Shame on you, CNR Rao

Plagiarism is a continuing bane. Young novelists with a Harvard pedigree do it, newspapers do it; sometimes newspapers plagiarize themselves with hilarious results. (If you catch them at it, that is).

Cricket-related examples that I ran into a few years ago: You left out dazzling, and Congratulations, Virender Sehwag.

The latest example to hit the news has nothing to do with cricket. It's from a paper co-authored by the eminent scientist CNR Rao. There's plenty of coverage in the press, and comment elsewhere by far more informed folks than me, so I won't try to duplicate it. (For example, see Abi's two posts The Rao Row and Prof Rao responds, and Rahul's three posts on his blog).

I'm only writing this to vent some steam: I'm just appalled by CNR Rao's reaction to this episode. If he had said nothing, it would have blown over as a relatively minor transgression that even the journal concerned was essentially willing to overlook. But instead, Rao chose to speak to PTI about it. And he says, first of all:

"This should not be really considered as plagiarism, but an instance of copying of a few sentences in the text."

Just what does that mean? In my dictionary, the word is defined as "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." How does copying of a few sentences from another paper evade this description?

But if CNR did not quite cover himself with glory with that remark, he digs himself further in the mire with these:

"I myself had written to the Editor that it was best to withdraw the paper … I did not directly produce the manuscript which I normally do."

CNR is implying here that he didn't read the paper that carries his name on it (first), and that when he apparently did read it, he himself thought it wasn't worthy of publication. Both of which reflect extremely poorly on an eminent scientist.

But CNR sinks below mire, and into despicability, with one final remark. The "copying", he said, happened "because of X" (X being the student whose name appears on the paper). Instead of having the courage and decency to take the blame himself, CNR chooses to blame, by name, the student: thus likely leaving a permanent black mark on a young scientist's career.

Shame on you, CNR Rao. I can only hope you are the exception in Indian science, not the rule.

Takeaways

So here's the thing. Some months ago, I posted here about takeaways that I, well, took away from an ad for the Chate International Academy. These were important takeaways, because they involved both 720 kilometres and insects that went in circles and dazzling capabilities (of which I clearly have none, because otherwise I might have caught the error in using that word "both").

Well, I'm glad I had those takeaways. Because today's news is that there are going to be some other takeaways from that very same Chate International Academy. Specifically, the one I mean is that the Academy has been fined Rs 500,000 for "misleading students by using the national emblem on its advertisement."

Sort of fitting, in more ways than one, that this news comes to us on January 26.

Axed hand

What I understand about this news: people took offence. Because there are always people willing to take offence.

What I do not understand about the news:

* Why the college management "apologised".

* Why the Kerala government saw fit to issue "instruction" that the professor should be suspended.

* Why the college followed the government's instruction and suspended him.

* Why the police lodged a case against the professor.

Clearly "freedom of expression", especially its value in an educational institution, is a foreign phrase to all these people.

What I hope I will read in the news soon: that the sick creeps who cut off the professor's hand (with an axe!) are punished severely.

Because the message has to go out: feel offended if you like, who can stop that? But if your felt offence causes you to attack others, you will be swiftly punished. Regardless of your religion or particular offence.

What I instead worry will happen in this case: Nothing at all, for fear of treading on various toes. That others who feel offended by other things will thus know they can also lash out without fear of punishment.

What encourages me in this news: This line, if it is really true -- "The attack has caused widespread shock and outrage across Kerala."

The wars we forgot

I called it "Sounds like a synonym", in print it is titled "The wars we forgot". Either way, my essay about mud, 250 km distances and a massacre is in the Hindustan Times today. Please take a look.

As ever, your comments welcome.

PS: I'm not responsible for that "pezzzzzzzzzach".

60 years later, a beginning

By some estimates, over half of India's children -- something approaching 80 million kids -- are malnourished, the highest number in the world. While reading about this several years ago for something I had to put together, I found a UNICEF report from the early '90s, The Progress of Nations, that did some eye-opening for me.

It said that the routine explanations for this scale of malnourishment -- poverty, low per capita food production, inequality in incomes, even vegetarian diets -- don't hold up to scrutiny. For Africa shows up significantly worse than India on some of these counts, but only about a third of its children are malnourished. Even in Mauritania, the worst African country in this respect, only 48% of the children are malnourished.

So what is the reason for malnutrition on the scale we see in India?

There are several the UNICEF report cited. They add up to what it called "the quality of child care." A mother may love her children a great deal, but "it is all but impossible for her to provide high quality child care if she herself is poor and oppressed, illiterate and uninformed." It is vital that Indian women be given greater freedoms, rights and opportunities -- and access to education. In fact, the report said the education of girls is the "key of keys" to fighting widespread malnutrition. This alone will make them more likely to exercise their rights, take a share in decision-making inside and outside the home and raise healthy children who will themselves attend school.

Others have come to similar conclusions. In World Hunger: Twelve Myths, Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins point out that overpopulation, lack of food and land to grow it on are not the real causes of hunger. Instead, it is a "scarcity of democracy". Amartya Sen has often and famously written that famines rarely happen in democratic countries. If a country has no elections and no free press, its rulers are not accountable and need not face the political consequences of failing to prevent a famine. In Hunger and Public Action, Sen and Jean Dreze argue that to eliminate malnourishment, health care and basic education must be promoted. Of course, educated people buy food and medicines in a more informed way. What's more, educated people demand services and their rights, whether health care, electricity or adequate resettlement measures if they are displaced by development projects. And the educated are better able to hold rulers politically accountable for their failures.

None of all this is new, I know. Nor is it glamorous front-page headlines involving six-hitting IPL superstars. Besides, it's been said before and will be said again.

Yet this is something of a context in which to understand what was indeed news yesterday. Sixty years ago, our Constitution put in place a Directive Principle of State Policy that said India should "endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of the Constitution, for free and compulsory education for children up to fourteen years of age."

Half a century on, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act has become law.

About time, but never mind. And if we now start making up for sixty wasted years, may this country finally fulfil its true human potential.

Paul Samuelson

Paul Samuelson died. His economics text taught plenty of people the basics of economics (guns and butter, to start with). I count myself among them, though "taught" might be stretching things a bit far in my case.

True story: A friend and I once made our way through the corridors of MIT in search of Samuelson's office, to try to pay our respects. We found it, but he wasn't in. We stood in front with our heads bowed anyway.

Go well, Mr Samuelson. There are many who remember you.

Attitude shift

A few days ago I was part of a panel discussion at a nearby school. Our subject was the recent proposal to make the CBSE 10th standard exams optional. Each of the panelists had to speak for a few minutes to start off the discussion.

This is what I said.

***
I'm no educationist, I'm just a father, and I think a lot about my kids' education. As a father, I dread the years when they will come close to graduating from school, because I wonder about their school-leaving exams. I wonder about college entrance exams. I wonder about coaching classes.

And all that wondering makes me worry.

Doing outstandingly well in school-leaving exams has become such a coveted goal that there's a huge amount of pressure on kids. The marks they aspire to reflect that: to get into a good college means you need to bring home 97 percent or more -- and I'd like to know the difference between a 97 percenter who gets in and a 96-er who does not.

But you have to aim for those marks, and more and more it seems you can get them only if you attend coaching classes. That disturbs me.

What's wrong with coaching classes, you might ask. If they help you get the exam marks you need for college admissions, what's wrong? And in fact, there are proposals to recognize coaching classes as equivalent to school or college programmes.

Yet what's wrong is right there: that coaching classes are directed at one or another exam. Everything I believe about education, everything I want for my children, shouts out that there's something twisted there. An education is not a preparation for the 10th standard board exam, nor for the IIT entrance exam. It is instead an investment in turning children into thinking, questioning, participating adults and members of society. It is the most important investment I'll make in my life, the most important one my country can make.

Yet look at where we are now. From the 8th standard or before, kids take coaching for their 10th exams, then the 12th, then various college entrance tests. It's the rare child who resists all this. Too many schools are poorly equipped to fight coaching, because that's where the money is, for teachers. Too many schools become poorly staffed places that even kids know there's no point attending.

Yet in this whole enterprise, are we turning out a generation of children whose greatest skill lies in taking tests? I don't want that for my child, and I wonder how many other parents truly want it for theirs.

So what's the answer? The genie is out of the box -- there's no way to ban or stop coaching classes, not that I want to. The answer then is to remove what makes them necessary: exams. Not all of them, I realize, for you need ways to test a child's abilities. But certainly some of them.

For example, the 10th standard exam. It has never made much sense to me: you do it and you immediately go to work towards the 12th standard exam. What purpose does it serve?

Finally, I'd like to see an attitude shift towards school education, to underline the idea of it being a country's investment in its future. Education is no less national service than joining the Army. Kids who get an education serve India every bit as surely as soldiers do. Make it a rigorous, thorough, broad-based education, sure; but recognize our schoolkids as young patriots. For that's what they are.

Think of them like that, and we'll know what to do about coaching classes and exams.