Monsoon showers in Hyd......

"Monsoon arrives in Hyderabad in June and lasts four months" Institutional Greening through water harvesting, MANAGE - The National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management, Hyderabad
The rains are here and the infrastructure of the city, as always, is unprepared and under severe stress. The streets are beginning to overflow. Potholes make life interesting for motorists and bikers and there's more to come. Traffic, already at a snail's pace on most of the city's busy roads has waterlogged roads to contend with. Let's only hope that the Public Health folks are more prepared, because monsoon showers lead to largescale outbreaks of disease. And that's the last thing Hyderabad can deal with. That's the plain and simple truth folks. China can build a road right up to the base camp of Mount Everest in four months, but we take ten years to build half a fly-over!
Hyderabad can be the new Shanghai:
And they say Hyderabad is as happening as Shanghai. 'They', in case this needs any explanation, happen to be politicians and bureaucrats--who between them have reduced Hyderabad to its current state.

Georgia Tech in Hyderabad

It's just a matter of time before all the big guns of higher education with a global reputation hit India. And one hopes that will happen sooner rather than later. Hyderabad notched up a first of sorts, in that Georgia Tech will have a major presence here. If you ask me, as a college teacher I would say that this is just what the doctor ordered for higher education in India. It is time we woke from our complacent, smug state, learned to compete with 'good' colleges and universities, stopped shouting from rooftops that we're 'as good as the best', let in some competition to shake us out of this delusional state and hold a mirror up to us. We're already way behind where we should have been, in terms of quality collegiate education and if we let the marxists prescribe what is good for us in this realm, education will take on Groucho Marx-ist overtones, with due apologies to the great comedy star.....In this instance, the A.P. Government deserves a generous pat on the back.

see also:

Georgia Institute Inks MoU To Set Up Campuses At Hyderabad And Vizag By Pradeep Sadanapalli | June 6, 2007

Govt for Georgia Tech campus in city 17 Nov, 2006 l 0203 hrs ISTlGanesh S. Lakshman/TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Georgia Tech : Why Hyderabad? Source: The New Indian Express @

Georgia Tech to set up its intl campus in Andhra, BS Reporter / Hyderabad June 5, 2007

Pressure cooker schools and colleges

HYDERABAD: "If you got 90 per cent or more in class X and haven't yet decided what to do with your life after school, count yourself lucky. Most other high scorers have had their decision made for them — not necessarily by their parents."
Cram schools hunt & trap students, 2 Jun, 2007 l 0220 hrs ISTlMRIDULA CHUNDURI, TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Come examination time and results, it's cramming all the way for millions of students. Board exams are a nightmare in our system with percentages determining everything and 1 mark slipping a student down by 10,000 ranks, especially in the Board of Intermediate and Eamcet examinations. One can well imagine the amount of stress an average student is subjected to, in such a scenario. High School and intermediate education (plus two or grades XI AND XII) badly need reforms. The emphasis, for the past several years, has been mainly on cramming and more cramming, regardless of any understanding of concepts.

From the time that the Intermediate results have been out, the newspapers have been flooded with full-page advertisements with each junior college flaunting its own list of 'toppers'. Most of these 'colleges' are pressure cookers where students are made to grind away, by cramming for hours on stretch. These colleges thrive on a system that glorifies and has institutionalized memory-based modes of learning that leave no space for individuality or creativity. Also, they're geared to 'bring the best' out of the 'creme de la creme' of students. Kids who are either average performers in terms of their grades (as reflected in their marks) or are backbenchers, as some inevitably are, can take a hike under the existing system. The colleges in question are essentially money-spinners with an ever-expanding network and enjoy such clout that it is widely believed that they determine just about everything from syllabus structuring to the pattern of exam papers and the continuance of the EAMCET exam....When will things ever change in India that is Bharat, or nearer home for Hyderabadiz and Andhra Pradeshis.....

See also:

'Pressure cooker' schools warning

Far and away......

Locating Home: India's Hyderabadis Abroad, by Karen Isaksen Leonard

Review from Saty's desktop:
Karen Isaksen Leonard's 'Locating Home' is a brilliant, comparative study of the Hyderabadi diaspora across the world-- Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, Canada, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.

Quite evidently, Karen has spent a lot of time over painstaking research, fieldwork and conducting interviews. 'Locating Home' looks at Hyderabadi culture and institutions, transplanted in alien shores. She demonstrates how memories of old Hyderabad, in terms of cultural values and institutions still find a place in the lives of these expats, or get transmuted and even discarded, depending on several factors, which include generation, gender, social strata, and other associations with what used to be the state of Hyderabad. Interestingly, Karen's previous publications include a book on the Kayasth community. 'Locating Home' is a must read for Hyderabadis--be they a part of the diaspora or 'locals'.

Review @ Amazon:
“This is research on a grand scale. Karen Leonard questions prevailing notions of diaspora, transnationalism, and globalization not by adding yet another layer to the cake of theory on these topics, but by providing a rich, incredibly diverse engagement with Hyderabadis around the world. As a multisite ethnographer, Leonard practices what most anthropologists are content merely to preach.”—Andrew Shryock, University of Michigan

oh Hyderabad!

Hyderabad Blast, May 18, 2007

Added to the miseries of day to day living, we have amidst us a network of lunatics, committed to making life in this city even more difficult. The bomb blast at Mecca Masjid is a case in point. Friday marked another sad day in the annals of our beloved city. But, we need to pick ourselves up and get on with our lives and show the loony bunch and the rest of the world that bombs kill people--they cannot touch the spirit and soul of a city.
Moving on to other things, traffic continues to be as chaotic as ever in this crazy city of ours, with most roads leading nowhere, at the end of the day. If you want to be enlightened on the rules of the road--here's some advice you could do with.

See also:

Hyderabad in Mourning?

Friday Bomb Blast in Hyderabad – Amusing Incidents and Disturbing Aspects. by Ashish Naredi

Misdirected Hyderabad Bomb Blast Investigations, By Adv. Irfan Engineer, 31 May, 2007, Countercurrents.org

The changing metropolis

That Hyderabad is not what it used to be, is something not worth repeating any more. Besides, isn't that true of every other city? But the pace at which change has overtaken the twin cities, is something no one, least of all our MCH and other civic bodies, had anticipated. A large, consumerist middle-class, and huge swathes of migrants seem to have sprouted from nowhere--thanks mainly to the IT sector. In turn, a related chain of service businesses burgeoned and boomed, making the city look like a happening city--you simply need to visit one of the many high-end malls or local pubs to see what I mean. But, scratch the surface and what do you find? A city that is fast losing the green cover it had, obsolete sewerage systems, municipal authorities who couldn't care less about roads, streets, parks or parking spaces, and who would merrily look the other way if you happen to be a builder or a contractor, regardless of what you are doing. Be it traffic management, civic problems, mass transport--things that are of basic importance in everyday life, Hyderabad is far from a happening place. Somebody needs to remind our city's denizens and authorities that ' a few MNCs do not a metropolis make', no matter what the real estate prices may say.

One recalls the tree planting campaign taken up by the MCH (in Mr. Narendra Luther's time) during the Emergency years in the mid-seventies, when it was widely being perceived that the city's rising temperatures could be ascribed to the widespread of denudation of trees. Those saplings had grown into sturdy trees only to be chopped down mercilessly by the same civic body, over the last few years. Who says we evolve with time?