Navigating the storm

When you are overwhelmed by despair, reach out to people around you for support.

The taste of victory is sweet, and for the scores of students across the country waiting with bated breath for their results, it was a time for celebration. Images of students shedding tears of joy and sporting sunny smiles were splashed across various media streams. The smiles were a culmination of burning the midnight oil, intense preparation and guidance from a community of teachers and concerned family members.

What remained invisible is the other side of this rosy picture. An army of students who had not made it, either failing to make the grade or not meeting their own high standards of self-created images of excellence. The taste of failure is bitter and seeps deep within, the hurt magnified by the mirror of one’s own judgment.

Facing reality

Sushmita (name changed) was mortified when the results were announced. She had failed most subjects, and watching her own friends celebrate their results was painful. To console the young lady, many of us tried to help by speaking to her about her options to show her that no door is ever permanently closed.

However, through her tears she candidly told us, “Please allow me to cry… I am in no mood for solutions and happy endings.” It was a lesson for all of us who had guided and formed close bonds with this student. We slowly realised that we ourselves needed to face the discomfort and pain of having one of our students not meet expectations. In a small way, we felt collectively responsible for her and while our intentions were good, we were not giving her the time and space to feel and come to terms with her own conflicted feelings. We asked her to reach out when she was ready. Three weeks later, Sushmita came to us ready to look at her options.

After a series of brainstorming sessions, she decided to retake her exams as a private candidate and pursue her passion for music by working in a music shop as an assistant. Five years later, it was a pleasure to meet her again. She had found her calling and was waiting to head overseas for a music course sponsored by the shop she worked in. Looking back, she said she felt gratitude for the experience of facing uncertainty and was sure that this would help her in her life ahead.

To completely face the unpleasant is strength, and for students who are going through periods of uncertainty, know that, however clichéd it sounds, there is always light at the end of the tunnel.

Reaching out to the people around you for support, or seeking help from a counsellor if you feel you are being handicapped by your sense of despair, will open windows to change which you never thought was possible.

Bittersweet

One of the ways to garner strength is to read the life stories of people who have navigated through periods of storm and sunshine, or spending time with people from your own family and neighbourhoods who have inspired you.

Imagine your dreams of becoming a lawyer curtailed by circumstances of a world war and financial poverty. When my ninety-year-old uncle shared stories from his past, his sense of humour and his way of looking at his own tapestry of life experiences was an eye opener and provided a glimpse into a world which seems so alien from to own. While he could not continue his education, he pursued his passion for learning in various other ways. He had no remnants of bitterness about not getting what he desired but always saw the blessings that his unplanned life brought in good measure. He had encountered people who had betrayed him and lifted him, death and birth, loss and gain, and when asked for advice, with a twinkle in his eye, asked us not to listen to advice but know that all is always well! Treat the two imposters — success and failure — just the same, he would tell us, paraphrasing the famous line in Kipling’s poem “If.”

In many traditions, when a baby is born, a mixture of neem and jaggery is offered, to signify tasting both the bitter and the sweet. For those of you, who are only swallowing bitterness, know that this too shall pass (pun intended)! Trust in the experience completely, reach out your hands for help when you are ready and take a deep breath, chanting the mantra, “All is well.”

This bittersweet symphony called life is the greatest gift you can receive. All the best in your journey.

UGC Must Not Rush into a Rash Reform





The University Grants Commission's (UGC) rendition of a Choice-Based Credit System (CBCS) limits choice and, unless modified drastically , threatens to throttle academic innovation and excellence in the country . CBCS requires students to complete a certain number of hours of academic work, tallied in credits, to qualify for a degree. For a subject honours degree, the university identifies compulsory core courses, accounting for a portion of the credits, with the balance to be earned from an assortment of disciplines, related to the honours degree subject or otherwise. This much is welcome.However, the UGC takes it a step further: in the name of interuniversity mobility via transferring credits, it seeks to im pose uniformity across universities. The UGC has prepared a model syllabus for each discipline, with core courses and the choices for electives for each subject. This bureaucratic quest for homogeneity ignores the reality that universities, meant to be creators of knowledge, do their work best when its faculty have the freedom and autonomy to pursue excellence in ways they think most suited. Programmes across universities are not meant to be replicas of one another. The freedom to design programmes, allowing for diversity and specialisation, is essential to ensure that universities fulfil their mandate as knowledge creators. Leave individual universities to work out the equivalence of credits sought to be transferred from one to the other.
Policymakers should understand that higher education is not about acquiring skills, but about advancing knowledge.Those who learn to learn by pursuing knowledge under guidance can learn and unlearn skills as required. Those who merely train in specific skills will be left in the lurch when those skills become obsolete.

Vedanta - Nothing is Real

K R MANOHARA





The world is a dream. The Mundaka Upanishad tells us that both the waking state and dream state of our life are illusory . They are mere creations of our consciousness. The highest level of our consciousness is that of Turiya, when we cease to see the world of matter and feel only one consciousness everywhere.Giordano Bruno, the Italian Dominican friar-philosopher, said, “The world is an eternal enigma, and our only connection with it is that we form part of it when we live.... [Man] must finally quit the scene to reappear no more. Death annuls all the features of life.... Truth, god, immortality are delightful concepts.
They are true, but standing on no verifiable basis.“
The whole universe of things and beings is a long dream. Everything gets superimposed upon consciousness. There have been great men in the past who have replied to the threats of death by rulers with, “You are going to kill me? That is the greatest joke I have heard.Even god cannot kill me. Who are you to kill me?
“And when you kill me, I, too, will see my body falling here.And when you cut off my head, I, too, will see it roll down. Because I am that which is in you, which is holding that sword. So when you have killed me, I shall still remain and survive in you as you.“
That reply , and variations thereof, are valid for all of us.

How to Make India Drought Resistant





There is a lot to do and much can be done

The Met has forecast a second-successive year of deficient rainfall, an event that last happened 28 years ago.Punjab and Haryana -the country's largest wheat-producing states -are predicted to get the lowest rainfall in 16 years. These are forward-looking numbers, and the reality could be more benign. But there is every reason for the government to gear itself up to avert large-scale rural distress. One of the major failures of successive regimes is to build an extensive, as well as efficient, system of irrigation. Much of what we have today is the legacy of decades past: open canal systems, built long ago, lose much water through evaporation and seepage due to poor maintenance. We can, and must, improve on this.Traditional models of storing water -and replenishing groundwater -like ponds, wells and even small lakes have to be rejuvenated. All land cannot be bought to develop malls and condos.Rice, wheat and coarse grains must be released from Food Corporation of India's hoards, at low cost. Drought-resistant seeds, already developed, need to be produced in large quantities and distributed cheap to farmers. Initiatives like kisan credit cards, crop insurance and so on have either failed or are yet to take off meaningfully , because we lack the institutional mechanism to activate them. However, preventing the farmer falling deeper into debt, with distress borrowings from the moneylender, is the foremost task before the government. The government will have an opportunity to put its Jan Dhan achievement to work and disburse credit to farmers.
Most states continue with the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act, which give monopsony powers to brokers and middlemen, and deprive farmers of a just market price. This has to be scrapped.Expanding the network of regulated warehouses, whose receipts are now negotiable instruments, will also help.Making the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme work as it is intended to will shield landless labourers from distress.

the speaking tree - Seeds: The Transcendent Stuff Of Life

Blu Greenberg





It was from a young boy that i learnt about the transcendent nature of seeds. I was working on a graduate school paper, the hypothesis of which was that Orthodox Jews believed in the existence of God in the universe. Of course, my respondents, 30 random members of my synagogue, affirmed this as an article of faith; but when came time for proof or certainty , there was plenty of equivocation. Only one person ­ the cantor of the synagogue whose heartfelt prayer had led the community for almost three dozen years ­ had no doubts whatsoever. God was his intimate father, present in his life every single day , all day.One evening, still curious about the other 29 religious souls, those who carefully observed the commandments, i returned home to find my 10-year-old son waiting for some conversation. I decided to test out the God questions on him. “Of course there is a God,“ JJ answered. He went on to offer his proof.“You see those cucumbers? Well, one tiny seed becomes a cucumber, and another tiny seed grows into a tomato, and another becomes a banana. Someone is making that happen. Someone is making the difference. That someone must be God.“
Without using those words, JJ was talking about the DNA of a seed ­ key to the universe in a speck of an object. What JJ was saying was that God's intelligence and power are encompassed in a single seed, a specially marked, carefully programmed unit, all the more remarkable because of its infinitesimal size.
Seeds are the transcendent stuff of life; our lives come from seeds. Seeds are what enabled life to be maintained from primitive times unto today: every human being ever born came from a seed; so too, all animal and plant life that sustained us as food, all that humans wore on their backs before synthetics, all aspects of shelter, all original tools of culture such as writing, music and art ­ indeed everything that we depended on to continue the generations.
Given the importance of seed, it is not unfair to say that in our everyday lives we tend to take for granted their power and importance. We discard seeds as garbage without a thought of the mysteries they hold; we pay more for watermelons and lemons engineered to be free of those “pesky“ things.
Judaism partially compen sates in acknowledging the masterminding ability of seeds in their end product, as my son did. Among my favourite aspects of Judaism are the blessings we recite during the course of each day, blessings over the wonders of nature ­ food, natural events such as thunder and lightning and great oceans, scenes of beauty , persons of great wisdom, change of seasons, and more.Interestingly , as regards the blessings over food, we are taught to recite not one global blessing for all food but differentiated formulations of thanks to God.
Before biting into an apple, we recite a blessing on this fruit that grows on a tree; we recite a different blessing on a cucumber that grows in the ground or a grape that comes from a vine or bread that comes from a wheat stalk in the earth. It is not the fullest recognition of the brilliance of seed, but it does heighten awareness that nature is an exquisitely designed, variegated entity that connects us to the Divine.
JJ's life was taken a dozen years ago, at age 36, in a bicycle accident.
I never think of seed without thinking of God, and of JJ. Seeds are the transcendent stuff of life, for so much about our lives comes from seeds. From `Sacred Seed', published by The Golden Sufi Centre.
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Urban forestry plan to combat climate change

The environment ministry will launch an urban forestry scheme on June 6 which will involve afforesting degraded forest lands in and around 200 cities. On the occasion of World Environment Day , environment minister Prakash Javadekar said the forestry scheme will act against climate change by creating a carbon sink and against air pollution in cities. The scheme will include a “smriti van“ service where any resident can plant a sapling in memory of his or her loved one by paying Rs 2000 to the state forest department.The ministry is also considering starting tree surveys in cities which can be conducted by residents and college or school students. A plan is being worked to create small nurseries of about 1000 to 2000 plants in government schools where there is some extra space.
The urban forestry scheme will be launched in Pune where a 70 ha degraded forest land is made available. About 4,000 saplings of native varieties will be planted in a phased manner. “Delhi has forests but there are several cities with only gardens. All 199 corporations have been asked to send us details of space availability,“ said Javadekar. TNN For the full report, log on to http:www.timesofindia.com





First-ever Post-Graduate course on Northeast to be introduced from next year: Dr Jitendra Singh 

New Delhi: As yet another new initiative to bring mainstream India closer to the North-East Region (NER), the first ever Post-Graduate Course in Northeastern Studies will be introduced from next year. The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh said here today that meanwhile, starting from the forthcoming semester beginning August 2015, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi will start an “Option Paper” in Northeastern Studies for students undertaking exam for Masters Degree in the University. 

Dr Jitendra Singh said this after a detailed briefing by Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia University, Prof Talat Ahmad and Director, Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research, Prof Sanjoy Hazarika. 

While complimenting the Jamia Millia authorities for this initiative, Dr Jitendra Singh said an institutionalized study and research on Northeast India will provide inputs for professionals and policy makers on key issues relating to the region and thus help create a bridge between the policy making desk and the realities on the ground. 

Dr Jitendra Singh said ever since he was given the charge of Ministry for Development of North Eastern Region, he noticed that everyone talked about bringing the NER closer to mainstream India but hardly anyone spoke of bringing mainstream India closer to the Northeast. The new initiative will, therefore, make up for this missing link in a big way, he added. 

Vice Chancellor, Prof Talat Ahmad informed that while the Optional Papers for the Northeastern Studies for Post-Graduate students will start from the current session, the University plans to start a full-fledged Master’s Degree in Northeastern Studies from the next session. He said, the curriculum of the course will be comprehensive and cover diverse aspects of Northeast India including history, geography, heritage and current affairs.