The Jnanpith Award winning Kannada writer U.R. Anantha Murthy has lashed out at campus interviews and recruitments, saying that they “pollute” the education atmosphere. Corporates and campus recruiters, he has said, should be kept away from colleges and universities:
“Anyone who can speak a couple of sentences in American English gets a job which can even fetch him Rs 25,000 per month. It does not matter if the person has not even passed SSLC.
“But a person who has completed MSc struggles to get a job for even Rs15,000. People who work in call centres are burnt out by 40. They cannot even produce healthy children. Is this what we call progress? What kind of situation have we landed ourselves into?”
Suggesting that the total approach towards education should change, Dr Anantha Murthy said even an arts student should be allowed to join medical and engineering courses:
“If you churn out doctors who have no clue about the historical background of this country, what kind of service can you expect from him?”
Also read: CHURUMURI POLL: Should campus recruitments be banned?
Photograph: Karnataka Photo News
churumuri 
funny….
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They cannot even produce healthy children.
Where is the correlation? Based on what study!!!!
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Hyperbole. Period.
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I think there are two parts to the statement as I read from this article – (A) is of limiting market access – dont agree with it. Banning campus recruitment would hurt everybody – students, corporates, institutions, etc.
(B) there is another point that URA makes which is about arts students being allowed to join medical schools. While it is somewhat difficult to imagine doing medicine without studying biology, I think it is possible to make doctors (engineers, Finance, stuedents, etc) study languages and Arts subjects that give the students a broader horizon rather than limit their horizon. A few months out of college is enough to make everybody realize the futility of our education system.
As Einstein (presumedly and if my memory serves right) said “Education is what one retains after one has forgotten everything that was studied in college/school”. In our education system, what one retains is probably very little. And to that extent, URA’s concerns are noteworthy.
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agree with URA that art students should be allowed to take up medical and engineering courses. They would approach these professions with much more sensitivity and sanity. URA’s suggestion may well materialize into a concrete policy reform not because of some visionary statesman, but due to the pressure of corporate lobbies, who realize that the looming manpower crunch could spoil the party.
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Prof.Shastry at it again! Noe it is SLB ‘s turn
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Gasbag.
Not only shd students be allowed to switch majors at any point of their career, but also be given the benefit of completely restructured courses. Unlike in India, in the US and Canada you enter medical or law school after a standard four year undergrad program, not fresh out of high school. So what if campuses stop corporate recruiters from conducting recruitment events? Students will simply attend these events at other locations. Isn’t URA happy that an SSLC pass/fail has an opportunity to earn a decent living instead of entering the automatic three-year college treadmill? So only URA shd be allowed to dress up fancily, sport a cell phone, and gallivaunt on foreign junkets. Lesser mortals shd stay put. Junk these fogies. Revoke URA’s Jnanapith Samman. Present him the Murkhapith Samman instead.
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Prof. U R Ananthamurthy has every right to say in public anything that he likes. We should thank him. But at the ame time one has to consider when he said it, where he said it, why he said it. Pleasing the peole in an assembly is easy. For each stream in education some specialisation is necessary, eg. basic knowledge of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry , Biology etc. That blocks the way for further studies. Special efforts are necessary. Eagerly wait for next instalment of advice from Prof. URA.
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A person who can talk English gets a good job.that is the need of the COPORATES. You cannot tell american doctors to study kannada or change theri working hours.
our children are doing night shifts because they have to fill their belly and ENGLISH EDUCATION is the one which gives them to fill their bellies.Instead of improving english education in government schools, URA is beating about the bush to score some brownie points with people who cannot speak english for which he is responsible.Already it is not only china but also the north indians who are catching up with english medium schools in even villages of Rajsthan,UP etc
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You ban campus interviews and start the now-defunct Emplyoment exchange and wait to get interview calls 3 times in a year to get a job 500-15-EB-800 for which you have to bribe half a dozen politician- caste leader etc.
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I think it is time for a major lobotomy on URA. If possible, this surgery should be carried out by a doctor who has an arts background.
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This is URA style…. When he notices, media has stopped talking about his antics, he comes up with a brand new one…. Just he wants to be there on some corner of the media…
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Let the MScs also speak two sentences in American English and earn 25, 000 crisp rupee notes.
When students with science backgrounds are making poor doctors (and engineers) because of reservationism, caste-based schools, capitation fee gluttony, I wonder just how much the situation for unemployed, educated youth will change if students who have not studied science are admitted to programs in the health and engineering sciences. One or two will surprise us, but there is a high price to pay for minimal return.
URA’s foray into lauding eugenics is an interesting development on his long journey towards encouraging fascism. Unless there has been a recantation on his part, his stated allegiance now is to the Congress and the Communists. Top castes always have claimed superior genetic endowment as an explanation for their dominance. As King of the Hill asks, what is the correlation between staring at the computer screen and lowered or weakened sperm count? Why, in the name of God, should everybody be creating offspring in a country that has more than half a billion people than it should have?
An undergraduate education in the liberal arts is all but dead in India. It is about time we accepted that globalisation and privatisation have made education not a means of gaining knowledge for its own sake but of finding jobs in IT and related fields for which no one has to bribe local middlemen bloodsuckers. People invest money and they expect a return. Dr. Murthy will remember that he could get a job as a college teacher soon after he got his undergraduate degree. Even a Ph.D now does not guarantee a job of that kind these days. I heartily dislike the evils of capitalism as much as I am pulverised by Manuvaada, but it is not my business to tell young people that they should starve and not attend campus interviews. Besides, those talented, highly remunerated youngsters pay a hefty amount of their income as professional tax, the source of money for sahithya academies and similar rackets.
Kannada and Karnataka now need help from well-meaning, influential authorities. Can our guru from Melige stop talking about India and its unchallenged supremacy for a while and pay attention to the plight of his Kannada speaking brothers and sisters? If English education is what will lift them out of the kind of misery he so heartrendingly confronts in “Suryana Kudure,” then he should not be instilling a kind paapaprajne into our consciousness about Kannada. To get a job as a result of learning to speak call center English is not treachery to Kannada. If I want to speak Kannada, there is nobody to stop me. Furthermore, if I have no use for Kannada as a means of making a living even though every single generation in my family has spoken it so far, the comfortably retired, happy seventy-something Kannada warriors have no business telling me that I should die along with Kannada. Let the learned doctor persuade his political masters that being educated in Kannada is no bar to leading a decent life; let his “Vikrantha Karnataka” admirers use their political influence (Shri Reshme) to create a Kannada-first-in-Karnataka mindset. Let him and his considerable following return their rajyothsava prashasthis, Padmashri gidmashris to the mindless persons who conferred them on them and say Kannada matters. We then might be able lend credence to his public statements.
A doctor who is competent to treat an illness is preferable to one who knows all about our gatha vaibhava but is incompetent to decide what course of treatment to prescribe.
Churumuri, please publish some statements from Dr. Murthy that show he is capable of thinking about others and not just about what further accolades and perks he can squeeze out of the Feds, for instance, the chairmanship of the National Integration Council.
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What else can be expected from URA? Go shasthri Go! I wonder why newspapers and blogs like churumuri consider him. Just ignore him folks!
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Has he run out of places to rename?
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wait campus recruitments are for college students no? that means theyve all passed in 10th and PU to get into degree or equivalent prof. courses. now what is this shithead saying? a person who has not passed sslc will get job.. he cant get into campus recruitment if he isnt in college , for which he has to be a SSLC pass. fak i hate that am typing that. we do we even need to clear it out that he is wrong? ;/ whatta waste of media time and mine.
why is he still in the state, lets deport him right away to mars.
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To day he has made some remarks about VC appointment . I think it is worth discussing in an independent thread
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These are extreme views.
1. Does URA have any statistics to say ‘they’ can not produce healthy children? Isn’t it show a frustration/jealousy which is evident here?
2. What’s wrong if a 10th fail guy earns 15k a month? What should matter is how productive is he to the organisation he works. This is the supreme court verdict.
3. How can art students be made doctors and engineers? Rather he can suggest that doctors and engineers should be taught history.
4. Why does he live in an illusion of superiority? Why does he think only people who can argue well and know (or pretend to) history only can earn well? Isn’t it a his version of casteism?
5. It looks like URA has developed a hatred for America. Is it fine if someone speaks 2 lines of British English and gets a job? Why stressin on “American English”?
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It’s now the turn of the Profs to feel jealous about students making 25k a month. In their day they would have been lucky to have seen a quarter of that or even less. When generating employment is a challenge in a populous country like India banning campus interviews will be nutty thing to do.
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URA and the likes are socialists by speech, capitalists in real-life.
It’s okay to lobby for awards and posts without merit, but it’s not okay if a smart guy (irrespective of his edu. quals) who can make a living..
URA is such an …
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in an era where even science students are finding it tough to join medical courses, what the heck is this loser talking about?
how come he can have something called a “social standing” if he can talk in irrelevant disjointed rants like this?
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URA is the “Master Genius Of Karnataka”.
[ “Anyone who can speak a couple of sentences in American English gets a job which can even fetch him Rs 25,000 per month. It does not matter if the person has not even passed SSLC.”]
“Anyone who can write couple of sentences in Kannada gets Sahitya Akademi Award. It does not matter if the person has not even deserves it.”
[“People who work in call centres are burnt out by 40. They cannot even produce healthy children. Is this what we call progress? What kind of situation have we landed ourselves into?”]
LOL
[ “If you churn out doctors who have no clue about the historical background of this country, what kind of service can you expect from him?”]
Doctors and history ?
History written by Prof. Shastry?
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The man in the picture is a lunatic and lost his thinking capacity for some time now. Plz ignore him. He is not worthy of discussion.
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