Now every now and then, you see advertisements of universities abroad offering a host of courses in different disciplines to our students. Not many of them are accepted out side their countries as being among the better known seats of higher learning. In fact, Ginger has not heard of most of them. The advertisements would say that so and so of such and such a university will be in town during a certain period and will see students at some given venue.

What makes me a little worried is whether it is necessary for a university that has any real acceptance to be coming all the way here to recruit students. It is not very easy to get into those universities in the first instance. They will not go looking for students. They may be bona fide institutions. But what is the actual value of their degrees. So parents would do well to make a few inquiries before spending large sums of money on an university education which may not assure their children of employment at the end of it.

Technical improvements in India
How technical improvements change situations some decades ago. India was considered to be a badly under nourished country without enough grain to go round for its entire population. Now it appears that India is producing more grain than it actually requires. It may be due to improved methods of production but India had bumper crops this year.

The food corporation is over stocked and stocks have doubled the corporation’s storage capacity which is about 27 million tons. One of the options now being considered is to distribute free grain to the poor. The authorities may give quotas to the MPs, so that they could distribute it within their constitueneies.

Mohomud Suffiari
Malaysia is bound to feel the loss of this great legal luminary, Mohomud Suffiari Hashim who was in his eighties died of throat cancer after battling cancer as bravely as he fought injustice in Malaysia. He was looked after by his friends to the end which showed how respected he was in that country.

He was the former President of Malaysia from the mid seventies to the early eighties. The post was the same as that of the chief justice of the supreme court. He was a vociferous critic of judicial blemishes and was involved in a "election watch" in 1990 to ensure a clean and fair elections.