LETTERS : MISCELLANEOUS

Admission Trouble (3/7/06):
(appeared in Deccan Herald)
Recently few final year B.A.students from Bangalore University had to forfeit admissions to a Master's course in a university in a neighbouring state inspite of being selected after entrance tests and interviews! Since the final year examinations of Bangalore university were held very late, they were not able to produce certificates needed by the university they wished to join.The timing of the final year examinations are very important for the student and the university should have held such examiantions much earlier. Further, the admission of these students would have been possible if the Bangalore university had the academic machinery to issue projected marks cards as some of the other universities in the country do. Apart from the fact that the Banglaore university needs to be more concerned about the future of its students, the UGC has to issue proper guidelines for a better coordination between the various universities of the country.

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6-11-2004

Dear Sir/Madam
Re: USA elections

A little arithmetic and a hard look at the recent election map show that there are essentially two distinctly separate Americas: The first with 55 million voting population ( 47.5 % of the total) preferring Kerry to Bush by 55:45 and the second with 60 million population preferring Bush to Kerry by 57:43. Further, both these can claim to be independent countries since the 29 states of the second group are almost contiguous while the second group with 20 states are from 3 well separated regions but with each region containing contiguous states within itself- the upper east coast , the greatlake states and the whole of west coast. This division seems to be also blessed by time since the voting pattern has not changed significantly in the past few decades. It is a tribute to the democratic traditions of USA that even such sharp divisions have not torn the country asunder!

24-8-04

Dear Sir,
Re: WHAT IF

If partition had not taken place, we would have had a civil war within a decade,
not just because of language differences. Also Nehru would have come to power even
if initially Patel had become the PM.WHAT IF the great man had listened to the Bombay economists at the at the time of the 2nd five year plan instead of Mahalanobis ?They
dissented and wanted stress on mass consumer goods and agriculture instead of heavy industries. Incidentally, this is supposed to be the Chinese model which has been
very successful!