Indian Education – Links with Tariff Reduction..Really??

In the linked article http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/1174  the authors have tried to make a correlation between Tariff Reduction and Education in India. Their summary says it all

India’s trade liberalisation in the 1990s produced large gains, but it imposed significant costs of adjustment on communities with industries that lost tariff protection. A new study shows that those communities’ educational attainment lags behind the rest of India due to the intersection of trade adjustment, poverty, and schooling costs.

The study is actually conducted in Nilgiris and is related to the Tariff reduction in the tea industry which is one of the main industries in this area. Why the article caught me attention is because I was born, brought up and educated in this region. 90% of my close relatives still live there and for many their children still go school there.

Well, Nilgiris is a beautiful region…so would anybody´s home town…but this one is special. This is where three mountain ranges Western Ghats , Eastern Ghats and Anamalai Hills meet. There are not that as tall as Himalayas, but definieltely higher than the ones in Europe. Ooty one of the main towns is at 2300m above seal level. But this town is just a valley among the mountains. What makes this place unique is that it is so high yet closer to the equator giving it a lovely climate which is like a European spring and autumn rounf the year and definitely no snow. The main stay of Nilgiris has been agriculture because they grow most of the European vegetables for entire South of India and sometimes more. Around 1990 there was this a big boom in tea prices and most farmers switched to tea production. On the negative side ,such wonderful place has nothing other than agriculture and tourism ..nilgiris is the favourite summer spot for most South Indians and the favourtie honey moon spot. Nowadays many have diverged to employment outside Nilgiris capitalising on the Indian “Cyber Coolie ” boom. But unfortunately this has not done any good to Nilgiris demographic profile.

Nilgiris was most of the inhabitated only by tribals like Todas. But the region turned out to be the summer station for British elite and with them the farmers from the neighbouring area primarily from the state of Karnataka. They brought with them thier servants from the villages.  These servants lived under master´s land and did all the manual labour for the masters. Everything of their life was and still is determined by the masters and that includes the education of their children. Now for the masters it does not make sense to educate these children beyond elementary education. Also for the masters themselves since they are not really looking for job or some other excuse to really educate their children, most kids here drop off before completion of their school education. College is only for some of the rich and famous only as a past-time. This situation continues even now.  And considering that here the midday meals scheme (free lunch ..courtesy the Tamilnadu government) is very much active, even poverty cannot be an excuse for this pathetic situation.

Now back to the original topic, would anything in the Tariff system could have changed their lives. No..I don´t think so. Though the situation is not entirely a slavery system, it is something close to it. Some kind of rule like forcing that all children will have to attend school till atleast 18 years old or something similar is required to get these children out of the clutches of the landlords.  

    

 

Power of Forums-Siemens Automation

Siemens did an experiment in their forum for their industrial automation from 8^th April to 5^th May.(https://www.automation.siemens.com/WW/forum/guests/conferences.aspx?language=en) .I too participated in it and also managed to come within the  most active 30 members. The most active 30 members is a special because Siemens had promised a gift for these members. The forum was good example on how support services can be extended by a company by bringing in together all the experts. Industrial Automation is one place where such a forum is very essential. The problem faced by most programmers and engineers in this field is that the upgradation of both hardware and software products is nearly continues. Everyday you have a new product , update or service pack or hot fix or new firmware coming up. A typical programmer in this field has to be well versed with atleast some of these products and this should be a dedicated followup. Following up all items is impossible. But then when a programmer is at a plant site he is expected to solve all the problems then and there and causing no production loss to the customer.  it is then such a support forum helps. The siemens forum has been functioning already since 3 years. I have used it a number of times and also provided support through this forum wherever I could. But the biggest change i saw I when this Siemens announced this campaign with gifts. All of a sudden you could see so many engineers and programmers eager to reply to every question. Even “I did not know that” comments were quite often used, clearly to get to the top of the list. Many problems posted were getting solved immediately and sometimes even before I had finished typing I found few posts already up.

This shows how much a small encouragement could motivate people to participate in such “experience sharing” activities.   I am sure Siemens gained a lot of name and reputation out of this campaign. How much this contrasts from the campaign of Rockwell another industrial automation supplier did out of their forum. In 2002 their forum was completely free and accessible to everybody. But since then they have restricted it to contract based and not allowing all to participate on it. But which one makes better business sense?  My guess is that Siemens model should win. But for that Siemens should not only publicise these features and facilities. They should also go deep into the forum to understand their clients needs and problems.