53% is the number of households who defecate in the open in India. This is according to a World Bank study. So about 300 million women have no access to toilets. The two young teenagers who were gang raped and hung on a mango tree had stepped out of their homes to relieve themselves. This is probably the only time women step out of their homes alone and thus become easy prey to sexual predators. One of the village women revealed candidly that Men go out in the day, so women can go only early in the morning or late at night.

The likes of us cannot even begin to imagine what life can be without access to a toilet. I remember a friend of mine, who was spearheading a nutrition programme for pregnant and lactating mothers, being told by the very group that she was targeting, that they would not alter their eating pattern in anyway as they had ‘trained’ their bodies to be in sync with the 3 to 4 am slot the women of their village were given to defecate in the field.

That was just an aparte.

Let us go back to the link between rapes and lack of toilet facilities. Maybe a sensible thing would be to initiate a massive time bound programme to ensure that every home has access to a safe toilet 24/7/365!  A community led Total Sanitation Campaign is in existence since 1999 but it seems as always to have been lost in translation.

As I have often held we are masters at quick fix solutions and crisis management and once again this is what seems to be happening once again. Even before one could say Jack Robinson, a leading NGO working on sanitation has ‘decided’ to  construct toilets in all the houses of Katra Shahadatganj village of Baduan, where two sisters were allegedly gangraped and murdered last week while they went to relieve themselves in fields. I wonder how many rapes it has taken for them to decide to take such action and above all why the previous Governments have not given this critical problem the attention it needed. It is estimated that India needs 120 million toilets. Time to address this with urgency.

It is said that 60% of the rapes in the state of UP where the horrific crime occurred. We have smart statistics and even quote them but what have we done about the issue. You would not believe me but many of the project why children who live in slums like the one in the picture do not have access to toilets. The ‘water tank’ you see in the picture is empty. It was the water tank atop a community toilet that must have once been inaugurated with much fanfare and lauded as an achievement, and then abandoned as it had got the initiator the brownie points sought. The families in the area use the railway tracks or any kind of privacy they can conjure. This is South Delhi.

Today Shining India cuts a sorry figure across the world. The US stated : it is “horrified” at reports of sexual violence and murders in India! The UN Chief is  appalled by the brutal rape and gruesome murder of two teenaged women in India who had ventured out because they did not have access to a toilet.

How many times are we going to hand our heads in shame and then get on with our lives.

An interesting article in today’s newspaper sums up the situation spot on. it states: So instead of flinching, keep looking for clues to how dalits are seen by far too many ‘other village folks’ in those upsetting photographs until you are horrified enough to do something about it. I wonder howling it will take in a scenario where those at the helm quip ‘boys will be boys’ not realising that such words travel faster than light and what may have bees said on the spur of the moment within a contact – the now jaded excuse of every politician who says an inanity – and become a reflection on us all and compelled the United Nations Secretary General to state: We say no to the dismissive, destructive attitude of ‘Boys will be boys’. Together, we can empower more people to understand that violence against women degrades us all. It is very shameful for us Indians to have to hear this, when we as a collective conscience should have been the ones to cry out loud.

So we will build toilets in a frenzy that will soon peter out. But let me ask you whether you really believe that building toilets will stop predators from prowling. They will simply have to look elsewhere. We cannot keep all likely to be raped  women shut in a country where you can be raped at 70  years of age or if you are a few months old!

You do not want rape to happen than build toilets and lock every female – from birth to death – away! I have a better solution kills us all, and then live and grow old till the last man standing. End of the story

If you are raped it is always your fault. In the city it is your clothes, your life style etc that incites rape and in the villages it is your caste, as is that gives the feudal lord and his kiln the right to ravage you. In the article mentioned above and aptly entitled Until we recognise caste atrocities for what they are, they will continue unabated as in Badaun, the author looks at the horrific scene from the likes of us’s point of view and says While we take in the contents of these photographs — of the two teenage girls who were raped and then left hanging from a tree last week in Katra Shadat Ganj village in Uttar Pradesh’s Badaun district — we also quietly take in a different set of information: so these are dalits in a UP village in 2014 India. Our brain searches and fails to find any distinguishing feature to mark it as a gathering of dalits. So this is how dalits look like, we tell ourselves.

True we may sort of connect with the short dress, smoking and drinking view but a girl like the one hanging on the tree does quite tick as to us caste remains a vague notion that happens in some other world! As the author states What the display in Badaun underlines is caste not just as demographic pie charts or identifiable target groups for social welfare programmes, but also as an all-too-visible bar code for higher castes in vast swathes of our sovereign socialist secular democratic republic to identify prey. Whether we like it or not, this dehumanising tradition thrives in many parts of our land.

Many of my colleagues belong are Dalits and believe you me, they have qualities that I have rarely found in the supposed high castes! Yet they tell me how even today in their villages they are not aloud to draw water from the main village well; they have to get off their bicycle when they passed in front of the house of a high caster person; they cannot smoke in front of any person of a higher caste; their wedding parties with horse, band and music can only happen outside the village. After they hanse danced and frolicked, the music stops, the groom gets of his horse and the wedding party moved quietly across the village to the house of the bride. No wonder many now chose to have their weddings in the city by hiring wedding halls and playing their music to their heart’s content!

But this is the reality of India version 2014. This is happening a few kilometres away from where we live. It is time we took on our responsibilities and dirtied our hands. In 2014 we chose democracy over family rule. It is not enough to celebrate a PM who has risen from the soil, it is time every Indian enjoys the same rights and above all the right to true freedom.

I urge you to listen to the words of this rap. They are heart rendering. Here are a some snippets:

An educational system isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn’t teach them how to make a life wrote activist David Suzuki. It makes a lot of sense but to reach there, we in India have a log way to go. At present our system does not even teach children how to make a living, let alone how to make a life. Education today for a large part of India’s children, I mean those born on the wrong side of the fence, is abysmal and practically non-existent. We have first hand knowledge of this as this is what we have been doing for the past decade and a half! Teaching children who attend  State run schools! What is heart breaking and wowing at the same time is to see how easy it is for these kids to catch up and reach the top. A child who may have spent 5 years in school and not learnt to read let alone write properly, needs just a year to come up to the mark. We can barely help a handful.

I saw a TV clip yesterday and it broke my heart.

It is a clip about a school in Bihar where there is a building where 4 schools run, one school in one room! What is heart breaking is to see the children in these images. Far from being unruly or inattentive, they do the best they can in the circumstances and the desire to learn is palpable in the eyes of these children. Shame on us and shame on any Government that allows this to happen. Again and again we seem to be masters at letting down our children. I wonder whether those in power watch such programmes of have a way of finding out the reality on the field. Sadly, it does not seem to be so as even in India’s capital city, conditions in government run schools are pathetic.

I hope our new Minister will look at the realities on the ground and before embarking on sweeping changes, will do something for the immediate. I was perturbed but I guess not shocked to see an article stating that the new Minister wishes to include Ancient Texts in the curriculum. I guess it was to be expected though I would have thought that she being a young mother who has children in school does realise that all is not well in our education system. I would have liked her to audit the ground realities and try and see what could be done to better the plight of the children NOW in school.

I agree that many things need to be reviewed but there are some that need immediate attention. If we go by Suzuki’s words and look at school as a place that does nor just help you make a living but should teach you how to make a life, the onus upon those to whom we have entrusted the responsibility of imparting the right to education now enshrined in our Constitution to our children is huge. I have nothing against teaching ancient texts and for that matter would love seeing our children learning about ancient texts of other civilisations too, but as things stand now the State has not been able to provide even the basic needed to impart quality education. There are schools without teachers, and without desks and drinking water and toilets: the list is endless. Maybe the first task that needs to be done is fix what one can for the children in school now.

We were all taken aback by the results of the Teacher Eligibility Test in 2013 when 1 in every 56 candidate cleared the exam! We are again shocked when we learnt that Indian children ranked 2nd last when tested on their reading, math and science abilities. The only country they beat was Kyrgyzstan. Yet Indian children do exceedingly well when given an enabling environment. This not only the case of Indian children studying abroad but also of Project Why children who study in State run schools and often come to us with huge lacunas, but make these up in a jiffy and stand their own after that. And this I would like to underline is with the help of untrained teachers. Yet these very teachers have the true skills required for children to succeed: patience, love, motivation and commitment. For us every child is a winner and is so treated. It is up to us to find the spark and ignite it. So on a short term I strongly believe that what we need is motivated people who could pull up the children bogged in the system, children who cannot wait.

It is sad that our present education system dos not even teach people to make a living. This is because of internal flaws in the laws that seemed to have been drafted by people who either do not have children, or have forgotten what education is all about. I will again stress the need to rise the pass percentage from 33 to 50% and to put in abeyance the no fail policy till class VIII. This policy can only work if the teachers are committed and proper internal assessments are done. In many state run schools, answers are written on the blackboard and dutifully copied by the students. I can never forget  the stand-offish manner in which a secondary school Principal told me that they only covered 40% of the course as kids could pass with 33! What they do not realise is that by doing this they shut all the doors to higher education as in today’s India you need 99%+ to accede to a  state run University where fees are still affordable. So it becomes imperative for all schools, particularly state run ones to ensure that children get the best education possible and a level playing ground. Now this can happen only by raising the standards of state run schools so that they become an option for middle class parents who I know will welcome this with glee. Only a quality common school system can usher the change we want or pretend to want. As long as political parties will go the ‘vote bank’ way, this is a long time coming.

Another aberration is the age span for free education: 6 to 14. We all know that the 0 to 6 interval is very important to the child’s growth and learning. Pre school teaches many skills – motor, social, conceptual – that prepare the child to formal schooling. Whereas ‘rich’ kids have literate parents who become their first teachers and are sent to pre schools when they are 36 months, kids from poor homes spend these years on the street, often cared for by a host of people, hearing foul language and  learning poor habits and develop a set of skills that often become a hindrance to their schooling. In many homes they never see a book or newspaper and the only written word they may see is what is printed on boxes and packages. Transiting from forced free spirits to a world of supposed structure is difficult.

True a scheme was mooted more than 3 decades ago which was supposed to run creches where such skills should have been taught. But these are a total failure and need to be re looked at and reinvented. I would urge the new dispensation to include pre school in the free school ambit. That is the beginning but what do you say to a compulsory school system that ends at 14 when the child would be in class VII or VIII. A right to education should mean a right to schooling to the end. 14 makes no sense at all, more so when rather than improve state run schools, the Government has come up with yet another aberration: 25% reservations in all schools for poor kids, what happens to a kid when he reaches the age of 14. Does he leave school, revert to a state run school or have his father rob a bank to pay the high fee. However the reality is that this facility has been hijacked by clever middle class parents so in fact, nothing has changed for the poor children.  

Another flaw in our system is that it presumes that every child should get the same schooling all the way till class XII. With the 33% saga it means that you may have a lot of semi literate kids with a school leaving certificate. Now all kids are not intellectuals and even if they were, the market forces needs other skills that can be taught whilst still in school. It is time we widened the science-commerce- art triad to include vocational skills and even hands on training. A class VIII kid interested in car or bike repairs could begin learning this skill and going to a maintenance centre let us say twice a week so that by the time he finishes school he is ready to join the skilled work force. I hope someone in the corridors that decide the fate of children, think about this. Sadly what we have seen in the past years is scant out of the box thinking.

Children are not and should not be guinea pigs. The CBSE introduced the Formative and Summative Assessment and open book examinations: Some of the main features of Formative assessment are that it is diagnostic and remedial, provides effective feedback to students, allows for the active involvement of students in their own learning, enables teachers to adjust teaching to take account of the results of assessment and recognises the profound influence that assessment has on the motivation and self-esteem of students, both of which are crucial influences in learning. I wonder how many teachers are capable of comprehending this system, let alone using it at all. These can only be successful with well trained teachers and the state run school kids face a double whammy here: uninterested teachers an illiterate parents. Before jumping into new areas it is imperative to ensure that all capabilities to implement them are tested and functional. This is a long term game and not one that can be imposed at the drop of a hat.

Teaching children about ones own culture should not be frowned at, provided it is done in a comprehensive and inclusive manner. All children in the French school system learn that our ancestors the Gauls were good warriors. I did too. But this was in junior classes and as we grew up the curriculum widened and by the end of one’s schooling you had a well rounded education. To give just you just an example which will I hope make my point clear, the French Baccalaureate, when I passed it,  had both a written and an oral exam. The oral exam was to test your ability to think out of the box. History was an oral examination and the curriculum was World War II to present times, in my case 1967. There were no choices, you actually picked a question out of a ‘hat’ and were given 20 minutes to prepare. The question I got was: Had World War II been lost by the allies, what, in your opinion would have been the present economic situation. There is no right or wrong answer. You just needed to defend your point. No matter how much you learn by heart, it will hot help you unless you understand what you learn. In counterpoint to this anecdote, when I wrote my first year Philosophy (Hons) papers in Delhi University, it was replete with ‘I think’ and ‘in my opinion’. I failed! My teacher told me to put all my thoughts in quotes and put a French Philosopher’s name, and I would pass. I did and passed with honours! Get the point.

To teach to make a life and not a living, it is important to help children learn to think for themselves and find their solutions. It is impossible to show them that there is more than one ‘right’ way. Education stands on the famous Delors Pillars of learning:  Learning to Know, Learning to Do, Learning to Live Together, and Learning to Be.

When I look at education in India, I wonder if we even achieve one of them.

It has been about 5 hours since I wrote my blog about the horrific gang rape and hanging of two young teenagers and my decision to raise my voice against such shameful occurrences till someone finally breaks the deafening silence. Five hours is all it took to be at my post again! Another teenager was gang-raped in the constituency represented by the supremo of the ruling party of the State. She was seventeen. And if that was not enough to get us seething, a rape survivor’s mother was brutally beaten by the father of the rapist because she refused to withdraw the case against his son. This occurred in the constituency of the Chief Minister of the same state, and the son of the aforementioned supremo. No arrest has been made while the woman is battling for her life.

I again want to reiterate that the strong, developed and inclusive India that our new Prime Minister wants to usher cannot begin to see the light of day as long as such horrific incidents continue to happen. Women constitute 49% of the population and if they are not included then India cannot be considered a blessed land!

The Badaun rape case as it seems to be known now seems to have got the attention of one and all. I am not a follower of Antisthenes but a sense of deja vu fills me with despair. I guess sufficient meat to prove my point. What do you say when you hear the Chief Minister of the State where these horrendous rapes have taken place under his watch and in his family stronghold tell a journalist who ask him about the abysmal law and order situation quip: “You’re safe, right? You feel secure?“. Let us not forget that it is the supremo of the same family who said some time back: boys make mistakes. The mistakes he was referring to was rape!

I do not see justice being meted in these circumstances. Some arrests have been made is what the State Government in a report to the centre and the guilty shall be punished. Why do I find this hard to believe?

An article that appeared touches a chord, if not many. It touches upon our reaction to such horrors. I will quote some lines that I found disturbing and yet so true: Sometimes a picture is not worth a thousand words. The photographs of the two Dalit girls, raped and strangled and then left dangling from a mango tree in Badaun have caused a firestorm. On one hand it’s been blasted as the “pornography of rape”. On the other hand, it’s been described as a jolt to wake up a blasé society where rape, especially out in the badlands of UP, is commonplace enough that it does not make front page news anymore. 

There is a point there. We are so inured, so numbed by the never ending horror story of rape that it seems we need to descend ever lower into the pits to be shocked to attention. It’s as if faced with a rape story, the media has to ask the question “What’s new about this one?” Is it a toddler? A foreign tourist? Or now is it the horrific spectacle of these two teenagers hanging from a mango tree while a crowd of villagers including children gawk?

The author ends his article with these terrifying words: If indeed we now need to see the “strange fruit” on our mango trees to be shocked, it begs the question about what kind of people we have become anyway.

These hard hitting words compel us to some serious soul searching. Have we really come down to this or will this photograph be the turning point we so need. Will it at least makes us accept that we have become people who are inured to atrocities as long as they do not touch our own. How many more such horrors will we have to see before we let out the cry that can bring about justice to all girls in our land.

Enough of these band aid and feel good solutions. Sadly our new Minister for women who is a woman herself has gone the usual way. She blames police laxity, and promises to create yet another rape crisis cell. She is also ‘willing’ to ‘recommend’ a CBI enquiry should the parents so wish. Come on what is the willingness and recommendation nonsense. The parents want JUSTICE and want this to never happen to another woman again. We want a Minister who is willing to think out of the box! We are fed up of ‘enquiries’ ‘commissions’ and such other jaded options. We are talking of young girls whose lives were brutally truncated before they even began. The little girl watching the scene must be thinking: is this going to be my fate to?

It is time to take the bull by the horns and to change all that needs to be changed. It is not the purview of one Minister or one department. It is concern of all the 49% of us! We have to get rid of everything that is feudal be it the police, the politicians or the so called feudal lords. We are a democracy. Don’t we love repeating this, so let us be a true one and right every tort.

Let us make these two beautiful girls the turning point and not look back!

It is one of us who could raped.

The new dispensation has fixed its top priorities, ten of them reminding us of the ten commandments! Priority number 2 states: Prioritise education, energy and water. Mr Modi has repeatedly during his campaigns said that the expectations of the education system remain to be fulfilled. This is music to my ears as I have always propounded that only quality education for all will help bring about the India’s of our dreams.

I have my take on education and state with conviction as for the last almost decade and a half I have been up close and personal with what goes in the name of education in our capital city. I have often written about this but feel that few take heed of my rants and raves. But I will soldier on stubbornly in the hope that I am heard.

Education in the other half of the city, the one the previous dispensation even hid behind giant placards during the infamous Commonwealth Games , is nothing but a sad and now jaded joke played year after year on millions of voiceless and helpless children. Though the city has large earmarked plots for schools, the ‘schools’ built on them can vary from enabling to forbidding. While some have adequate buildings others have one storied barracks with asbestos sheets and yet others have tents and classes in the open. This in a city with varied and often inclement weather. Some have desks often broken and splintered making them dangerous for children, some even have desks that are too high for the students who learn standing. I guess getting someone to cut the legs is an administrative procedure that may take ages! Toilets and drinking water facilities are also of diverse degree: from adequate to non-existent. A toilet without a door is a no no for a young girl you will agree. Where there are ‘playgrounds’ these are often unusable and dangerous. The husband recently was willing to upgrade the grounds of the school next ground and get coaches and equipment but was met with the hydra headed monster of red tape even though he was not asking for a penny and was creating the facility solely for the children of the school.

I could go on and on but I guess you get the picture. But there is more. After 67 years of Independence we have not been capable of building sufficient schools for the children of the capital and hence the same building is used in two shifts and our boys go to school in the afternoon when we all know capacities are diminished. And if that was enough, classes are overcrowded. In some cases there are over 120 kids in a class. This is mostly the case with girls, are even illiterate parents have now understood that the state run schools are not up to the mark so send their ‘sons’ to the myriad of private schools that have mushroomed to fill the gap.

In this situation the abysmal pass percentage of 33% and the no fail policy till class VIII is a no fail policy for large numbers of drop outs post class VIII drop outs that sometimes can barely read and write.

I would urge our new Education Minister to please hike up the pass percentage to 50% as elsewhere in the world and to reframe the no fail policy in a way that it ensures that a child moves on to the next class only if he has mastered the curriculum of the class s/he is in. Whatever the reason for lowering the pass percentage – I was told it was to increase the number of ‘graduates’ to access funds – it is absolutely detrimental to the child and no one has the right to play with any child’s future. I cannot begin to count the number of kids we have salvaged from these conditions, kids who have not only passed but become toppers.

The children of India deserve better and I hope our new PM and Education Minister will stand by them. They have waited for far too long!