Falling in Love with a Fall in Boston - Beyond What The Eyes See

I had heard a lot about the Boston fall and the dramatic change in colours from green to hues of yellow and red. I timed my visit to Boston to see the faint footsteps of fall, experience it getting louder and more colourful as it sweeps the entire area awash in colours.

I am enjoying every bit of it.

 'Autumn' and 'Fall’ are used interchangeably to capture the same essence of time bridging summer and winter. Autumn wears an attire of formality whereas fall brings along a poetic and philosophical feel appropriate to the annual event.

In the northern hemisphere fall commences with the autumnal equinox, the day, sun crosses the celestial equator, the imaginary extension of Earth’s equator in space. It normally happens between 21st to 24th September. Fall ends with winter solstice. Also called ‘hibernal solstice’, winter solstice occurs when the poles reach its maximum tilt away from the Sun. Winter solstice, therefore has the shortest day and longest night of the year. Then on, days start creeping upon nights till summer solstice gets revenge with the longest day and shortest night. The cycle, like it ever was, continues. Naturally both hemispheres have separate fall, winter and summer solstice.

The fall is interesting as it signals change in seasons offering us a spectacular feast for the eyes, a foliage that continuously changes colours. All trees do not change colours. Only the deciduous trees take part in this spectacle. For the cursory eyes, it may just be a change in colours, but for nature it is a complex process and for the trees a survival mechanism. In fact, it is the signal that the tree is shutting down its kitchen, the leaves, because it is running short on its fuel, the sunlight. Chlorophyll that gives trees its green and does photosynthesis, the process of converting sunlight into energy, starts breaking down. As chlorophyll breaks down, it exposes the underlying yellow (xanthophylls), orange (carotenes) and red (anthocyanins) pigments within the leaf. The catalyst for the change are primarily temperature and moisture. Since there are countless permutations and combinations of these two variables, no two falls can be alike! As fall progresses, each leaf starts gradually taking new colours, simultaneously weakening at the stem. Then having put on a spectacular show takes a final bow and falls down. The fall is all about swan songs; swan song of each leaf that once started its life journey with the tree as hope and goes on to contribute its might to the tree irrespective of the size of the tree .

The science behind what we see is important to understand why and how it happens. My interests, however in the fall was less for scientific reasons and more for what lessons it can give me.

Accept it or not we are part of nature and are inseparably linked to everything around us. There is so much beyond what eyes can see. Look close; Fall is a great lesson for all of us.

We all have our seasons of springs, summers, autumns and winters. For some of us life could be enviably long springs and summers. Life could be a dream run with neither autumns nor winters. But for many of us life could be very different. 

Barely noticeable springs and inconsequential summers that seem to finish even before it started could be condemned to obscure oblivion by immer challenging falls leading to extremely severe winters that linger till eternity. For reasons known or unknown life could just turn nasty.

 Like it or not; life’s like that.

We all respond to crises differently. Some like the evergreen trees may show no sign of approaching winter. They may easily weather challenging winters in life or even wither without warnings. But most of us show signs like the deciduous. When tough times come calling, signs show up in many ways, however hard we may try.  As life's winter gets closer and harsher, many, who we think will stand by us, fade away into unfriendly shadows or outright give up on us pretending they haven’t seen us in their life time. Worst are those who will confront us with often heard unjustifiable “I told you".

We could lose our greens, turn yellow in loneliness and go red in sorrows and losses. It's then that we should call to play our inner strengths

If we are rooted well in our belief of a better tomorrow, even while we face losses, we can let go of our leaves with dignity and conserve to weather the storm ahead. It’s autumns in life that help us know our true friends and strength.

Every winter however long and severe it may be, will have to end in spring.  Reassuring sunlight will come and with it new opportunities and hope. If the roots are intact, be assured, life will send shoots out, buds will emerge and the tree shall be full of greens once again.

As you enjoy the colours of fall, remember it’s the swan song for leaves but not for the tree. For the tree spring is about to come. Concentrate on sending the roots even further down.

Beware! You Could be Cordyceped

 Mystery Of The Long Horned Ants

The forest hides a lot even from the most prying eyes. Most of what we get to see in it is fleeting; what is not fleeting may just be a snapshot and not the full picture. The truth of the forest, a mystery! Today, let us unravel one; the Mystery of the Long Horned Ants!

Each plant species has perfected the art of propagation. When it is season, flowering plants bloom and the forest becomes awash with pollen clouds, each grain in the cloud hoping to find a suitable recipient. Most, not reaching intended locations dry up and die.

A fungus called Ophiocordyceps also sends out spores. Ants are no strangers to the forest. They come out from their colonies to forage. In millions, they crawl all over. Spores of Ophiocordyceps fall on plants, animals and the forest floor. It could also land on ants or they while crawling around could come in contact with it.  

Harmless incident? No; because they are the intended recipient!

If a carpenter ant (camponotus) and a spore gets together, the game changes. As soon as contact is made, the spores drive roots into the hapless host and takes control over its behaviour. Enslaved by the fungus, the afflicted ant has to find a place that offers the right amount of sunlight, temperature and humidity to help the fungus grow; and then in a bizarre final act, gets into a death bite at that precise location ensuring life for its guest. The spore grows into a fungi from the dead ant’s body to spew out spores, infecting another set of ants. The cycle continues. Colonies of ants could get wiped out like this in one season.

Genus Specific

There are more than 400 different species of Cordyceps, each targeting specific species of ants, dragonflies, cockroach, aphids and beetles etc. The story is all similar; the guest enslaves the host and controls its behaviour and eventually kills it.

The process is characterized by the presence of a parasite or parasitoid, a host willingly or unwillingly promoting its growth and at its cost and peril. Often the infection is genus specific.

If you think that this macabre story is confined only to forests or to species other than human beings, you can’t be more wrong. It is played out in and around us, our homes, places of work and in societies we live in. There are many an agent, targeting individuals, groups, sects and other such identities. Don't believe it?

Afflicted Individuals

When it comes to Homo sapiens, individuals are prone to being afflicted by one or multiple agents. Such afflictions are not race or gender specific. Some could be severely debilitating, adversely affecting our personal behaviour and social skills. Few could be even life threatening.

Many amongst us are corrupt. Degree and type notwithstanding, corruption inflicts personal and social costs. Though corruption has almost become a norm, many remorselessly indulge in it. Yet, there still remains an innate fear of being caught. For a few, ‘fear of being caught’ drives its roots and modifies their behaviour. Like the dictated move and death bite of the carpenter ant, the individual is consumed by suspicion. They see shadows even in bright light. Many of them withdraw into shells to shield themselves from prying eyes and leading questions for fear of being exposed. Some become introverted and become conspicuous by their acts, others compulsive liars and few both.

Behaviour and response to situations of many amongst us are driven by mistrust or distrust[1]. Caution is an existential virtue, but when that is fuelled by distrust it can spiral out badly. Such people over time become social misfits, subjects of scorn and eventually force themselves into their own shells and turn recluses.

It is just not only about the corrupt, timid or compulsive liars. There are many others who are similarly afflicted. Fear, guilt, apprehension, anxiety, insecurity, suspicion, greed, melancholy and so many such others; are just names of different genus that have the potential of commanding our minds and modifying our behaviour once they find space with us to rest and root. The most dangerous of all is being infected with a corrosive ideology.

 

Parasitoid

Unlike the empire of the sub-sapiens, we actually could make our infection look wanted. It could even get us inducted into groups we want. Once infected these people actually go around actively seeking to infect others. They are even willing to consume themselves in the process. Anyone opposed to that ideology is considered a threat and is treated appropriately.   That is when it becomes dangerous to societies. Fanaticism emerge like wise. 

 

Infected groups

The holocaust was the culmination of such a spore, rooting in one individual, spreading into others and then infecting the group prompting them to collectively prey on another group. It was not an isolated incident and not one of the past. Every day, across the world there are clouds of such spores of exclusionism infecting localities and regions.

Like Cordyceps, they need hosts and find ingenious ways to create divisions within a population that was otherwise living peacefully. As intensity of affliction increases, lies and falsehood spread at astronomical speeds. Having reached threshold levels, law of the jungle prevails over civility.  Everything that happens, however detached, gets connected and viewed through the spore’s perspective. A narrative is born! Then it is propagated and allowed to gain momentum. Once it attains the momentum threshold, it then catapults on its own with authenticity that truth commands. Social media plays catalyst. Disaster unfolds, slowly first, surely later.

 

Escape?

Insects, cursed merely by coincidence of presence in the area, have no way of shaking the spore away. It is doomed as soon as it comes in contact with the spore! They just can’t reason it out. What about us?

We are not as helpless. We can prevent the spore form driving in roots. It all depends on how well and how ready we are, as individuals or groups to reason it out.

What happens when a people lose sense of rationality?

 

[1] Mistrust and distrust are often considered synonyms but mistrust is a general sense of unease toward someone or something while distrust is usually based on experiences or information. Unfortunately like egg and chicken which manifests first in an individual is hard to decide. Often a learnt behavior both compulsively add to each other

Mighty Elephants And Mightier Mahouts: About Us As Hostages And Our Dependent Masters

Gentle Giants 

Majestic, mighty, intelligent and highly social, elephants are called gentle giants. The image that comes to us first, when we speak of them, is of the ones regally decked-up for various social and religious functions. We are so enamoured with its serene beauty that we easily miss the chains on its legs and the puny little man standing next to it carrying two stick like things.

Has the narrative about its gentle nature been so much ingrained that captive elephants seem to have forgotten its might?

What else can explain the power of a mahout, often drunk, making it obey his biddings. The only weapons a mahout bears, beside his words of command, are a cane and a hooked-baton. The chain that the elephant always carries around its legs become shackles only when the mahout feels threatened or wants to hold it to a post. Most often, the mahout just rests the baton on one leg of the elephant while he sits to drink or rest; the elephant doesn’t move that leg for fear of consequences. If by chance the stick falls, the elephant by itself picks it up and puts it back exactly where it was kept.

 

Individually, the cane, hooked-baton, chain and not even the mahout can match the strength of an elephant. The mahout depends on the elephant for his daily bread and the owner for returns of the sum invested. With its intelligence, it can turn situations to its advantage and easily break free. Yet, it remains enslaved till its end.

Types of Elephants

Depending upon the circumstances and surroundings, elephants fall into three categories.

The first and the luckiest roams the wild, free. They have to contest with natural enemies and overcome plenty of challenges to stay alive. Aware of their strengths and weaknesses they live in herds and grow up learning the art of negotiating adversities and remain free till poached or old age takes over. Majority of elephants belong to this category.

The second category consists of elephants captured from the wild. These unfortunate ones, once trapped, are trained, claimed and traded. Broken in body and mind, they spend rest of their lives in torturous captivity. Only death relieves them from their living hell. Despite legislations, purportedly in place, to protect them, barbs beatings and shackles hold them in place, lending regal looks to ceremonies. Controlled by a mahout, another les miserable, they suffer their indignity much like slaves of the yore under slave masters.

Blessing or curse, they possess phenomenal memory and recall experiences. They don’t ever forget that they were once free and roamed the wild. They recognise their tormentors, the mahouts, and never forget treatments received. Once in a way, fleeting though, they make it known.

A sizeable population still, their numbers are slowly falling. Increasing awareness both amongst humans in concrete jungles and elephants in the natural wild have resulted in decreasing numbers of elephants in captivity. Yet unending human greed will trap more elephants to live a condemned life of indignity.

The third and the worst of the lot are the ones born in captivity. They never have had the chance to experience or explore forests, roll in mud or laze around in streams. The reassuring presence of a herd is unknown to them. Born in captivity, life in chains filled with physical torture and verbal abuses is natural for them.

Blessed or cursed, never having tasted freedom or the liberty to walk free, chain isn’t an appendage, but an additional limb that brings along the opportunity for travel. Despite the unimaginable daily torture meted out to them, these elephants tend to consider their mahouts as their benefactors. They just fail to see the truth. Unfortunately, the population of this group will grow on some pretext or the other.

Think of it, are we also not like elephants?

Elephants That We Are

Don't waste time wondering which class of elephants we belong to. Definitely, rule out the first. Enslaved by visible mahouts and invisible fears that they instill in us, we keep sliding to and forth between the second and third categories, depending upon circumstances.

Born into families and societies, compelled by conforming rituals, practices, faith, beliefs, religions, politics and nationalities we mostly remain in the third category. However, stifling these may be, all of that are normalised and bondages, each one imposes, are internalised as identities or bonding relationships. We are slaves in such relationships. We are at home like the third category of elephants. These bonds are so normalised that most of us celebrate it. Fear of the unknown, greed for eternity hope of life beyond and ideologies that give us predominance over others are the batons our mahouts wield over us. We never dare question the veracity of such beliefs however illogical they may be. Those who dare are deemed blasphemous. They can make us conform to anything they want.

Man is neither conceived nor born free! Even in death, he isn’t free.

As we grow up, we knowingly or unknowingly let people and circumstances dictate terms. It could be through interpersonal relations like parent-child, sibling, spouse, friends, superior- subordinate or even organisational ones like member of a society, cults or organisations. The list is as imaginative as possible. Even our own behavioural traits can become our mahout masters. Our selfish obsession, jealousy, greed and such other vicious inner beings can enslave us and rob us off our freedom. These, over time, become toxically demanding and enslaving. We willingly allow ourselves to be manipulated in the name of nationality, religion, ideology, clans, tribes, faith, relations, and countless such machinations.

Inevitably we end up being held hostage by the ones propagating the scheme; much akin to the Stockholm syndrome!

Though to everyone else, the manipulators, manipulations and manipulated are obvious, many a hostage remain blissfully oblivious. Attempt enlightening them and risk receiving unbelievable response! While some may be aware of it, pressures and compulsions could force them to act oblivious. The fear of post break-out uncertainty is a deadly hold-back to escape from captivity. Willingly or grudgingly, we ruin our lives as a member of the second category. The sad part is that our mahouts are dependent on us and parasitically feed on us till either their end or ours.

Recently, I witnessed the sad culmination of a brilliant life. Held hostage, by his conviction to serve just one individual, he lay waste everything else in life.  Refusing to see a world with anything but his parent and hence unable to shake free of it, all his brilliance was snuffed out; tragic waste of a genius. He was not the only one; he is neither the first and will not be the last. The story of a bright mind taken astray with emails purportedly from deep within the caves of the mighty hills is another example. Whether it’s a case of such an enslavement or the deft art of a con artist can be debated.

Look around, we can find many such lives; look close enough, we may find ourselves in that group.

Are we also not in some shackles?

Break that Shackles

Most of us individually are peace-loving. Highly social and intelligent, each one of us know what is good for us. It has been proven many times over, through many studies that the human brain is capable of achieving anything it wants. The advances we have made collectively in science and applied sciences, bears its testimony. Yet, as individuals, we rarely use anything more than an insignificant part of our brain throughout our lives. We can acquire skills and knowledge at will. Our brains can find ways to overcome limitations imposed by physical strength. When it comes to capabilities, we are truly elephantine. But that is also our bane. We can justify anything; even our lack of inclination to free ourselves.

If our minds are made up, then unshackling ourselves from our fetters, self-imposed or otherwise, is child’s play.

The problem and it answer lies within us.

Can you feel your shackles? Star the search now

AFGHAN REGIME CHANGE AND US: THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES WE DON'T SEE

 

Men From Skies

The whole world watched in horror, live on TV, the crowd either ignorant of the consequences or hopelessly desperate to find space inside or outside, running along the huge military aircraft taxiing out for takeoff.

Few smuggled themselves into the undercarriage space that offered safety till the retracting landing gear claimed its space and spill out human remains before landing. Many clambered onto the wings and held on to each other and whatever else they could hold. Hopes seldom secure one against airstream of a plane in flight. Sooner than they thought, they gained height, only to fall from the sky. Men rained down from the skies above! Those who managed space within the aircraft escaped, at least for now.

The human tragedy that unfolded itself in Afghanistan in the month of Aug 2021 will haunt humanity for long. The photograph of Major General Chris Donahue, Commander U.S. Army 82^nd Airborne Division, walking back, consumed in the ‘night vision device green’, will remind US lawmakers for long, of another regime change gone wrong.

Regime Change

Successful or not, Americans have either carried out or attempted to carry out ‘regime changes’ across the world. But, the Afghan story remains unparalleled.

It all started on 7 October 2001 with a night bombing to decimate enemies of the US. It ended up as chaos on 30 August 2021. USA suffered more than 2,400 combatants and 1,800 civilian dead and more than 20,700 combatants wounded. It created 26 Lakh Afghan refugees and displaced 35 Lakhs internally. It took USA 20 years and $ 3 trillion to remove Taliban from power and reinstall Taliban!

The mighty US, turned hapless and negotiated with those, they once declared terrorists. The regime change presented the world with the Hobson’s choice of accepting or recognizing Taliban regime at the helm in Afghanistan. What an irony, those at the high table of geopolitics are already racing against each other to negotiate their terms of business with the same very people they called primitive, barbaric and fanatic. While governments the world over are trying to find reasons and excuses to reach common grounds with Taliban, they blissfully turn blind eye to something sinister, the ‘Sword of Damocles, emanating from the graveyard of empires.

What could it be ?

The Sword of Damocles

Damocles the obsequious courtier of Dionysius I, the 4th-century BC ruler of Syracuse, Sicily at least realised in time, the perils of the razor-sharp sword hanging over his head on a slender single strand of horse tail hair. We as individuals or as societies don’t realise there is one over each one of us! 

What is it that we must look out for?

Geopolitically it's a mess out there. No one knows who is in control. Anyone worth anything is trying to find ways and means to connect with those once considered pariahs. There are groups within trying to upstage each other for control of the landlocked country, forever in turmoil. Where it will lead to and when; nobody is sure. 

Under conditions of geopolitical uncertainty, countries often review bilateral relations, trade and business.  Everyone still there is either trying to hold on to a turf, a bargaining chip or create a new one.

As far as India-Afghanistan is concerned, bilateral trade is truly insignificant both in volume and importance. Geopolitically we seem to have been edged out as of now and our projects worth $ 3 billion, as of today, is a candle in the wind. However, it could become the seed, if it ever happens, for rekindling the much talked about ‘people to people’ relationship. Irrespective of what ‘people to people’ relationship means or ever meant, it is the very same people who chose to sideline and ignore India.

As regards domestic politics, reassuring for the ruling dispensation, the opposition seems to have switched on the ‘silence mode’ on the Afghanistan. There seems to be convergence on what various political parties think about the crisis and how it should be handled. 

Unfortunately, nobody seems to notice the sword of Damocles! It is present everywhere across the world, in every nook and corner of our neighbourhood and they have their origins in Afghanistan! It’s about opium and its drug derivatives.

Menace is Around the Corner

Talk of anything out of Afghanistan, one is tempted to first consider the spread of fundamentalism and Terror. But it is opium and its derivatives from Afghanistan that is now consuming the world. Though news emerging out of Afghanistan tend to indicate that Taliban is cracking down on drug trade in the country, it is believed that drugs had a significant role in financing Taliban’s come back.

The surge in supply of Heroin the world is witnessing is being attributed to crackdown by Taliban, forcing drug traders to ship out huge quantities of drugs in various forms into safe havens. But it is also common knowledge that they are in dire need of hard cash! If reports are to be believed, Taliban could be earning sixty percent of their annual revenue from illicit narcotics.

Whatever be the role of Taliban in drug trade or their intent to curtail it, the fact remains that there is a huge pile of drugs already out in the streets around us. More is likely to arrive. It has to be sold and it will find clients. They will create clients somehow. Some of us or our acquaintances may already be under its capitulating influence. Each gram of the substance found, captured and destroyed, represents a mountain of it already in the streets on sale. 

Anyone could be prey!

Drugs and drug trafficking brings along its wake a series law and order issues. It impairs societal peace and wreaks havoc wherever it reaches. it finally kills the society itself.  With such large quantities up for sale, law enforcing agencies must be up on the lookout. 

Politics and ideologies apart, if we all as responsible citizens do not come together, we may end up paying a deadly price.

EDUCATION : A COVID CATALYSED REVIEW

 The Unimaginable

Storage facilities overflowing, tankers, big and small unable to unload, oil has no takers and trades in the negative. As people shut themselves in, nations count and miscount their dead, diplomacy thick with accusations and counter accusations, economies bleed, businesses flounder and livelihoods vanish, mankind stares at endless uncertainty. We have even learnt to meet and greet from behind the masks.Mankind is now engaged in a strange battle for survival.

Speculations aside, nobody knows for certain what lies ahead. But everyone agrees that in the wake of the pandemic comes unprecedented fiscal chaos, large scale lay-offs and unemployment. World wars and cold wars, put together, couldn’t shake mankind the way corona did. Not many of us could have ever imagined our lives like this. Life with corona will be the ‘new normal’.

Ides of March and The New Normal

The ‘new normal’, everyone speaks about and presupposes with certainty, is “cause and effect’ determined. No soothsayer[1] to caution, the ‘Ides of March’ changed everything for the world. We came face to face with Covid and covidian terror has permeated all walks of life. Besides affliction and death, the most hard hitting covidian manifestation is unemployment. Road to economic recovery will be slow. 

Though establishments may not repopulate employee rolls to pre-covid levels, widespread outsourcing of micro-projects to individuals could happen. Entrepreneurial environment could bloom.The capable will grab and corner opportunities. 

Schooled to meet assembly line conformity and unable to adapt to the sudden shift, many will find themselves unemployed and unemployable. An education system that bulk-produced the ‘overqualified unemployable’ will soon saddle society with the jobless.

Nonlinear Minds

World over, the system of education , caters to demands of mass production. Traditional schooling conditions impressionable minds to think linearly. 

Over time, literacy has come to be known as knowledge and rating on parroted answers to oft repeated examination questions, abilities. Standard operating procedures assure expected outcomes. Experimentation and innovations unwelcome. Imaginative application could easily be reckoned as violation of entrenched methods and process. Deviations became risk laden and if unsuccessful, invited unbearable consequences.

Luckily for mankind, there were always unfettered nonlinear minds, that refused to be stifled by prescription syllabus and persevered to break the shackles of straight jacketed education. Information technology is the gift of such nonlinear minds. 

Nonlinear minds validate Moore’s law.  

Nonlinear minds set course for Future.

The Catalyst

What Covid did to Indian education nobody ever could.

Covid forced authorities to reconsider teaching methods. Children, irrespective of grades and classes, are now engaged with their teachers online. While online classes helped maintain teacher-taught contact, it inadvertently added an avoidable dimension to home-environment. Virtual schooling also denied children, ‘real’ opportunities to develop social skills, a double whammy further eroding throughput of an inefficient system. 

Though the current shift is incidental, cosmetic and temporary, Covid proved that the Indian education system can easily adapt to far-reaching changes if adequately stimulated. Bigger and better things are possible with the system. It took us Covid for the revelation.

Why Education?

Though evolving continuously, education has always been society-centric. The archaic education system is long overdue for reforms. Though, subject of research and intense debates, biases adding to ferocity, there can be no doubt on the fact that education must benefit the society at large. Irrespective of the time one lives in, society must pursue education as an activity to facilitate its survival and growth. Education therefore must focus on two basic aspects; ‘Value systems’ and ‘Capability building’.

Value Systems

Education must result in promoting peace, harmony, tolerance and ensure life with dignity. Value based education needs to be uniformly imparted and ingrained so as to build a just and humane society. Dignity of labour becomes ingrained.

Over time, what was once integral to the curriculum as ‘moral science’ vanished. When concern for fellow beings are not ingrained in children as an essential virtue, it eventually creates an indifferent intolerant society. Society stands to lose, short-term or long term.

Capability Building

The component meant to enable individuals and build capabilities should be imparted based on abilities and aptitude. This is where the current assembly line system, staring with kindergarten and unending even with post-graduation and doctorates grossly falls short, mostly with substandard products. Millions of over-qualified, unemployed and unemployable graduates bear testimony to the inadequacy of the current education system, one rendered meaningless by capitation and reservation-based admission.

Overqualified or Underemployed 

Possession of a minimum educational qualification is mandatory for securing a job. So, everybody strives to obtain whatever ‘degrees’ possible by whichever means possible. Since there is no upper limit of education stipulated for disqualification, it is not uncommon to find a postgraduate concierge or a clerk with doctorate. While no one can object to any one studying, as much as one wants, it should not be at the cost of the society. It is pertinent to understand that, for the society, creating an unemployable population or employing overqualified people is a negative investment. While basic education must be the fundamental right of every citizen, every citizen should not be forced to pursue higher education just for the sake of a job.

Competency Based Education

Since determining aptitude could easily become subjective and therefore prone to manipulation while being administered, primary and secondary level education must be made compulsory so that all members of the society can read, write and comprehend. Even today maximum number of jobs are such that it can easily and efficiently be done by those with secondary level education. Is there a need for an engineering graduate to man a machine or sell a policy? 

Denying eligibility to anyone with higher than required qualification to jobs will reduce pressure on avenues for higher education. Higher education must be competency-based because the society needs to invest in this category chart its way forward.  Curriculum at higher levels must also provide the flexibility of choice and timing to the one who pursues it, unlike the set piece combinations now in vogue.

Socio-political Compulsions

Political requirements would dictate differential treatment to those from underprivileged socio-economic backgrounds. To fulfill such socio-political requirements, individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds could be educated at state expenses provided, they meet all parameters of competence. As such making education free and compulsory up to secondary levels would take care of lot of issues.

The future

Covid has forced us to review our education system. It and revealed to us that we can bring about changes if required. If a virus can impact us so much, sky is the limit for collective human will.

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[1] Soothsayer who warned Julius Caesar about the impending tragedy that would strike him on the ‘Ides of March’