Thought for the day
"I never did a
day's work in my life. It was all fun"
—Thomas A. Edison
(American, 1847-1931)
Word for the
day
Spoony (adj)
Foolishly or
sentimentally amorous.
Malice
towards none
Entire country seems to have fallen in love with Taimur.
After all, what's in a name!
The coverage of Tamil Nadu events and UP elections by TV channels
in past one month raises many questions.
While the national English channels devoted disproportionately
longer hours discussing the TN events, national Hindi channels did not give any
prominence to the drama.
Similarly, while Hindi channels are devoting more than 50% airtime
to UP elections alone, English channels are not assigning much importance to
the these election, especially after the SP family soap opera ended.
So what is the message here?
Miles to go before you sleep
Last evening a visit to the local
garbage dump site was a revelation in many sense. A casual discussion with the
rag pickers gleaning the household garbage to pick pieces of paper, plastic and
metal, was quite enlightening.
Out of seven people diligently scanning the stinking dump, three
were children under the age of 14, including one girl, and three were youth in
the age bracket of 19-27.
There was a police PCR standing just 10mtr from the site. The
personnel occupying the PCR were blissfully unaware of the laws relating to right
to education, child labor, dumping of garbage in open areas etc.
On being asked why they chose to do this menial, risky (health
wise) and stinking job, when they have relatively decent options like pulling a
cycle rickshaw or even driving an e-rickshaw, working at a nearby auto garage,
cleaning cars in nearby housing societies etc., the youth politely answered
like this: "We are doing this job for past 12-15yrs. How could we change
it now."
On prodding further, one of them admitted that many of their peers
live on hope that "Someday they will find treasure in the garbage. More
years you have put in the job, greater the chances of you hitting on a
treasure." Though, the best they could cite of a treasure find was a gold
bangle found by one of their seniors 8yrs ago.
The discussion did two things to me: (a) it prompted me to drop
the search of the lost earring of my wife, which she thought could have been
dumped there with the daily kitchen waste, with the hope that it may complete
the treasure hunt of some child; and (b) raised numerous pertinent but
disturbing questions in my mind.
Some of the questions need immediate answers. For example:
(a) After seven decades of
independence, we are still struggling to eradicate manual scavenging. Though
many NGOs work in this area, so far not many policy makers have been seen
speaking about eradicating the practice of manual handling of garbage;
particularly, employing minor children for the job. It may take many more
decades before this issue is addressed.
(b) The police force
(including traffic police) is trained to prevent and detect crime, which is grossly
inadequate in my view. Moreover, in practice they are more focused on detecting
and prosecuting criminals rather than taking preventive actions. The system of "no
complaint no action" needs to be dumped.
I feel, their training and responsibility should be to proactively
protect peoples' life, dignity and property.
(c) If we want to reap the
demographic dividend, beyond selling more and more motor cycles, smart phones, and
apparels, we need to overhaul our education and training system. Moving backwards
(board exams etc.) will further damage the already ailing system.
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