This is exactly what happened in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. In 1985, when I finished high school, there were less than 10,000 seats in the whole state of (about 60 million people). Today, there are more than 150,000. Today, practically any kid that wants to attend an engineering college can get into one, and many seats actually go unfilled. The quality of the education is spotty, but really, what this education achieved is a kind of placebo effect - give confidence to people, which is what Kumar also describes. This explosion in number of colleges directly played a role in the emergence of the IT industry, which is primarily based in southern India.

I wrote about it in 2006: http://blogs.adventnet.com/svembu/2006/01/19/a-not-so-brief-...

I reposted it now at Zoho: http://blogs.zoho.com/general/why-it-happened-in-southern-in...

"Not very surprising.

If you intend to be a responsible citizen in India, you need a licensed Beretta Pistol."

This is completely untrue. ( I am Indian and live in India). In India, like in the UK, it is the rare civilian who has a gun, with the badlands of Bihar and some parts of Uttar Pradesh being exceptions. How did you conclude that "being a responsible citizen you need a pistol?"!!