recently a student who received an obscenely high marks applied for revaluation because he thought he deserved even more. he was acting well within the limits of accepted norms since there is no restriction on who should seek justice under available provisions of revaluation rules. so more and more students are applying religiously hoping to gain some more marks.

one is left wondering at the rational behind such move. are students acting on their own? or are they simply mimicking the behaviour that is so common in society today - the urge to have more. do they even understand that these things matter so little in the course of their future life? who can tell them these issues when their parents are forcing them to score more?

sensitising parents regarding the futility of scores is an urgent necessity. the future employers will also do a favor to society if they rely less on scores while selecting eligible candidates. more than anything, the students themselves should realise that joy of learning is far more important than the numbers in their score card.

cinema is primarily a visual medium. since the introduction of the talky movies, language has become an important part of the entire discussion. but there are at least three trends which undermine the role of language in cinema. the first is the contentious issue of actors playing roles in unknown language. by forwarding arguments such as ‘art has no boundaries’, they hide the complex questions on this issue.

the second issue is the tendency of artists not to give their own voice to the roles they play. though ‘dubbing’ artists have played appreciable role, this trend undermines the importance of language. in an interview, a famous member of this profession said that artists do not even pronounce the dialogues but simply say “1,2,3…” or “a,b,c,d..”! so much for acting by these highly paid artists!!

all these can be set aside as trivial. but how can one accept the fact that a person who does not know the language claims to direct a film in that language? even if he outsources the language related tasks (dialogues, songs etc) to experts, how will he control the narrative? how can he, who cannot understand the words, direct his actors? this is very puzzling but as it is with other issues here, we seem to live and compromise with these contradictions.

as a measure of providing social justice, constitution provided for reservation of certain seats in every election for underprivileged groups. the accepted formula for implementing this rule is earmarking certain seats exclusively for them. these constituencies are rotated on a timely basis so that there is a rounded representation of the community.

but this system is not without flaws. the political parties sometimes have difficulty in finding the right candidates for a reserved constituency. therefore they either force someone to contest or bring an outsider. these imposed candidates become virtually pawns in the entire game and the lofty purpose of social justice remains unfulfilled.

the possible solution can be to instruct (through legislation) the political parties to earmark certain percent of seats to these classes. in this way, the parties can select the best among the members of that class to represent the constituencies where they are known. this also removes the stigma associated with certain constituencies because they are reserved for a particular class.

if anyone thinks that the language issues are the result of post-independent india, there are in for a surprise here. in the book, ‘ti.num.sri. samagra gadya’ (kannada pustaka pradikaara, 2007) there is an episode which shows that these issues were raised as early as in 1932. we learn that the decision of mysore university senate to limit second language to either kannada or urdu raised much uproar.

the question then was the absence of sanskrita from the list. no one seemed to bother the place given to english as the lone first language. this gives us an opportunity to understand the confusion regarding language formulas in india. given the choice between local languages and english, this country always embraced the later. by surrendering the top place to english, indian languages were left scrambling for a place in language ladder.

after the formulations of states based on languages, the three-language formula became an accepted solution. with english and official regional language reigning supreme, hindi was pushed to third place. any other languages which was spoken by people failed to get a place in language policy. so decline of languages in modern india is a result of flawed policy decisions and not a natural development.

precision is the middle name of scientific writing. there is no place for intelligent guesses and claims without support while preparing a text of global significance. in this regard, the statement on himalayan glaciers in the ipcc report was found wanting. since the controversy raged, they have also issued a clarification.

in the meantime this has given rise to a peculiar phenomenon. now that there is a mistake in the report, the entire debate on climate change has taken a new avatar. the whole issue is now pictured as a huge global conspiracy with states and international organisations as central actors. some countries are also mocking at the agencies who are engaged in research on this important issue of our times.

this is not the time for such small fights. whether the date is correct or not, everyone will agree that the issue remains important. for the want of cheap publicity, it will be a mistake to withdraw from global efforts to mitigate and manage effects of climate change. from a commoner to national governments everyone has a proactive role to play in this time of crisis.

free and open source community is more about ideals and philosophy than technology itself. the dedicated volunteers of this community have contributed to astonishing progress of technology. these volunteers who are scattered across the globe invest their time and energy to develop this movement with an intention of helping others. open, unlimited access to software and related products has been the most cherished values of this world.

but there are reports that certain companies who host these software are blocking the access to people of certain countries. the reason forwarded by them are the regulations of the government in which they operate. given the choice between law of the land and philosophy of open access, they have chosen the former. whatever may the reasons, this action has exposed the weakest link of the movement.

the choice before the community are few. one, there is an urgent need to migrate hosting servers to ‘friendly’ countries. second, the question of existing code in those servers which are blocked should be resolved. this episode is a reminder to the followers of this movement that they have to be alert everytime to stop the evil moves of corporates who want this movement to fail.

if every time-period should be identified with a word, ’speed’ is the right candidate to represent these times. everyone and everything around us seem to be moving at such speed that for a while we may think there is no tomorrow. now and here are the new mantras. anyone who is not ready to participate in this speed marathon is rejected collectively by the society.

some keen observers may point to the fact that it is only because of technology that time seem to move in ultra speeds. from communication to travel, speed is the key element in technology design. but whether availability of these technologies itself have contributed to change in behaviour of the society or its usage patterns is an interesting question to answer.

no designer can foresee all the implications of the product he develops. the way in which people adapt a technology in their daily lives is hardly understood. why some technologies live short (eg:pager) and why some become omnipresent (eg:mobiles) is a difficult question to answer. but technology never forces a specific behaviour on people who use it. so if world around us is moving at absurd speed, something fundamentally has changed and may be technology has aided that thought process.

in the demise of k s ashwath, a rich tradition of kannada cinema has come to an end. he was the last person in the illustrious list of actors who portrayed fatherly characters with such sincerity that was unmatched. its only fair that we remember at least some members of that chain. b r pantalu was definitely one of the founder of this tradition.

r nagendra rao also established this tradition in a strong way. his portrayal as a loving father in `hannele chiguridaga’ is a framework which ashwath greatly adhered to. after the era of these two doyens, it was only k s ashwath who continued this tradition. the actor like sampath did not live long though he was a worthy inheritor.

today there is a near absence of space for actors who can continue this tradition. somewhere in late 90’s fathers in cinema lost their charm. an actor like lokesh was limited to playing comic roles.  there are actors like ananthnag and doddanna who can be used to do more powerful roles. the best tribute to k s ashwath would be to give more space for performers in kannada films.

this country presents a strange paradox. the present prime minister of this country was projected by his party as a candidate for that post in the recent elections. but he did not contest in those elections. his party’s victory was dubbed as the verdict for his candidature for the high post. he however remains a member of upper house through indirect election.

whether this method is suitable for this country is debatable. but not many would object someone like him to be in helm of affairs as he has a long and distinguished career as academic and administrator. so it looks like that the country is coming to accept the idea of experts taking a role in governance.

though the executive wing is filled with experts, legislature has always remained open to interested public. in the initial years it may have been thought that the intelligent electorate will reject opportunistic politicians. but with people with vested interests, zero expertise and no care towards commoners  dominating the governance structure, its time to ponder over the question of earmarking at least few key ministries for experts in that area.

the one reason which should rightfully make every citizen proud of this country is the supremacy of constitution. albeit for a short period of darkness, the words of constitution has reigned supreme in deciding the way this country should be governed. what one takes as granted today is the result of some real hard work of great minds of this country.

it is the constitution which really gave the idea of country to people who were scattered in different provinces under various kinds of governance. in the history of this land, 1950 marks a watershed year since this country really came into existence only that year. and to frame a set of rules to keep people of different hues together must have been a difficult task which was well handled by the framers of this book.

the collective adherence of the people of this country to a single rule book speaks volumes about their culture and respect to fellow beings. for a country which was used to be ruled by monarchs, it is unthinkable that people’s governance is accepted. in spite of its limitations, this country’s tryst with democracy along with adult franchise is the greatest hope for humankind.