Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Learnings from Tamil Nadu

I can't forget my three day visit to Tamil Nadu a few months back. I was working on a project with the Government of Maharashtra to upgrade aanganwadi centres in the state. (An aanganwadi is village level public facility with a room and playing place for kids of age below six to receive supplementary nutrition and pre-school education). During our project we came to know that Tamil Nadu has constantly been the leader in the implementation of anti-malnutrition campaigns and to understand the details, the team headed for Coimbatore.

We were received at the Coimbatore airport by Miss Smitha, District Officer for ICDS (Integrated Child Development Service), Coimbatore. After a little freshening up in the district's circuit house and a tamil lunch, we moved on to aanganwadi visits. After about three hours of road journey, we reached a small village with average monthly income of Rs.2500. But the aanganwadi said a different story. There were no kids with grade 3 and 4 malnutrition and 80% children had normal body weight. Kids came every morning to have meal, play, learn and enjoy. There were innovative play-items prepared by the aanganwadi sevika which helped her teach the little kids lessons without books. The enthusiasm in the village about our visit spoke of the significance of aanganwadis in their lives.

We moved on to see ten more such villages in the next three days and every village taught us several lessons. Villages that had no stable occupations, tribal villages, villages remote from towns, all of them had fantastically run aanganwadis. Tribal villages had only 20% malnourished children as opposed to a national average of 42%. There was water supply and electricity at every home that we went. Government functions seemed to have worked.

I think there is a lot that I have learnt from tamil nadu, but it would take me enough pondering to pen them down in a systematic manner.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

The Fuss about Reservation

When I listen to the various views on the issue of reservation to be given to OBC's in the premier institutes, I become speechless. I very well remember when about eight months ago, I was spending my last days at IIT Kanpur, the news of OBC reservation of 27% created a spur in the campus. Some of us joined hands to protest against this decision. I don't know how things developed that I became the leader of the movement. In a month time, the firewood caught fire. Protests started in all major colleges of Kanpur. Media started giving it's complete attention to the student protests. We planned to organize the entire Kanpur students community and protest in front of the District Magistrate.


I can't forget that day. Seven VIKRAM Tempos, Two Jeeps, and more than two thousand cycles with students riding, who belonged to eight different academic institutions, assembled at Moti Jheel, near the DM's Office. We didn't have funds to make a stage, but we did manage to arrange for a mic and speaker. We had banners, posters, templates to show our protest. Amidst that crowd of about two-three thousand people, I climbed to the roof of the Tempo that had the mic, in order to address the crowd. I don't remember what I said, but I do remember that major newspapers like TOI, Dainik Jagaran and Asian Age quoted me to having said the youth is on fire and that it's high time that engineers and doctors should move into active politics.

I was highly enthralled by the success of the protest. We handed a letter addressed to the PM, to the DM, Kanpur and came back satiated. I hardly realized that this agitation would spring up so much fire.

Five days later, I was out with close friends for dinner, when I started getting calls from NDTV, TOI, Dainik Jagaran and Sahara News about the next move of the Kanpur students. I said, nothing has been planned. To my utter surprise they asked me my comments on the announced Hunger Strike at IIT Kanpur to be commenced next day. I was taken aback. This wasn't the right time for a hunger strike. I could very well foresee that the protests are going to become aggressive and losing direction. With almost no political support and an opportunist media backing us, there was no future of this struggle. But then, I didn't have any alternative also. I didn't stop the hunger strike from happening. But I stepped down from the protest.

A new group of students had already formed an organized union against reservation. I was happy with the development, but a little unsure about the future. I preferred to be an onlooker. It was then that I started interacting with all those who supported the protest. To my utter dismay, I found that most of them belonged to upper castes, including me, and the protest wasn't against the policy of reservation but against the rise of the underdogs. I felt so ashamed of myself for leading a huge crowd which shamelessly blamed all the backward classes to have maligned the standards of education and jobs. I could very well see the scornful statement underlying all these comments, "Don't let these backwards rise....they'll eat up our space..."

Oh god !!! How could I not understand the motives of all those who were supporting me. And today when the Supreme Court puts a stay order on the implementation of the reservation thing, I find some relief in the fact that at least, SC has the same logic that I professed. That reservation is not the right way to uplift the backward classes. We need to try better means.

I wish some general class people do realize that the backward classes need an upliftment, and if we don't provide them alternative ways of upliftment, we stand no right to protest against reservation.


Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Why this blog?

It is generally felt by people in india that politics has been on a continuous journey towards degrading standards and increasing corruptions.... i beg to differ... not coz i feel that indian politics is doing great..but coz i do not feel that it's ethical to blame something that you are an integral part of... we as the citizens of a democratic country have got the right to vote and select our representatives and hence our government... that means that if we have a government that's BAD...we are to be held responsible...

this blog is meant to pour in my views of what i as a citizen of the nation, feel about our country's politics and how can I make a difference....

let me see how much of ideas get captured in this blog...