1/10th the population. Not to mention, the Japanese are far more socially responsible and socially evolved than Indians are- Japanese don't go around chopping migrant workers or torching each others places of worship. They have moved beyond such barbarism- India unfortunately has not. If you don't realize how much of a ticking timebomb our population worries are, you need to educate yourself on this topic, for this may be singularly the biggest reason for India's own self-destruction. Already, India's population pressures are making India unliveable- not just economically, socially or hygenically, at the most fundamental level- prakriti. And yes, to you conservation of tiger/elephant project might seem nothing more than 'humanitarian charity for the sake of showing ourselves how good natured and caring we are', but reality is, the survival of India's flora and fauna is directly linked and critical to our own survival in India. And no, corruption, etc. is a byproduct of our population problem and 'breed like rats' mentality.

[Desi Cartman]

Japan's population is 170 million, India's is over 1 billion. Population density means squat when you are dealing with empirical numbers so huge. A population density of 5000 people per sq km is easily sustainable when its the size of a city. A population density of 1000 people per sq km is catastrophic when its a country the size of bangladesh, nevermind India. Japan is 1/10th the size of India and has 1/10th the population. Not to mention, the Japanese are far more socially responsible and socially evolved than Indians are- Japanese don't go around chopping migrant workers or torching each others places of worship. They have moved beyond such barbarism- India unfortunately has not. If you don't realize how much of a ticking timebomb our population worries are, you need to educate yourself on this topic, for this may be singularly the biggest reason for India's own self-destruction. Already, India's population pressures are making India unliveable- not just economically, socially or hygenically, at the most fundamental level- prakriti. And yes, to you conservation of tiger/elephant project might seem nothing more than 'humanitarian charity for the sake of showing ourselves how good natured and caring we are', but reality is, the survival of India's flora and fauna is directly linked and critical to our own survival in India. And no, corruption, etc. is a byproduct of our population problem and 'breed like rats' mentality.

Population is a problem.. but its here and we cant reduce it in next 10-15 years ... The bigger problem is that the population is increasing with a low rate of employment generation. people will always work and contribute (if employed) . The key is to now educate , employ , develop infrastructure and use the so called excess population to India's advantage. for high birth rate issue , you can only make people aware, teach them and suggest ways to manage it but rest is their decision.. as for riots and people not getting along well with each other , for that the population doesn't need to be huge for example :Zim, Pakistan , Iraq etc . Its also partly affected by education and monetary well being. As for nature , yes its a very big issue for India ... and I dont see much happening. People in Australia are recycling and not even watering their gardens as they fear they may not have enough water in 10 years time where as in India rich people still get their cars washed everyday when 100 poor people are queuing to get a bucket of water each. The above is just my opinion and of course many people will disagree but to me the only solution is to elect smart , intelligent men to run the country. I dont think with Laloos and mayawatis around there is much chance of it.

[CC1981]

]

but its here and we cant reduce it in next 10-15 years ...

Why not ? If not reduce the population, why can't we reduce the growth rate ? why can't we adopt kids instead of breeding like rats to pop one out, when there are millions of kids starving and impoverished in India ? if you want 2 kids, why can't you make one and adopt another, instead of breeding like lemmings ? These are the questions i feel every Indian should genuinely reflect upon.

. The key is to now educate , employ , develop infrastructure and use the so called excess population to India's advantage.

These advantages of 'high population' is strictly generational and in a developing country economy, but utterly disastrous in the long run. The key is to stop breeding like lemmings, period!

but rest is their decision

I used to think that way until recently- now i am not sure, for if 'its their decision' leads to a catastrophic collapse in society and natural habitat of india, maybe forced sterilization project is not such a bad thing afterall.

as for riots and people not getting along well with each other , for that the population doesn't need to be huge for example :Zim, Pakistan , Iraq etc . Its also partly affected by education and monetary well being.

Where did i say population must be huge for these problems ? I said in INDIA's case, these problems directly emminate from having an absurdly high population figure, that shows zero sign of comming into control.

The above is just my opinion and of course many people will disagree but to me the only solution is to elect smart , intelligent men to run the country. I dont think with Laloos and mayawatis around there is much chance of it.

Incorrect in my opinion. Such social issues are NOT solvable at the government level, especially if the government is not a communist/dictatorial one where the decisions of one can be unilaterally implemented socially. The way forward is for PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY- there is no two ways about this, Indians have to smarten up and take individual responsibility of the issue instead of passing the buck- indians have to individually stop breeding like lemmings, adopt kids if they want more than 1 or 2 and utterly stamp out the pervasive indian culture of ' study--->get a job---> get married----> breed babies like rats' that is present in each and every demographic and social group in India.

[Desi Cartman]

^ for all that to happen people need to be educated and made more aware ... communist approach is not an answer. So there is only 1 way out ... EDUCATE - AWARE -EMPLOY - INCENTIVE - DEVELOP i dont think I need to explain how each of the above will help india in the long as well as short run. To implement above we need smart people to govern , With Laloos in power there isnt a great chance of govt working on it. As for taking personal responsibility, it can not be forced upon anybody ... It comes with education and awareness ...... none of my cousins or friends have more than 2 kids .. most of them have 1 because they are educated and are aware that its better to raise 1 properly than to have 2-3 . As for adoption, yes its a great idea but it can not be forced, people can only be made aware that its a viable option.

[CC1981]

communist approach is not an answer.

On simple moral grounds, i agree. But this issue needs solving, period. And what approach is justified purely depends on the urgency of the issue. Each year India is adding 20 million to its population, thats close to the entire population of Australia added each year in India. From independence, our population has swelled from 350 million to 1.15 billion in the span of just over 60 years. This is a catastrophic growth rate and ask yourself this- how much further India can really go with adding 20 million to its population each year, before the population pressure makes all the efforts to educate and uplift Indians from poverty a moot point, because ultimately, it boils down to # of mouths to feed versus resources and natural habitat sustainable to human existence. Either way, there must be some incentive provided by the government for Indians to have 1 kid per couple and more incentives for adopting kids. And if the incentives don't work soon enough, then yes, there is no alternative but the commie method of forced sterilization ( i won't ever advocate killing babies like they do in China, mind you- vasectomy is as far as i will go and i think its not too big a deal to have vasectomy forced on someone who already has 1 kid). And as per helping India in the long run- i fail to see how your educate, employ and develop scheme is going to help when 20 million new mouths keep popping up all over india every year. This is not just about education, this is about cultural tilt as well. And lastly, again, i don't think this problem-population control- can be achieved in a top-down fashion ( ie, emminating from the government and effecting the populace) in meaningful numbers in ANY functional democracy- i just don't see how the logistics of this will work out in a democracy!

[Desi Cartman]

I agree CC1981 there is no shortcut answer to this problem I just found this article and its a good read http://www.flonnet.com/fl2301/stories/20060127004010500.htm EDUCATE - people so they have skills to get employed AWARE - from being tolerant to having fewer kids EMPLOY - create more opportunities to work INCENTIVE - U mentioned what I was thinking, why is it that Indian Govt does not provide tax cuts if u have fewer kids ? DEVELOP - Infrastructure for the Growth of economy There is no single answer but there is something that has worked from the 70's .. there was a huge campaign back then "Bachay 2 yaan 3 hi achay" so if u look around most couples in our parents generation have 2-3 kids .. it works if its explained ! Same way it can effective if they promote having 1 child or adoption etc. In the generation that had kids in 70s most educated people had 2-3 kids because they knew its easier to care and raise fewer kids .. I hope that a similar message will be passed on to next generations and the only way they will understand the message is if they are educated ! BTW if govt wont make people aware or educate them how else do u think they will understand the concept of family planning ? how ? it has to be top down and then educated individuals have to take some responsibility but I cant expect an illiterate in some village in Orissa to understand this problem as well as we do

[CC1981]

so if u look around most couples in our parents generation have 2-3 kids

umm...most couples even TODAY have 3-4 kids, nevermind from our parents' generation! you forget that most couples in India are village couples, who breed with the intention of creating an army of children.

I hope that a similar message will be passed on to next generations and the only way they will understand the message is if they are educated ! BTW if govt wont make people aware or educate them how else do u think they will understand the concept of family planning ? how ? it has to be top down and then educated individuals have to take some responsibility but I cant expect an illiterate in some village in Orissa to understand this problem as well as we do

I agree that education is important and educated couples won't make the mistake of breeding an army of kids even if they can support them, simply because its socially irresponsible. But the point is, India today is still illiterate by and large and realistically, it will take a few generations worth of work for our literacy rate to reflect western standards of 95%+ literacy rate. But question is, can we wait a few generations in this passive approach of moral high ground ? Our literacy rate during independence was 15-20% or so and now it is around 35-40% or so ( i don't give a toss what Indian govt says or holds as literacy standards- if you arnt highschool pass, you are illiterate in my books and IIRC, Indian govt. holds literacy as the basic ability to write your own name!) It is considerable progress, no doubt- along with the rising population that has more than tripled itself in the time of 60 years, a 20% increase in literacy rate is pretty good. This puts us on track for near-100% literacy in approximately 150-180 years by linear projection- if we were to factor in other considerations like rising economic potential of India meaning faster growth in education rates( more and more parents can afford to send their kids to school with a growing economy), it probably would come down to a number less than 100 years from now. But question is, can we afford to keep India's growth rate spiralling out of control for another 100 years ? Can we really afford to keep adding even 5 million per year to India's population ?? ( current growth rate is roughly 20 million per year, a reasonable estimate would see it slow down markedly in the distant future, so lets say, for the sake of the argument, it comes to roughly 5 million per year on average for the whole period). I shall remind you that this 5 million figure i am using is extremely conservative - and it still leads to a growth of another half a billion for India before it comes to its senses! Can India really afford to have 1.6 billion people inhabiting it and with Pakistan-Bangladesh-Sri Lanka-Nepal factored in for say another rougly 200 million more over the same timespan, can the subcontinent really support 2.1-2.2 billion people ? Especially with a mind to our materialistic existence, where everyone craves a house, car, tv, etc, is that living standard achievable and more importantly, sustainable for the subcontinent ? The answer should be obvious to you - if with a population of roughly 1.5 billion, most of whom are living in poverty & negligible material use, the subcontinent is choking with pollution, ravaged by deforestation and extinction, how will we sustain a higher material development and standard of living for ANOTHER 600-700 million more people ??? I think logistics show that this approach of 'lets educate the masses and hope they develop personal responsibility and don't breed like rabbits' cannot be our primary means for population control- we've missed the boat on this one and perhaps it would've been a feasable approach 20-30 years ago, if implemented with a vigorous educational and social responsibility campaign. But today, this approach cannot be maintained as the primary means, as it reeks of 'missing the boat'/ too little-too late. Based on this, can you tell me why the subcontinent should not persue an active campaign of sterilization, forced if necessary ? Why exactly should we keep toting the higher moral ground of 'educate the public and hope they come to their senses, that is only the right thing to do', when we are clearly, up against the clock and every single projection shows a catastrophic failure in our ability to sustain our development, feed ourselves and not ravage the Indian countryside, turning it into a desolate land of over-exploited territorry, barren of animal habitat and forests being confined only to books ?? We have to do something- now! If not forced sterlization, we should atleast offer incentives to couples who have 1 kid or no kids and that would be a far more insightful and positive spending of our money instead of buying more fighter jets and navy ships for billions of dollars!

[fineleg]

CC, "breeding rats" mentality has dimnished in India a great deal, no? Even in rural areas, I think ppl realize that no more than 2 children is best. In this day and age, if things are still remaining like 5 kids, 7+ kids per family etc.(even rural), I'd be really surprised.

[CC1981]

CC, "breeding rats" mentality has dimnished in India a great deal, no? Even in rural areas, I think ppl realize that no more than 2 children is best. In this day and age, if things are still remaining like 5 kids, 7+ kids per family etc.(even rural), I'd be really surprised.

I dont think so at all that in rural areas people by and large have 2 kids only- atleast, not in my experience. Also, it is irrelevant if we have 1 kid or 2 kids or 5. The central issue here is India's bloated population. Obviously, this has a lot to do with life expectancy increasing as well as child survival rates going up. The problem is to curb the population growth- for that if it means 1 child policy like China, so be it, but the situation has to be controlled. At the end of the day, India is still adding close to 20 million people every year and that is an insane number of new peoples added.

[umpire]

When you say we have 1 billion ppl, don't we have 1 billion brains, 2 billion hands. We have everything to be developed country. But unfortunately we do not know what to do with the resources. I see kids begging on street, I swear I don't know what to do. I tried taking one kid and made him do some work in order to pay him. I hate entertaining beggers.

[Gambit]

The system is what is driving us today. Our legion of Engineers and Doctors are the biggest aces up our sleeves. At a time when countries in the west are moaning about the decreasing lack of interest in the applied sciences and medicine amongst their university going youth, India's assembly line production is in great demand not only in India but in the west. Products of our education system have no trouble coping with studies or work abroad. Of course, it has it's flaws. It doesn't encourage students to dream and to think outside the box. It's too regimented. It doesn't produce innovators. But that shall take time. Once the need for research in Universities is given attention and funding is increased, serious research and inventions will happen. In fact, CSIR is at the forefront of this and is working to implement a research culture amongst our universities. And India's population is going to turn out to be our greatest asset in the years to come.

[umpire]

One thing that stops/slows us down is "Bureaucracy". I hate those government employees sitting in the offices and making decision. We have corrupt set of IPS officers. We all blame politicians, well they should be blame, atleast politicians are accountable to some extent, what about these officers. Lot of this will go when we have fully e-governance setup. Government has new act, which not many people know of. Right to Information act. Lot of people are using this to straighten this bureaucrats.

[f.b.m]

1. GCSE-A level 2. IB 3. ICSE/CBSE 4. Canadian education system

Rate GCSE above IB? I did the IB and hear about how people who did GCSE lag behind in many things (independant study, just critical thinking, etc). This is by many lecturers btw.

[THX_1138]

I think till year X its pretty good. Thanks to reading those books I have knowledge about bio gas , how cars work , how parliament works , how to do basic math , etc PS: Painting and Sanskrit was crap though .. I don't understand why was I FORCED to learn Sanskrit

fantastic... stuff you could have read over the net on wikipedia. instead they could have laid the foundations for abstract algebra and vector analysis so you understand what vector spaces are, and thus understand what fourier transforms are... and thus know the physics and mathematics behind modern communication technology. take your pick.

[CC1981]

And India's population is going to turn out to be our greatest asset in the years to come.

Yes, great asset for the next 20 years. After that, great curse is what it is going to be. As i said- India today with 1.15 billion people is creaking and busting at the seams- choked with pollution, shaved nearly bald from deforestation and such. And if thats today, with most people still living a very marginal life ( money-wise), how the hell is India going to cope exactly with more and more people hogging more per capita resources and 20 million mouths added each year ? This population advantage of ours basically means only one thing- cheap labor. But cheap labor won't remain cheap for very long in India- as India progresses economically, everything will become more and more expensive, with price inflation and rupee adjustments....so in 30 years from now, when cheap labor is no more cheap, what exactly is our population good for ? Oh and another thing Gambit- the skills espoused in Indian education systems are highly overrated/impractical. Desis are superb at mental math- downright superior at it than western educated folks- but what good is it when everyone has a calculator ? A desi engineer is a math whiz....who never gets to actually apply his/her math wizardry at work, thanks to Maple/MatLab etc.....see what i mean ? And you shall find that when it comes to higher studies, few students from ANYWHERE have problems coping if it isnt in basic language communications- Masters students all pretty much do the same way. But most western students don't spend 5 hours a day after school getting tuition, doing homework and having ZERO life...They don't have to face the insane pressure of desi education system that makes the teenage years a living hell. And honestly, it is no secret that most desi college grads/uni students seriously lack personality- they are the mumbling, shy, 'nerd' types mostly and that is understandable, since they did practically nothing but study and sleep since they were 14. All this makes a huge difference and huge impact in LIFE since western students in general are far more well rounded products. And to conclude, I did class X through ICSE system in India through a fairly reputed school ( Don Bosco) - yes, i learnt more in class X than i did in class XII in British system- but 90% of the stuff i learnt in class X i have never used...thats Indian education system for you.

[fineleg]

The system is what is driving us today. .

Gambit, India is producing "numbers". But very few of the numbers have good quality, many are engineers or doctors for the namesake without good foundations.

[Tapioca]

I wanted to add this somewhere but couldn't find an approp. thread. http://outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20080324&fname=Cover+Story+%28F%29&sid=1&pn=1