Yesterday I had great company in Bangalore: Two members of the Bavarian State Parliament who came to Bangalore on the occasion of the Indo-German Film Festival. As I have known Prof. Dr. Hans-Gerhard Stockinger since my time working for Bayern 3, he had told me a few weeks back already that he would come over. So we kicked-off with watching the German movie “Der Räuber Hotzenplotz” where he introduced me to his colleague Ulrike Gote. The funny thing to mention is that Hans-Gerhard is with the ruling CSU, whereas Ulrike runs with the opposition party from “Die Grünen”. Yet, in contrast to conventional wisdom from controversial, sometimes harsh debates from television, I was surprised to see them interacting in an extremely friendly manner, like colleagues do who respect each other a lot.
In that positive tune, I though: Let’s get them something really, really authentic South-Indian for lunch. So we went to MTR on Lalbagh Road, better known as the “Tiffin Place” where you get fantastic food, all you can eat at 80 Rs. (=EUR 1.80) per person which they seemed to enjoy a lot. A highlight of this place is the walk-out through the kitchen where you see in what diligent and clean environment the delicious dishes are being prepared.
Following a little shopping-spree around the “usual suspects” in Brigade Road and MG Road for tea and shawls, we rejoined for dinner to head to Jamavar, the Indian restaurant in the Leela Palace. We had plenty of interesting topics to discuss as they are both focusing on media, like for example being members of the Rundfunkrat of the Bayerischer Rundfunk as well as driving educational topics for their respective parties.
As the nature of the conversation was private, I’d like to keep it rather general at this point. In the nutshell, I felt that they were very concerned about Germany’s education system declining in the international benchmark, had different angles how to fix it, but at the same time a consensus that by just speeding up studying duration, the situation will not improve automatically. What they both supported, is increasing the number of studying seats to universities combined with delivering better tutorials without turning the system into a school-like pampering session. As expected, my own views were still on the most radical side: Lower taxes to release purchasing power, make parents/students more responsible for their own destiny by being free to apply to whichever university they want and finally paying a significant chunk of the fees out of their own pocket. At the same time I strongly support universities to be run more like corporations which are able to hire and fire their own professors and select which student they want to accept and which not.
First, in my opinion, it will make students more value their studies as they have to pay and second, it will turn the anonymity of German universities into true “almae matres”. As I am writing in English and the majority of readers for my blog come from the Anglo-Saxon sphere or India, they will rightly wonder: “What the heck is this guy writing about? We are not used to anything else than that.” Yes, that’s exactly the point …
Just enjoyed the last rays of light on my terrace as I am preparing myself for my “shuttle”, flight Lufthansa 755 from Bangalore-Frankfurt tonight. And Germany in full autumn reports some 2 to 9 degrees Celsius. Brrrr.
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