What is a Broad-Based Education?

Here I am giving you a story which  had read in Shiv Khera's book, You Can Win . I liked it, so sharing it with you.

Some animals in a forest decided to start a school. The students included a bird, a squirrel, a fish, a dog , a rabbit & a mentally retarded eel. A board was formed and it was decided that flying, tree climbing, swimming, and burrowing would be part of the curriculum in order to give a broad based education. 

All animals were required to take all subjects. The bird was excellent at flying and was getting A's but when it came to burrowing, it kept breaking its beak and wings and started failing. Pretty soon, it started making C's
in flying and of course in tree climbing and swimming it was getting F's. 

The squirrel was great at tree climbing and was getting A's, but was failing in swimming. 

The fish was the best swimmer but couldn't get out of the water and got F's in everything else. 

The dog didn't join the school, stopped paying taxes and kept fighting with the administration to include barking as part of the curriculum. 

The rabbit got A's in burrowing but tree climbing was a real problem. It kept falling and landing on its head, suffered brain damage, and soon couldn't even burrow properly and got C's in that too. The mentally retarded eel, who did everything half as well became the valedictorian of the class. The board was happy because everybody was getting a broad-based education.

What a broad-based education really means is that the student is prepared for life, without losing their areas of specialization or competence.

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The reasons behind AAP’s astonishing forward march

Here I am giving some points which I think has helped AAP to get such outstanding success and more than that, attention of all India in the very first election which other new parties (except Telgu Desam of N.T.Rama Rao) in history of India could not able to fetch.
So here are the reasons:


Joseph Gobble’s method:
If you repeat a lie often enough, people will eventually believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself. In this case it was not lie, but people have tendency that they don’t want to waste their vote, and give their vote to the one who they think surely going to win. From the 2 months before the election, AAP has created environment that they are going to win 40 seats.


Cloud computing:
Take cloud computing for instance. AAP used a solution called ‘VoiceTree’ which took away the need to set up a massive call centre to make calls to citizens. Remember, political parties have long used recorded messages through cold calls, but that is mechanical and perhaps counter-productive. What VoiceTree did was provide the AAP with the power to make any person, anywhere in the world, a volunteer for the party at a very low cost. A volunteer called a toll-free central number and from there, he/she was connected to a random Delhi number. Once connected, the volunteer could make a personalised sales pitch for AAP, a far more powerful spiel than a canned message. And once made, the called number would be moved to a called database so that every volunteer had a fresh citizen to approach.


Social media:
The power of social media has also changed the game. The AAP no longer needed to go after mainstream media to ensure they carried AAP's viewpoints. The power of social media ensured that mainstream media had to go after AAP or risk losing relevance.


Clear manifesto:
Everyone who knows AAP has their manifesto on mouth. In every interview, they have repeated that. Even after 65 years of independence, others are promising roads, water, electricity and other basic needs. Not only this but AAP came up with distribution of power to people through their new methods – Mohhalla Sabha, Gram sabha in Delhi’s villages, Lokpal bill within 15 days after coming to power, Reduction of electricity bill to 50%, Citizen security forces, Regulations of donations in private schools and colleges.


Great team:
Party has really good team of educated members from all fields (not those who have politics as single source of income). Party has projected Arvind Kejriwal as their face of the election but others too had great influence in society. Unlike the case of Loksatta Party of Dr. JP Narayan (whose foundation based on nearly same principles as AAP) is only known face of the party. So AAP has able show basic democratic values in party through their action.

There are many other reasons, but these are I find important.

~Digvijay Sanjay Patil

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