The efficient fire alarm

None of the buildings in our University had any fire alarm.  Partly because these were built during the 70s.  But more so because the efficient CPWD, and now the RITES, that build all the public buildings does not believe in any safety procedures.

However, because the wiring in all the buildings are now more than 50 years old and overloaded, fires are very common in the Summer. Finally, after a lot of push from our end the administration decided fire safety.

Fat and thin, large and small pipes were laid through the entire school (of course without spirit level).  Each lab had a smoke detector installed. They assured us that in case of fire, the system will get activated and water, under pressure, will be released.

Well, today my student had an accident in the cell culture lab.  When I went in I could smell the acrid smoke. 

The good news: my student was not injured.
The bad news: the smoke detector did not go off.

Once again proving that L1 is the best.








Note: The Government of India believes in open competition.  That is to say, if I need to purchase an equipment or buy a consumable or if fire safety system has to be installed, then quotations have to be called in.  And the lowest bidder, known as L1, will be awarded the contract. This is to prevent corruption but...

Growing tomatoes

The past month has been horrendous but I am slowly recovering from the traumatic events and coming to terms with what has happened.  I am also sure that over time the memory of the day (especially of that one man) will fade away. 

My gardener, Nanku Ram, is an eternal optimist.  Like his predecessor Raghav Ram he too has dreams.  My father liked Raghav Ram for he was the only gardener who managed to kill the mint plant.  As my father dislikes mint, he was extremely happy with Raghav Ram and very upset when I dismissed him.

Nanku Ram has been with me for the past 12 years but I have never seen him this possessed.  We will grow tomatoes, he has been telling me ever since I moved into the new apartment.  The failure of the tomato plants in the past five years to grow has not deterred him.  So when he appeared with tomato plants this September and assured me that it will grow.  I was skeptical but did not possess the will power to thwart him.  We decided that we will plant them amidst the Malabar spinach also known as pui.  The birds and the various inhabitants of the forest around us do not eat this spinach possibly repelled by its large shiny green leaves.

The ruse worked. The tomato plants grew without hindrance. In fact they flourished and late last month, Nanku Ram said, with great satisfaction, that he will get stakes so that they would have support for further growth.  And that he would remove the pui. And, he told me, you wait. They will bear tomatoes.

He is right.  When I came back from Deepavali vacations from Chennai, there were three tiny tomatoes.  Now, there are ten tomatoes in various stages.  I look at them and gloat every day.  I do not know how many will ripen but there they are and I am happy.  As for Nanku Ram- he is extremely contented.  His dream has come true.

The Tangled Tree- David Quammen

I was led to this book by my friend who sent me a link to a New York Times excerpt from this book.  I am grateful to her.  Sitting in India, my opportunities are very limited to get access to books like this.  There is no Barnes and Noble ( I cannot forget their huge store in New York).  Unlike New York Times, or Washington Post, or The Guardian, newspapers in India do not carry a section on books. So when I read the excerpt, I ordered the book through Amazon.
The Tangled Tree, very properly, is about Carl Woese, who showed that archaea are a separate class of organisms.
The book starts with a tree traced by Charles Darwin.  This is the Tree of Life.  Above it he writes, I think. 
The branches of this tree represent various organisms.  Some of the limbs wither because they do not evolve and therefore, are unable to survive.  Life originated from a single point because the microorganisms were ignored. The single point represent all the eukaryotes- plants and animals.
But the micrororganisms exist and very soon it is realized that they are different from eukaryotes.  So the Tree of Life is modified. There were two points of origin- One that evolved into bacteria and the other that eventually led to us.
It is here that Carl Woese makes an entry.  He wants to trace the origin of life.  And he uses a technique that we still use today.  He sequences a molecule called 16S rRNA and shows that there is third branch.  These are organisms that live in extreme conditions- hot springs, extreme cold conditions etc.  He names them as archaeabacteria though we now call it archaea.  These are peculiar organisms, closer to us than to bacteria. The tree of Life, Carl Woese proposes, has three independent origins.
But it turns out that it is not still the complete story.  Mitochondria, that I talked about in last post, are really bacteria engulfed by an ancient cell and this engulfment led to the evolution of eukaryotes and eventually us.  This process is known as Endosymbiosis.  This was proposed by many and popularized by Lynn Margulis (one of the few female scientists that the book acknowledges though there are unnecessary details about her personal life.  Such details were not provided for the male scientists).  The hypothesis was later proved true by using the same technique that Carl Woese had perfected.  So here is where we diverge from Darwin's theory.  It is just not a question of survival of the fittest.
And then it turns out that this is also not the complete story.  Genes move horizontally, not just vertically.  So it is not that we just pass our genes to our progeny but also that we can acquire genes from viruses and bacteria. This process is known as Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT).  This is how antibiotic resistance spreads.  HGT is extremely common in bacteria.  So common, in fact, that it is difficult to create a tree for them. Branches cross over and the tree looks like a web.
It is at this point, I think, David Quammen over reaches for he proposes that HGT occurs as commonly in higher organisms as it does in bacteria and therefore, the tree of life as proposed by Charles Darwin can not be created. I do not buy this argument.  Yes, HGT is common in bacteria but it is not as common in higher organisms as he claims.  We are still closer to apes than to bacteria.

The greatest show on Earth- Richard Dawkins

This book is meant for those who do not believe in Evolution.  But those who do not believe in Evolution would continue not to believe in evolution (despite the Nobel Prize for Chemistry this year) and in fact, if I were one of them, I would be offended by the tone of the entire book.  He hammers, he berates. he pours facts after facts down the throat, and he clearly shows that he thinks that non-believers in evolution are stupid.  Not the greatest combination to convince somebody.
As a scientist, I found the book fascinating.  The evidences that Dawkins presents about evolution, about Darwin's theory, encompasses a wide swathe of science- biochemistry, evolution in laboratory, fossils, anatomy... the list is endless.  Some of it I had read before.  For example, he talks about Richard Lenski's E.coli long term evolution where he has been tracking genetic changes in 12 identical populations of E.coli since 1988. 
Some of it was new to me.  He describes an experiment where freshwater aquarium fish (Guppies) were grown in different tanks with different backgrounds.  The guppies have spots over their body and these spots are changed such that the fish can merge with the background.  So in effect the spots are used for camouflage purpose.  In this experiment, he describes, the scientists use different backgrounds and watch how an initial population of identical guppies adapt to the environment.
But the most interesting chapter was the one entitled "History written all over us".  Here, he traces how the body plan shows traces of how it evolved. Very often the body plan makes no sense.  The retina is placed backward.  The brain has to perform the most intricate deconvolution to ensure we see what we are supposed to see.  This chapter, for me, nailed down why an Intelligent Designer did not create each one of us.
However, the skeptics will still argue that why we do not see the bacteria evolve into something else. Fair question. The Darwanian process is a very slow and does not completely account for how evolution happened.  In evolution, it is understood that life began with a single cell.  A bacteria.  And from this evolved everything else.
But the Darwanian theory cannot explain how bacteria evolved into yeast.  The bacteria and yeast are both single-celled organisms.  But yeast contains an organelle called mitochondria which provides the energy for the cell.  The bacteria does not contain mitochondria.  How did mitochondria come up.
This was answered in the second book I read this past month.

Is research set up for bullies to thrive

A lot of discussion has been happening on how to make the laboratory experience a happy one. Given the fact that the Principal Investigators (PI) have tremendous clout and power and that the students/post-docs are on the other end of the power equation, cases of abuse abound.  Abuse, of course, takes many hues.
There is an article in Nature on this topic this week.  It caught my attention because it described a supervisor who followed the student around the lab, shaming her, yelling at her, and in general being as abusive as possible.  There was one more such report from Germany, where a researcher who focuses on empathy was anything but empathetic to her colleagues.
My student applied for post-doc positions in India. I was curious when she rejected some of the good labs.  I asked her for reason.  She told me that the PI had told her upfront that he expects her to work long hours every day, including the weekends.  Implied in this was, of course, she should not take holidays.  My student burst out "Don't I have a life?"
Unfortunately, as I am discovering, this attitude is very common.  I am also discovering that many PI have put in CCTV as well as microchip to monitor their student's activities.  Then there are those who spy out whether a student has boyfriend/girlfriend.  Woe betide if they turn out to have one.
Actually, it makes me wonder whether such PI have a life or not.  My lab is just one part of my life.  Of course I also sometimes (like when a paper is due for revision or when the clock is running out for the student to submit a paper or thesis) restore to hounding a student out and I am sure they grumble and moan about it.  But for me, 90% of the time, lab ceases when I walk out of it at 5 pm. That is the end. 
I pay for it, of course. I do not have umpteen publications. I will never be made member of any Indian Academies. I will never be given any recognition.  But, at the same time, I want to make science fun for my students. They should do it because they enjoy it. They should come to the lab because it is a good place for them to learn.  They will make mistakes but in the end, I hope, a spark is lit.
In the end, I suppose, it is about what you want from life.

Hunting for ALS genes- STAT news

One of my Uncles died of ALS.  We watched him fade away within five years of diagnosis.  There is no cure for the disease.  Indeed there is no cure for most of the neurological disorders. 
ALS or Lou-Gehrig disease is caused because some genes malfunction.  There is no one particular gene that causes ALS but there are many genes that are associated with this disease.  Each gene increases the risk.
The disease is not inherited.  Usually.
But it is inherited in some families (familial ALS).  Especially, if inter-marriages are common.  Genetic analysis of such families can lead a researcher to identity the genes associated with a disease.
STAT News has a great article on how a neurologist is tracking down the gene associated with familial ALS.
 

The River of Consciousness- Oliver Sacks

My M.Sc. student gifted me this book when his project got completed.  I am grateful to him for it is a wonderful read.  Published posthumously, compiled during his final illness, the book comprises of set of essays covering a whole gamut of topics.
He starts with Darwin- not the usual Origin of species but covering Darwin's experiments with plants and making the argument for evolution and natural selection.  So timely given the cacophony emanating from many of the right-wingers. I always used to be proud of the fact that Evolution and natural selection used to be taught in India without interference from religion (unlike America) but of course, I had reckoned without the right wing coming to power.  They, of course, do not believe in Evolution.
Oliver Sacks then talks about speed and couple of other topics.  But my favorites were towards the end.  There was one on mishearing. When he starts to lose hearing, he also starts to mishear. I showed it to my father who is now suffering from lose of hearing.  My father was deeply appreciative of this essay.
Then came the one on The River of Consciousness where he makes the case that what we think of one continuous stream of thought is in fact frames of thoughts stitched together into one continuous frame.  A remarkable power of our brain
The final essay was on Scotoma: Forgetting and Neglect in Science.  Many of the discoveries are neglected during the scientist's life time.  Take for instance Mendel.  He publishes his discoveries in a journal.  No one pays attention and then in 1900s, the laws are rediscovered.  And now Mendel is celebrated as Father of Genetics.  Or Barbara McClintock who discovered the so-called jumping genes.  No one paid attention till it turned out that these genes are important component the genome and contribute a great deal to variation.
All in all it is a book my father says he would like to read.

On the relationship between waterbodies and us

This past week I was in Hyderabad attending a conference.  Our hotel was opposite the Hussain Sagar Lake.  The driver told me that the lake was visible from the hotel rooms and I was lucky enough to get a room that faced the lake.  At the conference, one of the members told us that the government had created a nice walk around the lake.

So on the last day of the conference, I went out at 6.30 am for a walk.  The lake itself is lovely filled with water.  Common Coots were having a swim.  Nice and wonderful.  But...
The thing that hit me most was the stench that reminded me of Cooum river in Chennai.  My uncle used to have an apartment overlooking the river and everyday we were reminded of the river, thanks to the stench.
The lakefront had boards put by Hyderabad Municipal proclaiming the need to keep the lake clean but garbage (plastic bags) was strewn around the edge.

The lake front garden was small and unimaginatively built. Four stray puppies were gamboling.  There were no women.  The entire park had been taken over by men.  I had a quick walk and then turned back to the hotel chased all the way by the smell.
Which brings me to our relationship with water bodies. At this point there are no water bodies in India (maybe excluding Indore and Bhopal?) that is not highly polluted.  Garbage is one menace but the greater threat is untreated sewage and chemical waste that is dumped into the water bodies without a care. So while each of our river is worshiped, each of them too turn into a dumping ground for all waste.  None of the stakeholder is serious about cleaning up the water bodies- panels and measures are regularly announced but...

Standardized online entrance exam and biometric attendance for teachers

Now teacher attendance is mandatory. As usual I do not understand either of the two decisions.  What is this going to accomplish?  Will it force the non-performers to teach and do research? All it will do is that once a day they will make a trip to their center and sign in.  Big deal.  It will waste little bit of petrol but if it satisfies the powers, what can one say?
The other issue is even more mind-boggling.  Apparently, our exam is going to be now conducted in multiple choice questions. How do you evaluate a language or a social science student  or a international relations who is applying for Ph.D in multiple choice format? How do you evaluate their ability to make an argument and defend it in multiple choice format?  In sciences itself, where it is easy to design questions in this format, we struggle with the kind of students we get. Most often they possess absolutely no communication skills, many of them do rote-learning, many of them do guesswork, and when they join the program it becomes an uphill task to make them read, think and ask questions.  But in social sciences or languages...I give up!
As usual there will be no debate on this issue. It has been decided by the administration so we just have to follow it.
Ugh!

Two books by Emily Eden

I knew that Emily Eden had written letters from India and they were highly regarded.  I first encountered her, though, in William Dalrymple's book "Return of the King" which was the account of the first Anglo-Afghan war.  Lord Eden was appointed the Governor General  and his two sisters- Emily and Fanny- accompanied him to India.  The war was a disaster and Lord Eden returned back to England where, fortunately, he soon died.
That Emily Eden also had written novels was something I learnt from the blog Redeeming Qualities.  Her novels are not available at Project Gutenberg though they do have her letters.  Then I discovered Hathi Trust Digital Library and wonders! They do have both her novels.  This past week I read both of them- The semi-detached house and The semi-attached couple.
In the introduction to The semi-attached couple, Emily Eden is compared to Jane Austen and indeed the book follows somewhat the story plot line of Pride and Prejudice, though Mrs. Douglas nowhere is close to Mrs. Bennett.   Mrs. Bennett was obsessed with marrying her daughters off while Mrs. Douglas is obsessed with running every one down.  Marriage of her two daughters is incidental and Mrs. Douglas is actually very clear-sighted about it.  But, Emily Eden does not do romance very well.   The book begins with marriage where the at least the female protagonist is not very sure about her feelings.  The book, of course, ends with everything arranged satisfactorily but it was not very interesting. 
The semi-detached house, on the other hand, is a hoot.  I think Emily Eden had a fun time writing the story.  It has bunch of nice people from two spectrum of society.  But as they are all nice, they get along very well.  There is not much of a plot line but it was an enjoyable read.  It is one of those books that I know I will re-read.

Of banana bread and lemonades

The Real Summer of Delhi where the temperature rises up to 45oC or more and stays like that for weeks has started unusually late this year.  It is only in the past couple of days that the night temperature has shot up to 30oC. The weather promises to be like this at least for couple more days.
The only thing to do is to stay inside the house, keep oneself hydrated and hope that the rains will come soon.
This Summer I explored all kinds of syrups- Rose syrup that I made from rose petals, Nannari syrup made from Nannari roots, Aam panna from Raw mangoes, and lemon syrup.  The Aam panna and Lemon syrup are my Mother's recipes.  Every summer she would make it for us.  We never purchased any syrups from the market and Rasna was banned in the house after one of my maternal uncles told my mother that the chemicals in Rasna are not good for health.  So every summer she would make lemon concentrate and Aam panna for us.  I continue with the tradition.  Sugar syrup is boiled and cooled.  Lemon juice along with ginger paste is added to sugar syrup and the ensuing syrup is stored in the fridge.  Whenever, I want to drink lemonade, all I have to do is to take a tablespoon or so of the concentrate, add water, and ice cubes.
The Aam panna my mother used to make is different from the ones available in the market which contains mint leaves and pepper and other sundry items.  My mother used to boil the raw mango.  My job (not my brother's) was to peel the mangoes and crush the pulp.  Then my mother would add sugar and cardamom powder to the pulp.  I would stir it till the sugar dissolved and store it in the fridge.  When ever we wanted, we would take a tablespoon of it, add water to it and drink it.  More often, instead of drinking it, we would simply eat it with roti/chappati. 
This week I also made Banana Bread.  Banana in this season tends to get spoiled fast.  So I decided to eat my fruit in the form of Banana bread using this recipe.  As usual I tweaked it.  Instead of oil, I added butter (I had it and wanted to finish it).  I used 1 cup maida and 1 cup atta.  Instead of brown sugar I used jaggery.  This was the end result:

I gave two pieces to Sumitra whose wedding anniversary it was and a piece to my friend.  The only thing was that Sumitra's husband told her that since I have given her cake, he does not need to give her anything.  Sumitra, very properly, has stopped talking to him. 

Sexual harassment complaint against Inder Verma

The complaints pertain to a long period- from 1976 to 2016.  The magazine Science did an investigation and the report is accessible.
He has stepped down from his various posts and the Salk Institute is doing an investigation. 
He recently got the Infosys award and has also been elected member of the National Academies of Sciences.
As far as I know there is complete silence from the Indian academics though some people have told me that a letter has been issued from the academics to treat him with dignity as he has contributed greatly to science. If it is so, then it is in keeping with the traditions of Indian academies.

An update on attendance

When the JNU administration decided to implement compulsory attendance at all levels, there was lot of uproar.  I told my students that I do not support the directive but as it is mandatory and one never knows what the penalties might be, it would be judicious of them to sign the register.  The students started signing.  Outwards there was no protest. Truthfully, I was tad disappointed. I had hoped that they would protest.  Little did I know.
For the past one week, the parents/guardians of our students have started receiving letters stating that their ward does not have the mandatory 75% for the months of Jan and Feb. My students too received it.  I was startled. Many of them have taken just one day off.  So where did the administration get this number from?
It turns out that there was a referendum some time back.  7000 students said NO to attendance.  My students too.  Now, they are receiving the letter.
There are number of ways I look at it.
I can laugh at it.  Really! Research scholars. Many of whom are married and have children.  You are sending letters to their parents?
I feel derision.  Honestly?  This is a kindergarten?
I feel sad that the university is being constantly reduced down.  Issues other academics are being stoked up.
I am also elated. My students stood up.
But most of all, I am angry.  It is false data at least as far as the students of our school are concerned. The attendance was put up in public notice board, it is their with our office and almost all our students have more than 75% attendance.  They never protested about signing the attendance register.  When students from other schools were on strike, they went on with their work.  Yes. They exercised their right in ballot.  That is what it is.  Voting is their RIGHT.  They have the right to express what they feel.  Exactly what is the administration up to?  Did they think that the students will cower down?  Did they not stop for one minute and ask what if the students waved the attendance sheet at their face and showed that they had the mandatory attendance.  And will the administration apologize for this travesty?  Many of the girls are upset because their parents got worked up. Will they apologize to the parents for issuing a false letter?

Finally, what will the letter achieve?  What is the punishment? 
There are so many other issues we need to talk about.  Attendance is such a silly thing to make a fuss about.

How NOT to do admissions into the Ph.D. program

The past month has been a difficult one with Ph.D. interviews and the school lock-down.  8 FIRs were filed by girls from one lab against their supervisor.  The complaint was about sexual harassment. As the matter is now in the hands of the police (who true to form are not doing anything), I will not comment on the matter.  Suffice to say, the school lock down has been lifted, the complainants demanding new supervisor have been allotted one of their choice, and we are limping back to normal.  The administration did not budged an inch on any of the issues but the students and the faculty have to complete the course work, end-term exams, thesis submissions...so we are back to work.
What I am going to talk about is the admission to our Ph.D. program.
The UGC has made an entrance exam mandatory for entrance to Ph.D. program.  A student has to score 50% in the written exam to be eligible for interview.  During the interview, the research scholar has to present the research topic he/she wants to work on.  If selected, the research supervisor has to be assigned immediately.

There are many things wrong with this guideline and I will explain it with our experience this time.
1. We were not sure how the 50% cut-off would work if we introduced negative marking.  Given our past experience we were, in fact, sure that we would not get many students. In fact, the schools that had kept negative marking did end up seeing far less or none qualifying the entrance exam. So we removed negative marking.  The end result- 837 candidates qualified.
2. We are offering 40 seats. So we requested the administration to call 3-5 times the number of seats i.e anywhere between 120-200 candidates.  This is where we ran into the biggest block. We have to ensure the reservation policy is followed.  The administration found out that the UGC gazette notification does not spell out how to ensure the reservation policy (which of course was something that the faculty have been pointing out for past one but the administration in its "we-know-it-all" approach have never acknowledged our concerns).  So they told us that all 837 candidates will have to be interviewed.
3. They sent the interview call letter to all the 837 candidates. We then pointed out that if a candidate is called at 10 am in the morning and the interview happens late in the afternoon, the poor student would be sitting/waiting for the interview many times without eating because they are so stressed out.  It has always been the policy to divide the students into two groups.  One group would come in the morning and the other in the evening.  Further, as the interviews were happening in March, we have classes in the morning. We have to work things out.  The next thing we knew was that the students had been called from 2.00 pm onwards and we had to conduct the interviews in the afternoon!
4. The administration also told us that 56 candidates will appear everyday. They also told us that it would be spread over 15 days. So we met, discussed, and decided to have three interview panels. Each panel would interview 19 candidates. 
5. The administration also instructed us to interview each candidate in domain knowledge, analytical ability, and research proposal.  This makes sense if we have at least 30-40 minutes with each candidate.  When we have only 10-15 minutes, this makes no sense.  But we did.  We figure out a way.  Three faculty would ask the student on domain and analytical knowledge.  One would examine the research proposal the student had brought with them.
6. In social sciences, the students decide their research topic but in sciences, where extensive laboratory work is involved, the students are assigned their research topic.  Further, at least in Sciences, the students do not know who to formulate a research topic.  Our education is not geared towards it.  The research proposal that most students brought with them was usually an extension of the work they had done as part of their M.Sc project.  Further, since we do not encourage our B.Sc/M.Sc students to read research papers (when I do this as part of my course, I am always told by senior faculty that students cannot read research papers and that my approach is wrong), they do not have any idea of the research work or how to design experiments or what to propose.
7.The administration then insisted that the research supervisor has to be assigned immediately.  We protested. If we are interviewing 837 candidates over a period of 15 days, where the student has no idea what is research, how can we assign a faculty to a student?  I would not remember the student who came on the first day.  I would not know from a 15 minute interaction whether the student would be a good fit for my lab.  The student would have no idea whether I would be a good research supervisor for him/her. These things are always done after a discussion.  The administration refuses to see the logic.  According to them, we have to follow the UGC gazette notification.  This is an issue that we still have not resolved.
8. Finally, we also tried to tell them that since we held the interviews early but admission will be done only in July, we are not even sure who will join us.  IISc, IISERs, CCMB, TIFR, NCBS, and all the other institutes will be holding their interviews. Most of our selected candidates will go over to these institutes.  Many will go abroad.  We do not know how many selected candidates will eventually end up with us.  Of course, our conversations with the administration are always one-sided.  There is never a dialogue as they do not believe in it. 
At the end of 15 days, the entire process is a blur.  I have stopped caring. 

The KVPY interviews

For the past three days, I have been doing KVPY interviews. This is a flagship program of DST that is coordinated by IISc.  Students have to give an aptitude test and if they qualify, they are called in for interviews.  The selected candidates are provided scholarships for pursuing research. The program was mooted to encourage children to study basic science as opposed to engineering/medicine.  I do not know the statistics as to how many children do end up in research but we have had couple of KVPY scholars in our M.Sc program.  Brilliant girls who ended up doing Ph.D.
However, this post is not about how successful the KVPY program is. Rather I am going to talk about my observations over the past three days.  There were groups and each group interviewed approximately 90 students over the three days.

1. Most were boys.  Of 90 students, we had only 6 girls in my group.  Assuming that the exam is not gender biased, and given the fact that the number of girls in most schools is equal to the number of boys (I talking about co-ed schools) one wonders about the lack of girls in this program.  I have to add here that I have been doing these interviews off and on for many years and over the years I have observed that the number of girls attending the interviews remains less than 10%.  I do not know if IISc has done any statistics to find out if the number of applications itself is low or is it the girls do not qualify.  If it is the later, then we have to worry about the exam pattern because then it would mean that the exam is gender biased. If the number of application itself is low, then we do need to do something to encourage the girls to compete in these exams.
2. If the number of girls was less than 10%, then the religious minorities fared even worse. Again I do not know the reason but I found it worrisome.
3. Biology and math are mutually exclusive.  Which is a pity because math is needed in biology and we get students at Ph.D. level who struggle with simple math.
4. Physical education is a popular choice of subject. So students take Physics, Math, Chemistry, and Physical Education. English is of course compulsory.  I was curious about Physical education because none of the kids looked fit but couple of them assured them that they do play games.
5. Finally, there is a big divide between the big public schools and the rest.  Many of the kids were from these big public schools, confident, and fluent in English. Most of them are taking tuition for JEE. Government schools were woefully underrepresented. We got couple of kids from Kendriya Vidyalaya.  The children from other public schools providing English medium education were hesitant, lacked confidence and preferred Hindi as the medium of communication.  Except one girl who said that she would prefer to talk in English and not in Hindi even though it was a struggle for her.

Scones and such like things

I watch the Great British Bake-off regularly. The range of bakes that the participants are required to know is just amazing and as for their showstopper bakes- I know I can never get to that level.  I love to cook and bake but I do not have the patience to work on  decorating cakes for  hours together. 
The thing about watching this show is that I too itch to bake so for the past few months I have been baking cookies and brownies and learnt to bake scones.
Scones are my new favourite because they hardly have any sugar.  And I found a low-fat version that I made today.  Instead of using maida, I used a mix of Ragi flour, atta, oats, and maida in equal measure.  I added cranberries, orange peel, and chocolate pieces.  I had it with orange marmalade that I made yesterday. 

The chrysanthemums are the last of the season.  They were the only bright spot in the garden this year.  The rest of the winter stuff- vegetables and flowers- were pulverized and eaten up by various birds and animals. No amount of fence was proof against their determination. For the first time I purchased dahlia plants for the garden for after all a garden must have some colour before the summer drains them out totally.

The urge to do something

Site visits always teach me something new.  In the last post I mentioned how attendance will not improve performance of a student unless the student wants to learn.  Today's post is somewhat a continuation of the point.
I went to visit one of our projects in Noida.  This project is supported by a Swiss funding organization and a member of the organization was visiting.  I accompanied her to the project.  One of the innovative things that this project has done is to select about 20 children and support their education through school.  The great thing about this is that we can track the progress of the children.  Three of them are now in Class (grade) 11.  One of them has joined the Arts/humanities section, another has joined commerce, and the third has joined the science stream.  All of them want to go to college/university.  Needless to say they come from economically underprivileged section and in fact the student studying in the Arts/Humanities works with his father in the evening to augment the family income.  And it is this student who floored me.
The Swiss representative introduced herself and after a round of introduction and looking at their report cards, she asked them whether they have any question for her.  After a slight hesitation, this boy stood up and said in perfect English that he is interested in Graphic Arts/Design and he wants to a pursue a course in this area.  Ultimately he wants to go to abroad but he does not how to go about to fulfill his ambition.  Can she help him?
As we further talked with him, it turned out that he knows Corel Draw and Photoshop but of course, these are obsolete because the field prefers Illustrator, a software he does not have.  His NGO had taught him photoshop but he had forgotten it because he did not have a computer/PC.  Now he has PC and he has WiFi connection.  So he has found You Tube Tutorials for Photoshop and he is learning it through that.  The only problem is that he used to have Photoshop (it came with the computer) but it has got corrupted now.
The entire conversation took place in English, something that I did not expect.  But what amazed more was the fire he had in him to do something with his life.  He knew what he wanted, he had explored the options, and now he wants is some guidance so that he could achieve his dream.
I know IGNOU has graphic design course and I left that information with the coordinator. I do hope he gets what he wants.

On mandatory attendance

Yesterday onwards we implemented mandatory attendance even for Ph.D. students.  The logic provided is that mandatory attendance will improve student's performance. 

I do not understand how it will.  If a student does come to the class because attendance is mandatory, what guarantee is there, as my neigbour put it, that he/she will be receptive to the ideas discussed in the class? If the student is not interested, attending a class will not necessarily improve his/her performance in the exam.  And many of us would prefer not to have a disinterested student in the class because they distract us.  The performance of a student in a given course depends on many factors of which attendance is but one.  It depends whether the student is interested in the subject, what teaching methodology is being adopted, did the teacher make the subject interesting, did the teacher take classes regularly, was the course properly organized, course materials that are available....there are so many parameters.  So by focusing on only  one parameter, how does the administration hope to fix the problem of failing grades is beyond me.

The logic completely fails when it comes to Ph.D. students. What if a student is disinterested?  In India, over the years, I have seen many students enter Ph.D. course simply to avail the fellowship. Since there is no mechanism to throw them out, they remain in the system and often leave with the Ph.D degree. I do not know what they will do with it but the degree is awarded to them.  Mandatory attendance will ensure that the student signs in the attendance register in the morning but does not ensure that he/she will work on their Ph.D.  So what is it going to achieve? 

I decided to do a little research on this subject. Most of the research has focussed on undergraduate students and the view is split. There are many papers showing that the attendance does not improve the performance while there are few that says that it does.

In our case we do have to wait and see.