The politics of Kerala Minorities - "The fundamental right of minorities to exploit the majority"

This is a topic on which i had lots of personal opinion, but dint want to comment in public until the recent events that happened in kerala, my native state in relation to professional course admissions. There has been a fight between the managements of private colleges and the government regarding the fee structure and the seats to be given in government quota. I agree that in a perfectly capitalist country, all the seats should belong to the management and deciding on the fee structure should solely vest with the managements. But thats not the case here. What we are dealing with are institutions started by "Minority" communities of kerala. They get lots of tax and other benefits from the government and surely the benefits eat into the tax payers money and result in these institutions earning super normal profits. So why do we give concessions to these institutions? As far i know we should be giving those concessions iff they do something for our society. Now lets see, what can they do for our society. All these so called Managements had once applied for an NOC (No Objection certificate ) from the goverment. At that point, our honourable chief minister had given NOCs to private managements based on one condition : Half of the seats will be in merit quota and those students will be paying the fees specified by the government.(at that time when all these people signed on that agreement, the govt fees was close to only Rs.6000 or less per semester) All these Christian priests , other minority managements signed the agreement without raising any objections. At that time they were all thinking they can get any fees of their liking from 50% of the students. Nobody had ever consulted the legal side of such an agreement.

Soon after an year problems started popping up. People approached courts for matters related to this and the famous court orders started coming out which prohibited collecting different fees from different students in the same institution(though i still don't know how NRI quotas got legal sanction). Then started the committees for deciding fee structure and soon managements broke loose. They were not allowed to collect high fees from 50% students!!!! so they started thinking why should they give seats to govt when they are deprived of their "minority right" to exploit the majorities and minorities alike.

Why did we reach such a situation. Is this problem similar to the OBC quota problem we witnessed in a national scale? In my opinion, yes they are similar. The root cause of the problem is caste/religion based privileges. Now lets evaluate the situation kin kerala. the population census of kerala (census 2001)src : http://www.ecostatkerala.org/pdf/statplan/popln1.html

All Religions Total 31841374
Hindus Total 17883449 56.1%
Muslims Total 7863842 24.6%
Christians Total 6057427 19.02%
Sikhs Total 2762 ---too less to calculate---
Buddhists Total 2027 ---too less to calculate---
Jains Total 4528 ---too less to calculate---

Look at those figures, and i should say even those figures are misleading(as the list of "Hindus" include all those communities which were discriminated on the basis of caste for ages, so a good %of the Hindus do fall under the current "minority" status : SC/ST, OBC)

Now, in the wake of that how can you consider a community which constitutes 25% or 20% population as minority??Now let us see what is the UN definition for a minority : the % they give is 10. The real minorities of kerala are the jains, buddhists, sikhs and others. But do they have even a single Educational Institution under them? A majority of the educational institutions (college/school) are run by the christian managements. The other communities like Muslims,ezhava and nairs do have their institutions, but they are far less in number compared to christian institutions.

Personally i studied in a Christian management school and i know i did pay donation to get admission there, paid pretty high fees but there is one thing, the quality of education was good. Two weeks back when i was in kerala, i happened to watch a debate in Asianet TV. There was a Christian priest (who is also a management head), a muslim college head and a left political party leader. In that debate the priest argued that no Christian institutions take donations from students. Now, i personally know a lot of people who have already got admissions in Mar baselius college of engg through the backdoor, paying huge amounts as donation and they even started classes defying all court and govt authorities. (They have their affiliation cancelled, but i'm sure their money power can win it back). The christian religious heads in kerala have made this a religious issue now, calling from action in the house of God, the churches under them.

Where are we heading to as a community which boasts of the highest literacy rate in India? Swami Vivekananda was perfectly right in calling this state of kerala a "Mental Asylum". So whats the solution to all thsese problems here?

Now look at what Firoz Bakht Ahmed has to say : http://www.ecostatkerala.org/pdf/statplan/popln1.html

"The need of the hour is to follow the UN definition of minority to begin with and remove those groups in each state where they exceed 10 percent.

If minority status is to be granted, it should not be on the basis of language or religion but as per the UN charter that states that reservations should be made fore the disadvantaged and the have-nots who actually should be treated as minorities."

I agree 100% to the above statement. Also i would like to stress on "disadvantaged and the have-nots" are the people with the right for any privileges or reservations. Its not the wealthy Christian management who huge amounts in foreign funds or the wealthy Gulf money flowing into kerala or the liquor mafia money that need to get all the minority privileges specified in our constitution. Lets honor the greatness of the people who wrote our constitution by not letting these money power centres to manipulate their sacred work. Vande mataram.

Politics ruling Cricket, and ICL a welcome change in Indian Cricket

I like any other average cricket fan in India is perplexed by all the politics thats ruling Indian cricket. My belief was that cricket was a game and we play it out of passion for the game. But, in India its one of the most monopolistic markets. The monopoly who is ruling that is BCCI, which in turn is headed by politicians. They make millions in profit and still, the Indian domestic cricketers never used to enough money to lead even a middle class life in India. All the money awaits you if you make the cut to the national team and then you get all those advertisers run behind you. Following the legendary foot steps of Kerry Packer's World series cricket, Subhash Chandra(and his company) came forward with the idea of ICL-Indian Cricket League. Our very own BCCI who thinks the pot of honey is theirs suddenly jumps into action.(like a bear threatened with an intruder trying to steal its honey) Threatens all cricketers first that they are not going to ever play for India if they join ICL, got all the other cricket boards to follow suit (other hapless boards are minnows before the money power of BCCI and they have no option but to stand with BCCI). Even after all this drama kapil came up with an awesome list of players signed up for ICL!!! That was the deadliest blow to the ego of BCCI.

Now see what they does. Just like any monopoly in a market slashing prices heavily on a new competitor entering the market, BCCI announces 7-13 times increase in money paid at domestic level!!!! This shows the amount of super normal profits these dirty politicians and officials were holding onto themselves. This shows why a dirty battle between pawar and dalmiya took place. This shows much rightful money of the players were snatched away by BCCi. This explains the dreadful state of Indian cricket over the years, poor ground qualities, poor facilities for the paying spectators/avid indian cricket fans. Look at how these shameless creatures now getting ready to pay more to their players.

For all this we should than ICL and the people behind that. They didnt do it as a community service, but they just as Adam smith's theory of Invisible Hand, they have indirectly brought a fortune in the lives of every young budding cricketer in India. For that i salute them and hope every Indian cricket fan will support this "Liberalization" in the monopolistic Cricket market. Hopefully, these private players will soon improve the ground facilities to match global standards as these people make money by spending money. Not like BCCI or any lethargic government public sector company that tries to feed upon public's money. Personally i believe this is the beginning of a new era in Indian Cricket.

Revisiting the world of Wireless Sensor Networks

Today i felt like revisiting my past for a while. Surfed about what all are the latest in the field of Wireless sensor Networks (something i had left behind two years ago). I was so surprised to find so many people having started doing more research in this field. Two years back, it was more or less limited to a few universities like Berkeley. More and more applications too have evolved over the last two years. I found an interesting home page hosted by Archana here


Links to sensor networks based applications (Archana had compiled the following list):

1. Traffic Pulse Technology

2. Distributed Surveillance Sensor Network


3. Cougar: The Sensor Network is the Database

4. Eyes - Energy Efficient Sensor Netowrks

5. Reactive Sensor Networks

6. Smart Buildings Admit Their Faults


7. Smart Sensor Networks



Archana's home page goes on to give a very good compilation of the latest papers in this field.

This was my little effort on this field two years back: K-RTP: A Reliable Transport Layer Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Back after a long time....

Grueling two weeks...4 exams on two subjects, that tool proper studies after two long years. Its over now and i'm free again for a short while though....