All about loos: cynicism versus realism

All about loos: cynicism versus realism

If there is one topic that has received unprecedented publicity in the last months it has been loos! Unfortunately, the reason ‘we’ remember the importance of loos are often tragic: rapes, girls dropping out of school or having to defecate in the open even in cities and all related problems the worse in my mind being fatal diseases related to poor hygienic conditions. The reason ‘we’ think of toilets only at those horrific moments is because ‘we’ are the privileged 52% of Indians who have access to a loo. Should you be interested in knowing the hazards of open defecation here are some shocking factsA single gram of human faeces contains as much as 10,000,000 viruses, 1,000,000 bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts and 100 parasite eggs When ingested it can therefore lead to typhoid, cholera, hepatitis, polio, pneumonia, fatal worm infestation, trachoma, stunted physical development and impaired cognitive function. It makes open defecation a lead cause of diarrheal death; 2,000 children under the age of five die every day, one every 40 seconds, from diarrhoea. These should make us hand our head in shame and scream our outrage, but the reality is that we have access to toilets so why should we waste our time on human waste(sic).

But for the past months loos are the ‘flavour’ of the day and everyone and anyone wants to set up loos.  The latest commitment came from as high as the ramparts of the Red Fort on Independence Day. Yes 68 years after becoming a free nation we are yet to solve our ‘shit’ issue.

A few months back a modern Croesus came my way and upon learning that I worked for the urban poor stated his desire to build loos. His benchmark was to give the poor the best loo possible. He even went to state that he wanted to make Indians give up squatting and sit instead. Hoping to have a few pennies come my way, I accepted to help this person and in my own realistic way requested him to come and visit some of the existing loos in the slums we operate in. The visit was an eye opener to me though I think our Good Samaritan did not get the picture. My plan was to first try and find out why the loos that already exist do not work and in Delhi we have quite a range: from the filthy loos set up by the State, to the swanky ones made at humongous costs for the Commonwealth Games that have never been used, to the new red ones made by a Transport organisation that seemed locked too! Unless we find out why these have not worked, it is pointless to make new ones. To me it seems not so much the design of the structure but the maintenance, safety and upkeep etc. And the only people who can give these answers are the users themselves.

The state of toilets placed in slums is so bad that one of my staff who lives in such a slum has had to ‘rent’ a room across the street that has a toilet facility for hide extended family and come rain or fire, if you need to poo then you have to take a walk. Everyone cannot afford such a solution so as it is impossible to even enter the stench infested toilet blocks, you have to find your place in the sun. So to my realist and cynical mind all these promised loos may just go the same way. If I had a say, I would first fix the existing ones and then go on to making new ones that would meet the requirements of the end users.

Should you go to Defence Colony Market or Kailash Colony Market and feel like peeing, then in spite the super fancy loos that were meant to house cafes and flower shops you cannot as these are closed and unused and I am told in litigation. That they were build with millions of our hard earned money does not matter. It never does.

Making more loos in markets or slums makes no sense as they will go the same way unless we audit them and run proper surveys to find out where it all went wrong. If we do not do that, then apart from some pockets becoming heavier nothing will change.

Question your sons too!

Question your sons too!

I guess we were all waiting for our new Prime Minister’s address to the Nation with bated breaths. Many of his admirers as well as detractors were a little discomfited by the fact that one had not heard him at all after he took over as PM. I do not know about you, but I fell vindicated today when I heard his address from the ramparts of the Red Fort. Sixty eight years Kamala my mother was part of the delirious crowd and never forgot the range of emotions she had experienced. All the trials and tribulations she and her family had suffered were forgotten be it the pangs of hungers, the lacerated backs that had to be tended by a 7 year old, the humiliation and sneers. Nothing mattered any more. India was free!

I am happy Kamala is no more as her heart would have been shattered at how badly we tended the fragile sapling the likes of her had gifted us. I do not want to go into details, not today. Today let us celebrate the tree whose roots still stand strong.

Yes we all heard the the new PM’s speech and we all heard that he addressed us not as the Prime Minister but in his own words as the Prime Servant. This was balm to the heart but what made me want to hug him was when he addressed parents and asked them the questions never asked. Why did parents question every action of their daughters and not ask then same ones to their sons. As he rightly said, rapists have parents too and maybe if they were challenged at the right time they would not go astray. I guess that is where it all begins. Screaming for rapists to be hanged is not the solution.  

It was refreshing to hear a PM speak extempore! It was comforting to see a PM standing in the open like all his fellow Indians and not behind bullet or whatever proof glass. But what I loved most was when he said that he could not understand why a bureaucrat who comes to work on time is Breaking News!

This again is something that has always annoyed me. In my past avatar I often worked in high profile meetings and my team and I worked our a****** off to say the least. Yet when the time to reward those who were truly responsible for the success of the event, the medals went to bureaucrats. To me it was inane as they were just doing their duty, whereas people like us who were employed for specific tasks and found ourselves cleaning bathrooms or carting luggage because some bureaucrat had forgotten to employ porters or cleaners, we were ignored even when our names were sent up by our immediate bosses. So a bureaucrat who comes on time is no headline news and should never be.

I do not know what will happen tomorrow or in the next months, years or more, I only want too savour what I heard today.

Happy Independence Day!

An apologia for English

An apologia for English

I think I am well placed to write an apologia in defence of the English language which has come under fire in recent days. Courtesy my sometimes quirky parents I barely spoke English as a child as Kamala, my unique mom, wanted her child to speak Hindi which thus became my mother tongue in the true sense of the term, and Papa’s love for the French language and culture made French the language I would be educated in. On the other hand I spoke Hindi like a native and French to perfection, and as a toddler perfect Mandarin as being posted in Beijing I had a Nanny who only spoke Chinese. Sadly I lost my Chinese as there was no one to speak it with.

English did enter my life as not only was it spoken at home but was the second language I took in school and the brand of English I did speak was the kind spoken by any school kid going to a French school and having taken English as a second language. We were often taught by non native speakers and the abundance of the sound zeee was proof of that: Ze book iz on ze table! . I guess the fact that English was sort of spoken in my entourage made me a tad better than my school friends but just about. My parents thumb rule was that I would learn English somewhere along the way and I guess I did as is proof of the fact of me banging these words in English and having been a bilingual booth interpreter in more conferences that I can remember. However were you to ask me whether I have learnt English in a structured manner, the answer is NO!

After school I was hoping to be sent to the Sorbonne but again my unconventional parents decided to send me to a all  girl college in Delhi where speaking Hindi was infra-dig, and a strange social stratification based on which ‘school’ you came from conferred gave your status. Strangely it all boiled down to how well you spoke the colonial language. My friend corrected my atrocious pronunciation and an old friend of my father’s told me that the only way to improve your language was to read as much as you could. I did. Books were my saviour. You would be amused to know that a few years later I realised my French had become wanting and remembering the old man’s advice I embarked upon reading the complete works of Balzac. Now I make sure to read both languages regularly.

My grandson who barely writes though he is 5+, speaks 4 languages: English, French, Hindi and Italian and navigates from one to the other with utmost ease depending who he is talking to. We Hindi speakers have an extraordinary talent to master languages and can speak them as natives. This is not the case with many other populations who can never lose the accent and lilt of their mother tongue. We have one such example in our political firmament.

Today I feel saddened when misguided youngsters are bent upon removing basic English comprehension questions in a examination that will make them senior administrators and decision makers should they succeed. I feel outraged at our politicians who are supporting them to pursue their own agendas where the success of these kids is not even a minuscule footnote. I wish someone realised that in our quest of becoming a super power one of the big advantage we have is English. Today English is being taught in China in a frenzied manner and we are busy undoing our asset with impunity.

When I sat for the IAS in the seventies there were no preliminaries and we had a compulsory English paper where the most difficult question was the (in)famous précis. You had to condense a passage to a third of its size using your won words and not repeating any idea. That was definitely something that made the grey cells work overtime. The aspirants who will succeed in their examination will need English if not to write reports but certainly to access information and interact with the world. English should be taught properly in every single school, more so in State run ones. And to amuse you a little and end my tryst with the IAS, I must share what happened in my viva. I sat for the IAS with a 2 year old baby and had little time to mug statistics that anyway would change by the time I would need them. I also found the idea of mugging statistics of coal production, and so on totally futile. So unlike others who were waiting for their turn with yearbooks and last minute revision and went in without a stat in my head. The interview began with the eminent Chairman asking me a slew of statistics and hearing a slew of ‘ I do not know Sir’! He finally looked up and asked me what I knew. I told him that by the time I would finish my training and get a posting all the figures would have changed but I knew where to get the information and would make sure to have all the yearbooks etc on my office shelf. Everyone burst laughing and that was the end of my interview for which I got the highest mark of my batch.

But let us some back to this English comprehension question that is dividing India. If you can read the passage in the picture you will see that it is so simple that a class 6 kid can do it. Does it mean that we will have officers that will be unable to answer such a simple question.

The first thing I was asked by both parents and kids of the first slum I began work in was: teach our kid/us English. Even the most illiterate parent knows how important it is for his child to speak English. No one looks at it as a colonial legacy or a diminishing of ones Indianness. It is again politicians who want to nurture vote banks and do not care about anything else.

A language is not limiting in anyway. On the contrary it opens endless doors and avenues and when we have been blessed with a palate that catches unknown sounds without problems then we should make the most of it. 

No S.. please we are Indians

No S.. please we are Indians

An article by a namesake in a leading magazine begins with these words: The first test tube baby was born in India, 7,600 years ago, and he was called Dronacharya. Ancient sages divined a long time back the leaps in technology we see today, such as stem cell research. This is part of the new credo unleashed by a band Hindu zealots wanting to prove that everything we have now has its origin in Ancient India:planes, televisions cars, missiles and even hold your great test tube babies and stem technology. This is not a joke. The science textbook for class IX: Discussion on assisted reproductive systems names Dronacharya as the first test tube baby:“One day Bharadwaja went to the Ganges for a bath and saw a beautiful apsara named Gritachi. He was overcome with desire, causing him ejaculate. Bhardwaj captured the fluid in an earthen pot (Drone) from which Drona was born and took his name.”! You could easily laugh it away but it is far more dangerous than it looks. Just bear with me a little as this has to be addressed at several levels.

Sex education in schools is a big NO NO. Even our latest heath minister wants it banned. Actually sex education has been opposed by political parties off and on and makes it look like a pornographic experience. On the other hand girls and babies are raped, a 70 years old molests a 7 year old, a teacher assaults his 6 year old pupil and a 20 year old rapes a 80 year old before killing her. I guess in India vaginae are ageless!  None of these innocent victims can protect themselves because sex education is not part of their ‘education’. If they had been told about good touch, bad touch and told to scream, maybe these babies would have been spared a life lime trauma.

I am sure that none of these bigots have had their babies assaulted or raped. If that were the case they would have been the first ones to demand sex education. Let me tell you the truth and I speak of experience even inappropriate fondling by someone you trust scars you for ever and alters your life in more ways than one. The perpetrator may get away with a rap on the knuckles and be ready for his next assault  but the survivor never heals.

So no S.. please we are Indians.

Now in the light of this imagine how a young class IX student feels when he reads the above passage. Today’s youth are all fuelled by macho Bollywood heroes who are the only role models these kids have. The picture above is that of one of our kids taken during a photography workshop held a couple of years back. You can see the attitude and the body language and guess who he wants to emulate. But this kid knows nothing about hormone, urges etc. Imagine if he reads the passage that has been presented to him as Gospel truth and that makes it acceptable to be overcome by desire when you see a woman and the to  ‘ejaculate’ – btw is this world acceptable in the new moral lexicon in the making – then what do you think he will do next time he sees a pretty girl. Gosh. What messages are we sending to our kids and whether we realise or not were are opening the door to more rapes and even giving it the stamp of approval.

Everything is skewed in this country. For the labour law you are no more a child at 14. To vote you need to be 18. To marry you have to be 21 and to drink 25! This equation dos not work for me. You can vote but not drink at your own wedding!

Ejaculate is now kosher but then so should masturbation as it works in tandem. But the S word is not, you have to say values and for the P and V there are ridiculous sobriquets all lace with some notion of shame.

Time to put all this in order.

Transparency revisited – an answer needed

Transparency revisited – an answer needed

I urge you to read this post and give your take on it. Thanks. Anou

It was more than a decade ago that my dear friend and mentor DV suggested we have a detailed budget on our website as he felt that total transparency would help us gain the trust of people and hence get the support we needed. Actually he is the one who designed the page for us and we have been updating it since without any transformation. I was in complete agreement with him as I felt it showed the potential donor exactly where his money went. And that it worked needs no further proof that we are till today a vibrant organisation that is thriving in spite of a few hiccoughs.

Till date I have been the one who has headed, virtually single handed, the funding aspect of project why and I have been overwhelmed by the support of I have received. However the new laws that may soon come into force make an organisation like ours very precarious as we depend on the famed FCRA – the government stamp that allows us to receive funds from outside India -! It seems that the Intelligence Bureau has now set its eyes on all of us FCRA holders and may revoke it almost at will. In that scenario we sink, as ours is a cause that is not dear to our countrymen. It may or may not happen but I feel that one has to be prepared for the worst as one is responsible for so many tiny dreams. The option is to raise money from our own and that is a herculean task.

As luck would have it, a mail dropped in my inbox a few days back offering a fund raising workshop. I jumped on the occasion and sent my two coordinators even though it meant a hole in our pocket, one we could ill afford. But I really thought that we would get some new ideas if not an epiphany and also prove where I had been wrong.

R & D – and it is not Research and Development but why two hands Rani and Dharmendra – travelled the unending distance in heat and rain and attended all lectures attentively. If had not yet had my full debrief – I am dreading it – but from the little they shared I think that from from an epiphany, it seemed like a Oh No! moment.

Before I go on, I need to share my world view in the matter. When I was a donor, what mattered to me was that the money I gave reached to the beneficiary as directly as possible and not through some devious round about way. I my early days when I was still finding my way, I visited an NGO that is extremely successful and flushed with money. They had a swanky building designed by some foreign architect that to me seemed quite futile as it did not house any of the main activities of the said NGO. The Director’s office was huge and had not one but two air conditioners blazing and though it was midsummer I froze and wished I had a jacket. I could not resist asking him how much the maintenance of such a building cost and he had no hesitation in replying: 100 000 a month! That meant that the first rupee reaching the beneficiary was after the 100 000 were in the bank. I swore to myself never to go that way. Of course nowhere on their website would you find mention of this useless cost as it was well hidden.

So when R & D told me that one of the funding options suggested to them during the workshop was telemarketing I did a double take and candidly asked: but how do we get the money? The deal is you get 100 000 from a donor and if you can use that to generate 200 000 it is a win win situation. I guess many large organisations do that, but to do so you need to ‘hide’ cots, something that makes me gall. I know of one that started as small as ours but today has a huge fund raising department that not only does telemarketing, but also door to door campaigns as well as expensive mailing. I also know of many who have stopped giving to that organisation.

For me it is morally unacceptable to ask any donor for money that does not go to the beneficiary as directly as possible. I have refused more than ice the offer of four wheel drives as transport at project why is provided by auto rickshaws owned by parents of students and ex-students. How can I ask anyone for money that will go to some funding raising agency. I would rather close he doors. So here goes one suggestion.

The other was to have a good ppt that would showcase our achievements and be transparent. Whereas  we have been wanting in the first instance and never been able to show the scale of our achievements, I though we were spot on on the later: transparency! I was soon to learn that it was not quite so.

A friend from the US, who is knowledgeable in the field of fund raising: making presentation, writing proposals etc happened to be staying with us and I requested him to help R & D with the presentation part. It all went well till we reached the slide that would show expenses. Being extremely proud of my expense page, I would have bet my bottom dollar that all  that was needed to be done was to translate it into a chart of sort like those colourful pie charts! Our expert said that that would be counterproductive as we were too explicit as we mention every expense and have foot notes to elucidate if and when needed. However apparently this is not the way it works in the big bad world.

I need money for project why but I strongly believe that it cannot be at the price of giving up what has been my strength. I do not see why someone who wishes to donate to a cause should feel upset to see where her/his money goes even if it is cleaning material that we truly need and for which I can produce bills. I for one would prefer that then a section of the pie stating: project costs!

My intuition tells me to follow my heart but I would love to have your take.