Political discourse is at its lowest point in the country, at least in my lifetime. The partisanship is unbelievable and people continue to support their side no matter what the evidence, there is no remorse even when they’re proved to have been spreading fake news. This is something that everyone — the parties and the voters/supporters are to be blamed for.

BJP has done a great job at spreading some specific messages with incredibly effective propaganda, and these messages are the primary reason that I can’t support the party anymore. But before we get into any of that, I’d like everyone to understand that no party is totally bad, and no party is totally good. All governments have done some good and messed up on some fronts. This government is no different.

The Good:

1. Road construction is faster than it was earlier. There has been a change in methodology of counting road length, but even factoring that in it seems to be faster.

2. Electricity connection increased — all villages electrified and people getting electricity for more hours. (Congress did electrify over 5 lakh villages and Modi ji finished the job by connecting the last 18k so, you can weigh the achievement as you like. Similarly the number of hours people get electricity has increased ever since independence, but it might be a larger increase during BJP).

3. Upper level corruption is reduced — no huge cases at the ministerial level as of now (but the same was true of UPA I :/ ). Lower level seems to be about the same with increased amounts, no one seems to be able to control the thanedar, patwari et al.

4. The Swachh Bharat Mission is a definite success — more toilets built than before and Swachhta is something embedded in people’s minds now.

5. UJJWALA Yojana is a great initiative. How many people buy the second cylinder remains to be seen. The first one and a stove was free, but now people need to pay for it. The cost of cylinders has almost doubled since the government took over and now one costs more than Rs. 800

6. Connectivity for the North East has undoubtedly increased. More trains, roads, flights and most importantly — the region is now discussed in the mainstream news channels.

7. Law and order is reportedly better than it was under regional parties.

Feel free to add achievements you can think of in the comments below, also achievements necessarily have caveats, failures are absolute!

The Bad:

It takes decades and centuries to build systems and nations, the biggest failure I see in BJP is that it has destroyed some great things on very flimsy grounds.

1. Electoral Bonds — It basically legalises corruption and allows corporates and foreign powers to just buy our political parties. The bonds are anonymous so if a corporate says I’ll give you an electoral bond of 1,000 crore if you pass this specific policy, there will be no prosecution. There just is no way to establish quid pro quo with an anonymous instrument. This also explains how corruption is reduced at the Ministerial level — it isn’t per file/order, it is now like the US — at the policy level.

2. Planning Commission Reports — this used to be a major source for data. They audited government schemes and stated how things are going. With that gone, there just is no choice but to believe whatever data the government gives you (CAG audits come out after a long time!). NITI Aayog doesn’t have this mandate and is basically a think tank and PR agency. Plan/Non-Plan distinction could be removed without removing this!

3. Misuse of CBI and ED — it is being used for political purposes as far as I can see, but even if it isn’t the fear that these institutions will be unleashed on them if they speak up against anything Modi/Shah related is real. This is enough to kill dissent, an integral component of democracy.

4. Failure to investigate Kalikho Pul’s suicide note, Judge Loya’s death, Sohrabuddin murder, the defence of an MLA accused of rape who’s relative is accused of killing the girl’s father and FIR wasn’t registered for over a year!

5. Demonetization — it failed, but worse is BJP’s inability to accept that it failed. All propaganda of it cutting terror funding, reducing cash, eliminating corruption is just absurd. It also killed off businesses.

6. GST Implementation — Implemented in a hurry and harmed business. Complicated structure, multiple rates on different items, complex filing Hopefully, it’ll stabilise in time, but it did cause harm. Failure to acknowledge that from BJP is extremely arrogant.

6. The messed up foreign policy with pure grandstanding — China has a port in Sri Lanka, huge interests in Bangladesh and Pakistan — we’re surrounded, the failure in Maldives (Indian workers not getting visas anymore because of India’s foreign policy debacle) while Modi ji goes out to foreign countries and keeps saying Indians had no respect in the world before 2014 and now they’re supremely respected (this is nonsense. Indian respect in foreign countries was a direct result of our growing economy and IT sector, it hasn’t improved an ounce because of Modi. Might even have declined due to beef based lynchings, threats to journalists etc.)

7. Failure of schemes and failure to acknowledge/course correct — Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana, Make In India, Skill Development, Fasal Bima (look at reimbursements — the government is lining the pockets of insurance companies). Failure to acknowledge unemployment and farmers crisis — calling every real issue an opposition stunt.

8. The high prices of Petrol and Diesel — Modi ji and all BJP ministers + supporters criticized Congress for it heavily and now all of them justify the high prices even though crude is cheaper than it was then! Just unacceptable.

9. Failure to engage with the most important basic issues — Education and Healthcare. There is just nothing on education which is the nation’s biggest failure. Quality of government schools has deteriorated over the decades (ASER reports) and no action. They did nothing on healthcare for 4 years, then Ayushman Bharat was announced — that scheme scares me more than nothing being done. Insurance schemes have a terrible track record and this is going the US route, which is a terrible destination for healthcare (watch Sicko by Michael Moore)!

You can add some and subtract some based on personal understanding of the issue, but this is my assessment. The Electoral Bonds thing is huge and hopefully, the SC will strike it down! Every government has some failures and some bad decisions though, the bigger issue I have is more on morals than anything else.

The Ugly:

The real negative of this government is how it has affected the national discourse with a well-considered strategy. This isn’t a failure, it’s the plan.

1. It has discredited the media, so now every criticism is brushed off as a journalist who didn’t get paid by BJP or is on the payrolls of Congress. I know several journalists for whom the allegation can’t be true, but more importantly, no one ever addresses the accusation or complaint — they just attack the person raising the issue and ignore the issue itself.

2. It has peddled a narrative that nothing happened in India in 70 years. This is patently false and the mentality is harmful to the nation. This government spent over Rs. 4,000 crore of our taxpayer money on advertisements and now that will become the trend. Do small works and huge branding. He isn’t the first one to build roads — some of the best roads I’ve traveled on were pet projects of Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav. India became an IT powerhouse from the 90s. It is easy to measure past performance and berate past leaders based on the circumstances of today, just one example of that:

Why did Congress not build toilets in 70 years? They couldn’t even do something so basic. This argument sounds logical and I believed it too, until I started reading India’s history. When we gained independence in 1947 we were an extremely poor country, we didn’t have the resources for even basic infrastructure and no capital. To counteract this PM Nehru went down the socialist path and created PSU’s. We had no capacity to build steel, so with the help of Russians the Heavy Engineering Corporation (HEC), Ranchi was set up that made machines to make steel in India — without this we would have no steel, and consequently no infrastructure. That was the agenda — basic industries and infra. We had frequent droughts (aakaal), every 2–3 years and a large number of people starved to death. The priority was to feed the people, toilets were a luxury no one cared for. The Green Revolution happened and the food shortages disappeared by the 1990s — now we have a surplus problem. The toilet situation is exactly like people asking 25 years from now why Modi couldn’t make all houses in India air conditioned. That seems like a luxury today, toilets were also a luxury at some point of time. Maybe things could have happened sooner, maybe 10–15 years ago, but nothing happened in 70 years is a horrible lie to peddle.

3. The spread and reliance on fake news. There is some anti-BJP fake news too, but the pro-BJP and anti-opposition fake news outstrips that by miles in number and in reach. Some of it is supporters, but a lot of it comes from the party. It is often hateful and polarizing, which makes it even worse. The online news portals backed by this government are damaging society more than we know.

4. Hindu khatre mein hai (Hindus are in danger) — they’ve ingrained it into the minds of people that Hindus and Hinduism are in danger, and that Modi is the only option to save ourselves. In reality, Hindus have been living the same lives much before this government and nothing has changed except people’s mindset. Were we Hindus in danger in 2007? At least I didn’t hear about it every day and I see no improvement in the condition of Hindus, just more fear mongering and hatred.

5. Speak against the government and you’re anti-national and more recently, anti-Hindu. Legitimate criticism of the government is shut up with this labeling. Prove your nationalism, sing Vande Mataram everywhere (even though BJP leaders don’t know the words themselves, they’ll force you to sing it!). I’m a proud nationalist and my nationalism won’t allow me to let anyone force me to showcase it! I will sing the national anthem and national song with pride when the occasion calls for it, or when I feel like it, but I won’t let anyone force me to sing it based on their whims!

6. Running news channels that are owned by BJP leaders whose sole job is to debate Hindu-Muslim, National-Antinational, India-Pakistan and derail the public discourse from issues and logic into polarizing emotions. You all know exactly which ones, and you all even know the debaters who’re being rewarded for spewing the vilest propaganda.

7. The polarisation — the message of development is gone. BJP’s strategy for the next election is polarization and inciting pseudo-nationalism. Modi ji has basically said it himself in speeches — Jinnah; Nehru; Congress leaders didn’t meet Bhagat Singh in jail (fake news from the PM himself!); INC leaders met leaders in Pakistan to defeat Modi in Gujarat; Yogi ji’s speech on how Maharana Pratap was greater than Akbar; JNU students are anti-national they’ll #TukdeTukdeChurChur India — this is all propaganda constructed for a very specific purpose — polarise and win elections — it isn’t the stuff I want to be hearing from my leaders and I refuse to follow anyone who is willing to let the nation burn in riots for political gain.

These are just some of the instances of how BJP is pushing the national discourse in a dark corner. This isn’t something I signed up for and it totally isn’t something I can support. That is why I am resigning from BJP.

PS: I supported BJP since 2013 because Narendra Modi ji seemed like a ray of hope for India and I believed in his message of development — that message and the hope are now both gone. The negatives of this Narendra Modi and Amit Shah government now outweigh the positives for me, but that is a decision that every voter needs to make individually. Just know that history and reality are complicated. Buying into simplistic propaganda and espousing cult-like unquestioning faith are the worst thing you can do — it is against the interests of democracy and of this nation.

You all have your own decisions to make as the elections approach. Best of luck with that. My only hope is that we can all live and work harmoniously together — and contribute towards making a better, stronger, poverty-free and developed India, no matter what party or ideology we support. Always remember that there are good people on both sides, the voter needs to support them and they need to support each other even when they are in different parties.

This post was first published by the author on Medium.

Safina, 26, fled from Afghanistan with her family two years ago, but the fear of the past still haunts her.

Mariam, 50, constantly worries about her 25-year-old son Rahim who “keeps bad company, sleeps all day and doesn’t go to work”.

Rashida, 35, wishes her husband wouldn’t throw away his earnings in cheap bars.

Shabnam, 24 and married for four years, desperately wants a child.

They are just four of the hundreds of women in Old Delhi seeking solutions to life’s myriad problems. And every day, their search leads them to the far end of the busy Meena Bazaar market where, hidden amidst familiar monuments thronged by tourists and myriad mosques frequented mostly by men, lie two shrines where popular stereotypes associated with religion-based inequalities in Islam break down, and where Muslim women find themselves welcome.

Located behind the eastern gate of the imposing Jama Masjid, the Dargahs of Hazrat Sarmat Shaheed and Hare Bhare Shah seem at first sight unlikely destinations for those seeking solutions to life’s ills. Shaded by a large Neem tree, and mostly hidden from sight by noisy biryani sellers and quarrelsome vendors, there is nothing that spells ‘special’ about these shrines, or their patron saints.

Sarmat was an Armenian Jew, mystic and a gay poet who was executed on the orders of the Mughal king Aurangzeb in 1660. History says Aurangzeb hated the ascetic for his public nudity, and for his proximity to the then heir-apparent Dara Shikoh, the king’s elder brother. And Hare Bhare Shah, who migrated to Delhi from Central Asia, is believed to have been Sarmat’s master.

Apart from these possibly apocryphal stories, little is known of their origin. But the opacity of their origin stories doesn’t seem to matter for thousands of women who throng to them. The shrines aren’t just places to pray for the women; they are a sanctuary, an asylum, a refuge in an otherwise hostile world, where the rigid dogmas of their religion don’t apply and where they are free to just be.

Here, they don’t just seek God. They seek solutions, hope, peace, consolation. Or at the most basic level, a sense of comfort.

To the casual observer, the sight of so many women congregating in this little corner of the old city can be disorienting. The Old City is a male preserve; men are everywhere, running their businesses, chit-chatting in street corners or back alleys, and women, for the most part, are largely absent from the public sphere.

Hiding in their homes, behind curtained screens and veils, they make for invisible, shadow creatures, rendered unseen by the dark robes of religious rules and patriarchy.

At times, it’s easy to forget that here, women once ruled kingdoms and fought wars. After all, two of the capital’s most iconic landmarks – Humayun’s Tomb and Chandni Chowk were built by women. Their shadow looms over the city’s history, but in this present, they are banished to the shadows.

These twin shrines tucked into a corner of Meena Bazaar, however, come as a stark contrast. An air of calm shrouds the area. Step inside their doors and you are enveloped in the gentle orange glow of the cobwebbed chandeliers that light the red and green walls. Daylight slips slyly in through concrete latticed windows. Quiet conversations drift through the air. Women slip in and out of the chambers where the saints lie buried. And an unofficial women’s only club thrives inside this space.

In the narrow passageways that lead up to the dargahs women pray, whirl, moan, sob as they battle their particular demons. An old woman lights a lamp in a corner. A young girl scribbles a letter to her god. A group of women huddle in a corner, hands raised in ‘dua’. A lone woman weeps inconsolably into her handkerchief. Somewhere, a woman soothes a crying baby. Others engage in casual conversation as they await their turn to speak to the pir, the spiritual master.

As the clock strikes five, more women stream in, and the crowd in the passageway swells in expectation of the arrival of the master.

“Women come here for different reasons,” says Syed Muhammad Sarmadi, the pir of Hazrat Sarmad Shaheed. “It was believed that if a childless woman visits the shrine, Allah blesses her with a child. That is why women were initially allowed access. Things have changed now; they come because they want to talk. Some have domestic issues, others have health concerns. I try to guide them as best as I can.”

The conversations offer a peek into their inner lives. Outside the master’s office are wives who are desperately looking to fix estranged marriages, old women who want a cure for hairfall and arthritis, teenage women seeking relationship advice and young mothers anxious to know more about caring for their children. The ‘normal’ nature of their problems takes one by surprise. The women maybe Muslim, but their concerns are universal.

Shabnam Rehman, 35, is single. She comes here when the loneliness becomes overpowering. In her society, she says, it is a curse to be unmarried. “I have thought of killing myself. Now, I just come here.”

Safina, 25, wants the good night’s sleep that has eluded her for the last two years, ever since she fled Afghanistan with her family. She is scared all the time, and she doesn’t know why. Her children stay up all night because sleep brings nightmares.

In the fractured Hindi she has picked up during her stay in India, she asks the pir for a taweez (amulet), for dawa, for anything that will ‘fix’ her state. The master hands her a little parcel of rice and ash, and instructs her to rub it on her forehead seven times, then throw it away.

Safina sits still, processing this. She slips the parcel into her bag and walks out of the room, her place immediately taken by another woman in need. One woman complains of a constant headache; the pir places three lemons on her head and cuts them in halves. A young mother is worried her son is not as focused on his studies as he should be; the master suggests he take a lick of honey.

The solutions offered are in the nature of placebos, and sometimes border on the absurd, but the women have no option but to accept these fixes; to hope they will work. Even in this seemingly free space, ironically, it’s the male authority that defines and dictates answers, to whom the women eventually turn to and with whom the buck stops. And the women are expected to trust their wisdom blindly.

Not all are convinced, though. A tall, sharp-voiced lady who complains of the decline of her husband’s business, rejects the small parcel the master offers as an antidote. “You did the same thing last time,” she says dismissively. “Nothing happened. Try something else.” She doesn’t have much success, and after a 10-minute conversation, the pir convinces her to take the parcel and leave.

The rice, the ash, the limes, the small parcels are dispensed repeatedly, in various contexts and as the panacea for various ills. Some, like the lady coping with the failure of her husband’s business, are sceptical. But most of the women, numbering in the hundreds, who visit the shrine every day, the rote solutions on offer make do. Desperately looking for solutions, a word, a gesture, a placebo is all the solace they need.

To most, the master isn’t just a religious figure, he is a confidant, a friend, and sometimes the only voice of calm in a noisy, chaotic world. It doesn’t matter that he is clueless about their issues and ill-equipped to solve them.

They need to talk; he is there to listen, and for now, that is enough.

We wish to thank the National Geographic Society and the Out of Eden Walk, whose 2018 Journalism Workshop supported the creation of this project.

A new age version of the Mahabharata has been unravelling in Delhi since 2013, but no one seems to have noticed it. The eventual war is yet to materialise but dark clouds have been looming. But this time, there is a huge twist to the story. Karna isn’t taking sides. He isn’t going to accept a life in the feudal world of the Pandavas and Kauravas – and he has gone against both at the same time, which. in turn, seems to have united the cousins against him. Surprisingly, now the smaller kingdoms seem to be allying with Karna rather than the Pandavas or the Kauravas.

The similarity is uncanny. Karna was born accidentally, when Kunti was checking to see if the boon she had received does work. In the current context, there were several reports that claimed that the anti-corruption movement started by Anna Hazare in 2013 was in fact orchestrated by the BJP to unseat the Congress from power. The rise of Arvind Kejriwal and the formation of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) were unintended and unexpected byproducts of this movement.

Karna was indebted and obliged to Duryodhana for the rise of his status in society, but Kejriwal saw no need to exchange his conscience to gain support from any political party for his and AAP’s survival and growth. His rise to prominence was far too quick for both the Congress and BJP to digest. They quickly realised that he could well become the biggest obstacle in their quest to establish a bipartisan political system in India (like in the US). They have no option but to unite to quell the challenge he has posed to them.

The beginning of the Aam Aadmi Party was a tumultuous time for Kejriwal. Once he set his agenda to go against the Congress and the BJP, sympathisers of both parties started attacking the AAP from within and outside the party. Kejriwal also had to contend with power-hungry comrades who wanted to fight elections and seize power wherever they could. When he tried to bring their hunger for power under control, he was labelled an autocratic ruler.

Yet, through all the uncertainty, AAP contested the Delhi elections in 2014 and managed to break the duopoly of the long-standing Congress’ and BJP’s rule in Delhi. A hung assembly ensued – and after a vociferous appeal from within AAP, he decided to take the support of the Congress to form the government. But little did he realise that it was just the first step on the road that could lead him to his downfall. After a mere 49 days, AAP and the Congress parted ways.

Then came the general elections. The Modi wave was in full flow. He was touted as the next big thing to happen in India – and was expected to lead BJP to power as if it was a cakewalk. Kejriwal was again coaxed into contesting the elections and challenging Modi in Varanasi. Though he lost as was widely expected, unbelievably, AAP managed to win four seats in the Lok Sabha – a feat unheard of, for a party in its infancy.

It was after this debacle that he seemingly realised that everything that happened – from making him join hands with the Congress to forming the government in Delhi to contesting against Modi – was in reality a grand plan to cull his political aspirations and condemn him to the wilderness forever. However, taking a leaf out of King Arthur’s tale, he seemed to have quickly and quietly set up his own ‘Knights of the Round Table’ to plan his way forward. This, in turn, ultimately led him to securing a stunning win in the Delhi elections in 2015.

It would seem that the Congress and BJP  have blundered, time and again, in their strategies to deal with Kejriwal. He seems to be feeding from the energies directed against him by both the parties to make himself stronger and grow bigger. If the Congress and BJP hadn’t perceived Kejriwal and AAP as a threat (when they were in their political infancy), the party (which was just a group of disgruntled citizens at that time) could have had imploded because of their lack of political know-how. The ‘external threat’ of the Congress and BJP hounding them seems to have gelled them together, and they stood strong with Kejriwal. Now, they have become the heart and soul of the party.

But, I believe the biggest mistake was to have Kejriwal defeated in Varanasi. The expectation was probably that the loss would spell his doom forever. No one expected him to rise back again like a pheonix from the ashes. In hindsight, they must be regretting the fact that if he had won in Varanasi, he would have probably been boxed up as a MP in the Lok Sabha – and that without his sustained presence, AAP would have never won the Delhi elections in 2015.

Furthermore, instead of using their resounding victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha election as a plank to call for immediate elections in Delhi, BJP wasted precious time basking in the glory of victory. They gave Kejriwal the time and space he needed to recuperate, stabilise and strategise his next moves in Delhi. By defeating him in Varanasi and dilly-dallying with the election in Delhi, they had inadvertently resurrected his political lifeline and created the formidable adversary that he has become now.

Kejriwal seems to have just two items on his governance agenda – eradicate corruption and educate the people – both of which can not only disrupt the existing political system but potentially destroy it. After he won the landslide victory in Delhi, he seems to have taken his gloves off in his fight against the heavyweights, and has been punching and hurting them far more than they had ever thought he could. Delhi, being a quasi-state and the seat of the central government, has always been a grey area when it comes to the distribution of governance among the state and central governments. Kejriwal, with his limited powers of governance and his hard-nosed approach towards the Congress and the BJP, wasn’t expected to go far.

But his drive to fulfill the promises in AAP’s election manifesto in 2014 seems to have endeared him to people and that was the primary reason he was elected back with a full mandate. In the past three years, AAP’s governance in Delhi has met with resounding success and has been praised not only in India but even at the global level, with his Mohalla clinics and educational reforms coming in for special recognition.

Seeking desperate measures to stall his success, the BJP government has been using every possible option (including the erstwhile and present governors of Delhi and now the bureaucrats) as their pawns. But right from the time he rained accusations against Mukesh Ambani in a televised press conference, Kejriwal seems to have just one objective on his mind. It doesn’t seem like he is mindful of an eventual victory or loss every time he goes on the offensive.

His objective is to show the people of the country what the political parties have been doing all along in the name of governance. Their election manifestos still talk about providing power, water and education to people. All three are fundamental rights of people of the country – and any government, irrespective of the political party/parties that has/have formed the government are obliged to do what is required to meet these needs of the people without claiming any success for it. In that context, a recently-released report by NDTV shows how the education system and condition of government schools in Delhi have improved by leaps and bounds since 2015, when AAP formed the government. Yet none of the AAP leaders are shown to be taking any credit for the remarkable turnaround and Kejriwal wasn’t even featured in the video.

From the time the Congress and the JD(S) joined hands to thwart the BJP from forming the government in Karnataka after the state elections, speculations have been rife about a mahagathbandhan of all the smaller and regional parties (with the Congress at its helm) taking shape to defeat the BJP in the 2019 general election. However, the Congress has mindfully and consistently avoided and kept Kejriwal and AAP away from all the meetings between Opposition parties. The signs, however, have been ominous for both Congress and BJP. Kerala, which has a communist party-led government and has successfully kept the Hindutva ideology at bay and prevented it from taking roots in society, also has a warm relationship with Kejriwal and AAP. Then, Kamal Haasan invited Kejriwal to the launch of his party in Chennai. Inspite of the JD(S)’ bonhomie with the Congress in Karnataka, Kumaraswamy still invited Kejriwal for his swearing-in-ceremony.

Now, with the ongoing impasse at the Delhi L-G’s office and the attention and support he has been receiving from regional parties and state governments, the question that comes to my mind is whether the mahagathbandhan is forming around Arvind Kejriwal and AAP. Is this the opportunity smaller national parties and regional powerhouses have been waiting for, to oppose the BJP in unison and free themselves from the clutches of the Congress hegemony at the same time?

However, there is also a stark difference between the Congress hobnobbing for an alliance and Kejriwal receiving unconditional support from other parties. If such an alliance does materialise, it will relegate the Congress into a corner with no hope of a revival of their fortunes. As it is, Kejriwal has already delivered a killer punch to the Congress by questioning the loyalty of Rahul Gandhi and the Congress towards the people of Delhi in a televised interview. On the other hand, if the alliance manages to usurp NDA in the 2019 election, it will likely sound the death knell of BJP in every state.

I am expectantly waiting to see how this modern day Mahabharata plays out from here. Karna was too righteous and headstrong, which is why he ended up on the losing side. If he hadn’t nbeen headstrong and obstinate, even Lord Krishna would not have been able to go against him. And without Krishna as the charioteer, Arjuna could never have defeated Karna. He gave away his protective armour to Indra despite seeing through his disguise. This is because he chose to remain steadfast in his decision to fulfill the wishes of any Brahmin who came to him when he was returning after his bath.

Kejriwal too seems to be too righteous and headstrong. But unlike Karna, he is fighting for himself and his agenda – which means he has the choice to continue his fight till he succeeds or loses, or just let everything go, one fine day, and live a retired life in the contentment that he tried doing what he wanted to do and gave his best shot. Hopefully, this will help Kejriwal see through disguises and not make egoistic decisions on his road ahead.

The post Kejriwal Is Proving To Be A Wiser Version Of Karna In The Political Mahabharata Of India appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Written Anonymously:

My partner of seven years (husband of five months) introduced me to this fantastic show on Cartoon Network called “Adventure Time”. The show follows the story of a young boy named Finn and his dog/adopted brother, Jake, in the magical land of Oo. It’s a pretty zany show, but I love it – not only because of its deceptively complex story-line, but also because it features some fantastic characters who are queer!

I found myself becoming insanely obsessed with two of these characters – Marceline the Vampire Queen and her on-and-off partner, Princess Bubblegum. I had a poster of them in my room, and my phone wallpaper was a picture of the two of them kissing. I even drew them kissing in my sketchbook!

I never really questioned my obsession with them (which incidentally, isn’t even close to ending yet) until quite recently. The reason why I took this thought seriously in the first place was because over the past two years or so, I finally consolidated certain feelings I had been having towards women for a long time. Having been with a steady male partner since high school, I couldn’t entirely get myself to acknowledge that I was anything more than ‘bi-curious’ – that I’d kiss girls, but only when drunk, or gush over my various ‘girl crushes’ who weren’t really crushes at all, apparently. I barely thought twice about how in every sex scene I had seen in my life – including all the porn that I had ever watched – I only ever got aroused by watching the women. I even ignored the fact that a whole bunch of drawings I made and stories I had thought up typically featured women who were together.

But, as I continued creating art and writing stories featuring women, I slowly started to introspect. I realised how so many of the ideas of love and romance I had formed in my mind were just that – only ideas. They had been planted there by the overwhelmingly heteronormative ideals and expectations perpetuated by the ‘rom-coms’ and ‘chick-lit’ novels I obsessively consumed as a teenager. I realised that I wasn’t so much exclusively attracted to men as I was to the idea of being feminine. Since I was always nuts about all things associated with the performative aspects of femininity (when it came to love), I enacted the girls I read about in trashy Meg Cabot novels. Men were merely instrumental in my assertion of my femininity, and not in defining my sexuality.

Opening myself to this realisation changed my perception of myself. Though I understood myself better, I felt vulnerable to a whole new world of judgement from people. Since I had been with a steady male partner for a really long time, and my gender expression is feminine, people didn’t take me seriously when I came out. Emotions I developed towards a female friend were perceived to be my experiments with my sexuality, or as efforts to make myself seem more ‘interesting’ or ‘sexy’.  When I shared how I felt about this friend, some of my friends responded by saying that everyone was bisexual to some extent. Others responded by saying things like “You’re bisexual? You? Really? That’s great!”

Clearly queer people looked and acted in specific ways – and I, somehow, hadn’t gotten the memo.

People’s reactions and my awareness of the challenges and difficulties that queer people face caused me to hesitate to come to terms with my sexuality and identify as queer. Yet, I couldn’t deny how I felt in my heart – identifying as straight felt wrong. At the same time, I had to find a way to express these emotions and desires, which were actively being shut down or sidelined by people around me or by the voices in my head. Moreover, I had to learn how to do this without hurting my partner or threatening the relationship we had built together.

So, I channeled it into the very thing that helped me realise that I wasn’t straight – into art and writing. Writing or drawing about queer relationships allows me to imagine and express what I feel it would be like to be with another woman, or with someone who doesn’t fall into the binary. It has not only helped me in expressing deeper aspects of my identity, but has also allowed me to give myself the acceptance and validation I expect others to give me. It helps me acknowledge that my sexual and romantic desires that aren’t heterosexual are legitimate, even though my partner is a man.

Reconciling and expressing these emotions and aspects of my identity is a process. As someone who doesn’t feel the social ramifications of being queer on account of being a cisgender woman in a heteronormative relationship, I hesitate to take up the space I feel belongs to those whose lives are more significantly impacted by their sexual orientation and gender identity. Since my partner and parents have been relatively supportive of my identity, violence from family isn’t a threat for me either.

Balancing my privilege with the legitimacy of my own identity and emotions has been challenging, and it pushes me into a constant state of expressing myself and holding back. I’m still learning about how I can hit the sweet spot between taking up space that isn’t mine, and allowing myself to see myself as a legitimately queer being. Until I can work this out, making art for the purpose of catharsis and self-expression will have to do.

Lover of all things sparkly and fluffy, the author feels ridiculously happy in a tiara, and spends far to much time thinking about what she’ll wear. She is as indecisive as the Delhi weather in late July, and is in the constant lookout for boxes to fit into – for now, Cisgender-Panromantic-Demisexual-Libran-Unicorn sounds great, but she may change her mind.

In celebration of Pride Month, The YP Foundation is running an online campaign to spark conversations around issues specific to queer youth and their engagement in queer politics, through narrative pieces, articles, essays, comic strips, artworks, and personal interviews. Through these, the campaign seeks to explore the importance of the queer movement in India and the intricacies of queer organising. it also looks at the different ways in which the queer movement in India is forging alliances with other movements, through the active engagement and involvement of young queer people. This campaign is a part of a larger international campaign hosted by CHOICE for Youth and Sexuality.

To submit your stories, poems, articles and artwork, send them to info@theypfoundation.org by June 20, 2018.

The post ‘I Write, Draw And Paint About The Women I’ll Never Be With’ appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

केंद्र-राज्य की सरकारों ने इस वक्त सफाई की मुहिम छेड़ रखी है। उसी मुहिम के तहत शहरों को भी साफ किया जा रहा। यह सफाई कूड़े-कचरे के ढेर मात्र की कम, बल्कि इंसानों की ज़्यादा चल रही है। ऐसे इंसान जो झुग्गी-झोपड़ियों अथवा कहीं भी सड़क के किनारे गुज़र-बसर करते हैं। जो गरीब हैं, जिनके पास घर नहीं है। काम नहीं है, मेहनत-मज़दूरी करके किसी तरह अपना और बाल-बच्चों का पेट पालते हैं। दिल्ली हो या मुंबई कहीं भी ऐसी झोपड़ियां आसानी से देखी जा सकती हैं।

सवाल उठता है कि ये लोग आखिर कौन हैं? कहां से आते हैं? यह सवाल किसी भी व्यक्ति के दिमाग में आ सकता है।

संवेदनशील ढंग से अगर आप सोचेंगे तो शायद पता भी चल जाए कि ये वही लोग हैं, जो बाकी समाज के लिए घर की सफाई से लेकर सब्ज़ी पहुंचाने तक के सभी काम करते हैं। इनमें से ज़्यादातर स्वीपर से लेकर वॉचमैन तक कोई भी हो सकता है। जिन्हें आज इंसानों की गंदगी ठहराया जा रहा है।

झुग्गी-झोपड़ी में रहने वाले ये लोग ज़मीन व बेरोज़गारी के कारण शहरों की ओर पलायन करते हैं। लोगों के पास रोज़गार नहीं होगा, उनके पास ज़मीनें नहीं होंगी तो वे मजबूरन रोज़ी-रोटी की तलाश में कहीं भी जायेंगे, कुछ भी करेंगे और कहीं भी रहने को मजबूर होंगे। गांवों में सबके लिए काम तो बचा नहीं, शहर कहीं न कहीं कुछ तो काम दे ही देता है। हाल ही में रिलीज़ हुई ‘काला’ फिल्म में इसी मुद्दे को बहुत संजीदा तरीके से उठाने की कोशिश की गई है। पर हर बस्ती, झुग्गी में काला जैसा हीरो नहीं होता।

ऐसा ही महाराष्ट्र के भुसावल में हो रहा है। भुसावल की पहचान एक तो केले के उत्पादन से होती है, दूसरा रेलवे से। भुसावल का रेलवे यार्ड एशिया में सबसे बड़ा माना जाता है। भुसावल के आधे से अधिक लोग इसी यार्ड में काम करते हैं। आज जिनमें आधे से अधिक लोग ठेके पर मज़दूरी करते हैं और यही मज़दूर अपनी-अपनी झुग्गी-झोपड़ी बनाकर वहां रहते आए हैं।

अब यार्ड में निर्माण के बहुत सारे काम बंद कर दिए गए हैं। जो काम चल रहे हैं, वह भी ठेके पर प्राइवेट कंपनियां करा रही हैं। अब रेलवे को इन मज़दूरों की ज़रूरत नहीं रह गई है। उन्हीं मज़दूरों की ये तमाम बस्तियां यहां से बेरहमी से उजाड़ी जा रही हैं। इन परिवारों की तीन-चार पीढ़ियां यहां पर रहती आई हैं।

अमानवीयता का आलम तो यह है कि पहले इनकी बिजली काटी, फिर पानी तक बंद कर दिया। और अब सारी नालियां और सीवर लाइनें तक बंद कर दी गई हैं। रेलवे अपनी तमाम कॉलोनियों को तोड़कर वहां नया निर्माण करना चाहती है। वहां बसे लगभग हज़ारों परिवार अब बेघर होने की कगार पर हैं।

अलिशान बी, उम्र 45 वर्ष,

हमें बताती हैं कि हमारे अब्बा पहले यहां रहने आए। हम लोग यहीं पैदा हुए और अब बूढ़े भी हो गए। अब्बा तो बहुत पहले ही गुज़र गए थे। बड़ा परिवार था, इसलिए अब्बा हमलोगों के लिए एक छत तक न बनवा पाये। हम सबका पेट भरने में ही उनकी कमाई खत्म हो जाती थी। मैं अपनी बूढ़ी मां के साथ यहां रहती हूं। गरीबी के कारण मेरी पढ़ाई भी नहीं हो पाई। कहीं काम भी नहीं मिलता। फुटपाथ पर कुछ समान वगैरह बेचकर अपना काम चलाती हूं। कभी चप्पल, तो कभी बच्चों के खिलौने आदि बेचकर अपना और अपनी बूढ़ी बीमार मां का पेट भरती हूं। अपना दर्द बताते हुए वे कहती हैं, शरीर पर सफेद दाग होने की वजह से मेरी शादी नहीं हो पाई।

इतने सालों से यहां रह रहे हैं बमुश्किल सर ढकने को एक छत बना पाई हूं। अब उसे भी रेलवे के लोग तोड़ देंगे। अब हम कहां जाएं अपनी बूढ़ी मां को लेकर। हम तो कहते हैं कि रेलवे हमारे लिए कहीं ज़मीन दे, अगर वो भी नहीं दे सकती तो कहीं से हमें लोन दिलवाए। या वो खुद पैसा दे ताकि हमलोग कहीं एक चारपाई भर की ज़मीन लेकर अपना आशियाना बसा सकें।

शकुंतला बस्ते, उम्र 60 वर्ष।

शकुंतला अपने घर में अकेली महिला है। शरीर जर्जर हो चुका है। न बच्चे हैं, न पति, पति बहुत पहले ही उन्हें छोड़ कहीं चले गए। घर जैसा घर तो नहीं, बस सिर छुपाने को ज़मीन मात्र है। इनकी भी तीन पीढ़ियां यहीं गुज़री हैं। कोई काम नहीं है। घरों में बर्तन धोकर अपना गुज़ारा करती हैं। जमा पूंजी के नाम पर बस यही एक टूटी- फूटी झोपड़ी मात्र है। वह अपने बुढ़ापे के आखिरी दिनों में कहां जाए? वह अपने पुराने दिनों को याद करते हुए बताती हैं कि 70 के आसपास यहां आए थे और यहीं के रह गए। जब तक हाथ- पांव में दम था, मज़दूरी करके अपना पेट पाला। अब बुढ़ापे में यह विपदा आन पड़ी। कहां जायेंगे? क्या करेंगे? जब तक हमलोगों की यहां रेलवे वालों को ज़रूरत थी तब तक तो कुछ नहीं कहा, लेकिन आज वह अपनी ज़मीन खाली कराना चाहता है।

शांता बाई, उम्र 80 वर्ष।

मनमाड से यहां आई थीं। वो बताती हैं कि वहां पर हमारे पास ज़मीन नहीं थी, खेत भी नहीं थे। मज़दूरी करने यहां आएं। कुछ काम हम लोगों को यहां मिल जाता था। बच्चे बड़े हो गए, शादियां कर अलग हो गए। मैं अकेली जान बची हूं। सरकारी महकमे के लोग हर दूसरे-तीसरे दिन यहां आकर घर खाली करने को कहते हैं। पानी-बिजली सब काट दिया। नालियां तक जाम कर दी गई हमारी। भगवान भी मुझे उठा नहीं लेता। जाने किस बात का बदला ले रहा है।

अब यहीं पड़ोसी हमारे सब कुछ हैं। अलिशान बी हमेशा मेरी मदद करती आई हैं। यहां से कहां जाएं? कौन देखेगा मुझे? मौहल्ले के बच्चों के साथ अपना दिन काट लेती हूं। यहां से जाने की बात सोचकर ही दिल घबरा जाता है। जाने क्या होगा? यहां के आमदार, खासदार सबसे हमलोग मिले, लेकिन ये सब भी वोट लेने के वक्त ही दिखाई देते हैं। अब यहां कोई दिखाई नहीं देता। ना ही हमारे मसले पर कोई खड़ा होता दिखाई दे रहा है।

शेख फिरोज़, उषा बाई, हालिम सिकंदर, देवीदास भगवान दास नागा, हिरन्ना येरल्लो, ओंकार शंकर वांगर, लता बाई गोपालराव जादव, खैरुन निशा, सुनीता, विद्या आदि हज़ारों की संख्या में ऐसे लोग हैं जिनके पास जीने-रहने का इसके सिवा कोई ज़रिया नहीं है। ज़मीन नहीं, ठीक से रोज़गार नहीं। बस यही एक ठिकाना है जो अब उजड़ने वाला है। भुसावल के ऐसे ही लगभग 5000 परिवार उजड़ने वाले हैं, जिसमें चांदमारी चॉल, हद्दीवाली चॉल, आगवली चॉल, लिंपूस क़ल्ब, चालीस बांग्ला चॉल। इन सारी चालों में परिवारों की संख्या लगभग 5000 के ऊपर होगी।

NARESH GAUTAM & SANDESH UMALE

The post महाराष्ट्र: रेलवे को मज़दूरों से काम नहीं रहा तो अब उजाड़ी जा रही उनकी बस्ती appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

By Karan Singhania:

Gender equality has long been a struggle for Indian women. The oppression of women in the past centuries is, unfortunately, a common phenomenon. From being deprived of education, facing domestic violence, being forced to give dowry- women rights in India has a long way to go. India ranks 132 out of 187 in the Global Gender Inequality Index while standing at 108 out of 144 in the Global Gender Gap Index.

It is a shame that basic rights like education and employment are still considered a privilege for women in India. However, amidst all the inequality and injustice, Adivasis have been setting an example of gender equality and women empowerment for the rest of the country. The lives of our Adivasi fellow people are hard but they have been competent enough to acknowledge the rights of women and integrate them into the society. They know that the involvement of women in various aspects of life is essential and their role is just as important as men. Here are five ways in which Adivasis teach us gender equality:

Economic Involvement

Because the Adivasis lack a business system of economy, the traditional activities are carried out by women. Among the Gaddis and Bhutias, men are shepherds and women grow crops for food. The Bastars stand out as a great example of economic involvement. In this economy, women work together alongside men for clearing jungles, planting and harvesting crops. Among communities like Munda, Oraon, Santhals and the Gonds who generally populate Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and Chattisgarh, there is equal participation by both genders in the cultivation process. Women are exclusively responsible for transplanting and harvesting in addition to weeding, reaping, and winnowing activities.

A Karbi woman of the Assamese region earns her own income by selling fowls and other livestock. The 19th-century writings about Adivasis portray women as responsible, mature and stabilizing figures in the society. Some references to tribal women in colonial records were seen in reports where British officers hailed the women’s intelligence and capabilities. “Among the Bhils (who are primarily an ethnic group of West India), the women are generally more intelligent, and have a far greater fund of common sense, than the men.” (Barnes 1907:327; Skaria 1997)

It is unfortunate that a community with its own unique structure lost control over its functioning due to British interference and the Hindu anti-colonial movement. Verier Elwin, a scholar, wrote that Adivasi women had the right to inherit property along with other benefits. However, Christianity was imposed on them which reduced their economic involvement along with taking away of various rights. Moreover, the anti-colonial Hindu movement included Adivasis extensively but with a motive to convert them into Hindus. As a result, Adivasi women fell victim to a law imposed on their community, depriving them and their community of the right to practice their own methods to run the society.

Marriage Practices

Different Adivasi communities follow diverse practices of marriage. These practices involve exchange, capture, purchase, service, and probation.

The purchase practice of brides is not to be confused with dowry or other ill-practices. In contrast to the bride’s family paying money for marriage in the dowry system, the groom’s family pays a certain sum to the bride’s family in the purchase system. The payments can be made in cash and kind.

The service system is also a very healthy practice. In this ritual, the groom needs to do labour or provide services to the bride’s family. This ritual can be seen as one which signifies a woman as a precious being and in order to be able to marry her, one needs to prove one’s worth – not only to the woman but to her family as well.

The freedom of women varies among different communities. Some Adivasi communities allow little say to women, whereas some give their opinion the utmost importance. Among the Maria Gond tribe of Bastar, the consent of the girl is considered to be essential in marriage. There is a social practice that if a girl makes a decision about her marriage and pours turmeric powder over a man, it is considered to be a socially valid marriage. Among the Paliyans, a hill-tribe of the Palni Hills in South India, a girl is free to choose her spouse. Feel the need to adopt some Adivasi practices yet?

Property Rights

An extension to the economic rights, this is a highly important independent right. One may argue that the Parliament amended The Hindu Succession Act, 1956 in 2005. However, in reality, women are hardly allowed to exercise this right. The Right to Property has been highly debated and has been tampered with by the British and the anti-colonial Hindus. Despite the intervention of the British and anti-colonial Hindus, some Adivasi communities provide women with property rights.

As was the case with marital rights, different communities provide their women with varying freedom. Although men had the customary right to property and the ownership was transferred to male kins in absence of a male child, integration of household economy in the market has helped improve the situation. Women are able to create self-acquired property, in which daughters have shares. Also, daughters get an equal share of property if there are no sons in the Jamatia community.

The Dimasa, too, practice male inheritance but the property is transferred to the women if there are no sons in the family. Within the Garos, women inherit ancestral property, but it is the men who manage it. The situation regarding property rights wasn’t something to be proud of even within these communities until the Adivasis and Angamis changed things around. Self-Help Groups were formed by women and exposure to other factors helped them inform themselves of their legitimate rights.

Sexual And Social Freedom

The kind of liberty Adivasi women enjoy is worth noting. Women have always had more control than men over the sexual relationship. This was also until the British imposed their practice on them in an attempt to “civilize” them. Despite foreign intervention, a lot of Adivasi women still possess control over sexual relationships even today.

Verier Elwin also depicted the sexual egalitarianism among the Adivasis in his writing. He writes that women were the “rulers of the house”. They could change their partners and remarry. He conveys that sexual relations are a male’s duty and a woman’s right. A tribal woman has the right to demand her sexual fulfilment. For example, women of the Gond community are free to divorce their husbands in case of ill-treatment and abuse and widows are allowed to marry the deceased’s younger brother. The Gaddis practice polygamy in case the wife is unable to bear a child.

When it comes to clothing, the women of these communities enjoyed the freedom of clothing themselves as they wished. However, not wearing a blouse was shocking to the Hindu practitioners.

All in all, sexual and social rights of Adivasi women are debatable, but with reference to the crises we face today, we can certainly look up to these communities and learn from them.

Contribution To Defence

Adivasi women have a history of long-fought battles and display of bravery.

The Santhal women contributed significantly to the 1855 Santhal rebellion against both the British and the zamindari system. According to reports, almost every Santhal woman was a rebel and was also imprisoned for her active involvement in the uprising. Women like Phulo and Jhano Murmu played an integral role and thousands of Santhal men and women head out to Calcutta to take part in it.

The inclusion of Adivasi women in rebellions and defence does not necessarily imply that we should force women to join the army as well. This simply shows that women are held in equal regard to men and are seen as a strong force who can fight for and defend their communities if needed.

The lives of Adivasis have some unique characteristics but the involvement of women in the mechanisms of their society is something we can all absorb into our own lives. Not all Adivasi women and communities follow gender equality and even when they do, they are not regarding the same aspects. However, the ones that do follow and exercise the true meaning of gender equality are the ones we really need to look up to. It is our failure that we do not recognize such communities as our own even when they have been here for ages. We need to acknowledge, appreciate and inculcate these values and ideals. Maybe in time, we will finally understand value in the way of life of Adivasis’ and work towards making women an integral part of our society in the true sense.

The post 5 Ways India’s Adivasis Are Way Ahead Of The Rest Of Us In Practicing Gender Equality appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Hi. My name is Amit Kumar. I was a student at Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, until shameless professors at IIM Lucknow failed me under the influence of Dr Jamshed Jiji Irani and Tata Steel HR, and forced me to join back as a worker at the Jamshedpur steel plant of Tata Steel Limited.

The reality of IIM Lucknow beneath all the hype may startle many. I am doing my bit to expose the reality of the institute. I will try to substantiate my claims with evidence. Only if the judiciary in India could be free of corporate shackles, then I would have got justice long ago.

In the video below, I describe my situation.

It started when I was a factory worker at Tata Steel Limited, Jamshedpur Works. Owing to my humble background, my family was unable to bear the cost of my education after I passed my class 10 examination. So, I joined as a worker at Tata Steel’s factory in Jamshedpur and began funding my further education with my earnings. I finished my class 12 and graduation with a History Honours degree from a nearby college while simultaneously working at the factory to fund my education.

I was exceptionally good at my work at Tata Steel but I always kept my aspirations and higher education hidden because the management does not like the workers studying and leaving Tata Steel for better jobs or getting promoted. The management at Tata Steel only wants the workers to work, period. But with reduction of wages and deteriorating work conditions, I couldn’t bear seeing myself working at Tata Steel my whole life.

The following email will give you an idea of my work at Tata Steel approved by junior manager Mr Prashant Kumar Mohapatra, manager Mr Rajeev Ranjan and senior manager Mr Arvind Kumar. They were all part of my department at Tata Steel Limited.

So, I appeared for CAT 2014-15 and cleared the test with good marks. I got calls from various IIMs and private colleges. I chose IIM Rohtak and paid the advance amount to confirm my seat for the course on May 25, 2015.

On May 26, 2015, after confirming my seat for the course at IIM Rohtak, I applied for a study leave to HR Manager Mr Manish Kumar but the application was rejected by him. I requested for a written rejection which I got from Mr Manish Kumar. I talked with Senior Manager HRM Mr Rohan Kumar on phone. He too told me that I was ineligible for a study leave. The audio recording of the call is in my possession and the transcript has been attached. You may download the recorded call from here.

I was called to the department office by Head HRM Mr Vikas Kumar, where he, along with Head HRM Mrs Neena Bahadur, questioned me about my reasons for applying for study leave. I told them that I did not live with my parents, and therefore, I was facing difficulties in getting an education loan with my uncle as a guarantor. They further inquired about my responsibilities to my family and who else in my family was earning, etc.

Mr Sandip Dhir told me that the list was already prepared and he knew about it through his connections with the institute.

I was forced to write that I have got admission in IIM Lucknow by Sandeep Dhir in his office before him, even when I did not. I never made a request for study leave for IIM Lucknow. Also, please note that the list of selected candidates wherein I was selected for admission to IIM Lucknow was only announced on June 12, 2015, via email. I was forced to write on June 10, 2015, that I have got admission to IIM Lucknow, whereas I have attached the emails to prove that the fourth list was announced only on June 12, 2015, and I received the admission offer from IIM Lucknow on June 15, 2015. I have attached a copy of the letter with the reply Tata Steel management gave to Deputy Labour Commissioner, Jamshedpur on March 22, 2018.

 

The way the letter dated June 10, 2015, is written with futuristic claims inserted here and there, itself shows that I was forced to write under pressure by HR Manager Sandeep Dhir in his presence in his office. Also, it is not mentioned anywhere in the application that I requested a study leave for Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, which the HR managers forced upon me in the form of study leave issued on June 12, 2015.

Please note that IIM Lucknow releases no waiting list or merit list that can be studied by a candidate to predict selection in the postgraduate programme. Being an industrial workman, I had no influence or means to predict my selection in IIM Lucknow. HR managers of Tata Steel, on the other hand, had connections and immeasurable influence in IIM Lucknow via the ex-managing director of Tata Steel and the then Chairman of Board of IIM Lucknow, Dr Jamshed Jiji Irani.

The same day I was also contacted by branch manager of Bistupur branch of Union Bank of India who told me that he was aware that I needed an education loan and was ready to sanction the loan if I get a study leave from Tata Steel Limited.

On June 12, 2015, I was again called by Mr Sandeep Dhir to his office. He gave me the documents for study leave. I told him that I am yet to receive the admission letter and the results are not yet declared for the fourth list. He told me that my name will surely be there in the fourth list.

On June 12, 2015, the results of the fourth list came out in the evening and I received an email from IIM Lucknow with an admission offer letter on June 15, 2015. I was happy to see that I had converted IIM Lucknow.

 

After admission, I was surprised at the discrimination inflicted upon me by all the teachers at the institute, especially by one Mr Abhijjit Bhattacharya, who straightaway gave me a zero in subject QAM-1. Other teachers too discriminated against me, gave me fewer marks and penalised me heavily in all the subjects. I was failed in multiple subjects and terminated from the course.

I rejoined the course at IIM Lucknow. But this time, the teachers were more aggressive. They deducted my marks even when I wrote correct answers. I confronted two such professors, namely professor Prakash Singh and professor D. Tripathi Rao with the answer sheets I received, and made them aware of my knowledge of their wrongdoing. They assured me that if I worked hard, I could do well. I decided to let it be and be more alert in the future.

Professor Abhijit Bhattacharya told me face-to-face that he would fail me again and I should get zero in his subject, in the first class of his course. Eventually, he gave me the lowest marks in QAM-2 even though all my answers were correct.

On February 22, 2017, I was again terminated from term-2 and could not apply for repeating, having failed twice. I confronted the PGP Chairman professor Sushil Kumar and requested him to get my answer sheets re-evaluated and to allow me to attend classes for the ongoing term for which I had already paid the fees, but he gave no reply. I wrote to him an email stating my request. He still did not reply. I forwarded the email to the Director Dr Ajit Prasad.

To my surprise, the PGP Chairman ordered that my institute email ID be immediately blocked and instructed me to vacate the hostel and leave the institute campus immediately. I got two copies of letters drafted by a court advocate at Lucknow and submitted one copy of the same via registered post to the Director of IIM Lucknow requesting for re-evaluation of my answer sheets and allowing me to attend the ongoing term for which I had already paid the fees. I also approached Dr Jamshed Jiji Irani for inquiry, but as he had himself planned the ploy, he was afraid to face me. So, he lied that he was no longer the Chairman of Board of Governors of IIM Lucknow. But records prove otherwise. The evidence is below.

 

I somehow managed to pack my belongings in haste and returned to my home in Jamshedpur. (All the emails are in my possession because I had copied all emails from Institute email id to various other personal email IDs).

I emailed the Chairman of Board of Governors of the Institute, Dr J. J. Irani, but as he was himself facilitating the whole scandal, he refused to interfere. When I later emailed him requesting for an appointment, he replied to me not to email him as he was no longer the Chairman of Board of Governors of IIM Lucknow

I also lodged a grievance with the MHRD on February 28, 2017, with registration number DSEHE/E/2017/0538. Soon after lodging the grievance, I received an email from the Student Council of IIM Lucknow that if I submit a handwritten application requesting for readmission, I will be allowed to repeat the course from the beginning. Whereas after my termination and before lodging the grievance, when I requested for such an accommodation, the PGP Chairman informed me that it was impossible under the rules of the institute. The rule was also stated in my termination letter that a student who has failed twice cannot apply for repeating the course.

So, I refused to repeat the course and requested in reply for allowing me admission to the second year of the course, but received no reply to my request. This has been the case up to date. After one month of lodging the grievance, I received a reply from the CAO Mr Vishwa Ranjan that my answer sheets will not be reevaluated as it was mentioned in the rules of the institute. I requested to all the officials at the MHRD to interfere in the matter, but no one replied to my emails. I requested to meet the officials at MHRD but have received no reply until date. The grievance was closed after two months.

The Central Universities Act, 2009 specifically lays down that rules must be made to increase transparency.

But the Institute made some new rules to reduce transparency. These rules were made only to hide the unfair evaluation, after I confronted the professors with their act of unfair evaluation and wrongdoing:

• Question papers will be only given during the examination and must be returned with the answer sheets at the end of examinations.
• Answer sheets will not be given to students. They will only be shown once on a time provided to the student via an email at a very short notice the same day.
• Students cannot approach Professors for discussing the answer sheets nor can they request a revaluation of answers.

On June 15, 2017, I received a reply from Mr Vishawa Ranjan, CAO, IIM Lucknow, who is the public information officer of Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, wherein he denied me information under the RTI Act for my filed RTI number IIMLK/R/2017/50306. I informed the Director Dr Ajit Prasad and CAO Mr Vishwa Ranjan regarding the denial of information and its consequences and warned him of consequences contending that the practice was in contempt of a 2011 judgment — CBSE & Anr. Vs. Aditya Bandopadhyay & Ors — of the Supreme Court, which held that an “answer sheet is an information under Section 2(f) of the RTI Act and therefore, examinees/students have a fundamental and legal right of having access to their answer sheets under RTI Act.”

I filed the first appeal to my RTI which was again denied and returned. It was clear that the authorities at Indian Institute of Management Lucknow were trying their best to conceal the facts of the matter to hide their corrupt and illegal practices. I have filed a second appeal and complaint to Central Information Commission for which I am still awaiting a reply. (Reply to RTI IIMLK/R/2017/50306 and consequent reply to first appeal in possession).

The institute even broke its own written rules so that Professor Abhijit Bhattacharya would be able to hide his shameless actions.

Rule: Midterm answer sheets must be given to students. But Professor Abhijit Bhattacharya insisted on keeping both the Midterm and Endterm answer sheets as can be seen from the email below.

The email specifically says, “Students are not allowed to take answer books out of the classroom.” This was done against written institute rules only so that the students were not able to compare the answers and the unfair evaluation done by Professor Abhijit Bhattacharya.

Even the Chief Administrative Officer of IIM Lucknow, Mr Vishwa Ranjan has cited the same rule in reply to my RTI query.

 

Please note that Chief Administrative Officer of IIM Lucknow Mr Vishwa Ranjan resigned from his post as soon as I filed a writ in High Court at Lucknow in August 2017 against his RTI reply for reasons known best to him. The writ is still pending court till date.

 

Meanwhile, the Senior Manager HRM Mr Vikas Kumar called me and told me that as I have failed in the course, I must rejoin the job at Tata Steel back as soon as possible or else I may lose the job too. I was shocked again. He knew about my termination even though I did not inform him of my termination from the Institute. But helpless, I told him that I would join on March 15, 2017. He asked me to write an email requesting for rejoining. When I sent the email, he asked to specifically write the reason accepting that I had failed due to my fault. I only bolded the sentence that I have been terminated due to poor academic performance. When I joined, he instructed me to write a handwritten letter requesting joining the job after termination from IIM Lucknow.

After some days of working at the job, he met me in my work area and told me how Tata Steel had planned my termination even before my admission. He also warned me that management of Tata Steel was very powerful and that if I did not stop complaining against the termination order, I would face severe consequences.

I asked the Managing Director of Tata Steel Mr TV Narendran for a meeting via email. He replied that he was travelling so I should meet the PEO Mr Avneesh Gupta. I insisted on meeting him but when I did not get an appointment with him, then I took another appointment and met the PEO Mr Avneesh Gupta and informed him of the whole situation on May 9, 2017. He told me that he would take proper action and find the truth. He also assured me that I will soon receive a response to my complaint.

But I was afraid to go to work at the factory because Mr Vikas Kumar had threatened to kill me and make it look like an accident as he had allegedly killed Mr RR Jha (an employee who was found burnt to death in the Coke plant under suspicious conditions) a few years back. I felt insecure after complaining to the PEO Mr Avneesh Gupta. It should be noted that there are fatalities happening all around the year in Jamshedpur Works of Tata Steel Limited. So, it is an easy task for the management to eliminate me and cover it up as an accident-on-job in any such incident. So fearing for my well being and life, I informed the MD and PEO of my fear and discontinued going to work after April 30, 2017 until the matter was resolved.

I was issued a charge sheet from Chief, Coke Plant, Tata Steel Limited for absence from the job. HR manager Vikas Kumar threatened to kill me and make it look like a plant accident if I did not resign. So, I had to resign under force from the job at Tata Steel Limited, issued legal notices to TV Narendran and Jamshed Jiji Irani and requested to settle my provident fund and other dues and inform me of anything required from my side for the process of resignation.

I served legal notices to Mr TV Narendran, Managing Director, Tata Steel Limited, Dr Jamshed J. Irani, Former Managing Director, Tata Steel Limited and Chairman of Board of Governors, IIM Lucknow and Dr Ajit Prasad, Director, IIM Lucknow to which I have received no reply until date.

On May 20, 2017, Mr Avneesh Gupta replied to my complaint via an email denying the allegations and advising me to rejoin the job at Tata Steel Limited immediately. On the same day, National Human Resource Commission (NHRC), where I had filed a complaint with case number 14056/24/48/2017 issued directions to MHRD for investigating the matter and providing details of the action taken within eight weeks. But I have received no details of action from MHRD or NHRC till date.

After multiple requests and complaints, only a sorry attempt was made from PMO to which the Managing Director of Tata Steel Mr TV. Narendran has not replied till date.

The criminal complaint case against the above stated still lies before the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate. The court has been abstaining from even listening to my petition to date.

 

Frustrated with the inaction by the above-mentioned respondents and authorities, I am forced to expose the reality to all through social media. Meanwhile, authorities at IIM Lucknow and Tata Steel Limited may tamper with the evidence, and may kill me to shut my voice, framing it as an accident. So, timely action must be taken to save my career and life and expose the illegal privatisation of Indian Institute of Management Lucknow by the Tata management.

The post Deliberately Made To Fail, Given Death Threats: My Experience At IIM Lucknow & Tata Steel appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

I have been watching the movie “No escape” (2015) starring Owen Wilson and Lake Bell. The film features a family of four in the middle of a violent riot in an Asian country. Men with knifes and guns hunt down and kill people. They go from room to room, killing men, women and children. In desperation, Jack (Owen Wilson) does everything – from throwing his children from one side of the building to the other to jumping from impossible heights. His wife Annie (Lake Bell) almost got raped at knife by the gang leader, though she exacts her revenge by killing him later on. Finally, they escape by crossing over to Vietnam where they seek asylum. They are given a room to stay – and the family has a bittersweet moment at the end.

I just re-imagined this scenario at the US-Mexico border, where there are Hispanic people trying to escape from a dangerous predicament. They would seek asylum in the US – the ‘land of the immigrants’ or the ‘free world’ or ‘greatest country in the world’. But then, the authorities are likely to put their children inside a cage and take them away. Jack and Annie will be forced to go back to the country they came from without their children – and they will never see each other again.

I may be exaggerating here but this is what I can sense after seeing the way in which minors are being treated at the border. Boys and girls below four years are apparently being taken from their parents and kept in cages.

The bus transporting children has cages. Literally cages. #FamiliesBelongTogether pic.twitter.com/rUgQzFwBGk

— Jess Morales Rocketto (@JessLivMo) June 17, 2018

pic.twitter.com/kYTYDUVVzd

— D.L. Dormody (@Skritt) June 12, 2018

This is the horrifying scenario in the aftermath of a policy introduced in May 2018 by the Trump administration. Surprisingly, Trump has vehemently tried to deny this in his desperation to wash his hands after all the criticism he received. “We’re going to have strong — very strong — borders, but we are going to keep the families together,” Mr. Trump said, as he signed the order in the Oval Office. “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”

Ivanka Trump, an advisor and child’s advocate, broke silence only after the policy was reversed.

Thank you @POTUS for taking critical action ending family separation at our border. Congress must now act + find a lasting solution that is consistent with our shared values;the same values that so many come here seeking as they endeavor to create a better life for their families

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) June 20, 2018

Detention centers holding men and boys have barely allowed access to journalists. We know immigrant women and girls face additional challenges, like the increased threat of sexual violence, when migrating to the US and while incarcerated.

We ask again: where are the girls?

— Women’s March (@womensmarch) June 14, 2018

I don’t want to talk about politics in a ‘free world’. Instead, I would like to express that I am glad that the administration decided to end the cruel policy. However, it does raise the question – why introduce the law in the first place? It is visibly cruel, tyrannical and inhumane – and matches everything that was written in history books and begged not to be repeated. Trump’s comparison of immigrants with animals simply echoes what Hitler expressed about Jews. Until last month, this policy didn’t come into effect – and as per a report, the entry of illegal immigrants was less than what the US had seen a decade ago.

It breaks one’s heart to see children being taken from their parents. According to an article in the New Yorker, “Trump didn’t reverse the policy of ‘zero tolerance’ that his Administration introduced in May, which obliges immigration agents to arrest and detain anybody who crosses the border outside an official entry point. The Times reported that the new executive order was designed ‘to get around an existing 1997 consent decree, known as the Flores settlement, that prohibits the federal government from keeping children in immigration detention—even if they are with their parents—for more than 20 days.’ If Trump gets his way, families stopped at the border will now be detained indefinitely under the custody of ice. That is precisely the outcome that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit deemed illegal in a 2016 ruling about the Flores settlement.”

Anchor Rachel Maddow broke down in tears on air – and obviously, ultra-nationalists took time and liberty to take a dig at her. Over 2,300 children were taken from their parents, and despite the policy reversal, the parents might not see the children for months. “There will not be a grandfathering of existing cases,” Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesperson for the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, told the New York Times.

Personally, I am not surprised to see this from the guy who claimed to make America great again while also generalising about Mexican immigrants. The gentleman claimed that there were “good people” in the Charlottesville white-supremacist march, and even expressed tolerance through “thoughts and prayers” when a white man shot and killed 17 kids at Parkland. This is, in effect, racial profiling – where leniency is shown to the privileged race.

Ever since he took the office, the administration passed Executive Order 13769 which led to outrage. Trump also went on to to sign a global gag rule in a room full of men. The US also withdrew from the Paris Agreement while being one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gases. This year, it also withdrew from the UN’s Human Rights Council. These decisions are ironical but not surprising from a country that tried to execute the family separation policy.

This action by the authorities is nothing short of inhumane and it reeks of fascism. The idea of living an American dream has become a nightmare in the eyes of humanity. Frankly speaking, I didn’t expect this from a nation that fought against Nazis in World War II. Yet, I am not surprised at the attitude of this man who just wants to ‘drain the swamp‘.

The post Trump’s Family Separation Policy Reveals A Horrifying Scenario At The US Borders appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

“The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions – to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide – it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which is ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap.” –Michel Foucault, “Discipline And Punish: The Birth of the Prison”

This being Pride month, I thought of gathering my thoughts on a theme that has recently become quite closely-linked with queer politics–the politics of visibility.

Indeed, we even have an official date to celebrate international transgender day of visibility–March 31. Around this time, I’ve witnessed several trans friends on Facebook change their profile pictures and add a special frame to mark the occasion.

We should be familiar with the arguments in favour of the politics of visibility–for any marginalised community to be better integrated into society, they must be made more ‘visible’. As more and more people from dominant groups become familiar with queer persons–their histories, their bodies, their lives—they learn to see that there is very little that separates them. And thus queer people are granted the status of ‘normal’ in their eyes and integrated into the folds of society. Sounds great, right?

The Paradox Of Queer Visibility

In an interview about visibility and surveillance, gender non-conforming poet and performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon says the following, “People think that trans visibility means trans justice – that making trans people visible is the goal. But, there’s also a really disturbing part to this that I’m trying to work through – the sinister forms of visibility. And that, people are just really not… receptive to. I have to do a lot of provocation and pushing, to be like, do you know what it’s like to feel surveilled every moment of your life? To have people pick apart your body offline and online, to constantly be stared at? Do you realize the psychological condition that that forces on you?”

Indeed, as Foucault’s metaphor of the panopticon demonstrates, the prisoners are always under the watchful gaze of the warden, regardless of whether the warden is watching or not. This leads to an internalisation of the gaze on the part of the prisoners and self-surveillance and self-discipline.

Let’s take the concept of ‘passing’ for instance. Trans people are said to ‘pass’ if they can successfully pull off what society imagines the gender they identify with looks like. But a more sinister portrait emerges here:

• Trans people are always under the gaze of society and to an extent, they need to internalise the gaze themselves to be able to mingle with society.
• Why do trans people need to ‘pass’ in the first place? And what happens to those who don’t pass?

In 2017, 28 trans people were murdered in the US. A year later, there’s been little improvement. Already, there have been 12 reported deaths of trans people in the US. In India, we don’t even have any proper mechanism in place to keep a track of the violence meted out to trans people. We already know that a large number of trans people are only allowed to exist on the margins of society in India. But even then, there were several incidents of violence against trans people this year, though they rarely made their way to mainstream news channels and papers.

For instance, on June 6, a gay man was harassed in Delhi for being seen with a trans friend. On May 26, a group of trans women were attacked by a mob who mistook them for child abductors based on a fake WhatsApp forward. One of them did not survive the incident. Once again in May, a 22-year-old trans man named Paachu was driven to suicide thanks to medical gatekeeping on the part of his doctors.

The stories are endless. The lesson is simple. On the one hand, there is an incitement on the part of society and several well-wishers for queer people to come forward so that they can be integrated into society’s fold. But on the other hand, queer visibility is often met with brutal violence.

While at times this violence is naked and visible, this is not always the case. Take gatekeeping for instance. We are asked to confess the darkest of truths to our therapists and psychiatrists, but in return for our vulnerability, we are often met with invalidation and gatekeeping.

Then there is the constant self-surveillance one must undergo to render oneself legitimate in the eyes of society–a process that is nothing short of intense psychological torture. As Vaid-Menon points out, “The most lethal part of the human body is the eye, not the fist.”

Queer Resistance And Normalisation

“Queer is a total rejection of the regime of the Normal.” – Mary Nardini Gang, “Towards the Queerest Insurrection”

Perhaps it is time to remember that ‘queer’ is a contentious term. While for some it serves as an apolitical identity moniker, queer is also used to denote a certain kind of political orientation, rooted in opposing what is considered ‘the normal’.

In an interview given in 1981 on the themes of homosexuality and friendship, Michel Foucault says, “I think that’s what makes homosexuality “disturbing”: the homosexual mode of life, much more than the sexual act itself. To imagine a sexual act that doesn’t conform to law or nature is not what disturbs people. But that individuals are beginning to love one another-there’s the problem.”

A new mode of life also implies new modes of affective relationships between people. Relationships that are not a mere mimicry of what is considered ‘normal’–and indeed, relationships that are much more difficult for the state to appropriate within its apparatus of intelligibility.

Foucault continues, “Institutional codes can’t validate these relations with multiple intensities, variable colors, imperceptible movements and changing forms. These relations short-circuit it and introduce love where there’s supposed to be only law, rule, or habit.”

The politics of visibility are ultimately geared towards seeking legitimacy in the eyes of the State. But can the State approve of that which is inherently opposed to it in concept without deforming it and robbing it of all its subversive potential?

Just like the feminist movement was appropriated by its most conservative and non-threatening elements, it is forgotten today that Pride began as a riot at the forefront of which were trans women of colour like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.

Today, the gay identity has become a harmless marketable commodity and a mere mimicry of heteronormative relations. This is the assimilating power of the state.

As Mary Nardini Gang state: “Assimilationists want nothing less than to construct the homosexual as normal – white, monogamous, wealthy, 2.5 children, SUVs with a white picket fence.”

The question of queer visibility cannot be seen in isolation to the question of assimilationist politics. For a long time now, queer people have had to come together as a community and forge their own friendships outside the confines of their homes and families, in ways that defy the idea of the ‘normal’.

If an end to violence towards queer people is what we seek, perhaps instead of placing the onus on them to become more ‘normal’, the onus should be on the very legitimacy of what constitutes this ‘normal’ in the first place.

The post Being Queer In The Public Eye Has Its Benefits, But Also Risks appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

The NSUI-led Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) came into power after two years with two promises:

1. Restoring free speech, critical thinking and academic autonomy.

2. Defining the democratic role of student unions in the governance of universities.

While Delhi University students celebrated their democracy over a huge decision, Karnataka students imagined a similar day like this over the ban on student politics.

The student union elections were banned in Karnataka during 1989-90 when Veerendra Patil was the chief minister and KH Ranganath the higher education minister – following several incidents of caste-based campus violence. While some colleges still continue to have student councils with class representatives, there is no direct election of union office-bearers nor is there any influence of external student unions inside the campus.

Some student leaders including Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid have become chief targets of media trials, with many being labelled as anti-nationalists, terrorists, or brainwashed ‘kids’ funded by foreign organisations. An attempt to curb politics and regulate free spaces in higher educational institutions is being masqueraded in the garb of nationalism and security. Thus, it is not surprising that the public opinion on student politics in India has turned unfavorable – and most intellectuals claim that student politics is no longer what it used to be. In such a situation, it becomes crucial to highlight the importance of student politics in any society – and especially where 65% of the population is under 35 years of age.

The history of student politics and unions date back to the pre-independence era when the mobilisation of students was an important part of the Indian freedom struggle. From the Non-Cooperation Movement of the 1920s where students participated in large numbers (for boycotting educational institutions) to the Civil Disobedience Movement in the 1930s, the student’s community was united to impair the British regime in India.

However, the rise in the prices of essential commodities during the period of the Emergency brought many socio-political changes and protests from a large section of the society, including the student community. Student movements were suppressed by the government by using various tactics. The student leaders who were sympathetic towards the Opposition leaders were detained and tortured. About 60 students from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) were jailed during the entire period. Student unions were also banned in many universities.

The next phase of student activism is evident in the 1990s when the government accepted the recommendations of the Mandal Commission. During the agitation against the Mandal Commission, Rajeev Goswami, a student from Delhi University, set himself on fire and sustained 50% burns on September 19, 1990. This incident triggered nationwide uproar against the Mandal Commission – and in quick succession, a lot of students did the same.

Student politics and activism were also prominent in two big incidents where they participated in large numbers – during the anti-corruption movement with Anna Hazare, and when thousands of students wanted justice in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape case.

Without the presence of a students’ union, students can’t express their genuine grievances. Most of them are not comfortable with taking trivial matters to the court or an external body outside the campus. The student councils do not seem to be effective enough to solve these matters. Most of the time, the decisions are taken in favour of the administration, rather than the students – and the council members are bound to abide by the decision of the administration even in the worst scenario. The framework under which student councils work restricts the attempts or ideas of the council members. This often deprives the students of their basic democratic rights.

Hibah Bhat, a student Council representative of Christ (deemed to be University) said, “We don’t discuss real issues as we are only a student council, not an elected union. We need to discuss more fundamental and grassroot issues at the student level.”

The purpose of higher education is the holistic development of an individual’s personality and character. Politics is one such field where young students can earn immense exposure, alongside gaining skills in leadership and decision-making. If the policy-makers of tomorrow are not exposed to the problems of today, how can one learn to draft a policy that will actually help the cause?

“In Karnataka alone, it has been about two decades since student unions have been banned – and that is a distressing sign for a pluralistic democracy like ours. We need the youth to evolve into strong leaders, and be outspoken. Even if it requires the implementation of the Lyngdoh Committee report in the initial stages, I think we must proceed with it; something is better than nothing. Gradually, direct elections can be introduced in accordance with the status of law and order,” said Sharan KA, founder and president of Dialogue, a student-run policy-making institute.

If dynasty politics in the country has to end, we need to build platforms for them. If the youth needs adequate representation, they need to be nurtured through the union elections.

In an interview with the Economic Times, H S Manjunath, the Karnataka state president of the Congress’ student wing, the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), said: “Leaders who have come up through student politics are the ones most active today. The situation that happened in 1989 is very different from now and there is no need to fear that Unions will cause campus violence.”

There is another section of students and professors who do not want student politics back in campuses. They have their particular set of reason for this. Some believe that the introduction of student politics will bring back campus violence, whereas others believe it will lead to more disruption and chaos.

“The ban on student politics in the state of Karnataka was a wonderful  move and must be followed in all the institutions across the country. There are other ways of expressing grievances. Strikes and agitations are not one of them. The student unions don’t maintain a code of conduct in the institutions and this result in conflicts and campus violence. Moreover, education takes a backseat, and students become embroiled in issues that have no place in the campus,” a professor from a reputed college in Bangalore stated.

On the other hand, it does not really matter whether a campus is conservative or liberal (or maybe, all over the political spectrum). There are advantages to having student unions on the campus. Not only is it a democratic approach, it’s also a common ground for various beliefs, theories and ideologies.

When asked about the ban on student politics in Karnataka, one of the members of the Students’ Federation Of India (SFI) said, “The ban on student politics is anti-democratic and an encroachment on students.”

Campus violence is one of the major reasons why the state is not ready to lift the ban. Even with the imposition of this ban, there have been several incidents in self-financing colleges (where there’s no place for student organisations). The management have always tried to restrict campus politics, as student organisations often question the exploitation, injustice and their rights. The ban on student politics is violating the rights guaranteed by the Constitution – and any attempt to curb student politics should be opposed. Students don’t go to college only for an academic qualification. The institution should make them better citizens for tomorrow. Without a taste of democracy, how can the students even articulate themselves in the process of democracy?

“The reason for campus violence is not student politics. The reason for campus violence is that the ruling party’s student groups are protected by the government in power.” Shehla Rashid, a student activist and former JNUSU vice-president, said.

The Congress claims that the BJP government is intolerant and not secular in their thought processes. The Congress even supported the students who were deemed to be ‘anti-national’. But, despite being a majority outfit in Karnataka  for the last five years, they have not taken sufficient steps to lift the ban on student politics.

Dr Nasser Hussain, a recently-elected Member of the Parliament from the Karnataka Congress, acknowledged the need of lifting the ban on student politics.He also said that he has been working closely on this issue for the last two years.

If this ban had been imposed on any central university, the issue would have been dealt with more carefully. The issue would have gained the attention of and attracted the mainstream media. Somewhere down the line, Karnataka’s students don’t get enough attention like the students from other central universities like the Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University or Jadavpur University. Student politics was banned to prevent caste- and gender-based discrimination in the state, but the bias towards the Lutyens’ Delhi University students reveals discrimination on the basis of region.

“First of all people should change their mindsets. Students are not tomorrow’s leaders, they are today’s leaders. By banning students politics, the politicians kill the leadership qualities of students. As the ABVP’s motto goes (‘Student’s power, Nation’s power’), the strength of a nation is in the hands of students. So, by banning students from politics. they indirectly stop the nation’s growth. We will fight till the ban is lifted,” says Sharavena Raghul, unit convener of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and Chief Advisor to the Executive Board, Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC).

Despite a large number of student organisations wanting student politics back in the state, there is clearly no sign from the government to act in this scenario. The government is least interested in the problems faced by the students.

“One of the main reasons why the government is not lifting the ban is because of the nature of the issue. Largely, we have not really reformed ourselves. It might have been a long time chronologically, but the main question lies as to whether the student electorate has departed from caste-based issues or violence. DUSU’s politics is an example,” states Amogh Chakravarthy, Community Engagement Officer, Deakin University Student Association Student Council and Faculty Board member, Deakin University.

Banning student politics to solve the problem of campus violence is highly irrational and detrimental. Another set of argument by the intellectuals is that the turnout for the DUSU elections shows that students don’t want politics in the campuses. The turnout for the DUSU elections was about  44%, which was higher than the previous year’s where only 36.2% of the students cast their ballot. The reason for the low turnout is poor campaigning by the leaders. Most of the students are not sure about the candidates contesting for the election. Nor do they know about the promises made by these leaders. However, banning student politics is not the solution for the low turnout.

On the possibility of lifting the ban on student politics in future, Amogh further added, “Being a student politician myself in a different country, I feel that student politics is inherently good. But there are things to be kept in mind. Student politics is a reflection of the larger political narrative in a country. It increases engagement, awareness and representation, but there are other things to be sorted out before student politics can make a comeback.”

Colleges are not political institutions. They are places for holistic development. However, student politics might convert college campuses into proxy battlegrounds, and students may have to pick sides and decide between right and wrong. If this creates a problem, then we are forgetting the entire point of education. The point of education is not just about getting a job. It is about the ability to choose between right and wrong, and being vocal about the issues that matter.

The ban on student politics should be lifted from the state of Karnataka, and the student unions should be restored on the college campuses. The sad part is that not a single party is concerned about the problems faced by the students. Not a single party mentioned anything about restoring student unions in their manifestos for the assembly election in Karnataka. This shows how little the ‘to-be-elected’ representatives care about the problems faced by the students. The student unions must get together and draft a petition to lift the ban in the state.

The post Why Banning Student Politics Can Never Be A Solution To Campus Violence In India appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Written Anonymously:

I was 17 years old when I fell in love for the first time.

I, a girl who didn’t know why there were so many obvious differences between my “boy” friends and my “girl” friends.

I, a daughter to a heterosexual couple who were my biological mother and father.

I, an “assumed to be” cisgender heterosexual individual.

When my classmate told me she liked me and wanted to date me, I didn’t know how to react. Truth be told, someone who was 17 years old and was always looking for more in this world (read: me) was flattered that someone of the same sex had a high school crush. But I took that crush very seriously, because it made me think of only one question time and again: “Am I attracted to her as well?”

Long story short, I didn’t quite respond with a “Jai Mata Di let’s rock!” to her proposal but I told myself that I might as well give this a shot because the John Green inside me knew that my mind and heart wanted to be with her. And poof! The next day I woke up to a new me, a new life, a new experience of exploring my sexuality with someone who loved me and made me feel safe around her. I woke up to a bisexual me, and I have never looked back.

When I was negotiating my way through life, asking myself a lot of questions about who I was, who I loved, who I was attracted to, I knew the answers to these curious doubts would go a long way in bringing clarity to a bisexual mind in a heterosexual world. It took me a while to accept who I was and to love myself regardless of what certain people said or did to me. I had a supportive group of friends (half of whom are also gay, hahaha!), an understanding partner and a lot of Internet resources at my disposal, all of which helped me establish an identity which then consequently also became the most important element of my self. I couldn’t just ignore or suppress who I was physically attracted to or who I wanted to form a romantic alliance with, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

All of this took three long years, and that is when I decided to take it ahead and be a part of the politics that surrounded me, and people like me. Fast forward to November 13, 2017, my first ever Delhi Queer Pride Parade. I was in attendance not because someone had asked me to come but because I wanted to be there. I wanted to be a part of a public gathering where there were no boundaries, no limits as to how you can express your love and to whom.

Delhi was the first Pride Parade I had gone to, and I still consider it to be one of the most genuine and precious memories I have. I didn’t go there with a partner, but I guess you don’t need to have someone to feel loved in a gathering of hundreds of people who are looking for love just like you are, and who are unapologetic about who they want and what their expression of love means to them.

Throughout the Parade, I danced, I sang songs, I blew the colourful plastic whistles that the DQP organisers were handing out to all of us, and I looked around to find nothing but happiness and solace on everyone’s beautiful faces, as if they were walking down a path of liberation. I don’t think that is something that should be a luxury for all of us, but rather a necessity that should be fulfilled by the society we live in. Instead of saying that the DQP is progress towards a more open, liberal view of individuals and their sexuality, I wish for a day when every walk that I take with my partner in the public eye is celebrated with a humble smile, if not flags of love and celebration.

I was never the kind of person who would engage in politics. Even with my parents often discussing it while we were at the dinner table, I didn’t think of it as something that affects my life because, well, I think I just wanted to stay away from the Congress or the BJP. With the realization that personal is political and my life choices are in fact directly affected and often curbed by the people who are in power around me (not necessarily only the government), I took the help of friends who are close to me who know more about the political as well as historical significance of the LGBTQIA+ community, the gay rights movement(s), and the legal as well as psychosocial implications of living a life as someone who does not identify merely as a heterosexual individual.

I wouldn’t ask for you to jump into something as complex and pertinent as the politics of who we are and where we are as a community or even as individuals, because it took me years to reach a point in my life where I am personally invested in the movement, but I would urge everyone, from straight allies to LGBTQIA+ individuals to be aware, engage in debates and discussion that affect your life choices, and to celebrate love for what it is: love. Pride for me would always mean pride in myself, of who I am as a person and how far I have come from the mists of confusion and uncertainty and anxiety when I didn’t know if what I was feeling was ‘okay’. Safe to say, I’ve never felt more happy and gay in my life!

Anonymous is a 21-year-old feminist who is negotiating her way through the politics of who she is and who she loves. She can fortunately love dogs and cats without any brows being raised. She writes, dances, reads and wishes to change the definition of love through her academic career in psychology.

In celebration of Pride Month, The YP Foundation is running an online campaign to spark conversations around issues specific to queer youth and their engagement in queer politics, through narrative pieces, articles, essays, comic strips, artworks, and personal interviews. Through these, the campaign seeks to explore the importance of the queer movement in India and the intricacies of queer organising. it also looks at the different ways in which the queer movement in India is forging alliances with other movements, through the active engagement and involvement of young queer people. This campaign is a part of a larger international campaign hosted by CHOICE for Youth and Sexuality.

To submit your stories, poems, articles and artwork, send them to info@theypfoundation.org by June 20, 2018.

The post From The Mists Of Confusion To Being Happy And Gay: How I Embraced My Sexuality appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

As I begin writing this, I realise it has been a few years since I stepped into a place that was known to produce talent. I still remember coming to the campus gates with my dad and realizing the sense of prestige this place held. I still remember seeing that tricolored logo for the first time and the inscription that supposedly defined the institution: ‘Knowledge is power’.

On May 6, the VC who talked about his ‘ethical standards and integrity’ while resigning from Jadavpur University in 2013 after student protests, stepped up to the podium in the auditorium in Pilani and asked the students present to disband the very peaceful protest. Following this, the directors of the three campuses agreed to a common meeting between Mr. Bhattacharya and ten elected representatives from each campus. Owing to the degradation in his health the next day leading to a cancellation of the proposed meeting, the students in Goa stepped forward and decided on a peaceful protest, asking the authorities to continue the meeting with the individual next in power.

Posters were circulated, arguments were made and around 7 pm, the campus witnessed a march that went on for a couple of hours, finally ending in front of the academic block. I keep referring to the protesters as students because you must understand the environment everyone was protesting in. With the end semester exams lurking over everybody’s heads, everyone decided to pull the night off in front of the academic block, still sticking to their studies. This sentiment reverberated across the three campuses where despite having exams the next day, the students decided to sit outside and protest.

This exemplary show of non cooperation was followed with the directors agreeing to the above-mentioned meeting, with the exception of them replacing the VC’s position, and in agreement with the demand that the session would be live streamed in all the three campuses. All the representatives worked hard to frame their cases, collecting data and coming up with arguments to counter the set of diplomatic and false instructions put forward by the administration. This was followed by another meeting on May 9, wherein the 30 representatives were invited to a closed room discussion and were given the same diplomatic answers and questions were dodged again.

As much as the representatives continued to present relevant data and the required information to make a decision, they were put down by the use of continuous repetition and a clear denial of the listed facts by the team of directors. The session ended with the representatives putting forward a set of demands. This piece of paper acknowledged the lengthy process of meetings and discussion with the administration for the change in fee structure and requested for the authorities to put a hold on the hike until a decision is made. Along with this, the student body also requested to be kept in the loop as the end of the semester approached and very clearly expressed the fear that the administration would sweep all the positive discussion under the carpet once the break began. The authorities acknowledged this fear and promised to keep the students in the loop throughout the summer.

As the day of May 12 dawned, students started to go back to their hometowns, placing their trust in the administration and hoping for their promises after the meeting to be put into effect as soon as possible. Well, lo and behold, 12 days into the break and the students were greeted with an email from our now, very healthy, Vice Chancellor sir. The email, addressed to our parents, greeted them as important stakeholders of the issue at hand. It further went on to peddle nothing more than mere lies about the protests at hand, with an aim to create fear among parents and ended with requesting them to ask their wards to refrain from activities that are tantamount to indiscipline. What followed this incident of threatening and fear-mongering was the coming together of parents, wherein the VC was battered with emails from across the country. These responses argued how equating peaceful protests and demands for an open discussion with indiscipline was a weak move and how it portrayed the stifling nature of the authority in question that looks to choke the dissent out of its students. What upset the parents more was the administration’s decision to choose to intimidate the student body over their obligation to keep them in the loop, as promised.

As the entire BITS ‘family’ continued to respond to the aforementioned email by our respected Vice-Chancellor sir, the situation worsened with the authorities denying any other word of communication with the students, especially regarding the promised meetings on the issue of the fee hike. This situation of regress by the authorities simply added to the student body’s frustration and it worsened as the students were hit by yet another piece of one-sided conversation on June 19.

This email by the VC, titled ‘communication to students’, talked about the inherent legacy of the BITS institution and its private nature that put a demand of ‘no fee hike’ out of question. Adding to this, the document concluded with a list of reassurances by the administration towards evaluating the current model for future batches. It must be noted by the reader how the document does not talk of any fixed timeline or a set of steps that the administration would take to counter this issue. It simply keeps the other end of their promises open, like they always have been, and this gives little, if any, confidence to the student body about their words. The twisted phrases and the blank promises are clear signs of the administration’s lack of interest towards solving the bigger problem.

As the student body braced for impact with the same old, soaring numbers, the news broke about that the administration was releasing the details for the next semester. Here is where one can find them. As the administration still resorted to a hike in fees, we were once again, reassured of the double-faced nature of the authorities involved. Adding to this, once the students currently present in Goa for their internships tried to rally against this notice, they were threatened yet again by those in power. They were bullied with a fear of cancellation of their internships, which by the way, the students pay for, but that is a debate for another day. They were warned of their accommodations being revoked and as to how the college would be liable to take an action against their very peaceful march and gathering.

So, as of now, here is where we, the real stakeholders stand. We have been denied for an equal say in the issue. We have been ignored, threatened and continuously silenced out of the debate which will, in the end, affect us. We, the student body, have been at this for too long now. We resisted during our exams. We resisted during storms, during rains and we have been nothing but respectful of the administration. We have held off coming to the media, to only keep the institute’s name out of the mud.

As a student of this ‘prestigious’ institution, I pose this question to the authorities, have you no sense of basic decency towards your own students? Have you no respect towards those people who define you? Have you no obligation to be answerable to your own pupils that’ll go ahead and prove the stature of the institution one day?

As I end this piece, I have nothing but utter disappointment towards the institution I so excitedly joined a couple years ago. Maybe it is the same knowledge I gained in this place that has today pitched me against it, and the people that continue to lead it. I applaud my fellow protesters in our struggle against these insensitive pawns of authority who have succumbed to the lure of power and in return, have resorted to exactly what they don’t stand for. It is very ironic as to how an institute that equates knowledge with power continues to stay afraid of the knowledge of its own occupants. With a motto of ‘Innovate, Achieve, Lead’ plastered on its logos throughout the world, maybe the dictatorial administration would like to introspect and add a word in there, ‘Listen’, because who knows, they just might follow what they so honorably stand for.

The post BITS Pilani Admin Refuses To Act On Fee Hike, Students Revive Peaceful Protests appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

My friends tell me I do this thing, where just to say something funny or inordinate, I put myself down. When I write on my blog, where my most authentic voice escapes the editorial eye of publications, I let my freak flag fly. I undermine myself, take a dig at people who’ve hurt me, but only with the vain intention of getting a few laughs. This is me after a break-up about two years ago:

Like every other girl or woman I have deep, impending, unresolved issues about my body, my face, my hair, my pubes… some other stranger on the road is obviously prettier and no guy likes you because your breath stinks. JK about the latter, when it comes to guys I have realised with perhaps a very few exceptions, the fucking matters more than the feeling. They might not be able to carry you in their arms and give you a twirl, but they can and will take you from behind.

Humour was a coping mechanism; what I didn’t address was the fact that I was spiralling in a foreign country after having my heart broken in the most abrupt way possible. That I was going on dates, passing out in the beds of strangers, trying to evade my emotions.

“You learn from the part of the story you focus on, I need to tell my story properly.”

My writing has, of course, been heavily inspired by female comedians like Amy Schumer whose stand-up material revels in the glory of self-deprecation. After 10 years of using it as a comedic trope, in her Netflix special “Nanette” Hannah Gadsby refuses to degrade herself anymore. Because being self-deprecating when you’re already someone who lives in the margins, “is not humility, it’s humiliation.”

Gadsby breaks down comedy for you. In its bare bones, it is the art of creating tension and diffusing it. But it only lets you focus on the beginning and middle of a story, what about the end? she asks.

Having grown up in the orthodox Bible-belt of Tasmania, in Australia, the comedian, who identifies as a lesbian, says that till 1997 (at the peak of her adolescence) homosexuality was still illegal in the region. She feels that her comedy has suspended her in “a state of adolescence” which has also inadvertently altered the fate of her coming-out story, which she has often used as her stand-up material.

The comedy allows her to tell you that a young man had once called her a “faggot” because she was flirting with his girlfriend at a bus stop. But on realising she is a woman, he had backed off and apologised saying he wouldn’t hit a woman. What she had chosen not to tell you is that he came back for her again, “Oh no, I get it, you’re a lady faggot, I’m allowed to beat the shit out of you.”  Her eyes well up as she lets you in on the searing shame, “And he did. He beat the shit out of me and nobody stopped him.”

With this admission, the tension looms in the air, heavy and palpable. You want a silver lining. But there isn’t any. Gadsby says she’s not going to help you anymore, “…because this tension is what not-normals carry inside of them all the time, because it is dangerous to be different.”

The comedian who used to look up to Bill Cosby, probes the problematic argument of separating the art from the artist, in one of the many memorable moments of the show. She gives the example of serial misogynist (also known as the propounder of the 20th-century art movement, Cubism) Pablo Picasso. To give you context, amongst his many problematic statements about women, Picasso had also had a sexual encounter with an underage girl (aged 17) stating that she was in her prime, and at 42, so was he.

“How about you take Picasso’s name off his little paintings there, and see how much his doodles are worth at auction? Fucking nothing! Nobody owns a circular Lego nude, they own a Picasso!”

She points out what we already know, but choose to ignore, time and time again. We are obsessed with reputation. Reputation of powerful men, who wreck havoc and abuse their power, but for the sake of “reputation” their actions go unquestioned.

“We think reputation is more important than anything else, including humanity. And do you know who takes the mantle of this myopic adulation of reputation? Celebrities, and comedians are not immune. They’re all cut from the same cloth. Donald Trump, Pablo Picasso, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski. These men are not exceptions, they are the rule.”

In this special, Hannah Gadsby has positioned herself as not just a skilfull comedian, but also a master orator who forces you to take off your blinders and pay attention exactly when she wants you to. You might have tuned in for some good laughs, but she leaves you no choice but to take stock of how you navigate through the world and treat those whose lives have been violated for the benefit of a privileged few. We cannot keep on enjoying art if we are afraid to think and question its intent.

“Nanette” made me realise that they are many ways to be funny and make a point. And as a woman, undervaluing myself and my story, is not one of them.

The post As A Woman Inspired By Comedy, Hannah Gadsby’s ‘Nanette’ Forced Me To Question ‘Humour’ appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

इन दिनों पूरी दुनिया एक ओर जहां ‘फुटबॉल का महाकुंभ’ कहे जानेवाले फीफा वर्ल्ड कप की खुमारी से सराबोर है, वहीं झारखंड के हुंडरु पंचायत की कुछ बेटियां इसी फुटबॉल के माध्यम से पूरी दुनिया में अपनी पहचान बनाने के लिए उड़ान भर रही हैं। जिन बेटियों ने कभी अपने गांव से बाहर कदम नहीं रखा था, आज वे अंतरराष्ट्रीय स्तर पर अपनी भागीदारी दर्ज कराने रूस और इंग्लैंड जा रही हैं।

फीफा द्वारा आयोजित प्रत्येक चार साल पर आयोजित फुटबॉल वर्ल्ड कप के समानांतर एक फुटबॉल फेस्टिवल भी मनाया जाता है, जिसमें विभिन्न देशों से वैसे गैर-सरकारी अथवा स्वैच्छिक सस्थाओं को आमंत्रित किया जाता है, जो इस खेल को अपने स्तर से प्रश्रय देने का काम कर रहे हैं। इस बार भी कुल 48 ऐसे एनजीओ को रूस में आयोजित मैच के लिए आमंत्रित किया गया है। इसका थीम है, ‘Football for Hope’ ।

अब तक भारत की ओर इस प्रतिस्पर्धा में लड़के ही शामिल होते रहे हैं। इस बार पहली दफा 6 लड़कियां भी इसमें शामिल होंगी। इनमें से चार लड़कियां मुंबई से जबकि दो झारखंड से हैं।

झारखंड की राजधानी रांची के कांके प्रखंड के हुंडरु पंचायत की करीब 400 बेटियां समाज के ऐसे तबकों और परिवारों से आती हैं, जहां दो वक्त की रोटी जुगाड़ करना भी मुश्किल है। इसके बावजूद ये बेटियां अपनी हिम्मत, लगन और हौसले से अपनी राहों की तमाम बाधाओं को दूर करके अपनी एक अलग पहचान बनाने में कामयाब रही हैं।

ज़रा सोचिए, जो लड़कियां कभी अपने ज़िले से तो क्या, अपने गांव से भी बाहर नहीं निकली हों, जिन्होंने कभी ट्रेन भी ना देखी हो, वे आज हवाई जहाज में बैठकर रूस और इंग्लैंड जा रही हैं और उनकी ज़िंदगी में इस बदलाव की वजह बना है, फुटबॉल।

खूशबू बनकर गुलों से उड़ा करती हैं,

धुआं बनकर पर्वतों से उड़ा करती हैं,

ये दुनिया खाक इन्हें उड़ने से रोकेंगी,

ये बेटियां अपने परों से नहीं,

हौसलों से उड़ा करती हैं।

जी हां, और यह सब मुमकिन हुआ है एक इंसान के जूनन और जज्बे की वजह से। उस इंसान का नाम है, अशोक राठौड़। मुंबई निवासी अशोक बताते हैं, “मेरा पूरा बचपन मुंबई के स्लम बस्ती में बीता। वहां रहनेवाले ज़्यादातर बच्चों के मां-बाप मछुआरे या दैनिक मज़दूर थे। वे रोज़ सुबह काम पर चले जाते थे। उनकी अनुपस्थिति में उनके बच्चे पूरे दिन मटरगश्ती करते, जुआ खेलते या नशा करते थे। मेरे पिता को यह सब पसंद नहीं था। उन्होंने कोलावा म्युनिसिपल स्कूल में मेरा एडमिशन करवा दिया, जबकि मेरे आस-पड़ोस में रहनेवाले मेरे उम्र के ज़्यादातर बच्चे अपने पुश्तैनी धंधे या छोटे-मोटे काम करके ही गुज़ारा करने लगे।

उस वक्त मुझे कभी-कभी बड़ा अफसोस होता था कि वे सब मेरी ही उम्र के हैं और कमाई भी करने लग गये। मैं पिछड़ गया, लेकिन आज जब पीछे मुड़कर देखता हूं, तो मैं उनसे कहीं आगे निकल चुका हूं। मेरे हमउम्र लगभग सारे दोस्तों की शादी हो गयी। आज के समय में उनके दो-तीन बच्चे हैं। वे सभी मुफलिसी की हालत में जी रहे हैं। मंहगाई बढ़ने की वजह से वे जैसे-तैसे करके अपना गुज़ारा कर रहे हैं। आज मैं मानता हूं कि शिक्षा ने मेरी सोच और मेरी ज़िंदगी-दोनों बदल दी।

तब मैंने अपने आसपास रहनेवाले बच्चों की ज़िंदगी संवारने की सोची, पर सवाल था कैसे ? अगर मैं सीधे उन्हें पढ़ने के लिए तो कह नहीं सकता था, तो पहले मैंने उन्हें पहले फुटबॉल से जोड़ा। फिर उन्हें एजुकेशनल पर्सनैलिटी डेवलपमेंट ट्रेनिंग दी।”

ऑस्कर फाउंडेशन की स्थापना

अशोक बताते हैं कि करीब चार साल तक मैं यूं ही बच्चों को ट्रेनिंग देता रहा। चाहता था कि अपना एक ट्रेनिंग इंस्टिच्यूट खोलूं, जहां इन बच्चों को एक ही छत के नीचे स्पोर्ट्स और एजुकेशन दोनों ही ट्रेनिंग दे सकूं, पर इसके लिए फंड की ज़रूरत थी और हमारी कोई रजिस्टर्ड संस्था नहीं थी। इस वजह से कई लोग मदद करने से इंकार कर देते थे। तब वर्ष 2010 में अपने दोस्त सूरज पात्रों के साथ मिलकर मैंने ऑस्कर फाउंडेशन के गठन की नींव रखी। सूरज भी झारखंड का ही रहनेवाला है, पर पिछले कई सालों से मुंबई आकर बस गया है। उसके ही कहने पर मैंने झारखंड के पिछड़े इलाकों में बच्चों को फुटबॉल की ट्रेनिंग देनी शुरू की। फिलहाल ऑस्कर फाउंडेशन देश के चार प्रमुख शहरों- मुंबई, दिल्ली, झारखंड और कर्नाटक के विभिन्न इलाकों में रहनेवाले गरीब बच्चों को फुटबॉल की ट्रेनिंग के माध्यम से उनकी ज़िंदगी संवारने का काम कर रहा है। झारखंड में इसके संचालन की ज़िम्मेदारी आनंद टोप्पो और हीरालाल महतो संभाल रहे हैं।

मुंबई के ऑस्कर फाउंडेशन की ओर से दी जानेवाली फुटबॉल ट्रेनिंग ने झारखंड के नितांत पिछड़े माने जानेवाले आठ प्रखंडों के करीब 45 गांवों के करीब 700 बच्चों की तकदीर बदल दी है। आज फुटबॉल इनकी रगों में दौड़ता है। इस खेल ने ना केवल उन्हें अपने शारीरिक और मानसिक कौशल के प्रदर्शन का मौका दिया है, बल्कि उनकी आंखों में ‘अपनी अलग पहचान’ बनाने का सपना भी दिया है। इस फुटबॉल ने ज़मीन से जुड़ी इन बेटियों में इतना आत्म-विश्वास भर दिया है कि वे आज आकाश छूने का माद्दा रखती हैं। अशोक भी मानते हैं, ”मंजिलें उन्हीं को मिलती है,  जिनके सपनों में जान होती है, पंखों से कुछ नहीं होता, हौसलों से उड़ान होती है।”

बदल दी अपने गांवों की तकदीर

बदलाव के लिए हमेशा क्रांति की ज़रूरत नहीं होती। इसके लिए बस दिल में जज्बा और इरादों में मज़बूती होनी चाहिए। ये दोनों चीज़ें जिस भी इंसान में हैं, उसे फिर अपने मंजिलों को पाने से कोई नहीं रोक सकता। इन बेटियों ने अपने मज़बूत इरादों से आज केवल अपनी ही नहीं, अपने गांवों की भी तकदीर बदल कर रख दी है।

इनमें से लगभग सभी लड़कियों की कहानी एक सी है। आज से तीन-चार साल पहले ये लड़कियां जब फाउंडेशन से जुड़ीं, तो शुरुआत में इन सबके परिवारवालों ने भी इनका साथ नहीं दिया। शीतल बताती हैं,

सबलोग मानते थे कि फुटबॉल लड़कों का खेल है। हम लड़कियां नहीं खेल सकती, इसलिए जब हमने इस खेल में अपनी किस्मत आज़माने का निर्णय लिया, तो हर किसी ने हमारी खिल्ली उड़ायी।

सोनी बताती हैं,

सब कहते थे कितना भी मेहनत कर लो, लड़कों की तरह थोड़े न खेल पाओगी।

पुष्पा कहती हैं,

चूंकि मेरा कोई भाई नहीं है, इसलिए मां ने हमेशा हम बहनों के सपनों को फुल सपोर्ट किया। इस वजह से पापा कई बार मां पर हाथ भी उठा देते थे, क्योंकि उन्हें हमें इतनी छूट देना मंज़ूर नहीं था।

जब ये लड़कियां पहली बार टी-शर्ट और निकर पहन कर फुटबॉल खेलने निकलीं, तो हर किसी ने उनका मज़ाक उड़ाया। नेहा कहती हैं,

गांव वाले हमारे पैंरेट्स को कहते थे कि तुम्हारी बेटी कैसी बेशर्म हो गयी है। छोटे-छोटे कपड़े पहन कर लड़कों के साथ उछलती-कूदती रहती है।

प्रियंका बताती हैं,

पहले सब विरोध करते थे। टी-शर्ट और निकर पहनती थी, तो सबको लगता था कि लड़की बिगड़ गयी है। शुरुआत में उसके ऊपर से स्कर्ट या सलवार-कमीज़ पहन लेती थी और फिर ग्राउंड पर जाने से पहले उतार देती थी। धीरे-धीरे जब इस खेल में हमारा परफॉर्मेंस अच्छा होने लगा और हमारी खबरें टीवी-अखबारों में आने लगीं, तो घरवालों को लगा कि हम कुछ अच्छा कर रहे हैं।

देश के बाद अब विदेश में धूम मचाने की है तैयारी

इन लड़कियों में से केवल दो को छोड़कर बाकी अन्य झारखंड में ही नहीं, बल्कि देश के लगभग सभी प्रमुख शहरों (जैसे- दिल्ली, मुंबई, यूपी, नागपुर, कोलकाता, पंजाब, गुजरात, उड़ीसा, अंडमान एवं निकोबार आदि) में अपने किक का धमाल मचा चुकी हैं और कई पुरस्कार भी जीत चुकी हैं। अंशु कच्छप बताती हैं,

जब हमारी टीम अंडमान-निकोबार में मैच खेलने गयी, तो हम पहली बार पानी के जहाज में बैठी थीं। लगातार पांच दिनों तक जहाज पर रहना और समुद्री दुनिया से रूबरू होने का एक अलग ही मज़ा था।

सोनी कहती हैं,

अब तक हमारी दुनिया केवल घर से स्कूल और स्कूल से घर तक ही सीमित थी, फाउंडेशन से जुड़ने के बाद हमारा परिचय एक नयी दुनिया से हुआ, जिसमें लड़का-लड़की सब बराबर है। उनमें कोई भेदभाव नहीं है। सबका बस एक ही लक्ष्य है, खुद को बेहतरीन फुटबॉल प्लेयर के तौर पर स्थापित करना।

टिंकी और आरती ने बताया,

हमें अब तक रांची से बाहर जाकर खेलने का मौका नहीं मिला था। इस साल फरवरी में दिल्ली में फुटबॉल की ट्रेनिंग लेने पहली बार अपने राज्य से बाहर गयी थीं। अब अक्टूबर में हममें से सात लड़कियां सीधे इंग्लैंड जाकर खेलेंगी। फिलहाल शीतल और सोनी रूस गयी हैं।

फुटबॉल ने ना केवल इन लड़कियों की ज़िंदगी बदली है, बल्कि इनमें से हर एक की आंखों को एक अनूठा सपना भी दिया है। शीतल बताती हैं, “पहले हमारे गांव में 14-15 साल की होते-होते ज़्यादातर लड़कियों की शादी हो जाती थी, लेकिन फाउंडेशन से जुड़ने के बाद हम भी इससे इतर नये सपने देखने लगे हैं। आज हममें से कोई लड़की पढ़-लिख कर डॉक्टर बनना चाहती है, तो कोई आइएएस ऑफिसर। किसी की आंखों में नेशनल फुटबॉल प्लेयर बनने का सपना है, तो कोई फुटबॉल कोच बनना चाहती है। इसके अलावा, हम सब चाहती हैं कि आनेवाले कल में हम अपने जैसे वंचित वर्ग के अधिक-से-अधिक बच्चों की ज़िंदगी संवार सकें, जिस तरह से फाउंडेशन से जुड़े सर और मैम ने हमारी ज़िंदगी संवारी है।” इन लड़कियों के हौसले और जज्बे को देखकर दिल से बस एक ही आवाज़ उठती है,

कायम रख तू हौसला वो मंज़र भी आयेगा,

प्यासे के पास चल के समंदर भी आयेगा,

थक कर ना बैठ ऐ मंज़िल के मुसाफिर,

मंज़िल भी मिलेगी और मिलने का मजा भी आयेगा।

The post इस शख्स ने गांव की लड़कियों को बनाया इंटरनैशनल फुटबॉल प्लेयर appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

On November 30, 2016, SC ordered all movie theatres to play the national anthem before the screening of films and made it compulsory for the audience to “stand up in respect” till the anthem ended. 

Justice Chandrachud criticised the order saying, “Tomorrow, there may be a demand to stop people from wearing shorts and T-shirts while going to cinema halls, because national anthem is being played… Where do we draw a line? Where do we stop this moral policing?”

Finally on January 9, 2018, SC made the playing of national anthem in movie theaters before screening of movies optional.

We asked you, our Youth Ki Awaaz community,whether it should be made compulsory to stand for the national anthem in movie theatres, and got an overwhelming response. Here are some excerpts: 

1. “I feel proud to stand for our national anthem.” – Vikash Anand Giri

Wherever my national anthem plays I feel full of enthusiasm. My heart automatically allows me to respect my national anthem. In my opinion it is okay to play national anthem in cinema halls because somewhere it reminds us about patriotism. Jawans have the responsibility to take care of our tricolour until their last drop of blood. So, we would just be selfish to not spare few minutes for India.

2. “National Anthem should not be played in Cinema Halls. Period.” – Nripjeet Singh Anand

3. “I think national anthem should be played at least 10 times a day.” – Rick Pete

All streets must have loudspeakers installed. That way all the hungry starving kids on the road also can join in to prove their nationalism. I also recommend playing it at 2 AM in the night. Anyone can stand up in the broad daylight. Let’s find out the true patriots by playing it at 2 in the night.

4. “Forced Patriotism.” – Sukanya Girish

We can show respect to our country directly by keeping our streets clean, protecting girls from hooligans and representing our country abroad for a good cause. National anthem in movies is utterly useless.

5. “Try not standing up for the national anthem in jam-packed cinema hall…” – Ajay Barkade

…what follows after that is the main reason why it’s a bad idea… India is the first country where soldiers have to pay for their own uniform… and government talks about patriotism…

6. “You better respect whenever you get a chance.” – Srayashi Mallick

If you can stand in queue for buying iPhone ..you can also stand for few seconds in a hall to show respect to your national anthem there should not be any doubt in it. If national anthem comes up you have to stand.. you better understand this.. !!! If you think you’re being forced to show patriotism understand we have earned this independence..!

7. “One must stand up for the national anthem (unless some physical conditions restrict one) at all times.” – Jyotiprakash Sundaray

However, playing at cinemas is pointless. In fact, if you observe, the anthem played at cinemas is a musical one and different from the original anthem…not sure why!!! If imposed in cinemas, then I would also call for the national anthem being played at all govt. offices before start of work (the way we have prayers at schools) because our ministers are the ones who have forgotten our national anthem and they must be reminded at all times that they are “government” “servants”.

8. “Don’t belittle its meaning and respect by forcing it on people.” – Meenakshi Dogra

If you want to disrespect [the] national anthem, make people think of it as an inconvenience, then by all means do it; national anthem is to show respect, you can’t make people forcibly respect something, doing so just makes the opposite happen; there are thousands of different places and times we can stand for the anthem.

9. “I think playing the national anthem in a place like the theater will trivialise it.” – Parijat Shukla

If I go to the movies every weekend and have to sing it, it will drone in my ears and I fear it won’t matter as much to me. There is a prestige to singing it at important occasions and places. It’s like everyone wearing a wedding dress to your workplace everyday.

10. “National anthem in movie theater ? Please no.” – Shibani Basak

Standing up for national anthem? 100% yes. [But] It’s disrespectful to play “Jana gana mana” before “Hate Story 4”, or “Race 3”.

The post The Youth Ki Awaaz On Standing Up In Theatres For The National Anthem appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

For a country like India that spans the entire cultural spectrum of the world, the feature of our democracy is what continues to help us in moving forward as one nation and not as a conglomeration of separated regions, each with their own agenda. Just after 1947, while the critics across the world penned down the low probability of India sustaining the partition, it was only our varied tradition and the different lifestyles that helped our leaders in paving a strong Constitution and ultimately, a growing nation.

A major reason behind our founding leaders keeping in mind every single stratum was the ability of that particular group to have a political mindset and hence, push for an agenda that might guarantee the well-being of the same socially-active class. A special echelon which has continued to hold our leaders accountable on their promises and has sculpted a rather unique set of national political standards has been the student class.

From the freedom struggle to every year’s every election, it has been the youth of this country that has taken to the streets and has had the moral backing to question what’s wrong and to be the fore-runners in any struggle against an unjust manner of treatment. Although the spirit of youth involvement has always thrived in the decision-making process of our democracy, yet the last decade and a half have seen a tremendous effort by student unions from all across the country to spearhead the idea of student-led movements throughout India.

Be it the Jadavpur University protests in 2014 that called for Hok Kolorob or the desperate need of noise against women’s oppression, or be it the Justice for Rohith protests led by the Joint Action Commission which uncovered the deep-rooted casteist genes of our society. Be it the infamous and misrepresented JNU protests that revealed the clear bias of our media, or be it the protests by national institutes like Delhi University, TISS and BITS Pilani against educational decisions like autonomy and unregulated fee hike.

Although the entire world has seen a dramatic rise in student uprisings against policies ranging from market reforms in the US to institutional alterations in the European continent to the governmental changes in Hong Kong, the number of such protests have grown steadily in our country. According to these reports by the Bureau of Police Research and Development, MHA, the frequency of student agitations rose from about 6,005 in 2011 to 7,385 in 2012 to about 11, 748 in 2014. As the latest report describes, the number of student-led protests or agitations comprised of about 8.81% of total protests in the country in 2016. To put this in context, the number of communal agitations was at only 5.69% in the same year.

That’s right.

With a lot of articles covering the side of the debate that fails to encompass the opinions of the student activists themselves, this piece aims at changing that by going a step forward and asking the people of influence, the ones who are actually responsible for the beginning of a newer form of change in the society. As Piyush Kumar Sharma writes in his piece on the need for student politics in a country, “Politics is needed in institutions not only because it is present everywhere but to produce better leaders instead of having leaders foisted upon us because of their money/muscle power or by virtue of their lineage”. The need for educated politicians in a country with the largest voter base in the world is something that our educated crowd not only needs, but also very justifiably deserves.

If we glance over the age profile of an MP in today’s India, the surprise does not evade us. According to this analysis, MPs between the age of 56 and 70 form about 44% of the current batch whereas this age group just forms 8% of the total population. This has caused the average age of an MP in the country today to increase to 56 from 46.5 that marked the first Lok Sabha of free India.

More importantly, this data profile by PRSIndia shows that a mere 13% of today’s cabinet is under the age of 40. In a nation that has 65% of its population below 35, this number seems to be highly appealing. As a result, I talked to these leaders of tomorrow, the ones who have the power of stepping up and taking the reins of India from their corrupt, communal and quite appropriately, confused predecessors, about the way they perceive student politics taking shape on a national scale and about their expectations from a more youth-driven nation.

• Kawalpreet Kaur, the president of All India Students’ Association – Delhi Unit’s president, comes out as a strong proponent of student politics. Being a part of student activism herself, she felt that it is inherently necessary for students to be aware of the world, as they will form the voter base of tomorrow. On being questioned about the common argument against student politics that pitches it as a source of hindrance to the flow of education, she explained as to how being a part of a form of revolt fits the learning curve better. She went on to describe her own time as an activist as she pointed out the incidents wherein she got to practice the theory that students mug up in their classrooms. As I presented her the above-quoted data from the MHA and asked for her opinions on the sudden upsurge in the number of student protests, she chuckled and reassured the need for an upsurge as an enhancer of democracy. She felt that it was the incompetence of the government in power as it failed to satisfy an important stratum of its population, hence leading to an upsurge. Diverting from the student involvement in politics, I further asked her about the scenario of an apolitical student base from her point of view as an activist herself. She blamed this lack of intervention by a certain segment of the student base on a deficit of empathy and increased ignorance. This combined with a fear of one’s life that today’s times instil holds a lot of students from stepping forward and taking a stand. Moreover, Kawalpreet goes on to point out as to how certain factions in today’s student activism generate a more violent environment and hence, further amplify the inhibition in the crowd.
• Fahad Ahmad, the general secretary of the student union at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (TISS) pointed out that this sudden increase in the number of student protests throughout the country is a simple consequence of the ignorance of consecutive oppositions in the country’s He strongly felt that it is the salient feature of an effective democracy that it allows voices of dissent to be heard in every corner of its being, especially when the strata in question are tomorrow’s leaders. On being questioned about his take on the chunk of the youth that decides to turn the other cheek, he specifically blamed it on the education system that prevails in today’s society. He further went on to describe as to how certain branches and fields are seen as being above a social responsibility. This, according to Fahad, is what causes the representatives of the said branches to care lesser than their counterparts. Encouraging more of today’s youth to put their foot down and bring a change in the country, he called for more organized student activism. He felt that protesting as a single unified force and not for a range of issues must be the end goal so as to achieve a stricter sense of transformation throughout the nation. To the common argument about activism being an obstruction to the natural flow of education, he pointed out the flawed education system again. He called attention to the system’s twisted definition of an appropriate education which locks the minds of students to nothing but books and forces their creative voices and curious minds to die a silent death.
• Syamantakshobhan Basu, a student at Jadavpur University and one of the fore-runners during the Hok Kolorob protests talked about the callous nature and hunger for power that is inherent to the existence of an authority itself. Relating to his own experiences during the said protests, he expressed how any administration’s sole aim is to either appease the government in power or to secure credibility or profits for themselves. Be it by improved rankings, government approval or corrupt projects, the authorities always try their best to stay on the good side of power and in this transaction, tend to disappoint the masses of students who look at them for nothing more than mere accountability and transparency. As I gave him the data on the rise in student agitations in the recent years, Basu felt that that is a result of a higher degree of targeted victimization by consecutive governments, combined with a wider spread of ideas and opinions about the state of affairs, hence fueling the simmering rage. Like his fellow interviewees, he came out as a strong critic of labelling activism as a form of barrier to the process of education. He explained as to how a wider knowledge of society and issues pertaining to it instils the sense of self-actualisation and self-consciousness in a student, making one a better and more socially responsible human being, which is, after all, the end goal of a good education. On being asked about his opinions on the ‘apolitical’ trend of today’s time, he flagged the adjective as a luxury that only the privileged elite can afford. He explained as to how victimized classes seem to have no option but to be involved, which is something that ideally every citizen must choose to be. To this, he also blamed our electoral policy of ‘choosing the best out of the worst’, that forces a lay person’s hand at not caring at all. According to Basu, this is a mistake as well, as being privileged doesn’t guarantee a safe haven from the storm of incompetent leaders in power, while allowing corruption and oppression to increasingly consume society as a whole.
• Anupama TV, an IAS officer in the government of Kerala, drew a clear distinction between active student politics and the trend of student over-activism that prevails in today’s youth. On one hand, she expressed her admiration for the increased number of citizens that are democratically and socially more aware than their ancestors, but on the flip side, she felt that the very devoted participation of mainstream political parties in student activism today is creating an image that makes the entire idea of student-led politics seem like a broken tape of violence. Although she didn’t hesitate to applaud student activism as a reviver of the vibe of democracy and she agreed with the need of a guiding hand, yet she felt that the involvement of violent agitations and political blame game is definitely not the way to keep the spirit alive. On the topic of the sudden increase in the number of student agitations, Mrs Anupama affiliated this hike with the general trend of increased agitations in the society and the direct reflection of social activities to the campus dynamics, hence resulting in a boost in student-led politics too. Adding to this, she felt that an increased sense of aggression among today’s youth is surely a factor as well. She went on to elaborate as to how the presence of nuclear families and a very wide exposure to media from across the world tend to influence one to express more, which could then lead to more frequent agitations.

At the end of these insights into the heads of the supposed leaders of tomorrow’s democracy, the readers must pause and introspect. The readers must look into themselves and find out as to what they feel. The readers must awaken and frame a proper opinion because after all, an opinion is what will frame their tomorrow. There are no student uprisings without students. There are no means of protest if the crowd does not believe in its power to bring a change.

Concluding this piece, I place the final period, asking, nay, pleading the youth of my country to step up. I plead them to drop their weapons and their cusses and their rape threats and I offer them their voices, their only chance to bring a change in a country that’s still fighting to keep its head up. It is you who must question. It is you who must ask. In a parliament where 34% of the oldest MPs are labelled as inactive, you, the reader must realise that independent India might be a young country, but it surely is no longer the country of the young.

–

Image used for representation only.

The post What These 4 Youth Leaders Have To Say On The Rising Trend Of Student Activism appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

जब से होश संभाला है तबसे सुन रहा हूं कि देश में एक बार इमरजेंसी लगायी गयी थी और उस दौरान देश की सभी संवैधानिक संस्था को कुचल दिया गया था। आज हमारे देश में लगायी गयी इमरजेंसी को 43 साल हो गए हैं।

इमरजेंसी के 43 साल होने पर अरुण जेटली ने अपने ब्लॉग में इमरजेंसी की कड़ी निंदा भी की, लेकिन वो आज के हालात का ज़िक्र करना जैसे भूल ही गए। आज के हालात इमरजेंसी से कम नहीं है।

पिछले 3 सालों से हमारे देश में इस बात की चर्चा हो रही है कि हमारा देश अघोषित इमरजेंसी से गुज़र रहा है। इस चर्चा की शुरुआत साहित्यकारों, लेखकों और कलाकारों के सम्मान वापसी से शुरू हुई थी। लेकिन अब यह बात सिर्फ सम्मान वापसी तक सीमित नहीं है अब न्यायपालिका के कामकाज में भी सरकार का हस्तक्षेप, सरकार के खिलाफ लिखने और बोलने वालों की हत्या, बोलने की आज़ादी पर पाबन्दी और मीडिया की मौजूदा हालात इस चर्चा को और मज़बूत करते हैं।

अगर इस चर्चा का विश्लेषण किया जाये और 1975 की  इमरजेंसी और आज की अघोषित इमरजेंसी में समानताएं निकाली जाये तो 3 बहुत अहम समानताएं आसानी से मिल सकती हैं और एक असामनता भी है तब की और अब की इमरजेंसी में। यह असमानता आज की इमरजेंसी को और खतरनाक बनाती है।

तब की इमरजेंसी की तरह आज भी न्यायपालिका के कामकाज में सरकार का हस्तक्षेप किसी से छुपा नहीं है। नौबत यहां तक आ गयी कि देश के 4 वरिष्ठ न्यायाधीशों को मीडिया के माध्यम से अपनी बात रखनी पड़ी। वरिष्ठ न्यायाधीश पत्र लिखकर सरकार द्वारा कॉलेजियम को दरकिनार करने की बात बार-बार कह रहे हैं और जो इस देश के न्यायाधीश जस्टिस लोया के साथ हुआ है उसको लिखने के लिए लेखक के पास शब्द नहीं है।

तब की इमरजेंसी की तरह आज भी सरकार का मीडिया पर पूरा अंकुश है। आज की मीडिया के बारे में इतना ही कह सकते हैं कि मीडिया सरकार के प्रवक्ताओं का काम कर रही है और अगर कोई मीडिया हाउस सरकार की आलोचना करे तो उसको NDTV की तरह बंद करने की साज़िश शुरू हो जाती है। मीडिया पर अंकुश की चर्चा को बल हाल में ही आज तक न्यूज़ चैनल से निकले गए पत्रकार पुण्य प्रसून वाजपेयी के बयान से मिलता है, जिसमे वो साफ कहते हैं

देश में पत्रकारिता के हालात काफी बदल गए हैं। अब एडिटर को पता नहीं होता कि कब फोन आ जाए। कभी पीएमओ तो कभी किसी मंत्रालय से सीधे फोन आता है। इन फोन में समाचार को लेकर निर्देश होते हैं।

मीडिया सरकार की घोषणाएं बढ़ा-चढ़ा कर दिखाती हैं, लेकिन मीडिया जैसे भूल ही गयी है कि सरकार घोषणाओं का आकलन और आलोचना भी उसका धर्म है।

आज मौलिक अधिकारों के उल्लंघन की स्थिति 1975 के इमरजेंसी से भी बदतर है। लोग खान-पान की चीज़ों के लिए किसी की भी हत्या कर देते हैं मॉब लिंचिंग की घटनाएं हमारे संविधान और लोकतंत्र को जैसे खोखला कर रही है और अगर कोई लेखक सरकार के खिलाफ कुछ लिखे तो उन्हें दाभोलकर, पंसारे, कलबुर्गी और गौरी लंकेश की तरह हमेशा के लिए चुप कर दिया जाता है। लिखने, बोलने और विरोध करने की आज़ादी अब सिर्फ सत्ता पक्ष तक सीमित है।

जो असमानता आज की इमरजेंसी को और खतरनाक बनाती है वो है आज का एक बड़ा समाज का तबका जो इस  इमरजेंसी का समर्थन कर रहा है। जबकि 1975 में ऐसा नहीं था देश की जनता, मीडिया से लेकर नेताओं सबने इमरजेंसी की निंदा की थी। लेकिन आज ऐसा नहीं है। चाहे मीडिया हो या राजनैतिक गलियारे सब अपने-अपने व्यक्तिगत लाभ के लिए इस लोकतंत्र और देश को नुकसान पंहुचा रहे हैं।

आज हर उस इंसान के लिए अघोषित इमरजेंसी है जो सरकार की आलोचना करे और अपने हक के लिए आवाज़ उठाये। जिसको भी लगता है कि देश अघोषित इमरजेंसी से नहीं गुज़र रहा है, वो एक बार ज़रूर सरकार के खिलाफ किसी भी प्लैटफॉर्म पर आवाज़ उठा कर देखे उसको एहसास होगा कि इमरजेंसी है या नहीं।

The post “ये मोदी सरकार की अघोषित इमरजेंसी का दौर है, यहां सरकार की आलोचना गुनाह है” appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

The word ‘jugaad’ is quite intrinsic to the moral fabric of India. Whether it is the Mangalyaan Mission to Mars in 2014 which was accomplished in one-tenth of the cost of the US’s Maven mission or the Tata Nano, which is the world’s cheapest car, our country boasts of a frugal entrepreneurial and inventive spirit, like no other. And this is what connects achievements of great stature to the simple act of fixing a leaking car radiator by a roadside mechanic with bubble gum, to someone failing a driving test and pleading with the examiner, “Bhaisaab, kuch jugaad kar do?”

British journalist, Dean Nelson’s first book, Jugaad Yatra: Exploring the Indian Art of Problem Solving, probes the different ways Indians improvise and innovate in their everyday life. For Nelson, who has lived in Delhi for 10 years reporting on India and South East Asia, the idea of writing this book began with a conservation with his publisher, David Davidar.

“It set me thinking about a homemade air conditioner we’d bought from a retired journalist, M.B Lal. We’d moved into a down at heel house in Nizamuddin which needed a lot of restoration work. Our youngest son’s bedroom had no exterior wall for an air conditioner and as I worried about what we’d do when the summer came, I saw an article in the paper about ‘Snowbreeze,’ a jugaad AC made by a carpenter and electrician using a plastic rubbish bin, a skateboard, a cheap extractor fan and two steel buckets of ice. I was inspired by the inventor’s determination and altruism – he made to it help those who couldn’t afford branded ACs – even though it wasn’t the best cooler. It also got me thinking about good and bad kinds of jugaad throughout Indian life,” he says.

Critics have often dismissed jugaad as an excuse for mediocrity and shoddy products, that India’s inclination towards a ‘quick-fix’ is keeping us from building long-lasting solutions. In Jugaad Yatra, the author writes, “Jugaad quick-fix solutions and circumvention are, it seems, at the heart of India’s greatest triumphs and moments of shame.”

The concept of jugaad can be quite expansive, so the structure of the book emerged from the question posed above: “How can the same word be used to describe such a wide range of things, from inspiring frugal innovation to cynical governance and corruption? The answer is that there is good and bad jugaad, so that set the structure – an opening essay which laid out the issues and then a journey through examples of good jugaad, then a hike over the bad.”

He adds, “People use the word jugaad to explain the success of ISRO space scientists in setting their underpowered PSLV rocket to Mars and also for corrupt fixes – the common thread is circumvention, bypassing rules, laws and received wisdom to find unique solutions. These can be good or bad, but they all involve a workaround approach.”

Nelson informs that working as a foreign correspondent in the digital and social media age one gets very little downtime. For him, the obvious challenge was in deciding which cases and issues were genuine examples of jugaad thinking and which were not – “it’s easy, once you start looking to see jugaad thinking everywhere in India, so some discipline was required,” he informs.

Currently based in Edinburgh, the journalist who has written for The Sunday Times and Daily Telegraph, has observed and written about the sub-continent for over a decade. How has he seen the place change, for better or worse?

Speaking about the capital of Delhi, he says, “In many ways, things are improving – the Delhi Metro is a huge boost to the city. Incredible restoration work has been done in Nizamuddin to revive the Mughal landscape and create jobs for local people. There’s a new airport, many news airports, lots of infrastructure work is going on, education is Delhi appears to be improving. At the same time, Delhi’s air is becoming unbreathable; people are retreating to their homes more. Jugaad thinking and a lack of planning still blight India’s cities.”

Having bought a ‘Snowbreeze’ himself, does he think that it can help readers unlearn and learn more about what their country is actually like?

Nelson says, “I feel many Indians have embraced jugaad as a badge of identity. It is a tribute to their resilience in times of scarcity and hardship. But it is also a millstone which holds India back. To make real progress, to really develop – and as someone who raised his children in Delhi, I want India to realise its incredible potential as soon as possible – it must embrace the antithesis of jugaad: sound, smart planning, a culture of compliance and the pursuit of excellence. India has some of the world’s best brains but it needs good planning and systems to harness them for the wider benefit of the country.”

The post How ‘Jugaad’ Is At The Heart Of India’s Greatest Triumphs And Moments Of Shame appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

I still remember the first time I asked my mother the meaning of the word “rape.”

It was during a lazy afternoon, and my 12-year-old self was curious about this new word I kept hearing in the news: “balatkar”. And if that wasn’t enough, I’d also seen the word “rape” repeatedly flashed in the headlines, so naturally, I needed to know what it meant.

Back then 12-year-olds didn’t have cell phones (or at least I didn’t), so ‘Googling it’ meant waiting for your computer to turn on, then waiting for your modem to connect to the internet, and occasionally, trying to figure out why the internet wasn’t working despite your computer stubbornly claiming that it was, in fact, connected.

Till date I can recall her exact reaction in my mind very clearly. As soon as I uttered the word “rape” from my mouth, my mother completely froze and stopped what she was doing. You see, she was the kind of parent who’d hastily change the channel if I was in the room and anything even remotely sexual was on the screen, or would ask me to leave the room when she was watching her English TV dramas, fearing I might be exposed to “anaap-shanaap chezein”. So then how was she supposed to explain to her naïve, young daughter what rape was?

I don’t remember what her answer to my question was, but I’m pretty sure she brushed it off. However, it didn’t take me long to figure out the meaning of said word, since my curiosity won, and I decided that my need to know  surpassed the mild annoyance I’d have to face while waiting for my internet connection to work. And hence, that day I discovered what the words “sex” and “rape” meant, and what the underlying difference between both those terms was.

This was back in 2008. Today, things are much different. Kids have much more exposure to the outside world, due to ease of access to cell phones and social media. Furthermore, with extensive media coverage on rape cases within a country where 106 rapes occur almost daily, and where crimes against minors have soared 500 per cent over the past 10 years, it’s hard to keep younger kids in the dark about sexual violence and harassment.

The need to educate our young ones about sexual harassment arose once more quite recently when the nation was left shell shocked after discovering one of the most barbaric rape cases in the country in recent years, possibly worse than the 2016 Nirbhaya rape case. An eight year old girl, Asifa Bano, was abducted, raped and murdered by six men in Rasana village near the Kathua district in Jammu and Kashmir. After learning about such horrific cases, how does one equip a child to protect themselves? How does one ensure that a child does not fall prey to such unspeakable acts of barbarism?

Many would argue that there should be no need for children to defend themselves, and that the government should implement laws harsh enough to deal with the perpetrators of such horrendous crimes. And while that would be the ideal solution, India’s rape crisis shows no signs of abating any time soon.

This brings us back to the question: How do we talk to children about sexual harassment and rape?

The first step is to have conversations with them about these topics, and use the news as a means to educate, no matter how uncomfortable it makes you. And under no circumstance should you brush off their questions regarding the same, because if they don’t learn it from you, they will from somewhere else (much like I did from the internet), and there’s no saying as to what kind of information they might obtain from third party sources. Other than that, we must educate them about their bodies, clearly highlighting the difference between ‘good touch’ and ‘bad touch’, and start stressing the importance of consent, and the word ‘no.’ Most importantly, we must teach them to never feel ashamed, and assure them that they’d never get in trouble for speaking out against any harassment they might have experienced.

Parents and schools alike should also invest time and give importance to sex education, and have conversations with children about respecting the other gender. Teaching them how to handle rejection and not get caught up with emotions also plays a huge factor, since adolescence can be a tricky period for many. Parents should also talk to their children about their mental health, and keep a check on their online activities, to ensure they’re in a safe and healthy environment. It’s scary to think about how dangerous the outside world is, not only for us, but for our children as well. But by implementing these small, but crucial steps, we might be able to curb such incidents, even by a small margin. Sexual predators are unfortunately prevalent almost everywhere today, and hence, we must be able to educate our kids about the same, not letting our personal discomfort or opinions about such exposure get in the way.

The post How Do We Talk To Children About Sexual Harassment And Rape? appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

The Gomti river, a tributary of the sacred Ganga, spends a considerable time on its 12 KM walk and run in Lucknow, after sprinting about 240 kilometres at other places. On Sunday, June 24, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh Ajay Singh Bisht (also known as “Yogi” Adityanath) swept the banks and nearby places of Gomati with brooms and removed muck with spades. Indeed a thing to celebrate when such a towering figure and his 7,000—err, I mean—700 followers and friends do something to clean the river which is touted to be more polluted than its big sister, the Ganga, in Benaras.

A lot of coverage was achieved by this event, but maybe for the wrong reasons. The campaign, advertised earlier through newspaper ads and huge banners across Lucknow, claimed that 7,000 people, including students and citizen volunteers, had signed up for the exercise which was to be carried out between 1090 Crossing and Gau Ghat. All the activity was concentrated around the 100-metre stretch at Jhulelal Park, where the CM was supposed to inaugurate the campaign. Forget 7,000, barely 700 showed up for the programme, mainly nagar nigam workers, civil defence personnel, local netas, and BJP supporters.

Gomti Is Now Clean. Or Is It?

Citizens have the power to change things, and the greatest movements have always had huge participation from citizens—if not as leaders, at least as ardent foot soldiers. A closed lake whose aquifers are not polluted can always be cleaned by manual or automatic methods, even by volunteers’ clean-up drives, and regular checks on pollution. A river, however, has a lot of adventure to offer.

In 2001, and I am sure even before, citizens volunteered to clean up the Gomti river and banks on Sundays. Brandless, but with super motivation in their minds, they were ultimately named “Sunday Warriors” by local newspapers.

Originating in my hometown Pilibhit, The Gomti serves as a water source for over 35 lakh people. Here in Lucknow, about 36 city drains pour untreated sewage into the river. No wonder this stretch is the most polluted. Agricultural runoff brings lot of insecticides, pesticides and fertiliser, and its impact can also not be ignored. Gomti receives huge quantities of untreated sewage, industrial effluents, and also street washouts bringing oil, asphalt, sediment and many types of heavy metals.  If the findings of a research article that tested 15 locations are to be believed, then the level of Arsenic toxicity in Gomti in Lucknow exceeds twice the permissible limit set by the WHO. According to the research article, Copper exceeded the permissible limit at two locations, and Cadmium at all 15 locations exceeded the permissible limit by several times. “From industrial effluents to domestic discharge, the river becomes more of a flowing dumping yard,” said the research. Can your brooms and spades clean this mess? Green Gomti by 2017 was a target set by the previous government. What is yours, CM Yogi?

Setting A New Course

Every city expands, every state develops, but it is high time this development is inclusive. Development should be sustainable, not destructive.

The Sabarmati riverfront has for long been projected as the Gujarat model of development. However after industries and townships have grown, such riverfronts add to the stress on the rivers. It will be fun if Ajay Ji and his spade travel a bit more around the path of Gomti and break down a few illegal constructions and push industry effluents back to their sources. Thanks to him, a few more Indians, and even some formerly clueless Lucknow wallahs now know about Gomati. I will thank him more if the rivers of UP get their dues, and their recharge system are made efficient.

Rivers are not only service providers in terms of water to people, trees, and animals, they exert a huge economic impact on the population. And while Yogi is at it, I would love if he could announce an event where people instead, of dipping in the Gomati on Ekadashi, start taking its water home and bathe in it. Agreed it will be an event of high TRP value. Maybe when people go home, and measure pollutant levels of that water, they will finally realise the amount of care the river needs.

In addition to Lucknow, Lakhimpur Kheri, Sultanpur Kerakat, and Jaunpur are the most prominent of the 15 towns in the river’s catchment basin. It will be fun if the CM visits all of them and makes this much-needed change happen. If Bhagirath brought Ganga to this planet, why not a “Yogi” get the wells cleaned and help the recharge of this important river?

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