Vote via SMS is the most commonly used voting system these days. From reality shows to surveys & contests everywhere it’s been used. But, I personally don’t vote at all using this system since it uses 5 or 6 digit short code which my service provider will charge around 5 to 6 Re per SMS. Because of this pricing, participation in voting becomes very less.

But, somewhere down the lane I fel that there should be a revamping added to this idea. Why not use the technique of the so-called "Missed Call" to make votes?. The concept of "Missed calls" is of-course a "great invention" by the Indians!! We are so fond of using this “Missed Call” technique in our daily life that none of the home-based person in the family calls a worked-based person in the same family, instead they always give a missed call and the other usually makes the call back! Just because they don’t want to burn their currency from their home-based mobile(which apparently has substituted the tradtional 'land-line' phones). Taking this forward into a global market why can't we come up with a “Missed Call to Vote” system!

For Ex:

Q: Should ABCD become Governor of XYZ company?

If YES, give a missed call to +91 12 34 56 78 90
If No, give a missed call to +91 12 34 56 78 91

All that you are doing here is just giving a missed call, so you wouldn't be charged anything to vote! And isn't this system simple? you don’t even have to remember the “Send XX to YYYYY” and blah blah part to vote! It is just different numbers to dial for different options.

Just about a week ago, I was in conversation with a friend of mine- about what sort of active thinking needs to be inculcated in Undergrads before they go ahead and pick their majors.

This is a sentiment of a cry that usually lurks behind academia at large—for classics and philosophy majors who do not know what to do with their majors, for social science majors who become frustrated with the gap between jargon‑intensive theories and real‑life phenomena, and so forth. Except, perhaps, for premedical students, the academic journey taken by most students in college is fraught with questions of purpose.

In the past people have attempted to bridge the gap between academic theory and practice. One of the major points was that “in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.” In other words, if the theory is well‑supported with evidence from reality, it should naturally have relevant implications for practice.

But on the other hand, I would like to point out a subtler undercurrent of student attitudes towards academic texts like those read as part of the Core. The attitude, which I argue changes over time, goes something like this:

We enter into college, or for some of us, high school, excited about discovering truth and enriching our minds. We soon discover that we can’t agree amongst ourselves on interpretations of texts, let alone on fundamental concepts. Does “thou shalt not kill” apply to acts of self‑defence? To animals? What about capital punishment?

Frustrated with the ambiguity and dissonance, we throw our hands up, sighing, “It’s all relative. It’s all the same. Who cares?”

I think that this disillusioned response is due to a previous presumption that there must be one coherent theory that contains all truth. With this presumption framing our minds, the conflicting plurality of theories bowls us over—we swing over, deflated, to the other end, denying all truth. But to maintain this presumption would be to reject Newtonian mechanics simply because they do not work on the atomic level. It would be to deny what each idea and person has to offer. At its worst, this attitude becomes an ear‑closed arrogance, but a polite one at that—a kind that often takes a variation of the response, “Oh that’s interesting. Well, that’s just what you believe.”

So reading and thinking about theory does inevitably translate into an attitude and, consequently, a practice—the question is, what sort of attitude? A retreat into cynicism can become, I argue, a thinly veiled intellectual laziness that does not actively engage ideas different from one’s own. An active engagement means a critical assessment of ideas to judge whether or not one would subscribe to them and often involves a revaluation of one’s ideas. Such a mental exercise of reflecting, judging, and even imagining is useful in its own right. It trains the mind’s faculties and the heart’s toleration of difference—“mental gymnastics,” as my geometry teacher once said.

Theory may enlighten our understanding, but it ultimately trains our way of thinking. It is left to us to strike the right balance between contemplation and action and to translate the mode of thinking into practical action—a frustrating and ambiguous responsibility, certainly, but ours, and only ours, nevertheless.