by Anuradha Bakshi | Mar 6, 2007 | Uncategorized
Once again, on a fine morning the students and staff of pwhy were greeted by a gaping hole in the wall of our Okhla centre. This is not the first time and probably not the last. Wonder who did it, some drunken lads for a bit of fun or some mischief maker. Who knows, and come to think about it who cares..
The Okhla lot are used to such acts and what caused anger and hurt at one time has almost become a game. No mason or expert is needed. The morning after the incident students carefully pick all the bricks and keep them safely inside the classroom. A call is made to the office to get the required amount of cement and the kids get down to the task of repairing the damage while onlookers watch them and perhaps amongst them those who committed the misdeed.
My heart fills with pride as I watch the kids at work as more than anything taught in books, they have learnt a great lesson in life: not to be deterred by acts committed by cowards.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Mar 4, 2007 | Uncategorized
In trying to explain the significance of holi to my foreign son-in-law I found myself searching the net as my knowlede did not go beyond the Prahlad-Hollika story. On this site, I read the follwoing: Originally the festival was primarily for the Shudras who were otherwise not allowed to participate in festivals. In ancient India too, this festival was celebrated as a day when people forgot caste and gender differences and were allowed many liberties, otherwise forbidden.
I do have vague memories of my childhood in my grandfather’s home when on that day those who worked in the house joined everyone in the lawns where holi was celebrated with great gusto. Flowers had been soaked overnight to provide a wonderful yellow brew, and colours were natural, sweets had been made at home too and many sherbets cooled in earthen pots. Some were forbidden to us ; guess they were the ones laced with bhang.
Then Holi became a day one dreaded as chemical colors, and all the filth imaginable were hurled at you even days before the festival. Like most festivals, the essence was forgotten.
I was glad to reconnect with the meaning of the festival and was happy to see that the little band that played holi in my garden reflected just that essence as all the Indias not to say the world were united in fun and spirit.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Mar 1, 2007 | Uncategorized
I have never understood the intricacies of economics and figures, inflation and GDP or all such terms. During college time budget day was one when one waited to find out whether cigarettes would cost more. Not that one gave up smoking, one just adjusted things and I guess unconsciously made our own yearly budget. And come to to think about it this happened with every commodity as one slowly watched petrol going from 3 rs to 4o rs or so: one just adjusts one’s life.
For many years too the budgetary allocations to social programmes did not mean much bar the fact that one felt that they were needed and welcomed them with a nod of approval: midday meals for school kids, education for all, jobs for all: it felt comfortable and appeased one’s conscience as one felt something was happening.
It is only in recent years when I descended from a comfortable ivory tower that I faced a reality check. The Utopian midday meal became a real inedible offering, the superlative SC girl child programmes turned out to be a catch 22 game, and primary education a transit of many years in a insalubrious school before you dropped out. And yet on paper all these schemes seemed to right.
So yesterday as the new budget unfolded and new social schemes were revealed I was glad that many voiced what I silently thought: will these reach the beneficiary or be fodder for more hungry officials as the mind boggling administrative requirements will fly right over the true beneficiary.
Come to think of it we only have one year to make all this happen as on 28 February 2008 a new budget with new schemes will be presented. And this game will carry on till the day civil society does not come to the fore and ask for accounts! Last year we got a tool to do just that: RTI Act and some of taken on the formidable task to bring this act to the people. We as voters and tax payers need to demand accounts for every penny spent. A commentator mentioned a past Prime Minister stating the sad reality that of every rupee allocated only 16 paise reached the beneficiary.
As long as we remained silent spectator or armchair critics nothing will change. There are excellent schemes in existence and should they be allowed percolate down to the right beneficiary a tangible change would come about. The true beneficiary cannot turn whistle blower: he is often totally unaware of the scheme itself let alone the way to seek redressal. he will continue making his budgetary adjustments . The government will continue making yearly social schemes as they make good copy for electoral speeches, and we will remain in our obstinate silence and inertia, emerging out of it for brief moments when we feel the issue may directly touch us.
Yes we all want a shining India but how can it shine when a large chunk of it survives in darkness. Unfortunately it cannot be wished away. We need to be the whistle blowers; each one of us, asking accounts for the money spent as it is our own!
Last week a friend who was organising a workshop on disability asked a senior government official how a person without papers got a disability certificate; the answer was predictable: ma’am everyone in Delhi has a ration card.
No Mister, that is not true, there are many who do not and getting one is quasi impossible and yet they are handicapped and the ones who really need access to your programmes!
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 23, 2007 | Uncategorized
When you think you have seen it all, and feel smug in the false notion that you have created the required roadmaps, in a land where women are dispensable you are least prepared for Act II of what you believed was a one Act play with a doable denouement!
Yesterday I watched little Manoj dance and even gave my self a tiny pat in the back as memories of him flashed in my mind. A phone call brought me back to reality as I was told that Manoj’s mom 7 months into a unwanted pregnancy had landed at home with a swollen face and broken lip. The abuser was none other than her husband.
An article I recently read caught my attention as the author stated: 0ften a girl is brainwashed from infancy.. and I guess she is right, but there comes a moment when all the brainwashing and conditioning pales under the ignobility of the abuse suffered. That day the battering of her over abused body was the last straw, and the tears that welled Manoj’s mom’s sunken and anemic eyes were ones of anger and rage.
The story withheld till now poured out in chilling words, and that story was not just hers but the story of many women in India. She was barely 16, when she was married to this man, by a widowed mother who had the use of only one arm and three younger children to bring up. She had no option but to agree to the road map set for her. The rest is predictable a child before she attains the age of 17, an alcoholic man who is more abuser than husband or father. A weak child who can barely walk or stand at 2, and an unwanted pregnancy that she is forbidden to abort by the one who owns her body and soul all this laced with brutal beatings that dot her life with obsessive regularity. Days where she and her child go hungry, when rent being not paid lead to changing rooms constantly till you find yourself in an airless hole. No home to go back to, no family no friends.
You get a job and you work with a smile so genuine that even the most sensitive does not see your pain. You hide the unwanted pregnancy from fear of losing your job till it shows and you are exposed! You still try and whitewash the abuser as you have been conditioned to do but then all that was possible when there was no love and support around you. But when you see someone is listening your crushed spirit hidden in the deep recesses of your soul decides to break all the carefully built walls and set itself free.
However what are your options in a land where a single woman let alone a single parent is anathema. Where with a small child an an unborn one you have nowhere to go and are not coward enough to end your life.
Manoj’s mom is not an individual case, it is the story of many women in a land where in spite of venerating Goddesses we have forgotten the Goddess that lies in the scarred soul of each woman. And I am not talking of poor women only.
We may be able to help Manoj’s mom but the question that arises is what do you for the millions others.
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 19, 2007 | Uncategorized
In my quest to get pwhy kids and heir families the required caste and OBC certificates I set about finding out the procedure set out by our government. A quick perusal of the Delhi government website is sufficient to show that the modus operandi proposed is almost impossible to meet.
For Scs and Sts whereas the application can be signed by the local elected representative, someone that can be acceded to, the remaining papers require the signature of two class I gazetted officer, something that even i would have difficulty in finding.
In case of OBCs a new para has been added which states: I certify that to the best of my knowledge and belief that i do not belong to the creamy layer of the OBC… (para 14 of application form), However no definition has been given of the creamy layer!
It does not end here. To get a handicapped certificate you need to be 40% physically handicapped and 35% mentally challenged. Wonder what happens to those who are under! And in a city where the minimum wage for unskilled labour is about 3000 rs a month, the website states : He or she should be domiciled in Delhi for more than 5 years and their monthly income should not exceeds. 400/- and if unemployed their family income should not exceed Rs.600/
I think one would be justified to say that their seems to be a concerted effort to ensure that good schemes do not reach the true beneficiary. One would be justified in thinking that if we as civil society armed with a powerful tool like the Right to Information, set out to redress torts and ensure that existing schemes functioned this country would be a better place for all!
by Anuradha Bakshi | Feb 18, 2007 | Uncategorized
Today’s TV news brought pictures of 390 little bones buried near a hospital in Ratlam. Experts say they are the remains of babies. Today’s newspaper reported that there were thousands of missing children in our own Silicon valley a.k.a Bengaluru!
Post Nithari, the NHRC has asked for an update of missing children in UP. A website has been launched to keep track of missing children. Many questions come to mind and find no answers. The entire administrative setup seems to have forsaken the children of India in every way imaginable.
There are another little forsaken group of missing children, those that came for unknown reasons to seek shelter at the Baba Balnath Ashram since its inception in 1975. The present lot were rescued in early December 2006 though they too seem lost in complex administrative and judicial mazes. But what about all the others that transited this hell hole for 30 long years. Some should be almost middle aged women.
Will anyone give them a voice. What will it take to get civil society to ask these disturbing questions and seek answers so that they may get the justice they deserve? We have seen many a campaign in recent months that have brought closure to several cases. However these girls are invisible, yet they too are victims of the society we live in.
It is time to wake up and redeem ourselves if redemption there is!
