A few months back, I pointed mutineers at a new book – The Beautiful Tree – which documented the surprising success of very low cost, unchartered, private schools in India. Although some charged as little as $1-$2 per child, per month and they solidly outperformed their government counterparts –

It ain’t pretty but it works…

The results from Delhi were typical. In mathematics, mean scores of children in government schools were 24.5 percent, whereas they were 42.1 percent in private unrecognized schools and 43.9 percent in private recognized. That is, children in unrecognized private schools scored nearly 18 percentage points more in math than children in government schools (a 72 percent advantage!), while children in recognized private schools scored over 19 percentage points more than children in government schools (a 79 percent advantage).

In a blog post over at the ever-excellent Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok provides some detail on one of the reasons for the utterly poor government school performance, teacher absenteeism –

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I was in India earlier this month and while celebrity endorsements are all over the place, these posters for MacroMan Underwear with Hrithik Roshan were particularly, uh, eye catching –

Having lived in the SF Bay Area for over 10 yrs, I probably read too much into the posters & tagline (“Excitingly Male”). However, more interesting & prominently featured in the ad was Mr. Roshan’s polydactyly – long the subject of giggles and hushed tones but proudly displayed for a billion desi’s to proudly gawk at –

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I have been following Shashi Tharoor’s Tweets since the run-up to the Indian election, and have found him reliably interesting. The fact that he has been using Twitter is to some a gimmick, but it has been a bit of fresh air to people who want politicians to be accessible to ordinary people. (Melvin wrote a parody of the Twittering Minister back in June.)

But recently Shashi Tharoor’s Tweets have landed him in hot water. On September 14, he posted the following 12 words on Twitter:

@KanchanGupta absolutely, in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!

Kanchan Gupta is an editor at The Pioneer; Tharoor was answering a Tweeted question. The question came in response to a recent directive that government leaders should take austerity measures — don’t stay in 5 star hotels, take the train instead of fly, etc. (Tharoor himself has been living in a luxury hotel in Kerala; as I understand it, he pays his rent out of his own pocket, not Indian government funds.)

Within a day, the throwaway line was all over the Indian news and print media, with opposition leaders demanding an apology and Congress party leadership trying to figure out how to explain Tharoor’s apparent contemptuous elitism. PM Manmohan Singh himself had to intervene, stating that he felt the phrase “cattle class” was just a joke.

A boilerplate example of the outrage over the line, and Tharoor’s Twittering in general, can be found here.

Tharoor subsequently posted the following:

learned belatedly of fuss over my tweet replying to journo’s query whether i wld travel to Kerala in “cattle class”. His phrase which i rptd

it’s a silly expression but means no disrespect to economy travellers, only to airlines for herding us in like cattle. Many have misunderstd

i’m told it sounds worse in Malayalam, esp out of context. To those hurt by the belief that my repeating the phrase showed contempt: sorry

i now realize i shldnt assume people will appreciate humour. &u shouldn’t give those who wld wilfully distort yr words an opportnty to do so

What do people think? Tempest in a teapot, or some legitimate issues here? Should Tharoor either stick to Tweeting “straight,” or ought there be some room for humor for Indian politicians? Continue reading →

When my next-door neighbors decided to throw a raucous party this past Friday night that included (terrible) karaoke versions of N’SYNC, Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears, I went to Twitter for some relief. While scrolling down the page, I noticed the television show ‘Glee,’ was among the top ‘Trending Topics’ on Twitter. I’d heard much about Glee, which features Matthew Morrison as Will Schuester, a Spanish teacher at McKinley High School in Limo, Ohio who coaches a bunch of misfits as the director of the school’s glee club. Now’s a better time than any to start watching a new show that’s all about singing, I thought to myself as the neighbors burst forth into a fresh rendition of Jay Sean’s Down (That they precluded by saying “Oh man, I didn’t know that dude was Indian.”)

Ever since Glee came out on Sept. 9, my friends have been obsessed with it. I’d resisted till Saturday, because who really wants to see another High School Musical except for my tween cousins? (I didn’t mention I spent the better part of high school singing acapella, did I?) Much to my surprise, the show, despite the occasional annoying stereotype (the sassy black diva singer, the stupid quarterback, the fashionable gay guy), was entertaining. I didn’t much appreciate its approach to teen sexuality (there’s much celibacy-lambasting that parents of high school youth will most certainly take offense at). But by the show’s end, I was loving the character of Principal Figgins played by Iqbal Theba. Continue reading →