Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Illustration by ChatGPT I have/had many students whose parents are teachers in schools run or aided by the government. These teachers don’t send their own children to their own schools where education is free. They send their children to private schools like the one where I’ve been working. They pay huge fees to teach their children in schools where teachers are paid half of or less than their salaries. This is one of the many ironies about the Kerala society. An article in yesterday’s The Hindu [ A deeper meaning of declining school enrolment ] takes an insightful look at some of the glaring social issues in Kerala’s educational system. One such issue is the rapidly declining student enrolment in government and aided schools in the state. The private schools in the state, on the other hand, are getting more students. People don’t want to send their children to the schools run by the government systems. The chief reason is that the medium of instruction is Malayalam. The second ...

The prices of food and other essential things keep rising.  Newspapers and TV channels celebrate it in catchy headlines.   But the number of private vehicles on the roads keeps increasing indicating that people have money to buy them and fill their tanks with fuel.  The number of people spending time in expensive shopping malls and multiplexes have not decreased.  So who is affected by the inflation and price rise? Economist and Nobel laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, delivered a speech recently to the AFL-CIO convention and said: “ 95% of the gains from 2009 to 2012 went to the upper 1% (in the USA).  The rest — the 99% — never really recovered. “We have become the advanced country with the highest level of inequality, with the greatest divide between the rich and the poor . ” The situation is not confined to the world’s most “advanced country.”  It is replicated in every country which follows the same economic policies, including India...

Eleven central trade unions have called for a strike which is already on in the country.  The strike is not really unjustified.  The demands for generation of more employment, better enforcement of labour laws, controlling  privatisation of Public Sector Undertakings, and abolition of contract labour are all justified in the given situation today. It is a situation created by an extremely greedy capitalist system that fostered a self-centred individualism without any social responsibility.  Perhaps, the fault lies in the human heart rather than in systems. Communism was a system that sought to guarantee the welfare of each citizen in the country.  But in the hands of a man like Joseph Stalin, it turned out to be no different from Hitler’s Nazi fascism.  Capitalism was also not meant to be what it is today.  It was meant to provide more opportunities to individuals to explore their potential and achieve whatever success they are capab...

Courtesy: Internet Government employees belonging to the Leftist unions in Kerala have been on strike for the last 5 days.  They are opposing the contributory pension scheme that the state govt has implemented for staff  from April this year. What the govt of Kerala is telling the employees is that they should contribute 10% of their basic salary and DA (dearness allowance) to the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority.  The govt will make an equal contribution.  When they retire they be eligible to withdraw 60% of the amount in the Fund and will receive a monthly pension from the remaining amount. Most of the states in India and the central govt offices have already implemented this scheme. The govt of Kerala has certain valid arguments for implementing the scheme.  The govt says that 80.61% of state’s revenue goes towards payment of salaries and pensions for govt employees. A meagre 19.39% is left for looking after the welfare o...