about children but not for children
The de-recognition and thereby shutting of over 1000 schools in karnataka as they did not comply to a law passed many years back brings to fore once again the reality that education and the welfare and rights of children ranks very low on the political agenda of our country.
After the festivities a myriad of kids will find out that they do not have a school left. The debate of mother tongue versus English is an adult’s debate, children follow what they are told to. True that an English divide exists in our country but then can one forget that after 60 years of linguistic debate the problem of a national language has not been solved.
Today many parents living in slums plunge in their meagre pockets to get their children, sadly often the boys, in to what boasts to be an English medium school, even if it is a commercial teaching shop where no one speaks English.
When Ataturk decided overnight to change the Turkish language script as he felt that the children of his country did not need to be burdened by two scripts, he was traveling in the future.
Of the many commentators who spoke on the issue, one rightly felt that all children should go to the same kind of school where maybe 3 subjects could be taught in English and the other 3 in the regional language. makes sense to me, as I agree totally to what the same person said when he pointed out that those speaking the loudest on the issue have their kids study in up markets English language school!
When I came back to India after 16 years of living in other lands, it was a matter of pride to say that you had scored low marks in your lower Hindi paper, and all Hindi speaking peers were called Behanjis or Bhaiyyas.
I have always been comfortable speaking Hindi as my mother devised the best way to teach a child growing in a host of lands her mother tongue: she just spoke Hindi to me from day 1 and I was very surprised to know that she did she did speak English when I was six!
The great English divide has to come to a long awaited end, but it can only come when the upmarket people accept to send their children to the government run school down the road!
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feeding off kids..
It is appalling how adults use kids. Before little Utpal went to school a posse of family and relatives took advantage of all the goodies provided.
It is but obvious that one could not help him at home without including the others, directly or indirectly. A ceiling fan bought to ensure that he did not play with live wires provided breeze to everyone.
Now with Utpal safely in school and his mom well into recovery and at the doorstep of a new life, the bunch of profiteers that include innumerable new aunts and uncles and surrogate parents decided to use half-sister Durga.
So a man who is not a father suddenly discovers paternal feelings and send the poor child to get the pennies needed for his next bottle, and when she does not get them resorts to beating her on the streets.
Even I, who normally find to seek in some recess of my mind ways to condone almost everything found this behavior unforgivable. So Durga too goes to a residential programme where I hope she will make up for lost years and before someone realises that she is almost a woman and could be sold!
All this is extremely disturbing as when caretakers become predators no child is safe.
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words ad nauseum
When I look at little Komal who can barely see or hear, I wonder how long it will take her to learn the value of words.
I am sick and tired of words: words of praise, words of anger, words that hurt, words that hang without meaning, words that vanish into thin air as they are uttered.
Someone said: Words should be used as tools of communication and not as a substitute for action”.
Frankly I have started to doubt everything I hear. My inbox is filled with words that remained words for as soon as they need to be translated into action, a myriad of reasons spring from nowhere as grim deterrents. The one reason that seems to always be at forefront is mistrust.
It is a sad reflection of our society that we are ready to mistrust everyone and everything. We stop looking with our own eyes, be they that of the heart or that of reason, and conveniently apply the a foregone conclusion. So even if you have shown staying power of over six years and adequate results, helped children stay in school and repaired broken hearts, you are still not be trusted. And why should you, everyone around is screaming the contrary, be it our rulers or our peers.
A quirk of fate has suspended one of our main accounts, and it is strange that rather than fight it tooth and nail which is what I would have done barely a few months ago, I have almost welcomed it. It has enabled me to put my team to the test and find out whether they have understood that you have to fight for your right and prove yourself. No remuneration for the past two months and a challenge thrown to them of meeting half the running cost if they want me to check back in again or they risk having their sections closed down.
Much as the story of the wolf that never was till the day it actually came and no one turned up, it has taken them some time to realise that unlike the past, this time it was for real.
Unless everyone realised that they are responsible for what happens around them, change can never come. So shock therapy is sometimes needed.
What will be the outcome only time will tell. The worst case scenario is another trip to the labour court aptly prompted by hidden enemies, but how has always become used to it, the best is my team taking on the responsibility of collecting funds and moving out of their torpor.
I wait and watch from the wings, a sometimes amused smile on my face..
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the price of democracy
yesterday two children died in the cross fire the police resorted to, to quell angry mobs.
The mobs were exercising their democratic right to dissent against what has become a Kafkaesque cat and mouse game between the authorities, the courts and the people of Delhi.
For the past year the citizens of not quite understood the urban laws of this city that has grown defeating all rules. But were there rules one may ask?
Maybe they were, but a host of options were graciously made available provided you were ready to ‘pay’ for them. Once in a while a cosmetic drive was undertaken but to no avail.
Some of us stuck to the law and were often made fun of, as one’s old house stood amidst the new builder’s monster that mushroomed around us, even taking away the rays of sunshine that use to stream every morning in our rooms.
To say one was not tempted would be an untruth, but then the old precepts one was taught came rushing to your mind. the law will catch up one day, you must stick by the rules, even it means waiting at a red light in the dead of the night when no cars ply; but how can one forget the death of a dear friend when a truck came rushing a deserted crossroad breaking a red light and keeling a young mother.In today’s India sticking by the rules lands you in labour court, earns you unpleasant attributes and labels, and makes you the laughing stock of cocktail parties.Today in the prevailing confusion no one knows what will happen.
I know for a fact that many small shop keepers ear a day to day life, and if deprived of their income will have none at all. Laws when broken with impunity land you in situation when sifting out the honest from the guilty becomes an impossible task. but one must remember that when it is a question of livelihood, seemingly placid people turn violent, the French revolution is a sad reminder of that.
Two children died, but would there death solve anything or will they become a sad statistic in Delhi’s history. what frightened me yesterday was the reaction of the powers that be of were trying to explain the situation away with priceless inanities: politically motivated, passing the buck to those who ‘paid’ for services etc…
We all know that justice the symbol of justice is a blindfolded lady, but can we beseech her to open one eye and see with her heart before more children become sad statistics.
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finger prints of the dead
I could not resist writing about an experience I had today when I took myself off to the District Courts to register my will.
After being mobbed by all the notary and lawyers who sit at little tables with antediluvian typewriters in a neat row, like a bunch of crows waiting for the prey, we selected one who looked kind, though I do not know whether that was true.
I had printed my will and I think the man felt a little let down as he tried to show me the formats he had, all written in the language of the raj.
Then we proceeded to the signatures and I fell of my chair when he brought out a used ink pad and asked me to put the prints of my thumb then my four fingers under my name.
Thinking I had heard wrong, I told him that actually the document would only be read after my death and that by then my ashes would have been blown in the wind so how would they check my prints in case of doubt. He looked at me with extreme seriousness and told me that it was required. I dutifully did what told.
Later I realised that probably this was probably a legacy of the raj, where buried bodies could be exhumed. And no one had bothered to amend the rule, just as the other law that allows the state into bedrooms of consenting adults in the name of morality and that is being challenged.
I wonder why we are still ruled by a penal code that is over a 100 year old and was made by erstwhile rules. Maybe it is time to think about it as the only way a person of Hindu faith can have finger prints on record is to become a criminal.
Not my cup of tea!
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picche se… (from the back) an elusive answer to real questions
I have often wondered what is it that makes pwhy such a menace to local powers that be. Why is it that we get dragged to the labour court, accused of nefarious activities, ranging from pandering to stealing. Why is it that each time we solve a problem and start thinking that things are behind us a new problem arises, a true hydra headed monster with an elusive neck!
I have been mulling over this not quite finding a satisfactory answer. It hit me yesterday like a bolt out of the blue.
Education, a threat says who? Says ‘they’ say I is my answer. How can the little boy and his copy book can be a danger to anyone. The answer is that if he is given an empowering education than he is a huge threat to the existence system.
Let me elucidate this. Since the reservation issue aptly referred to as Mandal II raised its head and the issue of the creamy layer came up, I decided to ensure that all pwhy kids who fit into any reserved category should have the certificate to prove that. As usual I asked one of my staff members to find out, as he too is a contender. The answer was the usual I get, one that till date I did not doubt: I will check up with the local corporator’s office. Why should I question this, is the corporator not the representative of the people.
The next day I got my answer which was something like: there are no forms, they have not come picche se (from behind), they may come soon. Normally I do not dispute such answers but this time it disturbed me. No matter how badly executed we have a sound democratic system, at least on paper so of I went to friend google and of course in a matter of seconds found the forms waiting to be downloaded as well as the required information on how to apply.
That is when I realised the power of the kind of education I dream of, one that empowers. The cynics will say how can you teach everyone to search the net. My answer is simple yet sound, till we cannot get the kids to, we can show the parents the way: find someone to check for you!
Today I will walk to pwhy with the forms in my bag ready to be photocopied in as many numbers as wanted. When they reach the local politicians for countersignature I know I would have jumped a few places and be closer to the top of the wanted list, but I also know that I would have walked a huge step in the right direction and someone would have lost a bit of his hold.
It is another matter that some of the required stipulations have to be challenged in court as to get a caste certificate your family is required to have lived in Delhi since 1951. What about the 10 million who came after. Well they have to go seeking their Patwari. My question then is how come you are willing to give voters ID cards or whatever else is needed for your benefit and not what might help your potential voter. the answer looms larger than life.
No wonder that no one wants to get the creamy layer excluded.. wonder who would apply for the reserved categories in med school , IITs or IIMs then?
Somehow it maybe easier to call the bluff for by campaigning for the right to a certificate for every potential beneficiary. Is caste not an intrinsic part of a population count
P.S. while browsing the net for programmes for handicapped kids, I found out that most apply to those whose family earns less than six hundred rupees a month. Wonder which planet they live on
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will this one be the good one!
deepak came visiting to show off his two brand new teeth! he even smiled and played with us. This brave little fellow has kept his side of the deal: he survived a code blue and even though his broken heart stopped beating, he willed to beat again; he patiently waited that adults finish their strikes and protests and in the bargain got a huge abdominal abscess that took a month to heal. he met all milestones and even produced two teeth at the right time and even had an angiography that now has to be redone. He tries to eat though it is not easy, and he is hanging on waiting for the rest to fall in line.
It is sad that children have to suffer because of reasons that they cannot comprehend or control. On the 26 he will undergo another angio and if all goes well will finally get the surgery he urgently needs.
Let us hope that this one will be the good one…
distance makes the heart grow fonder
Distance makes the heart grow fonder says the jaded quotation. Most of us have at one time or the other used it.
Six long years trying to keep project why alive my way, has given a new connotation to these very words. We could also use Mark Twain’s Familiarity breeds contempt to describe the bittersweet reality that has been vindicated day after day.
In our quest for support we have been overwhelmed by the spontaneity of people living across the world, who have an may never drop by our planet but who somehow have understood its spirit. So be it the tiny amount sent by a student pining for home comfort food, or the generous gift of a well settled professional who feels that it is a way to pay back; be it the impromptu offer to volunteer of young people from different lands or the long plane hours taken to come by and write about us, it is the effort of those who are faraway that has sustained us till now.
The rupee a day option was designed for two reasons, one for each side of the spectrum. It was something even the poorest could spare and join the rank of donors and on the other hand something which I felt would allay the worst cynic who view everything with suspicion even if they have known you for donkey’s years. If some head way was achieved in the first case, then in the second the distance between hand and wallet still needs to be covered.
Another high road to bewalked
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Children.. a valuable resource
JFK said: “Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future”. Wonder what he would have felt about their situation in India..
last week three blasts rocked Malegaon, most of the victims were children, many beggars who had come on this holy Friday to the mosque and the cemetery, traveling long distances to earn a few extra rupees.
This morning the picture of two young rag pickers was carried in a national daily. The sealing of shops in an effort to beautify Delhi had in one blow taken their livelihood as they did not know where to sell their daily collection.
In a few days the child labour law will come in force and many kids will be homeless and in search of food.
The little kids in the picture are filled with hope and dreams as they sit quietly in the middle of a garbage dump, oblivious of the odours or even the flies, or the heat. They want to learn, knowing intuitively that it may change their lives.
Fuelled by images they see on the box, they dream of being a Sachin, or a Salman. Some want to be doctors, others teachers… many even belong to the innumerable social divisions that benefit from umpteen reservations. But there is a catch: none have the required certificate to prove it and getting on is a nightmare. No one has told them about the value of that piece of paper, on the other hand many have denigrated its value by telling them it shameful forgetting of course to enlightened them about the many benefit they entail.
And for those who have a certificate, the door are closed as they will never get beyond the infamous 33 %. I was even told by a secondary school teacher that they taught only 40% of the course as that was sufficient to pass.
On the other hand the numerous population count that have been done include the caste. Now does it not become imperative for the government to issue the required caste certificate one wonders?
Maybe someone should take notice of this and act so that if one of the children in the picture breaks all barriers and gets to the gates of higher learning, he is able to benefit from what is his right.
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Kim.. the ambassador of our dreams.
When Kim called a few week back to say he wanted to feature project why in his The Strait Times, I was surprised wondering what I had done to receive such an honour. I must confess that in the days preceding his arrival, I spent many hours wondering whether we would meet his expectations.
Kim landed with his photographer Fen and his warm smile was enough to set my mind to rest. It was a warm Sunday morning where we had to drive miles to meet little Utpal, and then go to a baby christening in the slum. As the day went by I knew that I had met another person who saw with his heart and that he would able to see project why as it should be seen.
Never mind the garbage dump in lieu of class rooms or the rather makeshift structure that we work in, Kim and Fen caught the love and passion that infuse our work, the smile of the special children as they dance and sing with abandon, the mischief of the boys who know that project why is the only place where they can claim their childhood and the hospitality of the humble rickshaw driver as he proudly serves them tea in his home.
We talked, or rather I talked and he listened, sometimes taking notes as I poured out my dreams, my hopes, shared my achievements and my failures not withholding anything as I knew that there was no need of pretending or shying about anything.
As I write these words, I have not seen what Kim wrote but the number of mails that have dropped in my mailbox and moved me to tears, are proof enough of the fact that the magic of Kim’s words has been the best ambassador of my dreams.
Click here to discover some of the heartwarming messages from Singapore
Read Kim’s story Suffer not little children here
but also for what we do not do
Have not written about mr. p for a long time. well it is said that no news is good news. he is doing great in school and his mom is doing great at the rehab centre.
His surrogate dad has been lurking around, trying to find the right excuse to scrounge a few pennies for his next drink. Needless to say that at this moment in time my detractors are having a field day filling his fuzzy inebriated head with vile ways on how to extort some money. I know that there is nothing he can do apart having nuisance value that can be easily dealt with.
But something stops me each time I think of dealing with this problem.
Moliere the French playwright wrote: It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do. These words keep flashing in my mind and it took me a while to understand why.
N is a drunk, but he is also the only father figure mr p has known. I cannot forget the special bond the two had and the genuine love mr p felt for this man. I cannot set aside the fact that in spite of everything he is the one who gave the stability of a home, no matter how erratic, to this child for the first 4 years of his life.
One day when mr p grows up and when I am not around, he may ask himself or others why I did not help his father. That day I do not want to have to fall in his eyes so it becomes incumbent for me to try my very best and do something for N. I may not succeed, but a least I would have acted and done my best and would be able to look into mr p’s eyes and say “I tried”!
This evening the now famous trio of maamji, radhey and amit bhaya will take N to a AA meeting, the same road that I took with mrp’s mom four months ago.
This is the only honorable things to do.
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to fight is much better than to win…
One of my favourite authors has been oriana fallaci. In her often acerbic and cutting words I have many a times found inspiration.
In her letter to a child never born, which is a commentary on life itself she says: ” to fight is much better than to win, to travel much better than to arrive: once you have won or arrived all you feel is a great emptiness… and to overcome your emptiness you have to set out on your travels again, create new goals..”
With a few alterations this could be a very apt description of what we are facing at pwhy today. True that we did not quite arrive or win, but we have reached moment in time when things have to be redefined and new goals set.
I always held that pwhy had to remain dynamic and adapt to situations. When I set this out, I was thinking of the programmes and the need to adapt them to field requirements, but today I see that they apply also to the management and running of the project.
In my quixotic belief that good was inherent in each one and just needed to be sought, I never thought that problems would arise from within the team. I guess I never imagined that there I would be faced with detractors and continued in my naive conviction that no one would want to do away with someone imparting education. But oh darling this is India, a land where the powerful can only retain their power riding on the shoulders of illiterate masses, and anyone daring to disturb this equation is enemy number one!
So we have reached an impasse, a state of perfect and unproductive immobility and we need to chart out the future. This was conveyed to team projectwhy and each section was told that they had to raise 50% of what was needed, and I would meet the other half.
I love my team, like you would a child, and I feel amused at how much they shy of asking, even if it is a rupee. Come on, old biddy, you are the one who changed their status, made them teachers, and now these mams and sirs take life seriously and begging – whatever the form is infra dig. What they need to comprehend is that seeking funds to empower and teach is the first step to acquiring freedom.
If they seek money for the work they do they actually create new jobs, new markets and opportunities for the area they work in over and above ensure that kids do not drop out. Now that is far more than they politician/bureaucrat duo do.
The challenge I face today is to make them understand that, to shake them out of their torpor and give them a set of new eyes to see the world in a different way, when they are the centre and the kingpin.
Not easy, but eminently doable as I myself was one of those who never asked for money, even the one that was owed to me. Today I have perfected the art of high tech begging.
So I set out on my travels again…
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full circle
Kiran and Komal are sisters. One is 6 and the other 16 days! Kiran was born on the day pwhy took off on its maiden flight. It was a time of dreams and visions, of hope and determination. It was also a time when we believed that good will prevail, that people will understand and take their lives in their own hands..
We kept on dreaming though at times the dreams seemed sated, but we held on to them trying one option after the other, battling enemies we could not have conjured, even in our wildest fantasy. There were some dreams that came true: children stopped dropping out of school, we repaired a few broken hearts, and above all we found well wishers all over the world. But somehow the bad outdid the good and we realised that our main dream – that of sustaining the project from within the community – turned into a nightmare. Surreptiously we found ourselves dragged into the usual you give, I take; you provide, I receive, moving into a state of immobility.
Just as Kiran had heralded hope, Komal seemed to have a different role. Her little dark face and protruding tongue reminded one of Kali, the goddess who destroys evil and protects those who seek her. Was there a message that one had to take stock, redefine our dreams and start once again..
Who knows?
Welcome to planetwhy Komal.
micro reflection of a macro reality
Strange that something I have always held as true is validated time and again, even when you pray that this one time one should be proved wrong.
When we set out to establish a model for education support in order to contain drop out rates, we wanted to evolve one that could be replicated and one that whit stood the test of time and space. Hence our decision to select local resources both human and material. Now if we were to go by school results as the only criteria of success, then we have been successful. But that is not enough as statistics published last week state that 100 000 children between 6 and 10 years of age are not in school in Delhi alone.
Were there many little clones of pwhy in all areas where we these kids are, than maybe things would be different. But that entails an in-built sustainability and that is where we have not done as well. Our efforts to seed and nurture the one-rupee programme has been a non starter.
My firm conviction that this is the ultimate weapon that would free children remains stubbornly in my mind. What seems to be the problem is our lack of competence in packaging and marketing the idea.
So I thought the time had come for a debriefing and the first step was to cross-examine myself. There are many things that happened along these six years that I could not have imagined. One is our frequent trysts with the labour courts and the other is the extremely passive attitude of some of our staff who refuse to take things in their hand and content themselves with doing what they think is their duty leaving me to raise funds for their ‘salaries‘! If many funders have been honest enough to ask what would happen after me, the staff members have not.
The fault is not with them; the fault lies in India’s reality where any social grouping is the reflection of the macro reality. What is good for the gander.. says the proverb. So all societal ills are very much part of our work, the ones that prevail across India, and the ones that are particular to Delhi. Divisive forces ready to play the caste/creed game, the sarkari (government) job syndrome which means goes by the credo: minimum work and maximum cribbing, the lack of motivation to take challenges and the plethora of dubious well wishers waiting to pounce of soft targets like us with the vilest accusations.
To be able to fine tune pwhy as a model, it has become imperative to take some tough steps in order to be able to turn the equation and make people want and seek our presence, be it parents or staff members.
The innumerable problems that plague India will not find a solution if they are addressed from the top only. It is only when things change at the micro level that programmes will percolate down and reach out the true beneficiaries. In the present scenario what is meant for the poor cleverly and insidiously hijacked..
It is time for some plain talking at pwhy, even if it means starting again, the difference being that this time all programmes will be initiated by the beneficiaries and nurtured by them.
I have resisted this many times, be it my ego, or my reticence that I had been wrong, or my innate and candid faith in the goodness of all beings, or my incapacity to assess the deviousness of my detractors, or my belief that my ways would prevail. I do not know.
Today I realise that, I too was a reflection or the macro reality, and that what was needed was to turn the tables.
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teacher’s day revisited
A nomadic childhood meant many a school, but when I look back on those years, each school no matter where it was located, always had a teacher one remembers with fondness, someone you wanted to emulate, someone you looked up to!
Be it Melle Valent in France, Mr Studenmayer in Algiers, or Mere Jean Marie in Saigon, they all played their role in building what I am today. And though lost somewhere in the recesses of my brain, a simple trigger brings their faces to my mind and they validate the high esteem teachers are held in, in India.
That was the, things are not quite the same today. Students have scant respect for their teachers, and teachers are a far cry from any expectation. Welcome to 2006 India where teachers take bribes and students beat teachers to death!
My heart went out to little K who put her best and grownup dress to celebrate teachers’ day where she was to teach a class. K is 6 and still believes in good and right. My heart went out too to many pwhy primary students teaching their peers with commitment and maybe imagining themselves as teachers one day!
Who is to tell them that this may not happen as they are likely to drop out somewhere along the way.
In times where passing the buck and playing blameGame, I think one should stop and ask ourselves a simple question: how responsible are we for this state of affairs? And if we are honest then we will see that each one of us has a part to play in this sad scenario. Absent parents in search of materialistic eldorados, teachers who have turned learning into earning, a government elected by us and thus representative of our aspirations that has let children down..
The list is endless…
In times where education is often heralded as the panacea of all ills and the key to every door, we have forgotten the basic truth: that education is based on mutual respect between teachers and taught. Teachers are per se, the obvious role models of children, something that we have lost on the way. Like everything else, we first must address our shortcomings, only then will teacher’s day regain the meaning it was meant to have.
number game..
The results of a recent survey indicates that India is the sixth most dangerous country in the world. Afghanistan, Palestinian territories, Myanmar and Chechnya were placed better than India.
Many will and even are contesting these results, and even if we do better, there is much that is not the way it should be on planetIndia!
The first thing that caught my attention as this news was being aired and commented upon was the fact the welfare ministry would be consulting the labour ministry to determine what a child is! The UN convention says 18 and below, our labour ministry says 14 and below, rape laws say 16 and below… now if we were to go by the UN then we are talking of 42% of our population, unfortunately only very few are voters!
The factors that were given were physical violence of any kind (outside or within the family); mental violence; displacement; sexual abuse and trafficking; early marriage; child labour; a lack of formal identity, including birth registration; the absence of parental care; detention without sufficient cause; a lack of freedom of expression; discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity or disability; poverty; HIV/AIDS and other diseases; a lack of vital services (including education and health care)
When i look around me, at the kids of pwhy many of the above factors fit like a glove. So whether we are 6th or 66th, Indian children are not given their basic rights. And those who try and do something are hounded and harassed till they give up. the laws that are made for them, are often eyewash, as no proper roadmap is made let alone followed.
So where is the solution one may ask? Well like for everything else I believe it has to come one step at a time from the grassroots by creating simple models that raise awareness and make people responsible.
Seems like our law makers and protectors have forgotten the children of India. It is for us to make them remember that they too exist. It is time to take a serious look at them and do something.
and the combat cannot cease..
And the combat ceased, for want of combatants.
Le Cid (IV, 3).
These words from a play long forgotten sprung to my mind this morning. Live every child put through the French system. Corneille is a must and often the play selected is Le Cid, where a tragic hero finds himself caught between his love and his duty as a result of a series of events outside his control. One is reminded of the doubting Arjuna in the beginning of the Mahabharata.
Both are compelled to follow their duty and fight someone dear. In the case of the French hero, the battle ends as for want of combatants!
I find myself in much in a similar situation where a series of events seem to have snowballed pushing me inside a labyrinth I cannot find the exit of. What makes it worse is that the enemy is invisible but powerful using simple minds as Machiavellian weapons.
Nowhere does the law say that one cannot terminate someone’s service. There must be hordes of people having lost jobs for various reasons, and none of them seem to have been meat for shady Trade Unions as these as well as the labour inspectors are well fed by factory owners and other employers who break every law with impunity.
I find it strange that a tiny organisation, who pays minimum wages as per law, and goes beyond what is expected to be present when people are in need, finds itself accused of vile and reprehensible things at every step. How can we be a danger to anyone, or are politicians and slum lords scared of the awareness we spread?
From providing women, to pocketing funds, I have done it all. I wish I had the wisdom and the ability to laugh it off, but pwhy is a child I have created with love and hardwork, possibly the best things i have done in my life, and I cannot distance myself.
Sometimes I think of locking it up but I know that this is exactly what my detractors want. But when I imagine, even for an instant, pwhy closed I realise that it will mean shattering many dreams, dreams you see in the picture above: young girls will drop out of school, babies will be back on the street, manu will not have any playmates, nasreen will not be able to dance to celebrate Independence day, and young Sunil will have to beat iron all his life.
Many may say: so what, there are millions like them ? My answer is simply, yes but if millions like us took the first step then things may change. Some of my staff, feeling extremely dejected this morning, asked me why were such things happening. I just answered that it was simply a micro reflection of the macro reality of India, and it was imperative to set the micros right so that the macro can change.
Our battle cannot cease, we are its combatants and everyone who has believed and supported us. If it ceases, that it mean that there is no hope for a better tomorrow. The enemy has to be worn down and won over. And if you ask why, then my answer is simple: Manu cannot go back to begging on the streets, his body infested by maggots, Nasreen has to dance at every celebration and Sunil must have a choice in life.
This combat will continue, even it there is only one combatant.
a hero to emulate
I often wonder who are the present heroes that the children of India can look up to and want to model one’s self on. The ones that are often cited are jaded or otherworldly.
We live in times when all we hear about is violence steeped in the widest variety of sauces. Our so called leaders are busy fulfilling their dubious agendas, or filing their pockets, their bureaucratic acolytes in tow.
People are murdered in crowded rooms but the state prosecutor cannot find a witness as the so called guardians a law are busy perfecting the art of covering up.
When we were young there were many we wanted to emulate: our teachers, often being the first choice. Today students beat up teachers to death in public, and no one stands up for a dead colleague. This is the India we live in, one where everyone runs scared.. or almost every one as when you are about to give up all hope comes by a simple faceless Indian, a barely literate peon who rises above everyone and conquers his fear and does the right thing though he knows that he may lose his life.
Komal Singh Senger a peon in the college where the sordid incident took place did not succumb to fear and came out to tell the truth and identify the culprits. he is of course stunned by the inertia of his senior educated colleagues and says: Because they have lost all integrity. It’s a shame that they continue in this profession, all of them should be shifted out everybody should be shifted out. Everybody from the Principal to the entire college staff who are scared to speak. If they cannot speak out for their own colleague, there is no doubt that no one will protect me either.he goes a step further when refusing monetary sops to buy his silence he adds: Yes, I was offered money. They said they would marry off my daughters and bear the expenses. But I don’t care. They will get married when the time is right. I did not give birth to them thinking that such people would relieve me of my responsibilities. Why should I take money from them?
It is true that he has been given police protection but we all know the strength of two constables in the face of those who are trying to protect the culprits. One can only hope that this true Indian will be protected. It becomes incumbent on all self respecting Indians to ensure his safety. Were anything to happen to him than all that is honourable and good would be lost forever and we would become a land of people ruled by fear.
Sengar is someone that every child should know about as he vindicates the stand that integrity and righteousness does not come with money or power, but lies within everyone irrespective of his origin. he is a man who could not see injustice and stood by what he believed to be right.
We salute Komal Sigh Senger, a true Indian!
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intuition to validation
The bete noire of any not-for-profit organisation is undoubtedly its sustainability particularly if one views such work as having a duration in space and time. Education above all does not make any sense if its temporality is limited to the ‘bon vouloir’ of funding agencies.
This is one of the reason that we, from day one, shunned instructional sources of funding as they are far too often linked to too many ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. We preferred a far larger funding group namely individuals.
I cannot even remember when I first thought of the one-rupee-a-day option, but in spite of its Herculean administrative hassles, it intuitively felt right from the instant it sprung in my mind.
Then like so many of us, I got swayed by others and the ideas that they mooted ad nauseam. As everyone seemed to view my idea with an array of negative reasons ranging from doubts about its difficult execution to cynical remarks about its every essence I played along and began our quest for sustainability which burnt a huge hole in our tiny resources and covered a range of activities: paper and jute bags, costume jewels, nutritive biscuits, baby clothes, bio-diesel plant nurseries, soaps, chocolates.. the list is endless and met with as many obstacles: lack of adequate outlets, competition that one could not meet, licence and permit raj but above all the total refusal of people to give up their salary syndrome, something that I believe is particular to Delhi.
Somehow when people set foot in India’s capital city – @ of over 600 a day says recent statistics, they somehow feel they earned the right to the elusive government job. I can cite countless instances of simple people having paid unfathomable sums to touts to get them a government job. Wonder how rich they and self sufficient they could have become had they invested that amount in something as simple as a chai shop. So it becomes impossible to get people to shed that attitude and take their lives in their own hands. Now basing our sustainability on such efforts, was a recipe for disaster as we learnt the hard but necessary way.
So we are back to square 1 and to the magic number 1 as this is the only way we can flip the existing equation. I have always held that development and change will come from the bottom when every one is aware of his/her responsibility in the democratic and civic process. As long as we carry on dispersing hand outs things cannot change as the process entails immobility: the giver gives and the recipient takes.
We have seen in the recent past many things move when people got involved albeit thanks to the oh so powerful media. A rupee a day gives everyone the possibility of altering his/her status irrespective of caste, creed, or economic background and of taking an active part in change.
It is a uphill task, one that will take time as we move with baby steps. But it is the only one that will esnure duration and multiplication. Till then we will need support and we hope that it will be in the form of 1 rupee donors so that we can evolve a strategy and put it to test.
In her second novel, Leonora Miano a writer from Cameroun talks about women taking charge of their own destiny, as this activist writer strongly believes that the new tomorrow will dawn on her continent only when Africans themselves take charge. This is a lesson that transcends continents, one I hope we learn soon.
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up, up and away…. another b & b
Wonder what mr p. is thinking as he climbs the steps to a temple he decided to visit on his monthly day out.
This is the same kid who should not have been around had all things remained as they were in the life he was born to live. So what is it that altered his life? A simple question with a multitude of answers starting with the now jaded and tired karma. From a boiling pan to a boarding school has been a quantum B&B leap.
Everywhere around us with fashionable and compulsive regularity people talk about the need to change things, build a better tomorrow, save children, impart education. The list goes on ad nauseam and often stops there: a string of words that often end with a cynical shrug at the numbers.
And yet if even an infinitesimal percentage of these well meaning should make the effort to translate their words into action, the change would be huge. What one should understand is that even one life saved or changed or even touched carries within it a ripple effect no one can stop.
That has been our philosophy all along and I can say that our success has been far greater than expected and heartwarming. The problems encountered have strangely and unfortunately come from the very people who master the art of juggling words and expounding on the need to change things. They have the power to do so, and it would not take them much. All we ask them to do is to dip in their pocket and give us one coin each day, but we have learnt that the coin in question is very elusive.
One of the stumbling blocks of organisations trying to work at the grassroots has been sustainability, which translates into the act of finding that elusive coin. Somehow between the thought and action lie a host of obstacles that can all be bundled into one word: mistrust. I do agree that present NGO sector is replete with dubious organisations, but among those lie some who do reach out and transform lives.
The reason why we thought of seeking a-rupee-a-day donors was based on the prevailing scenario in the hope that people would agree to set that mistrust aside as the amount sought was almost invisible. We still hope to be able to do it but at the same time we are aware that the ultimate power of change lies within the beneficiary group and that is and has been our ultimate goalpost, or to say it in other words the high road.
One has to however realise that this will take time and were we not to survive that the whole exercise would come to naught.
We will not give up, but this i a road we cannot walk alone, i hope someone is hearing?