If only words could suffice.

Our most revered Prime Minister has released another policy. This one is called Science Technology and Innovation Policy 2013 which is supposed to push India right to the top 5 global scientific powers by 2020. TOI, 4 January. Our august President urged scientists to win another Nobel Prize for India soon. Not quite true is it? Not one Indian has won a Nobel Prize in science while working in India. Winning a Nobel Prize takes years of research, state of the art laboratories and top class education. Above all brilliant students need to be identified and encouraged. " I call upon the scientific fraternity gathered here to rise up to this challenge and work towards this goal in a time-bound manner. I would like to urge upon all to apply modern tools for communicating science in a manner that can be understood by the common man," he said. Therein lies the whole trouble. There is a complete lack of understanding of what constitutes excellence. Excellence is produced by geniuses and they are extremely rare by their very nature. You cannot explain Archimedes Principle discovered 2000 years ago, Newton's laws of motion enunciated 300 years ago or Einstein's quantum theories to common people. The focus of the government is to hoodwink the public with populist measures such as increasing reservations in premier institutions, reserving 25% of seats in private schools for children from poor families and stopping examinations for school students so that nobody knows how well or poorly the children are doing. All designed to produce legions of dross who cannot be employed. In 2009 Indian children came last in the Programme for International Student Assessment Test in reading, mathematical science and science literacy for 15 year olds. The explanation given by government ministers was that it was because the test was not compatible with our culture. These fellows have not even understood that science and maths are universal and do not change according to culture. Why are our students so poor? The Central Teacher Eligibility Test 2012 results declared on 27 December showed that less than 1% passed the test out of a total of 795,000 candidates. All candidates have Bachelor of Education degrees. TOI, 3 January. Paper 1, which was compulsory, was for those wanting to teach classes 1-5 and Paper 2 for classes 6-8. More than 99% of so called teachers are incapable of teaching even class 1 students. Instead of setting up new colleges to compete with the IITs for the best students the numbers of IITs have been doubled without building new infrastructure. Doctors have been prohibited form going to conferences. The idiots do not understand that while laws of physics and maths do not change medical science is changing everyday as we start to understand the basics of the human body. Pious words do not produce excellence. Not when you are constantly dumbing down our children. To win elections.