Things I Wouldn't Change about Bangalore

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My friend Mercy wrote a post about it and now I am turning it into a meme with a twist. Yeah, you have to add your own onion to every dish. I will talk about "dinosaured" situations that I did not want changed.

The corner OTC store where you could shop for a month's groceries in 10 minutes and within countable Rs.

Auto drivers of the 1990s. I need say no more.
Walking a kilometer to school everyday through traffic ridden roads with no footpath and no fear.
The ambience which attracted multi coloured birds that perched on trees every morning.
One family per neighbourhood with the ability to burn money like crackers during Diwali. No competition.
The Sunday morning repertoire of Kannada serials - fun concentration in one channel
Satisfaction with butter sponge khara bread sweet bread combo for after school evening snack.
Feeling the pain of the beggars
National College circle as a land mark
Respect for the elderly people

Do you have any such "dont-want-to" changes?

Fixed Price. No Bargain. No discount.

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As a child, walking along beside my mother on our walks every evening, the thing that used to fascinate me a lot was stopping at various sellers and looking at their wares. I had ample time to look and touch because my mom would take her time to haggle for the best price. She, I think, is the world's best bargainer. At her peak she could bargain the cart off a push-cart vegetable seller! I never noticed then that my dad would never be around until the time came to whisk out some money for the purchase. Growing up brought it own woes and one of them was feeling uncool to be seen in public with one's parents in tow. I think every kid goes through this phase of wanting to look cool in front of peers which meant no chaperoning. I still accompanied my mum on those odd shopping trips to the market, but found it extremely embarrassing to be associated in any way with the haggling. I maintained a decent distance enough so that a casual observer would think I am waiting for someone instead of noticing that I am with someone and that someone was trying to go home with the cart and goodies.
I could never pick up the thread of bargaining from my genes and always prefer to pay without protesting. I wizened enough to move away without making a purchase if I thought the price was exorbitant but I couldn't get courage enough to demand an explanation. Super Markets was for me the best place to buy stuff because you dint need to get personal about your purchase. I knew very well that every person in that shop was paying the exact same amount as I was and there was no need to feel jealous or guilty.
Over the years, my mum's passion for bargaining has also decreased owing to the fact that she starts to feel sorry more often for the seller and his family. I think everyone reaches a stage in life where he/she feels philanthropic. They move away from the "i work hard so i need to get value out of every rupee" philosophy to "the other person works equally harder and if one rupee isn't going to pinch my pocket then i might as well give it to him". Now my mom sometimes buys stuff which she absolutely doesn't need only so that those few rupees would help the seller get a meal.
But lately, my bargaining genes have fought their way up. Every morning sees me haggling with auto drivers about the price to bring me to my office. There was a time BV (before V was born) when I abhorred taking an auto who wouldn't take the meter fare and would charge extra (Read). Necessity is the mother of all submission so I have succumbed to the habit and ease of taking an auto to work in the mornings so as to ease my morning rush.
Though Bangalore, by and large has not reached the Chennai limits of fixed fare, we are getting there very slowly with autos charging extra even to drive you to a destination outside the city limits (the auto drivers stick to Kempe Gowda's Bangalore map to determine the limits). So it is that I bargain for every 10 rupees (1 rupee is guffawed at these days) and I must say that I am building up my skills well. Look out vegetable sellers (if there is any in urban India who cares for bargainers)!

Dear Mr.Obama

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On becoming the President of the USA, I congratulate you for giving the world visually tolerable images of the so called "world's most powerful man" which was hitherto a very depressing affair given the fact that the person who occupies your esteemed office takes up half the bandwidth of world television broadcast.
You have lent a mighty voice not only to the generally intelligent folks of the United States but also to some shy denizens of our great country India, in particular to some narcissistic individuals. You may not be aware of the various appellations in our great land but one would definitely interest you – Obamma. We, in our locality (details of which I don’t mention for fear of brickbats) are pleased to inform you that we have a lane bearing your name or nearly so. Last week we named one of the by-lanes in our locality as “Obamma Lane”. The bearer of the name “Obamma” was definitely shy about her name being painted in bold, font 400 and bright blue on the signboard since it is not one of the most fanciful names we have in modern India to the extent that one might hear a snicker or two. This was until you came along. You have increased the significance of her name . I don’t subscribe to the school of thought which creates biases on the basis of a name because I do believe “What’s in a name?” but it gives me great joy to gratify you by informing you that your name itself is becoming a kind of status symbol.

Yours’ Sincerely,
A Wellwisher

Child labour

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When I turn around in my seat I see a construction site in the distance where around 40% of the workers look like children to me. Playful, adventurous and having fun. And I am not talking only about toddlers playing with mud and stones in the scorching sun but also about the teenagers who are lugging around heavy stones,displacing mud, watering the newly built cement walls while carrying heavy pails of water.
Its a shame. This area is supposed to be the information industry belt. And people who work here are supposedly well educated. Yet when it comes to construction and hard labour matters they seem to turn the other way as these young adults strive hard. Even though it is against the law in India.
But if you see the other side of this coin, these kids are striving to improve their living by sacrificing their childhood and education. They are constantly trying to help run their household. There is nothing that will force them to go attend schools while their parents scrape a livelihood all day. Not even free food works in most of the blue plastic cover wrapped on-the-move communities. Some of them have circumstance beyond their control due to which they have to work in order to be able to eat. Some live alone. Who will look after them if they dont? Wouldnt they resort to begging? Or get lured into doing acts against society which dint care about them in the first place?
Five years back I sent a mail of objection to the CFO of my previous company regarding one of the cleaning staff being a kid who definitely did not look 18. Although he assured me that the administrative staff check the age records before hiring he did start another check. I felt good about my community spirit till the evening when I started despairing for the kid's family. What if he was the only breadwinner for them? I felt extremely miserable and guilty for the next few days. The next week however I ran into the kid again near the stairs and I was so happy to see him back that I gave him a huge smile to his astonishment. He might never know that I could have been the villain in his life. But I still dont know whether he used a fake age record.
Should we allow the children to choose to work while we think that they should be going to school?

All I want to say is that, they don't really care about us!

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Have you heard anything which sounds like a cross between a train whistle and a crying dog? No? Listen to Himesh Reshammiya's Mehbooba song from his movie Aap Ka Surroor (Not even surrre how many Rs are in there). One guarantees that it will jolt you out of constipation. What he has decided to do with this song is abysmmal. There is a recital (yes!) of the lyrics by a rather sad and tired sounding Asha Bhonsle interlaced with this crying sound (when did HR practice with the canine populace I wonder) and yet there was enough scope to add in a sub plot into the song with a gruffy voice putting in his two cents rapper style. Punk! Sheesh! What amazes me is the frequency at which this song is aired on the radio channels here. I hear it in the mornings while going to work and on the way back. Plus there is this other song which eats my brains out. This is the title track of the movie Jhoom Barabar Jhoom. The title looks like it was plagiarised from Bobby Deol's barber. This song (like the other songs) in this movie are full of words from a language a regular person wouldnt know in Bangalore. Know your audience radio people! You are airing it in Bangalore, South India. Here the max people can manage to learn and understand is Hindi. How on earth would we know what a "guthiyan" or what a "lad gaye penche" refers to. I had to go to a lyrics site and then copy paste the words here else I was thinking the first line was something like "aaja rabba ishq di golguthiyan"! You getting the drift? I dont even know where I am heading to with this post. Sorry, I just needed a rant. I do enjoy other songs which are half punjabi but which makes for an enjoyable listening experience like the ones from RDB. I cant take it with all. I think radio channels need a reality check on what we want to listen to. Maybe a poll would be a good idea. I cannot go through another bout of hysteria listening to all crappy songs . Set a limit as to how many times a bad (deemed bad by poll) track needs to be aired irrespective of the listener requests. Puhleese there are so many of us who can do without these to spoil our moods.

Dog Person

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Yesterday something very strange happened when I was walking back home. Its become my practice of late to listen to radio on my mobile phone on my way back home. I keep it on even after getting off fom my office van and while I walk a short distance home. Yesterday it so happened that the van driver had also tuned into one of the radio channels (which was not what I was listening to) and he had put it on very loud volume. I, not having the inclination to argue with him, simply increased the volume of my phone. So there I was walking down the road with music literally pouring out of my ears and into those of startled passers-by. Suddenly I felt a brush against my left leg. I thought it might have been my dupatta moving to the wind. I felt the brush again and this time I literally jumped because it was a dog and he/she (I cant tell so easily) was very close to me! Literally walking in my shadow. I tried to move away but the dog stuck to me. It would brush against me or get in the way of my legs. If I stopped walking the dog would also stop and pretend as if it was looking for something on the road. As soon as I move there it was, my loyal shadow. I am usually not scared of our layout stray dogs because they are not only friendly towards us but also guard our layout against any intruder. This particular dog did not seem friendly but it seemed scared to me. I thought of all the incidents involving stray dogs mauling kids in Bangalore and decided not to take chances. I stood rooted to my spot quite in the middle of the road and did not move for two full minutes. The dog waited for me on the side and it got restless. Now it so happened that there was another girl walking in front of me so the dog just latched on to her shadow. I started walking again and started wondering why. That was when I noticed 3 more dogs walking quietly behind me. But these were not interested in me. They were stalking the other dog. It struck me at that moment that the lone dog was an intruder, a stranger who was trying to get into our layout community. He was keeping close to the humans walking maybe for two reasons 1) he thought the dogs wont smell him out (comeon I dont really stink that much dude!) 2) he thought walking with humans would give him a "pet" status. Whatever it was it dint work because in the next minute as the other girl stood confused and scared the layout dogs started barking and rushing towards the lone dog. We all got out of the way for the pack which dint rest till they chased the intruder out! Dogs do have brains people. Remember those labradors? They know their lost puppy dog look will get us to do anything for them.

(I took the pic from a Hindu Newspaper)

SSSHHHHH....

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Have you ever seen anyone walking into a doctor shop laughing ? Leave out the doctors, nurses and support staff from your count because they dont belong to the speicies of "Patient". For that matter have you ever seen anyone walking in talking loudly?

I wonder what it is about a doctor shop that you are expected to be instantly glum, gloomy and sad. Whether you have come to get your knee-scrape cleaned and ointed or whether you come to get your innards opened for a surgical operation, the mood needs to be equally grave and composed. The one thing I remember from my childhood is being sickly. I landed up in doctor shops more often than most kids, or thats what I think in retrospect. The one thing that made an impression on me was the big SHHHH.....poster with a little blond girl holding her finger to her lips. This was like the universal sign for "Maintain Silence" in almost all the doctor shops I went to. Just spot the blond girl on the wall and you knew for the next one hour you couldnt utter a word out loud. So mighty was the impression that even when the friendly old man in a white coat would forcefully give me a "chuchi" (baby talk for injection), I would not howl or cry in pain as the normal kids but give out a mature "AH" with an occasional tear daring to drop out. As I grew up though some other realisations dawned on me. The urge to crack a joke and laugh became uncontrollable when one is in a doctor's clinic. Like what happened today. We had to visit the doctor for some reason and me,T and my b-i-l had to choose that exact moment, when the doctor was examining the patient behind a curtain, to start whispering and giggling. I mean suddenly very common things start feeling funny in a starched atmosphere like that. We start chuckling for no reason, ok we did find the whispering funny to start with. And we whisper because we have a constraint of being silent. (We are all closet rebels.) The crinkly cover seems funny, the doctor's propped out ears seem very very funny. And ofcourse you are not allowed to laugh out loud (even though nowadays there is no blond girl on the wall). So you snicker behind your palms and try not to turn red. There are some doctors who never smile. There are some who always smile. But there are none who ever laugh out loud, not even when they see that they have cured their patient completely. Makes me wonder if a "full cure" is a myth. I couldn't even imagine doctors laughing in their private personal lives till I became more acquainted with my cousin's uncle and aunt who are doctors. They do laugh a lot and are very funny people! I think when they don the white coat they assume the role of the most responsible persons on earth and responsible persons dont giggle or talk loud just for the heck of it!

Ammu's story

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Ammu is a cute little 8 year old girl who lives in a big house next to ours. One of my best friends:). She was here today afternoon and getting pretty bored. I was writing a new post and offered to type a story of her choice if she would dictate it to me. This is what she narrated :

Once upon a time there was a long long river. A man was laughing at the boy swimming. Then after some days the man who was making fun of the boy had got a fracture on his leg. Then the next day the man said "I deserved this just because I made fun of the boy." Thats why the man went to the big river and he saw the small boy swimming in the river and told "I am very very sorry to make fun of you".

Says a lot about what children are imbibing these days. I felt a little happy at the young mind's perception. Oh by the way she made this one up totally by herself!

Blow hot blow cold

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Inter-continental travel generates an appreciation for a world perspective. The time difference makes me realize all the more of how half the world is up and about when I am down and snoring. Travel in March gives another dimension to the perspective - the weather. I came back to Bangalore exactly a week ago. I came from minus temperatures to sweltering heat! When I landed in Montreal a month ago it was the lowest temperature of the season, -36 degrees Celsius. I felt like I was going to freeze between the door of the hotel and my friend's car! Back in Bangalore it seems to be the highest temperatures for the season, +33 degrees Celsius. I feel like I am going to melt right outside my doorstep! It feels funny when I remember that a week ago I was swathing myself in layers of clothing and now, well lesser said about it the better ;)
The past week has been extremely hectic and I haven’t had much of a breather to do anything apart from hard work. And I haven’t foxed it yet like I do always. This time the 'hard' part seems to be for real :). Hence, I was ecstatic about the long weekend with Good Friday falling conveniently on a Friday he he.
As soon as I woke up on Friday I came to know of a get together that I needed to attend in the evening. I wasn't looking forward to socializing but in a small neighborhood like ours it pays to know your neighbors. So I had to mark my presence that evening at an Art of Living satsang being conducted in our neighbor’s home. I went with a lot of skeptism in my mind and not much of it was obliterated at the end but I made a few interesting observations. The satsang characteristically started off with a lot of singing. What’s a song without music so the singers were also clapping in a nicely formed rhythm. The clapping was so loud that you could see that the most prominent participants’ palms had turned a deep red. They were lost in the sur and taal of their own fervor. I realized that whether people sing along or no the clappity clap clap was enough to hold our sway. One couldn’t stop oneself from joining in the enthusiastic clapping and enjoy it. I felt it was a stress buster because you focus on just producing the sound and nothing else. It’s what meditation would do to you for example. Focus on one thing and forget the world around you. It’s easier to do it with a rhythm.
This was one of the techniques, one of my college teachers taught me, to increase powers of concentration. Turn on a nice rhythmic music and lie down with eyes closed. Phase out everything from your thought except the sound. You know you have mastered the art if you can still hear only the sound even when the volume is bare minimum.
At the end of the singing session the AOL teacher made a small speech about why we all should enroll our kids in this course! Maybe she was focusing only on kids because it was summer vacation? Her reasoning was that kids have very bad attitude these days and only AOL can cure them. This was a conversation which happened during the speech
Teacher : “Seeeeee, we are not able to control our kids and give them good behavior, yes or no?”.
A lady in the audience : “No”
Teacher (aghast at opposition) “Oh, so you think you can give good behavior to your kids”
Lady : “Yes”
Teacher (not backing down) “But are you successful?”
Lady : “A little bit”
(Which was honest, come on parents or any other training attributes to only a percentage of the kids’ attitude)
Teacher with a triumphant smile : “Seeee that’s why your kid needs of AOL, yes or no?”
???? What kind of logic was this? I don’t think parents would want to enroll kids into AOL because they cannot teach them good outlook towards life. I saw this as marketing flaw.
My philosophy is a little different. I believe that any individual (including a kid) has to gain a good attitude from inside. Of course surroundings do affect it but in the end I don’t think anyone can teach anyone else to be happy. Its all about self realization. One can only make an environment in which he could expect others to be happy. I am not unhappy because I am stressed out. I could be unhappy because I can’t see the positive aspect of a situation. I believe everything that happens, happens for good.
When all this was going on, my dad-in-law gestured that we could leave if we wanted to and I was so ready but the only thing that held me back was the smell of food! I stayed on and partook a lovely meal. It fully compensated the loss of an entire evening, thank you hosts! Well, Eating good food is one of the foremost arts of my living!

Reality bites

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The whole of this weekend I spent in front of the TV watching what is popularly known as “Reality” shows. Dance shows, live like a family shows, song shows and what not! You can take your pick from Saregama or Nach Baliye or Jhalak Dikhlaja or Big Boss etc. Where the first one tries to give a platform for budding singers all the others are only centered on celebrities. These shows have become so popular that they have replaced the gisa-pita saas-bahu soap discussions in the steamy (cooker da) kitchen banter! Bored aunties now have some exciting, adrenaline-pumping stuff to talk about. And please note that am still only talking about Aryan Vaid’s muscle show, Rakhi Sawant’s errr show, Malaika Arora’s one-pieces defying gravity, born not to perform couples lunging at each other in a dance or shocker Mona Singh winning a contest in true Jassi (underdog wins in the end) style.

Nach Baliye and Jhalak have people vying for the top spot in dancing abilities. While the former has married or to-be-married couples pairing up the latter has singles. Its a good platform for the budding choreographers but somewhere along the line it becomes all about the glamour, nakras and jatkas of the dancers and the choreographers only show their jhalak briefly. One whistle from Saroj Khan who is a judge on Nach Baliye and the participants dissolve into tears of gratitude as if their long tapas has finally borne fruit. But at least these days the ousted contestants are not creating a wail-y mess but are gaily moving on. On Jhalak we have three very cordial bored judges with their best smiles pasted on their faces. Can’t blame them for they have to judge dances of people who have never moved a leg side wards in their lives (barring one). And then you have to put up with the artificial sense of ohhh-losing-the-crown atmosphere created by the anchors.

Till recently I did not really understand the concept of a live-in show. On my trips to Germany I used to see a reality show which had a bunch of young people living in a house together day after day without the slightest corner of privacy. There were cameras everywhere including the bathrooms! I was a little shocked (blame it on the conservative brain) to even make any sense of why anyone would take part in it. And the show being totally in German did not help my understanding much. It was only when I saw a similar show on Indian television did I get enlightened.
The father of all reality shows has around 13 celebrities locked in a house with no outside access. Their antics beamed around the nation. Ofcourse they are all there for the money! The people on the show seem to be so contrived that you can almost see them peeling off their masks when they go to bed. While some of them are showing off their assets to best camera advantage (oh yeah they are completely aware of where those are placed), there are some who are try to woo you (the audience) all the time brightly chirping, there are a few who look and feel lonely and lost and there are others who act like mother hens!! All of them know they are playing to the gallery and they also need the money. They have to make a pretty picture with all the others while also voting in secret to eliminate the others one by one. It’s not that easy with the entire nation watching!

News channel NDTV became trendsetters with Big Fight and We the People where the common man is given a podium and a mike and an answerable set of people. This is getting drawn into the realm of entertainment also with reality shows. Its not too far when the show directors will air their shows live and The Truman Show will also become a reality!

I have a feeling we are in the renaissance period of entertainment where shows are about oneself and not some character one is portraying.

The Blank Noise Project blogathon

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I might be a little late for the blogathon which was supposed to link all the participants on 7th but does it really matter. What I want to do is support the cause.
I am a woman who has gone through harassment more than once. Even if it was mainly verbal harassment it nevertheless made me want to burrow into a hole. It is very difficult to share one's own experiences of this nature. I tell my husband, it’s the feeling of shame that engulfs us more than anger at the offender when such incidents occur. Because if it was rage then I think eve-teasing could have long been abolished. But the attitude of looking down and scurrying away is taking its toll. When I was in school and had to go through eve teasing on the roads I used to wonder if these guys were perverts. Even middle aged b*****ds indulging in it. But today when I read news about young girls 8 yrs old, 6 yrs old, 4 yrs old (God almighty!) I am not left in much doubt. It is not very easy for a girl to tell her parents about the harassment that she is subjected to in public places. It requires a lot of courage. I developed the sense to handle such situations early in my life. But again I did this because it was easier to handle it myself rather than give it unwanted publicity by telling parents. What all could I tell them? The sleazy brush in the bus, the passing of lewd comments as one passed by, groping in crowded places, glances pointedly on one's chest area? There was this handicrafts exhibition we went to once. We here being my parents and me. There I spotted a guy who was tagging along with a stream of girls. He kept one of his hands in his pocket and if one observed one could see it moving back and forth. I don’t need to explain what was happening here but it made me feel so sick that I forced my parents to get out of that place as fast as we could. Would I have had the guts to stop this guy and question him? I don’t think so. Not in front of my parents. Another sick incident was in a crowded market place. Now, market places are the breeding grounds for mentally-deranged-sleaze-balls. One of this ilk tagged on to me as soon as me and my mom got out of the bus. His modus operandi was very simple. I was walking behind my mom and he kept in step behind me. Whenever there was a people jam he would rush up against me. The first time I gave him a dirty stare he seemed to look behind him and shrug. The next time it happened he stood askance behind me and I knew. This happened many times to his credit because it was just a fifteen minute walk. The next few times I just stuck my elbow out so that the creep would encounter a sharp jab. But it dint deter him! Finally to get rid of the menace I had to tell my mom about him and get her to walk behind me. *Sick*. They don’t just stop at letching at nubile young girls. It extends to any woman who does not have any obvious signs of old age.
What is in their perverted mind? How did such crappy thoughts enter it? Did they go to the same kind of schools that we went to (eve teasing is not the domain of only the illiterates)? Do they ever feel guilty? What do they get out of jeering when they are with their friends? Of course they are sure the girl will bend her head and walk away but will not come and slap him. But seen from the girl’s side its fear. Fear of repercussions. Can she afford to confront these creeps? Would it ruin her life?
One way of getting rid of it would be to have stringent laws and conscientious law enforcement officers. Ideally I would like to give sexual harassers whether mental or physical a lifetime in prison just to set a precedent but again I am not qualified to pass judgments. We should also try to get to the root of such a personality trait. All those questions I asked before are very important. Can we study the causes and come up with Prevention is better than cure mechanism? Can we teach men to respect women beyond the body? First thing I would do in this direction, would be to decouple the association of a woman to a child bearer. Leave the womb and the breasts out of the picture. There is much more to us than just that!
Let's start a revolution on Woman's Day

Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Narayan

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I was initiated into R.K.N's writings by a very dear friend of mine. Prior to that I was an avid reader of run-of-the-mill fast paced western world novels. The first snippet i got to read of R.K.N was ofcourse "An Astrologer's Day" which is part of our curriculum in 1st PUC. It dint create much of an impression in me for I was not really a big fan of humorous stories back then. But once I embarked on the R.K.N journey I have never looked back. I simply love his works.
I will write in detail about my reading experience some time later (I really have to cater to a work deadline rt now), but below is a list of his books for all ye collectors!

R. K. Narayan's Published Works

1935: Swami and friends
1937: Bachelor of Arts
1938: The Dark Room
1939: Mysore
1945: The English Teacher
1947: An Astrologer's Day , and other stories
1949: Mr. Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi
1952: The Financial Expert
1953: Grateful to Life and Death
1955: Waiting for the Mahatma
1956: Lawley Road , and other stories
1958: The Guide
1960: Next Sunday : sketches and essays
1961: The Man-Eater of Malgudi
1964: My Dateless Diary : An American Journey
1965: Gods, Demons, and others
1967: The Vendor of Sweets
1970: A Horse and two Goats , stories
1972: The Ramayana; a shortened modern prose version
1974: My Days
1974: Reluctant Guru
1976: The Painter of Signs
1978: The Mahabharata: a shortened modern prose version
1980: The Emerald Route
1982: Malgudi Days
1983: A Tiger for Malgudi
1985: Under the Banyan Tree and other stories
1986: Talkative Man
1988: A Writer's Nightmare : selected essays
1989: A Story-Teller's World : Stories, Essays, Sketches
1990: The World of Nagaraj
1992: Malgudi Landscapes : the best of R.K. Narayan
1993: The Grandmother's Tale : three novellas
1993: Salt & sawdust : stories and table talk

Feel free to add to the list if I might have missed any

ERP in governance

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Dr. A.P.J.Abdul Kalam addressed the people of Karnataka this Sunday on his visit to Bangalore. I was one of the many citizens enthralled by his speech. What captured my heart was the level of detail that was presented to the assembled legislature. Details down to the last GB of fibre optic connections across major cities of Karnataka! I mean, he is a visionary not just the President. There was a variety of topics that he advised the government on ranging from agriculture to IT infrastructure, from decongestion of tier one cities to futuristic town planning. I wondered if making him the head of the government would help our nation and then again that position would not really offer him so much independence to think of next generation governance tactics. Lead kindly light Dr. Kalam!

His speech set me thinking and I strongly believe that what India needs right now is a good ERP system. Running governments of a country is big business. Currently the disjoint sets are too many in number within the same governmental machinery. It is a very simple tree structure with the central government at the node and 28 state governments and 6 union territories (hopefullyIi am right with the numbers) under it at the same level, if you think of it.

• Unifying all the departments of the states and center under one umbrella system would mean better accountability which I feel is the first thing lacking in our government today.
• Information retrieval, usage and dissemination would be highly efficient.
• Limited access would make it more tamper proof.
• Information keyed in once is available in minutes across the organization.
• The ROI for the government is very high and long lasting.
• Finance and operation reports could be generated out of the system.
• More transparency in governance.

A lot more advantages that is currently not occuring to me but might to you all!

Self respect is the most Elementary Education

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I was checking out Azim Premji Foundation's website regarding Universal Elementary Education.
I do have some opinions and beliefs about it and I have written them down as below. It is in no way complete. Will add on to it as and when i can get time out from my work!

When we talk about elementary education, one of my earliest memories in this regard, is of Saroja’s kids. Saroja was our domestic help for sometime at Hyderabad. On Sundays she used to come along with her two kids to help with the cleaning at home. This was the morning prime time slot when a lot of kid programs would be aired on DD1. Both her kids, hardly over 7-8 years old would be glued to the television along with my brother and me who were in the same age group. It used to rather depress me that they would sit on the floor and watch while my brother and I would sit on the comfortable cane chairs. I would invariably ask them to sit up on the other chairs. The kids needed a lot of goading to share even a single chair between themselves for the simple reason that they did not want my charity. I respected this self respect in them and many a times would simply sit on the floors my self. As I knew those kids had not yet started going to school. So it must mean that they had learnt this at home.

For any kind of education to be a success I believe that it should start with inculcating self respect in one self. There are a lot of initiatives being started for elementary education of the urban and rural poor children. But what the initiatives need to emphasise on could be to drive home the point of self importance. The children need to understand that this is not a charity drive for them. They should not start taking for granted the efforts of the innumerable volunteers who are trying to make their lives different. And the volunteers also should not vent their frustrations on the unsuspecting children.

Educating children really begins at home. It is the parents who should start instilling such traits in their children. Today, more and more people are realizing the necessity and outcome of education. This force should be garnered.

I believe it is very difficult to achieve success from any huge effort made on primary education unless it is supplemented by another group working towards issues of the parents as well. A child is a mere pawn in the hands of his/her parents/guardians till such an age where he/she can take his own decisions. Education is a major decision in life which needs to be taken early and hence by the parents.

Children coming from poor families would not have access to knowledge that an urban middle class or rich kid would have with just the click of a mouse. Outdoor programs and educational tours should be made part of the elementary education. Group activities and sports activities would help in inculcating self confidence in children and would also bring out their versatile talents. These are the formative years in one’s character and hence it should abound with a very healthy, competitive and humanitarian atmosphere. The children should learn to look beyond the four walls of their house and imagine beyond the boundaries of their school. Education should not be an endless effort at getting the multiplication tables correctly memorized but should be more of an effort in application of mind with an abacus kind of approach.

Coming back to children not taking the education program for granted. There are a number of schemes through which the basic needs of a child is taken care of by the institution if he/she is willing to come to school. There is a huge drawback that I can see of this. The children get so used to their basic needs being taken care of that there is a fear of stepping out into the world independent. The ‘earn while you learn’ approach would prove very beneficial. The children would learn to be independent at a very early stage. Providing them with a lot of well thought of options apart from just the pot making, doll making, weaving etc would help them in recognizing their interests as well in the long run.