A new D-Generation Gap

Teens always wanted to know why they see uncomfortable eyes when they are wearing a modern outfit. Girls want to know why they are always blocked from drinking/smoking.
Generation gap is the simplest potential reason for a huge domain to quarrel for. The concept of “right and wrong” changes with every generation, and this is the source factor for the conflict between the elders and the little. The young think the elders to be old-fashioned, the old feel the young to be shallow.
 

It seems repulsive but maybe, maybe the suggestions are always welcomed from the senior population. If someone stops you from deadly addiction then it sounds really good to the ears. BUT, but if these special senior sphere of influence are slave of addictives and then they stop you using their experience then it is a glass half broken, AND half empty.

This is exactly the situation of India.

You are told not to experience addictions, corruption and greed BUT you are tempted using mass media, surrounding and internet as bait.

Peak, pick and preserve this thought. India is done with suggestions and proposals. It’s time to implement them. 

-Nikhil Chandwani

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Gandhi V/s Youngistan

Youth says 'Who is Gandhi?' while Gandhivadis trying to defend the dead in talk show "Gandhi V/s Youngistan" which hits Indian television with Highest Trp for the channel

Recently on Gandhi, jayanti Jaipur witnessed a unique Talk Show with a unique concept, which probably happened for the first time all over the globe. It was based on the theme "Gandhi V/S Youngistan". People do not dare to open up their views on Gandhi in public, he being Father of the Nation. However, reality is different. Survey done in Youth says more than 70% of Youth hates Gandhi and his philosophies while many says, "Who is Gandhi?". This sensitive and critical topic was brought up on a talk show by 2 young Guns from Jaipur named Nirmal Mor and Pratik Mor. Mor brothers dared to take this point in public and organized a national level talk show which featured India's Well known speakers Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, Rajit Kapur, Dr. Anil Dutta Mishra, Sudeep Nagarkar, Dinkar Joshi and Sawai Singh. There were audience of more than 300 on the show. Pratik Mor says, "This talk show is a part of International youth talk series YOUNGISTAN REUNITES."

As the Talk show started it was trending Nationwide on Social networking sites including Twitter. The show went viral all over and created a huge buzz nationwide to witness highest Trp when it went live on Etv Rajasthan. It was acclaimed critically all over India. Pratik Mor and Nirmal Mor dared and they did it on their own. "It was hectic but we did it. Our first show of the series Youngistan Reunites was trending on twitter and it witnessed highest Trp. We will be doing such kind of shows in coming months in different states", says Mor brothers. Indeed, we are ready for the revolution in corrupt India. While Youngistan stood firm on their views on the show Gandhi philosophers had to sweat to defend their views. 
Here are few words from the Speakers:-

Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak :- Jo Dusro ki sahayta karne ka man rakhta hai who insane Gandhiwadi hai. Gandhi chahte the ki azaadi baad mein mile, pahle desh ki safai ho. Gandhi se adhunik soch wale toh aaj ke yuva bhi nai hai."

Dr. Anil Dutta Mishra: - Gandhi ji creative person and history maker rhe hai. Unka kahna tha ki pahle taqdeer ko badlo, fir rashtra ko badlo. Itne varsho se padh raha hu, lekin kahi nahi padha ki Gandhi ne kaha tha koi ek gal par thappar mare tha , dusra gal aage kar dena. Schools ne Gandhi ko dhang se padhaya hi nahi.

Rajit Kapur :- Youngistan ko Gandhi ki sadharan jeevan ko samajhne or use apne aap ko connect karne ki jarurat hai. Gandhi ki tarah hame bhi example set karne ki jarurat hai taki behtar bharat ka nirman ho sake.

Sudeep Nagarkar :- Jitne bhi social worker hai politician hai kisi ne yeh nahi pucha ki yuvao ko kya chaiye ? 2 oct ko hi Gandhi ko yaad kyu kia jata hai friendship day par kyu nahi. Jab gandhivad yuvao ki avashyaktao ko puchte hi nai, to yuva Gandhi ji ko kyu jane ?

Dinkar Joshi :- Wo zinda hote to aaj ke mahol ko swikar hi nahi kar pate. Yadi waise soch aaj ke yuvao ki nahi hai toh jimmedar Gandhi ke bad wali pidhi hai.

Sawai Singh :-  Gandhi ji ne kaha tha ki darwaje khol kar rakho or per jameen par, lekin ab darwaje toh khul rahe hai lekin logo ke per zamin par nahi hai.

Visit their Facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/youngistanreunites

Photo Gallery :

On the stage

Sudeep Nagarkar (National Bestseller Author), Rajit Kapoor (Actor), Anil Dutta Mishra ( Writer) and Zankrut Oza (Digital partner)

Shubam Chug, Dharmesh Goyal, Pratik Mor and Nirmal Mor ( Organizing team of "Youngistan Reunites - A talk show series)

Pratik Mor and Nirmal Mor ( Organizers of Youngistan reunites) with Sudeep Nagarkar

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Entrepreneurship - Pavneet Sareen

In simple words, an entrepreneur is a person who owns a business enterprise or an idea for a business venture. An entrepreneur is the person who undertakes risk to start a business. He/she either faces the brunt of losses or enjoys the profits. Every decision of the business is taken by the entrepreneur. Between the capital and the labor, the entrepreneur plays the middleman. Each entrepreneur has a respective grade of taking risks to strike an opportunity.

Some of the most general characteristics of entrepreneur are :
 

. Spontaneity on decisions
. Adequate knowledge of the market
. Reach on resources
. Ability to use resources
. Adherence to society norms
. Intelligence
. Profit distribution
. Risk Estimation
. Leadership Qualities

 "WITHOUT A PROBLEM , THERE IS NO SOLUTION "

 Being an entrepreneur beats working the 9-5, you don’t have to sit in one office trying to please another man and you are not restricted to one location, you can work where you want. You also have your freedom of speech and you can say whatever comes to your mouth. In fact, as an entrepreneur you can go on doing crazy things.

"WHY SHOULD YOU BE AN ENTREPRENEUR?"

 Being an entrepreneur can be one of the best decisions you will ever take in life but you don’t just jump into things without knowing why, this post will be listing 10 reasons why you should be an entrepreneur.

1. Be Your Own Boss.

Nothing can be more frustrating than taking orders from the same person all the time. Even if taking orders is okay, what happens if your life depends on taking orders? Failure to obey your boss can kick you out of your job.

Being an entrepreneur puts and end to this and you don’t have to answer or take orders from any boss anymore, you live your life as it pleases you, you do things as you want.

2. Work at Your Own Schedule.
 

Depending on how and where your business operates, you can even work at night and sleep at day as an entrepreneur, you can decide to live a different way of life – and this is what a 9-5 job will never provide.

3. No Limit to Your Progress.

As far as working under someone is concerned, there is a limit to what you can be. You can never exceed your boss. Being an entrepreneur helps you overcome this limitation and whether you want to be a CEO or a sales representative, it is yours to decide.

4. Determine Your Location.

Have you ever thought about working where you want? This might still be strange to you if you work a 9-5 job but one great advantage of being an entrepreneur is that you are able to determine your location. As an entrepreneur you can determine if you want to work in Africa or America but when working 9-5 you have no choice than to work in the constraint of your office.

5. Vacate When You Want.

Being an entrepreneur also affords you the ability to vacate when you want which a 9-5 job can’t afford. You can easily decide if you want to be at home every Thursday and Friday of the week but a 9-5 job will never afford you that.


6. Determine Whom You Work With.

As an entrepreneur your business is yours and you can determine if you want to work with friends and relatives or any other person, this a 9-5 job can never afford. If you are working a 9-5 job, it doesn’t matter if your greatest enemy is your colleague, you just have to work together.


7. Unlimited Earnings Potential.

There is a limit to what you can earn while working your 9-5 job, it doesn’t matter if your company doubled its income that month you will still be paid the same amount you are supposed to be paid but as an entrepreneur, since you own your business there is no limit to what you can earn, all you need to do is be very creative and look for various ways to improve your income.

8. Freedom of Speech.

If I ask you if you have freedom of speech I am sure you will come up with a resounding YES! If you are working a 9-5 job I can assure you this is not true, you have no freedom of speech!

When working a 9-5 job you can’t just talk to your boss anyhow because talking to your boss anyhow can lead to you being fired (Go call your boss a jerk if you don’t believe this!) but as an entrepreneur it doesn’t matter if you are talking to the CEO of one big company or a 12-year-old boy you still have right to the same words, you are simply not afraid of anybody.

9. Automate Your Income.

Another great advantage of being an entrepreneur is the ability to automate your income. You can easily employ people to help you manage your business while you tour the world but this isn’t possible in your usual 9-5 job, trying to do is you signing your sack letter.

Also, as an entrepreneur your income is not affected by how you work, you can determine if you want to be paid whether you work or not, you can also determine of you want to create your automatic income machine but this is not possible in your regular day job, you have to follow the working guidelines put together by your boss, failure to do this might result in something else.

10. Passive Income and knowledge Stream.

You can decide to spread yourself into as many businesses as you want when working as an entrepreneur but your 9-5 job won’t allow this, you have to be in the office every time, and not only in the office but also doing the things of the office.

One great advantage entrepreneurs have is that they can create passive income streams and also improve their knowledge in so many ways. You can decide to have a big company under your belt while at the same time doing some other business, you are not restricted by anything.

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Entrepreneurship is about ideas: Lord Meghnad Desai

BITS, Pilani K. K. Birla - Goa Campus witnessed an interactive session with the world renowned economist, author and British Labor Life Peer- Lord Meghnad Desai.

His intense session turned out to be really superb. Let's have a look at Lord Meghnad Desai's interview conducted by the campus's very own Department of Journalism and Media Affairs!

This interview is a part of their latest BITS Herald Summer Issue which can be viewed at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/96737622/BITS-Herald-Summer-Issue-12

Q: What was your inspiration and prime motive behind join­ing the Labour Party?

A: Well, I was always for the Left wing view and the so­cialist view of 'changing the world for the better'. I wanted to improve the living conditions of ordinary people and try and provide for employment, low poverty, better welfare state and such social and democratic ideals. Even though I am much more pro-capitalist now, I still think those are good things to go for. But, it has to be done differently.

Q: BITS-Pilani has a unique dual degree system, wherein students pursue a Pure Science degree along with an Engineering degree. From the point of view of an Economics scholar, how valued is the one year where the Economics dualities students study pure Economics subjects?

A: It's very difficult to answer that question. It depends on what the individual wants to do. Probably, one year in a joint degree system is enough to earn an Economics degree. But to know how academics judge it, we need to know what the individual plans to do. One year spent in Economics would not allow you to do a gradu­ate course in Economics. Two years might be required. But, then again it depends on what you learn and how much you learn.


Q: We have a club called CEL, which stands for 'Centre for Entrepreneurial Leadership', which promotes Entrepreneurship. As of now, the world seems to be pro-social Entrepreneurship. Would you say it is a fad?

A: It will just come and go. Eventually, entrepreneurship is entrepreneurship and it means finding a gap in the market and filling it. Facebook is an entrepreneurial activity. Nobody knew there was a gap. But, it provided that gap. Entrepreneurship is about ideas. It is a mental activity with risk-taking. Paradoxically, al­though there is a lot more capitalism, people are shy to speak positively about it. They don't want to mention profit-making is a good thing. So they talk about social entrepreneurship.

Q: How do you feel that the research and academia scene in India has changed from your time?

A: There is much more research into academia now. But I feel far too much research is government-spon­sored. There aren't enough private-research foundations or funding, that are enough to sustain really good critical work. I feel most of the research centres are concentrated in Delhi, due to this reason.

Interview by Department of Journalism and Media Affairs, BITS, Pilani K. K. Birla - Goa Campus and submitted by Chintan Zalani

-Team CoolAge 

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Two Young Entrepreneurs Get Their Hands Dirty With Urban Farming

Growing up: A Back to the Roots kit.
Photo © Ben Alsop

Nikhil Arora, 25, and Alejandro Velez, 24, didn’t plan on being mushroom farmers. In 2009, during their last semester at the University of California, Berkeley, Arora lined up a corporate consulting job and Velez nabbed one in investment banking.
But a lecture on sustainability in a business ethics class changed all that. Their professor mentioned that he had heard it was possible to grow edible mushrooms in recycled coffee grounds.
“No one had ever taken that idea and done anything with it commercially,” Arora says. Intrigued by the idea, the students took to Velez’s fraternity kitchen, where they set up 10 paint buckets of used coffee grounds fertilized with oyster mushroom spawn. Ten days later, they had sprouted their first crop.
They conceived a business, fueled by a $5,000 prize from a campus innovation competition that allowed them to buy a van and rent a 200-square-foot warehouse. “At that point, that was like giving a million dollars to us,” Arora recalls.
Two weeks shy of graduation, Arora and Velez nixed their plans to join corporate America. They spent the summer couch surfing and giving themselves a crash course in urban farming, tweaking variables like humidity, air flow and temperature. The investment paid off. That October, they sold their first mushrooms to Whole Foods Market in Berkeley. “We still have that invoice on our wall,” Arora says.
Soon they branched out into manufacturing and distributing indoor grow-at-home gourmet mushroom kits using recycled coffee grounds as “soil”; this became the basis for their company, Back to the Roots. “We started off doing the fresh mushrooms, then both the mushrooms and kits, and now just the kits,” Arora says. “We were almost out of business doing both … realizing they are very different operations–consumer-branded product vs. fresh produce–and we had to pick one to really execute.”
Today, Back to the Roots operates out of a 10,000-square-foot warehouse in Oakland, Calif., selling its DIY mushroom kits to 2,500 retailers internationally, including Whole Foods, Safeway, Home Depot, Loblaws in Canada and Three-Sixty in Hong Kong, as well as directly to consumers online. Revenue reached $1.3 million in 2011 and is projected at $5 million this year. Consumer purchases of the $19.95 mushroom kits through the company’s website account for 20 percent of all revenue.
To produce the at-home kits, Back to the Roots collects at least 40,000 pounds of used coffee grounds each week from 30 Peet’s Coffee & Tea locations. This spared landfills 1 million pounds of coffee grounds in 2011; this year, Back to the Roots is on track to recycle 3.6 million pounds.
Arora and Velez take pride in having grown their sustainable food business organically, without VC or equity funding. To date, their most substantial cash infusion has been $125,000 in prizes from business-plan competitions, including two worth $50,000. To help ensure their employees share their enthusiasm, the owners divide half the company’s profits among the 31-person team at year’s end. “It’s a fun way to align everyone to the same goal,” Arora says. “We’re all growing together. We really want to build a lifetime, generational brand.”

Michelle Goodman

Michelle Goodman is a Seattle-based freelance journalist and author of The Anti 9-to-5 Guide.

This story originally appeared at Entrepreneur.com

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YouTube lessons

With the growing reach and popularity of the Internet, YouTube has much to offer learners. Besides a mind-boggling range of topics, tutoring is on a one-to-one basis. And it's for free, writes GEETA PADMANABHAN

A techie group told me about The Khan Academy. “Check out the Salman Khan YouTube lessons,” they said. “This Salman engages students across time-zones without ever appearing on the screen.” I logged on.

Khanacademy.org has impressive stats. Some 77,331,379 lessons delivered, a library of over 2,400 videos covering everything from arithmetic and physics to finance, and history, with 180 practice exercises. There are brain teasers, tips on the credit crisis. GMAT problems? Check. IIT JEE? Check. Plate tectonics? Check. It's a growing collection of very popular free lessons.

Khan Academy

With an impeccable Harvard and MIT educational background, Khan developed his tutoring hobby when a younger cousin was having trouble with sixth-grade math. It was a hit, requests grew, and tired of repeating the explanations for family and friends, he created videos and posted them on YouTube. These morphed into Khan Academy, a one-man show of videos posted from his bedroom.

Each clip lasts a digestible 10+ minutes. His disembodied voice (he never appears on camera) thinks aloud and writes the equations and arguments in differently-coloured script. “It feels like someone's over your shoulder talking in your ear, as opposed to someone at the blackboard who is distant from you,” said Khan, once a “California hedge-fund manager by day and math geek by night,” but a full-time YouTube lesson-developer now.

Khan's “voice-in-the-head” style of teaching may be a big draw, but the medium itself has many built-in pluses. It's an attractive concept: short lessons that can be played over and over with P-in-P. A clever teacher can use YouTube lessons to advantage, starting from getting the students to listen. She can put together a playlist of YouTube videos on a single subject for continuous viewing, create quiz videos for instant feedback, make a “test review” video that students can study the night before the big test, and embed quizzes on a class blog or site so students can watch a video and complete the quiz at the same time. She can assign watching/creating videos as homework, giving herself the much-needed time to spark discussions in class. Completed assignments/discussions can be uploaded on the class YouTube channel, for future reference. YouTubers can implement something teachers have long recognised — there are many ways to explain a topic and there is more than one way to test student understanding. Imagine logging on to four different videos, all explaining the concept of number patterns in different ways. It is 1:1 tutoring.

Unlimited content, all free (YouTube.com/EDU). Some of the lessons are downright substandard, but you wouldn't want to miss lectures from MIT, UC Berkeley and, of course, Khan Academy on differential calculus, quantum physics and introduction to Computer Science. Lectures from world-known teachers are accessible anywhere, anytime. For English usage, expressions and grammar, you'd certainly want to listen to Jennifer at JenniferESL. She gets my vote.

Some minuses

With more Internet users and broadband, YouTube and other video-clip (Google Video, Vimeo) lessons will become popular. But don't discount the downside. Sound quality is sometimes poor, pronunciation and slang could put you off. Choose your videos well, and encourage teachers to create content that is tailored to your particular student community. There'll be a big “thank you” from rural students when they discover the English learning possibilities on YouTube.

But the very reach of these free YouTube lessons should get us thinking. “Any video clip that shows “how” stuff works is usually better than just plain text,” said Datla V Reddy, GM @ KU Education Digital India, a U.S.-based company focussed on K-12 Curriculum Development, Learning Management Systems and Teaching Services. “It ensures that students get to see it visually, allows for better understanding and recall.” Some of them, like those from Khan Academy have achieved cult status, but should they be the sole way of learning? “They might blunt holistic learning as videos are usually one-dimensional and not interactive. Also in an uncontrolled environment like YouTube, there is no control on the educational accuracy of the video uploaded and hence may lead to occasional wrong learning,” he warned.

For a video lesson:

* Decide on a particular topic that your class would enjoy.

* Find YouTube URLs for videos on the topic.

* If you do not have an Internet connection in class, go to Keepvid, download the video to your computer for use in the class.

* Introduce the video in class. Distribute a vocabulary hand-out. Make sure to include the URL of the YouTube video.

* Watch the videos together. In a computer lab, students can pair up and watch videos repeatedly. Students can then work on the quiz sheet in small groups or in pairs.

* For homework: In groups of four to five students, students should find a short video of their own to present to the class.

-Geeta Padmanabhan

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