by Anuradha Bakshi | Jul 5, 2011 | Uncategorized
I had blogged recently about the absurd situation faced by students aspiring to get admission in colleges in Delhi. There is more. A racket has just been exposed. It got you admission to your preferred college @ 500 000 Rs! The modus operandi: providing the candidate with a fake caste certificate. The aspirants were even students with high marks not satisfied with the college they got through merit wanting more! The racket had been going on for some years.
The cover story of a leading weekly aptly entitled 95% and nowhere to go, brushes a grim picture of the marks saga and the state of our education. Do read it if you have time. There are some startling facts. For instance the article says: Marks have been inflated, even as testing standards have been simplified. If you are 17 and can find an error with a sentence such as, “We were late and it is getting dark” or “Now we both was running”, or write a hypothetical dialogue when clues and even an example is given, you will probably do well in a Class XII CBSE English exam. A teacher goes on to reveal; It is possible to score 100 per cent even in English with the current lenient marking scheme: My school has had an exceptional result this year, with more than 29 per cent getting over 90 per cent in English. This, from students who cannot string three sentences of English together. A board paper does not test any real learning. It only tests your capability of answering a paper according to a prescribed answer sheet. Phew! That says a lot does it not? The marking system is absurd. A child’s entire future depends on how you perform on a given day in a given examination. Children cannot cope with the stress and we all are too painfully aware of the suicides that happen each year.
Children are taught how to score, not how to learn, think, analyse, reason etc. The culprit is the shift from the essay type question to the objective one! A student needs only to learn by rote. No one expects him to be creative, enquiring etc. Our education system has gone astray and needs to be set right urgently.
The rot started some years back. I remember how a young girl who wanted to be a doctor all her life and was an excellent student missed her boat by a few marks. She then had to become an engineer and is today a very unhappy though successful one. This is not an isolated case. There must be many like her. But is education not a means to realise your dreams? Not in our land. Here it is marks that defines who you will be and what you will become.
Now let us get back to the caste certificate racket as it compels us to ask some disturbing questions. It is obvious that these are purchased with the blessings of the student’s parents as no one class XII student could have access to such amounts of cash. Our first reaction would be to recoil in horror. How can parents accept to abet cheating? What lesson are they giving their children? and so on. But let us look at the matter in another way. Are they not simply helping their children fulfill their dreams. Not as simple as it seems, too many shades of grey.
In all this imbroglio our thoughts must once again go back to the children from underprivileged homes. If students with 90% are going to fill reserved seats by unfair means then where will the real beneficiaries go? Reservation, whether one approves of it or not, is meant to help the underprivileged get access to better options. It is true that even this had been hijacked by the so called creamy layer. And now it is being hijacked by the privileged ones.
Getting a caste certificate is no easy task. I remember how we tried to get one for a little Valmiki girl in the hope of getting her registered for some girl child programme. In spite of our best efforts we were unable to do so. The paper work required was beyond imagination and logic, and we got lost in the maze and missed the deadline. The said programme was only available to children less than 6 months old. So you see the scenario: the deserving cannot get a certificate whilst the rich can by paying. This is the real India story. Sad is it not.
India is replete of good intentions gone astray. I always hold that if even 50% of our social programmes had worked we would be a different nation altogether. My mind goes to the (ill)famed ICDS launched in 1975 that would have ensured that all Indians below the age of 35 would have been vaccinated and provided early nutrition. That was not the case as even today a child dies of malnutrition every 8 minutes! What ICDS has done is make people rich and provide jobs to political cronies. This is just one programme, there are hundreds that have gone the same way and it is still happening.
It is time we did something. We owe it to the millions of children who have been forgotten by all.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jul 5, 2011 | Uncategorized
Twenty one years ago my mother Kamala left me. Every year dutifully I have written her an ode, extolling her in ways dear to me. This year however I will take a different road and talk about her only child, the one who may not have been born had India become independent too late and a woman aged beyond motherhood. But that was not to be and the child was born in a free India. Now the question is whether the child has vindicated the mother’s sacrifice. It was time to answer this disquieting question as time is short.
The heavens must have conspired to make me do so as I received a troubling mail from a friend and supporter is reference to my swan song – project why! He wrote apropos my blog: Not sure how to ask this, but whenever I go over to your Project Why blog, I’m looking for some update on Project Why itself but more often than not, there are complaints about bureaucracy and life’s unfair circumstances that makes all of us angry. I do enjoy the ones about the kids, or the sentimental ones about a grandchild or the children at the PWhy or the boarding school, but there’s a transparency element I’m looking for but I’m left with opacity. The words were disturbing to say the least. It was my very existence that was being challenged and I was selected to be my own juror.
So here I am today defending my blog and my life!
The former is simpler. The pwhy blog came into being when a friend suggested I use this medium rather than the tedious individual mails I use to send once upon a time to share the day-to-day occurrences of pwhy and my inner most thoughts on things that made me happy, sad, angry, outraged and so on. Slowly the blog became the alter ego of a very lonely soul. It allowed me to unburden myself without rocking the boat. It made me feel, I must sheepishly admit, important as I was talking to the world. It also evolved with me as I grew in years and in experience. Some entries are like much needed fresh air, others reminders that one has not lost one’s conscience and yet others one’s heart. Some entries are cries for help. It is true that the blog began as a kind of journal of life at pwhy interspersed with appeals for support. Along the way came cris de coeur on issues that disturbed or outraged me. People reacted well to these. I too got emboldened to use this platform to share my inner most thoughts on issues I felt should concern us all. And many liked what I wrote and urged me to carry on. And I did, heartened by the response. So the pwhy blog became what it is today: a mixed bag of offerings that reflect my life and work, my successes and failures, my indignation and admiration, my joy and sadness and I must admit the line between personal and general was often flouted when not blurred.
But I never intended the blog to be a vindication of project why. Maybe I should have given it another name altogether. Project why was to be represented by the more official looking website. The blog was my personal turf.
Time now to address the more critical issue and write an apologia for a life. This becomes crucial subsequent to the words transparency and opacity. That anyone should feel that there is lack of transparency in pwhy is a slur on my very raison d’être. Right from day one project why was meant to be an open book. So when and how did it mutate into a closed one?
It is not easy if not impossible to be one’s own juror, but today I have to assume this role no matter what. The question that needs to be answered is whether pwhy has lost its transparency and if so why? In order to do so, one needs to look back with honesty and candour at the years gone by and see what where we went astray if indeed we did.
When we began this journey we had certain intents and many aspirations. This led us to make certain decisions that could be viewed as questionable. The first one was to have a very lean administration as I for one, galled at the sight of the pompous administration of other organisations wondering when the first rupee reached the intended beneficiary. Swank air conditioned offices, numerous secretaries and admin personnel seemed so out of place when the mission you were meant to fulfil was education of the poor or rights of battered women. So from the very outset pwhy we decided that our administration would be minimal and not a burden on our finances.
The next decision we took was to employ a maximum of persons from the social strata we worked for. Staff was found from within the community and trained on the job. We have never regretted this decision as our staff has done us more than proud but here again our choice had a downside. Our staff was not page 3 and and hence could not assume certain functions so easily handled by someone with a what is so aptly called English medium education.
This translated over time in added work for me. We never had anyone to write proposals, updates, reports and so on. We never had any one to handle the fund raising or the PR. Every time there was a new need it conveniently fell on my lap and I gladly accepted it. When we decided to have a website we looked for help and found someone to design it pro bono. But when that person left I was horrified to find out the cost of having it maintained. A vital decision had to be taken, either we gave up the idea of a website altogether, or I had to master web mastering in a day, or so to speak. You guessed right I went in for the later. It did not take a day but a few nights and I must say I was incredibly proud of the outcome. Come on a 50+ old biddy becoming net savvy. It still makes me smile. So as a true neophyte I took on the task of updating the site with almost obsessive regularity.
Those were early days when pwhy was still small and should I say manageable. And it was in tune with our transparency fixation. I remember how I reveled in making tables (a difficult task for a new webmaster) during the open heart surgeries where every thing was accounted for: shoes, clothes, food etc. The site had a section called this week at why and it was again updated regularly. We also had a section called child of the week where we profiled a pwhy kid. I had almost forgotten these. So the question is why did we stop. There are no clear cut answers. Things changed surreptitiously. Perhaps it was the novelty that wore of, or the repeated messages of trust made us a little complacent. We had established ourselves and were now trustworthy. We had sunk into a comfort zone. That was I began blogging and felt erroneously that it would keep people updated. And maybe it did in the initial stages. I guess I did not realise when it mutated.
The site became more static as the core of the project had been well defined and did not change much. A dynamic photo gallery and a live link to the blog were I must confess the only active elements of our home page. In hindsight I realise that I must have intuitively felt that something was amiss. This is proved by the other blogs I created and sadly never maintained as efficiently: a news blog, a blog about the boarding school kids, a blog on volunteers, for sponsors etc It had gone a bit out of hand!
And I must admit as I said earlier we had sunk into a comfort zone: we had our regular donors and when a need arose a blog or a mail assured we got the extra needed. And so life went on and we were blissfully unaware of the fact that our new ways were somewhat hazy. We simply relied on the trust we had built and left it at that.
I am glad someone shook me out of my smug reverie and pointed out the fact that we had lost our most precious asset: our transparency. Actually we had not lost it but it had got simply got mislaid. It was time to once again give it its rightful place. No easy task but I will give it my best shot. My life depends on it.
Pwhy is and will always be the best achievement of my life. Nothing can come in its way. I for one will leave no stone unturned to ensure that it regains its past glory.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jul 3, 2011 | Uncategorized
In a few hours Utpal will leave for school. We spent yesterday packing all his things: his unwieldy homework – a chart of roman numerals made with matchsticks, a wall hanging made of bangles and a cartoon character made with lentils to name a few – have to travel safely and reach school unscathed. It was no easy task as there were more charts, scrap books and so on. Wonder why a school gives so much holiday work, when does the child enjoy his vacation. Must confess that some of the said work was done by yours truly with a little help from friends!
Anyway while we were busy packing, our little man was enjoying his last day of freedom. He had planned it himself: morning spent at the women centre making one of his creation for his friend D, the afternoon at Kalka Mandir on his favourite rides and the evening at a nearby mall to try some new ones. In between all this there was a visit to the Doctor and short stop at the toy shop to buy a ball. A busy day I must say.
I of course was part of the doc/toyshop slot.
In a few hours my little man will leave for school. It has been a hectic and troubled month. When Utpal came for his holidays he was unmanageable: angry, stressed, moody, violent, capricious and dejected. No amount of coaxing or cajoling worked. We were all helpless and lost. Sessions at the psychotherapist were a nightmare. We were walking on eggshells. He had locked himself up in a dark world. He spent his days glued to the idiot box or demanding something or the other. It was to say the least unbearable as we knew the child was hurting but did not know how to express his pain. That is when we decided to meet the psychiatrist and seek help. I am glad we did.
For the past two weeks Utpal has been the tender and loving child he once was. The one everyone fell in love with. His huge and enchanting smile is back 24/7! He is once again his happy self. It is such joy to watch him. I must confess I have spent most of my time with him. Every morning when I go to wake him back I am greeted with hugs and kisses and he is willing to do anything you want him to. The idiot box does not hog all the space now, Utpal spends most of his time creating things: wacky laptops, zany desk organisers and more. He has his art and craft bag that with scissors, staplers paint and so on and carries it everywhere he goes. I simply watch in awe. He often gives me is lopsided smile, the one that lit is face when he was tiny, and the one that could melt the coldest heart. A smile he had lost but now reclaimed. And my heart fills with joy and gratitude. My popples is back into the light.
Apologies for digressing. Yes in a few hours I will wake him up and get yet another special smile. Then he will don his uniform that has been cleaned and ironed and hangs in his cupboard. I hope to catch a few moments with him before the car carries Utpal and his homework back to school. And I will wipe the tears in the corner of my eyes and go back into an empty house.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 29, 2011 | Uncategorized
S wanted a Blackberry Playbook for his birthday. Now S is not a young teenager but a well established person with a great job. D his wife decided to grant him his wish and buy the said object. But then S changed his mind and decided to donate that money to educate 4 kids at pwhy! Wow! S and D always manage to take my breath away. So the Playbook mutated into something intangible and yet so precious. I am humbled!
The curious and the cynic often want to know how pwhy is funded. This makes me smile as the answers I have are not the ones expected. Pwhy is not funded by the state of by hefty funding organisations. It is funded by spurned Playbooks, people walking rather than taking a car, garage sales and bake sales, someone crafting jewelery that is then sold, auction of children’s paintings, couples giving up their wedding gifts or children their birthday ones, people running marathons. The list is endless and each penny laced with love and compassion. And thus each penny becomes precious and sacred and translates into ace report cards, successful exams, life saving surgery and above all reclaimed smiles. And thus flows project why….
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 26, 2011 | Uncategorized
For the past few days the house has been strangely silent. What I mean is that one does not hear the screeching sound of cartoons on TV, something that was till date a constant when Utpal was home. He spent all his waking hours glued to the idiot box, lost in his own world.
As I had written earlier, I had been very worried about his behaviour and even sought medical help. Two weeks back he was put on medication and I waited with bated breath for the dreaded side effects and the expected results. The side effects were few – a little sleepiness and slight tremors – but the results have been so say the least stupendous. Not only has our little fellow calmed down and gone back to his old endearing ways, but the child that was once riveted to the television now spends most of his time creating things. His best till now is his computer. It is made out of a sweet box, cardboard, paper, paint, and even has a mouse that blinks light: a small remote controlled plane! This computer has changed my life and brought back a smile that had been mislaid. Utpal who had locked himself in a dark world has come into the sunshine and no one is happier than I.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Jun 24, 2011 | Uncategorized
Kal Mandir is Utpal’s name for the Kalkaji temple. It is a name he came up with when he was 3 and somehow it never changed. He loves going there and would go everyday if he could. His companion for these sorties is Radhey our three wheeler driver, someone he has known all his life! Radhey is the one who drove him to the hospital on the fateful night he fell into a boiling cauldron. KalMandir is undoubtedly his favourite place.
Sometimes he does go all the way to the temple itself and visits the Deity but what Kal Mandi means to Utpal is the fun rides that he loves. Till last week Kal Mandir was simply a name to me. Popples had often asked me to come with him but to my silly mind the Kalkaji Temple was an overcrowded place that I simply shunned. However the little boy’s entreaties finally bore results and last week I too went to Kal Mandir and loved it. I wish I had taken the trip earlier.
The experience is difficult to describe as it is a medley of sensations but I will give it a go. It was about 11am, a hot and humid day and I was dreading the experience but had to keep my promise to little Utpal. We drove in our three wheeler and entered the parking made for cars but to my utter surprised we were greeted with smiles and hellos. I thought we would be stopped as is always the case when you venture in a poor man’s vehicle into parkings but here Utpal and his conveyance seemed to be VIPs! I was a little lost but a little hand firmly took mine and pulled me along. We walked through an alley with shops on either sides: eateries, shops that sold prayer ware, toy stalls, even a photographer’s den where you could take your pictures with zany backdrops. The place was filled with incredible energy and fervour. On the way we walked past devotees walking towards the sancto sanctorum some on foot, others crawling or rolling, others even somersaulting. Strangely none of this seemed out of place or crazy. It just seemed normal as everything was tinted with an overpowering spirituality that made it acceptable.
We soon reached what can at best be called rides but is a far cry from anything you can imagine. Six or even rides fight for space in a tiny enclosure. The floor is mud and dust. A few plastic sheets cover the area protecting you as best they can from the heat or rain. Every ride has a wooden pole where the switches are placed and a maze of electric wires criss crosses the area at a little over head hight. A few bulbs light the place giving it a festive air. An elderly lady sits at rickety table at the entrance under the lone fan. She owns the place and that is where you purchase tickets @ 10 Rs a ride. But as I said Utpal is a VIP there and he headed straight for the first ride under the benevolent smile of the owner lady. I could see how much he loved the place. It could confidently compete with the best amusement park in the world. As it was still early and the staff was scarce, Radhey our driver and Utpal’s long time pal manned the switches. When Utpal had enough of one he simply said Bas and the ride was stopped. I too was VIP of the day as the kind lady left her chair under the fan for me. It was wonderful watching Utpal have the time of his life.
I must admit that I did recoil in horror at the sight of things at first but then somehow not only got reconciled to what I saw but I must admit quite taken in. It was a happy place in more ways then one. The amusement park, let us call it that, is strategically located on the way to the Temple Deity and thus children accompanying their parents manage to convince the later to stop on the way out after all religious obligations are fulfilled and parents often do as the rides cost very little. At any time of the day your hear whoops of joy and laughter as children and even adults spin and rock to their heart’s content while the kind lady owner tries as best she can to keep track of the number of rides everyone enjoys. The place defies every safety rule, even the most lenient, but I can vouch for the safety as Utpal has been an ardent visitor for years now. This little space is where children from the other side of then fence can reclaim for a few moments their right to be children. All in all a visit to this temple is far more than a religious outing. And Kalkaji temple being one of the preferred religious pilgrimage sees people from all walks of life and from all parts of the land. It is somewhat a family outing for all to enjoy with everything on offer: varied food, drinks and even rides.
For Utpal too it is a pilgrimage of sorts. Something he has known all through his disturbed life, a place that has never changed even if all else has. It is his security blanket and comfort place an no matter what a visit there is always welcome and is guaranteed to bring a smile on his face. I was so glad I did finally get over my silly reluctance and accompany him. I must confess I have been there more than once in the past few days.
A visit to Kal Mandir is like being in a time warp. For a few moments you are a tad disoriented as nothing reminds you of the world outside the parking. With my short hair and city gear I looked like an alien but barring a few beggars who sought my attention, no one gave a second look. You were just accepted as you were. A pleasant change from reality. And as you walked the road leading to the Temple you passed rickety structures replete with sounds and smells that reminded you of a village fair. It was exhilarating to say the least. The drums and chants that greeted you transported you into another plane. The fervour was infectious and for an instant you forgot all your woes. What brought people to this place was their faith and you were touched by the atmosphere. This was real India at its best.
I had blogged recently about the absurd situation faced by students aspiring to get admission in colleges in Delhi. There is more. A racket has just been exposed. It got you admission to your preferred college @ 500 000 Rs! The modus operandi: providing the candidate with a fake caste certificate. The aspirants were even students with high marks not satisfied with the college they got through merit wanting more! The racket had been going on for some years.
