Equality or Neutrality?

What is more important? Equality or neutrality? 

There is hot debate these days to promote equality in jobs, promotion, sports, politics, society etc. But when you promote equality are you not indirectly showing bias? But if you don’t show bias then can the equilibrium be ever achieved? 

I have not been able to understand this but what I could understand is that if there is a level playing field then I think neutrality is a much better approach than advocating for equality. But again the question is can there be a level playing field in all walks of life? 

In the past, only few have been controlling all the resources of the world. Now this is changing and this is a continuous process. Until that equilibrium is achieved we should all try to advocate equality but we cannot be promoting equality everywhere blindly otherwise we are unwittingly begetting the feeling ill will amongst people which is unwarranted. 

When you are neutral you can take decisions without any bias. What I think is that when you are in a place or situation where you have to take decisions, you should exercise neutrality rather than equality otherwise you can ignore things which can be detrimental in the future. 

Not sure if it made any sense but thought of putting it here what was going through my mind. 

Happy Sunday! 

Sports authority of India – Are you watching?

19 years old from Poland Iga Swiatek just won her first grand slam title in Paris defeating this year’s Australian open champion from USA Sofia Kenin. By doing so, she became first player male or female from Poland, a country of less than 40 million people (one sixth of Uttar Pradesh) from Europe to win a grand slam tournament. Agnieszka Radwanska from Poland had previously come close to win Wimbledon in 2012 but was beaten by Serena Williams. She played a great tournament just losing 28 games. No player was able to take a set from her and none of the set went to a tie break. That shows how dominating she was throughout the whole tournament. Not to forget her doubles run where she reached semifinals partenirng with Nicole Melichar of US. She hasn’t won any title, major or otherwise before coming into this tournament. Her best result was 4th round in this year’s Australian open. Though she did win Wimbledon 2018 but as a junior not as pro. One can argue that field was weak as world no 1 Ash Barty did not participate sighting COVID reason, Serena Williams withdrew from the tournament, world no 2 and 2020 US Open champion Naomi Osaka was out due to hamstring injury but that cannot be her fault. She did beat world no 2 and top seed Simona Halep in round of 4 in straight sets and also defeated world no 4 Sofia Kenin in the final to win her biggest tournament of life. Her overall game is very solid and forehand is even better. Apart from her game, she is so calm and composed which is very rare for a 19 years old player. When asked in the post-match presentation what her dad, who is an Olympic rower taught her, he taught me how to be a professional – said Iga Swiatek. Indeed one needs to be professional first because there will be ups and downs in the match as happens in life and one need to know how to deal with these situations. There is a lot to learn for us from this event. How can a country of just 40 million people produce a grand slam winner amidst pandemic? A young girl to go on to win a tournament as big as French Open without anyone breaking her a sweat. What are we doing or not doing to produce these champions? I am pretty sure sports authority have enough money to provide facilities to our young boys and girls to train better and eventually hold a coveted singles trophy in these major tournaments. Sports can do a lot not just for players but for a country too. It can bring a lot of money and lot of employment opportunities, especially in a globally recognized sports such as Tennis and Golf. Hope our people are listening and watching this. Hope things get better. I am hopeful and waiting for a day when someone will hold a single’s trophy at London or Paris or Melbourne or New York!

Is teaching for 8 hours enough?

 

When we are in schools and colleges, our main focus is to get a good job. The same is percolated to institutions and teachers so they also have curriculum based on jobs’ requirements.

But isn’t job or office only for 8 hours? What about the rest 16 hours?

Competition is important so is empathy, reaching to the top is everyone’s goal but through fair and honest way and not through deceit. Lending a helping hand to someone in need even when you are rushing to office will be appreciated more than what you can think.

We are not taught how to live life away from four walls of the office which is more than what we spend in office. It is even more important now as we are living in a digital era where human to human interaction is waning.

If you open any social media sites these days, it is mostly full of hate. People who hurl abuses or ridicule others are also professionals. They might have been the brightest student in the class but their language in social media speaks otherwise. Why can’t there be some common decency?

Some may argue that this cannot be taught as it comes from within but then how can hate come from within and not respect to one another, not disagreeing respectfully?

When we are faced with difficult situation we often breakdown because it is not taught how to stand up against challenges.  We certainly learn as in when we face these challenges but these can be inculcated so that we don’t fear challenges.

So much chaos is going on and it is only going to get worse. We should be taught how to lead healthy and happy life and not rich and ostentatious one. We should try to better prepare coming generation to be more compassionate, empathetic towards one another. Every race, every gender is equally good if only they get the same support.

Hope for a better tomorrow.

Have a great weekend! Stay safe.

Education should be for knowledge not for exams

                                                           Photo - Mangalorean.com

Recently government of India promulgated new reforms in education policy after 34 long years. As the world is changing at a rapid pace, education should also need to be kept relevant. It will help people to find right job as well companies to get employees of right skill set. Things needed to be changed specially in this age of digitized and connected world and government took notice to bring forth these changes for good.

We were taught in an environment where we focused more on exams than understanding the subjects. At the end of the day results were the benchmark and not what we actually learnt. This pressurized both parents and kids so kids did not get any opportunity to focus on anything other than scoring good marks. This led us to mug up things at times if we did not understand any topic or subject, just to pass the exams.

Any new change comes with set of new challenges too specially in a country as diverse as India. How the syllabus is going to be changed, how these new changes will be enforced especially when it comes to language, additional requirement of properly trained staff and also and most importantly the budget.

I hope these consideration have already been vetted otherwise it does not take much time for a situation to change from good to bad if not implemented properly as we have seen in the past, some of decision taken by this government.

Also, I hope the budget allocated is spent in a rightful and transparent manner. For example - when we spent 2.7% of GDP in education (which is less than many developing countries) still good 17% of it remained unused in FY 2017-18.

Out of all this one thing I do not understand is the obsession of changing names by this government. I am not sure what are they going to achieve by changing name from human resource development ministry to education ministry other than wasting money on paperwork.

As the government has clearly put the focus on skills and knowledge from exams I hope the same happens in politics too. Politics should be for governance and not for elections. There is always some election happening in some part of India. And when there is an election in India it becomes like a festival. Cabinet ministers, members of parliament, state legislative members are all on the roads to campaign for their respective parties leaving their day to day work. Honestly, current government has made this a habit to parade all their high profile ministers to engage in campaigning whenever there is an election rather than running their respective ministry which I unequivocally detest.

And last but certainly not the least, I strongly propose police reforms too in India. We haven’t made much progress on this front. We inherited the police system from British Raj and it is almost same since then.

Police should be to keep law and order in check in their local area and not to always serve the politicians and their families.

I hope things change as the world is changing, we adapt new ways of learning. We acquire more knowledge and less information. We get more governance and less noise. We get better policing where we feel safe and secure and less politics.

With this – Happy Rakshabandhan to you all !