Ok so who is a social activist? One who fights for the people and the society's cause all his/her life. One who survives on bare minimum things he has got. And one who devotes his life to the people. Whose name comes up on your lips when we talk of social activism. Medha Patkar, Vinobha Bhave and the likes of them.
Has it ever occured to any one of us that we would also want to serve the society. Well, I can say that atleast a few of us would have thought so. But then , what is stopping us.
The time involved in it. We are so scared that the little time we get to spend with the family would be lost.
The hassles involved. Well, there are so many hurdles to anybody who wants to do good. We see it on the TV and read it in the news papers. So beter be safe.
There is no money in it. It is really difficult to sacrifice the comfortable if not luxurious life we've been leading and go about helping some unknown person.
The list is endless.
So all of us sit at home ,watch on the TV, read in the news papers about so many people needing help. Some of us become emotional and sad for a minute, feel bad for them , feel sorry for them, utter some prayers for their well being and then flip to the next channel or go on to the next page.
Well this includes me too or so to say included me.
The fantastic Tamil writer Sivasankari, in one of her interviews ,when asked about her interest in social service said this very passionately;" Why do you think social service is something which is meant only for a few people. First I hate being called a social activist . Every human being is a part of the society he grows in , whether he likes it or not.Having gained so much from the society knowingly and unknowingly, he has a duty to give back someting to it.So there is nothing abnormal in helping people. Infact there is something wrong with a person if he is not socially aware, or doesn't bother to help a person in distress. So you should be questioning such people as to why they are like that"
I really liked this view. Coming back to my point, there is really no need to leave your family and friends, your job and your comfort, to help somebody.
If you just have the heart and mind for it that is more than enough.
I got enough proof for my argument yesterday. We were in IIT , Madras as volunteers for an interactive teaching workshop. I didnt have any expectaions out of it and just went there to see what it was all about.
It was an eye opening experience. There were so many teachers from all over Tamilnadu working in a number of rural schools. They were from schools with minimum facilities or sometimes even without that. The children were all first genration learners or even formerly child labourers.
As we were helping the teachers with their group activities like puppet show, salad making and rhymes, so many things dawned on me. The first thing being, the really low self image they have of themselves.If somebody tells me that something is bad about me, I would just stand up to him and say how good are you and I know better about me than you do. That is the level of confidence we have.
But if we were to tell them that they were bad in something, then they would accept it and never every try to improve upon it.
When we taught them a few sentences in English and gave them honest appreciation, we could see their heads go up in pride and happiness.
At the end of the day so many of them came up and thanked us for making them feel good about themselves and helping them unravel their hidden talents.
I was so taken aback beacuse I never went there with the intention of helping someone. Even when I was helping them with their activities, it looked routine though slightly interesting.
But the thing that struck me was how a little time we spend helping someone, can make a huge difference to their lives.
I don't know if they will remember the sentences we taught them. But the confidence they've gained is enormous. The feeling that they can learn and perform someting before a group of people in 2 hours is truly wonderful and worth more than all the money in the world put together.
All this just made me feel, if atleast some of us find time to help someone with what what might
might seem a small task to us but a huge thing for the other person, wouldn't it be some sort of a social revolution??
Sunday, May 28, 2006
To reserve or not to !!
There has been so much talk on the proposed reservation for the OBCs of late everywhere right from the print media , the television, among people..etc. The whole issue has been debated so much that even if I tell someone that I would like to reserve a few seats for a train journey , i might as well be mistaken for being "pro reservation".
Well, I don't want to say anything on whether reservation is right or wrong. I actually don't even know these statistics which the pro and anti reservationists are bringing up to justify their cause. Moreover, there are a lot of schemes for the poor and the OBCs that created as much if not more hype when being introduced, but which then sank without a trace and are just limited to the policy papers. So how this scheme would be implemented amidst so much opposition is also in question.
But amongst all this hype and drama surrounding this issue , one thing has intrigued me. One of the or should we say the main reason the anti reservation group is crying itself hoarse, is that if OBCs are allowed to come into mainstream or the so called elite IITs and IIMs and the AIIMS, there would be complete mediocrity all around.
Now I really wonder how much of quality is available in the products of IITs and IIMs as of now. If the quality was anywhere near as is being told to us repeatedly, then we should have been a nation of powerful CEOs , brilliant engineers and our healthcare system should have been among the best in the world.
But we are nowhere near it. Our engineers nowadays be it mechanical, civil, electrical or any branch want to be in the sofware industry. They don't care if they sit all night and do some junk production support work which is equivalent to a call centre job.There are very few who will actually venture into research or innovating something worthwhile.
Our IIM graduates latch at the first oppurtunity they get to work abroad and don't mind settling there. Again there are very few who would want to turn into employers.
And finally our doctors who are leading the anti reservation protests steal the show with their fantastic sense of responsibilty and duty.
There are so many doctors passing out of our medical colleges.But how many of them are working in the rural areas. The government hospitals are always a picture of neglect, with the doctors there spending more time in their own private clinics. The less said about our rural health care the better it is. There have been so many reports of malnutrition among children and I wonder where the doctors are at that time.
So my point is there is already so much mediocrity among our students and the reservation for the OBCs is actually not going to introduce it. But as I said earlier it remains to be seen if the OBCs and the poor ones at that will benefit from this.
I wonder how the students would have reacted if the government had announced that there are going to be separate engineering ,medical and management institutions for OBCs . I can swear that nobody would have bothered to raise a whisper because their seats are now untouched and their elite and holy institutions will not be dirtied by the bad OBC blood.
In that case we would actually have more number of OBC doctors and engineers passing out. We would still have mediocre graduates right?? we would still have a divided society right??
But then all this talk of mediocrity would have been thrown out of the window.
So I think the struggle now is not so much for saving India out of mediocrity or creating a caste less society. It is more about cementing the position the other castes have been holding for centuries. The message I'm getting out of all this anti reservation protests is " Get lost you OBCs and SC/STs, don't even dare to venture into our territory. If you really want to come up in your life, we will not care to give you a helping hand , rather we would push aside someone trying to do so".
And finally, if they do not want reservation so badly, how many of them would actually promise that each one would help one OBC or SC/ST student reach to the level of writing a JEE or a CAT.
Sadly the honour of cracking the joke of the century goes to me ...
Well, I don't want to say anything on whether reservation is right or wrong. I actually don't even know these statistics which the pro and anti reservationists are bringing up to justify their cause. Moreover, there are a lot of schemes for the poor and the OBCs that created as much if not more hype when being introduced, but which then sank without a trace and are just limited to the policy papers. So how this scheme would be implemented amidst so much opposition is also in question.
But amongst all this hype and drama surrounding this issue , one thing has intrigued me. One of the or should we say the main reason the anti reservation group is crying itself hoarse, is that if OBCs are allowed to come into mainstream or the so called elite IITs and IIMs and the AIIMS, there would be complete mediocrity all around.
Now I really wonder how much of quality is available in the products of IITs and IIMs as of now. If the quality was anywhere near as is being told to us repeatedly, then we should have been a nation of powerful CEOs , brilliant engineers and our healthcare system should have been among the best in the world.
But we are nowhere near it. Our engineers nowadays be it mechanical, civil, electrical or any branch want to be in the sofware industry. They don't care if they sit all night and do some junk production support work which is equivalent to a call centre job.There are very few who will actually venture into research or innovating something worthwhile.
Our IIM graduates latch at the first oppurtunity they get to work abroad and don't mind settling there. Again there are very few who would want to turn into employers.
And finally our doctors who are leading the anti reservation protests steal the show with their fantastic sense of responsibilty and duty.
There are so many doctors passing out of our medical colleges.But how many of them are working in the rural areas. The government hospitals are always a picture of neglect, with the doctors there spending more time in their own private clinics. The less said about our rural health care the better it is. There have been so many reports of malnutrition among children and I wonder where the doctors are at that time.
So my point is there is already so much mediocrity among our students and the reservation for the OBCs is actually not going to introduce it. But as I said earlier it remains to be seen if the OBCs and the poor ones at that will benefit from this.
I wonder how the students would have reacted if the government had announced that there are going to be separate engineering ,medical and management institutions for OBCs . I can swear that nobody would have bothered to raise a whisper because their seats are now untouched and their elite and holy institutions will not be dirtied by the bad OBC blood.
In that case we would actually have more number of OBC doctors and engineers passing out. We would still have mediocre graduates right?? we would still have a divided society right??
But then all this talk of mediocrity would have been thrown out of the window.
So I think the struggle now is not so much for saving India out of mediocrity or creating a caste less society. It is more about cementing the position the other castes have been holding for centuries. The message I'm getting out of all this anti reservation protests is " Get lost you OBCs and SC/STs, don't even dare to venture into our territory. If you really want to come up in your life, we will not care to give you a helping hand , rather we would push aside someone trying to do so".
And finally, if they do not want reservation so badly, how many of them would actually promise that each one would help one OBC or SC/ST student reach to the level of writing a JEE or a CAT.
Sadly the honour of cracking the joke of the century goes to me ...
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