Thursday, April 10, 2014

A deeper look at todays' problems

Todays problems in our countries are quite solvable if a person takes the whole picture. Let me give a few examples.

Problem 1

We have problems of soil poisoned with excess nitrogen, shortage of carbon in the soil,  very high fertilizer subsidy due to indiscriminate use, low yield due to wrong use of fertilizer and also problem of disposal of urban waste, health and sanitation issues in cities, loss making Doordarshan (Public service broadcaster)

Essentially these appears as very difficult and different problems across geographies, ministries and agencies affecting a cross section of people. But essentially it is one problem. The answers to all these problems are in testing the soil and making farmers understand their soil and what needs to be done. This will lead to lesser application of chemical fertilizers and more application of bio-fertilizers - which in turn will increase the demand for bio-waste and making conversion of city bio-waste into fertilizer which can increase the carbon content in the soil.  This will reduce the problems related to fertilizer subsidy This knowledge needs to be disseminated to the farmers - no private channel is going to do this as it is unlikely to be profitable and it will fall squarely in the domain of the public broadcaster.

Problem 2

There is problem of  availability of high quality  education seats in Engineering, Management and Medicine. There is a shortage of doctors so much so that Homeopath Doctors are being used as Duty doctors at hospitals.  The shortage of good quality engineering colleges is definitely affecting our ability to produce output and also attract FDI.  In the mad rush to some how get into good colleges people spend very large sums of money on coaching for the entrance exams. This in turn affects the development of youth who turn into machines primed to crack exams rather than thinkers, doers and problem solvers. People who have resources and are willing to pay send their children abroad to study bleeding the country of forex and the education sector of its best possible customers. Many of these students do not return leading to brain drain and problems in such families.

The solution to this problem is to increase the capacity in high quality education by giving admission even to those with resources at a higher fee. More on this in my earlier blog here.  Also if we simply change the entrance exam from being simple multiple choice to some thing which requires aptitude ( it is possible even using multiple choices f a more complex variety), the same coaching sector which is helping students crack the exams will be forced to make them think and learn.

So we need to look at all our problems in a much deeper and wider way and it is my belief if we do so that a way can be found to solve these problems.










1 comment:

  1. There is excess capacity in Engineering and Management and unemployable donkeys are coming out of anamadeyam institutes. Qulity here needs drastic improvement. Quantity needs improvement in Medical colleges and schools of nursing.

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