This picture is not from some old western. Nor is it a shot from a movie set in medieval days. This is a picture that was taken a week ago,  214 kilometres from where I sit and write. It is making world headline news and simple Googling for the words – cousins – rape – India – will show you how the story has been picked across land and seas. I normally do not like putting such pictures up but this time I felt the need to do so. It is high time we garner the courage to look straight at this horrific picture and have the guts to hand our heads in shame more so because, we are today on a high after the elections and rearing to make India count. Sorry, but until we ensure that no such horror happens we cannot aspire to that dream.

As you can see, the picture is of two girls hanging on a tree. They were so hung after being gang raped. The girls were Dalit – low caste – and the perpetrator of this heinous crime belonged to a higher caste. This reminds one the jus primae noctis an alleged legal right allowing the lord of a medieval estate to take the virginity of his serfs’ maiden daughters. It is yet again of the assertion of feudal lord to assert their old on the weaker communities. The police as always did nothing till the villagers refusing to hand over the bodies forced the administration to book the constables who had refused to act. Ultimately the guilty were ‘booked’ but the girls aged 14 and 15 were no more. As usual local politicians spouted empty words, the Government ‘promised’ action and the Central Government ‘sought’ a report from the State Government. The toothless Women’s Commission has also sought a report.

If you visit our new Prime Minister’s website and leave a ‘message’ you will, after an initial acknowledgment, get a response in a day or two.  The message says:

India is a blessed land, known for its glorious culture. It is our land that has shown the way to the world time and again. Today, we need to once again ignite the lamp of progress that will take our nation to greater heights and I believe together we can.

Once again I thank you for your wishes and I seek your support and participation in our endeavour to create a strong, developed and inclusive India.

When you see the picture above, the words make no sense. How can you be strong, developed and inclusive if revolting incidents like the one recounted above continue with impunity. How can you quote your past glory when the present is outrageous. And these are not isolated incidents. Far from that.

Rather than celebrate the hope that seems to be the flavour of the day, I hang my head in shame for my silence and my total helplessness. I hang my head in shame for our collective muteness and apathy.

We need to stop limiting our rants and raves to what we feel affects us and resort to guilty silence when the crime is perpetrated on people who we consider outsiders. Last year we somehow found our voices when the young woman was brutally raped in a bus in the capital. True a woman who went to see an English movie in a mall sort of made it to our ‘kind’ and the fear became real. But how do two little village girls in a remote area get our sympathy and make us take the cudgels for them.

The two teenagers were Indians just like you and me, they are constitutional rights just like you and me, they had dreams and hopes just like all teenagers even if theirs were somewhat different. The humiliation, pain and horror they felt whilst being raped was the same we would feel if it were to happen to us. The terror they must have experienced when they knew they were dying was no different from the one we would feel. I can go on endlessly. They were someone’s daughter, granddaughter, sister, friend.! And yet no one helped them in their distress, even those who are paid to do so. On the other hand they became willing partners in the crime.

Our December 2012 rants and raves did not amount to much. Rapes have not stopped and the perpetrators are still alive, but even their walking to the gallows would not make a difference to the crime rate. Our voice has to rise each time such an aberration occurs and we should not keep silent till the time they stop. I urge you all to do so in whatever way you feel comfortable with.

I hope our new Government gives the attention needed to these crimes as they mar the image of India in a way we cannot wish away.

The latest polemic in town is the issue of our new Education Minister not having a degree, the hallowed piece of paper that opens doors in India. To me is it is absolutely a non issue and will elucidate my take as we go on. However it has become a free for all that may just boomerang on the initiator! It is the question of the day on some channel, and has created a TwitterStorm so let us try and see which side we stand on.

For the past decade and more I have had ample proof that degrees and certificates mean nothing on their own. I am well placed as for the past that many years I have been working with a bunch of great people who have no degrees or certificates but are doing jobs that I challenge anyone to do. I am taking of my staff at project why which was selected after an intuitive decision of mine to source all my staff from within the community. I needed ‘teachers’ to ‘teach’ kids from class I onwards. Now the community where I was on the prowl had scant degree holders and had this been an imperative in my search I would have found no one. I knew what I was looking for and also what I wanted from them: passion, dedication, motivation and the desire to learn. I realised many women had some education that had often been stopped in the tracks because of marriage; I also found some very bright souls that had ‘dropped’ out of school not because they lacked ability but because of some decision of illiterate and over caring parents. The feisty woman who heads a large part of project why is one such kid. When she came to me she had been taken out of school by her doting mother who did not want her daughter to go back to school after she was severely punished for being a few days late in paying her fees. The young girl had been made to stand in the sun and had subsequently fainted. Today she has certificates and degrees more for form then anything else and runs the project with great aplomb! This kid, as kid she was when I met her, is an indubitable proof of the fact that common sense laced with a passion to learn can move mountains.

My other co-ordinator may have had a degree but that was not why I selected him. I selected him because when I first met him and discussed some social issues, I was amazed at how alike was our thinking processes, our values and our approach to social issues. I decided that I needed him by my side and have never regretted what one may call my impulsive decision. He runs my women and children centre with tact and flexibility and has a solved many a thorny issues that even I couldn’t have.

Both these wonderful souls have been my guides and given me not only support but the best advise I could have hoped for and unable me to grow project why to what it is today. Without them I would have stumbled, fallen and even failed. Yet they do not have swanky degrees, do not speak the Queen’s  English or have the ‘profile’ that is usually sought for such posts. What they have in ample measure is compassion, understanding, street smartness and belief in what we do. I could not have asked for more.

The team my two stalwarts lead is also partly  degree less or possesses degrees that have no value at all as is the case in India where 33% is still the passmark to graduate. It is sad that our education has come to this. I have had young men with BAs and even MAs from other States and the street worthiness of these degrees is nil. Actually they more often than not, prove a hindrance as in many cases it gives the ‘graduate’  a sense of false superiority. We have had such young men who have ‘refused’ to work under a woman coordinator with less education. Obviously we bid them a hasty farewell. But that is the exception to the rule. Team project why is five star and as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, kids they have taught have never failed and some are now gainfully employed. As I write these words I just got a call that one of our students has secured 96% in his XII class! I am waiting with bated breath for all the results though I know it beforehand. My kids have never failed me. All this, with teachers who have scant certificates!

Before I end this post I must mention one more person who proved beyond doubt that diplomas and certificates are not needed when you have a mission. Somewhere circa 1998 I had to make a decision that, though incomprehensible to most, was the only one I could make if I were to be worthy of being a mother. I decided to withdraw my younger daughter from school as I knew it was destroying her spirit. This wonderful kid had told me when she was 9 that she knew what she wanted to do in life: care for people with disabilities. I nudged her as gently as I could and as far as I could down the conventional line of diplomas and degrees. She played the game to the best of her ability but there was a moment when we both knew we had reached the end of the line. Even if I had the whole world against me, I knew that I had done the right thing for my child. She began training with autistic children at the age of 15 and has never looked  back. Today she handles the special children of project why with élan and confidence and has years of experience that no one can match. She is to the manor born!

Over the past years I have had the opportunity of testing some candidates with so called degrees. We had an MBA from one of the new universities that love blowing their bugle and come at a heavy price. I was shocked by the total lack of skills of this young man who barely could write a mail in proper English or for that matter handle any of the tasks assigned to him independently. I am glad he found a job as he did not meet our criteria.

We have also had a few persons with certificates in special education but sadly they have not met our standards as they lacked the compassion and common sense approach that is needed when you deal with students with diverse disabilities and varied ages. In a way I am glad that they too found greener pastures. Come to think of it, the ones who have stayed on came with no degree in special education but with their heart in the right place.

So to me degrees and super degrees do not matter; what matters is how you perform on the ground and more than that how you tackle challenges. Our new education minister may turn out to be a better one than someone armed with Doctorates and Post Doctorates. I am sure she will master in thinking out of the box and come up with the solutions our children urgently and desperately need. She comes with a fresh mind and the desire to prove her detractors wrong.

In India’s capital city which is in celebration mood with the arrival of a new government, a man killed his wife and two daughters aged 2 and 6 months. Their crime? Well the former had not given him a son, and instead born two girls that also needed to be killed. The man and his mother had tortured the poor woman for her inability to ‘produce’ a son and of course for not having brought enough dowry. But let us forget the dowry issue but get back to sex determination saga. To have a boy you need the Y chromosome and that is something a woman DOES NOT HAVE. So she can never be responsible for the child not being a boy.This is a scientific fact and unless we petition to God to change things, this will remain a reality. This was discovered in 1905 by Nettie Stevens who realised that sex determination is due to the presence and absence of the Y chromosome. Women do not have it so how can they be held responsible for something they do not possess biologically.

However it seems to have been traditionally held that women were the ones who determined sex, and  over the ages, women have suffered the worst humiliation for producing girls. In some cases, like the one   cited above, a woman had to pay the ultimate price for something she is completely innocent of. What happened to the innocent until proved guilty!

I have been nurturing the dream of another project, this one named project Y that rhymes with, as my grandson would say as he is into rhyming words, Why! I wonder why, whether it is in biology curricula or sex education, this fact is not made crystal clear. Even to children one could easily say: papa provides the seed and mama the place for the seed to grow. Now whether the seed is an apple or an orange depends on papa. If little boys and little girls were told that at an early age, then the millions of women would not have to suffer a cruel fate.

I know such a project can only work if it is done on a large scale by the State machinery on the lines of an earlier family planning programme initiated many decades ago when catchy slogans appeared everywhere: Ham do, hamare do – we are two, we have two -. I have been thinking of a slogan but my      copywriting skills are not the best. So if somebody can come up with one, it would be great.

As I said this is mammoth task, one that large international agencies should have adopted long ago. To my mind, it would also bring a perceptible change to the number of children born, while of course freeing women from a ‘crime’ they are innocent of.

But who will bell the cat or even cats I should say? That is the question. In our country sex is taboo and considered ‘wrong’, though it is the basis of creation. Hence sex education is defiled by some fringe elements who want to ‘protect’ the honour and tradition of the land. But it is time we talked about it and if the word S** is offensive, then find one that suits your misplaced values, but it is really time we talked about it unabashedly. How can we as a nation, hold our head high when a woman is murdered with her two young children because she gave birth to them!

Will the new Government which has the numbers look at this problem with honesty and courage so that no woman has to ever pay the ultimate price for bringing a little girl into this world.

Dear Prime Minister

Coronation Countdown is what of the news channel has chosen to name the hours before your swearing in today, May 26th 2014, 18 00 hours. As I write these words, the clock is ticking and we are about 8 hours away. I like the use of coronation for your taking over the helm of our country as I view it as the coronation of the voiceless people of India who after being perhaps bedazzled or simply manipulated, believed that their future lay in the hands of those who used ‘poverty’ as a clever political plank. I too must admit that for some time I fell under that spell and was convinced that all the programmes targeted at the poor would ultimately rid us of the shameful bane of poverty. Today I admit my mistake.

There have many new age theories that propagate that the more you talk about something, the more you attract it and hence it seems that we have collectively erred for brandishing the banner of poverty high and loud. True millions in India are poor and this something we must be deeply ashamed of, but we must view them as part of the whole or in other words as Citizens of India. I would like to think of today as the coronation as these citizens who I hope will finally be given a voice. You have said time and again that you are the Prime Minster of 125 crores Indians and that is what we want to believe.

I do not want to rain on your parade as today is your day. You have proved without an iota of doubt that India is a country where anyone can aspire to and become Prime Minister. You come to the hallowed grounds of the land with a story, a story that every Indian can identify with and thus you become a role model, something we Indians did not have. As you rightly pointed out, those who fought for Independence and even paid the ultimate sacrifice cannot be emulated as we have to live for India. Today the humblest heart looks up to you and feels that s/he to as an opportunity to break every ceiling that till now weighed on his head. With you at the helm, no ceiling is strong enough if you have the will, the honesty and the motivation to succeed. I would urge you to put an end to the bogey of poverty that has too long been a stranglehold.

I know that you have your task cut out for you and its is nothing short of Herculean! But I also pray that these tasks do not entail the falling in the crevices of oblivion, of issues that plague people everyday and tar India in a shameful manner. Most of these are due to the arrogance and feudal attitude of the machinery that we finally bid farewell to.

Without raining on your parade, I would like to remind you gently that on this 26th day of May 7000 citizens of India will die of hunger and of these 5000 are children under 5. This has to end not by handing a few kilos of grain a month in the name of food security, but by setting into motion actions that will entail self sufficiency in every family. Indians are proud people by nature and should be rid of the humiliation of having to beg for what is and should be a right granted by the Constitution. I would like to again draw your attention to the story of Ashok Kaurase who walked 35km in scorching temperatures as he was told that his compensation for crop losses had been credited to his account. It had not and on his walk back, he collapsed and died 10 km from his home. The post mortem indicated that there was not a grain of food in the 50 year old’s stomach. The family had not eaten for days. This happened a month ago. The man had made many trips to the bank to be told that it would take more time. The sum was a paltry 4200 Rs, but to him and his family, it meant life or death. That the money was credited a day after the news was reported is to my mind highly suspect. I tried to find a link to this story but could not. It has appeared in this week’s The Week with the title Hunger Strikes. So you see Prime Minister, even what is promised never reaches in time. Maybe your first step should be to ensure that promises are kept and to make those in charge of implementing such programmes aware of the fact that they are not giving charity and need to respect the dignity of the beneficiary. Such programmes are a sad reminder of our failure in implementing the constitutional rights given to them on 26 January 1950. Deaths from malnutrition have to stop specially in a county where grains rot in the open and food is thrown with impunity.

On this 26th of May, Sir, 6 women will be raped and 14 molested in Delhi. This too has to stop and here again it is not simply by sending a rapist to the gallows that we will solve the problem. Gender equality is again something that will need to be addressed by setting into motion changes in the mindset of those who believe in the inferiority of the female sex. Education can play a role in this and  we need to shed our apprehensions about including sex education at an early age. Little girls are raped and abused  in our country. They need to be taught the difference between good and bad touch as early as possible. And the teaching of the role of X and Y chromosome in determining the sex of a child needs to be explained loud and clear to ensure that no woman ever has to suffer the pain of being held responsible for not bearing a son.

You have given hope Prime Minister to every Indian whose heart beats for India and in your coronation we see the coronation of every soul born on this land.

I wish you success and fortitude.

An Indian

Whenever a person in uniform with his cap on enters any space where I happen to be, I normally get up. It is what I have been taught by my parents: RESPECT. If it is someone dear to me then I am quick to ask him to remove his cap so I can give him a hug. I know how puzzled my staff felt when in early Project Why days I sprung up like a jack in the box even if the beat constable entered my office in full uniform. Yes, the very beat constable who has known for his harassing and his corrupt ways. It is only when he removed his cap that I sat down. It was the very woman whose father and loved ones were mercilessly beaten by men in uniform who taught this as there was a difference: the ones who beat my granddad where working for the coloniser; the one who entered my office represented free India. That he was despicable was a matter of his conscience, not a reason to disrespect an institution in free India.