Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

News

Politics and the death penalty

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Yesterday, the Prime Minister of Mauritius announced that he is willing to reactivate capital punishment in the country (following its suspension a few years ago.)

Personally, I am against death penalty. Judicial errors are possible (and have happened) especially when the accused is not rich enough to afford the best barristers (watch The Green Mile.) And I am fundamentally against the idea of retribution: killing someone who has killed makes no sense to me.

The situation in other countries

According to Amnesty International, “more than two-thirds of the countries in the world have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice.”

Among the 58 countries in the world still practicing the death penalty, we have, for example, Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, United States Of America, Yemen and Zimbabwe.

 

Among the 139 countries which have stopped killing people, we have, for example, Australia, Canada, Cote D’Ivoire, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Seychelles, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Togo, Turkey, United Kingdom and Mauritius.

It is important to understand that law has been amended in Mauritius to suspend the death penalty and if, and this is a big if, it it to be reactivated, then law will have to be re-amended.

My personal opinion

Mauritius has laws against the death penalty. Mauritius has also ratified agreements at the level of the United Nations to signify its intention not to practice death penalty anymore. And the Prime Minister knows this.

He also knows that the population loves blood. I strongly think that he said what he said yesterday to win some additional votes for the coming elections. I don’t think Mauritius will reintroduce the death penalty. It’s all about politics… and political agendas.

When kids (and parents) become criminals

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I’ve just finished reading an article on Le Mauricien entitled Computing : des Courseworks sous-traités et tarifés. In the article, the journalist explains how HSc students in Mauritius pay some teachers, some lecturers, some past students and even some  IT professional (what this may mean) to do their projects for money and this is done with the benediction of parents.

Here is a revealing quote from the article:

Les “services” de ces “helpers” sont tarifés selon la complexité du travail. “Pas moins de Rs 5 000 ; cela peut aller jusqu’à Rs 15 000. Un contractuel qui ne se contente que d’un coursework par an demandera un prix élevé. Mais celui qui produit plusieurs projets réclamera Rs 5 000 à Rs 6 000 à chaque candidat ” affirme cet enseignant. Des enseignants de Computing relatent ce cas référé à la police, il y a trois ans, et impliquant un enseignant qui avait réclamé Rs 4 000 pour chaque “commande” reçue. […] Le plus grave, indique-t-on, c’est que ces travaux réalisés à l’école se font, dans la majorité des cas, avec la bénédiction des parents.

Plagiarism too…

The article also states that some students are now adepts of copying prior works from the Internet or even from past students. The journalist writes that more frequent and thorough verifications from the MES would be a good thing in order to help reduce this problem.

 

Personally, I feel the problem runs deep in our education system where accent is on succeeding at exams instead of acquiring knowledge and mastering a skill. Students and parents both wrongly believe that what is important is that piece of paper from Cambridge. They forget that the essential reason why people study is to become productive adults who can work efficiently so as to have time to enjoy life.

Work is not about waking up in the morning at six, leaving home at seven, getting in an office in Port-Louis at nine and having to work overtime (more or less) everyday because one is not productive enough. This is a recipe for catastrophe and frustration (which sometime characterises our society.)

Work is…

According to me, work is loving what you do and finding it easy. Work is also about getting home early to have time to play with your kids. Work, finally, is also about being good enough for your boss (yourself in case you are self-employed like me) to pay you a nice salary.

And it so happens that a lot of parents don’t know that. This is where things need to change if we want our society to evolve.

En apparté…

Taking tuitions seven days a week and focussing 100% on succeeding at exams is also a bad strategy. Sure, it creates a scholarship holder or a laureate but I’m afraid a lot of them lack creativity (because they were imposed so many constraints over so many years.) The problem is that, according to the World Economic Forum, organisers of the Davos forum, Mauritius has an “educational system [which] gets mediocre marks for quality” and the country will have a lot of problems to transition to an innovation-driven economy due to a lack of people who can innovate.

Let’s hope they are wrong. But, I’ll be frank, I think they are right.

Let’s talk on Facebook

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Since launching my noulakaz.net blog in 2005, I’ve written a lot of posts, received countless comments and responded to most of them. As a matter of fact, I love blogging but I’m doing it less now for reasons I already mentioned.

As I’m sure you already know, a lot of people (including most youngsters) prefer being on Facebook rather than reading blogs.

Consequently, and as a social experiment, I have decided to blog less on noulakaz.net but be more present on Facebook. This will allow me to discuss and form relationships with new people who do not normally read blogs as well as continue to communicate with you (as I’m sure you have a Facebook profile too.)

My personal Facebook profile is:

http://www.facebook.com/avinashmeetoo

My company’s, Knowledge Seven Ltd, page is at:

http://www.facebook.com/knowledgeseven

I have two profiles because, well, I have two personas:

  • My personal profile is where I discuss with members of the family, friends and acquaintances of all sorts of things trivial or not.
  • On the other hand, I intend to use the Knowledge Seven Ltd page to engage in more serious (and, surely, more interesting) discussions on open source software, Web 2.0 and the convergence of technology which is happening all over the world.