

This politician wants to take India back to 1940s by abolishing English and Computers  - ideamonk
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/002200904111531.htm

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plinkplonk
First, election manifestos in India are largely documents full of whatever the
authors _think_ (rarely accurately) will get them a few more votes in an
election, or signal various postures to various electoral allies, not
something they have the remotest intent of implementing to the letter. If one
hundredth of the promises made in the last election's manifestos were
implemented, India would be a very different place.

Publishing manifestos is an almost empty electoral ritual, beyond the above
mentioned mild "signaling" effects. No one holds any party accountable for
what their manifestos promise and by the time the next election comes around,
everyone has forgotten what the manifesto said (and there will be a new
manifesto!). As an example, any party that plans to curry favor with the
Muslim populace would include a "resist American imperialism" theme in its
manifesto (though my friends who are part of the ground campaign report that
many muslims think that Barack _Hussein_ Obama is muslim, so they are feeling
friendly to the USA and so the "anti American stance to please muslims" plank
is backfiring occasionally!)

Second, the Samajwadi Party is largely confined to the "cow belt" of India,
which has the least educated populace in India. There is a national election
coming up in the next few days and this is just posturing on Mr.Yadav's part
to score points with his uneducated/ English unfriendly constituents (or so he
thinks. Most people, even the desperately poor, would,given the chance, send
their children to English Medium. computer friendly schools).

A large chunk of the bureaucracy functions in English (though ever larger
chunks have moved to the local language over the years) and this causes
English illiterate people some difficulty when they have to interact with the
bureaucracy. This is the sentiment Mr Yadav is (faintly) trying to add to his
vote bank, without pissing off the english using bureaucrats. And of course,
there is always a bunch of hard core language chauvinists who hate every
language but their own (This in a country with 20+ official languages and
2000+ dialects) The elections are likely to be very close this year and every
bit helps. The smarter folks just ignore this kind of posturing and look at
what the candidate/party _did_ in the past(vs what they said).

Think of an American politician in a heavily republican evangelical
constituency talk about how he'd enforce Christian Prayer in schools and work
diligently overturn Roe vs Wade. The American pol would have powerful interest
groups watching and publicizing every deviation from their agendsa. In India
nothing like that exists.To a much greater degree than in the USA, in India no
one really cares about party manifestos anyway except in a very abstract
sense. Elections are decided on local/current issues and alliances.

Believe you me, any action to make this a ground reality would cause a massive
backlash, if not outright rebellion. Indian governments are largely coalitions
of disparate parties and there is no way Mr. Yadav will get the votes in
parliament to implement this. (he is a very canny politician, he wouldn't even
try!)

To repeat, It's just posturing. Mr Yadav was recently hauled over the coals by
the Election Commission for making vaguely threatening noises about a very
honest and incorruptible District Magistrate in charge of overseeing the
elections in his constituency and probably just wants a last minute burst of
publicity to shift the focus elsewhere.

To conclude, Computers aren't going anywhere. Neither is English education.
This is all posturing!

~~~
ideamonk
I hope nothing like this ever becomes a reality. What I was worried was that
if such people, popularize these ideas into the poor majority in India, then
winning by numbers is not difficult for them. When we look at the reservation
of seats issue (<http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/apr/12spec1.htm>), such
people when in power were actually able to create policies that would harm
over-all development. I wish the well-educated minority here doesn't sit back
at home and we all say it our aloud that we can't tolerate such people, by
going to vote! Thanks, it was a pretty nice and optimistic read :)

~~~
plinkplonk
"When we look at the reservation of seats issue "

reservation (kinda sorta affirmative action based solely on caste for any non
Indian readers )uses an "economic progress" bait to line people up behind it.
Whether the purported benefits actually manifest, one can debate about.

Removing English Education and computers has economics working against it.
Your kids won't be taught English or computers because we... errr ... want
them to remain peasants forever?

Besides , this move if ever attempted (it won't be . _No one_ will be able to
get it through parliament) pisses off the teachers, the urban population,
students, the business folks, the bureaucrats, illiterate/poor people who want
their kids to get the best education ... just about anyone who is not some
kind of local language fanatic. There aren't enough of the latter around
(except in small pockets) to change the last few decades of history and
economics in India (though the few who do exist are very voluble).

At best they are able to shift the _primary_ language of education in
middle/high school to the local language _alongside_ English (and there is a
good case to be made for that). There's simply no way this can be done at the
undergrad level and above. The logistical comlexity of textbooks preparation
for a few hundred branches of science, engineering etc (for e.g) would kill
any initiative like this.

but it won't get this far. As I said above no one will get it through
parliament.

As I said, just posturing :-)

[ Ok I am sick of discussing politics _here_. Iam not sure this is an
appropriate forum for this. I am signing off from this thread. ]

~~~
jonas_b
Too bad you signed off man. I've had a look at your comments and I must say
I've learned more about modern India from reading through them, than most
books on the subject.

~~~
plinkplonk
Thanks Jonas, if you need to more information anything in particular, just
send me email.

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ideamonk
The worst part, he has got his own sons educated in English medium schools. Do
politicians try to introduce such retarding ideas in your nation too ?

~~~
ckinnan
Ah, Indian Luddites. We fought this battle during our industrial revolution as
well:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite>

Here's a great parody of these ideas from Bastiat. It is a petition from
candle-makers to the government, complaining about the competition from the
sun.

<http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html>

------
alexk
Hi All, Please don't get me wrong, but I don't get what hackers interest HN
user can get from this article. I am from Russia and there's enough crazy
politicians in my country as well, but I don't feel like it's the right place
to post their ideas here. Flagged this article.

~~~
ideamonk
Well some issues related to politics, etc also affect hackers, and future
hackers. For example, the education system in some places lacks vision, making
hackers feel restricted, like I do, overburdened with unrelated subjects of
high credits under a CS degree. Otherwise I could've learnt things I wanted
to, started projects that I wished to do, and C# app dev for a project we are
doing wouldn't have taken 3 months, if we didn't have tests every other week
and loads of assignments to do. I could have had time to experiment, learn and
create so many things then. I think such decisions and efforts to do such
illogical things as abolishing use of computer and english would create more
and more problems for those who wish to learn and make lives more comfortable
by use technology. I thought such things do matter a little bit and even this
one.

------
kesava
I am sure the manifesto was made on a word processing software.

~~~
paraschopra
and they would have a copy of it in English too!

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ideamonk
IIT Foundation did respond to Arjun Singh's decision on quota -
<http://www.iitfoundation.org/?p=83> could we also have such activities for
these kind of situations.

~~~
plinkplonk
"could we also have such activities for these kind of situations."

the reccomended "activity" for "these kind of situations" involves going to
your polling station and voting ;-)

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FraaJad
it is sad that the same land which gave us one of the ancient world's greatest
universities -- Nalanda <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda_University>
produces these dingbats.

That said, plinkplonk's analysis of the situation is very accurate.

------
z3r0p4r4d0x
No wonder we're experiencing a brain drain, and the articles about US
Immigrations usually feature a smart Indian trying to live his dream.

