Crash doctorate?

The MHRD wants the IISERs to let students finish a PhD in six and a half years after finishing high school. Apparently it will lure the `best brains’ back to research. Perhaps they should first concentrate on luring brains, of any quality, back to MHRD.

LaTeX strikethrough

I wanted to write something crossed out in a LaTeX document. Could not find the way to do this in the obvious places. But a Yahoo! search produced the answer:

\usepackage{ulem}

anywhere in the preamble  (before \begin{document}). Then

\sout{word}

produces

word

This works in slides as well, also on mathematical symbols. But this package makes \em act as an underline, and \it produces what \sl normally would.

Chinese competition

Apparently the Dept. of Science and Technology has sent out a question to all the research institutes under it — how can India be more competitive with China and Japan in science and technology. Apparently this was a question asked in the parliament.

To many, a big part of the answer is obvious, dedicate more resources to school and college education, open more universities, and do not concentrate finances in research institutes. But the research institutes will not say this.

A smaller part of the solution is to support Indian science journals.

Arjun and Judhishthir

Arjun Singh now says that it was P.V.Narasimha Rao, who was Home minister in the Rajiv Gandhi cabinet in 1984, who allowed Anderson to escape.

And of course Rajiv Gandhi, whose widow is now the party supremo, had no knowledge of it.

There is really no reason to confuse Arjun with Judhishthir (Yudhishthir).

France and Bengal

While the French are busy banning the burqa, we Bengalis are busy forcing it on the unwilling. Sirin Middya, a part time lecturer at the nearby Aliah University, has been barred from taking classes for the last three months by the students’ union, because she refuses to wear a burqa.

The problem seems to be that the university is silent on the issue, as is the minority affairs minister. The university should come out and say clearly that those who are supposed to attend her classes, but do not, will be barred from taking the final exam, and thus the degree. Any student who stops her from entering the university or disrupts her classes must be banned from the university.

It is strange that a government which claims to be leftist is quiet on religious fundamentalism and its conflict with individual choice. It only proves that this government is not really leftist. Their economics has always been right-wing, now their philosophy has become fundamentalist.