Apples
This blog has been so dormant of late, that I fear that no one might read this post… but sometimes, you have such a strong urge to express yourself that you don’t care if someone reads your blog or not… I am so confused about the title of this blog… I wish we could have two titles… the confusion is between ‘the world is so unfair’ and ‘levels of unfairness’. While the former will attract more readers, the latter is more apt. Let us start talking then.
This post has been borne out of recent discussions. I was talking to a friend who commented that IIT system is so unfair and then we had a discussion about how assignments are not graded fairly as there are scant measures to check plagiarism and how the students do not mind plagiarism and are open to it, how exams can be highly unfair and how the system has been unfair to her. I agreed with her on most of this. I agree that the system is unfair. The incentives mechanism is flawed and people do not always get their effort’s worth. Her was a different voice, different from the ones you regularly hear at IITD and that made me think. I started thinking about this unfairness and went on.
But then, how could thoughts be restricted. I moved from one level of unfairness to another. IIT system doesn’t do justice (in terms of grades) to students, but then is it fair to judge student’s efforts by his/her grade. And then how fair is it for people from certain departments (read ‘CS’) to get better jobs than others. And this is not it. The level of teaching and opportunities available at IITs is a lot different from the other state and regional colleges. How is that justified? Just because you had better luck on a day and you could solve certain kinds of questions better than others, you get to have lot more opportunities, even if you don’t enjoy solving those questions anymore.
And there is more to it. These ‘question solving’ techniques were imparted by some coaching institute which not even 5% in India can afford or some ‘hi-fi’ school which limits its services to certain section of the society (exceptions exist). So, the life you will live is a function of, among other things, how rich and/or influential your parents were.
And education is not the only thing unfairly distributed, let us get to other stuff. For instance, how unfair is it for a girl to be born poor? She has negligible chances of getting education and there are high chances that she will be working throughout her life, will be abused at all levels, at all times and will not have two full meals on any day in her life(again, exceptions exist). You can easily see kids,at some signal close to DPS RK Puram, begging for food and this would be another example of unfairness. And yes, I have never been there, and I am still so sure about the kids because this is what the pattern is. With every well-fed establishment, there is a hungry hutment.
Finally, when I put all this in perspective, I find unfairness is inherent and there are levels of it. I cannot be angry with my life or be unhappy with it. I cannot be angry at getting 40% of the apple and the other guy getting 60% of it, when there were hundreds thousands waiting for the apple. I have had a bite of the apple. I don’t really know how big the bite was. But yes, the fact that I could have a bite should make me happy. There are people who couldn’t even see the apple, leave alone tasting it. This unfairness of 40-60 will be dealt with, when there are sufficient apples to be shared. Let us focus on getting those apples first.
P.S:
1.I found the idea of apples so interesting that I am changing the title.
2. I can visualize writing the entire post using the apple image, but read the title of the blog.. we are lazy folks. 
deepak
Hi! I am a student IIT Delhi. I have been trying to study Computer Science and Engineering here for the last two years. I am a lazy guy, and have been blogging infrequently.
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I don’t mind unfairness. I have kind of accpeted it. But the worse part is that we ourselves turn cheat on account of it, whether it is about cheating in exams (whether we cheat, or make someone cheat), etc. when we are being unfair to others.
nice blog, really.
the thing is, just like u wrote, there is a great amount of unfairness in the system. and it really isnt the amount that can be neglected very easily, thinking that atleast we have a bite of the apple. to explain my point, think of the labour class. they are often exploited(hope u kno what i mean) and the labour laws are violated to get larger profits. if they think like this, “many dont even have a job, atleast we have one, no matter if we are being exploited”, would that be right? NO. so basically, when u think about it from the point of view of right/wrong or fair/unfair, it really is unfair, and it would be wrong to neglect it thinking about the apples. but again, u said that its not entirely right to judge people and their efforts by their grades. now THIS, in my opinion, is the right reason for not caring about the unfairness in the system. u see, u have to think about what is important, and whats not. is it the grade/degree that matters, or the knowledge about the subject? the only importance of grades and degrees is to let people who dont know you at all, get to instantaneously get an idea(although inaccurate) about ur performance,knowledge,efforts,etc. but what really matters is whether u actually know the subject well enough, because after the first meetings, that is whats really gonna matter. also, for the department problem. the fact that u r not in the cs department doesn’t mean u cant study cs if u want to. u just may not get a degree for that, but if u really like it, how much does the degree matter anyway? and if ure good at it, sooner or later, with or without a degree, even people will get to know that u are good at it. so, the iit system might be unfair, but if ure determined, it really cant do u any bad