by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 9, 2006 | common school
Yesterday, the Delhi High Court pronounced a jugement directing 70 up-market state-of-the-art private hospitals to provide free treatment to the poor by reserving 25% of their resources to people below the poverty line.. the court also directed these hospitals to place large hoardings in english and hindi about the same..
Imagine if this were to be true, what a relief it would be to the scores of poor people who have few options: either trudge miles away to public hospitals or surrender to the local quack!
This jugement is akin to the one passed some time back on reserving 25% of seats in up market schools for poor children .. what happened there was that divisive lines got deeper and instead of the so called poor kids sitting next to their rich peers, all kind of excuses were found and alternatives worked out which in some cases resulted to a parrallel system for the poor kid, after the rich had returned home for the day..
So it stands to reason to think that something similar will happen in hospitals. First of all the poor illiterate BPL person is unlikely to be able to read the hoardings and understand them.. then will he ever be able to muster the courage to enter the hospital and ask for his right… making it passed the uniformed chowkidar would already be a miracle… and then if he does make it that far, who will decide where free treatment stops: a simple cursory check up by an intern or the much needed treatment which could be as expensive as complex surgery… you can conjure many scenarios but the common denominator remains the same..
What wil happen though is that many phone cals will be made between politicians and hospital administration and te 25% allocation will be easily met making everyone happy: the politician would have pleased one of his voters and the hopsital administration would have pleased the powers that be.. kept waiting at the gate would be someone like nanhe or munna’s mother who after some time would quietly turn back and take the bus to Safdarjung Hospital…
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 6, 2006 | Uncategorized
Last week bulldozers raised MG 1 or the mecca of the fashion industry in India’s capital city and our page 3 went up in arms.. TV programmes, newspaper articles, impassioned debates abounded.. even divine intervention was sought as pujas and yagnas were held…
Let me take you back to a couple of months when tens of thousands of homes were reduced to nought on the banks of the Yamuna.. and families and belongings carted on trucks and sent to barren land almost 50 kilometers away..
In the first case it is true that there has been great visible loss of property and immense erosion of pride but in the later case the loss was far far greater, albeit invisible: it was the anhilation of dreams and hope: many children could not sit for their Boards, families lost their livelihood let alone their shelter…
Let us be realistic what applies to Peter must to Paul.. and the culprits are the same: vested interests, vote banks, corrupt individuals – the list is endless.. and as was evident in a high rated talk show, the solutions seem few and hazy..
But one has to realise that whatever solutions come they have to be applicable to both ends of the spectrum. One must not forget that the high profile designer and the slum dweller are protected by the same constitutional rights and both have roles to play in the life of the city. If one stopped to think for a second one would realise that many of those who made MG 1 exist and thrive are probably people who live in slums under the threat of bulldozers…
Every city has to have a housing policy for the poor within the city; we are talking of the press lady, or the ones that come and help you in your home.. it is simple people who are an integral part of our every day lives… So let us hope that out of the high profile destruction will emerge solutions that will benefit all.. and that for once vested interest will think beyond the next election and the quick buck..
Note:
Three years ago, on xmas eve, we faced bulldozers that brought down a simple tent we had erected in what was orginally a MCD slum wing children’s park but had gradually eroded into a pig’s park filled with garbage and excrement.. that was the space MCD officials had given us to teach in.. thinking we would run away.. but we had painstakingly cleaned the park, and planted trees and erected a happy yellow tent where over 300 kids studied.. I am not reviving this incident to settle scores, but simply to tell one how shattered one feels when bulldozers destroy something you have built with hope..
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 4, 2006 | Uncategorized
It’s back.. the smile that kept us going through many ordeals…it’s back after five weeks in hospital wards, and operation theatres and more such places, and even if nanhe is a little tired and a little thinner, the smile is beaming and larger than ever..
You guessed right, nanhe is back in his tiny home, not larger than a dining table but huge when it comes to happy thoughts and positive energies.. True he still needs an operation but that is later..
The few minutes we spent with him and his radiant family were some of the most beautiful ones I have known for long.. Nanhe just hugged me and nodded his head at everything I said; he just had one request: to come back to pwhy! So he will, from Monday onwards..
I sat and watched, through blurred eyes, this brave little family: the mother who never gave up and patiently and tenderly tended to her frail cherub.. Mamta the 16 year old sister who held the fort while mama was away and even ran the vegetable cart.. the bewildered granny who had come from the village to help her brave widowed daughter… what a bautiful picture they made cluttered in the room where there was no place to breathe..
How blessed we were to be with them.. and I am sure Chauncey Olcott & George Graff, Jr. will forgive me if I substitute a few words and share with you their famous song: when Irish eyes are smiling:
When nanhe’s eyes are smiling,
Sure, ’tis like the morn in Spring.
In the lilt of nanhe’s laughter
You can hear the angels sing.
When nanhe’s heart is happy,
All the world seems bright and gay.
And when nanhe’s eyes are smiling,
Sure, they steal your heart away.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 2, 2006 | Uncategorized
Hours after I sit and wonder at how exposed and vulnerable you feel when faced with the death of a child… a life taken away before it even begins..
You try to find answers that would help comprehend.. you need those answers to carry on, even if you have to invent them… In India we have a convenient panacea to all that defeats logic.. so if something is not the way it should be it is bad karma, and if another has windfalls it is good karma.. and then you delude yourself by saying that all will be well in the life yet to come..
Now Chetna’s loss would be her parents bad karma.. but what karma explains this little life of barely a hundred days that were replete with jabs, pokes and pain..
Lat week a woman was beheaded in the jhuggi next to the one where we hold our secondary classes.. a muslim woman who defied social mores and left husband and child to marry a hindu man years younger.. they used to make stuffed toys and rarely mixed with others.. wonder what karma that was..
For a long time I wondered whether I could have done things fatser.. but from the day I met Chetna she was under medical care… and in her case funds that are normally long to come by, were raised in no time… how smug I felt thinking that this child would get her surgery at the right time and not have to gasp for years before fate conjured the right stars..
I guess this was maybe a way of ensuring that I do not start having delusions of grandeur and understand the limits of what I can do.. and yet it does not deter me from knowing that I have to carry giving it my very best..
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 2, 2006 | Uncategorized
You would all agree that terminal examinations are meant to assess performance and help improve the same. You will also agree that an exam has no relevance if marks are not given to the student… well not so in our city….
In December all municipal schools held terminal exams but the children were not given their marks..we needed the marks was to prepare the children for the end of year examinations which are round the corner.. we asked pwhy kids to request the teachers to give them their results.. we were horrified by what ensued..
The children were not given the marks. Two of them were even slapped for having dared ask!
Our staff did a round of the municipal schools our kids attend and except for one girl’s school which extended full cooperation, all others refused.. it was almost as we were asking for state scerets..
The worst experience was in the boys school where Jitendra and Hemraj, the two boys who were slapped study. This temple of learning seems to be set in the dark ages and the teachers out of a sombre dickensian novel. Chaos reigns amidts aggresive behavior and total apathy.. Our little team was treated with contempt and absence of courtesy.. what infuriated them was that no one seemed to comprehend why one was asking for marks.. Jitendra, a good student, was dismissed as a worthless one, defying all principles of basic child psychology…
The school was filthy and as teachers chatted in a group, children were busy fighting and using bad language.. the whole atmosphere was one of belligerence..
A perfect place to learn bad language, aggressive behavior and bad ways.. so why wonder when children from slums turn out the way they are..
The most important element in the adventure call learning is the teacher.. this is something that our law makers and leaders should understand..
