A well-managed public transport system can reduce the pressure on the demand of Petrol/Diesel and also reduce vehicular problems.
We Indians are obsessed with owning four wheelers, as it is perceived to be one of the prized possessions of an Indian household. We will go all out to ensure that we have at least one four wheeler in our lifetime. It may either be a new one or even a second hand will do. The only thing we do not understand as a nation is how to use them responsibly. They are manufactured and used indiscriminately. We should instead divert our precious resources to build efficient public transport systems and limit the usage of four wheelers to only a few. This will also reduce the demand for petrol & diesel.

Are engineers wasting time by taking management education?
There is a saying that experience is the best teacher. So any engineer who is joining management education is actually missing an opportunity to learn from genuine corporate experience. Apart from this management education is atleast may not be required for the engineers as managers are born and not produced. All the major business personalities from past and present like Bill Gates, Jamsedji Tata, Dhirubhai Ambani, and Henry Ford didn’t go through any formal management education but they were having sound technical knowledge about their own area. So engineers with sound knowledge in any case will become a good manager by gaining some experience. By joining management education and spending two odd years there he may actually deviating himself from his technical expertise and start concentrating on some unfamiliar areas. This makes him jack of all but master.

Balancing Work and Life- Whose responsibility is it anyway?
Today’s professionals are finding themselves torn between their professional demands and family life. Growing number of DINK (Double Income No Kids) couples is also adding fuel to fire. In initial years, young professionals are obsessed by their fat pay packets and exorbitant bonus but later they realize “real cost” of these benefits. Most of young professionals get a number of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, cancer, ulcer and even impotence/infertility. Whatever they earn, they spend a big proportion of it to maintain their “health” or “fight with diseases”. Corporates are more interested in maximizing their profits through their “talented professionals” rather than providing them a healthy lifestyle and our cities are failing to provide better quality of life in terms of good infrastructure and pollution-free environment. We need healthy people to build a healthy nation but whose responsibility is it anyway?

Delivering value-based education- Have we failed?
Some of recent incidences of killing of classmates by students or rapes of girls by teachers in schools have come as a shock to parents, teachers and school authorities. It has been also observed that after any such incidence, media blows up the incidence overwhelmingly for some days and then people forget about the incidence. People blame media, government, school authorities, teachers, parents and even prevailing education system, but nobody is ready to take responsibility on one’s shoulders. Does it mean that our schools are failing to deliver human values in their education process? Or, money-driven school authorities are more interested in creating “expensive infrastructure” than “delivering human values”, so they can charge more money from parents. Or, access to internet and other media is making our children more vulnerable to crimes?

Electricity operated vehicles are the most suitable mode of transport for India.
With the ever increasing petrol/diesel prices, it is high time that India looks for alternative technologies to cope up with this problem. The recent innovations resulting in launching of electricity operated vehicles- that includes both cars & two wheelers- is a possible solution. These zero-polluting vehicles are also easy to operate and user-friendly. Therefore despite our dismal power scenario India should pull out all stops and divert the automobile industry’s resources to produce electricity operated vehicles in large numbers. They are the most suitable mode of transport for India and hence should be promoted.

Indian Elections are fought on Sensationalism?
It seems that issues like development, healthcare and education have taken backstage in Indian electoral politics. Political parties have no time to discuss these because they do not grab attention and do not fetch votes. Rather issues like family dynasty, wealth, glamour, casteism, fundamentalism, and creating hatred amongst people are raised during elections, so that instant attention can be achieved. Indian electoral politics has indeed come a long way!

Indian Railways may lose their competitive position to the Airline Industry and a well-developed road network.
Indian Railways are facing a competition of their lifetime. The largest public carrier has never had it so bad. Economy airlines are attracting new travelers to their fold and the loser in the whole process is the railway. Railways have all these years done nothing to provide good services to its customers and the result is that it is under the threat to gradually lose its business to other competitors. People now would also like to use the newly constructed highways network and that too is going to seriously hamper the railways’ competitive position. Unless Indian Railways seriously does something about these threats, they will face the threat of getting out of business.

Is T20 Cricket killing real cricketing skills?
The meteoric rise of new found baby format-T20 in cricket is raising concerns across the cricket playing nations. As India is the financial epicenter of cricket and many would agree that the cricket is the ultimate popular sport in the country. Some cricket playing nations initially did not believe that T20 could be viable. Despite that many high profile T20 tournaments such as Stanford Trophy in West Indies had taken a good shape. Indian cricket board didn’t take any initiative until the so called rebellion Indian Cricket League (ICL) came into force. The inaugural T20 world cup organized in South Africa was more successful than the flagship 50 over cricket world cup. Indian side prevailed over the strong Aussies in the semi final and the rest is history. This lead to renewed interest in T20 cricket by the India board. There comes a new baby named Indian Premier League (IPL) and Indian corporate along with leading stars from the Bollywood jumped into the bandwagon to celebrate the birth. After the fast face developments in the new format many pundits and purist argue that this is not beneficial for the long term interest of cricket. T20 is likely to kill the skills and temperaments required for playing longer version of the game. However, the cricketing fraternity is divided over the real impact of T20. Some argue that this is entertaining and interesting for the viewers and others say it is killer. Obviously the format brings more money and competitive cricket. Let’s wait and watch out whether the format is thriller or killer.

Media and Privacy:
Media is regarded as the fourth estate of our democracy. It plays very important role in presenting people’s opinion before the government. We update ourselves about the country and the contemporary World through the media. But nowadays media is misusing its power by highlighting the private life of the celebrities. They are also highlighting social and criminal issues more than other political and economic issues of the country. Private life of the celebrities and other atrocities are highlighted so much that one feel boring to read or listen .Media is losing its importance gradually .Media should realize its importance and utilize its power properly. Then it would act as vigilant of our democratic system of government.

More Nuclear Power Plants are a solution to India's electricity crisis.
India is a huge country with ever -increasing demand for electricity. Electricity is the key to our economic growth and we need to fulfill the demand for electricity as fast as possible. It is felt by many that Nuclear Power is the only solution to this problem. The nuclear technology may be bad in terms of the radiation threats and related health hazards but we need to live with this essential evil, if we want to tackle the problems of non-availability of electricity. Therefore it should be a national priority to construct nuclear power plants.

Privatization of Higher Education
The government of India has passed the 'Foreign Educational Institution (Regulation of Entry and Operation) Bill, 2010’. As a result, higher education, which is run on subsidy, will get deregulated, enabling greater competition which will benefit the student community. The legislation can save foreign exchange outflow of about 7.5 billion dollars per year by way of acting as a positive force in retaining Indian students to study in the country rather than go abroad for foreign education. However, the proposed legislation should take care that managements of foreign universities do not exploit the Indian students and unnecessarily take advantage of free flow of education. It is being opposed on the ground that it will take away teachers from Indian universities to foreign universities within the country, but also because of its inegalitarian and elitist character. In this context, it is useful to discuss the implication of the bill for the society.

Reservation for Women in Politics
According to various international reports, development in India is being severely hampered by the breadth of the gender gap and limited female participation in traditionally male dominated institutions and social strata. There are countless studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of women's empowerment as a tool for development. To eliminate gender discrimination and promote female empowerment, women's decision making capacity must therefore be enhanced within the household, the workplace and the political sphere. However, the challenges faced by elected women in government are often extreme, and have been widely documented by both proponents and critics of women's reservation. Women are bound by double standards when it comes to politics. They are at once too uneducated or too elite to participate in politics; they do not represent women enough or they do not behave like “real” politicians, i.e. men. Against the backdrop of the said context, it is worth to examine the effectiveness of reservation for women in politics.

Should Government spend money on Space Research or on basic needs?
In a country where 50% people live in acute poverty and fulfillment of basic needs is a day- to- day challenge, can we afford our government spending huge sums on Space Research Programme? Instead the government should divert the entire budget towards removing poverty and providing education, drinking water and healthcare facilities. It is difficult to identify the results of the huge budgets spent on the Space research programme and it remains to be something that is close to the heart of the scientific community only. Though it gives India a place in the world’s most technological advanced nations, the other issues like tackling poverty are more important for India to handle.

Should Youth indulge in politics? What should be that role of youth in politics?
Should it be only limited to exercising voting rights? Youth may enter active politics by contesting elections, contributing in the election campaign of various parties by assuming different roles as party worker, taking up the issues concerning country and region with party in power etc. Dilemma for youth is professional career vis-a vis career in politics. What will be the benefits for the country if more and more number of youths starts participating in active politics. Is it that youth may have better insight into problems faced by society and also may have better solutions for the problems?

Solar Energy potential remains untapped in India.
Despite boasting of a talent pool of researchers, engineers and scientists, India has made very less progress in tapping the potential that is offered by Solar Energy. Solar Energy is free but we are doing very little to harness its benefits. The government initiatives to promote the usage of solar energy end up in only releasing advertisement by the concerned ministry on certain occasions. Also our successive governments have not developed enterprises that are related to solar energy generation. We actually are letting the most easily available source of energy go waste.

We need more Job Givers than Job Seekers:
With the advancement of technology and other innovations the business is becoming more of capital intensive than labour intensive. This has led to a problem of man replaced by machines and hence unemployment. Everybody wants to become manager and work with big MNCs with hefty salaries but the feeling of entrepreneurship is dying. Management degree has created number of managers to manage the enterprise but it has killed the risk taking ability of an individual and stopped generating creating entrepreneurs. So it may lead to a situation where in there won’t be any more job givers (entrepreneurs) and all will be job seekers (managers) and it may lead to further disparity amongst rural-urban and rich-poor. So is this the time to focus more on providing education more to generate entrepreneurs than managers?