India's undernourished children stand tall ... at 590 feet!

I am so happy that India has straightened out its priorities.  Finally!

If only they had done this a long time ago; by now, India could have become way more than a global superpower.

What is the occasion, you ask?  It is a statue:

When the planned 590-foot-high tribute is done, it will stand roughly twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty. 

Yes, a 590-foot statue is precisely what is needed to deliver India from problems like:

India is the epicenter of global malnutrition: 39 percent of Indian children are stunted from poor nutrition, according to government figures (other estimates are higher). Stunting is worse in India than in Burkina Faso or Haiti, worse than in Bangladesh or North Korea.
Here in Uttar Pradesh, a vast state of 200 million people in India’s north, the malnutrition is even more horrifying. By the government’s own reckoning, a slight majority of children under age 5 in this state are stunted — worse than in any country in Africa save Burundi, according to figures in the 2015 Global Nutrition Report.

Of course, I am being sarcastic when I write that the 590-foot statue will take care of India's ills.  It is a colossal atrocity!

Why build such a statue?

“Our question was: What kind of monument can generate the most public welfare?” said K. Srinivas, the state’s top civil servant. “We started looking at the statue’s potential in a scientific and methodical manner.”
The monument, called the Statue of Unity, would be a powerful symbol for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was elected last year.

You read that correctly: "the most public welfare."

You really want to know how much money will be spent on it?  Seriously?

The BJP-led government of Gujarat has budgeted $500 million for the project, including the statue and related development. As prime minister, Mr. Modi, who previously served as chief minister of Gujarat, set aside $30 million in federal funds to contribute.

What is $500 million, right?  Spare change.  Except that India has basic problems that continue to go unaddressed. You know, like open defecation.

Where did this massive idea come from anyway?

When trusted advisers, brainstorming how best to honor Vallabhbhai Patel, suggested a statue, Mr. Modi said its head should stand out against the surrounding hills and match the size of a close-by dam, one of India’s largest. Ticking both boxes took its height within the 200-meter range.
“This is the scale that we need, so be it,” said Mr. Modi, according to K. Srinavas, Gujarat’s top bureaucrat, who participated in the series of meetings about the statue in early 2010.

Maybe I should simply give up on my old country and avoid the heartaches altogether.  Oh well, easier said than done!

"like a cumin seed in a camel's mouth"

I had never, ever come across that idiom before today.  "like a cumin seed in a camel's mouth."  Interesting to imagine that!

Even more fascinating was this: I was not the only one to whom that expression was new.  Because, when I googled for it, the first in the search results was a question at quora.com.

Ready to be blown away?  The question at quora.com was:

I came across this in a BBC article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazi... ), and I don't understand what it could mean.

You see, I came across that idiom at that very BBC article as well!  Every day life is way too interesting sometimes ;)

Anyway, what was the answer there?

It is a literal translation of a saying in Hindi, the language spoken in Uttar Pradesh that features heavily in the link. 
It refers to something which is too little or insufficient to solve something massive (just as one cumin seed would do nothing to satiate a camel who may be hungry).

Aha!

To add to the interesting plot of asking questions and finding the answer, well, the BBC article was about students who feel they have a right to cheat at exams!  And, even more of a coincidence: the author, Craig Jeffrey is Professor of Development Geography at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford.  A geography professor!

So, what did this geography professor find in that article by a geography professor?

When I was working in western Uttar Pradesh, Singh ushered me into the bowels of a smoky canteen in the middle of his campus. Kicking a stray dog off a chair, he took out a packet of cigarettes.
"India's university system is in crisis," he began, lighting up and blowing the smoke towards the ceiling. "Cheating happens at every level. Students bribe to get admission and good results. Research students get professors to write their dissertations. And the professors cheat too, publishing articles in bogus journals."

I had heard about such things back in the day when I was a student in a part of India far, far away from Uttar Pradesh.  In the sheltered and prudish environment that I knew, as kids, we rhymed to ridicule a cheating act like copying:

copy-cat
kill the rat
monday morning
eat your rat.

I have no idea what that means! ;)

Back to the BBC article; what was shockingly new to me was this:

When pro-cheating rallies were held in Uttar Pradesh in the early 1990s, the state's chief minister gave in to demands and repealed an anti-copying act - he actually allowed students to cheat.

What the what?  In the first place, the government had enacted an anti-copying law? Like there is a law needed for that?  And then it was repealed?

In discussing the reforms is when the author had commented, "such reforms are like a cumin seed in a camel's mouth."

No wonder that American universities are very, very cautious when it comes to evaluating the merit of students from India and a few other countries.

Here in the US, we are a lot more professional when it comes to cheating.  We don't want students to go through the hassle of cheating.  Instead, we offer fake-classes for which we award students the highest grades.  Oh, on one condition though: the classes ought to primarily serve football and basketball players.  The rest of them need to real work to earn their letter-grades!

I suppose whatever reforms the NCAA comes up with will be "like a cumin seed in a camel's mouth" ;)