Let them fly!

Do you know how people manage to make pets out of birds like doves, parrots, etc., without keeping them inside a cage? They clip the wings of the birds to keep them on ground. When they think that the birds are accustomed to them, they let them fly and the birds mostly do come back to them, keeping their faith. Well, it has been the same case with the children in our (largely middle-class) society who are blindfolded till they land in an engineering or medicine college. Their wings of freedom to think on their own to choose a course are clipped early in the current education system.

An education system is intended to guide the constantly evolving new breed of children. But I am afraid, all the education in current form doing is narrowing down their thinking abilities. There is no imagination going into the aspect of teaching. The skills of teachers as well as the practicality of the curriculum had been constantly under scrutiny. No emphasis has been made on moral, democratic values or gender-sensitization. Various committee reports on the reforms that are needed in the same are yet to see the light of the day.  Surely, why should the children need, what we ourselves know nothing of! 

Besides, the disregard of the state towards the education in government schools has forced the parents to move to private organizations, which do demand hefty sums of money. When there are hefty sums involved, everything comes down to demand and supply. These hefty sums put a lot of pressure on the teachers, who will apply the same on to the children in order to supply the demanded marks and ranks. And generally, It doesn't matter what genuine skill a particular kid, possesses or is passionate about.

The anxiety of parents in making sure that their child is in a trusted path, which assures a settled job and career, has also become an obstacle in producing honest and sensuous citizens. The parents(most probably the father) set the goal for the young one, as early as (s)he borns. Any deviation from that goal gets discouraged at the faintest hint of it. Most of the children's dreams remain as dreams under the safeguard of their parents until its too late.

Also today's schools, colleges and universities have limited the education to a small group of popular courses with little or no real research, producing politically immature and only-job oriented professionals. The quality of education in highest institutions like IITs is also getting diluted due to various reasons. A lot of graduates have been switching over to careers that are irrelevant to the course that they actually graduated in.

Its already time for the Indian State to seriously consider a revamp of education policies in order to ensure that every child gets quality education in government institutions at each level along with an exposure to various fields of arts and sciences early in their life. And its high time the parents stop rubbing their dreams on to the children and start helping them chase their own dreams. Let them fly, I say...

Honesty: the new 'cool'

The amalgamation of corruption, favoritism, misgovernance, especially in the recent years has resulted in a plague that is spreading to various organs of our nation. This plague is spreading fast, transforming into a vicious cycle of dis-functioning systems that compliment each other resulting in the shrinking of basic human values of our society. It has already consumed most of the systems in place: political, police, bureaucratic, business, broadcasting, publishing and judicial systems.

According to some of these reports, the corruption in judiciary is not a new phenomena. But, the practice of judiciary saving its own is certainly on the rise with the recent developments of not one case, but number of cases. This is a dangerous phenomena as it effects number of other judgements by those involved in such cases. Even the post of Attorney General of India(AGI) seems to have compromised. Certainly the current AGI proved it more than once. And all other highest government offices and organizations like CBI, CAG , etc., are following the suit like mad.

As there wasn't any credible alternative political establishment, the people had been effectively left out of the Cycle of Democracy, turning it into the above mentioned vicious cycle. This cycle formed out of the corrupt systems has already started kicking(or killing) out the honest(who don't keep their silence about the fraudulent deals), and rewarding the corrupt and bystanders(who keep their silence on the deals). 

When one of their corrupt collaborators gets into trouble(latest example), all other mates in different systems of this unscrupulous cycle collude and try to bail him out at different levels starting from registering  of a complaint and through various levels like FIR registration, Investigation, formation of charges, court trial, re-trials, appeals, etc. In case if he somehow crosses all these barricades and gets a jail sentence(after 20-30 years), even then, there are processes that makes him feel like at home with special cells in the jail and with paroles almost whenever he wants.

Its very hard to break this cycle now, which seems to have reached its full spin. The key to break this cycle, lies with the political system, which is the at the core of this cycle, and in the hands of voters when an honest alternative do present. To stop this cycle, there's the need for a constant force to act against the spin, involving both honest political leaders and honest voters. This combination is the basic working principle for a democracy to progress, which can even make the existing corrupt political outfits gets renovated or replaced to good enough proportions for the cycle of democracy to start functioning again.

The recent Delhi elections prove that the people are ready to back a credible alternative at least for once. But, can this trigger a national political revolution that we are desperately in need of? There is no doubt that, to an extent, the political awareness among the general public is gradually increasing, especially among the young citizens, most of whom had been keeping their distance from politics and there by from voting. Some heated debates among the youth is always promising, but honest, unselfish, sensitive and dynamic youth represent the real progress of a nation.

As Chetan Bhagat said in a recent animated discussion on NDTV, goodness, or rather Integrity, must become the new cool (style statement).

Mango Politics

"Who are these people who won? 

Rakhi Birla, a small time woman journalist, whom no one knows, defeated the cabinet minister Rajkumar Chauhan, 

Ashok Chauhan, whom no one know either, defeated Chaudhary Prem Singh, who has been winning for the last 40 years,

and I defeated Sheila Dikshit by a margin of 25000 votes,

Who are we? 

We are common people, we can't stand against them in any way,

But, these vote margins aren't our victory, they show the anger of people against the corrupt system," (translated from hindi to english)

says AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal in his first interview after the sensational Delhi Assembly Elections, 2013.

The historical white gandhian caps of freedom movement were back in politics, hardly a year back. They even called it as the second freedom movement, but against corruption and misgovernance, this time. The aam aadmi of the Aam Aadmi Party are all set to put their first steps into the Delhi assembly in an unprecedented manner, wiping out the Congress and keeping the BJP at a safe enough distance from getting the simple majority. How did it happen? What made the people of Delhi trust the AAP more than BJP?

One can observe that the dynamic chief of AAP, Arvind Kejriwal, his past and his unminced words, impressed upon the different sections of the people of Delhi. He and AAP never left any stone unturned to expose the similarities between BJP and Congress, when it comes to corruption. Especially, the fact that both the youth and the old from various parts of the country and NRIs from various other countries, donated their time and money, put their careers on hold, shows, how desperate they were for a change in the existing political system. 

They became volunteers, went door to door and covered most of Delhi in teams as part of the AAP campaign, sharing their genuine concerns with the voters of Delhi. Also with the youth came some innovative and economic ways of reaching out to people. They held posters manually on flyovers for hours daily. The supporters who can't reach Delhi were asked to call people of Delhi, or reach out to people on Delhi bound trains.

The genuineness is amazing thing. The people who had been disgusted with dispassionate speeches, promises and apathy of the existing politicians have found solace in the genuineness of the AAP leaders, candidates and volunteers. This leaves not only the Congress, but also the BJP with a need to re-examine their strategies for the General Elections, 2014.

There is still uncertainty over who'll form the government in Delhi, with BJP, restraining themselves from trying out any gimmicks, eyeing the General Elections, and AAP sticking to its stand of not aligning with any of the traditional parties. Meanwhile, AAP is conducting classes to its brand new MLAs on how to dispense their duties.

Respect your Child, India

When I saw the above picture in 'The Hindu' today, I instantly looked around it to see if I can find any comments condemning the act. And it's not at all surprising that I found nothing of that kind. The comment under the picture, as you can see, says, "… Activists staging a demonstration…, etc.". Who are the activists? And who are demonstrating by sitting on road? Are the children, activists? 

The next thought I had, was what would I do, if I was asked to do the same, i.e., sit on a road without any perception of my own on whats going on and why, similar(in the aspect of perception) to those pupils in the picture. But, they might not had a say in what happened there, except sitting where they were told to sit and bending their head down when they were told to do so, in order to get a better picture like the one above.

During my last visit to my home town some months back in the summer season, I saw various rallies comprising of school children under the hot sun in support of the United Andhra agitation, but what stood out in my mind was the Visual of an open top auto trolly in a rally, carrying some school children in costumes of 'Bharath Maatha'(Mother India), who were agonisingly sweating and getting burnt under the scorching noon sun.

It's not the first time school children were made to rally around the town and won't be the last time either, if nothing is done about it. We can safely assume that this kind of attitude towards children prevails all over India, which evidently has least respect for its youngest. We demand respect from the children and never reciprocate an iota of it back. Thats how it has been.

This attitude is part of the child abuse that most of us familiarly identify in the form of respect that was demanded by the elders in a family or by the teachers in a school, etc. Putting the most condemnable sexual abuse aside, both the physical and emotional abuses that the children are made to face in India are widespread as found by the "Study Of Child Abuse: India 2007" carried out by the Ministry of Woman and Child Development, GOI. You can see the astonishing figures above.

India is also at a staggering 149th position in the world, in the aspect of Respect for Children's rights with an index of 5.42 out of 10 and under 'Difficult Situation' category, as determined by the RCRI (Realisation of Children's Rights Index) that was carried out by Humanium, an international Children's Rights NGO.

What can child abuse lead to? It can lead to all kind of atrocities that we are currently facing day after day. Once the mental balance of a child is disturbed, the damage that he/she can cause may not be demarcated. With the increasing number of cases of gang-rapes or other forms of violences that were being carried out by normal people, I wonder, if the roots for this behaviour, may well be found in the abuse that they might have faced during their earlier stages of life.

Childhood is the purest form of life as some of us quote at times. But with our acts, we are narrowing down or constraining their minds with our already made out opinions or delusional views. We need to try and respect them and their thoughts as much as we respect any other, at homes, schools or any where else. We should remember that a pure mind can be moulded into innumerable ways that can enhance humanity, but a small abuse is all that is needed to rip it off.

Confronting the culture of violence against women

Is capital punishment, a real deterrent for gang rapes? There had been many discussions on this and still going on after the Supreme court's decision to give death penalty to all the remaining four accused in the Delhi gang rape case, suggesting that this case falls under the rarest of rare category.

      But, can we expect this judgement to reduce gang rapes in India? 

     Do these criminal minds fear the law in that moment of lechery?

     And if they fear, does that make them stop from doing it? Or does that make them do the more evil thing, so that no one knows a thing about what they had done? 

    These are the questions, to which, we can never be sure of the answers, no matter who give them. The thing that we can be sure of is that the death penalty alone can't deter this horrendous crime. 

    The recent Hyderabad episode is an other example that reveals that this problem is more complex to be solved by a law. What will we do if some products of a company are faulty? We surely throw the product into trash, but the top priority would be to make sure that the company makes them right from then on.

      These culprits are exactly the same faulty products that were manufactured by our faulty system. For this, more than thinking about the kind of trash box we want to put in the faulty products, we need to think about the repair works that are quickly needed to stop this faulty manufacturing. Thats what exactly the Justice Varma panel suggested. Repair the damn manufacturing system.

It has been a habit for the government to constitute committees on pressing issues, but only implementing the politically suitable sections of the report, rather than the important ones. The Justice JS Verma committee's report was no exception(government did bring some changes in the rape law) 

      Its true that the report is far reaching, and it should be, as it gives the whole picture of women's problems in the society, at various levels. But, it only shows the poor state of affairs relating to gender bias that are still prevailing in our nation in implementing what our constitution assures women, in particular.

     As the report clearly asserts, We are in urgent need of electoral, educational and police reforms, which are the causes of more social evils. with special emphasis on how to gender-sensitize the children and adults to reach a matured state.

Bargaining Death

              How many of us took/gave(or going to take/give) dowry and think that it harms no one as the givers are quite capable of giving and takers are not going to ask for more?

Do you know that one woman dies every hour due to dowry related reasons on an average in India? And the death rate had even been raising in the last 12 years? National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) figures state that 8,233 dowry deaths were reported in 2012.

Who are really responsible for these deaths? No. Not just the husband, or in-laws, or even the parents, It's a collective failure of every one of us, the society, that is still encouraging the dowry arrangement, despite the progress we made in various fields over the years.

  Why dowry is still being taken as a prestige issue, or a status symbol? By taking/giving dowry you are only encouraging a whole bunch of people around you, who can be a lot greedier than they seem to be. And greedy enough to the extent of causing death in one or the other way.

If you think its just the uneducated or rural people that are victims of this social evil, you are completely wrong(please watch the video below). These deaths include a number of working women in urban areas like Delhi in this case.

The only remedy is collective banishment of the dowry system from the society. You can't be irresponsible towards these social evils and get away with it all the time. It can eventually harm any one of your dear ones at a later time.

So, my modest appeal to each one of you, take the first step towards breaking the walls of this Gender-bias, say no to dowry, both givers and takers.

Common Nonsense - Gender Bias

"Common Nonsense" is the phrase that came to my mind, when i was pondering about most of the common practices we are still following in our long running patriarchal society. Like an average netizen I instantly googled the phrase "Common Non-sense," to know whether its used commonly or not. It came out that there is a book by that phrase about some guy's biography and a website, but otherwise not common.

I have only recently started putting my thoughts on paper or rather on a digital screen. I can't say whether I got any better or worse in anyway(may be you can). But I am not going to stop with all these thoughts circling in my head. This seems to be at the least a small temporary relief.

We are in modern era, equal opportunities for men and women. Women have already reached the most powerful posts in the country.We have women CEOs, Women entrepreneurs and even women Chief Ministers. We hear these comments daily about the all-round progress that was brought up in the lifestyle of women.

But, after reading this piece from NewsLaundry, which has no surprises for any body living in our self-inflicted society, about the common practices of discriminating women, each one of us will definitely be relating to our own part in this humiliation, knowingly or unknowingly. And they qualify to be termed as common non-sense.

As a society, are we i.e., both men and women, treating our women equal to men? Are we treating a baby boy same as a baby girl at birth? Or during their childhood? Adolescence? Or even after being an adult? During marriage? After marriage? No. Never. We show discrimination at each and every step.

We show discrimination in celebrating their birth, in buying them toys during childhood. We make girls accustomed to do household things while leaving boys to themselves during their teenage. There is an example of a grandmother who reacts contrastingly, when she sees her grand-son shaking his legs sitting in a chair and when her grand-daughter does the same. It's only a small example of how inferior women feel of themselves.  Bluntly put, it's a systematic brain wash that's still going on from generation to generation.

And we all know about the traditional act of male chauvinism that takes place during the marriage. Man tying a 'Mangal Sutra,' a supposedly sacred thread around the woman's neck, as a process of taking responsibility of her as in what? Is marriage still being seen as transferring responsibility of a woman to a man? If not, Why are we still going through this process? Will any man ever be comfortable with it, if the same is done to him?, including the acts like touching wife's feet, etc.

Isn't this kind of unequal treatment of society is what making women feel inferior to men and men, superior to women, causing the horrific crimes that are under scanner nationwide in the present times. Are we developing our social norms along with our development in other fields? Is it too early to expect such change? Do we need to wait till generations after generations to see that change? Can it be done in one generation if young people won't bow down to pressures to follow this common non-sense? I have nothing but hope.

Troubling Times...

As you are reading this, I take it that you are trying to be knowledgeable of the things that are happening around. These are troubling times for democracy. We have been watching and feeling the raising apathy among persons in various positions of the government, starting from the President/PM to a peon in the govt. office, towards the common man. The Mind-boggling numbers associated with each scam and the high reputations of people involved in these scams puts our faith in this democratic system our forefathers built for us, to test.

You must have heard about the Niira Radia tapes (you can listen to some tapes which are leaked, by clicking on link there or download a zip here) that came out during 2G scam investigation, which were in the nation's discussion some 3 years back and as usual forgotten. The institutions like CBI and IT(Income Tax) Department also slept on them saying they are private conversations, until a PIL is filed in SC(Supreme Court) recently. The CBI was already caught by the SC during Coal-Gate investigation, changing case reports, also termed as govt.'s parrot , which does cover-ups for govt. choosing cases that suits the party in power. This issue had resulted in the resignation of the Law minister but, the more culpable Attorney general got away.

Coming back to the tapes, The SC Questioned the inaction of CBI and IT on these tapes, which clearly show the involvement of the big corporate names(Ambanis,Tatas) and their lobbyists in

1. The decisions the govt. or opposition takes,

2. The discussions of parliament,

3. The MSM(Main Stream Media) news and articles.

With this kind of involvement in every govt. decision, is it any surprise that the scams are queuing up one after the other. Our govt. has been converted into a system that manufactures scams and the Media lives short on real investigations and more on political drama.

Often we blame a person or a class of people on the spur of the moment. But we know its not a single uncommon incident. All public systems are getting murkier and the plague is spreading fast with the honest getting punished, threatened or even killed. If you are a daily news follower, you know what I am talking about. We only know one Narendra Kumar who was killed, one Ashok Khemka(Vadra-DLF deals-Full Video) who face transfer twice every year, one Durga Nagpal who was suspended and don't even know how many others were forced into the system or out of it. Some of you may know more such cases.

           On the other way around, we face the corrupt babus regularly while applying for a Driving License, during a Passport verification or land registration, etc. We please him/them and tell to ourselves, it's not really going to do any damage to the already "corrupted to core" System. On each time, we feel we are alone against it and there is nothing else we can do to get what we needed. We can think of getting rid of it only if we unite against it.

One doesn't need to sacrifice his life or leave every thing else in his life, to fight against corruption, if only majority of citizens really feel concerned about it and act against it. Unfortunately, it's not the case in our country. We often have/had a fistful of corruption crusaders and sadly they are/were hunted down. How many can be hunted down, if every one join.

Its 8 years since RTI(Right to Information) Act is passed by parliament after a tremendous effort put in by the various Civil Society Organizations. But still only a small group of people know about it, and even less use it. Though it's not a magical eradicator of corruption by any means, its impact will be felt by the corrupt. I am one of the small group who knows about it and I intend to try and file some RTIs myself and I encourage you to do the same.

Do you know that the 6 major political parties(Congress, BJP, NCP, CPI (M), CPI and BSP) uses public money indirectly in the form of subsidies, Tax exemptions and benefits and also were given lands in prime areas at low rates whenever their party is in power in a state or at the centre, based on which, they come under Public Authorities as per the RTI Act. and same is ruled by the CIC(Central Information Commission) 2 months back. 

But our so called major parties are so terrified of the CIC that the govt. proposed an amendment bill instantly which is welcomed by all parties(except very few) with in days. And the proposed amendment also comes with a retrospective effect from the date of the CIC ruling. 

Our parliament which take years and decades(even a century is possible as we still wait on…) to pass bills that the nation badly in need of, is going to pass this bill in days. There may be another amendment forthcoming to counter the recent SC ruling(without any retrospective effect) that no convicted criminal should stand in elections. What does this say about these parties? They are only there to safe guard their interests, and leave no trials of the loot happened.

But, we have a better weapon than RTI, which unfortunately comes only once in 5 years, and we won't even feel like using it and using it for good against corruption. 

I appeal to you, that this once we use it for the fight against corruption, without worrying about relation,caste,religion,region(I thought i could include party in this list, but after a second thought i think we need to choose an untraditional honest party as honest people in traditional parties were reduced to mute spectators like dolls used for showcases) and vote for the honest and non-corrupt candidate who delivers not for his parties, relatives and close friends but for the common man. We also need to implore our friends and relatives to join this fight, remember its always majority which wins in a democracy. 

We are lucky that these issues haven't really affected in a disastrous manner yet, or we think so, but you can't expect it to continue long and to your children. These are troubling times and we need to act united against corruption for the future of our nation.

Gullible Media

In the recent times of confusing news articles, tv debates and discussions, As a daily news absorber, I have been acquiring a useful skill of sorts, the skill of differentiating the bakwaas(crap) news from the truth. Most of the times, it can easily be done by differentiating the politicians who just speak whatever come to their mind at that moment to defend themselves/offend the other. Most of the bakwaas news will come from these politicians and they also become famous for it. You can easily see most of them trending on twitter on various issues. They definitely made a name for themselves, and they think it won't matter, as our so called democratic country is full of people like them winning election after election, you know how!!

Are our media channels are sincere enough? Almost all national news channels and most of the news papers nowadays, seems to be compromised, you can read about one of them here and here. It's amazing how conveniently they fail/ignore to investigate the important issues and bury them as early as another new issue comes. They ask questions every day and mentions at least a scam in every show(yes, news also became shows now), but who is stopping them from investigating a scam and bring the truth out for everyone. Or may be they are busy analyzing whats going inside each party and what gimmicks politicians are playing on each other. The National news channels are losing their credibility badly. And the regional news channels(at least in AP) are comfortable doing senseless debates or being movie masala outlets.

During the current Uttarakhand disaster, where still thousands of people are waiting to be rescued, TOI came up with this crap, which shows they didn't even bothered to double-check it from another source, and later they blame Modi's spin doctors for it? as far as i can see only TOI got that news posted on that day(tell me if i am wrong). May be TOI is very weak in playing spin. Now this whole shameful episode is well explained here. 

Is our media so corrupt that they just sold their soul to the politicians/political parties/big daddies or they just became so gullible that they can be persuaded to any extent? 

However, I still believe not everything had gone to dust.There are still good articles written. I think Caravan is doing a good job of reportage(at least its good till now). Some of its best articles in recent times: The Insurgent on Aravind Kejriwal, The Outlier on Subramanya Swamy and Inside Man about the Attorney General Of India Gulam Vahanvathi. There are many more articles if you have time.

And at last, You shouldn't miss the newly launched online portal, NewsLaundry, and especially Cothesline(a weekly episode on NewsLaundry), if you want to know whats really going wrong on in our media.