School Chale Hum

Congratulations India!!

Better late than never and even if it ranks as 132th country to do it, India has finally notified the Right to Education as a fundamental right. The move acquires an immediate significance as it promises delivery of Education to the one of the poorest and the biggest adolescent population of the world.
This is a bold move, one with the potential to change the destiny of this country of over a billion people in the coming two decades. Our politicians and leaders need to applauded for backing the RTE and passing this historic legislation, only to reminded of the fact that this is just the first milestone they have crossed in a tortous journey, which will only get tougher in the days to come. For the moment, Mr Sibbal and his team can afford a bright smile, so can the teeming millions of Indian kids, out there in the villages, towns and cities of India.
Sadly, passing a legislation on a sensitive issue like Education is not the solution as most of us think.
The Primary Education sector in India suffers from mammoth issues like:

• Accute shortage of quality teachers and high teacher absenteeism
• Lack of Infrastrucutre in Govt Schools
• High drop-out ratio of over 50 % and more so in case of girls, either due to social customs or lack of financial resources
• Only 7% share of private sector in primary education, as it is non-profitable in rural areas and non - affordable in many tier 2 and 3 cities
• Official corruption and red-tapism

And many more. The RTE bill has addressed most of the above issues, some of them like:

• Minimum Infrastructure to be provided has been mentioned as a legal requirement
• A minimum qualification for the teachers has been prescribed, which they have to attain within 5 years of their joining the job.
• Absenteeism over 10% will lead to official action
• 25 % of the seats of all private schools for class 1 have been reserved for children of economically weaker sections of the society
• Huge huge investment by the Central and State governments over the next 6 years amounting to approx 4 lakh crores to be spent on education

The centre as well as the states will have to recruit around a million teachers in the next 5 years in order to make this bill a reality, which, is the biggest challenge it faces. How are we going to ensure that the existing faculty and those going to be recruited will deliver quality education to the future of our nation?
From where will these million teachers come? Why any bright professional will venture into teaching profession with salaries lower than that offered to a class 4 "sarkari peon"? How will we ensure that tons of thousands of crores of public funds meant for our future generations are not eaten by the moth of corruption?
How are we going to ensure that girls won't drop out of schools that don't have a separate ladies toilet?

These are tough challenges to tackle and require every bit of committment from every stakeholder, be it the politicians, or the bureaucracy, the teachers or the school administrators, the parents, the kids, civil society, NGO's and nonetheless me to ensure that the gift of oppurtunity reaches to each and every kid of our country in the name of Education.

N R Narayanmurthy studied by a lamp-post, Dr Kalam studied in a village government school, and why to go far, my father did his own primary schooling in a tribal school. Narayanmurthy has given India and every Indian a global recognition, Dr Kalam has tutored India to follow it's dreams and my father has educated me to be a good human and stand on my feet.
The onus is on us to extend a helping hand to the Murthy's and Kalam's, the Manmohan's and the Raman's , the you's and me's , waiting for that lamp post, that village school, that oppurtunity.
Let's teach them a new poem, " School Chale Hum, School Chale Hum"

I am back!!!!

Wow!!
This feels awesome.
I am back on my blog, writing again, inshallah, for another 60 odd years :)

Political Alchemy

 Well, an attempt to write a poem churned up politics, God help me !!

Political alchemy

Don’t shout

Put things on flame

Fumes rise

Use ashes to cover the shame

Beat someone

Its good if he dies

If dead are none

There’s room for lies

Inflict pain

The more you do

The more you inflict

The more you gain

Skull hunting

That’s the new game

Use blood for painting

Shed it and make your name

In Conversations With.... Part 2

On Adoptions, with Ankit Agarwal and afterthoughts

I don't know whether it was the effect of the weather or the Chai that we were having at a roadside tea-stall, but we were feeling back to good old college days. Returning back from the office at 11 30 pm in a chilling, foggy nite, we decided to have Maggie opposite the CSC office, sector 58, Noida.

We were toying with the idea of joining an NGO in Noida, impart education to kids, and even considered the idea of starting something at our own, towards creating oppurtunities in the life of under privileged kids.

Call it stupid, but then we jumped towards our own future kids. I wished I had a girl child, he wished he had a girl and a boy, an ideal pair. And then, out of nowhere, I suggested, is there a probability of adopting a child?

We both discussed the option. We both acknowledged the fact that motherhood is an essential part of the life for most of the women. Motherhood, the whole process right from fertilisation till the birth of the baby, transforms a lady. That whole period of nine months, are unique for the couple, and especially, for the lady. We men can only understand, but cannot experience that pleasure and pain. In that case, we may consider the idea of having one baby, and adopting another, was my simple reply to Ankit.

He brought out the various practicalities involved in the whole process and we decided to go home, for it was already close to midnight.

I reached home and kept wondering. I know there are thousands of reasons that come in way of adopting a kid, especially when the couple can bear a baby, or the couple already has a child.

Social status, economic status, genes, love, emotions, there is just almost everything at stake.

I know there are millions of orphan kids in the world, and that every man has his own destiny, but then, will I not help one change his?

I will give this a long long thought.........................

In Conversation with..... Part 1

The last few days have been quite exciting, and I have had some really intersting and enriching conversations with my friends.
I am writing the extracts here for future reference, for they are quite engrossing and may lead to a better clarity in my thought process.
On Reservation with Ananya Sri and the afterthoughts

Reservation to the SC, ST and OBC as provided for by the constitution of India is an issue which needs a matured relook and solution. Is the sacrifice of merit justified? Or, to be precise, does providing reservation to over 50 % of the population of the country, majority of which is under-developed, help in imparting social justice or strengthen the caste and class divide in our society? Is the provision for reservation a political weapon, or an essential component of the Indian democracy?

The fact cannot be denied that majority of the members of the reserved category have been exploited for ages by the dominant upper castes.

Also, the Indian government has been told by the Directive principles of the state policy to create social and political justice in the society.

Few intellectuals advocate providing reservation to the under privileged on economic criterion. Practically, this is not possible, for there are 500 million + people in India who do not form a part of the economic workforce, and stats can be manipulated by the remaining 600 million.

I as a member of the unreserved category, have seen my merit being under mined by the policy of reservation. If I look at the bigger picture, I see some sense in the policy of reservation, for we need to reduce in equalities. But then, it has been 60 years since independence, and yet, the situation has not improved much. Has the pain of losing on merit by a general candidate gone waste when he sees the benefits of reservation being exploited by generations of many of the so called reserved classes?

Or, if I as a candidate of the reserved class use the benefit of reservation, why does the state not make it my responsibility to seek social upliftment of my community, why does my child need the same qouta which got me a job, why?

Who gains here, and what?

Both the general and the deprived masses are on the losing side, yet, hold each other responsible for the outcomes of the reservation policy.

I am not sure, how are we going to eliminate the evil of caste from our society until such policies hold ground.

Freedom Struggle Revisited-Revolutionary Terrorists- An Intellectual Quest-Part 1

In a message from the death cell, Ramprasad Bismil had appealed to the youth to give up
" The Desire to keep revolvers and pistols, not to work in revolutionary conspiracies and to participate in the open movement"

A die-hard communist, a rebel, a revolutionary, appealing people not to emulate his own path, why?
Going through the pages of the most reverred factual acount of the Indian struggle for freedom, by noted Historian Bipin Chandra,I was dumbstruck when I came across these quotes from Ram Prasad Bismil.
How can heores of our past debate their own stance so easily, did they repent the path they choose for themselves?
As I continued to read further, I came across one of the tallest figures of Indian freedom struggle, a young lad named Bhagat Singh. I was amazed to discover that this fellow had quite an apetite for books, and even at the tender age of 20 years, he was a giant of an intellectual.
His political ideology was shaped significantly by three things:

• The Jalian Wala Bagh incident, which showed him the naked nature of British Imperialism
• The taking back of Non-Violence Movement by Gandhiji when the movement was in it's full swing, which demolished his hopes for a free India at the prime of his youth
• In depth readings on Socialism, Communism, the Russian Revolution, Marxism and Capitalism

Before his arrest in 1929, Bhagat Singh had abondoned his belief in terrorism and individual heroic action. He had turned to Marxism and had come to believe that popular broad-based mass movements alone could lead to a successful revolution.

Prior to his execution, the great Indian rebel, wrote to his young political workers:

"The real revolutionary armies are in the villages and in factories.

Apparently, I have acted like a terrorist. But I am not a terrorist.Let me announce with all strength at my command, that I am not a terrorist and I never was, except perhaps in the beginning of my revolutionary career. And I am convinced that we cannot gain anything through these methods."

Few weeks before his death, he wrote an article, "Why I am an Atheist"

I would love to grab one copy.

And what did the word revolution meant for them:

The draft of the famous statement of revolutionary organisation HRSA, THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BOMB, co-authored by Chandra Shekhar Azad, Yashpal, and Bhagwati Charan Vohra, defined a revolution as:
"Independence, social, political, economic, aimed at establishing a new new order of society in which political and economic exploitation will be an impossibility"

Are we anywhere near to this colossal definition?

5 Past Midnight in Bhopal

03.12.1984

Something happened 5 past Midnight in Bhopal, the capital of the Heart of India, Madhya Pradesh which left it's most bloody imprints on the face of mankind.
The Bhopal Gas Tragedy.

03.12.2007

I was in the final year of my engineering in NIT Bhopal, when I heard the name Warren Anderson, seriously, for the first time in my life.
Out on the streets of Bhopal, there were ghostly creatures, for they looked too special to be part of the same brethren of mankind to which I belonged. One fellow had joined limbs, another one had the face that would have given the Marsians a run for their money and what not.
Yet, they had that peculiar syndrome of mankind, pain, agony and disgust.

Anderson ko waapas lao, Anderson Hatyara Hai
Gas Peedeton ki Madad Karo
Bhopal awaits for Justice
It could have been you!!!

Slogans such as these could be heard across whole of Bhopal, be it MACT square, Mata Mandir, Topn Town, Railway Station, Lake.
Stirred by curiosity, I turned to the doors of the sacred British Library of Bhopal for help.
And then, Eureka, I found it!!
Five Past Midnight in Bhopal, by Dominique Lapierre.

After I finished reading the book, I wished it was fiction, I was not ready to accept that it was not a Ghost story of our childhood, but a glaring account of the genocide of about 5000 innocent Indians by a corporate, and of the millions of survivors by the petty system of our country.

03.12.2009

The memories of reading about the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, meeting it's survivors last year in Bhopal, and the pathetic state of the government authorities in dealing with the whole matter remind me of the fact, it could have been me too, it's just chance that I was not one of them.
But Yes, today, I can be one of them, stand with them, for them, for myself, for our common shared future.
As a responsible citizen of India, I will strive towards bringing justice to the victims and ensure that the lessons of Bhopal are well learnt and we should lobby in favour of stricter safety norms for our industrial as well as civic safety.

And as an informed and active citizen, I will strive towards exposing and filling the loop-holes in our system.