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At Mysore, in a house at Saraswathipuram, a kid grinned and started playing with a toy. The kid’s parents were looking at the child crestfallen and sad, for it was deaf and hard of hearing and they didn’t know what future it had. But here was a man who kept assuring them that it was all going to be fine and all that was needed is perseverance from the mother to train the child.

Single-handedly, he and his wife guided the couple and lot more couples of the hearing impaired children. Their leading light was their own son, whose disability had made the man —K.K. Srinivasan, a Wing Commander in Indian Air Force — to leave the cushy job and settle into the task of helping his son gain knowledge that is necessary to have a foothold in society at Bala Vidyalaya school in Madras (now Chennai).

On coming to Mysore, Srinivasan realised that there was an immediate need for a school that was not expensive and adds to the demand for hearing impaired education schools that prepare deaf and hard of hearing children to enter the mainstream society.

He started a pre-school for the hearing impaired children which he aptly named Helen Keller Pre-school for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. The school was started in Mysore at the first floor of Srinivasan’s house in the International Year of the Handicapped in 1980.

So, this was the place to where the couple went to after visits to every clinics all over Karnataka. Years passed and Srinivasans were the light at the end of tunnel to the couple, who increasingly picked confidence to train their son. The kid was trained in all stages according to Woodford Aural Method and to lip-read.

Wing Commander K K Srinivasan with the Kids at his home

One day, the kid’s mother took him to a government school in Bamboo Bazaar. The kid was shocked by the children having similar disability to him there unable to express their thoughts cogently and rationally. He asked the mother “Ma, why did you bring me here?” The mother told him “if not for the school Mama had built and if not for the perseverance of a mother, you would not be asking me this question even.” The kid was enlightened and felt apologetic about not obeying his mother’s commands earlier in the day.

As days passed, Mama declared that the kid was ready to attend a normal mainstream school and it should be Mysore. He went along with the kid’s parents and discussed with some Head Mistresses and Head Masters of various schools in Mysore urging them to take in deaf children. Finally, the kid started attending the Ursu Boarding School, a school that accepts maximum number of hearing impaired children in the entire Mysore alone.

During weekends when time permitted the kid’s parents visited Srinivasan’s house here and then. He always hugged the kid with his trademark tight grip, and the kid smiled supremely. He always asked some questions to check the kid’s rational analytical abilities and gave some suggestions to the kid’s parents.

Mama: Neenu ivattu newspapers odideya (in Kannada) ? Did you read newspapers today ? What was the major news that you read (in English)?

The kid, confused by the sudden change of languages, stared baffled at his mother, who asked him to repay attention to Mama.

Kid: Are you asking something about the newspapers ? (in Kannada).

Mama: Smart guy, you should try and learn English slowly and try to reply in English (in Kannada).

Kid: Will try.

Mama: No trying, you can do it.

The kid grows up and manages to confound his parents by his sustained consistent academic performances at school and finally enters the college.

By now Mama’s conversations span immense stuffs. He talked about how he was proud of his son Raja, and how he finds the USA, how USA has better infrastructure for hearing impaired than India, the radical changes needed in India towards hearing impaired education and more importantly the change in attitudes of mothers and parents when training their kids, etc.

The school was relocated to some new spacious premises and he suggested the candidature of the kid’s mother, to run the school as the School’s Chief Counselor. He guided and often came to school during school fests, visits by important dignitaries and gave speeches urging the parents to keep focused and dedicated during the course of training their wards. He gave examples of this kid and several other kids whom he had successfully trained to inspire and give confidence to the parents. Raja also came and gave speeches that really moved and inspired some parents.

Srinivasan’s health began deteriorating as old age caught up with him. Still, he was surprisingly very active despite such ripe old age. He actively moved around both inside and outside the house, had still the sharp astute vision and touch in his conversations with everyone. He achieved so much that nobody else can dream of and left behind a legacy, that is the school that showed light to parents of hearing impaired children all over India till he passed away on July 10.

By now, you all must have guessed the kid was none other than me. I write this with deep pain, sorrow and not being in a position to attend his funeral at India from Florida, United States where I’m currently working. His funeral, I suppose will be attended by several dignitaries, his sons and families along with the Trustees of the Parents Association of Deaf Children as well as parents of the hearing impaired children who have immensely benefited from the man’s guidance at Mysore.

I and my parents and lots of others owed immensely a lot to Mama, as he was fondly called by all of us. He was a father figure not only to my family, but also for the distraught parents of the hearing impaired children all over India. He showed us how to walk the talk and achieve the impossible. We can only hope to take forward his legacy and inspiring vision to every breadth and length of India.

I request that the Rotary West Institute for the Mother and the Deaf Child be renamed as ‘Wing Commander K. K. Srinivasan Institute for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.’ This will be a very small but deserved tribute to the man, who we can rightly say pioneered the training and education of deaf and hard of hearing impaired in India.

R. K. Narayan is one of the most prominent Indian English writers to ever have graced our country. Narayan’s simplistic English stories are woven around realistic portrayals of various Indian characters, and various Indian cities with real names or imaginary ones, the most prominent of them being the little town of Malgudi.

I had brought the book during the Strand Book Fair, a haven for book lovers who wish to buy hordes of new books on a discounted price. Finally, after a year of having brought it, I did get some time to flip through the pages of the book. I was left spellbound by the amazing narrative and story weaving abilities of R.K. Narayan around various characters whom you could easily relate to the people in your every-day life. So synonymous are the roles and portrayals of these characters, such that you will often wonder, why couldn’t I think about that.

It is here, that you will definitely appreciate the brilliance of Narayan’s astute story writing abilities. Narayan was supposedly not a firm believer in age-old traditions prevalent during his times, and also married a woman outside the norms of Tamil Brahman caste, which is historically one of the most blessed upper castes in Indian Society. Still, the way he has penned the traditions of erstwhile Indian society and the dynamism involved with the advent of modernization in his stories beautifully has no wonder left a pleasant sense of admiration among his readers and respect among the western authors of repute, to name a few Somerset Maugham, John Updike and some others from our own land like V S Naipaul.

In his autobiography, R.K. Narayan attributes the idea of The Guide to an incident which he observed in the Cauvery Basin. In his own words:

A recent situation in Mysore offered a setting for such story. A severe drought had dried up all the rivers and tanks; Krishnaraja Sagar, an enormous reservoir feeding channels that irrigated thousands of acres, had also become dry, and its bed, a hundred and fifty feet deep, was now exposed to the sky with fissures and cracks, revealing an ancient submerged temple, coconut stumps, and dehydrated crocodiles. As a desperate measure, the municipal council organized prayers for rains. A group of Brahmans stood knee-deep in water (procured at great cost) on the dry bed of Kaveri, fasted, prayed and chanted certain mantras continuously for eleven days. On the twelfth day it rained. It was really the starting point of The Guide.

The Guide is a beautiful story which is spun around this simple event which still manifests, and is inspired on a true story, with a hero named Raju, whose turmoils, sacrifices and dilemma’s – Narayan effortlessly takes us through. His sense of humor, benign satire, irony, lucid and simple flow of prose is clearly evident in every page of the stories in every one of his fifty years of contributions to the Indian literature. All I can say is that they will continue to remain fresh as decades roll one by one, and the world slips into and escapes from anarchy, mayhem of the mankind. Get one for your bookshelf.

There has been a whole lot of literature regarding the period of transition of our country after the independence gained in 1947, to the present globalization days – Gurcharan Das’s India Unbound, Ramachandra Guha’s India after Gandhi. Although it is not certainly possible to compress the entire socio-economic history of India, the politics, their causes and after effects to a brief 263 pages, given the diverse and amazing socio-economic and cultural landscape of India, Sunil Khilnani’s Idea of India lives up to it’s image of being a compelling and rousing read. Although it picks up only a few key ideas that played a significant role in Indian history, it does a good job of analyzing most of the ideas presented in a wonderful, smooth and crisp flow of prose and pace.

Khilnani, subtly makes use of his profound historical knowledge and talks about Nehruvian and Gandhian ideas and their implications in present day India. As an unashamed modernist who ends up defending Nehru and Gandhi and their ideas, Khilnani also subtly captures the brief portrayals of various prominent national leaders and characters and their roles in shaping the Indian post independent history. Though most of the analysis in the book tends to be brief, the book is absolutely a pleasant read compared to the banal Shashi Tharoor, who relies more on his metaphor abilities while writing books.

The book talks about Nehru’s tussles within the Indian national congress, Hindu nationalism, Indira Gandhi and her “garibi hatao ” movement, her radical departure from the conventional congress principles, the identity of being Indian (how Nehru, Tagore, Gandhi and others had to become Indians to start bringing changes), the vortex of thought processes being influenced by inquisitive western ideas, the anatomy and economic dynamic changes of Indian cities and their growth illustrated by few examples of Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, and Bengalooru, the emergence of regional parties in the Indian political space, industrialization and globalization of India, the concept of Indian state and opposition to the idea with in the congress, partition of India, as well as occasional interesting quotes to few other wonderful literature like R.K. Narayan’s The Malgudi days, the faux paus of H.D Devegowda who as the prime minister of India once said, “Please help me, I’m not an economist, give me concrete solutions.” etc.

To sum it up, after you finish this book, I’m sure that each one of you will have found a starting point to look deeply into India’s history as Khilnani further stresses in the epilogue. A bit of thinking and retrospection will also help you make sense of country’s most current problems, as I have discovered profoundly in the past few months. I will post them in coming blog posts. For now, grab this book, grab a pack of potato chips or whatever is that you like to munch on, and hit the most comfortable sofa or bed in your place.

Science writer, atheist, teacher, reformist, rational thinker, story teller, social activist, Kannada’s encyclopedia – Prof. G T Narayana Rao passed away in early hours of the morning.

Image courtesy : Chandan B N

I was informed by Ravi.

I deeply regret that I couldn’t hand over my half baked writeup on his auto-biography “MugiyaDa payaNa”, which he had handed over to me before I left to the US as per his request. I honestly didn’t know what to comment. It was one of the brutally inspiring, motivational, frank, honest books I had ever read.

He wrote in his book that after his death, the news of his death should not be spread and requested for his body to be donated to Mysore’s JSS hospital. He also requested his sons and relatives not to undergo the religious rites normally prevalent in Hindu deaths.

May his soul rest in peace.

Press References:
1. http://www.starofmysore.com/main.asp?type=news&item=17143
2. http://sampada.net/article/9534

The controversial Kannada channel TV-9, who says they are there for a better society, seems to be like a start-up involving top news anchors who’d worked previously for ETV-Kannada. Some of them seem to have been elevated to higher statuses like interviewing VIPS (MLAs, Netas etc etc) in a cnn-ibnish style than just news anchoring.

And, the Mungaru MaLe star Ganesh, seems to like the Channel very much.

I’m on Twitter here. And, as Jace says – “small is cool” has become the fad these days. Howler for fraandship!

If the statistics and data in the reference urls are pretty accurate and can be believed, then this article makes sense. Some facts are pretty informative and mind-boggling – esp the points on Internet, food storage systems and renewable energies.

Hat tip: To Casanova.

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The Goldman Sachs predicts that India will be #2 super power by 2050 along with other BRIC bloc countries. Will I live till then, I do not know. But if this is going to be true, then I hope so. There are already some instant criticisms here and there on this report. Dissect the report at your own convenience.

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Adam: So, can you clearly communicate what clever canine conundrum you’re currently concocting?
Jamie: What?
Adam: What’s the myth?

mindryin has some kick-ass kannaDa and English satire videos on Youtube. Do watch them.

As I switched the news channels after getting bored of the India-Pakistan cricket match, the news trickled in about a farmer’s death in Haveri. These kind of incidents aren’t new to us. But I’m writing about the incident because it has been branded as an atrocities by the men in khaaki by the hopeless media.

So the question here is what makes the police in India commit stuffs like these. We are all reading shocking stories everyday on how the cops are misusing their power and bringing a shame to their daily functioning. The Haveri golibaar incident isn’t an isolated issue of Karnataka state police. One thing apparent from that incident is how low police forces all over the nation are scooping to these days. Why ?

History of Indian police:

The first ever police force in India came into existence in the colonial raj days. The Britishers established a force that worked for them, by keeping the people under subjugation of the British colonial lords. The police force picked few indians who in turn joined the forces to earn out a livelihood. They weren’t ashamed of committing atrocities on their own people when the rulers issued out orders. The British inculcated a system that gave unlimited authority for police to suppress any dissent against the protesters. This culture seeped in sort of into the police machinery as years flew.

Britishers are responsible for the hierarchies that you see in Indian administration these days. Almost all of Indian administration has titles that were invented by the Britishers and the shades of the colonial raj continues even these days. The Indian police force also has a depth based hierarchy that trickles down into constables who are lowly paid as those in the hey days of the administration. In fact the police act of 1861 is still the basis of Indian police machinery these days.

Corruption in the police forces:

So the Britishers left in 1947, and Indians began heading the police force. The concepts brought in by the Britishers were drafted into the rulebooks. The colonial lords were replaced by the local regional influential politicians who wanted to control respective regions for their vested interests. The corruption has been pervasive right from the rank of the police constable to the higher ranked chief of police throughout the country. The colonial mentality still reigns in the administrative measures taken by the police these days. The states governments in India also hold penetrable authorities over the police forces these days. An average salary of the Indian police constable is very low and he is an easy target for the vested interests in the political parties that want to shed the opposite party in bad light.

Politics of self-interests:

The blaming that happens in political circles is nothing new to all of us. The Haveri golibaar incident witnessed the usual political blamewar, with the stupid Congress and appa-maga factory accusing the state BJP government as sleeping over the government formation. The loquacious Siddaramaih even said in KannaDa, “sarkarakke baroDu maja maadoDakke aLLa” ( coming to govt. is not to have fun). In fact, Siddaramaiah’s followers from congress had engaged in similar rowdy play in Jayapura in Mysore ages ago. However all the political parties have their share of mal-administration and it is known how low they scoop to inflict bad image on other parties. One easy target for them is the police. I won’t be surprised if some sane committee investigates the haveri golibaar incident and concurs that the constable who shot the farmer had been paid by some vested interests to commit that blunder.

How to set it all right ?

The deeply ingrained corruption in Indian administrative circles will need decades of cleansing. The police are also humans like us. It is unfair to blame them for every mistakes of theirs’ without delving into the socio-cultural scars that the colonial British have left on them.

1. The chief minister is answerable to all the corruption in the state. He either sits idle and lets his sub-ordinate ministers take advantage of the police or he himself directs police to do unfathomable activities. So it is upto the chief ministers of states to be fair and impartial in administration.

2. The political parties and the media need to think straight in the brain and desist from pressures on the police forces. Example: Noida twin murders.

3. The union government is responsible for corruption at the center level. Point 1 applies to the prime minister and the union cabinet.

4. There are talks about the police act being revised since 2005. The flaws of the age old colonial police system needs to be rectified and revised.

5. Police is seen as an authority not answerable to the public if they want. On basis of the Right to the Information act, they should start mingling a lot with the society, and this helps both parties understand the problems closely. Some good samaritan officers in the police industry are blogging these days that might reach the urban population readers well. At rural levels, the police/political chiefs should lead the way by incorporating monthly visits and conducting a Janta darbar frequently and report back to their superiors and the media. The haveri incident could have been avoided if such a darbar had been incorporated by the officials.

6. The average pay of police services, most importantly that of the constables need to be improved significantly. Sixth Pay Commission has relegated the leadership of police services to a band of utterly demoralized officers and wholly denigrated it’s rank, scale, and promotional avenues – vis-à-vis other all-India and the central Services.

7. Infrastructure in the police station needs to be uplifted. Most of the stations do not even have decent vehicles, cars, bikes and a library, internet etc.

8. Lead by example at highest levels. The highest ranks in Indian police service undergo rigorous IPS exam and subsequent training at Sardar vallabh bhai patel academy upon selections. They should try to bring in knowledge transfer at lower ranks which may not be highly educated and rational like them. The high chiefs should discard the politics, greed for money and lead by example.

9. I dont think that the CBI is fully clean, but they seem to be more impartial than the police forces. The CBI was brought in much later after the colonial rule and they keep revising their policies. The CBI measures can be slowly injected to the police services.

There might be more important points, but I’m not able to get them right now. So I will stop here and hope that the police machinery is reformed in decades.

References:

1. To serve and protect from indiatogether.org [ http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/jan/gov-policeact.htm ]
2. http://www.pay-commission.com/
3. http://www.cbi.gov.in/history/hist.php
4. http://karnatakastatepolice.org/karnatakastatepolice/

One year ago, I wrote a nonsensical entry for the school magazine, that was convoluted and not quite upto the point I wanted it to be. Atanu Dey got it all right when he wrote a piece on laptops and learning. He says:

Would we have become better educated if we had access to laptops and the internet? Arguably yes. At least some of us would have had a richer educational experience. Strictly speaking for myself, I would have probably flunked. I would have surfed the web for god alone knows what, I would have played computer games (I once spent an entire year playing Solitaire on my laptop), I would have wasted all my time socializing on the web. In short, I am grateful that I got access to the internet only after my basic education was complete. Even now, as a grown up and presumed responsible person, I find that my work suffers when I start surfing the web. I am sure that if my internet privileges are not restricted, I will probably never finish the work I am supposed to do and I fear that I will get fired.

So when I wrote that piece, critics led by the venerable Gowda told me that technology and internet is admissible to a certain extent only. I too had thought like them, but had failed to get the flow right back then in my article. I didn’t want to submit the crap that I had assembled in less than an hour. But the magazine badly needed an alumnus to write a piece and given the paucity of other alumni to write an article, my article was published. My piece was to be concerned regarding internet and technology in the life of the hearing impaired children, and how I benefited from it. However I ended up bragging about my life there. And more importantly, I forgot to put the point that the technology and internet cannot be differentiators un-till the basic primary enlightenment stage is reached and there lies the flaw in that article. Let us forget that article for now.

However if I were to go back and write the piece wrt todays children and their learning, I think I would have struggled to write it the exactly the way Atanu has written. Atanu points out how schemes like OLPC are superficial and in reality such stuffs do not work. You go to some village in India and give them a laptop and come back after a year – nothing will have changed. The reality of the education is grossly divided these days between urban kids and the rural kids. While the urban kids get significantly greater resources for their perusal, my experiences have led me to note that they almost end up not utilising most of stuffs. Rural kids in contrast tend to grab even tiniest chances offered to them and end up being successful if provided with proper guidance.

However coming to the point, I feel that the provision of internet and laptops to the kids today needs to be allowable to a certain stage. How to enforce this strategy ? Let us take the schools. Most of the schools in India do not even have a decent library. Try doing a quiz and you will know how much is the lack of the current affairs. Having dedicated internet centers for fixed hours daily along with a resource person who can guide how exactly to use the internet and the laptop can be extremely beneficial in these cases. In urban areas I do not think implementing this will be much of a problem depending on the schools managements. Coming to the rural areas, all of us are from one or the other village. Each one of us can go to our villages monthly and try spending some time with the kids to guide them, brush up their knowledge and guide their careers. Once you are assured they do not go to the way that they end up mis-managing the resources provided to them, you can ask the kid’s parents to go for internet at their house. A problem with this proposal is I’m not sure how feasible is affordability of the internet. The rates for broadband are costly, forget dialup. The emergence of telecommunication in India is sort of promising and I hope that it will alleviate the affordability issues as it reaches the aam-aadmi in coming months. Another issue is I do not know if the kids can stay focused as they plunge them into the information highway.

I will stop here now, and try to pen more thoughts on this. But for now, I think the OLPC India wiki has deep fundas and insights on the problems of technology deployment in India. Think about it.