by anouradha bakshi | Oct 18, 2016 | Uncategorized
Don’t go by the picture! These kids are the luckiest as they live on the bank of the river in the middle of green vegetable patches and breathe good clean air, or at least the best available in our capital city.
For the others the invisible bars of polluted air are slowly appearing and will soon incarcerate us all for the months to come.
You guessed right! Air pollution is on its way. WHO has just confirmed that Delhi’s air is the worst of all megacities. Fine particulate matter is already four times more than what is acceptable.
That the situation is critical is obvious but to put matter in perspective here is a fact: India’s capital was the only megacity to record a PM10 level above 200 µg/m³, exceeding the WHO air quality standard of 20 µg/m³ by more than 900 per cent.
The monsoons have gone and with it blue sky and breathable air. For the past few days a grey lid covers the city and no, its is not rain clouds. In some areas farmers have begun to set harvested fields on fire, construction sites are thriving and in a few days festive celebrations will begin and firecrackers will burst with impunity. And then as winter comes small fires will be lit to keep warm, more fields will be set on fire, cars will rev in the traffic and the smoke of industrial chimneys will add to the toxic cocktail. And we will be breathing this air as we have no choice.
Or do we?
We all know that the air is polluted, that water is scarce and so on but how many of us take any remedial measures. The rich will buy air purifiers and soon the poor will too as prices are coming done. Market forces!
Is it not time to stop looking for bad aid solutions and do something for mother Nature.
Easier said than done as the fight is somewhat skewed. Talk of firecrackers and it is all brought down to mores and tradition, and what about the fire to warm yourself. When you live on the street then that is the only way you can beat the biting cold. For farmers it is easier to set fire on the land than painstakingly pullout old roots.
Air pollution has dangerous effects on humans, animals and plants. It leads to heart and lung disease, global warming, acid rain and more. Children are the most affected. Children from urban slums suffer the most as they rarely take a break and get to breathe clean air.
The problem with the solutions are that they require life style changes that many are not willing to adopt: take the bus or the metro instead of your car, switch off lights and appliances you are not using.
Some measures are impossible because of no availability of safe infrastructure. One would love to walk but where are the pedestrian walks, one could cycle to work but where are the cycle tracks. It is said that if water is sprayed regularly on roads and construction sites there would be a change in the air quality, but this again is Catch 22 itself as water is scarce and precious.
Most of these solutions are not in our hand as they involve government and administration.
At Project Why we believe that the first thing is to make children aware of the critical situation that exists and then inform them about the ways to curb air pollution so that even if they cannot do things they can become Warriors of Air.
Some of the steps they can participate in are: segregation of garbage. asking their families not to take motorbikes for short distance errands, learn to recycle and reuse, convert garbage into compost, switch off lights, etc.
Let us not forget that it is children who suffer the most. 4.4 million children in Delhi already have irreversible lung damage. So if not for us we have to think of the children and their tomorrow.
It is only when we ALL accept to become Warriors of Air that things will change.
by anouradha bakshi | Oct 11, 2016 | Uncategorized
Two weeks ago, two class XII students murdered their teacher. The reason: he expelled one of them for poor attendance. Rage, anger, frustration? Nothing can condone violence of this kind and the boys will face the law.
The question that begs to be asked, though few will, is: who is responsible for this brutality and the answer may not be as easy as one would like to believe.
This extreme action should compel us to look at reality in the face. The two boys were school going and had studied hard enough to reach class XII. They were not one of the (ill)famed dropouts.
That any child would resort to such abhorrent violence must lead us to look at the present education system and social environment our young live in particularly in urban slums. This post is not meant to justify the act but prevent it in days to come as violence and aggression are an intrinsic part of the DNA of underprivileged children.
Education is undoubtedly the one tool that shapes mind and thus life. School should be an enabling environment where every child blooms according to her or his capabilities and talent. Education goes far beyond three Rs.
At Project Why we have always believed in Jacques Delors definition of education, namely his four pillars of learning: learning to learn, to do, to be and to live with others. Sadly education as we know it stops at the first.
One of the reasons of setting up Project Why was to address a unnatural reality: the half day school system whereby boys go to school post lunch. The school is for girls in the morning. Boys are left to their own device as their homes are tiny and so the street becomes their realm. With no quality parental control they are left to themselves. Bunking school becomes easy and as they grow the transformation between child and bad element is bound to happen. What we forget is that we are a part of the terrible mutation.
That they should be aggressive and even violent is again to be expected. Child physical abuse is rampant in both homes and school and becomes the only tool they know. No one talks to them or asks them their point of view. Communication is one-way from adult to child and they have no voice. So where do they learn to be and live with others.
We once asked a group of secondary students who were regularly beaten in their school what was the one thing they would change if given a chance and ALL of us would have bet our bottom dollar that the answer would be physical abuse. We were astounded when they told us that they would give the child a chance to explain himself before beating him. Beating was par to the course. What they wanted his a voice.
Children need to be heard. Children need to be recognised as individuals. Children need to be respected. Their talents need to be discovered and honed. They need to be given means to vent their anger and emotions. If the two boys who now will spend years in a brutal jail had been taught better then three lives would have been saved.
It is time we took responsibility and acted. Education reforms are needed but again they have to be the right ones, the kind that helps every child to grow to her or his full potential.
by anouradha bakshi | Oct 4, 2016 | Uncategorized
All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching? wrote Nicholas Johnson.
Television is the most ubiquitous object as it breaks all social barriers and finds its way in every nook and corner of the land. Satellite dishes dot the most unlikely roof tops from crowded slums to the thatch homes of the agricultural labour tending to vegetable fields.
SONY DSC
No matter how poor you are, TV is always something you will find money for. Nicholas Johnson is right in saying that all TV is educational but then what does it teach today?
In the times of 24 hours and innumerable channels there is a lot on offer. In tiny homes with a sole TV there is not much scope for parental or any kind of control. The preferred programmes are undoubtedly the plethora of soap operas that seem to have taken the place of the weekly movie outing that was once affordable. Today the big cinema halls with different ticket rates have been replaced by multiplexes where you pay the same for front or back row.
In yore years the back row was for the dating couples and the front row for what was know as the whistling viewers. Post movie day there was a week of processing what you had seen. And in yore years again Bollywood movies did have a social message. Gone are the days of tear jerkers!
Soap operas are family dramas that are a far cry from the reality of those who view them in slums. Nothing resembles the harsh reality of survival. They do provide a much needed escape but where escape is good once in a while, it can be nefarious when resorted to constantly.
Then there are cartoons that are often seen by children after much negotiation and even violent arguments. Some are innocuous but others can be violent.
There are movie channels, reality shows, music channels and even educational channels. Common to each is the clever interspersion of ads. No wonder that you find the most upmarket products in the poorest of homes as these are available in affordable pouches.
Many young slum kids learn their dancing and dress sense from the box. Not a bad thing some would say.
But too much of anything can be dangerous and when there is no control of any kind danger lurks in every image.
At Project Why we try and put things in perspective. The only means to do so is to give every child that comes to us the freedom to share her/his thoughts and desires with us allowing us to help her process it rationally. It is all about open communication.
TV or for that matter any information source is educational provided it is backed by processing and understanding.
by anouradha bakshi | Sep 27, 2016 | Uncategorized
You may be wondering why the illustration for this post is an ultrasound plate. The reason is that there exists no picture of the child whose story we tell.
Little Sonny was born a month or so ago to a beggar woman of the Kalka Temple. This was the mother’s 4th child, the eldest way in her late teens. Two of her children are special needs children and the husband passed away before Sonny was born. When the baby arrived and it was a boy, the mother was elated.
However one look at the child was enough to realise that the baby was born with Down Syndrome. No one had the heart to tell the mother. Would she have believed this? Perhaps not as Sonny was the ray of sunshine she held on to.
A few weeks later Sonny passed away. The reason given was an insect bite at night. He had gone to sleep alive and woke up dead. Maybe it was all for the best as a child like him had a very bleak future.
Had he been from a well-to-do family that a scan like the one above may have resulted in his being aborted.
He could also have been born in a caring family that would have done everything possible to make his life the best or to a family where he would have been shunned. But that was not the case.
Sonny is one of children born in India but never claimed by the land. They remain wandering souls that have fallen off the net and when they pass they often fade from the memories of those who gave them life as they are too busy in simply surviving.
by anouradha bakshi | Sep 20, 2016 | Uncategorized
A recent UNESCO report states that India could be late by half a century in achieving its global education commitments. It would need to make fundamental changes in the education policy if it were to meet the 2030 goals. At present India is expected to achieve universal primary education in 2050, universal lower secondary education in 2060 and universal upper secondary education in 2085.
That education is the one and only road to transformation is indubitable. Education helps break the poverty cycle and hence should be given centre stage. But that is not the case; hence the delays un meeting the millennium goals.
If we are to go with the stated report then it will take another 34 years for ALL children in India to acceded to primary education.
Let us leave statistics alone and look at the human factor. What this means is that for many millions of children today primary education remains a dream. The reasons are many. From poorly run schools, to lack of teachers, to lack of motivation, to gender bias, to access to schools, to inclusiveness, to poverty etc. Each of this is redressable.
But time is a crucial factor and time is something that children do not have. They grow every minute and before even planning can be done, they have missed the coach.
It is imperative that immediate solutions are found and implemented.
One such solution is Project Why.
Education does not simply mean enrolment in a school. Only if the education is of quality will it help transform a life. In todays education scenario going to school alone does not suffice. What has come to be know as ‘shadow education’ – after school tuition, coaching, extra classes – is a essential to success. This comes at a price the poor cannot pay. This is further compounded by the fact that poor children often have illiterate parents who cannot provide any support.
It is over 1000 children that Project Why helps at no cost for the past 16 years. The fact that the problem is not only real but calamitous is amply demonstrated by the large number of children who have come to Project Why after 3, 4, 5 and even more years of sitting on a school bench and who could barely read or write. Such children drop out often by the end of primary school or when they face their first real exam.
The flip side is that the same child who would have dropped out and been considered a failure needs only a little help to make up for lost years and reach the top of her class. We have many such children. That is what makes the situation so tragic.
Project Why is a minuscule effort but one that bears fruits. At least for these 1000 children education is a reality.
