What happens when you get small amounts of road space, exploding numbers of new cars, imbecile two-wheelers, maniacal truck and bus drivers all jostling for space, cutting each other off and breaking every rule of driving and road courtesy? Stand by any intersection and observe the mayhem.
There are an estimated 30 lakh vehicles jostling for 7,000 km of road space in Bangalore. And 200 new cars are registered every day (along with hundreds of other vehicles), adding to this mess.
No one observes the rules of driving. Lane markers and traffic lights are wishful reminders of decorum that few drivers care to observe. In reality, everyone drives where they please, stops wherever they want to at any time, and turns anywhere. Drivers on the far left of a road can swipe to take a right turn. Drivers who face an obstruction think nothing of suddenly flowing into your space.
Car horns and brakes are the most frequently used parts of a car, followed by the steering wheel. Turn signals are rarely used. Mirrors are protruding nuisances that are folded in.
What you may have learned in driving school is seldom needed or used on the road. The city’s drivers have devised their own set of signals. A couple of squeezes on the highbeams indicates, “I’m headed at you and am taking your space, so give way.” A wrist stuck out and wobbling in the air indicates, “You can squeeze past my side.” Elbows and foreams may be used to turn a steering wheel so hands can be freed for more critical functions such as talking on the cellphone and checking that the family jewels are intact.
Bangalore has awful roads. Sidewalks are often dug up so pedestrians share the road with vehicles. The majestic trees that form a canopied arch on many roads are daily ripped out to widen roads. The city has tried to add dozens of flyovers and ready-made underpasses (called "magic boxes") to ease traffic. These are so narrow that they actually cause traffic to freeze instead of moving it along.
The most traversed roads are either dug up to retro-fit an antediluvian Metro rail system, or are dumped with re-routed traffic. The city's roads are among the worst I've ever seen. I've seen better roads in Liberia -- and they've had a long-running civil war where grade schoolers with guns run the show. Whenever CNN airs a report on a bombing in Baghdad, I shout: "They have better roads!"
The IT industry works because it is able to wire most of its output to every end of the world. Of course, no one knows that these paragons of efficiency who answer, “Hello, this is Sam. How may I help you?” risk life and limb to get to work, and put their personal health and sanity on the line every day so they can fix customer gripes continents away.
Think of how many hours of your and your school-children’s week are spent going to work and school. Then be sobered by what fraction of your primary school-aged child’s life is spent breathing toxic gases and witnessing human incompetence on a grand scale every day, to and from school.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
MTR: The Emperor's New Dosas
The Mavalli Tiffin Room, reverently known as MTR, is one of those legendary Bangalore institutions that anyone who loves the city or wants to learn to love it is urged to go on gastronomic pilgrimages to.
Queues start forming shortly after the eatery opens in the morning, and crowds throng outside at lunch time. Bangalore is a city that does not have very many sights to see, and so MTR figured high on our list of places to go to.
We made it for family breakfast one morning.
Flooded drains formed a moat around the seedy building that houses the restaurant. We wobbled like tightrope walkers over a makeshift bridge of broken bricks and entered the temple of high cuisine. Many of the most awesome eateries in India look forbiddingly dreary or ordinary. The grimy interior did not deter us. These people have been too busy cooking up heavenly meals for decades to think of lowly details like sweeping and dusting.
People wait for a table, eat quickly and leave. There are no plaster of paris curly ornaments on the ceiling or anything as pretentious as a cummerbund on a waiter or a folded napkin on the sticky tables. The waiters wear lungis folded up and tied around their hips, and they don’t offer you a menu. They are too busy zipping from table to table, and usually neither receive nor expect tips. You choose from the dozen items the kitchen has on offer at the time you order.
MTR is like the Soup Nazi in The Seinfeld Show. You show up, and you wait humbly and politely eat what they give you, in the manner they choose to serve it, because they know their food best and you’d better be grateful to be getting some of it. You don’t ask for sambar if they care not to serve it. There was none at 10 a.m. “No sambar,” the waiter said disapprovingly when some was requested.
The dosas we ordered were tepid and already wilting. They looked practically burned. I glanced at other people’s dosas. All dark brown. The rava idlis, supposedly invented here, were cold and bouncy. The kharabhath was over-seasoned, but the only item colorfully garnished with a tomato slice. The gulab jamuns were warm dough pellets with a metallic aftertaste. I wonder how this restaurant got its name as a food purist.
We had asked for coffee to be brought along with our meal and offered several reminders to our waiter, who put his hand up every time he walked by, nodding as though he were quelling an annoying child. The coffee was brought at the end of the meal, when it is customarily drunk. We sipped it gratefully. After all that below-average, pulpy food, the coffee tasted honest and robust.
This was my second sampling of food at MTR, and I rate its food as unremarkable to downright awful. I can forgive a bad meal at a restaurant. But two unrelentingly awful meals at a shrine where I had to grovel to get a seat? I felt scammed at having to endure a long wait and indifferent service for food even an okay cook like me would scorn to produce. What I can’t understand is that thousands of people line up to shove this food in and still praise the lord for blessing Bangalore with MTR. I just don’t get it.
I know lots of people who say in praise of MTR: “I’ve been eating there for 20 years and the food always tastes the same.” After two equally wretched meals there, I can believe that there’s no variation in the quality of the food and don’t plan to go back unless struck by desperation or dementia.
MTR has sold its venerable brand name to a Norwegian food company that now mass markets its high quality masalas and ready to eat mixes globally. Maybe the restaurant should switch to using these in its own kitchen.
You might wonder if I have something against South Indian udupi food. I love idlis and dosas. The steam curling off fluffy idlis on a plate, the crisp, golden dosa that opens to reveal its lacy, bubbled inside (sounds like Victorian underwear, but never mind!) can get me all excited about tucking into a meal. The mustard and chilis in the sambar set off a loud but pleasingly familiar argument with your tongue, while the coconut chutney calms it down. A steel tumbler of filter coffee is good down to the chicory-flecked sediment. It is a flavorful meal.
Having said that, I must confess a politically incorrect puzzlement I’ve long harbored about South Indian food. How can people who eat idlis and dosas and rasam practically every day, sometimes all through the day, step out of their homes and purposely seek out restaurants where they can find more idlis and dosas to order, meal after meal, day after day, month after month, and disturbingly, hop with ecstasy when they do find that dosa joint (gasp!) at the end of the block? I don’t get it. The food they get all poetic about is practically identical to what they eat at home all the time.
It’s comfort food, and I can understand the tears that may run down a deprived cheek when months of separation from idli and dosa ends with a chance encounter with a perfect hing-laced sambar bubbling in a styrofoam bowl on an icy Chicago morning. You think of the plump squeeze of your mother’s hand telling you to have one more dosa, you can hear your father sucking drumsticks noisily with his teeth. After days of boring cornflakes and waxy bagels and bony toast, you want to dig into idli and dosa and feel your sinuses sting gratefully. Moisture courses down your eyes and your nose and you don't give a damn how you look because your body has all its senses engaged in making some heavenly food disappear. You don't say through pursed lips, "Pass the apricot jelly, Nigel." You're busy making indelicate, slurping history of your idli-dosa combo. I get that.
But to crave a dosa, that same dosa, because the last one you had was in the morning ...?
Can comfort food be so comforting that it can anesthetize you into such a state of zombie gratitude that you can’t snap out of it for decades? I had to physically fight the urge to stand up on a chair at MTR that morning and shout, “It’s okay, people. It’s okay to say it. This food is pretty bad.”
Maybe people just keep going back again and again, more than 20 years, to see if they can finally get a good meal at the place. I’m not going to be one of them.
Queues start forming shortly after the eatery opens in the morning, and crowds throng outside at lunch time. Bangalore is a city that does not have very many sights to see, and so MTR figured high on our list of places to go to.
We made it for family breakfast one morning.
Flooded drains formed a moat around the seedy building that houses the restaurant. We wobbled like tightrope walkers over a makeshift bridge of broken bricks and entered the temple of high cuisine. Many of the most awesome eateries in India look forbiddingly dreary or ordinary. The grimy interior did not deter us. These people have been too busy cooking up heavenly meals for decades to think of lowly details like sweeping and dusting.
People wait for a table, eat quickly and leave. There are no plaster of paris curly ornaments on the ceiling or anything as pretentious as a cummerbund on a waiter or a folded napkin on the sticky tables. The waiters wear lungis folded up and tied around their hips, and they don’t offer you a menu. They are too busy zipping from table to table, and usually neither receive nor expect tips. You choose from the dozen items the kitchen has on offer at the time you order.
MTR is like the Soup Nazi in The Seinfeld Show. You show up, and you wait humbly and politely eat what they give you, in the manner they choose to serve it, because they know their food best and you’d better be grateful to be getting some of it. You don’t ask for sambar if they care not to serve it. There was none at 10 a.m. “No sambar,” the waiter said disapprovingly when some was requested.
The dosas we ordered were tepid and already wilting. They looked practically burned. I glanced at other people’s dosas. All dark brown. The rava idlis, supposedly invented here, were cold and bouncy. The kharabhath was over-seasoned, but the only item colorfully garnished with a tomato slice. The gulab jamuns were warm dough pellets with a metallic aftertaste. I wonder how this restaurant got its name as a food purist.
We had asked for coffee to be brought along with our meal and offered several reminders to our waiter, who put his hand up every time he walked by, nodding as though he were quelling an annoying child. The coffee was brought at the end of the meal, when it is customarily drunk. We sipped it gratefully. After all that below-average, pulpy food, the coffee tasted honest and robust.
This was my second sampling of food at MTR, and I rate its food as unremarkable to downright awful. I can forgive a bad meal at a restaurant. But two unrelentingly awful meals at a shrine where I had to grovel to get a seat? I felt scammed at having to endure a long wait and indifferent service for food even an okay cook like me would scorn to produce. What I can’t understand is that thousands of people line up to shove this food in and still praise the lord for blessing Bangalore with MTR. I just don’t get it.
I know lots of people who say in praise of MTR: “I’ve been eating there for 20 years and the food always tastes the same.” After two equally wretched meals there, I can believe that there’s no variation in the quality of the food and don’t plan to go back unless struck by desperation or dementia.
MTR has sold its venerable brand name to a Norwegian food company that now mass markets its high quality masalas and ready to eat mixes globally. Maybe the restaurant should switch to using these in its own kitchen.
You might wonder if I have something against South Indian udupi food. I love idlis and dosas. The steam curling off fluffy idlis on a plate, the crisp, golden dosa that opens to reveal its lacy, bubbled inside (sounds like Victorian underwear, but never mind!) can get me all excited about tucking into a meal. The mustard and chilis in the sambar set off a loud but pleasingly familiar argument with your tongue, while the coconut chutney calms it down. A steel tumbler of filter coffee is good down to the chicory-flecked sediment. It is a flavorful meal.
Having said that, I must confess a politically incorrect puzzlement I’ve long harbored about South Indian food. How can people who eat idlis and dosas and rasam practically every day, sometimes all through the day, step out of their homes and purposely seek out restaurants where they can find more idlis and dosas to order, meal after meal, day after day, month after month, and disturbingly, hop with ecstasy when they do find that dosa joint (gasp!) at the end of the block? I don’t get it. The food they get all poetic about is practically identical to what they eat at home all the time.
It’s comfort food, and I can understand the tears that may run down a deprived cheek when months of separation from idli and dosa ends with a chance encounter with a perfect hing-laced sambar bubbling in a styrofoam bowl on an icy Chicago morning. You think of the plump squeeze of your mother’s hand telling you to have one more dosa, you can hear your father sucking drumsticks noisily with his teeth. After days of boring cornflakes and waxy bagels and bony toast, you want to dig into idli and dosa and feel your sinuses sting gratefully. Moisture courses down your eyes and your nose and you don't give a damn how you look because your body has all its senses engaged in making some heavenly food disappear. You don't say through pursed lips, "Pass the apricot jelly, Nigel." You're busy making indelicate, slurping history of your idli-dosa combo. I get that.
But to crave a dosa, that same dosa, because the last one you had was in the morning ...?
Can comfort food be so comforting that it can anesthetize you into such a state of zombie gratitude that you can’t snap out of it for decades? I had to physically fight the urge to stand up on a chair at MTR that morning and shout, “It’s okay, people. It’s okay to say it. This food is pretty bad.”
Maybe people just keep going back again and again, more than 20 years, to see if they can finally get a good meal at the place. I’m not going to be one of them.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Reason #1: The Housing is Ridiculously Overpriced
I’m not comparing Bangalore to Mumbai or Shanghai or New York here. I’m comparing Bangalore to Bangalore.
Single family homes are rentable in multiples of 1 lakh a month unless you live out in the middle of nowhere, have lousy road access, arrange to pump your own borewell water and generate your own electric power. A 3-bedroom apartment in a compound with recreational facilities should cost you a third to half of that.
The rent bubble has burst, and one can now rent a small villa in Palm Meadows, an upscale gated community, for Rs. 40,000 a month, instead of a lakh a year ago. Homeowners whose rent expectations zoomed from Rs. 20,000 to 2-3 lakhs are now cooling their heels as there is an oversupply of housing.
Gated communities at least offer on-site recreational facilities that compensate for the utter lack of cleanliness or facilities outside their walls. But a dekko will bring the shocking realization that many of the so-called luxury housing options available are little better than low income housing projects in the United States or Europe.
Typically, what you pay for is just a roof over your head because the city does not have much to offer in terms of civic amenities or quality of life.
That homeowners and agents demand extortionate rates isn’t any tribute to the superior quality of the housing on offer or the attractiveness of Bangalore as a city. For rents that are higher than in Palo Alto, Calif., where the original Silicon Valley is, Bangalore offers dug up footpaths, unswept streets, open drains, and daily chaos, making it a destination for people who have to be here because their jobs are located here. Not only does the housing exclude any white goods, it does not include good (and free!) schools, rolling parks and ribbon-smooth highways. It does include horrendous traffic jams and a high probability that your principal source of water will be tanker trucks bringing pesticide-laced ground water from the city’s dwindling borewells to your building. All in all, a laughable price tag for the only good thing on offer: the weather.
Bangalore’s topsy-turvy housing prices are all about supply and demand. There was a huge demand for high-end housing from 2004 for NRIs and expats moving to Bangalore. Whitefield became an attractive location because villas with on-site club facilities were available within a 30 to 45 minute drive to two popular international schools (TISB and Indus), and close to ITPL and its vicinity, where the offices of IT majors are located, as well as to the old HAL airport.
With the housing bust already here, thousands of apartments built to lure property speculators now lie vacant in Whitefield. Villas are quietly put on sale. Gone is the bidding frenzy of prospective renters and the queues of buyers willing to shell out several crores for villas they built for Rs. 20 to 40 lakhs.
The rental market has cooled too. Landlords who salivated at the prospect of luring a gullible expatriate to pay them 2-5 lakh a month in Palm Meadows, with a 15-month, interest-free deposit now have villas lying vacant for months. Gone are the days when they coldly evicted tenants in the middle of leases because some agent promised a company lease that would pay them double.
The new airport is in the city’s north, as are some of the newer international schools. Although still very much an expat ghetto, Palm Meadows is no longer the only option for new expatriate families. More housing is available in every neighborhood of Bangalore. And traffic jams have doubled the peak hour commute from Whitefield to M.G. Road from 45 minutes four years ago to an hour and a half on a good day. Electronics City to the airport is a good 2 hours. A windfall doesn’t last forever.
Apartment prices are also a third to half of what they used to be a few years ago. But these are a bargain only if you think your dream home should come with: No zoning regulations, so you can have a shop or restaurant open practically anywhere in a residential area. Traffic noise that lasts into the wee hours of the morning. Walking on streets that have choked gutters, no sidewalks and no safe junctions to cross at.
The gloriously spreading trees along the sides of roads that the Garden City got its name from are quickly being cut down, and there is rubble and trash everywhere. Metal barricades and knee-high medians stretch for kilometers, with no consideration for pedestrians and school children. Motorcycle riders think footpaths are an extra lane for them to drive on. Streets get flooded after a few centimetres of rain. People fall into overflowing drains and drown every monsoon and yet nothing changes.
All these make Bangalore an ugly, decaying and unsafe city.
Single family homes are rentable in multiples of 1 lakh a month unless you live out in the middle of nowhere, have lousy road access, arrange to pump your own borewell water and generate your own electric power. A 3-bedroom apartment in a compound with recreational facilities should cost you a third to half of that.
The rent bubble has burst, and one can now rent a small villa in Palm Meadows, an upscale gated community, for Rs. 40,000 a month, instead of a lakh a year ago. Homeowners whose rent expectations zoomed from Rs. 20,000 to 2-3 lakhs are now cooling their heels as there is an oversupply of housing.
Gated communities at least offer on-site recreational facilities that compensate for the utter lack of cleanliness or facilities outside their walls. But a dekko will bring the shocking realization that many of the so-called luxury housing options available are little better than low income housing projects in the United States or Europe.
Typically, what you pay for is just a roof over your head because the city does not have much to offer in terms of civic amenities or quality of life.
That homeowners and agents demand extortionate rates isn’t any tribute to the superior quality of the housing on offer or the attractiveness of Bangalore as a city. For rents that are higher than in Palo Alto, Calif., where the original Silicon Valley is, Bangalore offers dug up footpaths, unswept streets, open drains, and daily chaos, making it a destination for people who have to be here because their jobs are located here. Not only does the housing exclude any white goods, it does not include good (and free!) schools, rolling parks and ribbon-smooth highways. It does include horrendous traffic jams and a high probability that your principal source of water will be tanker trucks bringing pesticide-laced ground water from the city’s dwindling borewells to your building. All in all, a laughable price tag for the only good thing on offer: the weather.
Bangalore’s topsy-turvy housing prices are all about supply and demand. There was a huge demand for high-end housing from 2004 for NRIs and expats moving to Bangalore. Whitefield became an attractive location because villas with on-site club facilities were available within a 30 to 45 minute drive to two popular international schools (TISB and Indus), and close to ITPL and its vicinity, where the offices of IT majors are located, as well as to the old HAL airport.
With the housing bust already here, thousands of apartments built to lure property speculators now lie vacant in Whitefield. Villas are quietly put on sale. Gone is the bidding frenzy of prospective renters and the queues of buyers willing to shell out several crores for villas they built for Rs. 20 to 40 lakhs.
The rental market has cooled too. Landlords who salivated at the prospect of luring a gullible expatriate to pay them 2-5 lakh a month in Palm Meadows, with a 15-month, interest-free deposit now have villas lying vacant for months. Gone are the days when they coldly evicted tenants in the middle of leases because some agent promised a company lease that would pay them double.
The new airport is in the city’s north, as are some of the newer international schools. Although still very much an expat ghetto, Palm Meadows is no longer the only option for new expatriate families. More housing is available in every neighborhood of Bangalore. And traffic jams have doubled the peak hour commute from Whitefield to M.G. Road from 45 minutes four years ago to an hour and a half on a good day. Electronics City to the airport is a good 2 hours. A windfall doesn’t last forever.
Apartment prices are also a third to half of what they used to be a few years ago. But these are a bargain only if you think your dream home should come with: No zoning regulations, so you can have a shop or restaurant open practically anywhere in a residential area. Traffic noise that lasts into the wee hours of the morning. Walking on streets that have choked gutters, no sidewalks and no safe junctions to cross at.
The gloriously spreading trees along the sides of roads that the Garden City got its name from are quickly being cut down, and there is rubble and trash everywhere. Metal barricades and knee-high medians stretch for kilometers, with no consideration for pedestrians and school children. Motorcycle riders think footpaths are an extra lane for them to drive on. Streets get flooded after a few centimetres of rain. People fall into overflowing drains and drown every monsoon and yet nothing changes.
All these make Bangalore an ugly, decaying and unsafe city.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Top Ten Reasons Not to Move to Bangalore
Packing up your family and moving to Bangalore because this is Silicon Valley with the same salubrious weather and a lower cost of living? Whatever your company’s HR propagandist or your relocation agent tells you, brace yourself for unpleasant surprises.
This city has a king-size ego, and not much to offer in terms of work, family life or lifestyle. So think twice about altering your life plans to accommodate this city.
The enduring lesson I’ve learnt: You’ll have to sacrifice a lot to accommodate this city, but it won’t do much to accommodate you – not because it doesn’t want to, but because it is itself in tatters.
Here’s my honest and opinionated assessment of Bangalore that will help you factor in all the real pros and cons of moving to this city.
Next post:
Reason #1: The Housing is Ridiculously Overpriced.
This city has a king-size ego, and not much to offer in terms of work, family life or lifestyle. So think twice about altering your life plans to accommodate this city.
The enduring lesson I’ve learnt: You’ll have to sacrifice a lot to accommodate this city, but it won’t do much to accommodate you – not because it doesn’t want to, but because it is itself in tatters.
Here’s my honest and opinionated assessment of Bangalore that will help you factor in all the real pros and cons of moving to this city.
Next post:
Reason #1: The Housing is Ridiculously Overpriced.
Friday, September 11, 2009
CBSE, ICSE: Pick Your Poison
Copyrighted. Reprints only with full attribution and the author's permission.
What is CBSE? What is ICSE? Is one better than the other?
For parents, it is akin to being asked to choose which poison to administer to their child. Both these exam boards cram a huge amount of knowledge into our children while chipping away at their individuality so that by the time they finish school they are are no square pegs left to squeeze into round holes.
CBSE schools are affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education, based in Delhi, which is why some schools will say they are attached to the “Delhi Board,” as opposed to the regional “state board.”
The CBSE board conducts two examinations, one at the end of Class 10 (which it is now considering making optional), and another at the end of Class 12 (the results of which help determine which college a student might be able to enroll in).
Government and military employees face frequent transfers around the country. The CBSE board has a uniform curriculum tailor-made for this constituency.
The CBSE curriculum is largely rote-based, and therefore ideal for government and military schools as it is fairly easy to ensure the same textbooks and parroting teachers are available anywhere in the country. The exams test memory rather than intelligence.
The CBSE board is perceived as strong in mathematics and the sciences, and easy in English and social sciences. The same board also conducts entrance examinations for engineering and pre-medical courses, and the curriculum and questions of these coincide with its school syllabi.
This accounts for the widely held assumption that CBSE students perform better in these tests because they are already familiar with the subject matter tested.
Many private schools also offer the CBSE curriculum: It is an easy product to deliver even with barely adequate teachers. Customers don’t have to be sold on it as they are predisposed to think it gives their children an edge in the college market.
The other rival education brand, the ICSE, also has a cookie-cutter approach to education. But it has a far massive syllabus and essay type questions, which are a truer test of intelligence and expressiveness, and therefore harder to get perfect scores on.
A large portion of CBSE exam questions are multiple choice, making it easy for candidates to get perfect scores for correct answers even if they have poor language skills -- and therefore high overall scores. The board has recently modernized the curriculum, requiring more essays and reflective answers. It also plans to switch to a system of letter grades from 2010.
Parents opting for the CBSE system say they do so their children can get higher scores, giving them an edge in college applications (Most Indian colleges specify the minimum cutoff percentage of marks they want in applicants. If you got less, don’t even bother to apply.) However, many of the premier colleges in India administer entrance exams of their own precisely because they do not want just rote learners to crash their rolls and they want to pick their own candidates. So, scoring high in school board exams are no longer a shoo-in for admission to India’s top colleges.
The CBSE system is the default choice for many who want their children to study engineering or medicine because popular myth has it that this board’s candidates are more likely to succeed in entrance exams. This is only a perception. The reality is that the majority of candidates who succeed in entrance exams for institutes such as IIT prepare themselves with additional private tutorials and coaching classes that teach test taking techniques that enable them to score high. In fact, actual surveys of students who made it to the Indian Institute of Technology, the holy grail of engineering studies in India, have revealed that a greater number of them hailed from ICSE rather than CBSE schools.
The national education minister Kapil Sibal recently shook the massive ants’ nest that the country’s education system is by suggesting that his government is likely to abolish the 10th grade examination, starting with the CBSE’s own exam, from 2011.
Under the new system, students will be assessed by their own schools, and over a longer period so that a single exam does not have the power make or break their lives. Letter grades will be awarded rather than marks so students have benchmarks for their performances, without having their worth measured in percentages and decimals derived from one exam. These are all sensible changes.
These are all necessary and welcome changes. Indian students generally perform well on tests that require cramming and offering predictable answers. They are unable to think out of the box because our education system does not nurture or reward this skill.
The 10th grade exam is often a dress rehearsal for the 12th grade exam, which supposedly prepares you for college exams, and ad nauseam. If an exam exists solely to prepare children for another bigger exam, then it has no intrinsic value of its own. Our 9th and 10th graders devote two years to cram for a week of sit-down exams. Imagine, if that time was spent in experiencing the joy of learning for the sake of learning before they are spat out of the system and into the cynical world where skills are worthwhile only if they are marketable or capable of generating money.
What is CBSE? What is ICSE? Is one better than the other?
For parents, it is akin to being asked to choose which poison to administer to their child. Both these exam boards cram a huge amount of knowledge into our children while chipping away at their individuality so that by the time they finish school they are are no square pegs left to squeeze into round holes.
CBSE schools are affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education, based in Delhi, which is why some schools will say they are attached to the “Delhi Board,” as opposed to the regional “state board.”
The CBSE board conducts two examinations, one at the end of Class 10 (which it is now considering making optional), and another at the end of Class 12 (the results of which help determine which college a student might be able to enroll in).
Government and military employees face frequent transfers around the country. The CBSE board has a uniform curriculum tailor-made for this constituency.
The CBSE curriculum is largely rote-based, and therefore ideal for government and military schools as it is fairly easy to ensure the same textbooks and parroting teachers are available anywhere in the country. The exams test memory rather than intelligence.
The CBSE board is perceived as strong in mathematics and the sciences, and easy in English and social sciences. The same board also conducts entrance examinations for engineering and pre-medical courses, and the curriculum and questions of these coincide with its school syllabi.
This accounts for the widely held assumption that CBSE students perform better in these tests because they are already familiar with the subject matter tested.
Many private schools also offer the CBSE curriculum: It is an easy product to deliver even with barely adequate teachers. Customers don’t have to be sold on it as they are predisposed to think it gives their children an edge in the college market.
The other rival education brand, the ICSE, also has a cookie-cutter approach to education. But it has a far massive syllabus and essay type questions, which are a truer test of intelligence and expressiveness, and therefore harder to get perfect scores on.
A large portion of CBSE exam questions are multiple choice, making it easy for candidates to get perfect scores for correct answers even if they have poor language skills -- and therefore high overall scores. The board has recently modernized the curriculum, requiring more essays and reflective answers. It also plans to switch to a system of letter grades from 2010.
Parents opting for the CBSE system say they do so their children can get higher scores, giving them an edge in college applications (Most Indian colleges specify the minimum cutoff percentage of marks they want in applicants. If you got less, don’t even bother to apply.) However, many of the premier colleges in India administer entrance exams of their own precisely because they do not want just rote learners to crash their rolls and they want to pick their own candidates. So, scoring high in school board exams are no longer a shoo-in for admission to India’s top colleges.
The CBSE system is the default choice for many who want their children to study engineering or medicine because popular myth has it that this board’s candidates are more likely to succeed in entrance exams. This is only a perception. The reality is that the majority of candidates who succeed in entrance exams for institutes such as IIT prepare themselves with additional private tutorials and coaching classes that teach test taking techniques that enable them to score high. In fact, actual surveys of students who made it to the Indian Institute of Technology, the holy grail of engineering studies in India, have revealed that a greater number of them hailed from ICSE rather than CBSE schools.
The national education minister Kapil Sibal recently shook the massive ants’ nest that the country’s education system is by suggesting that his government is likely to abolish the 10th grade examination, starting with the CBSE’s own exam, from 2011.
Under the new system, students will be assessed by their own schools, and over a longer period so that a single exam does not have the power make or break their lives. Letter grades will be awarded rather than marks so students have benchmarks for their performances, without having their worth measured in percentages and decimals derived from one exam. These are all sensible changes.
These are all necessary and welcome changes. Indian students generally perform well on tests that require cramming and offering predictable answers. They are unable to think out of the box because our education system does not nurture or reward this skill.
The 10th grade exam is often a dress rehearsal for the 12th grade exam, which supposedly prepares you for college exams, and ad nauseam. If an exam exists solely to prepare children for another bigger exam, then it has no intrinsic value of its own. Our 9th and 10th graders devote two years to cram for a week of sit-down exams. Imagine, if that time was spent in experiencing the joy of learning for the sake of learning before they are spat out of the system and into the cynical world where skills are worthwhile only if they are marketable or capable of generating money.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The Parents' Guide to India's Education System
Copyrighted. Reprints only with attribution and the author’s permission
This blog offers the Only guide to education in India that is comprehensive, honest and useful. Most so-called guides are larded with PR bullshit. Take it from a parent and a former newspaper reporter who has scoured every option and is happy to share her findings with thousands of others who are likely to walk in the same shoes.
Families moving to India find themselves staring at an alphabet soup of educational systems: CBSE, ICSE, SSC, SSLC, NCERT, IGCSE, ISC .... The nightmare doesn’t end, and parents have to make the right choice in a snap.
Time is short. The education system is completely different from what your children are used to. The school year is different. The Indian school calendar runs from June to March so you agonize about whether it’s better to let your children finish their school year abroad so they experience closure before you all move, or better for them to cut short their school year, forgo their summer holidays and plunge into a fresh start in India. School admission can be a humiliating ordeal for parents and children. Schools typically have long waiting lists and grueling admission tests that can batter a child’s self-confidence. Your children are likely to be saddled with heavier school bags, loaded with homework, parrot their textbooks and constantly prepare for tests.
You stare at all these unappetizing options and have to take the perfect decision quickly ... because your child’s future depends on the oracle of a school principal and your ability to find the right school and curriculum.
Unscrambling the acronyms is easy. The challenge lies in finding the right school that can give your child an enriched and balanced learning experience that you want for them and would make your relocation worthwhile.
Those relocating for a brief period want to leapfrog into a compatible educational ecosystem. Those moving to India for good want to make that perfect, unerring decision that could make or break their family's adjustment to India.
Parents want to choose a school and an education system that together are most likely to make their kids happy, successful and well-prepared for admission to the most competitive colleges in India and abroad.
Read my succeeding posts for answers to the most asked questions about the Indian school system.
The next installment will answer:
What is CBSE?
What is ICSE?
Which is better: CBSE or ICSE?
This blog offers the Only guide to education in India that is comprehensive, honest and useful. Most so-called guides are larded with PR bullshit. Take it from a parent and a former newspaper reporter who has scoured every option and is happy to share her findings with thousands of others who are likely to walk in the same shoes.
Families moving to India find themselves staring at an alphabet soup of educational systems: CBSE, ICSE, SSC, SSLC, NCERT, IGCSE, ISC .... The nightmare doesn’t end, and parents have to make the right choice in a snap.
Time is short. The education system is completely different from what your children are used to. The school year is different. The Indian school calendar runs from June to March so you agonize about whether it’s better to let your children finish their school year abroad so they experience closure before you all move, or better for them to cut short their school year, forgo their summer holidays and plunge into a fresh start in India. School admission can be a humiliating ordeal for parents and children. Schools typically have long waiting lists and grueling admission tests that can batter a child’s self-confidence. Your children are likely to be saddled with heavier school bags, loaded with homework, parrot their textbooks and constantly prepare for tests.
You stare at all these unappetizing options and have to take the perfect decision quickly ... because your child’s future depends on the oracle of a school principal and your ability to find the right school and curriculum.
Unscrambling the acronyms is easy. The challenge lies in finding the right school that can give your child an enriched and balanced learning experience that you want for them and would make your relocation worthwhile.
Those relocating for a brief period want to leapfrog into a compatible educational ecosystem. Those moving to India for good want to make that perfect, unerring decision that could make or break their family's adjustment to India.
Parents want to choose a school and an education system that together are most likely to make their kids happy, successful and well-prepared for admission to the most competitive colleges in India and abroad.
Read my succeeding posts for answers to the most asked questions about the Indian school system.
The next installment will answer:
What is CBSE?
What is ICSE?
Which is better: CBSE or ICSE?
Monday, September 7, 2009
Hyderabad 2: Charminar
The Charminar is to Hyderabad what the Arc de Triomphe is to Paris.
The Charminar was etched in my mind long ago as a child, even though no one in my family smoked. I was raised in a tee-totalling world in which only movie stars and the local layabouts smoked cigarettes, while servants and laborers dragged on bidis. I remember the sketched logo of the orange Charminar cigarette packs in paan shops and on billboard advertisements that urged everyone to Relax, Have a Charminar.
I saw the actual monument finally, and it is practically as tiny as its likeness on the cigarette packs.
You’re driving down the main drag of the old city quarter of Hyderabad, and there the Charminar suddenly stands before you, dingy and chipped, with that aged yellowness of old dentures.
The ticket office charged me Rs. 5. The staff insisted my husband should pay Rs. 150 even though he has proof of residence in India. “Naagrikta honi chahiye,” a ticket guy said, turning down all government-issued proofs showing he lives in India and is not a tourist. “He has to be a citizen.”
Our family goes through this annoying and humiliating exercise of Indian double standards all the time. When we go travel anywhere in the United States, my husband and I pay the same to see any national monuments. I don’t pay more because I look darker than him, or because the ticket guy thinks I look foreign or because the American government thinks I should pay more because I must be richer since I come from the land of maharajas.
At the Charminar, no documents were asked of me; the color of my skin was enough. My husband paid 30 times more than me. I wonder how the Indian government calculates the exponents by which tourists or anyone not perceived to look Indian should be robbed officially. What a grubby beggar it reduces a government to to dip into the pockets of its guests so shamelessly and for no apparent reason other than it can get away with such extortion.
My husband got the same view of the graffitied minarets, but the ticket he got was printed on nicer paper while mine looked like a bus ticket. The guards let him through with a jaunty flourish.
The Charminar might have been a towering structure in 1591. What you get after climbing up a narrow, glute-challenging spiral staircase is get a pigeon’s eye view of the lanes of fruit vendors, yellow arcs of auto-rickshaw queues, billboards and crowded bazaars. The carvings on the minarets are clearly visible from the balcony.
A grubby jute rope is strung across the balcony to deter people from falling over. Suicidal leaps from the minarets have made the upper levels of the Charminar out of bounds for all visitors except for Very Important Persons. There are taller buildings in the city whose heights can guarantee greater success in creating a bloody pulp of oneself than the stubby Charminar. But maybe there is something romantic about leaping out of stone arches that have an established pedigree in assisting suicides.
The Charminar's walls are gouged with graffiti. “All from before 2006, before they posted us here, Madam,” a guard said defensively. Who are the scribblers, typically? “Students,” he said. “Illiterate people are not our problem because they can’t write their names. It’s these educated people who want to write their names everywhere.”
The Charminar was etched in my mind long ago as a child, even though no one in my family smoked. I was raised in a tee-totalling world in which only movie stars and the local layabouts smoked cigarettes, while servants and laborers dragged on bidis. I remember the sketched logo of the orange Charminar cigarette packs in paan shops and on billboard advertisements that urged everyone to Relax, Have a Charminar.
I saw the actual monument finally, and it is practically as tiny as its likeness on the cigarette packs.
You’re driving down the main drag of the old city quarter of Hyderabad, and there the Charminar suddenly stands before you, dingy and chipped, with that aged yellowness of old dentures.
The ticket office charged me Rs. 5. The staff insisted my husband should pay Rs. 150 even though he has proof of residence in India. “Naagrikta honi chahiye,” a ticket guy said, turning down all government-issued proofs showing he lives in India and is not a tourist. “He has to be a citizen.”
Our family goes through this annoying and humiliating exercise of Indian double standards all the time. When we go travel anywhere in the United States, my husband and I pay the same to see any national monuments. I don’t pay more because I look darker than him, or because the ticket guy thinks I look foreign or because the American government thinks I should pay more because I must be richer since I come from the land of maharajas.
At the Charminar, no documents were asked of me; the color of my skin was enough. My husband paid 30 times more than me. I wonder how the Indian government calculates the exponents by which tourists or anyone not perceived to look Indian should be robbed officially. What a grubby beggar it reduces a government to to dip into the pockets of its guests so shamelessly and for no apparent reason other than it can get away with such extortion.
My husband got the same view of the graffitied minarets, but the ticket he got was printed on nicer paper while mine looked like a bus ticket. The guards let him through with a jaunty flourish.
The Charminar might have been a towering structure in 1591. What you get after climbing up a narrow, glute-challenging spiral staircase is get a pigeon’s eye view of the lanes of fruit vendors, yellow arcs of auto-rickshaw queues, billboards and crowded bazaars. The carvings on the minarets are clearly visible from the balcony.
A grubby jute rope is strung across the balcony to deter people from falling over. Suicidal leaps from the minarets have made the upper levels of the Charminar out of bounds for all visitors except for Very Important Persons. There are taller buildings in the city whose heights can guarantee greater success in creating a bloody pulp of oneself than the stubby Charminar. But maybe there is something romantic about leaping out of stone arches that have an established pedigree in assisting suicides.
The Charminar's walls are gouged with graffiti. “All from before 2006, before they posted us here, Madam,” a guard said defensively. Who are the scribblers, typically? “Students,” he said. “Illiterate people are not our problem because they can’t write their names. It’s these educated people who want to write their names everywhere.”
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Hyderabad 1: Fire at the High Court
I went to Hyderabad for the first time ever. The High Court was on fire the morning I landed. The morning after I left, the Chief Minister died in a helicopter crash.
Monday was one of the rainiest days there. The rain started before dawn and had retreated to a drizzle by late morning, when my husband and I drove from the airport to the old city to catch some sight seeing.
My husband’s cellphone rang. “Are you near a television?” a friend demanded. “The High Court is on fire.”
Eerily, we were on the same street, just a block away. We turned our heads right, and there was the fire: the brown onion domes of the stately 93-year-old High Court with black curls of smoke puffing out. There weren’t any fire engines around or police cordons, no signs of sleepy government officials poked into moving with any speed. It just seemed like a normal morning, with cars streaming by on the street outside, while parts of the city’s highest court were into their sixth hour of burning.
The High Court, a magnificent building of pink granite and red sandstone (that now look a drab brown), cost Rs. 2-million when it was built in 1916. Its architect was Vincent Esch, who also supervised the construction of the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta.
The next morning’s paper reported that the fire, started by an electrical short circuit, was detected at 4 a.m. by a guard. There were no fire alarms or extinguishers in the building.
Apparently, the fire department had for years been sending reminders to the Court that it needed to comply with fire safety guidelines. The state's highest Court thumbed its nose at them; its business was to dispense law, not follow it.
Monday was one of the rainiest days there. The rain started before dawn and had retreated to a drizzle by late morning, when my husband and I drove from the airport to the old city to catch some sight seeing.
My husband’s cellphone rang. “Are you near a television?” a friend demanded. “The High Court is on fire.”
Eerily, we were on the same street, just a block away. We turned our heads right, and there was the fire: the brown onion domes of the stately 93-year-old High Court with black curls of smoke puffing out. There weren’t any fire engines around or police cordons, no signs of sleepy government officials poked into moving with any speed. It just seemed like a normal morning, with cars streaming by on the street outside, while parts of the city’s highest court were into their sixth hour of burning.
The High Court, a magnificent building of pink granite and red sandstone (that now look a drab brown), cost Rs. 2-million when it was built in 1916. Its architect was Vincent Esch, who also supervised the construction of the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta.
The next morning’s paper reported that the fire, started by an electrical short circuit, was detected at 4 a.m. by a guard. There were no fire alarms or extinguishers in the building.
Apparently, the fire department had for years been sending reminders to the Court that it needed to comply with fire safety guidelines. The state's highest Court thumbed its nose at them; its business was to dispense law, not follow it.
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