Latest news with #Augean
Express Tribune
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
Unbecoming of a PM
Listen to article Prime Minister Narendra Modi is perhaps feeling the heat of embarrassment, and is out to provoke his people for more jingoism against Pakistan. His speech at a rally in his hotbed constituency, Gujarat, was unbecoming of the stature of a Prime Minister, and it seems he believes in stooping too low without any concern for diplomatic or interstate ethics. This reckless provocation has a purpose and that is to derail the momentum of mediation and diplomacy that the US and other major powers are choreographing to usher in peace and stability between the two nuclear states. The fact that they have returned from the brink after a four-day duel, and are keeping their fingers crossed, calls for some statesmanship and not this political vandalism that the Indian premier is resorting to. For the sake of record-keeping, let us reiterate what Mr Modi uttered in his carried-away saffron fanfare: " eat your bread or [choose my] bullet." This appears to be a page taken from the playbook of Nazism, which led the world into a catastrophic World War, devastating civilisations and humanity. Such brinkmanship is quite common among other BJP and RSS stalwarts too, as they time and again feel like threatening Pakistan to raise their minion status at the cost of regional sanctity. The applause from the crowd adorned in orange and white outfits is a red flag, and it is high time the world community took notice of India's political terrorism following its aggression against Pakistan under the false pretext of Pahalgam killings. Modi, as an elected leader of one of the world's largest democracies, must reflect on his policies, and the best way out is to clean the Augean stable by addressing the irritants between the two countries. Pakistan's condemnation is noticeable, and it is right in asserting that the fire-spitting speech was intended to distract attention from the ongoing human rights abuses and demographic engineering in IIOJK, as well as the failure of the Operation Sindoor. The onus is on India's civil society and the general public to rise to the occasion and checkmate this war-mongering mentality by booting the incumbents out.
The Hindu
13-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
In India, education without employment
In defending the educational policies of the present government, it has been claimed that education has been freed from the shackles of previous governments: Atal Tinkering Labs, coding right from middle school, the recruitment of Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe teachers, and the empowerment of Muslim girl students. But primarily, it is stated that the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 'will enable an educational renaissance'. In all these utterances, the seminal point that is forgotten is that our educational system remains clueless about the shape-shifting marketplace — namely, the employability of our graduates as a workforce. Education has many purposes. It enables, it enervates and elevates. As Vivekananda said, education empowers one to stand on one's own feet. After 75 years of foolishly gambling excellence for equity, India has squandered both. Young people are unable to find meaningful employment that is commensurate with any training that they may have received. The degrees they have are not worth the paper on which they are printed. It is irrelevant that these problems were created or ignored by the Congress pot or the Bharatiya Janata Party kettle. The present lawfully elected government has the responsibility to cleanse these Augean stables. Never mind that the NEP 2000 is the fourth such document that was supposed to do this after the Radhakrishnan Commission (1948); the Kothari Commission (1966) and the Officers' Commission (1985). A good education is one with an optimum of depth and breadth. Depth alone imparts the technical expertise for employability. Breadth provides flexibility in a rapidly changing Artificial Intelligence-driven ecosystem, where those in the job market need to constantly re-train themselves to avoid extinction. A high rate of educated unemployment There is barely any evidence, four years on, that any of the NEP recommendations have been put into effect. In 2025, India's overall graduate employability rate is 42.6%, which is practically the same as the 44.3% of 2023. Similarly, knowledge-intensive employment in the year 2023 only stands at 11.72%. Multiple entries and exits, a hallmark of NEP, have only created low-quality and poorly paying e-commerce jobs. The high rate of educated unemployment today shows that education in India is actually disempowering students. The NEP is a retreat to the Vannevar Bush model of the mid-20th century U.S. without its financial cushioning. The NEP is outdated and financially unviable in the India of 2025. With lip service paid to 'new' ideas such as Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS), mother tongue learning, changing history textbooks, flexible curricula and a complete absence of methodology to effect its recommendations, the NEP is a dead fish in the water. It depends on course choice alone to correct imbalances, notwithstanding that the course content itself may be unworkable. It is noteworthy that there was not a single member from industry or the business sectors in the committee that drafted the NEP. A good university seamlessly integrates breadth with depth. It is claimed that there has been a remarkable improvement from the past in that 11 Indian universities are ranked in the top QS World University Rankings (WUR) 500, clearly echoing the selective narrative of Nunzio Quacquarelli, CEO of QS, who was generous in his praise of India, while releasing WUR 25. Mr. Quacquarelli quoted the 318% increase in the performance of Indian universities, as the highest growth among the G-20 nations, quietly avoiding mention of both India's low ranking (above 100) and low publication quality. To wit, India's Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI) rank (an indicator of publications quality) during 2008-19 which was 17th among 19 countries in the G-20, inched up admirably to 16th position in 2024. Such 'increases' have been touted by the Ministry in its Press Information Bureau press release of February 13, 2025. It has also been claimed that this is the year when Indian universities showcased the highest performance improvement among all G-20 nations. It is unbelievable that in this digital era, the government has failed to recognise and understand the commercial implications of QS, THE and similar agencies and the reasons for their skewed and deceptive analyses. A missing transparency on projects Mega research projects were carried out with great fanfare and amidst a media blitz in the past. These included the New Millennium project (CSIR-NMITLI), the $10 Akash tablet project, and the IMPRINT (IMPacting Research INnovation and Technology) project (MHRD). These projects were in the limelight for years, but the public is not aware of the emergence of the intended products or processes from these projects, on which hundreds of crores of taxpayer money has been spent. It does not matter whether these projects were initiated or shut down by the Congress or the BJP. What we, as taxpayers, want to know is if these projects were value for money. India's Global Innovation Index (GII) represents the innovation capabilities of India. Our ranks in 2014, 2015 and 2024 were 76, 81, and 39. Malaysia and Türkiye lead India in GII with ranks of 33 and 37, respectively. The GII reveals the world's top S&T clusters in two innovation metrics: published patent applications and published scientific articles. India has four clusters with ranks of 56 (Bengaluru), 63 (Delhi), 82 (Chennai) and 84 (Mumbai). The Bengaluru cluster is often touted as an unparalleled rival to Silicon Valley, particularly with respect to the numbers of startups and Unicorns. However, its 56th rank needs to be compared to the sixth-ranked Silicon Valley cluster. In terms of cluster intensity of the top 100, Bengaluru at 94 followed by Chennai at 96, Delhi at 98, and Mumbai at 99 pale in comparison to San Jose-San Francisco (Silicon Valley) at 2 and Cambridge at 1. The number of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications per capita and scientific publications per capita for the Silicon Valley cluster are 7885 and 9211, respectively. The corresponding numbers for the Bengaluru cluster are 313 and 1077. Samsung Electronics (South Korean) is the leading patentee in Bengaluru. No further comment is necessary. The subject of start-ups There is no point talking about start-ups, when we do not know what they mean. Start-ups in China, the U.S. and Israel tackle semiconductor technology, how to refine rare earth elements with ecological sensitivity and how to make metformin cheaper. In contrast, our government lauds new apps that hawk food products. India cannot have start-ups without indigenous technology. It cannot have indigenous technology without indigenous science. It cannot have indigenous science without indigenous quality education, sans political agendas. Two-wheeler kiranas are not startups. Contrary to the thinking of the Education Ministry, the University Grants Commission (UGC) remains an instrument of control. It always has been and there is no justification for this antediluvian organisation to have both regulatory and financial control over universities. Can the UGC present a single piece of hard data showing that changes in pedagogy and syllabus have had a positive effect? In other words, how relevant are these changes, if any, to industry, skilling, and employability? India would probably be better off if the UGC was shut down. Sitting UGC chairs, vice-chancellors, directors and ministers need not appear in national dailies peddling their policies and propaganda ad nauseam. Their job is to execute policy, not talk about it, and to ensure decent employability for the youth. It is our job, as independent academics, to write in the newspapers, if they do not do their job. 'When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent' — Isaac Asimov Gautam R. Desiraju is Professor Emeritus, Indian Institute of Science and Distinguished Professor, UPES Dehradun, with a citations-to-publications ratio of 102.5. Mirle Surappa is INSA Senior Scientist at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, former Vice-Chancellor, Anna University, former Director, IIT Ropar and former Dean, Indian Institute of Science. The views expressed are personal
Yahoo
16-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Britain's new megaproject is a triumph. Pity you can't see it
Last Friday, Radio 4's Today programme found the BBC's irrepressible royal correspondent, Jonny Dymond, rhapsodising about his visit to a decidedly unregal location. He had descended 40 metres (130ft) underground to report on the construction of an immense concrete tunnel, 25 kilometres (15 miles) long, which follows the course of the Thames from Acton in west London to Abbey Mills in the east. The scale of the structure, he reported, was astonishing: 'It's beautiful to see, but you'll never see it. This amazing feat of engineering has almost no above-ground monument. It'll be sunk away from the sight of people who might rejoice in it, because it is a giant sewer.' With 21 connections to London's Victorian sewage system completed, the Thames Tideway Tunnel has finally begun its Augean task of containing the capital's sewage. It has yet to be tested in storm conditions, but it is expected to prevent 95 per cent of the sewage spills that currently befoul the river. Animal and human alike, the denizens of the Thames should find their river a purer and more pleasant place (including the crews of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, who last year had to abandon the tradition of flinging the victorious cox into the river, because of high levels of Roger Bailey, the Tideway super-sewer's chief technical officer, remarked a trifle ruefully that it was great to have a good news story about infrastructure. The great Victorian engineers – Bazalgette, Brunel, Robert (railway) Stephenson and his near namesake, Robert (lighthouse) Stevenson – were heroes of their age. But in our own time, mention of the term 'infrastructure project' tends to evoke not so much magnificent monuments of national ambition and expertise, as the expectation of endless delays, ballooning budgets and interminable discussions, which continue, sometimes for decades, without resolution. No one could describe HS2 or the prospect of a third Heathrow runway as feel-good projects. And buried far beneath the Thames, the splendour of the Tideway as a feat of engineering is destined to remain unappreciated by all but a few tunnel fanatics. Yet it is not without above-ground reminders of its existence. Some of the construction sites are to be turned into public spaces, while artworks have been commissioned reflecting the history of the Thames: a balustrade of bronze oars at Putney; herons echoing a motif from William de Morgan's Chelsea ceramics workshop. But perhaps the sewer's most important monument will be its invisibility: its construction may not achieve William Morris's utopian vision of 'The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green'. But it might bring it a little closer. If you seek its monument, look around. Sir Andy Murray may have retired from playing professional tennis, but you'd think the superb co-ordination of an elite athlete would enable him to tackle other sports at a fair amateur level. Not so, apparently. Recounting his first skiing trip on the Sporting Misadventures podcast, he admitted that his wife Kim was mortified by his inability to dismount a ski lift with grace. When he did eventually get up the mountain he couldn't get down again, having neglected to learn how to stop, and had to be rescued. Undeterred, he plans to have another bash. There is something quite cheering about this snapshot of minor humiliation. Social media is the gateway to a vast archive of people doing things very well, from child prodigies knocking out virtuoso piano pieces when their feet barely reach the pedals, to video updates of Violette Dorange's struggles against the cruel sea – at 23, she is the youngest solo sailor ever to complete the Vendée Globe round-the-world race. Such videos may ignite a spark of inspiration, but it can die as quickly as it flares: if you're never going to do something really well, why persisting in doing it badly? It might be more entertaining to keep watching people with real talent. (This thought strikes me daily as I mangle Haydn's early piano sonatas.) Generous as always, Sir Andy's tale of his skiing debacle offers hope to hapless amateurs. When we are ready to give up, we can think of the great Olympic champion descending an icy mountain on his behind, and decide to give it another go. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
16-02-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Britain's new megaproject is a triumph. Pity you can't see it
Last Friday, Radio 4's Today programme found the BBC's irrepressible royal correspondent, Jonny Dymond, rhapsodising about his visit to a decidedly unregal location. He had descended 40 metres (130ft) underground to report on the construction of an immense concrete tunnel, 25 kilometres (15 miles) long, which follows the course of the Thames from Acton in west London to Abbey Mills in the east. The scale of the structure, he reported, was astonishing: 'It's beautiful to see, but you'll never see it. This amazing feat of engineering has almost no above-ground monument. It'll be sunk away from the sight of people who might rejoice in it, because it is a giant sewer.' With 21 connections to London's Victorian sewage system completed, the Thames Tideway Tunnel has finally begun its Augean task of containing the capital's sewage. It has yet to be tested in storm conditions, but it is expected to prevent 95 per cent of the sewage spills that currently befoul the river. Animal and human alike, the denizens of the Thames should find their river a purer and more pleasant place (including the crews of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, who last year had to abandon the tradition of flinging the victorious cox into the river, because of high levels of Roger Bailey, the Tideway super-sewer's chief technical officer, remarked a trifle ruefully that it was great to have a good news story about infrastructure. The great Victorian engineers – Bazalgette, Brunel, Robert (railway) Stephenson and his near namesake, Robert (lighthouse) Stevenson – were heroes of their age. But in our own time, mention of the term 'infrastructure project' tends to evoke not so much magnificent monuments of national ambition and expertise, as the expectation of endless delays, ballooning budgets and interminable discussions, which continue, sometimes for decades, without resolution. No one could describe HS2 or the prospect of a third Heathrow runway as feel-good projects. And buried far beneath the Thames, the splendour of the Tideway as a feat of engineering is destined to remain unappreciated by all but a few tunnel fanatics. Yet it is not without above-ground reminders of its existence. Some of the construction sites are to be turned into public spaces, while artworks have been commissioned reflecting the history of the Thames: a balustrade of bronze oars at Putney; herons echoing a motif from William de Morgan's Chelsea ceramics workshop. But perhaps the sewer's most important monument will be its invisibility: its construction may not achieve William Morris's utopian vision of 'The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green'. But it might bring it a little closer. If you seek its monument, look around. Three cheers for amateurism Sir Andy Murray may have retired from playing professional tennis, but you'd think the superb co-ordination of an elite athlete would enable him to tackle other sports at a fair amateur level. Not so, apparently. Recounting his first skiing trip on the Sporting Misadventures podcast, he admitted that his wife Kim was mortified by his inability to dismount a ski lift with grace. When he did eventually get up the mountain he couldn't get down again, having neglected to learn how to stop, and had to be rescued. Undeterred, he plans to have another bash. There is something quite cheering about this snapshot of minor humiliation. Social media is the gateway to a vast archive of people doing things very well, from child prodigies knocking out virtuoso piano pieces when their feet barely reach the pedals, to video updates of Violette Dorange's struggles against the cruel sea – at 23, she is the youngest solo sailor ever to complete the Vendée Globe round-the-world race. Such videos may ignite a spark of inspiration, but it can die as quickly as it flares: if you're never going to do something really well, why persisting in doing it badly? It might be more entertaining to keep watching people with real talent. (This thought strikes me daily as I mangle Haydn's early piano sonatas.) Generous as always, Sir Andy's tale of his skiing debacle offers hope to hapless amateurs. When we are ready to give up, we can think of the great Olympic champion descending an icy mountain on his behind, and decide to give it another go.
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
At first I laughed at Trump. Now I know not to underestimate him.
I was trying to remember the last time Donald Trump's opponents laughed so hard at his expense. Oh, yes, it was Nov. 15, 2022. The twice-impeached, Jan. 6-disgraced former president announced that he would run again for president. What a joke. I laughed, too. Now this week, Trump is the target anew of that same mockery, that same sneering contempt, as he momentarily lifts the promised tariffs on Mexico and Canada. Trump's 'a cheap date,' his tormentors say. Canada and Mexico merely offered him things they had already promised, and Trump folded. What a fool! Opinion: Mexico and Canada outsmarted Trump in his trade war. He still thinks he won. This was exactly the mood when Trump brought the world media to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2022 to declare that he would return to the White House. People howled. The conventional wisdom was that Trump was actually not running for president but running from the law. Here's how The Washington Post put it: 'Trump's urgency to announce also comes from wanting to get ahead of a potential indictment in any of the several ongoing criminal investigations.' His popularity was in the toilet. Polls showed 54% of voters had an unfavorable view of him. Forty-four percent had a 'very unfavorable' view, The Post reported. Just three months earlier, the FBI had served a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago living quarters looking for and finding classified documents. And now he was running for president again? What a farce! Except that he did run for president. He did win. And now it is Trump sweeping the Augean stables of the FBI and the rest of the U.S intelligence community. That latter development has even become a trending topic this week on social media: 'Panic in D.C.' This is a cautionary tale for anyone inclined to believe that Mexico and Canada just took Trump to the cleaners on tariffs. Laugh at your peril. Before you do, however, go back even earlier to 2015, when Bill Maher asked Ann Coulter who would win the Republican nomination for president. 'Donald Trump,' she said with unflinching confidence. Laughter rained down on her. Not only was the audience doubled over, the other guests and Maher laughed at her. Coulter sat as the dunce in the room. She did not back down. Today, Donald Trump controls the White House and majorities in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. The Democratic Party is in tatters. A new Quinnipiac University poll shows that Democrats just hit a 16-year low in popularity. A mere 31% of U.S. voters express a positive view of the Democratic Party. But Democrats have new hope today. They think Trump just blew himself up with tariffs. Did he? They say he got from Canada what Canada had already put on the table – a $1.3 billion hardening of the U.S.-Canada border. But that happened in December. Here's how Newsweek headlined it on Dec. 20: 'Canada Announces $1.3 Billion Border Security Plan Amid Trump Tariff Threats.' So, that was a concession Trump had already won with threatened tariffs. He merely kept his line in the water a little longer to see what else he might snag. And here's what he got. Canada will appoint a 'fentanyl czar' to focus on drug trafficking. It will join the United States in designating drug cartels as 'terrorist' organizations and creating a joint strike force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering, Canada's National Post newspaper reports. In all, a $200 million bonus. Not earthshaking, but not nothing. Tell us: Trump has been president for nearly a month. How do you think he's doing? | Opinion Forum As for Mexico, The New York Times reports that country 'will post an additional 10,000 Mexican National Guard members on the border with the promise to 'prevent drug trafficking,' in particular fentanyl.' Liberals howled again that those troops are already there. OK, then take it up with The Times, which you now accuse of fake news. That doesn't even take into account that Trump hasn't closed the deal on tariffs. He merely paused it for a month. For you Trump critics, are you confident that the president will never reimpose tariffs if he decides Canada and Mexico have just answered him with phony concessions? I don't like Trump's tariff ploy. I don't like playing chicken with the national and global economy. But I'm also fully awake to the fact that I've misjudged and underestimated Trump before. Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store. He is bringing a new muscular approach to foreign policy. There is trouble on the horizon with authoritarian powers China, Russia, Iran and North Korea forming an axis to challenge American democracy and influence in the world. Many of the Democratic nations in Latin America have been getting cozy with the Chinese in return for infrastructure funding. That infrastructure gives China a commercial and military foothold in the Western hemisphere that can be used to threaten the United States and its citizens. Whether he intended to or not, Trump has sent a message to all of Latin America that you can go ahead and choose sides, but we have the ability and the will to inflict serious pain on your economy and your people. How many Latin American nations will forget that the next time Chinese diplomats show up bearing gifts? Panama has ended its participation in China's Belt and Road Initiative to build dual-use infrastructure across the globe, Bloomberg News reported Monday: 'After talks with (U.S. Secretary of State Marco) Rubio, Panama's President Jose Raul Mulino said his country's broad agreement to contribute to the Chinese initiative will not be renewed, and could be terminated early. He said the deal was set to expire in two to three years.' Still laughing? Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic, where this column originally appeared. Email him at You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Trump didn't fold on tariffs. Don't underestimate him again | Opinion
