Caste? Indian. Thank you very much.

Towards the end of November 2001, we were nearly into the final days of school, class10 i.e. S.S.C. we had to fill out our application forms for the Secondary School certificate examination. Before filling out the final form, we were given a dummy form to fill. The dummies were supposed to be checked by checked by the administrative staff of the school to rule out idiotic errors. Once, a boy supposedly filled in the name of his father as Reverend Father Ivan Mascharenas instead of his own father’s name! Can you beat that? At the age of 15? Anyway, the poor soul must have been confused or simply absent-minded. So we got along the business of filling our forms and submitted them. Some students were summoned to the office of the administration for errors in their forms. I was one of them. I was baffled. Errors? In my form? Impossible! I went to the office. I was handed over my form. Not a single problem. Most of my schoolmates standing there were called for the verification of their caste status. It was my turn. I asked the officer what was wrong. She said I had not entered my caste. Indeed I had not and on purpose. I had left it blank. I told her that I was not interested in filling that detail. I didn’t even know my caste to fill it in the first place. She said it was mandatory as incase if I belonged to some backward caste I would be eligible for government benefits. I said I was not interested. My dad is an orthopedic surgeon and my mom has studied law. I was more than privileged. Thank you very much. Moreover, I continued my tirade by stating that throughout our school days we had been ingrained with the idea that we were Indians first and Indians last. Nothing in between. She refused to accept my form. I argued that the form stated (in very fine print) that the candidate should have be an Indian national and must be born before 30th of December, 1986. I fulfilled the criteria. No success. She refused to accept the form. Instead she gave me a file of our admission forms that we had submitted at the time of taking admission into school. I was told to find out the caste entered in my form. I grudgingly did that but I did have my revenge because I got to joke about my schoolmates looks in their photos as 4 year olds. I reached my form in that file. I recognized Dad’s handwriting. He had entered both religion and caste as Hindu. I saw no problem with that. I filled in that stupid detail.

High Time We Start Disrespecting Our Elders

OK, I do not advocate retorting every few sentences, but we need to realize that respect is like money. You have to earn it to receive it. Your age or social status does not automatically grant you access to money or respect. I sickens me every time people talk down to us youngsters about the importance of respecting elders. What for? I completely understand and agree with the fact that our are far more wider than us due to their experience and the knowledge they have gained over the decades. After all, they have already committed and learned from many mistakes that all of us do all the time. We must profit from their experience. That's exactly what they wish too. But what about those who have remained stupid despite their years? What about their egoistic bastards who refuse to learn? What about those sclerotic morons who refuse to look at newer, different point of views? Should we respect them too? Or will it be better to ask them to shut up? I prefer they latter. I have seen endless number of geriatric entities going around sermoning young people to respect them without caring two hoots for the fact that respect is to be commanded and not demanded. Beggars, fuck off! I do not care a damn about those who are liked by many senior people (including our parents' generation, not just our grand-parents' generation) for being very respectful towards their elders as respecting elders says nothing about your intentions and character. You may be doing that out of sycophancy just to earn brownie points. Or just for giving the impression that you are well-bred. I prefer people who respect everybody impartially. Someone who respects their elders and juniors equally is someone who truly has class. It is easy to respect people who are elder to you, who have a elevated social or economic status as compared to yours or those who are simply seem stronger than you in terms of sheer physical strength. But what is seriously cool is respecting those younger than you, those less economically / socially privileged as compared to yourself or simply those smaller in size than you. That's strong character! That's cool! I won't go around faking respect for people if they do not deserve it just because they were born before me. You haven't done me a favor.

"Indian Women can't divorce." - Yeah right, Madam I.A.S!

There are sometimes when I wonder if education really brings about a change in our attitudes towards our self and towards life and society. One would normally expect highly educated people to being more sensitive and informed about socio-economic and political issues and evils. It is however these very people who seem to repeat sins of thousands of years and ensure that they are not eradicated. Look at this for example. I spoke to my English professor from junior college recently. She narrated an incident about her friend (female), an I.A.S officer, who is also married to an I.A.S officer. This lady’s husband is an alcoholic and a wife beater. This lady I.A.S officer puts up with abuse 24/7! Her friends, including my professor, advised her to divorce her husband, as it is the only solution to her problem. Her response to this counsel left them scandalized. She said that she could never do something like that as she is an Indian woman and that she will end up losing her face if she is divorced!!!!!!!

My heart goes out to those women who are trapped with dangerous husbands due to financial constraints or simply due to being ignorant about the fact that they can legally get a divorce, but this idiot just makes me nauseous. Education has not made any difference in neither her husband’s attitude nor her own.

The Futility of Penalizing the 3rd child

There are talks in the Kerala government circles these days regarding the imposition of the ‘two-child’ norm for couples failing which they will be penalized Rs. 10000 per ‘extra’ child and disqualification of the 3rd child for of free healthcare and education. This rule might be forced to bring down the birth rate further. Kerala already has the lowest birth-rate in India. I sincerely appreciate and approve of their intentions but sadly, they have missed the point. I wish to know whether beggars, commercial sex workers and slum dwellers will be made to shell out the fine for it is always this category of people who seem to have a gaggle of kids with them. Making something compulsory will make people resent it. Moreover, it will add to the workload of our sufficiently stressed law enforcement agencies. Instead, there should be higher emphasis on sex education so that people started making educated choices in their sex lives. We must adopt a sensitive approach towards educating the masses about safe sex and use of birth-prevention methods. Experiments in Uttar Pradesh are already bearing fruit. In Lucknow, a youth-oriented initiative, called Saathiya, is working closely with chemists to educate clients, especially those from weak economic sections of the array of birth control measures available and even reducing the awkwardness associated with the sales of condoms. This has lead to an increase in condom sales, some areas even reporting a 300% jump in the sales of condoms. This project was launched by Private Sector Partnerships for Better Health and USAID, the development funding arm of the US government. A 2006 project called "Condom bindaas bol" was intended to tackle a fall in condom sales in 8 Indian states that represent 45% of the Indian condom market. The more recent launch of the "Condom Condom" ringtone to popularize condoms in These states – Bihar, Chattisgarh, Delhi, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal - constitute 40% of India's populace of more than 1 billion. The Kerala government can take a leaf out of these initiatives and promote them instead of cooking up stupid money-minting schemes. The more recent launch of the "Condom Condom" ringtone to popularize the word 'condom' hits bull'e eye. It will undoubtedly help deflate the shame associated with the word in popular usage.

We cannot blindly imitate China and impose a ceiling on the number of children couples can have. China is slowly confronting problems related to an ageing population and low number of youngsters. The one child norm created a preference for boys, which in another 10 to 20 years may translate into higher crime rates by testosterone charged single males unable to find partners. The situation is also grave in countries like Japan, Russia and Germany where employment might take a hit if there aren’t sufficient numbers of young men and women to replace those who retire from active work life. The Japanese Health minister, Hakuo Yanagisawa, went overboard by saying that he wants 'birth-giving machines', aka women, to have more babies. It is easy to imagine the outrage he managed to cause! Germany is concerned about 30% of its adult women being childless by choice; the figure touches 40% in case of female who have completed graduation. The Germans have also debated compensating working parents with €3,000 annually for childcare costs against tax, urging women to have more children. A number of other countries facing declining birthrates have offered similar incentives. Australia offers a $4,000 additional benefit for each child and in recent times has proposed to reimburse all child care expenses for women who desire to work. Numerous European nations, with France, Italy and Poland, have offered some arrangement of bonuses and monthly compensation to families. Closer home, Singapore has a principally bountiful plan: $3,000 for the first child, $9,000 in cash and savings for the second; and up to $18,000 each for the third and fourth. Several Japanese regions, in the face of almost calamitous population loss, are offering rich incentives. Yamatsuri, a 7000 strong municipality, north of Tokyo, offers parents $4,600 for the birth of a child and $460 a year for a decade. In a throwback to the Stalin era, the Duma intends to tax childless couples either to encourage Russians to have more children, or make childless Russians help absorb the costs of the government’s maternal capital program, which gives 250,000 rubles (9,200USD) to mothers for the birth of another child. In fact, for every sixteen Russian deaths, only 10 Russian tots join the population. All the mentioned countries are now confronting the challenge of supporting the retirement of its seniors who are turning into an unproductive, economic burden in the absence of youth.

These nations mentioned here are naturally at the other extreme of the demographic spectrum, their problem being the antithesis of our problem. The irony of demographics across different continents should teach everyone some lessons. Undeniably, we do need to stop our people from breeding like vermin but that does not imply that we start imposing fines. The countries with low birth rates also have 97 to 99% literacy amongst their women. The government can do much good by improving sanitation and other facilities in schools so as to keep girls in school. The lack of toilets is often cited as a reason for girls dropping out early from schools. According to a survey conducted by National University of Educational Planning and Administration, only 37.42 per cent of the 11,24,033 schools in 604 districts had toilets for girl students. The absence of toilets can be a major disincentive for pubescent girls to pursue schooling. If local governance bodies like Gram Parishads and Zilla Parishads start ensuring that the local schools have separate functional toilets for girls and boys, that may help keep girl longer in schools, thereby increasing literacy and decreasing the chances of early marriage, often responsible for high fertility. All Indian states should adopt the scheme in Bihar, Mukhya Mantri Balika Cycle Yojana (Chief Minister’s Cycle for Girls Scheme), and provide cycles to girls for going to school so that transport between their residences and schools does not prove to be a hindrance for education. The Indo German Watershed Development Programme in Maharashtra has shown that watershed development in villages leads to reduction in migration due to lack of employment and leads to women’s empowerment. This also leads to improvement in literacy levels as children get to go to one school for an academic year and do not have to miss out on school due to their parents’ search for employment form town to town. The IGWDP has successfully shown that within 2-3 years of the implementation to a watershed management program, the demand for education amongst women rises. Higher levels of education do transform fertility rates as well as income levels. Better facilities for women will encourage more women to pursue careers. Dividing time between work and family, inevitably calls for a small family. That will predictably cause people to have just one or two children. Even if some families opt for bigger sizes that should not pose a problem.

Improvement in literacy levels cannot certainly be the only solution to high levels of fertility. There must be adequate efforts to improve the perception of the girl child. If people continue to consider daughters as liabilities, then early marriage to get rid of the ‘burden’ will be inescapable. The preference for sons also leads people to keep having more girl children in order to beget a boy. There also lies one cause of high fertility. But urbanization of semi-rural and rural areas may help curb such extremist reproductive behaviour over the coming decades although it may not reduce the bias against girls. Affluent areas of Bombay, Bangalore and New Delhi continue to have some of the worst sex ratios in the country, but at least the families remain small. There must exist efforts at the grassroots levels to convince people that educated women are beneficial to the family. Very often, people favour less educated girls for a daughter-in-law as they believe that better learned girls are disobedient and headstrong. This is far from the truth. Educated women take better care of their families as compared to uneducated women.

Keeping in mind the myriad problems of gender and perception of education that we have in this country, a fine to bring down the birth rate with prove futile. Those living below, on and slightly above the poverty line will be de facto exempted from such fine. People will not be treated equally when it comes to imposition of such fines. The attempts to reduce the birth rate should be sustainable and must be implemented in such a manner that we do not end up like China, Germany, Japan and Australia in about 40 years. Otherwise, it is our generation that might become a burden for our children who may not be sufficient in number to support an ageing population.

From Witch to Bitch

In the middle ages, any woman who annoyed any one around herself was branded a 'witch'.

That got outlawed.

So today, she is simply called a 'bitch'.

Over the centuries only one consonant has changed but the usage is always in the same context.

Four reasons why I will never have an arranged marriage!

Well, I have nothing against being introduced to suitable boy by my parents just as I don’t mind going on a date with someone my friends suggest, I might meet the love of my life in both the cases, but I do have certain problems with the manner in which arranged marriages work in this country.

1. My first problem is that why can’t a guy find a girl for himself for keeps? Why does he need his parents to do that for him? Is he a man or a joke? (Ok, that’s directly translated from Hindi into English!)
2. Next, How would I know if he is not some homosexual getting married to a girl just to please his parents? I have no intentions of being stuck in a loveless or a sexless marriage! Yuck! In case of a love marriage scenario, you can be assured of the fact that your boyfriend has the ‘hots’ for you!
3. I am fair. Not like the Caucasians, but by regular Indian standards. In India, many men and their parents are obsessed about having a fair wife/ daughter-in-law to ensure that their future generations are good looking. (In India, you are good-looking if you are fair, that suffices.) I refuse to let my children being subjected to racism even before they are conceived or even before their parents had the chance to sleep with each other!
4. Most importantly, I want to get married at my own risk, for my own sake and at my responsibility. No one other than my husband and myself shall be responsible for what happens between the two of us, even if we get a divorce! (I hope that never happens) I have a few friends who said that they will opt for an arranged marriage as in case of a divorce, it is their parents who are to be blamed and not them as they had, like good children, obeyed their parents wishes, and hence it is the parents who had made a wrong decision. What spineless, heartless creeps! Don’t get married if you can’t shoulder responsibilities! I don’t ever want to meet or worse marry a guy who thinks in this manner. Never!

Same Language Subtitling for higher levels of literacy

Literacy is roughly defined as the ability to read and write for a person who is 15 years of age and above. The literacy rate of India stands at an abysmal 61% as reported by the 2001 census. Furthermore for males it is 73.4% and that for females is 47.8%. Dr. Brij Kothari has developed an ingenious method to counter this problem. He has set up PlanetRead that uses “Same Language Subtitling (SLS)” on popular film songs all over the country on TV in the same language as the audio. PlanetRead’s “karaoke” approach to literacy provides recurring and habitual reading practice to over 200 million early-literates in India. In addition, nearly 270 million illiterate people are motivated to become literate. Currently, “Same Language Subtitling (SLS)” is used only on DD shows like Chayageet and Chitrahaar. HBO, STAR Movies and Zee Studios also use them for their movies. If all TV channels in India start employing this method, we will reach our goal of 100% literacy faster. Our hindrances will only be the lack of access to television in many parts of the country and absence of electricity in many areas. Consider this, according to the article In India, the Golden Age of Television Is Now of Vikas Bajaj in the New York Times, there are roughly 105 million homes with televisions in India , up from 88 million in 2000. The current number of television households is about the same as in the United States , though for India that amounts to only about half of the country’s households, compared with 98 percent in the United States . Look at the potential effect Same Language Subtitling will have on our population. It will also prove good for young school going children who will progress faster in school. The other group that stands to benefit is people who cannot hear and those who are hard at hearing. India is a very populous country (estimated 1 billion plus population) so the number of deaf people can not be definitely estimated. It is known to be in the millions - some estimates are as high as 60 million. Same Language Subtitling helps deaf people (with an access to television) to benefit from TV programs. Although India is rapidly developing, there is still plenty of poverty, and thus a high rate of deafness. Improving rates of literacy will help reduce poverty and a whole lot of other problems. Join hands against illiteracy. Tell your friends about it. Forward this email to them as well as your favorite TV channels. Some email addresses are colorstv@viacom18.com, sales@indya.com, zeemarathi@zeenetwork.com, zeetelevision@zeenetwork.com.

We have to ask our TV channels to support Dr. Brij Kothari’s initiative. For more information http://planetread.org/home.php