Another report
https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/in-urban-up-87-of-waste-from-toilets-goes-to-rivers-farmlands/article25291914.ece
This is what is expected.
Initiatives are like kids games---make up as you go along.

It has been worrying that so many toilets are being constructed without proper disposal plan in case of need. The twin pit system , if built scientifically, does not need disposal. But in the get hurry to report ODF villages, I doubt if they are being built with care. So then if a flood innundates the area, can you imagine the state?
Here's a study
http://wateraidindia.in/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/SBMG-toilet-technology-report_online.pdf

why do officials play games?

The TRAI chief has challenged people to do something harmful with his aadhar number.
One point- does he assure the successful hacker, if any, immunity from prosecution or will he then say "Aha now YOU go to jail"?
Second point- maybe he doesn't mind his home address being public. Some would, particularly women.
Most women have experienced stalkers following them to the bus stop etc. Now if you gift him your home address, he's going to stalk you 24x7
Maybe they don't want their husbands to know their bank account number.........many women with drunkard husbands hide money for kids fees etc.
Old people would not like the world to know they live alone and where they bank.
Given time, I can make a mile long list of scenarios where privacy is essential for safety and well being.
I would like to point out that with 3d printers etc, someone can probably make a physical finger with your fingerprint. This can be used to access your bank account or vote in your name even if fingerprint verification is asked for, or .........frame you for murder!!
(This outlandish, though not impossible, thought comes to me because I used to watch CSI cyber- an interesting show sadly cut off in the middle of a season)

PS. What if someone buys a large amount of gold using Mr Sharma's PAN and other details. He may not have any problems, but anyone else would be spending the rest of their lives explaining to the income tax, if not  put behind bars.

I watch this TV show called Blue Bloods. It is about a family of New York Police Department officers. The show is fictional and makes all the right noises about country, service etc. The chief protagonist is the police commisioner who used to be a US Marine Corps officer who later became a police officer and rose to the present position.
In this episode, (S07 E11 if anyone is interested) there is a test for entry into the NYPD. Many ex soldiers write the exam. There are questions in the psych eval asking if they had used arms against any human and if so, did they feel remorse.
Normally answer should be "NO" and "NA", but for ex soldiers truthful answer would be "YES" and "NO" and this would disqualify them. So they lie in the test.

This is the problem in our country. We use the army for dealing with civil unrest. The training in the army is to kill and feel that killing is the right thing to do, feel proud of eliminating the enemy. They are trained well for this purpose.
But now they are not facing the enemy. They are facing their people.
Can they forget their really good training and not kill?
If they can, the next time they face the enemy, will they falter and jeopardise the unit?

Civil unrest is not the same as war. Personnel dealing with this must be trained differently from personnel dealing with enemy combatants. But we use soldiers for dealing with civil unrest and expect them to react differently from what years of training has ingrained in them. How can you expect that?
The govt must raise and train an internal security force really well for the different kinds of challenges.

understanding the technology I use

I have got this notice from Google regarding use of cookies in my blog, and that people if any, from EU countries who read my blog must be notified about such cookies and that Google has kindly taken upon itself to do so.
I am totally technology challenged. So people from EU please note my blog has whatever cookies Google has used and has presumably notified you in a notice that is not visible to people elsewhere (link does not work).

I have over the years come to terms with the fact that I cannot understand the workings of most of the things I use. During my student days (long, long ago), I was using a couple of Fortran programs written by someone for various calculations. Though I understood what the program did and its outcome, I knew I could not have written all that code. I had made a few minor alterations to suit my work, but could never have written it myself. I tried to tell myself that just as I can understand and use a spectrum from a spectrophotometer without being able to build one, I should use the huge programs without needing to write it all myself, but I was only half convinced. That bothered me a lot and really undermined my confidence. 
Now we use so much technology that I don't think anyone fully understands all that they use. Why should they? One doesn't reinvent the wheel every time one makes a bicycle or build a car in order to drive one.

April 17th op-ed in the Hindu has two articles. One  about the HERC and another about research in medical colleges.

First the article about mandatory research by doctors working in medical colleges. As I have said many times,teaching full time and in this case, also treating patients or performing surgery, leaves very little time for research. One cannot conduct research in 15 minutes break between patients or classes.
What should be mandatory is that teachers must keep abreast of the latest research in their field. Maybe every teaching institution can have an in house publication that prints monthly research reviews authored by faculty. A brief summary of what has happened in a particular field in the last few months.
As far as the HERC goes, it's much of the same old, same old.
Only one suggestion I found interesting is that colleges can be associated with research labs. This would ensure that both students and faculty got some insight into the recent advances in their field of interest without having to publish.
 This mandatory publication requirement has led to substandard research in huge volume.

caste

I came across a video of Ravish Kumar moderating a discussion about Y Sudarshan Rao's  statement in his blog, that caste system was working well in olden times and has now acquired the negative connotations, primarily due to the Muslim invasion. I did not really continue watching this for long.
Like the "foreign hand"/CIA theories of the 70s and 80s,  blaming everything on someone else is pretty feeble. Even assuming he is right, the Muslims have gone so what is your new excuse?
However, that's not my concern here.
The recent genetic studies (also older ones) shows that across caste, we all have similar DNA. There is some North- South divide and some small differences in the DNA of the north-eastern people, but nothing major. 
If the caste system had been rigid since 3000 years ago, that is strict endogamy was practiced, there would have been bigger genetic differences between the people of different castes.
So the strict caste rules are of more recent origin. Not long ago enough to have impacted our genes significantly.

When my children were small, I used to take them to the Birla Science Museum in Hyderabad. It soon became our vacation "must do". Below the science exhibits, the museum houses a small by very well curated art and archeological museum. In that I saw an exhibit labelled "stone tools from Hashmatpet cairns".
Hashmatpet is a locality close to where I lived, and my children and I were very keen to visit. We persuaded my husband to drive us there one Sunday morning.
Apparently there is a huge ring of cairns of which the ASI has excavated one. It is about 25-30 feet wide circular with steps carved in the earth and inside is a dolmen. It is perhaps a shrine or a funeral site. There is no explanatory signage, so it's just our guess.
This location is surrounded by flats a little way off, but around it, is the local rubbish dump and outdoor toilet. We had to navigate on tiptoes from the car to the excavation.
This was the state in 1995 or so (I think). I haven't been to see it since. It is probably razed and flats built over it.
I was reminded of this on reading the blogpost   http://suvratk.blogspot.in/2018/04/crisis-in-indian-palaeontology.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+ReportingOnARevolution+(Reporting+on+a+Revolution)

PS:   http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-andhrapradesh/When-culture-comes-to-naught/article16602153.ece

history

I enjoy reading history. I came across a blog that gave some info about the Cholas from some epigraphs from Kanyakumari. All that is fine, but in the story, the first Chola king chased and killed a Rakshasa who turned himself into a deer. This blogger states that this story is discredited by historians (for obvious reasons). Fine till here.
But he feels these historians are hypocritical.
Now comes the problem.
He says  
"As to one changing into another species.
 Today we accept that an object can exist at different levels at the same time as claimed by quantum Physics."
????????????????
In my childhood, I used to like one story and found it hilarious.
There was a man with small child. He fed the child some milk, but it choked. The man was upset. He had a blind friend who asked him what the matter was. The man said, "my child choked when I fed him some milk."
The blind friend asked "what does this milk look like?"
Man said "It is white"
Friend asked "what is white"
The man showed a stork nearby and said "this is white"
The blind friend touched the stork and felt its long neck and said "If you try to feed a child this huge thing, what do you expect?"
The blogger reminded me of this story.

Continuing, there's an oped https://www.google.co.in/amp/www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/halving-the-syllabus-squaring-knowledge/article22882623.ece/amp/

The latest announcement from the HRD minister is that the CBSE will cut the prescribed syllabus by half. If done properly, it is a good idea. I have said many times that we teach too many unneccesary stuff in our endeavour to cover everything. There must be quality, not quantity.

As with many other government interventions, if they do a random cut in the syllabus, without asking experts, or by asking random babus to set the syllabus, we are in for trouble. 

I have been volunteering at a school where I am teaching physical science to some 10th class children. Another NGO asked if I would help some girls in their Inter II year (equivalent of class 12). So I have familiarised myself with the syllabii of class 10 as well as Inter II yr. I am also familiar with the syllabus for BSc classes, since I used to teach them for many years.
The point is, at every level, they teach the same concepts, for example shapes of orbitals. However, it is done very weirdly in class 10. In one page, electrons are particles moving around the nucleus, and after three pages, they are in orbitals that have weird shapes. The narrative makes no sense. The Inter text book is a little better, some attempt is made to connect the dots. In BSc, it is much better and the narrative makes some sense, even if we don't deal with any of the math.
My point is, why teach it in the 10th? The way it is given would confuse anyone. This confusion can be debilitating later. They acquire some misconceptions and that stays with them all through.
 A student studying for  MSc in Chemistry, thinks the electron in a p orbital is a particle that moves around in figures of 8. This probably was the picture he got in the 10th class and it never went away even though he has studied some quantum chemistry in BSc and MSc. (true story)
Mis-learning is deadly, it cannot be rectified easily.
That's the danger of stuffing in "topics" just so you can boast that your syllabus is advanced.
School syllabi  should teach very basic concepts, limited in number,but those must be taught well enough to engrave it in the students' memories. And children must be taught to learn on their own and enjoy the process.
As in everything else, we feel quantity makes up for quality