Munnar evictions .. for public good ??

Munnar evictions:

The past couple of weeks we have been reading in the papers about the Munnar evictions. Yesterday the revenue secretary had submitted the report to the cabinet which has been accepted in toto by the cabinet. VS has also used the opportunity to give a blow to the pinarayi faction by installing his favoutites like Pramod Kumar IAS, Rishiraj Singh, Raju Narayana Swamy etc in the enquiry and demolition panel and administration of the district. The CPI and Pinarayi are angry but i think this time VS will have his way. They cannot afford to make their displeasure public, lest the public construe or misconstrue something else.

It is quite unfortunate that yesterday, 9 may, it was the poor landless people who were targeted and were evicted from the places they have occupied. Even though they showed the necessary records, fake or not, to the officers, the demolition process was initiated. It is ok if demiloition was going ahead with full steam, irrespective of affiliation, affluence and influence. The public hope it will continue with the same tempo against the mighty, rich and politically influential people. Then only can we say justice is being done. The press meet of VS was funny with his disclosing that unauthorised constructions , the team will "thallipolikkum".

It is ok to demolish temporary structures but what about structures which have risen two to three floors high? does it need to be demolished or transferred to the govt ? does it serve the purpose of protecting Munnar's pristine beauty and virgin surroundings. The govt needs to take a very sensible view rather than "thallipolikkaling" all structures there..

The transfer of Idukki district collector and other officials and the suspension of more than fifty govt land revenue dept official shows the earnest desire of VS to cleanse the system of bad elements. But how far he will succeed, given the pressure of pinarayi and CPI is the big question.
Political parties are in a damage containing / limiting mode, while the public is observing. This is a great moment of reckonoing for CPM and VS in particular as he is batting charges that he talks one way while in opposition and other way when in the CM's chair.

Let us wait and see.

george..

Why I love Teaching ..??

Why I love teaching ?

Teaching is an art which does not come to everybody. It is a blessing. Partly I believe it comes from your hereditary makeup and partly from your desire to learn more and teach others.. Anybody with a bent of mind to help others and be of service to others in society according to me would also be good at teaching. I am not sure how strongly I can make that statement.

If one has a humble mind and a desire to learn more, he will be helped by God to be of service to others. I also believe that it is God who finally decide what one should be at and how good he can perform his selected task.According to Eastern traditions, not all could teach and a teacher had a noble position in society. He was respected more than anybody. There is also a famous saying in Malayalam which goes this way, vidhyadhanam sarvadhanaal pradhaanam , meaning educational asset is the most important of all assets.

After serving in the industry for a couple of years at the beginning of my career during 1987-89, I switched back to academics, teaching at the Govt College of Engineering, Goa, as I found that was my cup of coffee. I loved interacting with people and particularly youngsters and teaching them or updating them on whatever i knew. In the process, I found that my knowledge in that area increased too. That is another great thing about teaching. As some famous person has told, teaching is learning a second time. When we try to teach somebody a concept, our own basics get brushed very well and we gain lot of insight in the area. This will cause us to develop more interest in the area.With the grace of God, I could finish my Post Graduation in Industrial Eng and then go on to the Indian institute of Technology, Bombay, India to do a Ph.D. in 2004 in the area of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. Getting the higher qualification has definitely improved my knowledge and also the quality of my teaching. I am now very eager to learn and acquire more knowledge which is helping me to keep busy with lots of reading and writing.

A teacher needs to have a very humble mind. Even the lowest qualified person whom you meet can definitely teach you lot more facts of life and secrets of life than what you can get from the best books, the best institutes or the best teachers. If we are humble enough to realise this truth, the sky is the limit in the learning and teaching process.

A professor once remarked, I have learnt lot from books, still more from my teachers but the maximum from my students. Keeping healthy interaction with students and allowing their imagination and a questioning mind soar is the best way to keep abreast of developments and think creatively in your area.

After finishing PhD, creating knowledge for the world to progress is the task entrusted on me. And I promise that till my last breath, I shall be doing that. Not only creating new knowledge, also helping to disseminate this new knowledge and other knowledge which I acquire from elsewhere, to others.

george..

Life at MBC, Peermade ..

Life at Mar Baselios College of Engineering, Peermade, Kerala.

This is the engineering college in the self-financing sector set up by the Malankara Orthodox Church. It's aims are noble, to produce the best engineers and to make them socially and spiritually responsive and enriched.

MBC peermade is a cool place. After joining here in Oct 06, I find both the students are faculty are cool.... Eventhough the students here are not academically that bgreat brilliant, they are promising good students, capable of great things. Almost all of them are capable of reaching great heights, except for some students. It is a truth of life and we have to accept that. It is there in all walks of life.

The last odd sem (Oct 06 - dec 06) I taught Humanities and Economics for the 3 rd sem comp science students and the same subject again for the 5 th sem electrical engg students. This even sem (feb 07 to june 07) i am teaching the 4 th sem Electronics and comm students and applied electronics and instrumentation students the subject of Reliability and Humanities, the humanities part being shared by the Librarian, Mr Kumar, who is also an Economics graduate and an MBA. I also engage the partial load of E-commerce elective for the 8 th sem comp science students with jojymon from comp science.

The college has terrific potential for growth and terrific goodwill among the public.

The discipline among the students is lacking a bit. Discipline is very vital for the functioning of any institution. Only with good discipline can there be academic growth and excellence. The teaching faculty are hard working, sincere, resourceful and have good potential.

The college can be taken to great heights with time and proper investment of funds, effort and dedication. With propoer leadership and good discipline, the college can be raised to the status of the best technical institution not only in the state of Kerala, but also in the country. It is a great and challenging task, but not difficult.

Aim at the stars, at least you are sure to hit the moon. Keep our sights high, very high and work hard to achieve it. The joy is in working to achieve our goals. Sure the rewards will not desert us.
If we put hard work, nobody on earth can take away the rewards of that hard work from us. The end is going to be truly marvellous and exciting. Never lose sight of the goal !!

800 students, eight faculty families and fifteen single teaching faculty share the campus with me.

My kids are getting good education at the St Pius X ICSE school at Kuttikanam (of course with lot of tutoring and coaching from our side.., lest they miss out on life, opportunities and competition..). Jobin is entering 10 th and chinnu 3 rd. Jobin plays cricket with the college students in the evenings, chinnu with her friend ananya.

Social life is missing here at Peermade. But the environs is great. With cable TV, good comm and transportation facilities and the internet, in this flat world, Kuttikanam is not far from civilization !The climate is terrific. They say for eight months in a year, Kuttikanam is a miny Swiss town, less the chocolates !!

Great weather and the few people around are quite helpful. WE go occasionally for long car rides in the surrounding places. In January we had been to Iddukki dam, and Thekkady with our relatives.

My wife Anila basically likes a calm surroundings and so this place fits in to our requirements. Since I am aiming at institution building, with the full support from the management of the church to help build this institute to world class levels, this set up is ideal.

If Indian industries can go global, why can't Indian academic institutions ? I am not talking only of IITs and IIMs, even MBC can be a world class leader in technical education, I am sure.. With proper team work and a motivated faculty and supporting staff, it is possible..

This is my goal and vision for this college which I am aiming to achieve. Fortune favours only brave and hard working people.. And I am sure to achieve it, so confident, with God's blessings !!

george

The World is Indeed Flat..

The World is Flat ... - Thomas Friedman, Penguin Books, 2006

Thomas Friedman

This is the title of a fantastic book which I happened to read some days back while undergoing ayurvedic treatment at Sahyadri Ayurvedic Hospital at Pothupara near to MBC CET . As the title suggests, it talks of how the world has got flat ( a term coined after the author Friedman's interview with Nandan Nilekani, CEO of Infosys) with the globalisation of the past ten fifteen years.

Thomas Friedman of the NY Times, has illustrated with great clarity and understanding with lot of cases of how the different companies in different countries are collaborating with each other in today's world and benefiting out of the process financially, socially ( offering employment and an upward shift in the standard of living of the middle class in the developing and the new age economies of China and India).

The breaking down of the Berlin Wall, the release of the WWW browser Mosaic from NCSA and Netscape Navigator by Mark Andresseen, the open source / free software revolution, with the example of how the Apache web server (which runs on seventy percent of web servers in the world) was developed, how Bill Gates though clandestinely from the Macintosh machine popularised the windows GUI, the outsourcing, off shoring etc happening in the world have been some of the ten flatteners of the world. ( as illustrated in the book)

He also talks of how people are striving in the developed countries to remain untouchables ( in the modern digital world, if your work cannot be digitised you are an untouchable..!!) eg. dentists, journalists, doctors, drivers, sweepers and so on. Accountants, software engineers, design engineers (excepting the site engineers), radiologists are the touchables !!

,The book is aptly titled " The history of the globalised world of the twenty first century." - dealing with contemporary political, social and economic issues of the developing and developed world..

A must read for everybody wishing to be upward mobile in this globalised world and to have an impartial view of the merits and demerits of globalisation. Even Joseph Steglitz' book on globalisation does not give such a "developed, developing and less developed world" positive perspective of globalisation.

The discussion of the Walmart and Dell supply chains in the book was very interesting !!

george..

Who says a Celeron 466 is obsolete ?

Just two days back I got my Celeron 466 motherboard problem solved after getting it repaired from Mumbai through a computer hardware geek in Ponda, Gireesh Nabhar, 9822480710. Damages to my pocket was Rs. 1.2 K.

The windooze partition is retrieved and the Redhat 8 Linux partition too is working fine.

Last night I got a D-Link network interface card (rs 400/-) installed through Gireesh, it was working fine on Windooze. Later on I tried configuring BSNL Broadband on Redhat 8.0. While booting itself it configured the network card and asked whether I want to set up networking and asked the IP address of the machine, netmask, Primary DNS and lo.. , after booting when I clicked on Mozilla, it went perfectly to google.com !!

Look how easy was the configuration of Broadband on Redhat 8. Earlier I had a tough time configuring my Suse 10 for boradband.

Thanks to Edgar, Diabolic Preacher and Vidhyadhar Gadgil of Ilug-Goa for their postings and help!!

george..

Trek to Tambdi Surla waterfalls .. 29 July 06.

This is a brief report of the trek of the Nature Club of GEC to Tambdi Surla on 29 July 06.

Are you aware that there is a beautiful waterfall near to Tambdi Surla ?

It was 29 th of July, 2006. Nature Club of Goa Engg College decided to make it to Tambdi Surla this time. Trekking to the nearest waterfall which is at it's best during the monsoon.

The group of 40 nature lovers, Dutta on the wheels, were off at 8.30 am from GEC. On the way at the Farmagudi and Ponda new bus stand we collected more nature lovers. Aditya and gang, the organisers of the trek also got the food from mausi. The ex-BEs about 10 in number added lot of charm to the trek. Total 65 !

When we reached Tambdi Surla at 10.30 am, we made a quick visit to the temple, completed the formalities of ringing etc and came out. There was an arrow on the main road which pointed the way. One of the locals helped us by getting us to the first nallah. He bade bye and we were left to ourselves to find the way to the falls and back ! Oops !!.

The arrows marked in white paint by an earlier trekking group gave us the confidence to go ahead. The climb was a not so steep one, with enough of exictement on the way, LEECHES !! Clinging to the legs, pants, shoes, slippers etc.. Thank God it did not climb higher !

We could hear the roar of the waterfall from a distance but we could never see the majesty of it's fall till we got near. We saw some birds on the way. Being the monsoon, everything waas quiet, except for water dripping from the leaves of the trees. The famed British nature photographer Ray Wilson has setup this site. This link may give some idea to what this place is like in summer. http://www.raywilsonbirdphotography.co.uk/Foreign%20Trips/Goa/Goa10.html

At 12 noon we were truly taken aback to see one of the best sights in our lives, the water descending with foam and spray on the rocks and forcing it's way through the rocks downhill. The wind was very strong near the falls, the spray of water got us drenched. There was no stopping the boys and girls. All got into the water, a little far from the base. Spent almost an hour and a half at the base. Some were taking snaps, but one common pasttime for everyone, was fooling around the place !

It was getting to be 2 PM and hunger set in. Seeing that it was not safe to let anyone be alone near the falls, we climbed back to a safe place. With the waterfalls as company under the drenching rain, all of us had lunch of pulav and chana curry. Mausi gives good and neat food everytime. Very tasty too.

It was time to say bye and we did not want to enter the water again. By 2.30 we started the descent. Quietly we started walking. By 3.30 all had reached got bacl to the base, Tambdi Surla temple. One more visit to the temple and some snaps later we were all seated in the bus. The bus started slowly and inched it's way through the forests before it came to Dharbandora, Tiska, Khandepar and Ponda. The leeches which were caught inside the bus clinging to the bodies gave us enough company on the return journey.

At the bus stand lot many of us trekkers got down to go to Pamjim and margao and the rest in the college.

Each trek is getting better than the earlier ones, one thing we can say for sure is that Goa has many many beautiful places we need to see. The Tambdi Surla waterfalls was a gorgeous sight which we shall remember all our lives. The sheer force of the water falling on the rocks, the spray and sound it created was terrific.

An experience which I would like to relive again ! Hope so with everybody else !

Thanks to all ex-BEs and our present engico friends, you made this trek, the first of the acad year 2006-07, a success.

Long live GEC Nature Club and long live the Engico spirit !

Georeg Easaw, a nature fan !

Shifting to Kuttikanam, Peermade, Idukki, Kerala ..

Eventhough I wanted to make some postings the past couple of weeks, it did not happen. The reason was our family has shifted to Kerala. I thought I was moving in a no-internet country, Kuttikanam.but it is not so .. Kuttikanam, Idukki is not a totally no-internet land. View this link for lots of info ..

http://www.govantravelsindia.com/tours/peermade.asp

Peermade, the final resting place of the Sufi hermit Peer Mohammed who came to this place with the Moplah traders centuries back, is the best hill station of Kerala after Munnar which is just a hundred kms away. Peermade was earlier the summer retreat of the Maharaja of Travancore.

It is the new place which I am going to after a couple of months. Going to live in royal opulence !!

Known for it's excellent educational facilities, Kuttikanam has the Marian College offering MBA. MCA and other allied courses. It is a very reputed institute run by Roman Catholic priests. The state govt run Institue of Human Resources Development, IHRD has a number of computer courses to offer. The state govt syllabus Mariagiri high school and the St Pius X ICSE school with 11 and 12 th stds are run by Roman Catholic sisters. The Mar Baselios College of Engg at Kuttikanam, (Pothuppara to be exact.., 5 kms from Kuttikanam), in a sprawling 77 acre campus in the midst of tea gardens, is an engg college which has come up in the self financed sector and five years old run by the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church. It is the only fully residential engg college in the state of Kerala, with three big hostels for the students and the only one to offer faculty accomodation. Presently only govt engg colleges offer this facility in the state.

There are five branches of engg there, ETC, Comp, Applied Electronics and Instrumentation, Electrical and Electronics and Mechanical Engg with a total intake of almost 1000 students.. I am joining there as Professor in Mechanical Engineering by end September '06. The present HOD Mechanical and Principal is Prof E V Mathew, retired Professor from TKM Engg College, Quilon.

Anila is very thrilled to be near to her hometown of Kottayam. Me too. It is indeed a great feeling to be back in the land where your forefathers have breathed and walked, to be back in the land where your childhood days bring fond memories of jackfruit, mangoes, tender coconuts, walking between rubber trees, cashew nut trees etc..

Jobin has joined 9 th std and Chinnu in the 2 nd std in St. Pius ICSE School situated at the Kuttikanam junction. Chinnu has to learn Hindi and Malayalam , while Jobin does not have to study Malayalam. The syllabus is a bit tough, and the kids are okay to it. Anila and kids are presently staying in the campus in B3 quarters.

Kuttikanam is a cool place. Anila loves this place very much. We need to be careful about leeches which are plenty in this area. They silently take away blood from your body and neutralise that chemical in the blood which promotes blood clotting. The result is that for a few minutes you will suffer loss of a smal quantity of blood. A bloody socks, inside of shoes etc can result.

The nearest town is Elappara 4 kms towards Kattapana and Pambanar 8 kms towards Kumily. There is a good mix of Tamil cuisine, culture and language in this area. Peermade town, 4 kms away towards Kumily, has a small govt dispensary, the only medical facility nearby. That could be a negative point. But the other side of life in Kuttikanam is that one can never fall ill. The place is such healthy !! Elappara has a branch of SBT. The ATM of this bank is in Kuttikanam and that is a great blessing !!! Anybody going to Thekkady, the elephant reserve from Kottayam has to pass through Kuttikanam.

Munnar, the world famous hill resort is just one hundred kms away, lying north of Kuttikanam. Kuttikanam is also 1000 m above sea level. The nearest important town with shopping facility is Mundakkayam in Kottayam. One can go to Ernakulam vis Kanjirapally, Pala, Mulanthuruthy and Piravom, it takes approximately four and a half hours to reach Ernakulam from Kuttikanam. Travelling through this route is so lovely , especially during rains. The roads are lined with ruber trees on both sides for almost three quarters of the journey. No wonder this part of Kerala is the largest producer of rubber in Kerala and the people are equally hardworking.

Transport is one thing one need not worry at Kuttikanam as there are buses plying through the picturesque mountains to Kottayam and Changanassery every fifteen minutes along this route. Buses come from Kattapana or Kumily. St Josephs Engg College at Pala and Amal Jyoti Engg college at Kanjirapally are the other two reputed Engineering colleges run by Catholic priests in this area.

Kuttikanam has a gracious cover of mist in the mornings.

In a lot of ways Goa and Kuttikanam are similar. The only differing point is in the temperature. There is greenery everywhere in Goa just like in Kuttikanam. While summers are hot in Goa it is very pleasant in Kuttikanam. I will continue in Goa for another two months before packing off to Kuttikanam.

The place is very healthy, with no pollution at all, no dust and allergy free !!

There is cable TV beaming almost 30 channels. The BSNL telephone link is quite weak, but it is compensated by a very strong presence of Airtel (GSM ) and Reliance (CDMA). We have an Airtel connection at home 0999-500-5945.

We hope the stay there to be pleasant and trouble free.

So till my next post, Bye,
George..