The Haringvlietgates

I was in Netherlands for a week. I took the opportunity to visit Delta works at the Haringvlietgates which are the largest flood gates in the world. I visited the Expo and watched a movie on The Netherlands' experience of dealing with the floods. The Northsea floods of 1953 created a major natural disaster for Netherlands prompting the creation of Delta works, a series of constructions to protect the land from the sea.

The Haringvlietgates that I visited is a part of that construction. It is a master piece of civil engineering. The flood gate was actually constructed in the open sea. The flood gates close during hightide preventing sea water from entering the river and open during low tide letting the river water into the sea.

Now floods are a common experience in India every year. I looked around for data and found that we have a similar natural disaster every year that Netherlands experienced in 1953 in terms of loss of the human lives. Now it would be some thing if we can create similar infrastructure to tackle this annual menace.

Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

I was on a non-stop flight to US last week. Giving me good company on the long flight was Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. Wonderful book!

Captivating from beginning to finish with excellent stories through out, it was a great read. Atul has an easy way of narrating his stories. The arguments are supported by sound data and coherent logic. It is simply not only about check lists. It goes in to the roots of how excellence can be achieved in different settings. How do you achieve consistent results in repeatable processes when all knowledge to perform the process is available? by avoiding all stupid mistakes, by involving all people who have the knowledge and by communicating clearly. All simple things but very hard to achieve in practice, going by the results. Building a check list is not as easy as it sounds. I frequently forgot one thing or the other on my travels so I made a check list. Either that checklist was not available right before the travel or it was too long or was not practical to check. Hence it is very important to design the check list with the critical things that one is likely to miss, making the check a mandatory part of the over all process each and every time avoids the stupid mistakes.
The aviation industry is a wonderful example. I can't imagine pilots being able to fly without the check list.
The check list is just a visible symbol of inherent discipline. Discipline is more difficult to achieve than being skillful and even selflessness. Because it goes against the nature and habits. That's why it is harder to achieve discipline. It is the adherence to this process discipline that is critical for consistent results once all the knowledge and tools are available to do the job.

It is really a thought provoking book. I can't help thinking about different settings- personal and professional - that this checklist led discipline can help to achieve excellence.

Right to Education:Metrics for measuring the progress

I have posted on Right to Education before. As a part of Public Interest Foundation, we have developed a set of metrics to measure the progress of implementation of the act. The objective is to sensitize institutions responsible for implementation on the challenges and throw up ideas for effective implementation.

The complete article and the frame work can be found here.

Right to Education

I have been collaborating with Public Interest Foundation for a few weeks now.


One of the initiatives we have been working on is Right to Education. Government of India passed this act(Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 to be precise) in Aug, 2009. The objective of this act is to provide free and compulsory education to every child of the age six to fourteen years in a neighborhood school till completion of elementary education. The act is scheduled to be implemented within a period of three years.



It is a wonderful act in its ambition to provide free and compulsory education to every child. I think this act if implemented well has great potential to change the face of India. Imagine every child- children in every nook and corner of India receiving at least elementary education free and compulsory.



One of the features of this act is that it prescribes all unaided schools i.e. a school not receiving any aid or grants to meet its expenses from the appropriate government or the local authority, shall admit in class-I, to the extent of at least 25% of the strength of that class, children belonging to weaker section and disadvantaged group in the neighborhood and provide free and compulsory elementary education till its completion. This also applies to unaided schools providing pre-school education.



The act further provides that such schools can get reimbursed for the costs incurred by it to the extent of per-child- expenditure incurred by the state or the actual amount charged from the child which ever is less. This is from the act - clause no. 12 (2). You can download the act from here.



I think the unaided or private schools should take lead in implementing this policy for the following reasons:

1. To be a good citizen of the society- the school can contribute to inclusive education by involving children from the disadvantaged sections


2. Anyway it is required by the law- you can't deny admission for a child from your neighborhood even if the child can't pay the fee by law. Sure you can bribe your way through but I am sure at least there are some who don't want to do that.


3. The schools can get reimbursed as described. It will cover at least some costs.

I think this will be a wonderful opportunity for some not-for Profit organizations looking to spread education in India though funding it through commercial means i.e. some children pay market rates. Their model now gets a bit of support from this act. Though I suspect the delivery mechanisms for taking advantage of this act at the state level may not be ready at all places.