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Showing posts with the label society.

The Gems on Coursera

I found myself in a rare situation this April. Had things stuck to their schedule, I would have completed my graduation curriculum and would have been ticking off any college goer's dream check-list, which did include a few travel and adventure. But, the situation as of 2020 has a different story to tell. With no end to this quarantine insight, the check-list became an impossibility.  So I took the Coursera COVID offer for colleges and started my odyssey to various areas of studies, my mechanical engineering syllabi had prevented me from. So without much ado, here are the "Gems" on the courses platform, each one must give a shot at.  Model Thinking This course gives an unusual approach to what we have accepted as complex socio-political phenomena. With simple logical and mathematical principle, Prof. Scott E. Page recreates results which have puzzled global leaders. He argues that this approach to reality is a must for all in this 21st century, and I could not agree mo

Drum rolls for Democracy

“Power to People” At the heart of democracy lies this promise, a promise to give people the power to decide the course of their nation. In this new millennium, we believe it is the best possible thing to do. However, the major reasons why democracy is considered the best today is that it happens to be the choice of most developed nations. We have lived long enough in democracy that we would readily part with our powers. And it seems a dangerous step to take. But, if we look closer into the functioning of these developed countries, its the functioning of the institutions that actually contributes to its development. The interplay of judiciary, bureaucracy and elected government, in most cases decides the life standard. The irony here is that more independent these institutions happen to be, the better they perform. Which indirectly implies, institutions of bureaucracy and judiciary, need to independent from the control of legislature (the ones people happily elected). Coming to