[Fsf-friends] CBSE/NCERT

[doxa@sancharnet.in]

Dear Nagarjuna,
The author is Sangeetha Panchal a teacher at Hans Raj Model School, New Delhi who has co-authored (alongwith Alka Sabharwal of the same school)  the text "Computer Science Information Technology for Class 5" of CBSE. She claims to have been a member of Computer Science Syllabus designing committee for both NCERT and CBSE.
The text is full of MS stuff, and the authors seem to be blind in love with MS products. The questions framed reflect their intentions of making students commit to an unflinching love towards these products.

Somehow, this reminds me of the scandalous indulgance of IKM (Information Kerala Mission), an incubatory project of Microsoft under Govt of Kerala, whose chief (PV Unnikrishnan) was desperate to  get photographed with Bill Gates, when the latter visited India. Media personnel took the story head on and commented that this was a "sell-off" (the development of Microsoft based software for local bodies in Kerala). This gentleman even took the Minister for IT and arranged for the *shake-hand* session. PV  Unnikrishnan had earlier written (after making EM Sreedharan , son of EMS, a co-author of the article presented in the 13th Science Congress) that he was going to *set up the biggest deployment of MS SQL Server in Kerala*, when the computerisation of the Local bodies would be completed. Cadres of LDF, whenever opposed were silenced, telling them that *the project* had the blessings of (late) EM Sreedharan Nambudiri. 

People often get into *radical extremes* falling into love with *dollar power* of the richest corporate, without realising that their folly would only be short-lived and that they would be dumped forever into waste basket by common citizens. And this seems to be exactly what is unfolding in Kerala when the School Teachers Association would have completed their training of Free Software.

CK Raju,
Thrissur