A friend who works with ‘Education’ (as we in the third sector often like to put it) once told me ” In India its difficult enough to obtain an education without having to worry about its quality too”.

I like to believe in the potential of private enterprise to do do wonders for education, professor James Tooley’s new book – the beautiful tree, does a great job of pointing how this might be plausible with primary education.

I’m also a long seasoned advocate of the Friedman argument that the Government has no business being in business. In India there is no business quite as complicated (both on the regulatory scenario front and on the potential impact front) as the business of higher education.

The argument against the utility of certification and regulatory roadblocks to offering and receiving higher education more common sense than anything else.

Sadly though, when one takes sides one often (and I am guilty of this in more ways than one) — one forgets to account for the losers in the short-run. Take the ICFAI mess in the cities of Hyderabad and Jaipur for instance.

So what can you do, as a student – while the rest of us sit and pontificate about the merits and demerits of who should be in the business of education or who shouldn’t?

Take a look at this article which suggests that students’ check the following four things before committing a good year or more of their lives to an ‘institution’ -

a. Is the Institution awarding the degree, either a valid University or Deemed to be University? If yes, is it operating within its authorized jurisdiction?

b. Does the course/ programme have the approval of the relevant professional council?

c. Does the institution have valid accreditation?

d. Is the institution awarding the degree a member of the Association of Indian Universities?

I recommend everyone who is contemplating any sort of higher education (in India) read this piece thouroughly!

As the author points out towards the end:

“…it is important that students know the regulatory environment in the field of higher education in India. Knowing the legal requirements and taking reasonable care in these matters can help the youth of this country avoid losing money and precious years to well marketed, money-oriented educational business empires. It is certainly better to be careful than to be sorry!”

Working has managed to take me away from blogging as often as I once used to.

Its done other things to0 – like rekindle my interest in building, keeping and growing social networks, figuring out a GTD like system that actually works for me both at work and at home.

I call this phase of my existence the “networking-productivity MashUp” phase.

Central to this phase has been reconciling myself to use two separate laptops one for work and the other for my techie misadventures.

The two set-ups have much in common sans the OS and documents.

One of the things that maintains seamless similarity across any laptop/computer I am assigned to for a fairly reasonable length of time is my browser.

My Wakoopa usage tells me I spend a lot of my time in a ‘browser’ (combined for work and home use) and so I try to get it to work the way I like.

Firefox is still my favourite browser despite the existence and obviously faster performance of Chrome (which I use solely for GMail, GReader and so on…), the reason is its extensibility.

Here are my favourite Firefox add-ons with a description of why I like them.

Some are still ‘experimental’ so you’ll need to create an account to make them show up on the add-ons website.

- Adblock Plus

Just the most effective way to get rid of ads on the net.

- Better Flickr
- Better GCal
- Better Gmail 2
- Better GReader
- Better Lifehacker
- Better YouTube

I like this set by Gina of lifehacker – and because I read Lifehacker every single day the ‘Better Lifehacker’ add on too is extraordinarily useful.

To use any or all of these you need to get GreaseMonkey.

- bit.ly Preview
A little pop up overlay over all shortened url’s (not just Bitly) which is great, if you, ever need to discover what website that great nugget of knowledge came from while you stumbled along the net.

- Brief’

A feed reading extension which is probably the simplest one to use!

- Calvin and Hobbes

This one puts a new strip of the ‘greatest political philosopher ever’ in your status bar, comic relief is important!

- Clean And Close

Adds a Clean And Close button to your download manager, which is useful if you download a lot and the long list bothers you.

- CoLT

Makes it easy to copy link text and locations, especially useful for research where you want text and link sources.

- Cooliris

The best description is the official one — “Cooliris (formerly PicLens) transforms your browser into a full-screen 3D Wall for searching, viewing and sharing the Web.” Very pretty indeed!

- CyberSearch

I like how this adds to the ‘awesomeness’ of the awesome bar – search results directly from keywords. Cool.

- Dafizilla Table2Clipboard

If you ever have had to copy a table from a web-page you will be very happy you found this!

- Delicious Bookmarks

Doesn’t require a description does it this one!

- Extension List Dumper

“Dumps a list of the installed extensions.” – very useful if you ever wanted to write your own “my favourite Firefox extensions” type blog post.

- Fasterfox Lite

“Performance and network tweaks for Firefox but without the Pre-fetching”, which really wasn’t that useful.

- FindThatBand

Sorry!, but Google for this one. It lets you – “Search for a music artist or band on MySpace, LastFM, or Pandora”.

- Fire.fm

Get your daily music fix from Last.fm.

- FlashGot

Want downloads? Get FlashGot.
- Google Gears

At the minimum you’ll need it to enable gmail offline and a faster loading version of word press.

- Google Shortcuts

For keyboard shortcut junkies.

- GoogleEnhancer

Adds numbers, highlighting, favicons and ’search by date’ to Google searches

- Image Toolbar

“Provides easy access to common image functions”, IE Style.

- Intense Debate in Google Reader

Enables the Intense Debate comment system in Google Reader.

- Link Alert

Changes the cursor to indicate the target of a link.

- Linky

Converts text links into genuine, clickable links.

- LiveClick

Adds feed reading and notifications to Live Bookmarks.

- Morning Coffee
Keeps track of daily routine websites and opens them in tabs.

- MovieRating

Lets you view the RottenTomatoes rating for a movie.

- Net Notes

Store Notes on Websites in your Bookmarks.

- No Squint

Manage site-specific full page and text zoom levels

- Open in Google Docs
Open web documents directly in Google Docs

- PDF Download

Allows you to choose what to do with a PDF file: download it, view it with an external viewer or view it as HTML.

- Previewr

Allows “Easy link previewing”

- QuickJava

Allows quick enable and disable of Java and Javascript from statusbar.

- ReminderFox

Displays and manages reminders and ToDo’s

- Search Cloudlet
More powerful Google search with context-aware tag clouds

- Select-n-Go by Cleeki

Select, search, and preview instantly.

- Site Launcher

Open websites using special keyboard shortcuts, like Launchy for Firefox

- Smarter Wikipedia

Adds a “related articles” box to Wikipedia and allows searching of selected text from context menu

- TwittyTunes

Post your tunes to Twitter using FoxyTunes, and more…

- Ubiquity

An extension that allows for the use of dynamic commands in Firefox.

- Unread Tabs Supreme

“Unread tabs are displayed in italics to indicate that you haven’t read them.

- UrlbarExt

“Extends the Location Bar with set of commands to (Make Tiny URL,Copy URL,Search site,Go up,Tag pages easily ,Navigate through sequential URL’s,Unblock filtered websites and Surf anonymously using online phproxy servers)

- YouTube Cinema

Play YouTube videos in cinema style.

Two videos I highly recommend watching, if you have the time…

The Aurora video on the future of web user experience is here.

Also check out this lecture debunking myths about statistics in developing countries, its long but brilliant.  You’ll need FLV Player to watch it on your computer – which is available for free here. Or just watch it online.

Incidentally I found this video on the YokWay social network, which is one of the better content geared social networks I’ve seen lately. Its in Beta currently, I have 10 invites to give out though, so comment and let me know if you want one.

Update : Part two of the Aurora video is online now here.

Another Update: All four parts of the Aurora Series are online here, courtesy Lifehacker.

Last week I became a part of the Snowball Effect group on Face book. The group is trying a social experiment to illustrate the snowball effect which is the long-standing phenomenon that people follow what others do.

The ‘Mojave Experiment‘ put together by a Microsoft research team illustrates this idea nicely. The “Mojave Experiment” is an attempt to find out -

What do people think of Windows Vista® when they don’t know it’s Windows Vista? We disguised Windows Vista as codename ‘Mojave,’ the ‘next Microsoft OS,’ so regular people who’ve never used Windows Vista could see what it can do – and decide for themselves. …

Results from the experiment indicate that over 90% of users rated Vista much better than they did based on preconceived notions.

For most part, Vista works very well for me- sure it has annoying parts like every Windows system has had in the past, the real question is; Are we all sheep?

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the Indian Condom Song on YouTube.

Unlike the comments I find the song more than just funny.

To me – the video illustrates the awesome power of local creativity to spread a vital public health service message.

It is repetitive, which is a good way of reinforcing the message in addition to being amusing and memorable.

For several South Indians its a familiar tune that remains in your head and most importantly it goes a long way towards talking about ’safe sex’ openly.

Lots of new stuff coming up:

The all new start-page is online @: http://varna.sr.googlepages.com/

A new tumblrlog for random stuff on the web is online @: http://varna.tumblr.com

The delicious bookmarks page (cleaned up) is online @: http://del.icio.us/varna

A new photojournal is online here @: http://varnavisuals.wordpress.com

I shall start publishing on these pretty soon.

I don’t normally advertise offers, but here’s one no book-lover should pass up on! Check out the Blog a Penguin Classic website, register early enough and get them to send you a free book, plus get your review published upto six-weeks later.

They are 1400 Penguin Classics up for grabs!

I was looking for career principles online and I stumbled upon Ajit Chaudhuri’s post on irmans.org to freshers. Its brilliant and reproduced below for anyone who wants to work with/in development.

———–

Welcome freshers !
Tue, 30/01/2007 – 01:03 — maverick
“S/he who follows another’s footsteps leaves no footprints”*

Despite not (yet) having achieved gurudom, I am occasionally asked for advice about joining the development sector. Most of those enquiring can be slotted into two categories. The first are well-spoken but mediocre people who are getting nowhere in their chosen professions and have (therefore?) developed a social conscience. Their impression of the sector is as a place where the effort to returns ratio is second only to the spirituality business. The second are those whose short-term career objective is to join Kofi Annan in New York, and their impression of the sector is as a place where one hops on to intercontinental flights with the same regularity that you and I used the local public transport system in our student days. But occasionally, very occasionally, some young person approaches me with intent in his or her eyes, not knowing what ‘development’ is, with this vague idea of working with people in some faraway place and dirtying their hands, firm only about using their good qualifications and skills to do something different. I never know what to tell the former types – whether to play up their fantasies or to give them a reality check. As to the latter, this is what I have to say.

First, to address the basic questions:
Is there scope for good people here? The development sector needs bright people coming in as much, if not more, than other sectors of the economy. The array of problems that the sector addresses is mind-boggling in its variety, intensity and complexity and, should you decide to make a career here, you will require all the skills and drive that you think you possess. The sector also offers the opportunity to make one’s mark, and leave one’s footprints, in ways that are not possible elsewhere. So please rid yourself of the notion that this is a sinecure for the mediocre, the retired, the idle rich and the infirm.

Is long-term financial survival possible here? All of us have nightmares about being middle-aged, washed out and broke. Whether this sector provides more scope for such a turn of events than others is debatable. Most people here, as elsewhere, manage to get by, build their houses, educate their children, etc., etc. It is possible, and quite easy if you are good, to move to more lucrative segments within the development sector at some stage in your career. But – you will have to deal with the ass kissing, red tape and white domination that often go with the money. Anyway, by that time you will be aware of the pros and cons of the decisions you take. If money is important in the short term, however, then forget about coming here – you will be better off peddling soap or consulting or doing whatever it is that you are alternatively qualified to do.

What to do? Where to go? You need to figure out some basic questions before you start looking, such as rural or urban setting, in which part of the country, in an activist or a welfarist set up, and how close to the community you want to work. Finding organizations to work in that suit these settings is fairly simple after that, and good organizations are always looking for good people. Donor organizations are good places to enquire about these matters.

And now for my personal advice on what you should do:
Start out doing a field job – one that involves living and working directly with a community. The community consists of a large number of people who don’t have to say yes sir or yes ma’am to you and don’t care which fancy institution you did your post-graduation from – you have to earn your spurs from scratch, throw management theory out of the window and prepare to be surprised and tested every single day. You will discover that the class 5 pass man working with you is much better at the job than you will ever be, or that the supposedly pathetic women your activities are directed towards have much more guts than the modern, educated babes back home. Doing something here involves stress, fun and serious learning, and it is this part of your life that will stay on with you wherever you go. Spend a good amount of time here, ensure that you are not stuck with the report and proposal writing jobs and ayah-duty (i.e. escorting funding agency wallahs into the field) that you will be passed on because of your English-speaking skills, and see that you leave something intangible behind when you go. Later in life, when you are dealing with NGOs from a funding or consulting perspective, you will have plenty of NGO-wallahs giving you the what-would-you-know-you-city-asshole vibes – watch their tunes change once you let slip that you were once in their position.

Do the above with a good NGO – be careful about this because, though there are many good NGOs, they are still a small proportion of the total number of NGOs around. Good NGOs, in my opinion, are honest, secular and transparent. They formulate their plans and activities on the basis of the needs of the community they work with and are answerable to them for this. So be careful about this – you would not want your CV littered with associations with family businesses, feudal empires, pimping and middlemen set-ups, money laundering operations, touts, donor puppets, crooks, etc., masquerading as NGOs.

Become an expert – by the time you have put in 2-3 years in the field, there should be some topic relating to your work that you know more about than anybody else in the world. This means relating what you do on the ground to the larger picture, to what is happening elsewhere in the world and to the latest academic debate on the subject. Keep up to date, keep writing, and write to publish. This is easier said than done, field people have an innate distaste and little time for serious writing, but it is this that will separate those who will later go on to effect policy from those who will remain community organizers all their lives.

Eschew jargon – people in the development sector, like the IT sector and several others, have a peculiar predilection towards using jargon. The problem with this is that it serves to exclude people whom you would wish to include and include people whom you would probably want to exclude. Words like participatory, empowerment and sustainable, which you will find bandied about like toffees on a domestic flight, actually mean different things to different people and very often don’t mean anything at all. And when an organization wants to recruit dedicated, motivated and committed people, it usually means that they want to pay less for more work and therefore only suckers need apply. So don’t get caught up in this bullshit, learn the art of communicating exactly what you mean in a simple and understandable way.

Be humble and be nice – nothing like these qualities, even if put on, to enable you to get along. Having said that, don’t put up with nonsense beyond a point that even fake humility and pleasantness can’t handle. People and organizations that cross the line should end up spitting out teeth with their blood, so to speak.

Watch your love life – you will find yourself working closely with members of the opposite sex, often in very intense situations, and you will find yourself liking some of them and vice versa. Have your fun! But, my advice is, don’t find yourself marrying and/or having children with anyone you would not have done so with had things been different. The fiery young activist can end up a leach of a middle-aged man, worrying more about what is happening in Red Square than in the well-being of his immediate family and quite happy to leave you with all the responsibilities while he gabs on about revolution. And the passionate free-spirited feminist is unlikely, later in life, to have a hot cup of tea ready for you when you come home after a hard day at the office. And you will be shocked at how easy it is to forget people once they are out of context.

Should you take the plunge into the sector, you will find yourself interacting with a wide variety of people. Watch out for the following types –

People with halos – you will find a number of people claiming to be doing a favour to humanity by working in this sector, especially at the higher echelons. Many of them have active PR machineries supporting their claims to sainthood, and some even believe in their own hype. You can be sure that, like everywhere else, being hardworking, intelligent and capable are not enough to reach and stay at the very top – you also have to be ruthless and slimy. There are no exceptions to this. So, whenever you hear or read the words ‘S/he/I could have been rolling in it in any other line but chose to sacrifice her/him/myself to the cause of the poor/destitute/vulnerable blah, blah, blah” be warned of the existence of yet another hypocrite in the world.

Emperors – they are the lords of all they survey, and don’t distinguish between their personal assets and their organization’s resources, and this usually includes its women employees. Yes, most, but not all, emperors are males.

Pompous employees of donor agencies – donors have an inexplicable penchant for recruiting morons. They do sometimes go wrong, and you find yourself dealing with someone who knows his or her job and who is able to have a positive effect on your and your organization’s work. But you do often have to deal with someone who thinks s/he has arrived because s/he represents the money, and/or someone to whom development is about budgets and utilizations more than people. While there is no known cure for stupidity, sometimes it helps to let the former type know that they have their nice air-conditioned offices and fancy credit cards because people like you are willing to slog in the sun for peanuts. Don’t take crap from them and, much more importantly, don’t become like them if and when you are in their position at some later stage in your life.

Development tourists – these people travel the world to conferences and seminars on money that is meant for the poor. They are the self-appointed spokespersons for India’s (and sometimes the entire third world’s) poor in Geneva, Stockholm and such places. Their slick presentations, that have audiences thanking God for having created them in this tumultuous world, invariably disguise the fact that they last did something on the ground about twenty years ago – they have since been too busy traveling. Don’t make the mistake of getting impressed by these parasites. And don’t join them expecting to see the world; you will be lucky to have more than a Bangladesh visa stamped on your passport.

If you are still planning to join the sector – a very hearty welcome to you!

By Ajit Chaudhuri (PRM

* A Confucian saying after having undergone a gender audit

—————

The original url is here.

Academics starts in earnest again tomorrow. In the meantime I’m catching up on reading…

• How Economists Think
• The Fundamentals of Critical Thinking (An Excerpt)
• What We Have Learnt From Markets
• Statistical Literacy
• The Praxeology Method
• Making Markets Thick

and Kenneth Arrow’s Nobel Prize Speech

A night to go before I again run out of time to read stuff like this.