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Reader's Mail

Royal birthday

The Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati seems to have developed a fetish for celebrating her birthdays on a scale that is lavish and grand by any standards. The ostentatious celebrations remind you of the feudal lords of yore. Ms. Mayawati, who claims to represent the weak, the poor, the downtrodden and the backward, collects crores on this occasion. Now whether all this money gets parked in her personal accounts or is used for the benefit of the poor is a matter of conjecture and curiosity. It would do her image a world of good if she were to come out with a statement of accounts of the money thus collected by her.

One cannot miss the striking contrast between the styles of Sonia Gandhi and Ms. Mayawati. While Ms. Gandhi celebrated her birthday by being with the quake-hit people of Jammu and Kashmir, Ms. Mayawati chose to enjoy the spectacle of dancing elephants and flattery of sycophants.

In a country where a large chunk of the population is living miserably under the poverty line, it is sheer moral bankruptcy to indulge in such extravaganzas.

M. K. Bajaj,

Apartment 4B,

New Generation Apartments,

Zirakpur,

Chandigarh.

Manmohan Sir....

The report from Delhi University, "A pilgrimage for Manmohan" (January 19), covers the speech made by the Prime Minister on Wednesday, January 18, at the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the Delhi School of Economics where he once taught after leaving a prestigious job with the UNDP since, in his own words, "something exciting was happening in India and I wanted to be part of it".

I am one of those privileged enough to have been taught at the Delhi School of Economics by a distinguished trio: Dr. Manmohan Singh, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, and the distinguished agricultural economist A. M. Khusro. Each had his own distinct style of pedagogy: if Dr. Manmohan Singh, soft-spoken as ever, was full of academic rigour, Prof. Amartya Sen with his excellent command over both style and substance was full of academic vigour, and Dr. Khusro was the proverbial man with the golden tongue.

It is good teachers like these who make up an institution of the calibre of the Delhi School of Economics. Indeed, the influence of a good teacher stretches beyond infinity. All the more regrettable, therefore, that a shortage of teachers is now afflicting our institutions of higher learning, including the Delhi School of Economics. This calls for urgent remedial action if we are to continue to conform to what Dr. Manmohan Singh in his speech called "the requirements of the academic dharma".

Vinod Chowdhury,

Senior Reader in Economics,

St. Stephen's College,

Delhi University,

Delhi - 110 007.

Hello, MTNL....

I fully agree with Mr. Mukul Dube (Reader's Mail, January 9). MTNL's proclaimed services and the actual services rendered are poor. Take Dolphin services, for example. I didn't receive my December bill from MTNL and saw it on Internet while travelling in Chennai on the 24th of December with payment due date as the 25th of December. I tried through their Internet site to pay the bill through credit card. Alas, they do not have this facility while all private phone service providers offer this facility through their websites and so many other options.

On returning to Delhi I rang up their Customer Service who informed me that I could register for their ECS service through the bol.net.in website or through their new customer portal for ECS payments or try to obtain forms through their Customer Service Centres. I have tried at least 50 times on the website to register for ECS but the site does not accept. I have sent e-mails and feedback but there has been no reply so far.

The bill comes on the Internet very late and they don't even send us an sms about it. Above all, there is no one to complain to. Fortunately I keep Dolphin only as a stand-by and use other private operators' services for my daily needs. When you have cheap calls, you must expect cheap services too, I presume.

A. B. Ilango,

A/4 80, Konark Apartments,

Kalkaji Extension,

New Delhi - 110 019.

No grades, please

The Central Board of Secondary Education (C.B.S.E.) is reported to have decided to introduce a grading system for Class X examinations from the year 2008, and not to carry "Pass" or "Fail" on the mark-sheets of the students. This decision needs consideration. It is pertinent to note that marks are a better and more precise index of a student's performance than the so-called grade. The grading system has been tried in many universities and examination boards but had to be replaced by the marks system. Delhi University adopted it for its under-graduate and post-graduate examinations in 1978 with great fanfare and after long preparations. The system had to be abandoned after three years, when the students and examiners and even the examination branch of the University found it inconvenient and unscientific. Many students who passed the university examination under the grading scheme, particularly those going abroad or joining other institutions for higher studies, had to approach the University for conversion of their grade points into numerical equivalent.

Two more reforms are needed in the school examination system. One, in order to encourage the students to give precise answers and not write anything irrelevant; the size of the answer book should be limited to 32 or 36 pages, without any additional sheet/answer book to be provided to them. When the duration of the examination for a particular question paper is limited, there should be a limit on the space provided for the answer also. This will save avoidable efforts on the part of the examiner and others involved in the examination process and wastage of paper.

Two, under the present system of question-paper setting and its evaluation adopted by the CBSE, examiners tend to give inflated marks, in some cases as high as 100 per cent even in some of the theoretical/descriptive papers of humanities and social sciences. Many of these "super-achievers" tumble dawn to 60 per cent or 70 per cent at their graduate examination.

The system needs revision so that the marks awarded are realistic.

Prof. D.P.S. Verma,

(Former Professor, Delhi School of Economics,

University of Delhi),

QU-285 B, Chitrakoot,

Uttari Pitampura,

Delhi - 110 088

(Letters for this column may be sent by e-mail to wsins@thehindu.co.in. They must carry the full postal address of the writer and should be marked "Reader's Mail".)

Apartment 4B,

New Generation Apartments,

Zirakpur,

Chandigarh.

Manmohan Sir....

The report from Delhi University, "A pilgrimage for Manmohan" (January 19), covers the speech made by the Prime Minister on Wednesday, January 18, at the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the Delhi School of Economics where he once taught after leaving a prestigious job with the UNDP since, in his own words, "something exciting was happening in India and I wanted to be part of it".

I am one of those privileged enough to have been taught at the Delhi School of Economics by a distinguished trio: Dr. Manmohan Singh, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, and the distinguished agricultural economist A. M. Khusro. Each had his own distinct style of pedagogy: if Dr. Manmohan Singh, soft-spoken as ever, was full of academic rigour, Prof. Amartya Sen with his excellent command over both style and substance was full of academic vigour, and Dr. Khusro was the proverbial man with the golden tongue.

It is good teachers like these who make up an institution of the calibre of the Delhi School of Economics. Indeed, the influence of a good teacher stretches beyond infinity. All the more regrettable, therefore, that a shortage of teachers is now afflicting our institutions of higher learning, including the Delhi School of Economics. This calls for urgent remedial action if we are to continue to conform to what Dr. Manmohan Singh in his speech called "the requirements of the academic dharma".

Vinod Chowdhury,

Senior Reader in Economics,

St. Stephen's College,

Delhi University,

Delhi - 110 007.

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