I urge you to listen to the words of this rap. They are heart rendering. Here are a some snippets:

An educational system isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn’t teach them how to make a life wrote activist David Suzuki. It makes a lot of sense but to reach there, we in India have a log way to go. At present our system does not even teach children how to make a living, let alone how to make a life. Education today for a large part of India’s children, I mean those born on the wrong side of the fence, is abysmal and practically non-existent. We have first hand knowledge of this as this is what we have been doing for the past decade and a half! Teaching children who attend  State run schools! What is heart breaking and wowing at the same time is to see how easy it is for these kids to catch up and reach the top. A child who may have spent 5 years in school and not learnt to read let alone write properly, needs just a year to come up to the mark. We can barely help a handful.

I saw a TV clip yesterday and it broke my heart.

It is a clip about a school in Bihar where there is a building where 4 schools run, one school in one room! What is heart breaking is to see the children in these images. Far from being unruly or inattentive, they do the best they can in the circumstances and the desire to learn is palpable in the eyes of these children. Shame on us and shame on any Government that allows this to happen. Again and again we seem to be masters at letting down our children. I wonder whether those in power watch such programmes of have a way of finding out the reality on the field. Sadly, it does not seem to be so as even in India’s capital city, conditions in government run schools are pathetic.

I hope our new Minister will look at the realities on the ground and before embarking on sweeping changes, will do something for the immediate. I was perturbed but I guess not shocked to see an article stating that the new Minister wishes to include Ancient Texts in the curriculum. I guess it was to be expected though I would have thought that she being a young mother who has children in school does realise that all is not well in our education system. I would have liked her to audit the ground realities and try and see what could be done to better the plight of the children NOW in school.

I agree that many things need to be reviewed but there are some that need immediate attention. If we go by Suzuki’s words and look at school as a place that does nor just help you make a living but should teach you how to make a life, the onus upon those to whom we have entrusted the responsibility of imparting the right to education now enshrined in our Constitution to our children is huge. I have nothing against teaching ancient texts and for that matter would love seeing our children learning about ancient texts of other civilisations too, but as things stand now the State has not been able to provide even the basic needed to impart quality education. There are schools without teachers, and without desks and drinking water and toilets: the list is endless. Maybe the first task that needs to be done is fix what one can for the children in school now.

We were all taken aback by the results of the Teacher Eligibility Test in 2013 when 1 in every 56 candidate cleared the exam! We are again shocked when we learnt that Indian children ranked 2nd last when tested on their reading, math and science abilities. The only country they beat was Kyrgyzstan. Yet Indian children do exceedingly well when given an enabling environment. This not only the case of Indian children studying abroad but also of Project Why children who study in State run schools and often come to us with huge lacunas, but make these up in a jiffy and stand their own after that. And this I would like to underline is with the help of untrained teachers. Yet these very teachers have the true skills required for children to succeed: patience, love, motivation and commitment. For us every child is a winner and is so treated. It is up to us to find the spark and ignite it. So on a short term I strongly believe that what we need is motivated people who could pull up the children bogged in the system, children who cannot wait.

It is sad that our present education system dos not even teach people to make a living. This is because of internal flaws in the laws that seemed to have been drafted by people who either do not have children, or have forgotten what education is all about. I will again stress the need to rise the pass percentage from 33 to 50% and to put in abeyance the no fail policy till class VIII. This policy can only work if the teachers are committed and proper internal assessments are done. In many state run schools, answers are written on the blackboard and dutifully copied by the students. I can never forget  the stand-offish manner in which a secondary school Principal told me that they only covered 40% of the course as kids could pass with 33! What they do not realise is that by doing this they shut all the doors to higher education as in today’s India you need 99%+ to accede to a  state run University where fees are still affordable. So it becomes imperative for all schools, particularly state run ones to ensure that children get the best education possible and a level playing ground. Now this can happen only by raising the standards of state run schools so that they become an option for middle class parents who I know will welcome this with glee. Only a quality common school system can usher the change we want or pretend to want. As long as political parties will go the ‘vote bank’ way, this is a long time coming.

Another aberration is the age span for free education: 6 to 14. We all know that the 0 to 6 interval is very important to the child’s growth and learning. Pre school teaches many skills – motor, social, conceptual – that prepare the child to formal schooling. Whereas ‘rich’ kids have literate parents who become their first teachers and are sent to pre schools when they are 36 months, kids from poor homes spend these years on the street, often cared for by a host of people, hearing foul language and  learning poor habits and develop a set of skills that often become a hindrance to their schooling. In many homes they never see a book or newspaper and the only written word they may see is what is printed on boxes and packages. Transiting from forced free spirits to a world of supposed structure is difficult.

True a scheme was mooted more than 3 decades ago which was supposed to run creches where such skills should have been taught. But these are a total failure and need to be re looked at and reinvented. I would urge the new dispensation to include pre school in the free school ambit. That is the beginning but what do you say to a compulsory school system that ends at 14 when the child would be in class VII or VIII. A right to education should mean a right to schooling to the end. 14 makes no sense at all, more so when rather than improve state run schools, the Government has come up with yet another aberration: 25% reservations in all schools for poor kids, what happens to a kid when he reaches the age of 14. Does he leave school, revert to a state run school or have his father rob a bank to pay the high fee. However the reality is that this facility has been hijacked by clever middle class parents so in fact, nothing has changed for the poor children.  

Another flaw in our system is that it presumes that every child should get the same schooling all the way till class XII. With the 33% saga it means that you may have a lot of semi literate kids with a school leaving certificate. Now all kids are not intellectuals and even if they were, the market forces needs other skills that can be taught whilst still in school. It is time we widened the science-commerce- art triad to include vocational skills and even hands on training. A class VIII kid interested in car or bike repairs could begin learning this skill and going to a maintenance centre let us say twice a week so that by the time he finishes school he is ready to join the skilled work force. I hope someone in the corridors that decide the fate of children, think about this. Sadly what we have seen in the past years is scant out of the box thinking.

Children are not and should not be guinea pigs. The CBSE introduced the Formative and Summative Assessment and open book examinations: Some of the main features of Formative assessment are that it is diagnostic and remedial, provides effective feedback to students, allows for the active involvement of students in their own learning, enables teachers to adjust teaching to take account of the results of assessment and recognises the profound influence that assessment has on the motivation and self-esteem of students, both of which are crucial influences in learning. I wonder how many teachers are capable of comprehending this system, let alone using it at all. These can only be successful with well trained teachers and the state run school kids face a double whammy here: uninterested teachers an illiterate parents. Before jumping into new areas it is imperative to ensure that all capabilities to implement them are tested and functional. This is a long term game and not one that can be imposed at the drop of a hat.

Teaching children about ones own culture should not be frowned at, provided it is done in a comprehensive and inclusive manner. All children in the French school system learn that our ancestors the Gauls were good warriors. I did too. But this was in junior classes and as we grew up the curriculum widened and by the end of one’s schooling you had a well rounded education. To give just you just an example which will I hope make my point clear, the French Baccalaureate, when I passed it,  had both a written and an oral exam. The oral exam was to test your ability to think out of the box. History was an oral examination and the curriculum was World War II to present times, in my case 1967. There were no choices, you actually picked a question out of a ‘hat’ and were given 20 minutes to prepare. The question I got was: Had World War II been lost by the allies, what, in your opinion would have been the present economic situation. There is no right or wrong answer. You just needed to defend your point. No matter how much you learn by heart, it will hot help you unless you understand what you learn. In counterpoint to this anecdote, when I wrote my first year Philosophy (Hons) papers in Delhi University, it was replete with ‘I think’ and ‘in my opinion’. I failed! My teacher told me to put all my thoughts in quotes and put a French Philosopher’s name, and I would pass. I did and passed with honours! Get the point.

To teach to make a life and not a living, it is important to help children learn to think for themselves and find their solutions. It is impossible to show them that there is more than one ‘right’ way. Education stands on the famous Delors Pillars of learning:  Learning to Know, Learning to Do, Learning to Live Together, and Learning to Be.

When I look at education in India, I wonder if we even achieve one of them.

It has been about 5 hours since I wrote my blog about the horrific gang rape and hanging of two young teenagers and my decision to raise my voice against such shameful occurrences till someone finally breaks the deafening silence. Five hours is all it took to be at my post again! Another teenager was gang-raped in the constituency represented by the supremo of the ruling party of the State. She was seventeen. And if that was not enough to get us seething, a rape survivor’s mother was brutally beaten by the father of the rapist because she refused to withdraw the case against his son. This occurred in the constituency of the Chief Minister of the same state, and the son of the aforementioned supremo. No arrest has been made while the woman is battling for her life.

I again want to reiterate that the strong, developed and inclusive India that our new Prime Minister wants to usher cannot begin to see the light of day as long as such horrific incidents continue to happen. Women constitute 49% of the population and if they are not included then India cannot be considered a blessed land!

The Badaun rape case as it seems to be known now seems to have got the attention of one and all. I am not a follower of Antisthenes but a sense of deja vu fills me with despair. I guess sufficient meat to prove my point. What do you say when you hear the Chief Minister of the State where these horrendous rapes have taken place under his watch and in his family stronghold tell a journalist who ask him about the abysmal law and order situation quip: “You’re safe, right? You feel secure?“. Let us not forget that it is the supremo of the same family who said some time back: boys make mistakes. The mistakes he was referring to was rape!

I do not see justice being meted in these circumstances. Some arrests have been made is what the State Government in a report to the centre and the guilty shall be punished. Why do I find this hard to believe?

An article that appeared touches a chord, if not many. It touches upon our reaction to such horrors. I will quote some lines that I found disturbing and yet so true: Sometimes a picture is not worth a thousand words. The photographs of the two Dalit girls, raped and strangled and then left dangling from a mango tree in Badaun have caused a firestorm. On one hand it’s been blasted as the “pornography of rape”. On the other hand, it’s been described as a jolt to wake up a blasé society where rape, especially out in the badlands of UP, is commonplace enough that it does not make front page news anymore. 

There is a point there. We are so inured, so numbed by the never ending horror story of rape that it seems we need to descend ever lower into the pits to be shocked to attention. It’s as if faced with a rape story, the media has to ask the question “What’s new about this one?” Is it a toddler? A foreign tourist? Or now is it the horrific spectacle of these two teenagers hanging from a mango tree while a crowd of villagers including children gawk?

The author ends his article with these terrifying words: If indeed we now need to see the “strange fruit” on our mango trees to be shocked, it begs the question about what kind of people we have become anyway.

These hard hitting words compel us to some serious soul searching. Have we really come down to this or will this photograph be the turning point we so need. Will it at least makes us accept that we have become people who are inured to atrocities as long as they do not touch our own. How many more such horrors will we have to see before we let out the cry that can bring about justice to all girls in our land.

Enough of these band aid and feel good solutions. Sadly our new Minister for women who is a woman herself has gone the usual way. She blames police laxity, and promises to create yet another rape crisis cell. She is also ‘willing’ to ‘recommend’ a CBI enquiry should the parents so wish. Come on what is the willingness and recommendation nonsense. The parents want JUSTICE and want this to never happen to another woman again. We want a Minister who is willing to think out of the box! We are fed up of ‘enquiries’ ‘commissions’ and such other jaded options. We are talking of young girls whose lives were brutally truncated before they even began. The little girl watching the scene must be thinking: is this going to be my fate to?

It is time to take the bull by the horns and to change all that needs to be changed. It is not the purview of one Minister or one department. It is concern of all the 49% of us! We have to get rid of everything that is feudal be it the police, the politicians or the so called feudal lords. We are a democracy. Don’t we love repeating this, so let us be a true one and right every tort.

Let us make these two beautiful girls the turning point and not look back!

It is one of us who could raped.

The new dispensation has fixed its top priorities, ten of them reminding us of the ten commandments! Priority number 2 states: Prioritise education, energy and water. Mr Modi has repeatedly during his campaigns said that the expectations of the education system remain to be fulfilled. This is music to my ears as I have always propounded that only quality education for all will help bring about the India’s of our dreams.

I have my take on education and state with conviction as for the last almost decade and a half I have been up close and personal with what goes in the name of education in our capital city. I have often written about this but feel that few take heed of my rants and raves. But I will soldier on stubbornly in the hope that I am heard.

Education in the other half of the city, the one the previous dispensation even hid behind giant placards during the infamous Commonwealth Games , is nothing but a sad and now jaded joke played year after year on millions of voiceless and helpless children. Though the city has large earmarked plots for schools, the ‘schools’ built on them can vary from enabling to forbidding. While some have adequate buildings others have one storied barracks with asbestos sheets and yet others have tents and classes in the open. This in a city with varied and often inclement weather. Some have desks often broken and splintered making them dangerous for children, some even have desks that are too high for the students who learn standing. I guess getting someone to cut the legs is an administrative procedure that may take ages! Toilets and drinking water facilities are also of diverse degree: from adequate to non-existent. A toilet without a door is a no no for a young girl you will agree. Where there are ‘playgrounds’ these are often unusable and dangerous. The husband recently was willing to upgrade the grounds of the school next ground and get coaches and equipment but was met with the hydra headed monster of red tape even though he was not asking for a penny and was creating the facility solely for the children of the school.

I could go on and on but I guess you get the picture. But there is more. After 67 years of Independence we have not been capable of building sufficient schools for the children of the capital and hence the same building is used in two shifts and our boys go to school in the afternoon when we all know capacities are diminished. And if that was enough, classes are overcrowded. In some cases there are over 120 kids in a class. This is mostly the case with girls, are even illiterate parents have now understood that the state run schools are not up to the mark so send their ‘sons’ to the myriad of private schools that have mushroomed to fill the gap.

In this situation the abysmal pass percentage of 33% and the no fail policy till class VIII is a no fail policy for large numbers of drop outs post class VIII drop outs that sometimes can barely read and write.

I would urge our new Education Minister to please hike up the pass percentage to 50% as elsewhere in the world and to reframe the no fail policy in a way that it ensures that a child moves on to the next class only if he has mastered the curriculum of the class s/he is in. Whatever the reason for lowering the pass percentage – I was told it was to increase the number of ‘graduates’ to access funds – it is absolutely detrimental to the child and no one has the right to play with any child’s future. I cannot begin to count the number of kids we have salvaged from these conditions, kids who have not only passed but become toppers.

The children of India deserve better and I hope our new PM and Education Minister will stand by them. They have waited for far too long!

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.