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Where are the revolutionaries?

May 6, 2012February 4, 2017 Prasad Ajinkya2 Comments

In the first half of the 20th century, when India was struggling to achieve it’s independence, the nation was under going two revolutions.

The primary being a change in power, a struggle to overthrow the British Raj and to stand on it’s own feet. This was possibly the right time for reform as well, social norms such as sati and child marriage were being questioned. Female education was one such issue that was also being addressed. The country was undergoing a change, and a large socio-cultural change at that. Revolutionaries were there who foresaw a future where these harmful practices were no longer the norm.

I am not saying that all of this happened overnight, in fact I am sure that in some of the rural areas these practices are still being done. But the goal was achieved for most of the nation and mind-sets were transformed.

It has been over 50 years of independence for India now, and somehow I feel things have gone astray.

Where are the revolutionaries these days? If you are going to tell me that there is Anna Hazare, then I will reply that he is a politician and not a revolutionary. There are these hordes of NGOs who in the name of doing good demand charity from the citizens. Asking for charity is not the bad part, the bad part is that setting up a business processing unit to run this charity.

The interesting part is the only place where you will get to hear the word transformation is either in corporate board rooms, or in medical surgery units! When the revolutionaries of yore used to write, they used to put forth their manifestos … a call to action for the society. Nowadays the only call-to-action that I know of are gradient buttons on websites.

The revolutionaries are out there, busy writing blogs and tweeting about society.

It’s not as if we as a social collective have forgotten about reform, if you search on the internet you will find enough rants such as this … on blogs, on twitter, etc. The point is that after we have vented and ranted, we let it go and that’s that. The easy access to vent our frustrations ensures that we never reach the tipping point!

KhanAcademy: Saviour of the American Youth

April 27, 2012May 6, 2018 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

When I first heard of KhanAcademy (KA), it was a collection of Youtube videos. Each video was lucidly explaining simply fundamental topics in Maths, Science and even some in Finance. That was back in 2002 when Salman Khan (no, not the actor) was doing these videos in his free time and was giving them away for free. To see one man create such a rich set of learning media was inspiring.

The day KA received a 5 million USD funding, marked the critical change in the system. With the funding came a responsibility towards a greater good, a need for a vision that encompassed the funding and the need for a team who would embrace this vision and deliver this system.

And they haven’t disappointed. As I sit writing this post, I am also downloading the Python-based system of KA (which they have released as open-source). There are simple step by step instructions on their wiki to deploy the system as an offline server.

The KA CMS (pre-uploaded with the KA content) is given to the teachers and instructors of this world. For free! Not only that, but there is a dedicated team working with schools in the US to adapt these awesome set of exercises for their students.

Now, a celebrated speaker and a visionary in the field of education, Sal is often invited as a keynote speaker in different conferences, here’s on from the RSA conference (Courtesy: Rajat Swarup).

In the past, the US education system has received a lot of flak for not helping the students. So much so that there are more students who are losing faith in the system every year. When you lose faith in the system, thats the point when that system stops working.

KA, has restored faith of the American Youth in Education. The generation which was planning to drop-out of college (because thats what their heroes do) are now learning that the system is not flawed and that they can really learn something new when going to school. The lost generation has found its way.