Rural schools

Today was cool. I worked in the morning at the office. I'm working on a website for the education department. It used to be pretty bad. Granted nobody was really working on it full time. Some dudes just made it because they were interested in doing so. It wasn't part of their job. But right now I'm working on a site that I think is better.

I was really hungry this afternoon and decided to get a real lunch rather than the sandwich I usually get. So I went to a random restaurant around the corner. Boy was that a good meal for cheap. I paid about 75 cents for this:


After lunch was the interesting part of the day. There are four interns working at the foundation. They're MBA students at this school in Bombay (Mumbai if you prefer). They're working with the "Computer Assisted Learning Centers" (CALCs) and were going to go visit a few today. My work isn't exactly related so I hadn't been yet, but since they were going, I was invited along to have a look.

The foundation makes flash animations in local languages which are interactive games that help children learn. It helps teachers as a visual aid to reinforce what they're teaching. But there are a few other, perhaps more significant, benefits from these CALCs. There's been a noticeable relationship between attendance rates and these computer centers; dropout rates are much lower; and the community takes more interest in the school since it gives them a sense of pride to know that their village has computers in their school. The program is active in many of the Indian states now and they produce these animations in about a dozen different languages.

We visited three different schools and I talked to the teachers, the principals, and students. They all evenly show a sense of enthusiasm for using the computers. It is so wonderfully cute to watch those kids use computers and watch other students use them.

The schools have a few hundred students each and they have first through seventh grade. meaning roughly thirty students to a class. Most of them have about 2 to 3 computers, sometimes 4. Since most of the computers were bought on grants or donations made about three years ago, they're having issues with maintenance now, since the warranties have expired. Also, there aren't enough teachers to supervise the kids. Though its great watching the kids use the computers, there are generally about 20 kids watching as about 10 use them. There's a long ways to go, but its a start.

I took a few pictures.

This is Shiv Kumar. He's in the sixth grade. He was one of the kids waiting to use the computers. He didn't actually get a turn today so he was just sitting down and studying for his exams that are coming up.



These kids are playing a game called "the story of the bean" or something like that. The little girls are all waiting for their turn.


Some kids waiting for their turn. They were just goofing around, talking to the MBA kids and laughing. It's really fun talking to these kids since they're so excited to see us. They're just fascinated to talk to anyone from outside their village I guess. At one of the schools we were talking (well, I was talking since I was the only one who spoke the local language, the MBA kids spoke Hindi) to the kids and they were all so excited. They sang us songs, and showed us their history projects. It was great.



As I said, the waiting kids were supposed to be studying. Here's a picture of the kid sitting in front of me who was studying for his Kannada test.



The teacher was explaining stuff to the kids. Boy, I realized today how bad my Kannada reading skills are. These kids can read a lot faster than me... well, I guess thats expected.


Finally, as we were leaving, there were a bunch of kids who were sitting outside. I guess because it was a nice day, their teacher took them outside. They were all sitting in a circle studying for their exam. They waved good bye as we left.

Meeting with the commissioner

The past few days I've mostly been doing work on my own. So there isn't a whole lot to say. Although I will say that it sucks to have 6 day work week.

I guess I should say a little bit about the meeting I had when we submitted our five year plan. It was actually rather anticlimactic. There were about 20 people at the meeting. 10 people from various schools, teachers, administrators and such. 2 people from UNICEF. They're working on a project to track kids who are out of school. To see what they're doing rather than school, if they're employed and if so what kind of work and so on. And there were a few other people from random departments and us.

The commissioner didn't show up for an hour. So he sent someone else after that. The meeting just involved us vaguely describing what the document was and why we were submitting it. We didn't actually go into the details of it.

But while we were waiting for the meeting to begin, it was interesting to hear some of the other people talk. Some of the people there were teachers at schools in really poor areas. And it was interesting hearing them talk about the problems they're having with computers, and how much they appreciate having computers despite those problems. One of the things that stuck out to me is that charity often is painful for those who receive it. Some of these people bought their computers a few years ago from money they got from donations. But those donations have dried up since. Now they don't have money to maintain them. Its rather sad. The government can't give them money to fix up the computers, and they are legally bound not to ask the parents for money. Apparently its a law that government schools cannot as parents for money. And so, they rely on charity. And that charity just doesn't come through consistently. Having computers for a few years and then not having them is painful, especially when you start using them regularly.

But it was nice to hear them talk. One guy was saying how he loves watching the third graders use computers with so much fascination. Thats what made him start using computers for administrative work. "When a 7 year old can use computers so well, I asked myself, 'why shouldn't I?'" One of the biggest problems is getting people to get over the intimidation of technology. And it's good that it is happening.

Pictures from work

I took some pictures at work. There wasn't anything particularly notable about today. So, I'll just put some pictures up. I do have a big meeting tomorrow where we present the "five-year plan" (which is just stuff we pulled out of our asses) to the commissioner. Should be fun. I think I'll have some good stuff for you tomorrow.

Although the guy I had to give the document to, the guy I work under, said, "Yeah, looks good. But I'll have to work on making the English less intimidating." I thought that was funny. My writing isn't exactly ... you know? But I guess most of these people don't really read much English.

Anyway, here are the picture.

This is my desk in the office. I like the random lights on the ceiling. And the room is circular, which is kinda weird.


This is the view from my window. I'm not sure why it has that metal mesh on it. Its on the fourth floor. But I guess I should remember the monkeys that would jump into the fourth storey classroom when I was in highschool.


This one is a picture of a "milk parlor" where people stand around and drink milk! I find it funny to watch grown Indian men with their mustaches stand around and drink flavored milk out of little cups.

Driver

I'm still in the car. I'm not driving today because my parents heard from one of their friends that they had an accident and someone died. The person driving the car was charged with negligent driving, though it wasn't her fault and now has her passport confiscated and such until the investigation is over and she is found innocent. So my parents want me to be driving as infrequently as possible.
That means I have a driver driving me to work and back.
He's really funny. He started asking me about America. About how much it would cost to get some coffee. He asked if there are beggars in America. I told him that there were and how the government was anti-welfare. That Americans don't like welfare. That a lot of people don't like welfare in America because they don't want to pay more taxes. "Sons of bitches!" was his answer.

Anyways, he told me how someone he knew married a white lady. I thought he was probably going to say something negative about that. But I was surprised. He said, "I think it’s really cool that this guy went over there and married someone from there. A guy from here went there. That’s really good". I asked him if he didn't think there was anything wrong with it and he said, "we're all people. I don't really think it matters where you're from". I thought that was pretty cool. I generally thought that the view on this would be more xenophobic. This is an uneducated, illiterate guy. He really has no exposure to anything. And its nice that he has such an open mind about things.

Writing a five-year plan in just one day

OK so I show up at work today at 10am. The guy I work under was the only one there. I start reading more material to write the plan. I forgot to read some stuff last night.
The girl who was supposed to help me showed up around 1030. She walked around talking to people for a while and then had a chat with my boss. Not sure what she told him but he called me over and said, "she's not feeling well and is going to be taking the next few days off. The plan is now entirely on your shoulders". So that’s what I did today. I, who have never been involved with any government planning in my life, was in charge of drafting a five-year plan in one day. That’s all I did today. From 11am to 5pm I sat at my computer writing a five-year plan. I gave he boss a draft at the end of the day. He's going to comment and I'm going to revise tomorrow.

There's just something ridiculous about this though. First of all, I’m not sure you should have a five-year plan for technology. Second, you'd think a five-year plan would take at least five weeks to write. It’s just a bit silly.

The plan I wrote is pretty general. It’s really more of an inventory of current projects.

Anyways, that was tiring.

I’m in a car right now. Some lady with a baby walked by the car asking for money. Its really sad. People rent out babies from the slums and they're used to get sympathy. Sad.

Black and White

My cousins stopped by today to get some advice from my dad. They're buying a new house. This brought up the question of finances and that of "black" and "white" money. I'm not sure if you are familiar with this terminology but white money is money on the books. Black is money that the government doesn't know about, usually hard cash. When one does any large transaction here, there is a certain ration of black to white. This is of course so that you don't pay taxes. So if you buy a house, for say Rs. 2 million (Rs is or rupees) then you pay about Rs. 0.8 million in white. You register the house for that amount. You pay taxes on your property for that amount. You then take cash. Bundles and bundles of cash to the guy you're buying from to pay the remaining 1.2 mil. It’s not uncommon to find vast sums of money in people's houses because of this.
My cousins had to pay Rs. 1.7 mil in white but they took a loan from the bank for 2.2 mil. I guess they're just going to give back 0.5 mil.
Well, there isn't a real point to this story. I just find the notion of black and white money peculiar.
If you look at the latest Indian budget, they introduced a nominal tax of 0.1% on cash withdrawals from banks that exceed a million rupees. The reasoning that the finance minister gave was that it is a measure to try to keep money in the official system. I'm not sure it’s going to work. But we'll see.

Back in the office

I started coming in to work regularly this week. After working at home last week, this is really different. I think this is going to give me more insight into what its like working in the government. The few hours that I would go in the past few weeks were highly amusing but didn't really show me how slow things really are. Or how nobody really wants to do work.

Under Indira Gandhi, India, like Russia, started using five-year plans. And that legacy is yet to go. Government departments love writing five-year plans. Sadly none of them actually get carried out. So I'm working with a "Policy Planning Unit". The responsibility of writing the technology five-year plan for the department is ours. The guy I work under has been telling me about this thing for a while. But said that I didn’t have to be part of it since I just got here and don't know about any of the stuff they’re writing about. Today as soon as I showed up he told me that what I was working on is now on hold. The plan hasn't been completed yet and the draft is due on Thursday. I was supposed to work on it with this girl who has theoretically been working on it for weeks. I'm supposed to have a draft by the end of tomorrow.
Well, we walked over to her computer and took a look. She had titles for each section but no text. She had a bunch of documents with information we could use. But she had read none. And she was working on it for weeks. Oh and all this time, we couldn't find the mouse to her computer. Someone had taken it. And she couldn't use the computer without a mouse.

Anyways, so we start reading some stuff and she said she had to go get some stuff done. Then she moves to another table and starts filling her tax forms. When she finished that "Ok, so I have to go in an hour. We can talk about some of this stuff 'til then". And I ended up coming home after that. Got nothing done, except that I have a bunch of documents to read and write a five-year plan tomorrow. I doubt that she's going to be much help.

Some people...

We have new neighbors. They're assholes.

When you build a house, you're supposed to have your blue prints sanctioned by the government. This is just to make sure that people don't violate regulations, obviously. In our neighborhood, there;s a bylaw that says that you cannot build more than one unit per plot of land. But the people who just built a house across the street from our house built 6! They paid off the officials who were supposed to have stopped them.

These people aside from building a huge ugly thing across the street and offending our aesthetic, are also really obnoxious. They're loud and really fucking annoying. They've also paid off the cops. One of our neighbors tried calling the cops at 3am once but the cops just didn't show and they later found out that they had already been paid off.

My latest beef is that they wake me up at 630am every day. Since so many people live there, they have a lot of cars. They pull them out of the driveway every morning, in reverse. These ass munchers have really annoying beepers and tunes play when they're in reverse. Its not uncommon in this country to have those, but for so many cars to have that one after another at 6:30 in the morning is just ridiculous.

We've asked them plenty of times to turn it down, and they say "well, we don't ask you to make your dogs stop barking do we?" What's most annoying is that I can't even call the police.

Third world Indian goodness: corrupt cops and public officials, inconsiderate people.

Cricket

This week, I'm working from home. I think this is going to be the case mostly. I haven't had much to say for the past few days since I'm just sitting at home.

But I have a few comments to make about life here, now.

We have a cricket series going on right now between India and Pakistan. Its a pretty big deal in this neck of the woods.

Lately cricket has been a source of reconciliation between India and Pakistan. People have been showing huge amounts of good will. India toured Pakistan last year and they were treated very well, as were the fans who went to Pakistan. One thing people were worried about was whether India would be able to reciprocate the hospitality. And I think that despite the few groups that have been retarded about it, things are going well right now. A few Hindu fanatic groups like the "shiv sena" have threatened to disrupt any cricket between India and Pakistan. Fortunately nothing like that has happened. On the contrary, Indians have been very warm to the Pakistanis.

Thousands of Pakistanis have come to India on special cricket visas. Right now they're in Mohali, a North Indian city, which is about 3 hours from Lahore in Pakistan. Apparently there just aren't enough hotel rooms there. So Indian families have volunteered to host Pakistanis. They're cooking for them, letting them stay in their homes, and just chilling with them too. I think its great that people are showing that the hostility between the two countries is really cosmetic and political.

Apparently India has also invited Musharraf to come visit India just to watch cricket and not for any official purpose. I think this is great and hopefully things will continue in this cooperative vein.