I've gone deaf

The blog sphere is flooded with sagacious advice, radical calls for action, screeching accusations of incompetence, Government officials to be sacked, people confessing this is the last straw and that India is a lost cause and overall, a mood of great depression, doom and intense brooding.

I am quite fed up with all this. No one is for a moment denying your right to mourn and remember those who died and those who laid their lives down. By all means, decry fascism and radicalism in all its forms. But please stop, in your oh-so-articulate ways trying to give incisive explanations and insights into what is wrong with the systems, how our politicians are the cause of all this, how our bureaucrats are another cause, how this and that and this again is done wrong in our country and the list goes on.

Of course everyone knows what the problems are. Of course we all accept our apparatus whether political or security related is pathetic. I won't go into the details of all that is wrong because so many thousands of you out there have already screamed it from the top of your roofs and made me deaf in the process. When I watched the attacks and the diabolical aftermath I was left numb. However I am now angry. Not at those 10 or 20 idiots who came here and randomly left death behind nor at the larger machinery responsible for these ideas. I am angry at the outbursts that I have seen, heard and read. All of civil society, all the articulate folks out there are on TV shows, in newspaper columns, on blogs all berating institutions of India. And now I don't want to hear any more of your theorizing and your suggestions. Stop it already.

All you folks out there who think you have a solution, why don't you have the intestinal fortitude to convert some of your zealotry into action? We all know what the problems are so instead of further underscoring what we already know, how about being part of a possible solution?

You think our politicians are inept and you are more capable?
You think our education system breeds mediocrity?
You think our hiring policies discriminate?
You think Muslims are disenfranchised and suppressed?

All of this is true. So how about you be part of a solution? Contribute your time, your money, your knowledge to root out these problems instead of turning all serious and pious , gloomy and worst of all intellectual when such events happen. It takes but a day's searching to know how you can work with educators, with NGOs reforming Muslim education, to work with unemployed youth support groups to increase employability. It takes but a day with Google and your mobile phone. That's it. No one's asking you to don combat gear and take a chopper ride to Baluchistan. You can contribute here. And the need is more urgent than ever. I have only listed a few and very random list of things that you could do to help. I honestly am not optimistic about it really happening you know because, this is our way the Indian way. We know best how to theorize. We know best how to device the most perfect solutions in our well-groomed, grammatically correct English. It seems actually, that we seem to know it all! Kudos to all you smart folks out there. I am sure many of you are going to take part in walks, protests, white shirt days, black band days et al. While I admire your awareness and sense of sharing your thoughts in this peaceful manner, do also remember that as important as symbolism is, by going for a protest and back to work the next week you are no better or no worse than the very politicians you derided so heavily for flying into Bombay to visit the sick and dying when the attacks were still on.

I know so many of you out there all of whom seem to have solutions for everything that's wrong with civil society. Now more so than ever, all of us has an opinion, something we want to change. Yet how many of us will act? I shall leave that to you to ponder upon.

But please, for now enough of your screaming. Enough of your shouting yourselves hoarse. Either act or go back to your cocoons, knowing now of course that no one really can cocoon themselves anymore.

Just say "no" ?

"New Delhi: Condom and safe sex terms that will find no mention in the new sex education module being devised for school students in India. It will instead stress on abstinence, the National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) announced Monday.

NACO director-general Sujatha Rao said the module would be adopted after intensive consultations with all partners, including parents and teachers.

"There will be no mention of condom or safe sex in the revised module life-skill education programme. But we will be focussing on the aspirations of the youngsters and will also talk about being faithful to one's partner and abstinence There should be no hypocrisy on the subject," Rao told journalists at a meet on Response to HIV/AIDS: Forging Partnership with the Media.

The decision to introduce sex education in India's schools was aimed primarily at creating awareness about HIV/AIDS since 2.5 million people in the country suffer from the disease. However, the module created a furore.

One of the main objections was a flip chart prepared for teachers jointly by the UN Children's Fund (Unicef) and the government-controlled NACO.

Educationists themselves turned against the programme and after states like Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, UP, Kerala and Karnataka banned it, NACO formed a committee last year to make a new module."

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The doublespeak and hypocrisy continue unabated. As someone who works on the periphery of Education in India, this is representative of the challenges facing educators and progressive elements in the sector. How can progressive stances be adopted at a policy level when, like any other issue, Education is used as a pawn in political games? This is teeth gnashing stuff right here...and at times, fills me with a faint dread that in the game of helping our kids be smarter, more productive citizens, we are failing and badly on a mass scale; while isolated "experimental" schools continue to push the boundaries of education to create even brighter children increasing the intellectual inequity that already plagues Indian society. The intellectual divide will only spawn a larger, more dangerous wealth divide and the circle continues. I really wonder sometimes if hope does spring eternal...