30 October - 5 November 2017-min

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30 October - 5 November, 2017
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Editorial
www.NewDelhiTimes.com
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By Mark Parkinson
@Mark_Parkinson
markp.india@gmail.com
markparkinson.wordpress.com
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By David Kilgour
Author & Lawyer
NEW DELHI TIMES
Access to the Highest levels in Formal Education
here are institutes of further studies in
India where, because of such enormous
desire for seats, admit only 0.01% of all
applicants. However, interestingly, some
years ago I saw an interview with a prominent
business head in the country during which
he was asked whether he would rather
recruit the ‘intake list’ of those institutes or
the graduates coming out of those institutes.
His answer was – the former, not the latter.
In the case of those Institutions the entry
requirements are handled by some very clear
cut, very rigorous and taxing examinations.
The ability to absorb the vast volumes of
information required to do well in those
exams becomes the key criteria of entry.
From that business Head’s perspective,
if he recruited those who could get in to
these Institutes he’d know he was getting
people with high intelligence, a strong work
ethic and ability/ willingness to compete at
y the mid-20th century, many thought
Soviet communism might replace
democracy as the dominant political
ideology worldwide. Today mercifully, only
five communist countries remain across
the world, co-existing with about 188
other nations-a majority with democratic
governance of differing kinds. The five
are China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and
Vietnam, but the focus here will be on China.
With 89 million members, the CCP is the
largest political party in the world, larger
than the entire population of Germany. China
is still the world’s most populous country
and now has the second largest economy and
a third of the world’s billionaires. However,
because of its huge population (about
1.388 billion), the GDP per capita last year
was under $7,000, just 55% of the world’s
average, thus highlighting that it still has a
long way to go.
Like North Korea and Russia, the party-state
in China pretends to be a democracy. Isaac
Stone Fish, a senior fellow at the U.S. Asia
Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations,
writes: “Beijing goes on insisting—despite
its lack of free and fair elections, uncensored
media, or an independent judiciary—that
it’s a democracy…But… lying to the
people does not the sound foundation of
good governance make. In the seven years
extreme levels, putting themselves through
whatever it takes to get through. Amazing
stories abound of the arduous experiences
people have gone through to jump the
hurdles.
The best and most respected centres of
learning in other parts of the world have
different methods for selecting the students
they wish to attract through their doors.
This was a particularly interesting article
about Oxford University’s interview and
questioning process;
Photo Credit : Shutterstock
The Guardian – Solving the Riddle of
Getting in to Oxford
The Oxford University approach is very
clear about the kinds of students they seek
to attract through their admissions process.
The interviews are designed to identify
students who think critically (individually
and in discussion with others), who
challenge and question and don’t just accept
the knowledge they’re ‘given’ at face value.
If you want even more insight in to the
kinds of questions that were being posed to
potential students and the sorts of answers
that professors were looking for, you can
read this page;
University of Oxford – Sample Interview
Questions
The mismatch between what some education
systems produce and what places like
Oxford University are looking for was
brought home to me very starkly when I
worked for two years in Bangladesh. There,
every year, there would be celebrations of a
handful of students who had achieved 5 A*
A levels in a single sitting. Like anyone in
the world really needs five A Levels? And
yet, up to that time, no individual student
from Bangladesh had ever been admitted to
either Oxford or Cambridge Universities for
undergraduate studies. Some had obviously
made it there at the post-grad level. These
students were seen to be too one dimensional
– able to mug up vast amounts of learning
to score highly in exams, but lacking the
critical depth of view.
Returning to the Indian scenario of the IITs
and IIM’s, there is no question that they do
fulfil a role of a very strenuous filter – in
an environment where the age profile and
population size means a massive educable
youth at any one time.
However, it’s a system that cannot contribute
to having every person achieve their potential.
It just pulls a few with innate intelligence
and ability to pass exams and places them
at the top of the pile with masses of selfbelief
thrown in. Even in this respect, they
experience certain challenges. Across India,
over the last 20 years a number of academies
have arisen that take youngsters from very
Communism Today in China
I lived in China, no Chinese person who
was not a Communist Party hack could tell
me with a straight face they were living in a
democracy.”
Wei Jingsheng of the Chinese Democracy
movement observes from America on
whether democracy exists within the Party
itself: “The constitution of the Chinese
Communist Party very clearly states: the
whole country of China must obey the
CCP leadership, the whole CCP must
obey the central committee of the CCP…
Some people said Deng Xiaoping created
a democratic atmosphere within the CCP…
(He) was retired at home (in 1989) when
he called a few retired old men who were
just as angry as he was, and thus they were
able to remove the Secretary-General of the
Communist Party as well as decide on using
the people’s army to kill the people. Is this
“democracy within the Communist Party”?
In 2006, the Coalition to Investigate
the Persecution of Falun Gong in China
(CIPFG) asked David Matas and me as
volunteers to investigate persistent claims
of organ pillaging/trafficking from Falun
Gong practitioners. We released two reports
and a book, Bloody Harvest, and have
continued to investigate (Our revised report
is available in 18 languages from www.
david-kilgour.com). We determined that for
41,500 transplants done in the years 2000-
2005 in China, the sourcing beyond any
reasonable doubt was Falun Gong prisoners
of conscience. David Matas and I visited
about a dozen countries to interview Falun
Gong practitioners who had managed to
escape both the camps and the country. They
told us of working in appalling conditions
for up to sixteen hours daily in these camps
with no pay and little food, crowded sleeping
conditions and torture. Inmates make a
range of export products as subcontractors
to multinational companies, including
Christmas decorations and McDonalds’
restaurants toys. This constitutes gross
corporate irresponsibility and a violation
of WTO rules; it also calls for an effective
response by all trading partners of China.
James Mann, author of China Fantasy and
former Beijing bureau chief of the Los
Angeles Times: “…Democratic governments
around the world need to collaborate more
often in condemning Chinese repression —
not just in private meetings but in public as
well…Why should there be a one-way street
in which Chinese leaders send their own
children to America’s best schools, while
locking up lawyers at home? The Chinese
regime is not going to open up because of
our trade with it…”
Premier Wen Jiao-bao noted before leaving
office, “Without the success of political
structural reform, it is impossible for
us to fully institute economic structural
reform. The gains we have made… may
be lost…and such a historical tragedy
as the Cultural Revolution may happen
again.” Governments, investors and business
people should also examine why they are
supporting the violation of so many basic
human rights in order to increase trade and
modest surroundings and ‘hothouse’ them
through the IIT entrance exams. However, I
was told a few years ago by a number of IIT
faculty that these youngsters struggle once
they’re in. The goal of getting in figures so
massively in their lives that once achieved
some struggle to re-calibrate to new longer
term goals.
There are also doubts and issues raised
about whether these institutes are adequately
and effectively preparing young people
for the world environment in the Twenty
First Century. A lack of emphasis on the
development of social-emotional skills is
something I know has been a point of focus
in the last few years, especially for the IIMs.
By their very nature, seats to study in the very
highest of educational institutes will always
only be for a very small minority. Only a
few have the motivation to test themselves
in such an inferno atmosphere and even
fewer have the character, competences and
skills to achieve entry or to pursue a course
of study in these places.
For those who do, enormous and varied
opportunities are opened up in the world
for how the person will contribute. For
those students who have such aspirations
and the potential, preparation needs to start
early. That preparation needs to be focused
very much on what the person’s goals are,
their vision and values and how those align
with the Institute they’re looking at. Then,
the focus needs to be very much on what
that institute requires, how their system
works and how to be as prepared as well as
possible.
investment with China. This has resulted
mostly in national jobs being outsourced to
China and continuous increases in bi-lateral
trade and investment deficits. Are we so
focused on access to inexpensive consumer
goods that we ignore the human, social and
natural environment costs paid by abused
Chinese nationals to produce them?
Photo Credit : Shutterstock
Many Chinese nationals seek the same
things as the rest of the world: safety and
security, the rule of law, respect, education,
good jobs, democratic governance and a
good natural environment. The party-state
must end its systematic violations of human
rights and begin to treat its trade partners
with respect if the 21st century is to move
towards harmony and coherence.
David Kilgour, a lawyer by profession,
served in Canada’s House of Commons for
almost 27 years. In Jean Chretien’s Cabinet,
he was secretary of state (Africa and Latin
America) and secretary of state (Asia-
Pacific). He is the author of several books
and co-author with David Matas of “Bloody
Harvest: The Killing of Falun Gong for
Their Organs.”