Refugees in their own country....

The images of my fellow north-east people in Bangalore railway station in my screen made me shudder, and the voice of the newscaster keep repeating that all those people clamouring for a tiny little space inside the already packed Assam bound train are running away from an ‘unknown enemy’ when she didn’t use the word ‘rumours’.

The image brought me to tears, but the words used by the newscaster made me angry.  The more appropriate words would have been unwanted, failed, discriminated, abused, exploited, prejudiced, despised, refugees in their own country!

Can 30000 people who had already left the southern cities of India for their home in the north-east be such fools to run away as soon as they heard some random stupid rumours?  Are they saying that these people are not able to assess their own situation and their own security taking in to account the attitude of the police and the people in authority?

Have their lives in mainland India has ever been secure, equal and devoid of discrimination that they would need a rumour to leave it?  The attitude and treatment of the police and the people in authorities towards the north-east has never been free of prejudice.  We have been always discriminated and every move we made, every piece of cloth we wear, every parts of our body are judged, commented, whistled, hooted, and mocked every single day.

Or maybe there is more than just a rumour, if not a direct threat?  How about a group of people, who had thrown up their hands and given up, because of the constant discrimination they faced, and are waiting for a trigger to go home, even before the rumour spread?

The congress government at the central has kept ‘assuring’ that they would trace the source of the rumours and take stern action.  Why not start with the illegal Bangladeshis immigrants who have occupied the indigenous tribal land in Assam?  What did/does the central government said about them? Not a single word!

The Lesser Indian?

What do you say, when certain section of the society, run in fear and panic despite repeated assurance from all sections of the authority not to panic?  It simply means that there absolutely is no trust in the people who give you that assurance!

Now ask why they don’t trust the people who assure them not to panic, the answer is obvious! They have learned their lesson not to trust the politicians and police from their past experience. 

The Police in Bangalore and Pune have claimed that not a single complain was registered so far regarding violence or assault of north-east people in their respective cities dismissing that the fear and panic of the north-eastern people are a result of some rumour! 

Was that so surprising when every north-east male showed up in the police station, he was seen as a substance abusing trouble maker and whenever a north-eastern female showed up in the police station, she was seen only as an immoral, characterless slut? So why would any sane person showed up in the police station to complain only to be accused of being moral-less?

When a north-eastern student was beaten to death; he was dismissed as a drug addict by the police, when a north-eastern student was raped; her character was questioned by the police!  If such grave cases that involve the north-eastern people were considered not worth registering as a valid police case, now tell me how can we trust the police?

Perhaps the panic in Pune and Bangalore is caused by rumour, which certainly is not, but why would a person in his right mind who have experienced systematic discrimination in their everyday life in mainland India take a chance of trusting the perpetrator of such discrimination???

Anyhow how can we complain about discrimination that comes in various forms?  There are the spoken and unspoken discrimination that each and every north-eastern people face in their everyday life in the mainland. Now tell me how would we register a case about a man who abruptly started singing some vulgar song with a sneer in their face as we passed them? How would we register a case against someone who suddenly looked away and started crying ‘chowmein’ as soon as we passed them?

By the way, what has the authorities (Central & State) do to ease the situation beside giving a hollow assurance? The central government gave assurance of safety to the north-east student, but why is it silent about the illegal migrants who caused the whole thing in the first place? Isn't silence about the illegal migrants being a sign of support and preference when all they gave to the north-east people is verbal assurance?

To my north-eastern friends, I want to say don’t panic or fear, but don’t take your chances either! It’s about time we consider our position in India –are we the lesser Indian as we often feel?  The answer to that question will not make you any safer, but it will at least tell you what to do next!

Some News

1. Indian Express: Thousands More Flee Bangalore/Pune Despite Govt Plea for Calm

2. Hindustan Times: NE Exodus Continues, Cops Probing Source of Rumours

3. Times of India: Northeast Migrants Flee Pune-Bangalore-Chennai

A Note on Language Used in Teaching-Learning Process....

On Tuesday, we had a group meeting wherein one of the agenda discussed was on IEC (awareness campaign material) about SMC (School Management Committee) and the RTE (Right to Education).  One of the drafted posters has a group of figures with blank dialogue box for all the character to speak or say something about the issue.

We were yet to decide what exact words they will be saying, but the discussion was on in which language to write the dialogue and in what language should the overall message be written.  Most of them said that it should be written in Hindi only as there are some problem and grammatical concern when writing in the local language i.e. Chhattisgarhi.

The ground situation in Chhattisgarh is that, the teaching-learning process is in Chhattisgarhi whereas the textbook and reading and writing are done in Hindi. During the entire discussion, I never spoke or said any words as I’m relatively new here, and I still don’t know the ground realities.

But one thing I want to comment is on the kind of implication it has for such different languages in the whole teaching learning process for the various stakeholders. In psychology, and now in common parlance, the terms negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement are often used and in this situation, I wonder what kind of perspective we are reinforcing. 

As mentioned earlier, the textbooks in Chhattisgarh’s school are in Hindi, and everyone, despite speaking Chhattisgarhi had accepted Hindi as the medium of education and has no complain at all.  In fact they had accepted the difference in medium of teaching and medium of writing, if we make a study, an overwhelming majority would agree that Hindi is the proper medium because that has been the practice for a long time, and considering that it has been reinforced for a long time, it won’t come as a surprise at all.

Now regarding the poster, if the dialogues are written in Chhattisgarhi and the overall message of the poster were written in Hindi, it would reflect the ground reality and an overwhelming majority will accept the languages used and the differences in language.

Personally I think conducting the teaching learning process in two different languages smack of double standard.  Why give preference for a language which the locals don’t use in their everyday life?  And, by reflecting the ground reality, or making that distinction in our campaign materials, are we not reinforcing the prevailing language discrimination, or preference for Hindi? 

I understand that the NCF has given mother-tongue as the preferred language of teaching….but I don’t know what it says about the text book! So here are a few questions to myself that I have to understand in the near future, but if anyone can help me out or point me towards a direction, I would be more than happy.

• What does the NCF said about the language medium of teaching and the language medium of learning in the classroom?
• Why is Hindi so important when a majority speaks Chhattisgarhi?
• Do the people of Chhattisgarh ever asked their preferred language for education?
• Are policy makers aware of this usages of two different language in ?
• How bad or how impossible really is Chhattisgarhi language that textbook cannot be written in that language?
• What are the rationales for writing text-book in a second language?
• And, what is APF policy on this regard?

What would it take to score 100% marks in Social Sciences?

Attending SCERT conducted training session for Master Trainers in Raipur, I got an opportunity to interact with the participants during one of the activities.  The activity was from the previous day which I didn’t attend.  The participant were given an assignment – they were given a question which they have to answer in an essay mode based on certain (exactly 6) parameters.

The participants were grouped into three and each group were given four answer sheets (without names) to check based on the 6 parameters on a scale of 5 marks.   As a new face, the members in my group were pretty eager to tell me what they were doing and why they were doing so.  I watched them decide how much mark to give, what should be the rationale.  I saw them negotiate mark until one tired participant passed on to the next participant to give mark as s/he wished.

As they scored the assignment, I noticed that out of the 4 papers they checked, two got 3/5 marks, one got 2.5/5 while the other one got 2/5 marks.  They explained to me the rationale behind the score they give which I can understand.

But the surprise came when I asked what it would take for someone to score 5/5 marks (or 100%)! Their response is that such score is impossible because this is an essay!  Then I asked them to bring this situation to a classroom, and consider that –as a teacher, teaching student a specific subject, social studies, for one year, and the student studying that social studies for one year and giving extra efforts of studying each word of the text for about two months in preparation for the final exam, what are the chances that the student would score 100% mark?

One of the participants gave me a prompt response that the chance is 0.00001%!  Most of the participants nodded in agreement! One of the teacher told me about her personal experience of checking the exam paper of a class VIII student with the perfect answers. She said the paper was perfect, and there were no single mistake, the hand writing was good, and the grammar was good, but I have to cut 2 marks and give her 98/100 because if someone else check it again, there might be a difference in opinion and might not agree with the score I give, and also it is not practical to give 100% marks in social sciences no matter how good the paper is!

Initially I find that response shocking but on further reflection, that response gave me an idea of the complexities of social sciences as a subject, and also the grim reality student are faced with.  

In the subject matter, it reflects the differences in how we viewed knowledge and understanding, and not just the complexities and divergence with which we can look a particular subject/issue/situation.  For example, society can be defined in various ways, can be looked from various perspectives; and how would a teacher score such subject?

For the student, it is a very grim reality because no matter how hard they study, and no matter how much they understand and build their arguments, they would not get the perfect score simply because there is no specific answer like 2+2 is 4 which would fetch them 100/100 marks.

My First Impression of Dhamtari/Chhattisgarh

As you enter the town of Dhamtari, the first sight that will welcome you is the trees dotted fields full of lush green paddy crops!  But don’t be surprise if the first building you saw is an automobile showroom!

The first building I noticed when I first entered the town of Dhamtari is the TATA Motors and Hyundai Motors Showroom facing each other on each side of the road amidst a lush green paddy field.

That image keeps popping up in my head every time I think of Chhattisgarh.  I won't say that that image represent Chhattisgarh simply because I still know very little about Dhamtari or Chhattisgarh, and I’m yet to learn many more things and my views and opinions of Dhamtari & Chhattisgarh will be changed in the future as I come to know better.

To me, cars and bike represent ultimate consumerism, especially in places like Dhamtari which is a rather small rural town.  On the other hand, the very existence of the automobile showroom in the middle of paddy field also shows the agrarian based economy of the region. As we all know (even though debatable) agriculture is the lowest preferred or lowest ranked profession of all!

That mental image of mine also means to me that the people, despite their consumerism, still not deserted their traditional occupation, so here is the potential friction. Modernism and traditionalism.

It is pretty common, nowadays, to see traditional and modern culture and practice working parallel in our Indian society....but when it comes to traditional mindset interacting with modern mindset; it is a totally different thing.

But as I am going to begin working in Chhattisgarh, I think it is important to me to make a mental picture of what it would be like -and be proved right or wrong in every step because that is usually how I learn best, and what to me is an open mind. 

The above is my mental picture of Chhattisgarh as I begin with, and I would be more than happy to be proved wrong each day because it would mean I learnt something!!! 

Pay Slip, Decisions, Fears, Possibilities, Certainties, Regrets and everything else...

Blankly staring at my payroll file and subsequent months’ prediction sent to me by the HR Dept in my computer screen, my thoughts danced like pieces of a maze, trying to fit each other and make sense of the puzzles. 'Chaos' -that would have been a much better word than 'puzzles' to describe my state of mind at that time.

The IT projection was not what I expected and rather disappointing, and the certainty of going to work in Chhattisgarh and the possibility of being there for much more than a year -and to top everything, I have had higher pay/salary options before I took a very value based decision to join APF, and joining APF instead of going back home to work among my people as I always promised myself, etc. were some of my previous decisions that is spinning in my head now. 

All these certainties, possibilities and the eventualities made me almost puke.  To add to my woes, I don’t know what is in store for me when I go to Chhattisgarh. After one month of induction programme in Bangalore which impressed me somehow, I have some idea of what APF is doing, but I still have a much more vague idea of what I could do and how I could contribute....

I know what I want from life, my life goals are set, I know exactly how I want to see myself a decade down the line, but uncertainties and confusions had always been my biggest enemy and I am not very good at dealing with it.

Perhaps once I go to Dhamtari and started having an idea of what all is being done there, the puzzles might fit together. Perhaps things will fall in to place, and perhaps they will eventually come to make a perfect sense in the grand scheme of my life.

My beliefs and goals are not different from APF's, but what are different is the end beneficiaries. I have always made a point that I’ll go back to my home, to my people, so that I can contribute and enrich their life further...and I know the situation in Chhattisgarh, especially among the tribal, is as worse.

My point being, I’m a man driven by passion, and I don’t know if APF will post me here for forever, but once the passion in me come out or fail to come out, I'm afraid that I might got stuck here for forever.