Ministers resign and then are brought back through some backdoor as governors, deputy ministers or ministers of state. Public memory being short, except for a resigned shake of the head, the masses, who gather during the heat of the moment in squares to shout slogans, are missing by inaction.

There seems to be mudslinging going on now that almost seems to say that if a predecessor before the present scamster has been corrupt, he has a right to be so. BJP who donned the mantle of the honesty and called for the immediate resignation of Raja, Chavan and Kalmadi are talking of enquiries for Yedurappa. There is so much open and blatant double standards.

The Prime Minister is supposed to be unimpeachable in his honesty and integrity and yet his holy cloak hides the multitude of dishonest deeds the magnitude of which is so gargantuan that it is now spilling over like a full bubbling pot.

Kiran Bedi rightly said that there is no process in law for anyone to fight corruption by filing an FIR, getting an investigation and an arrest, as far as politicians are concerned. Once elected, they don’t even have to answer any questions. They are protected by the law and administration with immunities that will ensure that they are never prosecuted or jailed. Not a single one has been arrested or jailed so far.

Murli Deora asks in today TOI if the people of South Mumbai even know who their corporators are. I suggest they put up a big board in all areas with phone numbers and names so that all of us know whom to call. Is that a hard thing to do? I suggest we have a small space in the newspapers which showcases the number of calls that are unanswered or grievances un-redressed like a score card on politicians. Is that too much to ask? I suggest we strengthen the hands of RTI Activists by starting a fund for their families, so that they can pull out papers of scams like Adarsh before it turns into full blown shocker. Is that hard to do?

Where there is a political will there is a way.. the rest is talk talk talk… In the present situation I cannot see a social will unless we all go in for a bloody revolution.

?

SWINE PANIC

Swine or pigs have long been part of our leisure and entertainment. Take the prize fat sow in Wodehouse's Blanding Castle novels, Piglet of Winnie the pooh, Wilbur of Charlotte's Web fame, three little pigs of Aesop, Porky pig from the cartoons, the musical Pink Flyod pigs, Piloswine, Spoink of the Pokemons or Babe who endeared millions of celluloid fans, swine have never given us sleepless nights.

All has changed. Swine is a dreaded word!

Today our media is pigging out on swine flu. Swine is in again. Swine is news. Every swine has its day. Dirty swine, greedy swine are pass�, killer swine is the new wave.

And it's a wave hitting all parts of the country. Sweeping all the media stakes with shareholdings handed out to pharmacies and drug companies. Bonanza time. Instead of Black Death that took

off 2/3^rds of the European populace in the middle ages, we have

Death riding atop the obese swine to lasso hapless humans in droves.

The deadly H1N1 virus as our mediamen are calling it, is fatal we are told, and yet its only a flu and more people die routinely of accidents or malaria each day. Swine flu fatality is less than 1% of those infected. In fact it can be so mild that many cases of what is seen as just a flu could have been swine flu in mild form. These people are then open to infect others for the next three weeks. If those infected are immuno-compromised through old age, and underlying complexity of disease history like diabetes, hypertension, asthma, then it can spread through their systems with virulent intensity and kill them.

The young and the healthy are not spared. Children and teenagers can have their T cells go into overdrive and this unregulated activity can break cell walls and let in the virus which then travels through the blood stream to cause multi organ failure.

The fact that swine flu virus lives for a couple of hours in the atmosphere as opposed to the AIDS virus that perishes in a few seconds is also a cause for concern. The disease is therefore out there. In the air and on doorknobs, tables, clothes and handles waiting to be picked up.

So prevention might be a difficult thing though one must mitigate its advances by ensuring personal hygiene, masks, avoiding unnecessary touching of nose and mouth, all kinds of hugging, kissing and other physical overtures . Not a guarantee of being safe, but a thought to console one on one's death bed, if one is unlucky, that one did one's best!

It is now becoming obvious that this virus is the resurfacing of the deadly Spanish flu which during 1918-19 took off a third of the world population from the map as did the Black Death earlier in Europe in the Middle Ages. H1N1 as a pandemic might easily be the way in which Nature is out to regulate the 6 billion plus that humans have proliferated and a weight the earth is groaning under. Mother Nature throws this spin on her arrogant human offspring from time to time. She does spring cleaning and keeps herself healthy. She allows herself a little chuckle especially as she remembers hearing stuff like 'Let us save mother earth - Stop nuclear weapons'

Earlier, Plague, typhoid, small pox, syphilis, cholera, typhus, TB, leprosy, malaria and yellow fever, have been responsible for such corrections.

Some diseases though deadly like AIDS, Lassa fever, ebola virus have been contained as they cause death very soon, and future victims need very close contact with the infected. Hence they do not become pandemics.

In recent times SARS and bird flu have caused huge scares but have been contained. When H1N1 struck therefore we were caught napping, in the belief that like the other two, this one would fade before reaching our shores. There is also the strong belief amongst several Indians that being a terribly polluted country most germs would be easily rebuffed by our well oiled immunity machinery. In fact the joke goes that the swine flu virus should be put onto our politicians who would corrupt them and render them fake.

Yes there is panic. Sure we have begun to wince when someone in the lift coughs, and surreptitiously move away when a colleague sneezes, but life does not stop. Schools are closed but there are people ready for Ganpati bapa with masks, children building human pyramids for Gokulashtami looking like little bandits at play, weddings where designer zari lined masks will adorn guests, shopping melas and other celebrations will progress without abating. We are a resilient bunch. Love in the time of H1N1.

Meanwhile, our beleaguered and unthinking health system wakes up when people begin to die and go floundering without a plan of action. First 900 rush to test when only 300 can be accommodated; the BMC chairman asks people to send an sms to decide closure of schools; people are not sure if high fever is a requisite for the virus on day 1 or day 4? Tamiflu should not be taken as the virus will mutate is not a directive that TV is telling us. Spurious cures of all kinds are laughing all the way to the bank. Masks are being sold for 500 a piece; slums, from where all our home help arrive daily are not being fumigated; people rushing into hospitals and sharing body odour in pressing queues so they are likely to be infected if they just went there with a healthy sneeze. It is like a Mario cartoon, a mass of arms and legs we call apna Bharat in a state of panic.

Ofcourse, we should have done the throat swabs at the airports when Mexico, US and UK was reeling first. The testing at the airports was such a farce that I am still tearing with laughter at the memory of it when I returned from Down Under in May. That was the mistake. ab bhugat rahe hai . A stitch in time saves nine should be our national motto I say!

At the end of the day, when your time comes, it comes and you go. When you read the history of pandemics harvesting 50 million people its just a number, Now that you are worried about a 100 deaths, the enormity of that ancient tragedy stares at you in the face. Rahen na rahen hum meheka karenge yeh zami yeh aasma haamre bina so if we are part of the big correction folks, look at the big pic and do not despair. It's your contribution to making the world a more equitable place.

 

A PRIDE OF GAYS     Some of the most kind, productive, successful people I have known are gay. I am privileged to know them and to have the gift of their friendship. To this wonderful blessing, I owe gratitude to my daughter Adithi who changed my inflexible and unfair views on them when she was just 15, in one of the several arguments we constantly have on various issues, and the " violent agreements" we come to as my son-in-law is discovering.   When prejudice is born of ignorance it can be damaging to self and society. Self because all of us are on a growth path and need to find it within ourselves to view all aspects of life with harmony and love. Society because we can collectively coerce, harm and cause incredible pain and justify it as the truth, be immune to guilt because of our numbers.   My first gay friend was Brian, a handsome suave Australian with whom I shared a class teachership of a grade 5 class way back in 2000.     Brian was an excellent teacher, a sensitive person involved in a corrosive relationship with a much younger man, who eventually used him for material ends. I have shared with Brian teaching strategies, his reminiscence of childhood, admonished him for his gullibility, laughed and shopped, taken him home to my rather uncomfortable husband, partied into late nights with friends and listened to his fears and dreams. I have loved Brian as I love all my friends, without judgement and with a deep sense of gratitude for the gift of friendship.   I have since known friends of my daughter who are gay. Again lovely human beings, intelligent, hard working, playful and wonderfully caring. It is no secret therefore that my feelings for their cause are biased in a personal sense of outrage at their unfair plight.   To my mind a lot of people who are highly prejudiced are those who have never known a gay person. Like my early stages of prejudice they are embroiled in half truths or untruths given to them by threatened clergy, moral custodians who have very selective vision and pursue soft targets from amongst the large areas of social reform available to them or people who are insecure and who fear a takeover of their comfort zones by having to deal with difference.     First of all gays and lesbians are born that way. They are not products of deprivation of social mingling of opposite sexes. They are not confused people who could swing either way. Their confusion, if at all, emerges from the reactions to their gender preference from the society they live in and its violent disapproval of their desires. Gayness  is totally a part of their genes in a sexual preference they cannot help. To a gay touching a girl sexually would be as abhorrent as it would be for a straight man to touch another man sexually. So you first need to empathise with the human beings, instead of writing them off as deviant or trying to punish or “cure” them. Can you cure someone who is born with dark skin, or slit eyes, or with female genitalia? NO. But you can cure yourself of thinking of people as lower than you because of their caste, creed, colour, sect, nationality  and sexual preference.   Imagine having a criminal law against all those who were left handed or blind. Imagine having a criminal law against anyone worshipping the rain as a new religion. We would find these either cruel or  ridiculous. And yet we have lived with a 150 year old archaic law criminalizing gays without batting an eyelid because it has a sexual orientation and we are so uncomfortable with sex.   The criminalzation of gays was an offense on the part of our society. We stand guilty. We stand in shame for that atrocity. Like the purging of Jews by the Nazi regime for which we as humanity bear the cross of guilt and shame and anger, we must take responsibility for  not advocating the cause of our gay brethren sooner and asking for their rights.     Same sex mating has been found in several species of the animal kingdom signaling to us that it is not 'unnatural'  but a scientific   part of  recorded natural history. We have a natural aversion or curiosity to homosexuality because it does not produce fruit in a child. It therefore becomes subservient to heterosexuality.  We are also the majority and therefore anything that is different from the norm we try to obliterate as it threatens our dominance. And yet, nature is responsible for these mutations and variations. There must be a larger purpose in this, like the control of burgeoning populations where Mother Nature gently steps in and neutralizes the numbers through such changes in gender preference, who knows?  If, in the future, we were to find a reason such as this, we would perhaps canonize those who have made our survival possible and treat them with gratitude and honour.  Such is the changeability of our self serving attitudes and values.   The AIDS panic hugely damaged the reputation of gays where rabid religions leaders called them the scourge of mankind and talked of nemesis of God against this Evil. Closeting personal emotions are clearly harmful as any bottling goes. So it is  with the frustration of gays who are not allowed even the mildest of ex-pressions of affection that we heterosexuals take so much  for granted.   Extreme social repression has extreme reactionary consequences. The confusion ensuing from violent social disapproval can create fear and confusion and as sexual orientation is at the heart of the matter, where all other parameters are common, this aspect gets highlighted and becomes the core of the gay man and movement. Hence the fullness of wholesomeness of the human being is lost because of this skewed focus. Gays themselves are known to lose this focus, concentrating exclusively on their sexuality to define themselves as individuals.            Then there is religion. The custodians of religion are unanimous in their anger and fear for traditions and the shaking of the foundations of societies. They expect a huge corruption of morals because gays have been sanctioned a few basic rights. Their argument about the  natural order presumes that man is not part of Nature? If he is homosexual then does that not indicate that  Nature has the capacity for homosexuality? If deers are not, then neither do they marry. This intermingling of these parameters as arguments of the natural order is  just an excuse for religious bigotry.   People marry for several reasons, love, children, money, companionship, sex, status and who will judge any one of these is more valid than the other?  Marriage is a social institution created by society for the protection of women and children. It is also an institution that protects wealth and property and therefore a business transaction of sorts. Because it involves the emotional ties between a man and a woman it also enshrines love and care. It protects property and rights of individuals and families. It offers support in old age. Are we saying all of these parameters need to be met in order to justify marriage? If that were so why have we seen the following changes in this sacred institution, other than the sanction of gay marriages? We have constantly reinvented the institution and moulded it.             �            Legalization of divorce �         Criminalization of marital rape (and recognition that the concept even exists) �         Legalization of contraception �         Legalization of interracial marriage �         Recognition of women's right to own property in a marriage �         Elimination of dowries �         Elimination of parents' right to choose or reject their children's mates �         Elimination of childhood marriages and betrothals �         Elimination of polygamy �         Existence of large numbers of unmarried people �         Women not taking the last names of their husbands �         Changing emphasis from money and property to love and personal fulfillment Marriage has evolved significantly. In fact live in and co habitation is now recognized in many countries to be given the status of regular marriages and property rights. Hence why are we making such a fuss over gay marriages? Until we have no divorces in straight marriages can we deny gays the right to marry in the name of righteous sanctity? The court ruling brought great jubilation to the gay community who hit the streets to rejoice. Gay parades in many countries  are regularly held as part of the assertion of who they are. It is necessary for them because they have for long lived with fear and guilt and shame that the hetro society has heaped on them. In Indian society where physical hugging of males and females are viewed with prudery and shock, I understand why the PDA (public display of affection) has hurt some sensibilities. All we need to do is fan the flames of our personal prejudice and social hatred to create strife and trouble. I am really happy no one did that.

  What makes us think gay couples can”t live happier lives than hetros or that they make bad parents? How narrow is that? Don”t hetros divorce even after being married for 50 years in their old age? Don”t they beat up and abuse kids? So how are they better qualified?

What as a society are we protecting? Do we think young children will become gay if they are not born that way? Our society is changing all the time. What you consider normal now as couples holding hands would have been a scandal in the age of your grandpa. Similarly we will find that several behaviours that we consider shocking could well be the norm in a couple of generations. So let us not exaggerate the moral component too much. History must teach us to be more tolerant, empathetic and to tone down our rabid reactions to people and situations. So let us make amends and at least allow them an hour of celebration. dont grudge them that.

And stop the 'we' and 'them', they are human, they are people like you and me. Once upon a time the blacks, the jews and the shudras, why even women have been put to this discrimination pain. Let us not  repeat bad history.

So the people have spoken but….

Before we go into a euphoric Rahul Gandhi Zindabad bleat or Congress is our only hope claim, blindly applauding the winner as we are wont to do in the throes of success worshipping delirium, - the winning side being a comfortable one - let us take stock of what lies in store by examining the apples in the basket.

Read the following article that appeared in the DNA on criminalisation, nepotism and corruption in who we have elected.

It is only by an extraordinary miracle or by a very decisive extrication of these toxins, that it is possible for this election result to be deemed favourable or happy.

What we can do as a people is to continue our campaign against the evils of the state by doubling our vigilance and making sure we dont leave the door open for the bandits to loot some more.

This report in the DNA immediately after the victory of the congress I would like to take as a sign of the change in the times to come.

Vigilance and protest is the key to a better India. I hope the voices we heard during the pre-election campaigns go up a thousand fold and the various associations, activists, parties formed to counter and fight corruption strengthen and proliferate.

The jaago campaign should not be part of an election fever. Actually I have never believed that we can suddenly garner a majority of candidates to be different from the ones we have got. It is a fond dream and a sweeping one at that. But what we can do is watch carefully and protest loudly. The jaagran must be NOW. Keep a keen eye on how the papers and magazines are "building" Rahul Gandhi in the wake of the victory. He is already a PM in their eyes. It is Rahul's victory. Such sycophancy will ensure that we turn a blind eye till the next election by which time the country has lost five precious years.

This is an article from DNA copy pasted below:

“A large number of young MPs, many with criminal charges against them, a staggering number of persons hailing from “political families“, and a huge number of crorepatis will mark out the 15th Lok Sabha from its predecessors.

There is a disappointing 15% increase in the number of MPs facing criminal charges in the incoming Lok Sabha, which will also have at least 225 MPs who are less than 50 years old.

Despite the high-decibel campaigns led by film stars and non-governmental organisations (NGO), there are more criminals in the incoming Lok Sabha than the previous one.

According to National Election Watch (NEW), a coalition of more than 1,200 NGOs that fielded film stars and media campaign for electoral reforms, especially against criminalisation of politics, 150 of the newly elected MPs have criminal cases pending against them. Of them, 73 MPs face serious charges.

In 2004, there were only 128 MPs with criminal cases in the Lok Sabha, of whom 55 had serious criminal records. So, in effect, there is a staggering increase of 17.2% in MPs with criminal records and 30.9% increase in the number of MPs with serious criminal records, as compared to the previous Lok Sabha.

The Congress’s MP from Gujarat, Vitthalbhai Hansrajbhai Radadiya, holds the dubious distinction of having the most criminal cases against an MP. He has a total of 16 cases, of which 5 are of a serious nature

The maximum number of serious charges under the IPC are against Jagdish Sharma of the JD(U) from Jahanabad, Bihar.

The incoming Lok Sabha would also reaffirm the fact that in Indian politics, family is the source of power.There are at least six parent-offspring pairs in the Lok Sabha: Mulayam Singh Yadav and son Akhilesh, Sonia Gandhi and son Rahul, Deve Gowda and son Kumaraswamy, Maneka Gandhi and son Varun, Ajit Singh and son Jayant Chaudhary, Sharad Pawar and daughter Supriya Sule. There is also Farooq Abdullah and his son-in-law Sachin Pilot.
From Tamil Nadu, the younger generation of Karunanidhi’s family would also step in: son Azhagiri and nephew Dayanidhi Maran would join the Lok Sabha. His daughter Kanimozhi is already in the Rajya Sabha.

In state after state, a large number of MPs who have won this Lok Sabha election are from politically powerful families or are erstwhile royalties.

The Lok Sabha elections are also turning out to be stupendously difficult for ordinary Indians, as the cost of fighting elections shoots through the roof. In fact, there has been an almost 100% increase in the number of crorepatis in Lok Sabha from 2004.
In the incoming Lok Sabha, there are 300 MPs who, as per their affidavits, are crorepatis.

The richest MP is Namma Nageswara Rao of Andhra Pradesh, who won on a TDP ticket from Khammam. He has declared an asset of Rs173 crore. Second is Naveen Jindal of Kurukshetra of the Congress party, with a declared asset of Rs131 crores.

Over 66% of the Congress’s MPs are crorepatis: 137 of the 206 winners. Compared to the Congress, only 50 % of the BJP MPs are crorepatis: 58 of its 116. The SP and BSP percentage is closer to the Congress: 14 of the 22 winners are crorepaties in the SP; while of the BSP’s 21 MPs, 13 are crorepatis.”

So my dear friends jaagte raho .

Politicians have discovered technology. They have begun using sms es and emails to touch base with the electorate. I have been getting letters for a while from party workers of various candidates, wooing me with their claims. But this it was from the young man himself- the sitting MP as they call them. Therefore, I couldn't resist taking a good swipe at him. Sharing this with all of you. — On Wed, 4/8/09, MILIND DEORA SOUTH MUMBAI LOK SABHA MP <mdmail@milinddeora.net> wrote: From: MILIND DEORA SOUTH MUMBAI LOK SABHA MP <mdmail@milinddeora.net> Subject: Letter from Mr. Milind Deora, Member of Parliament To: me . Date: Wednesday, April 8, 2009, 11:36 AM Dear Citizen, I believe now more than ever, it is critical for political leaders to do what is expected from them: LEAD. Lead not only with confidence but also with a profound sense of caution and intelligence. This sense of history dawned on me when I was out on the bloodied streets of Mumbai, in November 2008, pitching in to do whatever I could to save lives. In light of the Mumbai terrorist attack and the global financial crunch, I'm convinced that leadership with conscience is the need of the hour. The inclusive politics I've always advocated and practiced is at threat from a divisive brand of politics that works on the colonial principal of divide and rule. In November 2008, I was shocked - as you - to find that the leaders who established a media presence on the strength of a politics of hatred were missing when we needed them to lead the people and offer resolution. Instead, they went into hiding, thereby disclosing their incapability ' and their terrifying indifference. On April 30th, 2009, we have the opportunity to elect our representative to the highest legislature in the country, thereby empowering a Federal Government and a Prime Minister that can best represent us, and our nation's interests. It is critical that we, as Indians, utilize our precious vote to guarantee ourselves political stability. A stable government is imperative not just for sustaining a rapid rate of economic growth or ensuring an effective and consistent foreign policy in line with India's interests and global ambitions, but for the world to recognize India as one nation, with a common goal, and not as a coalition of interests. Although you may be familiar with how I have served my constituency and country, some key attainments are listed below: Mumbai's Development: Worked with the Maharashtra Government to establish Force One, Mumbai's own NSG-styled commando battalion Wrested Rs.1,200 crore central funding ' the highest in the country ' for re-laying Mumbai's decaying storm water network Worked in parliament to establish the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), with the aim of providing central assistance towards urban renewal projects across Indian cities, of which Mumbai and Maharashtra are the biggest beneficiaries Initiated the Beautification of Marine Drive and Gateway of India promenades Secured funds for upgrading major hospitals: Rs.120 crore from the Union and Maharashtra Governments for J.J. Hospital; Rs.30 crore for Cama and G.T. Hospitals from the Union Government Coordinated between various government agencies and the private sector to ensure that the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, Mumbai Metro and Trans-Harbour Sea Link projects become a reality Sourced additional funds from Union and Maharashtra Governments for the Mumbai Urban Transportation Project/Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project (MUTP/MUIP) Rail/Road components Pressed Mahanagar Gas Ltd. to extend its network of piped natural gas to cover South Mumbai homes Secured the Union Government's research-related grant of Rs.100 crore for Mumbai University Staunchly opposed corruption in the BMC (e.g. the Mayor's proposal that meant virtually 'gifting' away the landmark Crawford Market to a builder) Launched the debate on converting 600-acres of mill lands into open spaces and affordable/low-cost housing Provided Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) funds to various housing societies such as the Cuffe Parade Resident's Association and Altamount Road Resident's Association, towards their beautification Determinedly promoted student activism and youth affairs through SPARSH, an NGO providing free computer education to economically underprivileged primary and secondary students of over hundred schools in Mumbai, and SIGMA (Stimulating Inspiration Guidance and Mentorship Association), connecting industry with academia; by helping upgrade educational infrastructure using MPLADS funds ' e.g. setting up a brand new audio-visual (A/V) lab for the students of Wilson College, Chowpatty In Parliament (www.parliamentofindia.nic.in): Participated in numerous parliamentary debates/questions, notably on the Supplementary Demands for Grants; Indo-US Nuclear Deal; 26/11 Terrorist Attack on Mumbai Earned the privilege of initiating the Lok Sabha debate on the Right to Information Bill, now turned into a vital act The average number of questions asked by an MP over the past 5 years is 135. I raised 472 questions in the 14th Lok Sabha The average attendance in parliament of all MP’s from Maharashtra is 64%, and the national average is 73%. My attendance rate is 75% Outlook Business Magazine rated me as one of the best performing MPs based on a wide range of criteria On Parliamentary Committees: As member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, worked on the indigenization of Defence Production, Defence Budgeting, creating consensus towards setting up a Unified Command for the Armed Forces, and the Welfare of Ex-Servicemen As member of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Urban Development, took active part in deliberations on Mumbai's rightful claim for increased central assistance for various urban infrastructure projects. However, I would not like to take this opportunity only to highlight my achievements; rather, I would like to use this space to open a conversation with you about the future of our city ' and our country. Hungry for transformation, we are prepared to drop our differences and unite to become the change we seek. Now, with the Lok Sabha elections looming before us, it is crucial that one of us engages in politics in the belief that our own future is at stake. To surrender political differences for the larger good to benefit us all, that's the heart of my agenda. I am writing to you, therefore, on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections to ask for your full and wholehearted support so that I may continue my work with the same determination and dedication as thus far. I invite you to come on the same page as I, so we can continue to shape Mumbai's and India's destiny. In deep gratitude, I remain, Your MP, Milind Deora

My reply:

Dear Milind,

It is interesting that you should write to me on the eve of the election. What were you doing for 5 years? There is no point pointing fingers at other parties, what had you done to ensure that South Mumbai was not targetted? After all you were in power, not them. What did you to do ensure that the coastal guards were in place? What was actually discovered when the gates were investigated after the horses had fled, was alarming negligence. Are you distancing yourself from that responsibility? You cannot. You who were chosen and placed as the corporator of this constituency is guilty.

Before we have global ambitions can we cast an eye on the local? Gone through Badwar park fisherman colonies and the slums up north of that? Seen how they live? It is good to pave the footpaths and beautify Marine Drive with atrocious phallic structures of cement, but I would have been happy if the lives of these misearbles had been addressed. My maids who come from those slums have remained in exactly the same place if not worse under your rule. What have you done for slum rehabilitation? What have you done about beggar cartels? What have you done about undertrials? What have you done for the sanitation in our beaches which stink with human fecus? I am not interested in your beautification plans. We could have lived with those footpaths for a while longer. We were happy with the brush dividing marine drive. It was functional, green and cheap. You have neglected people in flesh and blood in favour of concrete.

Can you give us an account of how that 1200 cr were spent? Are you in a position to say that there will be no flooding now on? You have secured a lot of funds, the development of the city is not very noticeable, except for the digging of roads. Whether they will change into metros and flyovers is yet to be seen.

What have you done about policemen who openly take bribes on all the south mumbai nakas? of buses that honk in the early hours and bully traffic. of red lights thwarted because there is absolutely no cop around? These are highly visible signs of lawlessness. The RTI guys have struggled so hard to get a foothold as activists, that your efforts look like comfortable potshots in high places.

You went to parliament 75% of the time? I can’t not go to work 25% of the time. How did you manage? And if others are doing even less why didnt you kick up a shindig? We would have voted you for doing just that.

What is the public expenditure on you? Can you please send me an honest account? I dont want to spend so much on any of you. Do you think that will ever happen? I want you guys to travel in the heat of the trains, bump up and down on potholes, take delays at goverenment offices, be faced with bribing for your rights, and know what it means to be a common man or woman. I want you to know exploitation and fear. Be common for a month? Can you?

If your party is hoisting candidates with convictions will you raise your voice against your high command and call their hypocrisy to account? Do you have that courage? I dont want you to wrest money, I want you to be my voice because I cannot be heard in those halls of parliament. And my voice is asking questions on corruption and accountability. It wants to be heard like millions of my bretheren. You cannot be my voice because you will not speak my thoughts or fight my battles. Your agenda is not mine.

Will you have the fortitude to respond to this letter, or will your lieutenants delete it as soon as they read it? Will you pretend that you get so many letters that you can’t possibly read them all? Will you dismiss me as a woman who does not know the complexities?

You have a man like Adi Godrej rooting for you. A man who own half of Mumbai. Will all your combined power and money buy my maid a decent night’s sleep? That, my dear Milind, is the question. The rest is dross. The fluff that you pull over all eyes and more importantly your own eyes, in actually believing that you did a tremendous job, is the final irony. Can this nation, in all honesty, afford any of you?

In distress and frustration,

me

I would like to thank the guys at the Administration Office of Rediff Iland for taking prompt action and banning the imposter Lissome Lady’s blog. They kept their word. They do exist. They can be approached and they do listen to reason. Thank you Rediff Iland.

I believe this person went on and on pushing the enveloppe each time under the conviction that the admin did not exist and anything could be written without consequence. Looks like she got her answer (if it be a ’she’ that is)

Once again three cheers for the Iland Admin. Hip Hip Hurrayyy….hip hip hurray… hip hip hurray.

Imitation could be the best form of flattery but when the imitation uses caluminous means it is foul.

Someone has decided to masquerade as Lissome Lady and write incriminatory anti- Islam articles. This is criminal. We are living in the age of terrorism and I guess it can stalk virtual spaces too.

I have written to the administration on this. I would like anyone who knows someone in the admin to give me details so that I can book these people.

I am trying to flick off  people like Shahjadi with mental problems who see morality issues in my comments to friends, but  this imposter is a different kettle of fish.

If this continues I will have to approach the police. Defamation is a crime. Lissome Lady is a nick that has been writing on this iland for more than a year. I suggest the person use another nick that cannot be mistaken as this one.

Please scrutinise any comment that comes from Lissome Lady in your gb or comment page, it might not be mine.

If this is an attempt to make me stop writing, watch this space. LL is made of sterner stuff.

On Feb 25 2009 I received this letter quite out of the blue.

Dear Lead India participant,

Two years ago, you decided to step forward and DO something about the way our country is run, and the quality of politicians we elect to run it. You chose to speak up rather than merely crib from the sidelines.

Today, on the eve of the most important general elections we've probably ever had, the nation needs a concerned citizen like you. To ensure that we don't again waste this once-in-five-years opportunity, like we have been doing for the past 60 years.

The Times of India is set to launch Lead India '09, a country-wide campaign across all our newspapers, with the aim of ensuring that better candidates are put up and elected in the coming elections. The campaign will first try to put pressure on political parties to feature better candidates, by mobilizing the opinions of lakhs of thinking individuals around the country; and then act as a Voters' Guide to help voters make a more informed choice, through detailed investigation of all key candidates in 40 urban constituencies.

To enable Lead India '09 to become a powerful peoples' movement, it needs a core band of volunteers willing to play the role of catalysts. As a member of this core, your main role would be to ignite the minds of our countrymen ' through heart-felt participation in blogs and discussion boards or indeed by hosting your own blogs on any issue close to your heart. You would also be expected to reach out to friends in various community websites and involve them in the movement through simple pledges like 'I say NO to criminals in politics' or 'I'll not let my vote go waste'. Therefore, please let us know the social networking sites (e.g. Facebook, Orkut etc) which you are a member of.

So, if you want to be a change agent in this historic election, do write back to us by February 23rd and we'll give you a special pass and pre-registration to the forthcoming Lead India '09 website.

I do hope you decide to come on board.

Rahul Kansal

Director, The Times of India

I wrote back promptly:

You want leaders Rahul? You wont get any different from what we have now, unless you give us candidates who we see as people with visions and real track records of change. Not someone who has been in politics coz his father was, or headed an institution for four decades that has not revolutionised its own backyard with forward thinking. Not someone who is selected by a party to toe the party line. So who are we fielding?

Leadership is a very difficult phenomenon. Rare and precious. First define who is a leader. Is it one who sits at the top of the heap by happenstance? Or is it one who has the vision, the stamina, the purpose, the focus, the honesty to pursue the goals? Is he/she likely to get down to the factory floor and dirty his hands or is he going to add to the public expenditure? Is he one who has pretty words or someone who has been tried and tested in the battlefield of adversity?

I am not interested in candidates who have no background in education becoming education ministers. Can we demand a complete profile? a complete POA from these candidates? At this point when we vote we don't even know who will get what portfolio? Blind man’s buff. We do not make informed choices? So what are you asking me to do?

Change your slogan to ‘Only the gritty can lead India.’ Do our leaders have the grit and the gumption? Do they reflect? Do they have the courage to make changes? Are they inclusive without being biased to one sector that gives them votes? Are they quality conscious? Do they believe that education is about character building? Will they pressurize Boards of exams to be more accountable in the kind of citizens they produce? Do they believe in creating awareness amongst our children on political leaders? evaluating quality? changing mindsets? responsibility to the future generation? Do they have an agenda for your paper to publish and debate on?

In all probability, you will not even reply to this mail of mine, but I still have the satisfaction of writing to you because you wrote to me. Choose the right leader who will make the change and you will find the change you want. Otherwise, you are only garnering support from the masses to support the mediocrity that fills our cadres.

Scrap you page 3. Don't fiddle when India burns. Give that space for this bigger cause. Put out candidates who have calibre. Force parties to take them because they are the right candidates who have people support. Get to those slums, which is where your big electorate are? How are we educating them? Begin a revolution. You are such a powerful paper. Ask what you are doing for this country? And if you are doing something, is it enough? Or is it too little, too late?

After this there was one more mail saying: You are chosen as ambassador of the Lead India campaign so begin your propaganda against the government or some such vague inanity. Every one these days is into protest T shirts, coffee mugs, slogans and songs that is anti politician. It is fashionable to be so. The Times has half page adverts urging an against vote campaign. Have they found any alternatives among our billion people to field as candidates? No. They are going to give the new government an agenda of wishes. The irony of it!!! I mean do these guys think they can make a difference with this kind of lip service?

The same musical chairs ' Sonia, Manmohan, Advani, Mayavati, Mulayam, Devegowda, Patnaik, Jayalalithaa going round and round. It is the same in Pakistan ' If they throw out Zardari it will be Sharif or Gilani or Khayani ' different faces of the same political persona with the same agendas of corruption, condoning of dishonest practices and stagnation. Will that make those thousands burning the streets happier? Sadly no. It will continue limping. Similarly India. Can we ever produce an Obama or a Thatcher from the rank and file of ordinary lawyers, teachers, grocers? I still remember that stupid boy Milind Deora standing and shaking outside the Taj when the terrorists attacked. That is what happens when you inherit your father's political kursi. I felt a cold contempt because the constituency continues to be as dirty and crowded as it was five years ago. And now when we think of youth leaders who comes to mind? The same Rahul Gandhi, Supriya Sule, Milind Deora .

Those Lead India finalists who were brought in with so much fanfare, where are they? Why are they not part of the election candidature? Why are they advertising 'say no to criminals' when they were quiet about that anti criminal bill? Why are they not in any case publicizing the names of potential criminal candidates each day reminding the electorate that these are people who need to be booed and shooed out of sight?

As long as we have these same jokers in the fray we can vote, not vote, do an anti vote whatever, it makes no difference. If elections are cancelled because of anti votes are new candidates going to sprout? From where? Can you and I stand for the elections? I did not even get a reply from Rahul for my pains, is there going to be someone out there who will listen to an unknown face? I think not.

When people with power cannot garner their strengths to make a difference how on earth will any anti vote help? Enlighten me someone.

THE TERROR PARADOX

So now cricket is in trouble. Whatever statements faceless terrorists are trying to make they are saying it in places where millions congregate. On popularity lists, they are targeting entertainment, sport, places of worship and restaurants. Ministers, their houses, their workplaces do not seem to fit their target bill. It is almost like they want to keep them alive to watch the mayhem or else why would you spare the perpetrators and go for the bystanders?

Now we have the popular world narrative of ‘we must get terrorism out’, ‘we shall not fail’, ‘we must protect our children’ and the rest of the moralaistic and socialistic blah.

However before we put up placards or billboards screaming messages of our stoicism, courage and immense resilience at the faceless face of terror let us look at the roles of players behind the scenes hidden by smokescreens of power.

Let us look at the political agendas of the various countries that hang in the precarious balance of power which they shift with careful acquity to maintain dominance and to equalise growing rogues.

I was determined to see Slumdog Millionaire. A movie sweeping awards the world over had to be good notwithstanding the protests by Indians about the show of poverty marketed and sold as slum tourism. Ironically, the film does have a sequence of the same slum tourism it is accused of, as a testimony of how poverty all over the world has a sordid attraction for the haves and how the have-nots use this to advantage to earn their daily bread. Therefore, that is not really an issue to bleat about. It is the reality.

The writer has cleverly used a popular show to format the life of the protagonist slumdog, whose potential success is justified in the long series of struggles that his young life has witnessed and experienced. Early beginnings in crowded slums, completely realistic and shocking in their filth, squalor, congestion, crime, grime and crap. Even as we see them all around us, even as they rub shoulders with us in the streets and buses, even as they work in our homes, the truth is that we have do not know how they live. We imagine it. We are as ignorant as the tourist who aspires to see them. The stark full frontal reality of the slums is intensely disturbing and shameful. We have to acknowledge that there is no point in protesting about its portrayal, if we are not ashamed to live in its proximity. The protest should be towards the forces, the protectors who actually spawn it with corruption and greed. The protest and shame should be inwardly directed to question our indifference and insensitivity toward fellow citizens and their state of poverty and shun them like some unwanted disease. Poverty should be shunned the poor should be addressed.

The film holds your interest because of its slick editing and pace. It has great moments in acting and cinematography. It is different and unique in many ways. It disturbs and that is always the sign of a good film.

It is in many ways a story about purity. Like a lotus emerging from a dirty pond, Jamal has all the innocence of spirit, true love, loyalty, empathy, justice, stoicism, lack of guile, honesty and goodness. Even without his win at KBC, his story is the journey of success. As foils, we have the lives of Salim, Jamal's brother who takes to a predictable life of crime and Anil Kapoor who confessedly a rags to riches story, is dishonest, cunning, malicious and frustrated even after he is economically successful. His automatic envy of Jamal who mirrors his own struggles underscores the difference and accentuates Jamal's true worth. All of this difference is threaded by the common index of money that strings together the various characters in the film and allows you to examine their responses to what life deals out to them.

The story line however is weak. Not enough attention has been paid to draw the characters and sketch their growth in a way that they remain etched in our minds in haunting empathy. It is the story that has the ultimate sway. The various engagements of Jamal with life in the slum, the beggar cartel, the train hawking, the tourist guide, the restaurant and then the call center teaboy seem to be embellishments of the character stuck on him from the outside rather than intrinsic to his role. This makes the character seem more like a middle class kid role playing in a story as a slumdog. Boyle fails in not even attempting to put any make up on the very upper middle class urban looks of Dev Patel to mask this and therefore renders him cardboard, especially as the story does not support his credulity with more script intervention.

He lacks the brooding, the rough edge, the pain and the hunger that should be a natural consequence of his life content. He lacks the harshness that takes the toll on good looks. His eyes lack the vigilance, the caution that will necessarily be a part of the lesson of survival on the streets, even if he is lacks guile and is trusting. He has the freshness and comfort of a well-heeled kid living in Pali Hill who has wandered into the film and is play-acting the role. So although the slum world is truthfully represented in all its squalour, the character seems to be created and protected by the storywriter and does not grow naturally out of the slum. Salim is more the slumdog than Jamal.

In one shot we do see Jamal as slum school goer reading the 'Three Musketeers' at the municipal school (a highly unlikely text but one is willing to give that some poetic license) After that there is no establishment to his link to learning, as all we see is his survival in local trains and tourist places. His ability to pick up is hinted at so fleetingly that it is almost missed. He is no Ekalavya who has learnt on the job of survival. No frames have been dedicated to closing the gap between the street waif Jamal and the jeans clad teenager sitting on the hotseat of the show. His presence on the show too is to be visible to his lost love rather than to be a millionaire. Rather even his 'knowledge' seems to be a fortuitous one, a matter of luck than design. Hence the saga of courage and grit in the slumdog to succeed is reduced to one of lady luck's blind strokes than of human endeavour or striving. And to think the director could have changed all that simply by using the tattered text of the Three Musketeers in Jamal's pocket, as a telling symbol of his lost learning and his yearning for it. Nay, even his lost childhood, orientation and habitat. When I think about it, what a multivalent and iconic symbol it would have been! You don't have to use grand footage and lots of talk to create an impact.

A western audience would interpret Jamal's many situations and circumstances, rich in experience as the true journey to success, where success is measured not by money but by the sum total of one's resourcefulness, suffering, capacity for love and hope.

What will appeal to a western audience, more than the abject poverty of India, as mistakenly felt by a lot of blame shifting Indians, is Jamal's learning in the various circumstances he meets in life and his gains from them and because of them. We who are obsessed with learning within the walls of classrooms cannot appreciate the value of Jamal's life. But the message that real education is found in the University of life could have been established with just a few strokes of the artists brush in a few frames that could actually have heightened this awareness. Here we see Jamal's life played out in tandem to the game which is exciting, but without an appreciation of the real message, the story seems to carry on as a series of fortunate happenstances that lead to a lucky boy's victory. This is underscored in the last frame that says 'D. It is written' a perfect karma coating to an Indian story.

Other parts that lost it were the police station incident where the producer gets the winning Jamal arrested to ensure that he doesn't win. Electric shocks and suspension torture for a case of alleged cheating? If anyone should have protested, it should have been the Mumabi Police for maligning them. What they should have been fried for is being party to the burgeoning population of homeless and beggars and the cartels from whom they vasool their hafta. Surprisingly, Boyle has avoided this aspect and he also seems to have forgotten the role of drugs in the lives of these kids.

What stayed behind with me in shocking clarity and pain is the plight of children on the streets and slums of Mumbai. The fraility of their lives, the surreal changes in their circumstances over which they have no control or protection, the nightmarish dangers that they face, the risks they run where their very existence seems to be borrowed from Time by Life. If you simply follow the story, like the chap behind me who whispered "pedophile hoga" when Mamman arrived on the scene, you end up simply predicting the prostitution, maiming, beggarhood as an outcome of fictional events. You do not engage with the reality. It does not strike you that it could have well been your reality or mine, had we had the misfortune of being born in those slums. The thought is chilling and humbling as well. Because we know that this is not fiction but the reality of our city, the hurt, shock, pain and guilt we experience is deep and depressing.

As a movie, it is good not great. Rehman's music is grossly overrated. Irfan Khan is wasted. Dev Patel is a find. To deserve an Oscar it does not have the vastness of canvas of political cultural and universal panorama as a 'Fiddler on the Roof', or the greater irony of human lives and talents as an 'Amadeus'. So, if it wins at the Oscars, it is hoped that there will be some change in the lives of these miserables. We hope their faces continue to haunt us and we as a society wake up and address the cartels and gangs who maim and kill our children (yes they are 'ours') and put their spaces in extreme danger, instead of getting conveniently xenophobic and protesting against the release of the film.

If the Indian wants to pick holes in the film, talk about what has been done, is being done that the film has neglected to portray. What happens to post-riot kids? Can anyone look them in the eye and tell them we take care of them? That our media hounds the government about their plight? That we use our social and political machinery to make sure that at least our children are safe? Do we?

Is It A Cheetah?

This is an amazing article by Stephanie Tolan. If you know someone who you knew to be extremely intelligent and still did little with his/her life in personal, commercial or creative terms. If you have found amongst your menial staff sparks of astonishing insight, reckoning, sharpness. If you have a child who is performing far below his/her potential, then this is a must read for you. It is a read for anyone who wants to widen horizons in understanding the diversity of human intelligence and its special needs. Much has been said about the taare on the zameen, chalo aasman ki taraf bhi aankh utakar dekhe….. kitne taare gir bhi toh rahe hai……

Stephanie Tolan …..

It’s a tough time to raise, teach or be a highly gifted child. As the term “gifted” and the unusual intellectual capacity to which that term refers become more and more politically incorrect, the educational establishment changes terminology and focus.

Giftedness, a global, integrative mental capacity, may be dismissed, replaced by fragmented “talents” which seem less threatening and theoretically easier for schools to deal with. Instead of an internal developmental reality that affects every aspect of a child’s life, “intellectual talent” is more and more perceived as synonymous with (and limited to) academic achievement.

The child who does well in school, gets good grades, wins awards, and “performs” beyond the norms for his or her age, is considered talented. The child who does not, no matter what his innate intellectual capacities or developmental level, is less and less likely to be identified, less and less likely to be served.

A cheetah metaphor can help us see the problem with achievement-oriented thinking. The cheetah is the fastest animal on earth. When we think of cheetahs we are likely to think first of their speed. It’s flashy. It is impressive. It’s unique. And it makes identification incredibly easy. Since cheetahs are the only animals that can run 70 mph, if you clock an animal running 70 mph, IT’S A CHEETAH!

But cheetahs are not always running. In fact, they are able to maintain top speed only for a limited time, after which they need a considerable period of rest.

It’s not difficult to identify a cheetah when it isn’t running, provided we know its other characteristics. It is gold with black spots, like a leopard, but it also has unique black “tear marks” beneath its eyes. Its head is small, its body lean, its legs unusually long — all bodily characteristics critical to a runner. And the cheetah is the only member of the cat family that has non-retractable claws. Other cats retract their claws to keep them sharp, like carving knives kept in a sheath –the cheetah’s claws are designed not for cutting but for traction. This is an animal biologically designed to run.

Its chief food is the antelope, itself a prodigious runner. The antelope is not large or heavy, so the cheetah does not need strength and bulk to overpower it. Only speed. On the open plains of its natural habitat, the cheetah is capable of catching an antelope simply by running it down.

While body design in nature is utilitarian, it also creates a powerful internal drive. The cheetah needs to run!

Despite design and need however, certain conditions are necessary if it is to attain its famous 70 mph top speed. It must be fully grown. It must be healthy, fit and rested. It must have plenty of room to run. Besides that, it is best motivated to run all out when it is hungry and there are antelope to chase.

If a cheetah is confined to a 10 X 12 foot cage, though it may pace or fling itself against the bars in restless frustration, it won’t run 70 mph.

IS IT STILL A CHEETAH?

If a cheetah has only 20 mph rabbits to chase for food, it won’t run 70 mph while hunting. If it did, it would flash past its prey and go hungry! Though it might well run on its own for exercise, recreation, fulfillment of its internal drive, when given only rabbits to eat the hunting cheetah will run only fast enough to catch a rabbit.

IS IT STILL A CHEETAH?

If a cheetah is fed Zoo Chow it may not run at all.

IS IT STILL A CHEETAH?

If a cheetah is sick or if its legs have been broken, it won’t even walk.

IS IT STILL A CHEETAH?

And finally, if the cheetah is only six weeks old, it can’t yet run 70 mph.

IS IT, THEN, ONLY A *POTENTIAL* CHEETAH?

A school system that defines giftedness (or talent) as behavior, achievement and performance is as compromised in its ability to recognize its highly gifted students and to give them what they need as a zoo would be to recognize and provide for its cheetahs if it looked only for speed. When a cheetah does run 70 mph it isn’t a particularly “achieving” cheetah. Though it is doing what no other cat can do, it is behaving normally for a cheetah.

To lions, tigers, leopards — to any of the other big cats — the cheetah’s biological attributes would seem to be deformities. Far from the “best cat,” the cheetah would seem to be barely a cat at all. It is not heavy enough to bring down a wildebeest; its non-retractable claws cannot be kept sharp enough to tear the wildebeest’s thick hide. Given the cheetah’s tendency to activity, cats who spend most of their time sleeping in the sun might well label the cheetah hyperactive.

Like cheetahs, highly gifted children can be easy to identify. If a child teaches herself Greek at age five, reads at the eighth grade level at age six or does algebra in second grade we can safely assume that child is a highly gifted child. Though the world may see these activities as “achievements,” she is not an “achieving” child so much as a child who is operating normally according to her own biological design, her innate mental capacity. Such a child has clearly been given room to “run” and something to run for. She is healthy and fit and has not had her capacities crippled. It doesn’t take great knowledge about the characteristics of highly gifted children to recognize this child.

However, schools are to extraordinarily intelligent children what zoos are to cheetahs. Many schools provide a 10 x 12 foot cage, giving the unusual mind no room to get up to speed. Many highly gifted children sit in the classroom the way big cats sit in their cages, dull-eyed and silent. Some, unable to resist the urge from inside even though they can’t exercise it, pace the bars, snarl and lash out at their keepers, or throw themselves against the bars until they do themselves damage.

Even open and enlightened schools are likely to create an environment that, like the cheetah enclosures in enlightened zoos, allow some moderate running, but no room for the growing cheetah to develop the necessary muscles and stamina to become a 70 mph runner. Children in cages or enclosures, no matter how bright, are unlikely to appear highly gifted; kept from exercising their minds for too long, these children may never be able to reach the level of mental functioning they were designed for.

A zoo, however much room it provides for its cheetahs, does not feed them antelope, challenging them either to run full out or go hungry. Schools similarly provide too little challenge for the development of extraordinary minds. Even a gifted program may provide only the intellectual equivalent of 20 mph rabbits (while sometimes labeling children suspected of extreme intelligence “underachievers” for NOT putting on top speed to catch those rabbits!) Without special programming, schools provide the academic equivalent of Zoo Chow, food that requires no effort whatsoever. Some children refuse to take in such uninteresting, dead nourishment at all.

To develop not just the physical ability but also the strategy to catch antelope in the wild, a cheetah must have antelopes to chase, room to chase them and a cheetah role model to show them how to do it. Without instruction and practice they are unlikely to be able to learn essential survival skills.

A recent nature documentary about cheetahs in lion country showed a curious fact of life in the wild. Lions kill cheetah cubs. They don’t eat them, they just kill them. In fact, they appear to work rather hard to find them in order to kill them (though cheetahs can’t possibly threaten the continued survival of lions). Is this maliciousness? Recreation? No one knows. We only know that lions do it. Cheetah mothers must hide their dens and go to great efforts to protect their cubs, coming and going from the den under deep cover or only in the dead of night or when lions are far away. Highly gifted children and their families often feel like cheetahs in lion country.

In some schools brilliant children are asked to do what they were never designed to do (like cheetahs asked to tear open a wildebeest hide with their claws — after all, the lions can do it!) while the attributes that are a natural aspect of unusual mental capacity — intensity, passion, high energy, independence, moral reasoning, curiosity, humor, unusual interests and insistence on truth and accuracy — are considered problems that need fixing.

Brilliant children may feel surrounded by lions who make fun of or shun them for their differences, who may even break their legs or drug them to keep them moving more slowly, in time with the lions’ pace. Is it any wonder they would try to escape; would put on a lion suit to keep from being noticed; would fight back?

This metaphor, like any metaphor, eventually breaks down. Highly gifted children don’t have body markings and non-retractable claws by which to be identified when not performing.

Furthermore, the cheetah’s ability to run 70 mph is a single trait readily measured. Highly gifted children are very different from each other so there is no single ability to look for even when they are performing; besides that, a child’s greatest gifts could be outside the academic world’s definition of achievement and so go unrecognized altogether. While this truth can save some children from being wantonly killed by marauding lions, it also keeps them from being recognized for what they are — children with deep and powerful innate differences as all-encompassing as the differences between cheetahs and other big cats.

That they may not be instantly recognizable does not mean that there is no means of identifying them. It means that more time and effort are required to do it. Educators can learn the attributes of unusual intelligence and observe closely enough to see those attributes in individual children. They can recognize not only that highly gifted children can do many things other children cannot, but that there are tasks other children can do that the highly gifted cannot.

Every organism has an internal drive to fulfill its biological design. The same is true for unusually bright children. From time to time the bars need be removed, the enclosures broadened. Zoo Chow, easy and cheap as it is, must give way, at least some of the time, to lively, challenging mental prey.

More than this, schools need to believe that it is important to make the effort, that these children not only have the needs of all other children to be protected and properly cared for, but that they have as much RIGHT as others to have their needs met.

Biodiversity is a fundamental principle of life on our planet. It allows life to adapt to change. In our culture highly gifted children, like cheetahs, are endangered. Like cheetahs, they are here for a reason; they fill a particular niche in the design of life. Zoos, whatever their limitations, may be critical to the continued survival of cheetahs; many are doing their best to offer their captives what they will need eventually to survive in the wild. Schools can do the same for their highly gifted children.

Unless we make a commitment to saving these children, we will continue to lose them and whatever unique benefit their existence might provide for the human species of which they are an essential part.

“Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity - to me, the female sex, not the weaker sex. The worth of a civilization can be judged by the position it gives to its women" Mahatma Gandhi

It is interesting to note that the Ram Sene goons did not target drinking men and beat them up, they did not picket the establishments of the pub owners, they did not protest in the media, on public forums, write letters, create youth forums for the propagation of culture ' they chose the least common denominator ' muscle power!

Whether women should drink or abstain, whether women should wear skimpy garments or be in burqua is another matter, the question is should they be beaten and humiliated if they do so. That is the only question. Is the end of all disagreement going to be the show of might against those who are physically weak? Is the government and the police going to be spectators in a surreal drama as they debate their private and party ethics when this happens? Are we going to allow our individual and collective fears of decimation of culture dictate to our common decency on how to treat people who disagree with us? Once these issues are intertwined, the water is muddied, and then it is impossible to voice a just and balanced take on the issue.

As I have said earlier, our protests are always laid at the door of issues that are peripheral and tame. Do we protest against the candidature of criminals and lynch them when they speak up? Do we check the untrammeled pollution of our cities and picket car multinational manufacturers who grab land and want to add to the menace? Do we voice our displeasure against the outdated syllabi in our schools and colleges with a show of hands in public meetings to bring about change? Do we write in the media about conspicuous consumers who pay no taxes? Do we do a dharna outside their homes and offices of our corrupt ministers who indulge in unabashed public spending? Do we pull up the obnoxious havaldars who puts his hands out for bribes and publicly give him a sound trashing? Do we dunk the faces of corporators in the garbage piled up in the street corners of their constituencies? NO. We take all that in silence ' in humiliating silence ' the true yoke of the slavery that the British fostered on our psyches.

What we do instead is check out what we can protest against that will also insidiously titillate our scummy minds. What better than something to do with women? A chance to paw, ogle, molest, rape in the name of God and culture or law even. Whether it is Khushboo's views on premarital sex or bar girls eking out a living by gyrating their derrieres or women having a night out at the Mangalore pub, we are up in arms. The custodians of culture are alive, awake and aghast.

Never mind the goons who did the heinous act had criminal records, possibly little education and smaller minds. Never mind they were instigated by some cheap politician to get some mileage in the next election using a bottle of cheap liquour. Never mind the culture card would keep the masses in a state of undecided confusion on whom to throw their lot with. And haven't some chief ministers succumbed to the pressure of the protection of culture call and mouthed inanities that have strengthened the arms of the violent and the audacious?

So what exactly are we safeguarding here? Indian culture? And what pray is that? Women don't drink? Has anyone actually studied ancient culture? Women, even in the royal households did drink. They wore skimpy clothes too. For a long time they were topless. The temples are replete with sexual figurines and coital positions. Every God had at least two wives. The saints when woken up from their deep meditative stances or slumbers made up for lost time by humping their distractions lustily. Polygamy and polyandry were both practices of that very culture that we are calling pristine and driven in snow. Temple prostitutes, temple widows and their duties to the temple priests were no cultural secrets, the landed gentry and their innumerable illegitimate offspring are legendary, the lower classes ofcourse had poverty and economic reasons for their promiscuity. So why are we beating up Valentine day enthusiasts in city colleges for handing over innocuous cards and hearts to one another? Why are couples holding hands being detained? Why is lip locking almost equated to intercourse in public? Have we not actually cut off from our roots?

This Victorian prudery which the Brits again fostered on our self esteem with damaging consequences, we have retained like some moral code to be preserved, even as the perpetrators have moved on to carnal shores themselves and gone on to deify their most sexually corrupt woman -Lady Diana even desiring to cannonise her as a saint!!

So who are we? Standing on the cross roads of a world that affects everybody in the global ambit with a cross pollination of language, entertainment, fashion and food, travel, internet and television communications we need to ask ourselves ' who are we? Who are the dominant cultures? Is a mixed culture enriching or marginalizing? What have we done to alleviate the influences eroding our culture? Have we strengthend the gravitational pull of our culture for our youth? If not, how do we do this? Certainly not by maar peet. Our youth celebrate the diversity of our states and the ones that are global. The nature of youth is celebration. Raas garbas go cheek by jowl with disco dancing so much so that it is now called disco garba and a true metaphor of the tastes of today's youth. So, what's the harm?

What exactly are we afraid of? If we can articulate that, I think we will be in a position to allay those fears and take steps to achieve what we want.. then again who exactly are the 'we' in this committee? That question can go into another study. Is there a representative Indian that we can club as "we"?

When we speak of Rand and her theories, we often forget that she wrote almost 70 years ago when the world was a very different place. Most of us as teenagers have found her rivetting, and as adults we have found holes in her theories. Many of us as mature middle agers are able to sift her hysteric passion and see the core of what she was trying to say and thereby rediscovered a naked honesty about her that is humbling and disconcerting. Her 'conspiracy of mediocrity' is so subtle and insidious in life around us that most people miss it and label it corruption, nepotism lack of leadership etc. You have to be a Dagny or Roark to understand the predicament.

Love her or hate her, those are the only options. Rand cannot be ignored. She has an indelible place in the history of thought that no one can take away. People have put on her doorstep the selfishness and woes of the world of baby boomers and hippies and post war materialism. Marx too could be held responsible for the excesses of communism and Gandhi will probably be held to account for the sluggishness of India's progress on the world stage. But, are those reasons for not studying an ideology dispassionately for its merits and flaws?

All theories have holes and can be put to scrutiny and test ' even die-hard scientific ones. Rand's theory too bears testimony to this truth. I agree that collectivism is necessary for life to function on the planet. Sethuraj's blog is largely an argument on inter-dependence of life that invalidates the selfishness theory. The question is this: Is altruism a genuine and natural or a conditioned and acquired virtue? Scientists have lately discovered the feel-good gene that inspires altruism and this is closely connected to the survival instinct.

Selfishness cannot be easily wished away. Even something as basic as reproduction and continuity, with the responsibility and labour pains it entails, would have found few takers, had it not been for the instinct of selfish orgasmic pleasure. Therefore, selfishness does rule us in basic and altruistic endeavours. Power rules us too and power is a selfish need of the ego which is essentially selfish. Rand is hated because she dared to speak for selfishness and validate it, when every moral and religious teaching was decrying it. Followers continued their selfish pursuits even as they vociferously mouthed social commitment.

If we indulge in socialistic pursuits, they again come back to our cyclical interdependence on the collective to indulge the individualistic. So is there anything at all that is not selfish? Even the love of a mother for her child, which is perhaps the most unselfish of loves there is, is selfish. They say you can only be as happy as your most miserable child. So then if I make sacrifices for my kid , am I not in everyway ensuring my own happiness?

If there is the call for the individual to fulfill his needs, pleasures, wants, it is an ideal not an idea and like all ideals, be it democracy or communism or socialism or religion, there will be flaws that will decry the possibility of them ever succeeding as a body of thought. There will be people who will misinterpret, abuse and corrupt these systems to ensure that we lose faith in their core values and truths. As for individuals, fulfilling a larger collective need is an undeniable truth, whether it is the assembly line in a factory or a hierarchy in a family or different arms of an administration. If each individual does what he is born to do, why would there not be peace on earth? But ofcourse, that is an ideal. Rand in her rabid style did overstate her cause in most screeching tones, but the basic truth of what she says is not to be overlooked.

Critics of Rand also point out to her own life - that she lived disastrously. They show this up as an example of her flawed theory. This of course is illogical and does not befit the objective scrutiny of a thought or philosophy uncoloured by the creator's persona, a feature that all good criticism must bear. You can hate her for her personality traits but do listen to what she is saying without splitting hair and indulging in character assassination or ideological bias.

We are more comfortable with the aphoristic 'little drops make an ocean' than we are with the Randian ‘virtuous selfishness.’ Is there a difference? The oxymoronic choice of those words, the connotations they manifest, our own moral conditioning will not let us accept them without protest. The 'moral obligation' often termed ‘duty’ is what so many of us are labouring under in every field, where there is silent suffering, a lot of misgivings and unhappiness, and a collective approval of this ‘destiny’. In fact, suffering is made into a virtue so that we do not analyse or scrutinise it closely. To add to this there is dishonesty in feeling one way and behaving another, often without any real conviction except traditional learning.

Anyone who speaks up against this collective will be shot down by the collective, which can be as lethal as a totalitarian coterie, or the megalomaniac dictator. It dictates our lives in rituals, beliefs, values, knowledge, ethics and morality. We do not recognise it because it is a collective of everyday people, and our education states that all collectives made up of huge numbers, must be good and safe. Aren't moral police collectives? It is only after the upsurge of fundamentalism that we have even begun to recognise how collectives that are apparently advocating 'godly causes', or even ‘righteous causes’ can be pernicious, haven't we?

Mediocrity is a collective conspiracy. Look around you and you will see it everywhere. Among educators, administrators, heads of states, business organisations ' everywhere. Meritocracy is blatantly and shamlessly abandoned , yes, collectively abandoned. They pay lip service to excellence but they do no espouse it in their daily lives as part of practical practices. Then, the agendas seep in and as a whole, there is a rejection of anything or anyone who will upset the apple cart. Follow the fortunes of Roark in Fountainhead to see this in action.

Rand has miserable plots, and her characters are impractical ideals. However, if you can catch glimpses of these ideals, even in some people that you see around you, the truth of what she says will strike you between the eyes. And truth is bitter. It is discomforting. It is easy to reject. The rejection would be the triumph of collective narrative over the individual's uniqueness.

Rand could be a failed writer (quality, not sales) and a failed life (not living up to her own ideals) but Rand’s thoughts must be read with patience, and Rand's views must be filtered with some indulgence. If this can be done, what is left behind is a small nugget of truth, rare and perhaps unpalatable, humbling and necessary ' an integral part of real morality.

The Right to Education Bill was mooted three years ago when the Reservations Issue was in full spate with protests and self-immolations by the student community. The Bill proposed that underprivileged children should be given 25% reservation in elite schools. There must be no admission selections based on any kind of interviews or donations. Free education is the birthright of children upto grade 8. The Bill was forgotten and has been sluggishly lying around waiting for the elections to resurrect it in the form of "reforms" that the government would like to impress on people's recent memories, when they cast their votes.

Be that as it may, it is still a blessing that it has raised its head and there is once more a revival of the primary school reservation issue in the news. Imagine children from the slums sitting with the richest kids and learning from the same texts, the same teachers.. I cannot think of a more beautiful scene. And it has taken us a whopping 62 years to even reach this place limping along.. will the Bill see the light of day? It is time to cross fingers and toes on that question.

I remember the children of elite schools being depressed at the thought of sharing their space with slum dwellers, the owners and heads will probably be depressed at the dip in snob value, and the politicians might have a nagging worry about empowering the illiterate masses. However, if we can swing this, we might be able to get to a level of some degree of betterment in our fortunes.

Government will ofcourse have to invest in food, uniforms, transport, extra tuition and counselling for these children. I hope they don't scrimp on it and set it up for failure, so that they can all go back to their comfort zones of snobbery, vote banks and campaign bribes.

What one also needs to redeem is the education itself. Are we going to have more lemming-like hopefuls in the job market, who have poor communication, organizational and leaderships skills, or are we going to have well informed thinking and creative young adults who feel the dignity of labour, have wonderful means of leisure, are comfortable and balanced in diverse circumstances in their lives, and are able to look forward to the future with a sense of equanimity and fulfillment?

This is only possible if we do something about the curriculum. The first thing to do is not to dumb down children. There is a tendency to get children to parrot information and to assume that they are incapable of understanding. This is how the teacher mafia makes sure that their own lack of knowledge is not exposed and they have something to do to justify their existence, and their egos are not damaged by any unpredictable questioning.

Next, we need to change methods of teaching so that we don't put a mass of information on the kid to churn out at the opposite end in exactly the same form and call it an examination. We need to make sure kids know concepts which means that in geography they are aware of how landforms are all we might really need to predict climate, crops, flora and fauna, people, food, occupation and lifestyles. In History, children need to use multiple sources to form their own conclusions so that we are aware of how the partition of India is viewed by historians from Pakistan, British records, old newspapers, memoirs of both Hindu and Muslim leaders and posters, painting, movies of those times. In languages, we need to have viva as one of the core examining tools so that we know the kids can speak and articulate in the languages they spend a lifetimes on. In science, we need to build curiosity about the world around them so that they see in everything a hidden experiment waiting to be done and in maths, a connection to life that is as old as we are. Can we achieve this?

I have just overhauled the language curriculum in one school and in two years of its inception, English there has topped 2000 of the best schools across the country in an international standardized test and left its competitiors far behind by a huge margin. Was it easy? No. But it is a test of stoicism to achieve what was thought to be impossible. It can be done. The trick is to change the comfort zones of teachers, parents and children. They will never then go back to the substandard. I am proud of this effort because it tells me that this can well be a microcosm for the country. To set up a culture of competence and excellence. How many times we use that as jargon. How many of us will bite the bullet and strive all the way? If our leadership deems it so, trust me, we will kick and scream but we will be dragged to the post. But will they do it?

I would like to introduce real education in the form of awareness of rights as in RTI, and consumer forum work, election manifesto reading, constructive protest procedures, understanding basic law, political science, women's rights, inheritance laws, property acts, sociology and rural development and demographical study as part of learning. Meditation must be made compulsory like sport. Basic life skills as in how to help someone injured, how to inusre and invest, how to use self defense in practice, how to read between the lines, how to preserve one’s health and dignity in a sexually promiscuous society, how to parent, how to pursue goals without flinching, how to gain and keep friends. They can well be part of a language or social studies curriculum. They can be motivated by a film study programme or a visit to the courts. It is imperative that all high schoolers do a celebratory rail yatra of select villages and hotspots where India is both struggling and making progress. How does the farmer live? How do women save? What kind of arts are struggling to survive? What kind of innovations have local communities achieved? How well are we doing in science?

The new kid on the Board block is the IB programme and running up close at heels is Cambridge Education. What do these mean? Most Indians believe they are examinations that do not need extensive study. They are wrong ofcourse. A different approach perhaps, more thinking but not less study because you can't think unless you have explored several points of view. They have begun using them as buzzwords to mean a good phoren education and seeing it as a magic wand to enter the realms of foreign universities and great jobs. And, they are not wrong entirely. So let us see what they mean?

First, these courses are frightfully expensive in doing the very things that commonsense must dictate to us as easily feasible if we had the will. Both programmes are about skills rather than content because if you have the skill you can be an autonomous learner. They are both about social consciousness and empathy. The IB also has a component where the philosophy is reflected upon in Theory of Knowledge, which is looking at different sources of information, looking at perspectives, questioning the truth and validity of popular opinion, understanding how we believe what we believe. Open ended and exploratory it builds thinking and character. The programme has a greater level of difficulty and sophistication in the language, arts and the social sciences segment because these are disciplines with a multitude of skills and nuances as opposed to exact sciences which have boundaries in their early study. Music, art and sport form the other area that cannot be neglected as extra stuff. They are the very soul of our leisure and enjoyment in later life. To appreciate them better through knowledge is more of what we should seek, than perfecting their nuances ad nauseum and getting deemed unfit in a particualr aspect.

The Education department will do well to take several leaves from these Boards and design our curricula to meet such objectives. Then we will have our own home grown curriculum that is affordable, spirited, positive and make our children thinkers, reflectors, doers and leaders. And what is more, that will include our slum children ' and soon our tribal children, who will be more enlightened, less discontent and proud of their heritage, culture and country.

"Into that heaven of freedom, let my country awake!"

THIS POST IS FOR YOU VIDUSHI…..

Can one view the inscape of an existence, that is larger than itself in terms of emotional and spiritual space, and call it a mere life ? Can one ever know anyone intimately even if one stayed in touch with his or her thoughts and feelings throughout a lifetime? How many of us know ourselves, or seek to know who we really are? How many shades can be worked into human portraits with ever changing hues of personality, influences, backgrounds, upbringing, relationships, aspirations, circumstances, decisions, vanities and regrets? These are the larger questions that 'Tumhari Amrita' a brilliantly crafted play by Javed Siddiqui, and directed by Feroz Khan invite you to ponder on.

Inspired by A.R.Guerney’s “Love Letters”, “Tumhari Amrita” staged since 1992, is a chronicle of two lives. Set in a stark minimalist stage with just two tables and chairs, the fabric of the lives and times of the two protagonists is woven with the magic of just words. Shabana Azmi is Amrita Nigam and Farooq Sheikh is Zulfi Hydar. Childhood friends, buddies, lovers, confidantes, soulmates, and ultimately learners in the journey of life. You may hold someone's hand all your life and never see his/her face, is the ultimate irony it teaches you.

What a minimalist setting does, is that it allows the performer's emotion to reach the audience, without the distraction of visual and audio interference. When the actors are as skilled in their craft as Shabana and Farooq, we tend to overlook their talents because what we see in the story-telling mode of narration is so natural, that we are not even fascinated by it, until we realize how we have been drawn effortlessly into another world. A world set in pre-independent India, comes to us through just a clutch of letters. But, they are personal letters and we are peeping into intimate spaces with the permission of the writers themselves and delivered to us in their own voices. Yet surprisingly, there is no lurid anticipation of voyeurism. That is one of the successes of this playwright and of the performers.

Both actors play their parts with brilliant ease where all they have at their disposal is the use of their voices and ex-pressions to hold an audience enthralled, for an hour and a half. The sense of space, place, world, philosophy comes purely from the characters who tell their story. The script enables this with touches of constant humour peppered throughout, in the various little ironies and paradoxes of life, quirks and perversities; or in sketching characters with shades of mischief, playfulness, sarcasm or fancies and foibles that resonate in our own fallible lives. We recognize these and swell up in laughter and sighs at our shared human predicament.

Amrita is the intrepid painter with an innate sense of poetic beauty, a quiet sense of inward-looking tragedy and a desire to experiment impulsively and flirt with adventure. However, throughout there is an honesty about her that is at times brooding and at other times brutal. This is set against Zulfi, who is the traditional everyday man ruled by either his inability to stand up against a much-admired patriarch or the various commercial and familial priorities that bind him. At one level, the play is about this business of not being able to get in touch with either ourselves or others as we bungle along in search of social approval and comforts. And yet, even those of us like Amrita who choose to fly the coop cannot remain unfettered, even if that is so by a different set of restraints.

Amrita is the one who asks questions. Who am I? Why am I here? She is the one who ponders on death and wonders what it would be like to cut her veins and watch it bleed. She is the one who goes to the beach and sleeps nude on the golden sands and is outraged when the man she is with wants to paw her. She employs drinks and drugs in her attempt to free her mind from herself and to be the detached observer.

Yet, she ultimately has the moral fiber to confront her own falsehoods and self-deceptions with courage and strength that is one of the defining moments of this play. Not just acceptance but admiration of her condemned illiterate step-mother of years and the new light in which she sees her now, in contrast to her own rebellion, is a humbling experience for the audience as well, as we recognize in ourselves and in our instant response to the play's situations, our own falsities and pretenses.

We are left fascinated by the lifelong bonding between two diverse people. Amrita is poetic and maverick, has travelled the world, loses herself in the self-centered melee of the western world, and experiments with forgetfulness to find herself. Zulfi, on the other hand, sits in his own country and grows in stature to be a statesman of repute. He is rooted in the need for stability, honour and security, and is enslaved by time, work and social priorities. He neither seeks nor finds himself till the final loss of Amrita hits him.

We can relate to both because we contain both in our souls.

The interdependent pair speak in equal balance. It is like a jugalbandi, like a poem where the musical notes move in tandem with the emotional wavelengths to set the rhythm. Sometimes it is a symphony, sometimes just percussion and then longer pieces that are poignant and heart-rending like the wail of a sarangi on a lonely moonless night. And yet, it is non-melancholic and that is the surprise ' the play's ability to keep it light and unencumbered by sorrow and drag it down where it cannot be redeemed. The play spreads before us like an exquisite timeless tapestry, where the sheer intricacy of the craftsmanship overrides its age.

The play embarks on exploring the nature of relationships. How do we relate? The letters are charming and platonic with barely any passion. There is no hint of sexuality or even sexual tension. Despite that, the chemisty is unflagging. The intimacy is felt more in terms of time than emotion. The lives lived in the ordinary events, and in commonplace everyday newyears and birthdays bind together a longevity test for the sustainability of the relationship. This is true for a lot of us too. Our lives are stitched together by threads of common shared experiences that are ultimately unique and special for each of us.

It is also concerned with the larger metacognitive question of knowing about knowing. Amrita who spends three days with Zulfi searches for the man in the letters. The mind body disconnect is hinted at making us wonder about the real nature of our attractions and the dichotomies and splits between the real and imagined and perhaps the nature of reality itself.

Like any classic literary piece, the play employs several leit motifs like the mirror, the painting, the creeper to suggest larger truths. Amrita herself is like a painting and as the play ends, the canvas is complete by the significance of her life and persona. Poetry is a part of her nature. Her descriptions of pain and love which she finds married in Pieta, as motherly love that is supreme, is revised to a human and universal condition, when she experiences compassion for Zulfi's wife if she Amrita accepted his late marriage proposal. Her description of memories as crisp autumn leaves beneath her feet, her honest admission that she could live in the comfort of a veil of canards, or of how madness cannot be shared, are instances of a soul of beauty. Truth is Beauty and Beauty Truth is what she is all about.

He on the other hand, is you and me. Safe, sane, secure and ordinary. His weaknesses, his timidity is ours. His late marriage proposal to her is self serving and cowardly, as were his reasons for rejecting her earlier. His education, because of her life and death, and his recognition of both their true natures, is our education too. Her quiet loftiness does not intimidate us, rather it gently tells us that all we need to do is espouse the truth and feel the compassion.

And yet, she is not the "good" one, she is the maverick. She is not this ultra strong character, she cries for help throughout, she admits she is lost and destroyed, she has been drunk, suicidal and in mental asylums, she is not anything we want to be. He is what we all want to be ' solid, successful and stable.

And yet the final lesson in this play hinges on that 'yet' and makes it powerful, timeless and enduring. It is this 'yet' that strips away all pretensions and leaves us peeled and redeemed, albeit for a small interval in time, in a tryst with Truth.

Individually, the arugmentative Indian is a big talker. Talk fills the vacuum of action. And collectively? How do we protest collectively? We light candles, we form human chains, we congregate and indulge in sloganeering, we froth at the mouth and throw words at waiting cameras where the questioner might actually answer his own questions as part of the query thus limiting your response to a yes/no. We might go in for a rail roko or rasta roko and the pyromaniacs amongst us might gut a bus or a few cars to cinders and sometimes effigies. The more intrepid pyromaniac self immolates and paves the way for a press photo. Then ofcourse there is the satyagrahi who might go on a hunger strike for causes that are debatable. All the action is there -intermittently, but the cause is always a vague and ambiguous one like peace or anti terror or anti government without touching on any specifics. The venues are also far away from the governing body establishments or their homes, so that the heat is never felt by the khadi kurtas and gandhi caps. The voices on television one night are forgotten the next morning.

One such protest at the Gateway which boasted as being the largest citizens rally had the convener Hemank someone emailing all of us at the nth hour calling for tokens of protest - posters, petitions etc. He himself had this fear that it would be a circus (his words) and urged people to just meet and talk in groups. HUH? There was no agenda, no planning, no thoughts, nothing. The points for change that some of us sent to him did not even get a response. So what was it all about? A tamasha?

Now they have planned a human chain from the tip to toe of Mumbai. Did the Gateway protest stop the Congress from hoisting Chagan Bhujbal of the Telgi Scam as head of our police forces? Are we going to protest a specific?

Chhagan Bhujpal, a man who is single handedly responsible for aggravating all the corruption and decay in the Police system of Maharashtra during his last tenure as the Home Minister of Maharashtra has now been rewarded by Mr. Sharad Pawar by being again re-appointed as the Deputy Chief Minister and Home Minister of Maharashtra. He was removed as the Home Minister for his involvement in the Telgi scam. This is how the NCP under Mr. Sharad Pawar rewards the show of strength and solidarity of the citizens of Mumbai.

The politicians have thumbed their noses and what did the Press that were running around like headless chickens and calling panel after panel with Enough is Enough glued on in their studios do? Do you see a front page protest? Or do you see them jumping into the Rane-Chavan quarrel? Did anyone take a protest march to Mantralay? You dont need lakhs of people to go there. There must be a roster of protestors every day to drive home the message into the thick and selfish skulls of our politicians.

Yes, there are people organising protests, but what we lack is leadership. We lack planning. We lack thinking through and the patience to reach a consensus. We lack the killer instinct. We have not learnt that the best battles are won by wearing down the enemy not by sudden bursts of violent vocal or corpal outrage.

I feel that we need a body of advocates and lawyers who will help us to sue these men and women who romp around in complete audacity in places of power. We need to register our protest and our anger legally against those who think they can do as they please. We need to begin political and social education as part of adult education throughout the country. This can be done by both media who can publicize it and schools who can implement it as a package for the political and social upliftment of the poor and rural folk. In a country like ours dont you think these moves are mandatory for change?

Today the papers are full of the elections with an oblique reference to the terror attacks as part of the analysis with the question did it have an impact on the wins and losses. So, that incident that was until yesterday a turning point in the tolerance of the common man has become a factor in determining the success or failure of an election of the very same goons we expressed contempt for. Shame!

And so, the politician laughs all the way to the chair. He knows the intellectual organism does not have any staying power to combat him consistently, he knows the common man is not smart enough to decipher his tricks. Otherwise, would they blatantly talk of how with the new economic reforms people can walk away with cheaper cars and how the realty sector will get a boost. Without an exception we have forgotten the 60 people who died in CST and in Cama Hospital. Not even a five-minute coverage of the carnage of those poor people. The rich Tata, his Taj and the affluent who died there have become icons for change. How many lives are lost each day in our country, have they ever become turning points for anyone? Did Insurance companies bend backwards to make documentation simpler in 1993 and the train blasts? How discriminating we are when it comes to class divisions. How blatantly shameless and remorseless.

I come back again and again to the role of the Media because they alone represent a voice that can be effective and constant.. morning after morning, day after day. Because there was an outcry from people like myself on their insesnsitive and sensational coverage of the terror attack, they sure made the right noises about introspection but at the end of the day like all protests whether it is from the people or other agencies, the meida protest and relsolution remained mere tokens of anger and not the flame that scorches and renews.

One this topic also note how the Indian will spend time and money protesting against Khushboo who made some remarks about premarital sex, or Amir Khan who made some casual statement about his disapproval of displacing the tribals in Gujerat or the whole jingbang who will waste weeks on specualting whether Jaya Bachchan will apologise to Raj Thackery? Look at groups and individuals that will file social petitions against bar girls, some army general’s joke or Valentine’s Day celebrations. Moral issues are taken up and chewed on for days by the press and the people like their entire bharat varsh is at stake. But real accountability of a political or social nature, be it blatant police corruption, drug selling on the streets, begging children abused by cartels, these are abandoned. Not one single protest.

Note also how the press and politician has latched on the Pakistan card of extraditing terrorists old and new and the games with Big Bro USA. Who will remember that Chagan has taken his aasan or details of how much equipment the Mumbai police have been given as promised or whether the non existant coastal guards are now in place? When terror strikes again we will ask those questions… until then the media will feed the opium of currency and the sensational sense of now and what next to the masses and lull them into a sense of illusionary safety in being able to gossip - a sign of peaceful times.

We need to put our shoulders to efforts that will bring in changes in leadership, that will ensure reforms in police, administration, law and accountability.   
 

These suggestions are by no means exhaustive or fool proof. Not being an expert, I am sure there are quite a few holes. But, this is a beginning in thinking about some concrete measures that we can demand when we form groups, instead of merely recording anger and vaguely calling for change.  It is not as if we are going to get these demands as soon as we ask for them. However, it is essential to have a clear checklist on what we want to see happening in the next few weeks or months. If we let up, we will lose.

Looking for the right candidates to run our government from amongst us is imperative. That will ease the way. Ideally, we must sweep clean of the present lot in the next elections. I am hoping we can by some miracle and a lot of effort,  achieve this. There are many groups actively campaigning today. We must not let the momentum slip. We must monitor closely what the Home Minister will do.

I believe certain basics must change in this country if we are to achieve what will be nothing short of a Revolution.

I invite you all to add, subtract and multiply these solutions.

Judiciary

1.     Judiciary must be independent of the Parliament, which must only be in charge of administrative matters.

2.     The police must be made independent of political governance and come under the Judiciary. If constitutional changes need to be made in this regard, they need to happen.

Political

3.     The job of public servants must be seen as a tough one. We have forgotten they are public "servants" and not maharajas by default.  It is the cushy and corrupt nature of these positions that have made us all vulnerable and brought us to this state of moral penury. They must be made to move into smaller houses. Public expenditure must be severely questioned and curtailed. Revive and pass the disclosure of income, education and criminal record requirement for candidature. Change the constitution disallowing any convicted criminal from being a candidate. Candidature of accused must have be cleared with expedited trials before tickets are issued. There must be no immunity or clearances for politicians re: checking bags for security.

4.     Review all Z security arrangements and make this available only to sensitive posts. Police does not report to politicians and they should not be waiting on them.

Police

5.     Police must be put on a rigorous fitness-training regime and unfit policemen must be taken off the active force. Police reforms including salary structures must be revised urgently and corruption laws for the men in uniform must be as stringently implemented as common criminals. Transfers and suspensions must be done away with as forms of punishment for corruption. Continuous training and updating of equipment must happen with records available to RTI.

6.     Active beats and policing activity must be arranged and this must be made public in newspapers as part of transparency to people. Local and zonal bodies must report missing beats in their areas and these published openly in zonal or ward office boards, with action taken against erring officers.

7.     Ban employment of refugees and restrict them to zones that are not vulnerable to security.  There must be daily reporting of visitors/immigrants from the sub continent at police stations.

Media

8.     Media that indulges in pointless and sensational reporting of incidents must be called upon to account. Freedom of speech cannot be given full rein in the times we live in. Media needs to be restrained in how it displays information. Modern technology is a double-edged weapon where the enemy is given access to the same information as the countrymen. Indiscriminate disclosures, bragging police interviews and the "automatic right" of people to know everything there is to know, needs to be revisited and legally curtailed.

9.     Media must have basic guidelines on reporting as they are the bulwarks of a democracy. Media leadership must be questioned.  They have the responsibility of unbiased and complete information, of mobilizing public opinion and galvanizing movements to make changes. They must answer questions raised by people on selective reporting and soft-pedaling of serious issues. They must have follow up pages so that issues are not forgotten and shelved.  Money clout and influence of  media moghuls often hijack the real voices of the Nation.

Anti- terrorism

10. Set up a non-political commission to look into post terrorist strikes to identify acts of commission and omission by agencies that were accountable and have failed in their roles. The law needs to bring in prosecution measures against all those who are responsible. There must be no immunity whatsoever. This will automatically ensure that people who choose power will be men and women of probity.

11. The Intelligence Bureau and RAW must be manned by anti- terrorism experts and there must be special courses to train these officers possibly affiliated to a world body. These agencies could contain amongst its advisory members political experts on countries, psychologists and sociologists.

12. Have clear job descriptions to IB, RAW and local Police, NSG and accountability processes that will be reviewed by an independent  panel.

13. Create a one point reporting for all Intelligence and this body should be made responsible for dissemination of information as well as follow up on investigative procedures by the various agencies that it services. All intelligence gathered must be fed to this body. This organization thus becomes completely responsible for all intelligence successes and failures.

14. The NSG must be used only for anti terrorist and hostage situation operations not for guarding ministers. Each major city must have independent units, fully equipped and ready. They must be accountable to the Police Commissioner who will then direct both his men and the NSG to effectively cover the situation.  The reports must be sent to the NSA. Continuous  training and updating of equipment must happen with the NSG.

15. Create a 3 ring security on the seas with the navy, the coastal guard and coastal police answerable to the nearest Naval command.

Citizen's Groups

16. Create a citizens' zonal vigilance body that not only monitors its territory but reports on omission, acts of corruption and wastage. Citizens living in a community  are the best people to protect the interests of their zones.

17. Set up a citizen's commission to invite information on various areas that are left unguarded and empower them to ask questions and seek answers of their representatives on security issues. Give these people deadlines for implementing the necessary action and be liable for prosecution or removal from office. Most often citizens are well aware of loopholes and vulnerable risks but don't know how to tackle it.

18. Advocates must have email and telephonic agencies where citizens can ask for public interests cases and litigation.

19. Except for sensitive internal security information all other procedural information must be available for RTI inspection by people

20. A continuous search for new leaders must go on with free platforms provided for by the Media, by Corporate houses or by citizens forums, so that we are not enslaved by the miserable choice of the same corrupt parties.  Continuous education especially among the poor must be undertaken by NGOs only for the purpose of political awareness and citizen's rights.  People who indulge in divisive politics must be tried for treason. The words 'caste', 'region' and  'religion' must be removed from all forms to be filled for education and employment.