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Archives: March 2011

March 26, 2011

We dont want to be a Nero’s Guest

by viggy — Categories: social — Tags: , , , , — Leave a comment

“We dont want to be a Nero’s guest” is what everyone had to say when around 130 people from various parts of Bangalore gathered to raise voice against Farmer suicides. It included software professionals, research scholars, students, professors and state government employees. All of them could have continued doing what they did on their weekends i.e. party with their friends, visit amazing places near Bangalore or just watch a movie and sleep. But they chose not to because how much ever you ignore it, you can not just feel it right to enjoy a happy life with your neighbours committing suicide. Especially when it is for around the same amount that you spend for your family on a weekend.

Just our saying that “We dont want to be a Nero’s guest” doesnt change anything. It wont bring the 200,000 farmers who have already committed suicide and it wont change the policies to stop more farmer suicides. But what it does is to let the government know that they cannot just get away with this. We cannot any more have the policies in favour of the minority of the people in name of development and let the majority starve to death. It is a perfect recipe to disaster and sooner or later we will trigger it if we dont do anything to change the current scenario.

As planned, we started the protest march at 5 pm from Mysore Bank Circle with around 60 people each holding a banner. We did manage to get the attention of the people who were travelling on the road and distributed the pamphlets too. Hope atleast some would have read them and will contact us back and join us in this cause. We raised slogan against the current reduction in silk import tax from 30.66% to 5% and the anti farmers policies that the both central government and state government having been imposing in every budget. We reached Town Hall at around 5:45 where around 40-50 people were already sitting with banners.

At the town hall, we started with a street play depicting the inequality between an engineer living in an urban area and a farmer. An engineer gets atleast a call per day informing him of the various loans that he can avail to buy luxury items which can be sanctioned to him without any security. Where as the same banks do not have any money to lend to farmers who have been working hard in the fields but do not have security for the banks. The play depicted the current scenario perfectly where in politicians are happy to subsidize electricity to malls in the cities on the cost of cut offs and load sheding for more than half of a day in villages. With banks and politicians giving no heed to the voices of the distressed farmers, they are forced to borrow money from wealthy money lenders in villages at an exorbitant rate of interest of minimum of 36% and which can go as high as 120%. With all doors closed the farmers are left with little choice but committing suicides, hoping they will not be reborn atleast as a farmer in their next life.

After the street play, Senthil gave a brief introduction of how the idea of conducting the vigil had come up and why it was such an important event. He thanked all the participating organizations like AID Bangalore, ITEC, Sugathi, Concern and many more. He represented the people who had all gathered when he said that we were all ashamed to face someone like Shri Boregowda who had lost his son and daughter-in-law due to the policies of the government that favoured us. He also mentioned the pathetic condition of the current media which had not covered the farmers suicides.

After his talk, Senthil asked Shri Bore Gowda to come and speak a few words. He explained to everybody how both his son and his daughter-in-law were already in debt but were planning to clear the debt with the good production they had this season. However the sudden fall of cocoon prices became the trigger for them to take such a drastic step. The sad grand-father who had been left with 3 grand-children had only the future of his grand-children in mind. He requested everybody to come forward and help to give a good life to his grand-children. He also told how many local government authorities had visited them and promised compensation but none of whom had actually dispatched any amount till now.

After this, Mr. Krishna Gowda, a sericulture activist from Mandya, gave us the complete picture of the impact of the import tax reduction. Though the government currently has decreased the silk import tax in pretext of the move to help the silk weavers, he told us that it hardly actually helps the weavers. It actually help the bosses of the rich bosses of the weavers who will now be making huge profits. He told that the price fall happened due to the anticipation of the fall of silk price when the actual policy will be implemented from April 1st. Anticipating the fall of silk price, the dealers in the market emptied their stocks of silk thus causing such a huge crash in silk price. He mentioned that how both central govt and state govt had completely ignored the matter. If only the state government had inject money to support the price of the silk, such a fall in price could have been averted. He also mentioned that the actual repercussion of the reduction in silk import will be seen when  Chinese silk will enter Indian market with the meagre 5% import tax. This, he warned us, will actually lead to many more suicides if not acted upon immediately.

This was soon followed by a talk by B. Suresh, a popular director who is known to make more sensible kannada movies than his counterparts who believe in making movies with just songs and masalas. With twilight dawning, we simultaneously started the candle lighting event with Shri Bore Gowda lighting the first candle. Soon we had more than 100 candles lighting to show the solidarity for all the farmers who have committed suicide and to let all the farmers living that their neighbours in the city for whom they have been tilling the field and feeding with their hard work will do their best to help them lead a happy life.

With atleast, TV 9 and Samaya NEWS channel covering the event and reporters from The Hindu, we hope to see at least this burning issue of Farmer suicides reaching the National pages of the news papers and Breaking News tags of TV NEWS channels. However, one thing is sure, we are not going to stop and this is just the beginning. A group of people will be soon visiting the affected villages and understand the ground reality which will then help us to actually think of some concrete steps that we can take to help these sericulture farmers.

Do contact us if you would like to join us and help us end up eating the very own hands that feed us. We are reachable at,

http://www.itecentre.co.in/node/18

You can keep yourself updated about this issue by following the wiki page that we have created, http://farmer-suicide-and-it.wikispaces.com/

March 21, 2011

It is now or never

by viggy — Categories: experience, social — Tags: , , , — Leave a comment

I always wanted to do something for him. Through out my life I had seen him sacrificing to keep me happy. These were small things but these were the things due to which I am whatever I am. Very often, there would be one apple and two of us. So to make me eat the full apple, he used to say that he did not like apple. Slowly, he started disliking more and more things for me. He also got too comfortable with his old clothes so that I could have new one. We were not poor but as most of the middle class families, we had limited budgets. I always used to think that when I grow up I will make up for it. After all I was a small boy at that time. What could I have done. I studied hard and got good marks and that was all I could do. Slowly I grew up to be a college boy but still I was small. I did not earn anything but I did spend a lot. We had grown from middle class to upper middle class, so I had the luxury. But I didnt observe the cut downs that he was making. He didnt buy a car so that he could sponsor my graduation.  Then the incident happened. He was diagnosed with a terminal illness. But somehow I had hope. After all he had been a good man through out his life, why would God punish him this way. If anyone had to be punished, it had to me for bullying him to agree my terms. But 2 years later, he passed away and I was left all alone with the huge burden of things I wanted to do for him. Now I dont know what to do with all the plans that I had made for him. I have money now but no one to enjoy it with. I make self sacrifice but that does not bring a smile on anybody’s face. I do not know how to reduce this burden. If only amongst so many things he disliked, I knew one thing he liked. But I never asked. It is now I realize that whatever you want to do for others, it is now or never.

Many of you must have heard about the farmer suicides. Almost everybody must have thought to do something for them. Probably as soon as you reach 40, each one of you want to be a politician or a social worker and change the policies in favour of the farmers. Or probably you are waiting to finish one last project that you are presently involved in. But please realize that it is NOW or NEVER. Inequality is the fastest growing sector in India and we need to arrest it as soon as possible. Farmer suicides have become so common that NEWS channels consider it as a information than a NEWS. Come join us to wake the people of India and save our farmer brothers. Please let us not have to carry the burden of things that we wanted to do for the farmers to our graves. Be there on 26th of March at TownHall at 5 pm. For more information, http://farmer-suicide-and-it.wikispaces.com

March 12, 2011

FOSS in curriculum

by viggy — Categories: curriculum, discussion, FOSS, FSMK, FSMK, Misc, panel, tech — 1 Comment

Having missed most of the excitement of the two days of the State level academicians convention on Free Software in Research and Teaching, I arrived at the venue fortunately to get a chance to attend the panel discussion. The topic of discussion was “Foss in Curriculum”. The discussion was moderated by Senthil and the panel consisted of the following distinguished persons.

Prof. K Gopinath, IISc

Dr. K. Rajnikant, Principal, MSRIT

Dr. C. R. Venugopal, Prof and Head, SJCE, Mysore

Dr. Sunil Manvi, Prof and Head, Reva ITM

A time limit of 8 minutes was given to each panellist to express their views. Senthil started the discussion by stating the position of Free Software Movement on the subject. He said that the whole FOSS movement was started initially by academicians and researchers from various universities who did not want vendor lock in for the tools they were using in their research. Hence it was apt for even faculties and university as a whole to ensure that there is no vendor specific courses or instances in the syllabus. He compared the situation of profs struggling to understand the proprietary tools  even when FOSS tools are available like people trying to get the recipe of Coco-Cola even though there is tender coconut available. He emphasized that when tools are proprietary and hence closed for everybody, how will the students be able to play with it and understand it. It is like asking a mechanic to learn to repair the car without actually being allowed to open the car hood. With this, he asked Dr. K. Rajnikant to express his views.

Dr Rajnikant who is principal of MSRIT and also an academic senate member of VTU was the VTU representative for this panel discussion. He told that when the questions comes of mandating tools in curiculum, there are many factors they need to consider. Due to this factors, they are forced to keep a blend of both proprietary and FOSS tools in the syllabus. One such factor was the importance of the knowledge of tools to the students placement. If the industry is using mainly a proprietary tool in particular domain then for helping students to get placed in the industry, they will have to inclucate such a tool in the syllabus. However, he made it very clear that VTU did not have any mandate on compulsarily using any proprietary tools in the curiculum. For example, he told that the graphics subject is already being thought using OpenGL which is a popular FOSS cross-platform API for developing graphics applications. Hence colleges always have freedom to explore various FOSS tools if they want. But in reality, since colleges already have paid licensed versions of proprietary tools and thier profs already have put effort in developing course material around the proprietary tools, they are unwilling to move to FOSS tools. Another factor he pointed was that at present, students are using the just the tools to develop the applications and not to actually understand how the tool is developed and internals of it. Hence for them, it does not matter even if the source code of the tools actually exist. In conclusion, he made it very clear that VTU in near future as such cannot mandate the use of FOSS tools in its syllabus and it was necessary for them to keep a blend of both proprietary and FOSS tools in the curiculum.

After this, Prof C. R. Venugopal from SJCE, Mysore and also an academic senate member of VTU right at the outset declared that he was a lover of open-source. He said that during his post-graduation in IIT-Bombay, there was already a culture of Eat Breathe and Drink Linux. He emphasized that as a computer science engineer, a student must be knowing inside out of the computers which can only be possible if they start playing with the source code of the tools which is possible only with FOSS in the curiculum. He said that the main problem that needs to be addressed immediately is the lack of faculties who can teach current subjects with FOSS tools.

Prof Gopinath started the discussion by giving his encounters in life for promoting FOSS. He said that when he had started teaching his subject, operating systems, he was making use of minix and encouraged students to start enhancing it and he found many students who were able to do it. He said that even after trying hard to equip his department machines to linux, he was not successful way back in 1992 as it was considered to be inferior. But within next 2-3 years, the institute itself started getting pre-loaded linux machines and soon all the machines were running only on Linux. In his opinion,FOSS is the perfect platform, a infrastructure to start to building things on it. Hence, it is the right way to teach any subject. He also said that, instead of colleges going to industry to buy licenses of softwares, colleges should actually invest on developing the necessary tools internally. He said that if the faculties find FOSS tools to be not as competitive as a proprietary software, then it should be used as a base for teaching. It can then be used to understand the problem and solve it. He also mentioned that he was probably a wrong person as a panellist as he has always been using FOSS and anything other than that is unthinkable to him. Hence even for the sake of discussion if he suddenly starts talking anything against using FOSS, then probably his head needs to be checked.

After Prof Gopi’s such strong statement, Prof Manvi, from Reva ITM was asked to express views on the discussion. He said that only FOSS tools can be played with. Hence a student should definitely use FOSS tools during his course. He also emphasized that at a time when colleges have very limited funds for infrastructure, they are forced to cut costs in every possible way and hence using FOSS tools in lab is a very viable option for colleges also. He mentioned that it costs around 5 lakhs per annum for 30 machines license of a popular proprietary tool used in Electronics department of which he is the HOD. If there is a FOSS alternative, like Scilab, then colleges should definitely use it. He said that using FOSS tools even after taking support license from vendors will save as much as 30% of the costs. He also mentioned that it is very difficult for colleges to use industry tools as the tools keep changing every 2-3 years and it is very difficult for them to upgrade it. It is even unnecessary for them to upgrade to newer versions as the subject fundamentals that they teach in the course remain the same. He pointed that the immediate problem that needs to be addressed is to the lack of necessary documentation for every FOSS tools so that the faculties can go through them and start using it. He saw this as the major hindrance for using FOSS in curriculum and if addressed it will certainly boost the rate at which colleges are moving to FOSS. Hence he requested organization like FSMK and FSMI to work on it. As a first step, he asked FSMK to come up with complete lab manuals for present lab subjects using FOSS tools.

With this we came to the end of the panel discussions and since very less time was left, Senthil quickly made the conclusion that as of now there was no complusion from university for colleges to use proprietary tools and if the few hinderance pointed by panellists were solved, colleges will deifinetely start using FOSS.

Again due to time constraints, only two questions were allowed. In the first one, an Audience pointed that to allow students to go to depth, it was necessary for the university to decrease the breadth of the course. For this, Dr. Rajnikant pointed that as an university it was necessary for them to look at a bigger picture while deciding the course. There are colleges which lack faculties in particular subjects and if the depth was increased then the lack of faculties for such subjects will be more. Hence they have to decide the curiculum keep these factors in mind. However, he pointed that under the university there were 14 autonomous colleges which had the freedom to decide their syllabus in each subject and conduct examination accordingly. But for this, colleges need to prove their abilities only after which the university can award them with such freedoms.