Antidisestablishmentarianism...

If systems are religious and become ritualistic and limnal, do not benefit the parish of learners, such systems must die; contributions and associations to such schools must stop; system must be deemployed if a complete cold reboot is not possible because the architecture resists such reboot designs. Church is but a metaphor in this post for any establishment. I have been witness to one such and was given a cold bath yesterday...

I've always known one cannot fly with turkeys; but, the moment of epiphany is when the realisation dawns that those around you are turkeys. At least, those ruling the roost are turkeys, Orwellian pigs and dogs that would piss on the blueprint when it is not conducive to their egoistic parasitism and predatorial social climbing instincts. You take a decision then: DO NOT fly with turkeys anymore.!

A system that is non-inclusive either at ideological or at practical level is what fuels factions, divisions, partitions; especially when that system harbours cheap ideas of reparations of perceived harms of the past, now that those ruling the roost for the day come to believe they have the power to abuse, however temporarily, to score a pyrrhic victory.

A system that does not want to encourage a pan-systemic fabric in the interests of all stakeholders, but only attempts to foster one in order to protect its interest is myopic. It only wants to include others at their own terms. Such a system is not interested in the long term development of a culture, but works to ensure that the power centre stays with the founders. Such a system is controlled periodically or cyclically by short-sighted minds that wants to ensure their relevance and is its own cancer.

We are living in such times under such systems from local to global, national to universal, notional to empirical. We are living in such matrices as need to be either overthrown or shirked. I was witness to one such very recently and one such that I WAS glad to be a part of and contribute to in the past; a system that is no more open to improvements but is mired in its own bog of physiological growth into bureaucracy that does not anymore aim to foster the growth of its ultimate, purported recipients: learners!

The founding fathers and mothers have long deserted in foresight, surrogate suppliants cyclically lord over ensuring the inorganic degeneration. The gods of rationale and wisdom too would soon desert them. Newer parallel systems would perhaps overtake. Pity to what could have been!

The Supreme Salary - Teacher's Day Observations

Dear Teacher by choice, default or auto-correct...

While on this Teacher's Day I salute your 'yeoman' service to the society, I have a wish to make. I would rather see you 'a freeman' who makes 'the difference' between the cultural growth of human civilisation and the stolid march of a utilitarian society and stand for the former than the latter. I have a few paeans to sing, not before I have etched my observations.

Teachers should take up employment or profess only out of personal conviction, not due to financial considerations. This is not to say that teachers should not seek prosperity or social status. After all, they are human beings with feelings too. The two can be inclusive - personal conviction and prosperity, I mean; but financial considerations must be subservient to personal conviction.

What is this personal conviction? It is to touch lives, to impart not just language or technical knowledge as Einstein observed, but humaneness and empathy as well. What does this personal conviction stem from? It stems from a deep-rooted need to create human beings who grow to understand the unfettered urge to give more than take. Is this happening today? No.

The majority of today's teaching fraternity is insecure, anxious and scared.

Insecure because they fear the loss of integrity that some of them fail to realise they do not possess since they took up a teaching 'job'. They fear to be questioned because they do not have answers acceptable to the younger generation that seeks honest, simple and lucid answers. This is because the world of the teacher's youth and the world of today's young generation are different. Teachers cannot provide answers and caveat from their time and space to another spatio-temporal reality whose world is wider, more complex and more cluttered. Most teachers realize this, but fail to accept it, unwilling to let go of outdated habits in which they seek comfort zones and refuge.

Today's reality just cannot be wished away by yesterday's practices. This status quo is best exemplified by two stereotypical day-to-day realpolitik of family structure: young teens or adolescents who see the redundancy in certain beliefs and practices of their parents and swear in youth not to become like their parents, but to be an understanding adult to their children when they eventually grow up. They seldom succeed, rarely retain their vow. Time does it to them. The reality of everyday world bites hard. The next analogy is not dissimilar, but somewhat different: that of the caterpillar-daughter-in-law's transformation into the stereotype of an ugly butterfly-mother-in-law she swore not to become.

The teachers - those who chose to become, that is -  end up falling into the trap they saw some of their anxious forbears in, which they swore not to fall into, if at all they became teachers. Where does this anxiety arise from?

The anxiety, as I see it, is a result of their aspirations to provide a provocative and energising transfer of knowledge (at the beginning of their careers) in conflict with the system's need to complete "set" objectives. This "said" objective can be to produce 'the best results' or 'the need to be competitive in enrollment' in a dog-house system or simply 'the compulsion' to complete syllabi.  It all has become number crunching war. Whatever the latter is, it is a compromise. The system may be at fault, but what of the teachers themselves? Such people must not take up teaching, or if they have, must pronto give up, and had rather served in a brick kiln even as Howard Roark did. It is not idealism that I am professing, but a salvo against those who want to marry financial success with ideological achievement. It just does not work out both ways.

The life of a teacher is fraught with more challenges, adventures, risks and dangers than that of Odysseus on his travails. The teachers knew this as they took it up. This might sound idealistic, but such an uncompromising stance is the only way forward for the teaching fraternity, to resist the subversive investment culture in education these days. This, though fraught with personal perils, is the only option left to revert an educational system that is entrapped in the fangs of a bunch of fascist monkeys also known as the tribe of educationists, most of whom have 'invested' their finances in the pursuit of creating their respective visions of 'glasshouse' intelligence that is filled with 'snowflake world'! You shake it, it is all flaky and silvery, in an exciting flux, romantic to look at from outside. Once the confetti inside settle down, the spectacle is vapid, inane, banal, mundane and as spiritually devoid as Eliot's wasteland. These investment educationists (like investment bankers) are the Eliotean hollowmen who gnaw at our social fabric today like the rats in the attic. Teachers worth their salt need to and must, out of self-belief and spinal self-respect, shake off this anxiety of 'the objective of the system.' They have to be bold as warriors and choose their battles carefully to fight.

Now, what are they scared of?  Loss of job?  Loss of financial security - an essential motivation to lead life? Loss of self-esteem? Financial security and job are no doubt interrelated and understandable; but more important are the erosion of pedagogic faith and learner-centric values.  If jobs are lost, so long as one retains their self-esteem, earning is still possible. Tucked somewhere in this struggle is also 'the circle of societal expectations' we have created around ourselves. It is not a suraksha chakkar, but a cage we build around ourselves. Why does one really, even if we are social animals that cannot exist in isolation, have to be bound by others' expectations of how we must live?  There is greater dignity in so-called cheap labour, if integrity in oneself as a human being worthy of higher mental notion is retained.  At that level of existence, there is no dignity of labour as the class-conscious society sees it... but only the pride of dignity that one is still capable of earning without sacrificing one's soul.

Here, let us talk about 'loss of self-esteem.'  This is something not without, but within.  One has a soul that is 'not for sale.'  It should never be sold.  Or even temporarily pledged or pawned.  The only difference between the other vertebrates and human beings is this soul-awareness. This is more so true of artists. By artists, I choose to include the teachers as well.  Are they not performers on a daily class-room stage?  A boring performance is often the difference between a monotonous class and stimulating atmosphere.  It is this stimulating atmosphere that leads to learning.  Otherwise, we will end up with a classroom full of students who have teachers chasing them in circles (not exactly the kind of cultural revolution we desire in education!), pleading the students to return their boardmarkers.  So, this soul-awareness!

Every person has a price, no doubt. Some are priceless, others priced less. Which one, I ask the teaching fraternity - every single one of you who may stumble on this rant - do you want to be remembered as? Even if the Don Corleones of investment education ask you to name the price, make it unaffordable. Good teachers are a rare breed and should not sell themselves cheaply (I do not mean financially alone here!) to organised exploitation of knowledge transfer. Good teachers do not hesitate to work and go the extra country mile to help students beyond the confines of structures. A good teacher is spinal to the creation of a good citizen. So, anyone worth harbouring aspirations of themselves as good teachers must retain their self-respect and take pride in saying that 'I do not take the easy way out at work.' I do not use previous years' notes, I do not rely on existing material to regurgitate in front of x no. of students... There are Mephistos everywhere. Do you want to be Dr. Faustus? And cringe and grovel on the day of reckoning? Or do you?  Wouldn't you rather be that teacher who inspired a generation of fearless individuals who stand up on top of their tables, quoting Whitman?

Throw the dead teacher in you, focus only on imparting provocative knowledge, help discover the seeker, not typecast functional automatons who only build or design or drive or cook or stitch or 'teach.' There are many ways to skin a cat, but you can't escape the pain. The society will wince, cry, caterwaul, even claw back painfully at times; but without pain, no real gain.  The Pain is the teachers', but the gain ultimately is the society's. They will recognise and remember. In most cases post-career or even posthumously. At times, miraculously within the service period and automatically financial rewards would take care of themselves. That financial reward is sweetest that comes unexpected. However, yes, they will recognise and remember. Ultimately that is the Supreme Salary!

Sincerely
a Learner.

The Angst and Anguish of an English-patient

We Indians know not the art of war neither information dissemination that the west has mastered through their media... nor for that matter the craft of propaganda that socialist states quite successfully undertake!

I was watching CCTV today and this thought arose in me. I thought this too would pass like a lot of thoughts that have struck me recently, gently nibbling at my sides like an acupressure foot-massage in a pond full of hordes of little fish, asking me to post a blog.

I had successfully resisted those. I had decided a while back, not to abuse the blogspace by posting frequently random thoughts about random things. I have stuck to it, with the vehemence of a leech on a skin... but no! This one would not pass! So I gave into it as it started gnawing at me like a restless rat on a tin roof over a dingy attic. Hence this post. A while back I had this post on my Facebook about why we don't need Slumdog Millionaire and how it is not a great movie and all those who praise its Oscar-worthiness are lickers of white backsides because this is the latest tool of exploitation of Mother India by the Colonials. A great many gen-xers of the school I teach at rose up in arms in a Sepoy Mutiny against this anti-British stance of mine. I stood like the steadfast tin soldier then, as I stand now. Search me! What I explain below is God's own truth as witnessed by me and heard by me.

Since yesterday, the CCTV has been televising CCTV 2009 National English Speaking Competition. It must have been already a long-drawn process typical of any National level competition, which must have started at germane levels, at Colleges where hordes of people participate at the intra-college and -University level challenges and have arrived where they are.

23 participants are being pitted against 3 challengers and judged by a 9-member Jury about the English speaking quotient of each of them. THREE of them - after a three-day ordeal (the last day being tomorrow - 14th Nov, 2009) - would go through to a Grand finals. What is the competition about? Speaking English. What is the message it holds for us? A lot actually. At the moment we pride ourselves with our BPOs and Call Centres being the cash crops of our country's foreign revenue harvesting. Soon, this would vanish if what I witnessed was true.

A quiet little revolution has taken place. A lot of Chinese are starting to speak English. With an accent that would be much much more acceptable among the Western countries who want to transact with Asia - India or China or Japan or South Korea! With an accent that the English native speakers as well as the European english speaking businessmen would be comfortable. Add to it, the Chinese spoken English grammar may turn out a zillion times better because most Chinese go to language schools where English is taught by native English speakers. The grammar as well as the accent and the command is bound to be better in comparison to ours.

We had earlier in the recent past seen or read how the Chinese were being coached in English to serve the visitors during the Beijing Olympics. Further additions to this point: by its sheer volume and numbers, we all know China is bigger in population than India; in terms of the percentage of youth population, China is equal if not higher than India, if Indian statisticians and demographers are to be believed when they say that in 2020 or whenever India would have the highest youth population in the world!

The projection is: in three to five years time, when these college and university attending youth of China pass out and graduate to the world of business, China will have more English speakers in the world than even United States, which is the single largest English speaking nation and contains the most number of English speakers in the world. What will happen to our BPOs and Call Centers? How much of Green Bills would migrate home then?

I remember the times when I was in the IT sector, working as an in-house translator first, then as in-house full-time language consultant for German, then after as a free-lance consultant, when at the best of times a translator could spin more than a lakh of rupees in a week's time. That was the height of the IT boom when Indian IT industry was preferred in the West due mainly to our ability to do transactions not just in English, but good English. Even the European market - inspite of the lingual-cultural barriers and difficulties would come to our doorstep as a preferred business partner than China - though both our labour charges were cheap equally - simply because of our English abilities. The way school education is headed these days when, leave alone the students, teachers cannot communicate properly in English shows how badly communication suffers.

Communication is not just about content, it is more. It is the art of speaking a language, the art of structuring thoughts in a language through which the thoughts are presented, the art of having command over a language and presenting it in an effective manner. The Chinese are starting to master it, we are losing it - much like Arunachal Pradesh. The Pakistanis are (according to some of my young friends who have debated at the international levels, where the Pakistanis have a longer and stronger traditional and respected presence) mastering it and we are losing it - much like Kashmir!

What do we do? We are having internal skirmishes over haves and havenots. We breed petty politics and politicians and deliberately keep the population illiterate. We cannot say China is fully literate or totally prosperous; nor that it lacks corruption or internal political hassles; but... what they do not do is shoot movies that show our badness or our slums or our past glories alone! what they do not do is sell our souls to foreigners - who once ruled us - who shoot our undesired side and pitch it at Oscars. How many films or documentaries are made about the other side of China. All of us have the other side, but do we have to project that to claim material glory?

We have this biggest joke called Prasar Bharathi - they are celebrating 50 years of existence, the first 20 years of which it never reached the masses. When it is now reaching the masses, we know its quality. Supposedly, Doordarshan is beamed in 30 different languages, but look at its digital quality. Look at the packaging of programs. As an avid watcher, I can vouch for the heterogeneity of Doordarshan's content. Its content variety far outstrips any 10 of the private cable and satellite channels put together. Sadly, though, DD lacks in quality packaging. The latter these days is very important. It is just not what you give, but how it is given!

I am unaware of the following fact. Like the BBC or DW-TV or TV5 or ABC or VOA, do we have any television network that is beamed primarly targetting the countries we should be targetting and packaging a politically correct picture of India? Please let me know. I am as Adam as before the toad did its job!

Coming back... it becomes doubly our duty to take up communication seriously. It is quadruply important that the current tweens and teens and gen-x learn communication tools properly and master the common language of the world so that we do not lose out on progress. After all, speech is the one unique ability that humans possess; having been subject to 400-odd years of English-rule, we cannot afford to squander that advantage because our northerly and Dravidian politicians do not want to make the effort to learn Angrezi. Crazy, isn't it? Of course, when we reach out to our own masses, let us speak their language, both in spirit and letter, but we have to push ourselves to extremes to polish our communication. After all, true challenge lies in going beyond the basics and mastering the aesthetics. Would we? Do we have the grit to rise above our self-excavated rubble?

A small winding up info. There is this international competition for schools called World schools Debating Championships (hereafter WSDC) that is held annually in some city of the world or other, where teams representing countries, with participant-representatives drawn from schools of the respective countries, brandishing their Debating abilities and debating in English over a range of topics that bother the world at large on areas social, political, cultural, economic and artistic. As a curtain raiser to that, they have a mini-WSDC, which is a sort of whetstone for aspirant teams, novices and debutants to the field. This year it was held recently in October-November, as a prelude to the forthcoming WSDC at Doha, Qatar in February 2010.

Know what? China would be a debutant at Qatar2010. They participated in the mini-WSDC and wound up 4th in a field of 10 teams that contained some of the strongest debating teams in English such as New Zealand, US or Chile! As a rejoinder, after what I saw on CCTV... this is a strong foreboding. If you care to, and you receive this channel I am referring to, follow the CCTV English Speaking Competition if you happen to chance upon it.

JAI HIND!

The RIGHT side of SAFFRON and the LEFT side of RED

Everything, it seems, is a question of hysteria, conversion and expediency. Does it naturally follow we are talking India: be it Cricket, Culture, Politics, Religion, Entertainment! The mandate - I thought long and hard - is not in favour of UPA or Congress or against BJP as people are led to think. The mandate is in favour of the ability of any person who is projected as an icon and possessing the ability to sway people's emotion than intellect. Example: Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Bannerjee... the list is long but not endless, because there are also failed icons and cheats. The example of former being L.K.Advani and the latter being P.Chidambaram. 22 Recounts? They recounted until the counting minds and hands tired and gave up, knowing Chidu's will to retain the constituency is stronger than the will of the others to gain. Power Play is the game of those who are afraid of losing, not hate losing. Look at what happened in the Sivaganga constituency. I am sure there is a scenario that transpired yesterday in Sivaganga that is similar to what happened in Florida in the year Cousin Bush recounted and won. So... 

In the middle of all this, the LEFT finds itself in a mess. Lalu issues a statement obviously repenting the wisdom of non-pre-poll alliance. Expelled speaker Somnath Chatterjee conveniently blaming Prakash Karat. UPA believing that they are more secular than others and hence they won! BJP claiming that there was oil all over the body but not on the mustache enough for dirt to stick on it: "Oh! But look at the seven states where we have done well!" 

The sum total of inability to convert the figures to form government is higher in ineptitude than the parts that constitute a whole new political dharma, dear Jaitley. It seems more than anyone else, the Fourth Estate, especially the TV News channels seem more bent on using the fall of BJP and the LEFT to their TRP best by vilifying the former and mourning the latter as though they finally moved Lenin from Dzherzinsky Square to the inner precincts of some seedy museum. Axes continue to fall through the press on figure heads who deem themselves culpably responsible for the fall of their bastions. In this context, I think, Mr. Advani must be either the most qualified drama person or the most naive politician. He says he wants to quit. He reminds me of the Soccer team managers who are either axed or take moral responsibility and quit because their side lost. Is he so naive to believe that he could have made the party's march to Parliament happen were others not to be there? He did realise years back that he was not as charismatic as Atal-ji. Barely had he said he wants to own moral responsibiity and quit, the idiomatic lip-service that he should not quit rose inside the party; but in just over three hours it died at the same speed it rose with and now they are already clamouring among themselves, WHO NEXT - You or me? 

The trouble with all those who are magnetic enough but not charismatic is that they lack that extra moderation. Atal-ji never did anything that was politically flamboyant. Manmohan never has either. Sonia doesn't too. The ability of a leader in India to retain the mass hysteria to their side, today, comprises of a certain quality to be in the middle and yet not get emotional. In some cases the lack of emotions or intelligence can also be helpful, which leads us to the burial of Left. 

More than anything else that happened in Elections 2009, it is not the so-called end of Advani that will be remembered, but people's faith in democracy and the eradication of superstitious belief that socialism can exist in India in the garb of communism.

Communism calls itself a rational and social way out of religious beliefs that generate superstitions and lack of thinking as well as gives rise to capitalistic inequality. Accepted, the commies have their right to whatever they want to think. After all, we believe in Freedom of Speech and Thought. Have people forgotten the old axiom that anything that is an "ism" is not very different from religion! They also seem to have not taken notice of the fact that since the liberalisation era India has been inexorably catapulting and inevitably spiralling downwards towards the nadir of a free market economy that would lead its Dow Jones and Hang Seng listings ultimately towards its own little share in the global meltdown of economy when it would happen. We may today say proudly that India was not as affected as other and developed nations. The lesser the share the less the damage, but... it did, didn't it not? 

We do live among a generation that believes in everything being material and everything is there to be questioned. More suicides and more harassments and more ills than positives. The other day I had an argument with someone about how there are more unhappy people in the current generation than ever. He said that statistically there are more happy people. It also statistically means that the population has increased several fold over a period faster than rabbits fornicate and profligate and populate! When the number of happy people increase, the number of unhappy people also increase by that same logic that where there are more people being born there are also more people dying, if you go by number theory; and where number theory comes into play, capitalism sooner than latter overhauls any other belief because it becomes the Right of the Might and not the Might of the Righteous. 

This is where Communism and Communist parties got it wrong. They thought that they had the UPA by its proverbial balls during their last reign. The Left blackmailed UPA with its one-point agenda of "NO to Nuke Deal" if it is from US! The UPA strongly proved them wrong. 

It looked, from the LEFT angle, only for a while. After all, the elections were round the corner and there's enough sluice gates that could be damaged across the country. Then again, the LEFT has not delivered to the people what the capitalists have not either. I strongly think the one single favour the Indian voters did to themselves in this election is that they threw the Left; but are they finally and totally out or just bloody and broken, not yet battered and defeated? The coming days would prove that. 

One thing is certain: Life is not that bad on the RIGHT SIDE OF SAFFRON as they still are the only other national party and they do have the best single majority this side of Congress and hence shall continue their seat-warming on the bridesmaid side. They have been the best Opposition party in the history of our 60 plus year old democracy and we need them in the opposition. If they are good enough to do positive developmental contribution economically and politically in their respective areas, there is no reason why they cannot have a better cheer next time around. Their statement that they are willing to be a constructive opposition seems earnest for the moment... unlike THE LEFT SIDE OF RED who are already sliming their heads together as to how they can dismantle their Third Front and go Back to associating themselves with a secular governement in the face of a fundamental opposition. To give a little twist to the Giorgio Moroder song of the distant past in what could become an NDA post-poll song of woe, "YOU ARE LEFT, SHE's RIGHT, I AM WRONG".

The Illogical Mandala of Indian Politics...

...and the sad plight of the Indian voter!

Yes... this must indeed be the saddest day in the life of an average voter of the world's most populous democracy!

Bharath is 2000+ years old. Hindustan is as old as the Moghul invasion. India is about 62 years old. In the middle of this confusion are caught millions of millions of people who do not know which concept justifies their geographical existence.

And today... it is all becoming very clear. The so-called world's largest democracy is after all the world's largest monarchy. Back up at the centre until the EIC came to rule us, we were always dynastic. Which ever way we look, our country had always had dynastic and monarchic rule. Down south, the Cholas, Cheras, Pandyas, Pallavas, Chalukyas... and now it is the Karunas. The fact that today the Indian voting majority has just about ended crowning Congress at the centre and the Tamils the DMK is proof of my proverbial pudding. Not that the BJP or the AIADMK are angels and the Congs and the DMKs are demons. All of them are the same flea abuzz the pee. But, the question is, are we the pee? or the peed? One good thing in the middle of this electoral melodrama is the Left is left behind and the Third Front has been put in its place. This just goes to show that if you desert those who depend and believe in you, Divine Providence takes over. The Mayawatis and the Karats and the Yechuris of the world can take a flying trip to moon and fall back or stay in the orbit. 

It is always my belief that an ideal state to have is a two-party system, where one ascends power for the development of the country and the other becomes the watchdog opposition that criticises constructively. Not that my belief is unique or invented. It is at the root of the spirit of democracy. So, it is good in a way that the Congress is retaining power and without this time having to resorting to the barter-minded pimps who are ready to sell their ideologies for the sake of key portfolios or minimum common programme in their or their party's or their state's interest; or for that matter this time Congress is not going to be blackmailed by two-timing commies who won't even be respected in a communist state. I am glad for Congress for this result. This is one reason I feel it was better that BJP must not come to power this time... for they would have come to power only with the help of such species as we discussed above, although in different name packages! Now the Third and the Fourth are just that in the Houses when the parliamentary sessions would begin. The debate would happen primarily between the Party in Power and the Respected Opposition. The Third and the Fourth cannot topple any motion or there won't be no more armtwisting at no-confidence motions. Good for them, good for us. 

Talking of the Opposition: yesterday, during my conversation with a long-time friend of mine, who also happens to be a psephologist - those guys who analyse elections and try justifying the statistics of ballots in retrospect! - I happened to mention that I had a feeling BJP would end up and must end up in the opposition because they would never get an absolute majority to go up the pedestal. Some of the reasons are: 1) Advani is not your ideal moderate head that is fit to be a Prime Minister of the country, 2) BJP is yet to come up with a prospective incumbent to that post (and Nitish is an ally, not an incumbent of the party and has also expressed his self-doubts), 3) the Mayawatis and the Sharad Pawars can only tug at the bit but not hold it - they are all too regional in their presence whatever said and done (and in Maya's case it has been proved so) and 4) the Congress orchestration is so fine-tuned and well-oiled a machinery that is almost 100 years old that they can sway sentiments and put together that vicious combination of pseudo-secular indoctrination and the image of Gandhi in the minds of the unsuspecting mass of the North... AND 5) they have too many more alliances to hammer up the 2/3rs majority that UPA requires. Look at what has happened. 202 out of 543 just by themselves. Give them another 3 months of campaigning time, they'll get 275 themselves!

How true! I have never been proved true thus in my entire life on any issue. I don't like the fact that UPA is forming the government, because I keep asking, albeit rhetorically, are these the choices before a voting Bharat-putra? The trouble with Indian politics is our Constitution. We need to urgently topple it over its head and scrap the IPC and build a fresh preamble and a constitutional rule book. We are stuck with the British colonial legacy, only we call it IPC. It could as well be EPC.  Who better than Congress to run the legacy! Are they not the ones who connived with the British and made us A NATION DIVIDED? And then went out of their way give separate existence to the two physically divided parts of our neighborhood Spiderman Pakistan? After all, these Congressmen and women of the Gandhi family are all Britain educated, no? I have to digress here...

Today, at my MYT workshop, there is this 9th standard kid who thinks the Gandhi - like a lot of uneducated people of India - in the Indira, Sanjay, Rajiv, Rahul etc. belongs to Mohandas Karamchand! I had to take her through a short course in history to clear where the Gandhi comes from! And there is someone else who has not heard of Win Chadda or Ottavio Quattrochi or the Italian antique dealer connection of Sonia. How much of history would Congress continue to dress up with 123 and Nuke Deal and Aam Aadmi and NREGA? I talked, also today, to a folk theatre activitist who gives me statistical take of how much of NREGA's 80 bucks a day reached the Aadmi. All this would look like Cong-bashing. So be it. They are not fit to rule even the come-full-moon submerging islands of the far coasts of Lakshadweep. Then again, neither is BJP. 

Coming back... if this is the case of the country's only two national parties caught in the regional party politics, what way out for you and me? We keep alternating between these two parties and most people vote for Cong because they hate BJP because they have been so glamorously indoctrinated against BJP for what the Sene and the Sena and others do. One doesn't understand how easily the allegedly educated (because being educated seems to be a sin and crime to me as we don't take anything but reactionary measures) and urban Indians fall prey to well-orchestrated press campaigns of breast-groping men in Sene outfit which gets equated with Bhartiya Janata Party that also incidentally shares the saffron colour with other religiously Hindu in belief outfits. Why is it that an average Hindu has to shirk from the very terminology that defines his existence because every one who is not a Hindu and in a position to doctor things through their access to press is power-mongering and thus rally behind any one else who is not a Hindu in the name of secularism? Is secularism only Hindu bashing in this country? When the sewerage goes into the Bay of Bengal or Arabian Sea, does it gets separated on the basis of Hindu shit or Islamic shit or Christian shit or Dalit shit? Why then should we vote on the basis of secularism or the lack of it? It just dawns on me that the average voter of the world's most populous democracy is no better than that shit he shits, according to these politicians. And we continue to vote... and we continue to believe in the democratic process that extradicts the Quattrochis and the CBI that abides by a Supreme Court decision that always favours Congress. Is the Supreme Court also Congress' hand-puppet? How does Congress continue to keep its stranglehold so long? Will the allegedly educated urban Indian who is more bothered about his space to fornicate with or without reason and choose to consider morality as a conveniently changing view point depending on his inebriation levels ever wake up to ask the right questions even if the issues that bother this nation does not touch (leave alone affect) him/her? Don't get me wrong! I am not asking you to vote for options open besides Congress here! What use is the choice we have? Only remember... because one doesn't like the deep sea one can't dive into the devil's mouth or vice-versa.  We need to create options, we need to take well-argued and analytical stand.  How do you do that, ask you! I hear. I shall give one small example.

On my way to cast my vote, at the gates of my electoral booth, I ran into a friend who came out having voted. I asked him casually if he had done with the process. Inspite of my not asking, he volunteered that he had voted for Congress. I asked him aghast when he is going to change his family tradition when he - who used to work high up in a leading Chennai newspaper and as opinionated as a jehadi can get about Indian politics - countered me by asking what is the option? I told him several, one among which was 49(O). He said he was not willing to compromise on his physical security since 49(O) requires that you should disclose your identity! Now, if you do, that is what taking a stand is! Assuming that the goondas of the parties of India would sorround your house like the NSG during the Mumbai Taj Siege and hence do not want to compromise on your security is what I call the spinelessness of an educated urban Indian! Do we think that the powers that be are watching us like the Big Brother of 1984 or the Overseers of Zamyatin's WE and send people to destroy all the 49(o) voters? How shallow can we get? For god's sake, this is a country of 1.2 billion and 49(O) as of today can't usher India-shaking changes. But at least, one would have taken a stand! I really do adore all those who voted for the Independent candidates because at least they chose an option, winning or not! This is probably how we could begin.

We have FIVE GOOD YEARS TO DO THAT STARTING TODAY... let's begin... NOW!

Doubts re-surface...

Hello... anyone out there? Hey-loooooo.... anyone who can clarify this Dalit identity issue about which one of my recent posts talk???

In the meanwhile, there have been two occurences that further muddle my search.

1) I saw a footage in one of the 24-hour News Channel showing a mass conversion of 2000 Dalits to Buddhism in Mumbai

2) In today's The Hindu, there is a news item about how the Dalits are planning to protest by forcing their way into the Draupadi Amman Temple near Salem, to which they have been denied entry by the caste Hindus for the past years.

My researches on the web haven't yielded the result I seek. Could someone out there clarify my confusion. Who is a Dalit? Or what constitutes a Dalit Identity?

Thanks and much obliged.