by Anuradha Bakshi | Nov 16, 2006 | Uncategorized
She is 11, goes to school but there is a catch; she has been married to a man more than twice her age who is also the husband of her handicapped sister.
The future of children and particularly girls with disabilities has always been a source of concern.
Often their already grim lives turn to nightmares after the demise of their mother when the reins of the home passes on to a new entrant: the elder daughter-in-law.
It is for this reason that we try at pwhy to teach each and every special child basic living skills so that he or she can remain within the home. Often we have to argue with parents who try and see the child as normal and chart out a life for her which leads to marriage as the very Ponce Pilatus option: I would have washed my hands off her. No one ever thinks of the plight of the girl in a new home.
Yesterday a TV channel aired a story that disturbed me a lot. A father had married his deaf and dumb girl to a much older man; only there was a catch: he also married his 11 year old second daughter to the same man! His explanation was brutally simple: his disabled daughter would find a home.
The understanding was that daughter no 2 – still a child – would remain in her parental home till she finished school. Only that is not what happened, soon after daughter no 1’s wedding, the in-laws started abusing her and insisted that daughter no 2 come immediately. Apparently this case is not unique, many parents of disabled daughters have had recourse to this.
I know that everyone reading this blog will be horrified, but seven years in pwhy have taught me to look at the larger picture before condemning anyone. True that the authorities have moved in, the father is behind bars, the younger daughter still in school does not quite understand the situation, and the handicapped young woman is back home, her future as bleak as ever.
Now had the ‘deal’ worked, it would have remained a secret and the sisters would have lived together. The larger question nobody seems to be addressing is: what will happen to them now and what is the future of the innumerable young women with disabilities in a country that has no option for them?
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by Anuradha Bakshi | Nov 12, 2006 | Uncategorized
Welcome to the land where small is not beautiful..
Wonder what I am getting at?
Two recent news items caught my eye. One pertains to sealing and its effect of small traders, and the other on the proposed amendment to regulate foreign donation to NGOs. In both cases the big fish will get away but the small will suffer and ultimately die.
Keeping an eye on nefarious activities is understandable but believing that those who engage in such activities will not find other ways of doing so is naive.
Those who are engaged in trying to make a difference by reaching out to the many who have been let down – children, women – know how difficult it is to get help from within the country. Somehow the word NGO is circumspect and viewed with extreme suspicion and disdain, making people like us wary of even using it to identify one’s self. True that it unfortunately conjures in the minds of people the image of huge organisations with large budgets and heavy administrative setups . It is also true that many are just that. Now with the added scare of NGOs being used to fund terror, mistrust will grow.
The flip side that there are some people who set up projects with an honest approach and are engaged in good work. The flip side is also is that funds normally come from across the seas, where even our kin become more charitable.
I spent the first years of pwhy trying to get support from friends, relatives, school buddies of spouse etc watching personal funds whither as very little was forthcoming. Everyone always had a good excuse, one more ludicrous than the other. Must add that what I sought was tiny, something people would flitter away in an evening. I even came up with my one rupee a day pitch, thinking that what I was asking was actually so tiny that it became invisible. But to no avail. Then our famous FCRA got cleared and the same story was sent out on the net reaching people I did not know.
Distance makes the heart larger I should say as I was overwhelmed by the support that came from young students and professionals over and above friends that I had known for long. The sums were not big, as many took the rupee-a-day option that translated into a tiny 8 dollars a year. But we survived month after month and year after year. We survived and hundreds of kids did not drop out, 20 different kids spent a few hours a day laughing and being loved, 30 people got employment and could feed their families, 7 hearts got repaired..
Now with the new law that will soon come to force, we may lose much of this support. Not because we are dishonest or dubious but because meeting the requirements will deprive us of the spontaneous support of small donors who often react to appeals from the heart. Moreover, the new law also states that a tab will be kept on whether or not the money is used for development. This will open the doors to witch hunting, settling of personal scores not to forget new avenues for under the table payments as who defines what development is!
For organisation like ours who do not believe in corpus funds and think that money given for a cause should be used as soon as possible, any blocking of funds to answer queries would mean no money for the next month. For organisation like ours which have very restricted small administrations, a point appreciated by our donors, it may mean increasing that budget to meet the new requirements. It alsomeans retructuring our donor base in a way that may jar with what we believe in.
But above all it will mean losing the warmth and spontaneity that characterised pwhy as its number of supporters grew across countries and lived the joy and angst of our little effort with us.
Small is not beautiful in our land!
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by Anuradha Bakshi | Nov 9, 2006 | Uncategorized
Over the past six years I have had to fight many battles. Lost some, won some. Sometimes the adversary is too formidable as was the case of the MLM people who came with their rehearsed pitches, their alluring promises and their fast track to riches!
They came, saw and conquered many young men and women promising them a quantum leap measured of course in gleaming bikes, and natty cars. My sensible words fell on deaf years: some listened by respect, and others just took the longer road to avoid the babbling old lady telling them to take one step at a time.
I felt a pang of guilt as pwhy boys and girls were naturally selected to lead as their social and communication skills were well honed by years of tender grooming. I watched with despair as some dropped out of colleges to be able to sell more computer software to gullible slum dwellers. The MLM gang was quick to scale down their minimum qualifications to ensnare more lads. Graduate, to class XII, to class X and even less.
I prayed my favourite God to make the pyramid crash sooner than later but to no avail. I have to confess that all the ex pwhyans have gleaming bikes and some have even bought cars, leaving me even more uncomfortable as I know the inevitable outcome.
So R got his brand new Innova. It is parked on the other side of the Giri Nagar road, in front of his tiny shack that is barely sufficient for the family of 5, next to the tinier shack that is the bathroom. Every morning his teen age sisters open the car, switch the AC, put on loud music and happily brush their teeth and have their morning tea. The car is also often used as a sitting or even sleeping space!
That is what happens when cars land in slums..
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by Anuradha Bakshi | Nov 9, 2006 | Uncategorized
I watched the sealing drive yesterday. The targets were big fish be they showrooms, offices of even government institutions. The government suddenly took the rule of law very seriously.
Later in the day I read an article ringing the death knell of small NGOs located in areas identified as seal-able!
The logic presented by the author was simple: such NGOs had chosen those premises as hey were often cheaper. This enabled them to present their donors with small admin bills. Were they to move into commercial areas then the rent and other charges would often be higher than the amount spent of the development work they do.
NGOs normally do not break laws, however when those are poorly defined then they may inadvertently do so. It is a well known fact that donors are weary of inflated admin costs, so it stands to reason to think that were small NGOs asked to move out, they would have no option but to cease their activities. It is true that there are some NGOs who are not quite what they seem , but small NGOs like ours have a role to play in a city where the government has abdicated many of its duties. Not many alternatives are left for takes.
At present we are on safe grounds, but who knows one day laws may change or be suitably modified to meet numbers and the sealing gang may land on us. I have been thinking of this and have come and realised that pwhy is maybe not in such a bad situation as most of our activities are nomadic. The solution will be to turn every activity into a nomadic one and become a jhola – satchel – NGO. Each one packing the need of the day in a satchel and taking off for the garbage dump, road side, shanty assigned to us and ending the day in your own drawing room to take stock and plan the next day.
I remember many of my detractors criticising my stubborn resistance to enclosing pwhy in the confines of four walls, but somehow I held on and feel vindicated.
So jhola days may be round the corner…
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by Anuradha Bakshi | Nov 3, 2006 | Uncategorized
here we go again.. says the popular song.
I have been watching the tos and fro’s of the local authorities regarding the now existential question: to seal or not to seal!
To take the Shakespeare reference further we could easily say; all is not well in the State of D.. (substitute Delhi for Denmark). Is there a solution?
To understand the present situation one has to travel way back and ask a multitude of almost rhetorical questions: why the master plan which had a fair allocation for commercial buildings was not respected? Why did the local authorities happily give green signals to illegal activities? Why did the politicians promise regularisation of unlawful construction before each and every election? many questions and no answers as it is a chicken and egg situation.
For the past few days the government both local and national have been in their usual band-aid mode? One arm says yes to sealing and the other no. But what is disturbing is the pathetic excuses: a festival here, a law and order situation there. In the meantime a city is held to ransom, children cannot go to school and violence lurks at every corner.
Everybody has been caught unawares! Those who paid and retreated into comfort zones, those who received and promised, those who broke laws with impunity and those who turned their eyes away..
This crisis management situation has become endemic to our very nature with no one realising that it just delays the inevitable just a little bit longer.
The sealing situation threatens to become a hydra headed monster and no Hercules who would look for the neck and sever it. We just go on snipping the heads which grow again and again.
But one day the laws catch up and everyone stands helpless. There is a Hercules, but in this case not an individual but a complex entity covering all sides and willing to take on his or her share of responsibility and willing to lose some to set matters right.
Wishful thinking in this day and age where individual benefits are more important than collective ones, where rights are demanded but duties shunned!
Where do we go from here…
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by Anuradha Bakshi | Nov 2, 2006 | Uncategorized
I am livid. Do you remember Babli?
Here I was back in a comfort zone feeling smug like a proverbial Cheshire cat, thinking that with her brand new heart, Babli was sitting on a school bench making up for lost time when I was hit by another thunderbolt.
R and S came back from a field visit visibly upset. On the way they had passed Babli’s slum cluster and found her sitting on a cart selling chewing tobacco, cigarettes and biscuits instead of being in school, her little sister standing in the background.
The cart was supposed to be the father’s way of earning some money, but he simply left her there to pursue his gambling habit. Seems that it happens often as she sheepishly told us that her name had been struck of the roll of the school.
The mother spends long hours in the factory she works in and the father does as he pleases. Come tomorrow and we will set out on a remedial mission which will start with some plain talking with the impossible farthest threatening to put him behind bars if he abuses the child in this manner. Then a PR expedition to government school to ensure that she is taken back. Somewhere down the line the mother will get a dressing too.
These moments are when you just feel throwing your hands up but you stop midway and wonder how you can address the situation that actually is one of protecting children’s rights. We can carry on our crisis intervention, but there is a larger question that needs to be looked at: parents need to be informed about the laws in existence and about the importance of giving girls a good education.They should be made aware of the child labour laws and more..
The presence of little Arzoo in the background is a blatant proof of the fact that girls are treated differently as Ramu the brother goes to school.
There is so much to be done, one step at a time…
Note: two days after this post babli was back in school, and sister arzoo back at pwhy’s creche.
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