Kids wasting their valuable time on internet

Social book marking sites, communities, groups, blogs getting more and more traffic. But who are all feeding them? Yes you are right the youth. Youth wasting their precious time by such useless activities. Chatting orkutting comes first in such time wastage. Students who joined in Engineering getting such exposure, Indians usually see internet first time in Engineering of during graduation. After their first experience gradually get edict to net. Pornography, Soft Porn occupies first places, next comes chatting, orkutting, social book marking, forums and so on.

Most colleges offer free internet facility to their students, so that it becomes a part of their active learning. In my college all systems connected to internet are occupied by students who are busy with chatting. Active students must pay for net outside the campus. If affordable students internet from their homes. Most people come from middle class background but still invest on internet. I am not against internet, but wasting time online for online dating, pornography, gossips, useless news…

I am surprised to see how this culture spread even in small towns, when I visited Tenali, I am surprised to see all degree college campuses surrounded with internet cafes. Around ASN Degree college, all shops surrounding it are internet cafes, ATMs and cellular centers. See how students are wasting their parents money on the name of education. In Tenali most people are middle class or below middle class students, mostly from surrounding villages. They are literally exploiting their parents.

Posts like 2,00,000 is some forums is not uncommon. Say if each post takes 30 seconds then 2000 posts takes  1.1hr, 20000 posts takes 11hrs, and 2,00,000 posts takes 120 hours nearly. Its an rough estimate but reality may be four times to my estimation. What he will gain with such huge number of posts? When I visited Sify executive at Teanli, he told me that there are few systems around 8% which use Yahoo messenger or Gtalk only for 2000 hours in a year. I found that 2000 hours on net is common at Vizag, Guntur, Hyderabad, Vijayawada and Tiruapthi.

So, while pursuing education students literally wasting 4 hours daily on the name of gaining knowledge. A month ago, I read a query posted to a psychologist about internet syndrome, she says, her son behaves mad if internet goes down and he is spending 10hours daily on net. I am surprised to see that letter is from Guntur, where the total internet connections are below 10,000.

And the second class users who waste time on net are employees from various IT service companies, most posts in Orkut are by Infy employees. If they utilise that time to gain some certification programs they will shine in their profession, but they are killing time and wasting companies resources.

Most colleges and companies banned Orkut, Gmail, Yahoo Chat and other such stuff, but engineering brains finding alternatives to reach them.

During my first year, TCS conducted off campus interview at Hyderabad, and we came to know that 400 members attended that (in 2002) we are shocked on hearing that number 400. But my relative told me that 40,000 members attended TCS off campus in October, she expressed her sorrow since, she wasted lot time on chatting, SMS and Hutch to Hutch phones when she was in final year. If she used atleast 25% of that time, she might got a job. Her aggregate percentage reduced to 63%, while cutoffs for most offcampus interviews ranges from 65%-75%.

Students and Employees instead of utilising internet to enhance their skills and knowledge, they are destroying their time. Once you come out of student life, you will definitely pay for the time you wasted while schooling.

Time I spent on this post is : 8:56 PM to 9:34 PM

TERA

Topfree Equal Rights Association.

www.tera.ca

TERA fighting for complete equal rights for women in USA and Canada. Men are allowed topless in public while women are not. To support them I will publish their logo on my blog.

I strongly believe that, to be topfree or not to be completely issue of women. They must be given choice, if law permits men to browse with out shirt then why not women? Their claims are logical and I support them.

Law must be same irrespective of gender, law shouldn’t show distinction between male and female.

If they wish to cover themselves maximally, they may. If they wish to be completely topfree, they may.

More about TERA’s purpose with reference to feminist theory is contained here.

Real costs associated with education in India – 1.

These days I am receiving mails about wonder making with rupees 100 -150 every month. Infosys foundation too became brainless. Rs 100, Rs 150 scholarships per annum are worthless and no way useful for poor children education. How much an primary, upper primary and secondary education costs?

First of all, previous generation political leaders and especially committees on various issues gave important, useful and insightful suggestions. But bureaucracy and corruption in all stages made those suggestions and law useless.

The major challenge our education system faces is dropouts. School going children for primary education are good enough to maintain literacy rate at 80% or more, but suddenly their ratio decreases after they finish primary education. The reasons are, nearly all villages have got primary schools, but for upper primary or secondary they need to go to some near by village. Students need to walk more or less 5 kms. So they drop out ratio used to be more. But that’s past, BJP government concentrated more on education as a result almost all villages has now Secondary schools. More over bus passes for students at low rates, better transport facilities and better infrastructure for schools made this factor a minor factor now. This really gave a push to secondary education in India. Except a few percent, families with annual income above poverty line consider Education as compulsory.

Yet, in India 22% of people live below poverty line, and still female education is at poor stage. We can see a considerable or big push in dropouts of female students final year of upper primary education and early years of secondary education. The reason is simple, poor toilet facilities at School, government took initiative ans concentrating in toilet developments and personal cleanliness, yet the drop out ratio is same, a soft corner associated with this is “Maturity”. In India, waste clothes are being used as sanitary napkins, which are hard to maintain and are not comfortable to handle, but the cost of sanitary napkins is too high for them. As a result parents and child tend to remain at home as a result the drop out ratio is considerable. Mostly matured female students stay away from education and wait for marriage. A few social workers found a solution to this, home made sanitary napkins, they teach children how to make sanitary napkins with blotting paper, but yet in India people refrain to discuss such activities in public even all are females only. Other hurdles like lack of mechanism to supply raw materials, hesitation in Children, very few social workers and its hard to reach every village makes this a hard nut to crack.

This is only one side, but what about children who never enter school? Large families is not uncommon in India, 6-12 children in a family is common in India due to religious superstitions or other beliefs. In such families feeding children is major problem more over, due to home deliveries children and mother become weak and anemic. More over protein rich food is an illusion, they even can’t provide food for the entire family how can they provide food which is protein rich? As a result children suffer with diseases caused due to vitamin deficiency and anemia. So, they are not in a position to reach school. Once the child gets 5 years, the parents places him some where for work, he will  earn 15 rupees a day and he can feed himself, some time his parents too. But still he lives in drastic environment and can’t think about schooling. At least if he works he can eat twice a day, but if he go to school?

Later another reason for more dropouts before or during secondary education is, once they reach 14 years, parents takes the children to farms to work, as a result he has to get out of school and work in him farm. Another reason is, parents hesitate to send him for work before 14 years, since its too early to work. More over most children are from agriculture background changes in monsoon and output also influence their education, if bad output, the family can’t bear his expenses as a result he will come out of school and work for him.  At the stage the daily wage is 45-100 rupees a day plus afternoon food in some works.  So, once he starts working, he can enjoy with his earning that takes schooling away from him. This is the main reason for greater alcoholism in villages.

More over, the child finds it hard to understand the subjects due to mental abilities and changes in medium of instructions, this adds high illiteracy rates in Muslims, they complete primary education in Urdu medium, later they shift to local language medium in secondary schools. English medium government schools a new concept developed recently to compete with private schools adds to dropout ratio, since English is not our mother tongue.

Surprisingly caste is another factor which adds to dropouts, parents from higher casts don’t let their children to sit with lower caste people, if such distinction is not possible they tend to refrain from schools. More over most schools and school surrounding are used as public toilets that too by lower castes why adds fuel to fire.

What about lack of teachers, lack of teaching facilities and lack of infrastructure is predominant in past but with concept “Vidya Volunteers” and central spending of 9314 crore rupees towards welfare of people changed the face of schools. As few as 1000 schools requires teachers and another 1000 schools requires students, but using the resources efficiently nullifies this problem. In practice its successful. So right now its share is 1-2%.

So, called social workers spending 100 rupees a month ignoring the socio-economic factors and thinking of some thing not present in the problem space. Social problems constitute 56% and economic problems constitute only 40% to illiteracy in India. Other factors like problems with schools fill the reaming percent.