5 point something: Society must give women the following...

1. Education – Women are smarter than men and should have an equal if not a stronger right to education. Beti Bachao Beti Padhao

2. Freedom to have a social life – Interaction with society including men (without judgment) will help them gain the confidence and experience to deal with life situations

3. Right to marry a man of her choice - So that she can continue to be the woman that she has evolved to be

4. Protection from physical and mental abuse – Women will far excel men in most fields if their safety and wellbeing is guaranteed

5. Same love, care and nurturing as a son – It’s about time daughters are treated the same as sons, especially in villages and small town.

The author is a bored Mumbai bachelor. 5 Point Something is all in good fun and not meant to cause offence.

Source: DNA, 9-03-2017

On Women’s Day, meet a ‘special’ person who cares for differently abled children

Bobby Ramani (27), a Lucknow University alumnus, left a fulfilling career to set up a school for specially abled children.

Bobby was doing well at a real-estate company. She would come home every day, look at her differently abled brother and try to cheer him up. However, her brother would never seem very happy unless Bobby took him for a drive. After all, autistic kids love fresh air, music and long drives.

On one such evening, Bobby realised that she was not fully satisfied with what she was doing. “Making money is not all that matters after all,” she thought. So she decided to establish an organisation for differently abled children, especially those from the below poverty line (BPL) segment.

Bobby Ramani (27), a Lucknow University alumnus, left a fulfilling career to set up a school for specially abled children.

Bobby was doing well at a real-estate company. She would come home every day, look at her differently abled brother and try to cheer him up. However, her brother would never seem very happy unless Bobby took him for a drive. After all, autistic kids love fresh air, music and long drives.

On one such evening, Bobby realised that she was not fully satisfied with what she was doing. “Making money is not all that matters after all,” she thought. So she decided to establish an organisation for differently abled children, especially those from the below poverty line (BPL) segment.According to Bobby, ignorance and the laidback attitude of the people are the biggest challenges in her line of work. “This attitude alone led to every other issue that followed,” Bobby said.

“Surveys indicate that 30 to 40 million Indians suffer from psychiatric problems that require urgent attention. However, there are only 500 psychiatrists, 400 clinical psychologists and 100 psychiatric social workers available to provide them cosmopolitan health care. Most of the mentally ill are cared for by indigenous healers. If these are an all-over estimate, imagine the figures we would get if we focus on rural areas,” she added.

Families often grow frustrated with specially abled children due to the lack of services available and the extra care and patience required in bringing them up. A lot of times, they end up blaming such kids and take out their anger and ignorance on them.

“We at ‘I Support Foundation’ are committed towards making Lucknow and the country a friendly place for the differently abled,” she said.

Source: Hindustan Times, 8-03-2017

For a New Humanity

OSHO





The most important need of humanity today is to be made aware that its past has betrayed it. There is no point in continuing with the past, for doing so will be suicidal.The new humanity will not be a society in the old sense, where individuals are only parts of it.It will be a meeting of individuals where individuals are the masters and society is to serve them. It will not have so many religions, it will have only a religious consciousness. The individual, for the first time, will not be programmed; he will be helped to be himself. He will be given only tremendous love for freedom, so that he can sacrifice everything, even his own life -but he cannot sacrifice freedom.
There will be no marriage; love will be the only law. Unless everyone is well-educated and has at least a bachelor's degree, he will not be allowed to vote.There will be a no-party system because people will vote directly for individuals. The government, unlike now, won't have any power; it will be simply functional. It will serve society in the real sense, not just in words.
Life has so many dimensions, but politics has dominated them all. Looking at a newspaper, someone on another planet would find it difficult to conceive what kind of people live on earth: only politicians?
Murderers? Rapists? Criminals? Because the media reports are full of these people and on top of everything is the politician. Newspapers should be full of creativity and positivity; only 10% should be given to the politicians and the negative elements.

Dear Reader

WISH YOU A VERY HAPPY WOMEN'S DAY FOR TODAY, TOMORROW AND FOR THE YEARS TO COME.


TISS GUWAHATI CAMPUS LIBRARY

The stakes in Manipur

nipur will vote in 38 of its 60 Assembly constituencies on Saturday in the first of two phases. This election is shaping up into something new for Manipur’s polity, a direct contest between two national parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party. The Congress is seeking to defend its 15-year record in power, while the BJP fancies its chances in a State that has generally voted favourably for the party ruling at the Centre. The four-month-long blockade by the United Naga Council of highways leading up to the valley has dominated the discourse in the run-up to the elections. The Manipur elections are important for both national parties. The Congress is seeking to retain its hold as the only party that has electoral support across various ethnic and geographic regions in the State, while the BJP is keen to get power in another northeastern State, after its victory last year in Assam. A contest between the Congress and the BJP in Manipur is welcome, as both parties do not represent any specific ethnic groups, unlike other parties in the fray in previous elections. But the BJP lacks a grassroots base in Manipur and largely comprises leaders who have defected from the Congress. This has resulted in a political campaign largely made up of accusations and counter-accusations of corruption, besides the blame game on the ongoing blockade.

The decision in early December 2016 by the Okram Ibobi Singh government to notify the formation of seven new districts, creating 16 districts in the State, was momentous. It allowed the Congress to seek support from the hill areas for this decision, as the new districts in the hills made for better administrative access in areas far from the valley. However, it resulted in the intensification of the blockade sponsored by the UNC, severely hitting normal life in Manipur. The persistence of the blockade has led to some degree of disaffection owing to the inability of the Congress government to bring it to an end, even if the government’s defence that any punitive measures against the UNC would have led to violence cannot be summarily dismissed. The Congress blames the Centre for not prevailing upon the UNC and other Naga groups to end the blockade, while the BJP blames the Congress for precipitating the crisis. In a State where insurgent groups remain active and that is still dependent on Central transfer of resources to shore up its economy, the electorate would have welcomed a genuine discourse on such issues in the run-up to the elections. Sadly, this did not happen.

Source: The Hindu, 3-03-2017

As a teacher, the learning never stops

Teaching happened to me by accident. It was never my first choice. I was at a point in my life where it was the best option available to me. But after 20 years in the profession, I’m glad I pursued it. Over the course of my career, I’ve had the privilege to teach children of different age groups. I’ve guided pre-schoolers as they developed their early perceptions of the world we live in, taught middle-schoolers hell-bent on being mischievous and helped moody high-school teenagers navigate the challenges of adolescence. For all that I’ve taught my young kids, however, they’ve given me back so much more. While I have hopefully played a role in helping shape their lives, what I’ve learnt from them most certainly continues to shape mine.

Acceptance: Pre-schoolers have no biases or preconceived notions. They are able to accept every classmate for who they are or what they are. As a teacher, I too learned to accept the kids as they were - no prejudices and no biases. With my acceptance came calm and peace in my classroom. Nobody was better and nobody was worse than the other.

Patience: This has never been one of my virtues. But the pre-schoolers forced me to develop an abundance of it. You can’t help but be patient when teaching a pre-schooler. A child of four years can only move so fast. There is so much to see, so much to explore. I learned to enjoy those precious moments with the babies. I learned to appreciate the effort and sincerity that they put into every little thing they did.

Each child learns differently: While this fact is drummed into our heads in training, it is truly surprising when you actually encounter different learning styles in the classroom. I learned very quickly to teach the same lesson in different ways, especially for the preschoolers. Sometimes I have had colleagues wonder if I was going batty because I would insist on repeating a lesson several times in different ways.

Sense of wonder: My little ones taught me to wonder – something I had forgotten in the rush of life — at little everyday things like raindrops caught in a spider’s web, the aircraft flying overhead, the resident cat of the school moving her kittens to a new hiding place one at a time, watching a bulbul build its nest day-by-day, twig-by-twig while we waited for the buses to pick up the kids… the list is endless. The learning that took place during such unplanned sessions was remarkable and never forgotten.

Technology: The students of my secondary and higher-secondary classes have been largely responsible for the upgradation of my technology skills. They taught me to make the best possible use of my laptop and iPad. The outcome of these sessions was the students appreciated my candour and were much more receptive of the syllabus I had to teach. A rapport was established that enabled me to use my newly-learned skills to teach them my subject more effectively.

Humility: In my years of teaching I have come across more than a few students that were extremely intelligent. Accepting the fact that the child probably knew more than me was a humbling experience at first, but I knew accepting it would help me better guide the child to fully realise his potential. This spurred me on to update my body of knowledge which then allowed me to engage my students in healthy discussions and debates in class.

After all, we teachers are only facilitators and not omniscient beings.

What’s most rewarding about teaching is what you get back. The learning never stops.

The writer works as Mumbai coordinator for Kids for Tigers, The Sanctuary Tiger Programme and is a freelance trainer for teacher trainin

Source: DNA, 8-03-2017

Ragging alert: Engg students can be expelled for mocking caste, gender, religion

Engineering students can be expelled for mocking the caste, ethnicity or sexual orientation of college mates, as the regulator has expanded the definition of ragging ahead of the new academic session.

Ragging is rampant in such colleges where freshers are often humiliated by senior students and even abused physically. There have been instances when students have died or ended their lives unable to bear the pressure.

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has identified a set of pejorative words in a notification released on February 22, a copy of which is with HT.

The notification defines ragging as “any act of physical or mental abuse (including bullying and exclusion) targeted at another student (fresher or otherwise) on the ground of colour, race, religion, caste, ethnicity, gender (including transgender), sexual orientation, appearance, nationality, regional origins, linguistic identity, place of birth, place of residence or economic background”.

The guilty could be barred from classes for a certain period, thrown out of the college or in extreme cases, lose admission, which will make the student ineligible to study engineering anywhere in the country.

Read | Kerala: Two students in hospital after ragging, accused on the run

Over the last few years, universities and colleges reported a sharp rise in discrimination on grounds of region or caste, AICTE sources said.

More than two million students are enrolled in AICTE-approved 10,000 institutes in the country.

The notification would act as a deterrent, Delhi joint commissioner of police (operations) Robin Hibu said, adding students often complained to him about name-calling and taunting.

“Such cases happen because of the lack of awareness and concern about other communities,” said Hibu, also the nodal officer for Northeast residents who often face harassment in the Capital.

The notification holds for all engineering and technical colleges -- government, government-aided and private -- across the country.

This is the first expansive definition of ragging by AICTE after it came out with a set of rules in 2009 to check the widespread menace.

Colleges offering technical education, engineering technology, including MCA, architecture, town planning, management, pharmacy, hotel management and catering, and such programmes will have to follow the directive.

Last year, the University Grants Commission, the higher education regulator, barred use of such words in central universities.

“It is a good move. It is necessary to make students aware and conscious about how they behave with other students and do not indulge in any act of harassing or bullying,” an official from Delhi’s Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology said on condition of anonymity.

The city’s Indian Institute of Information Technology director Pankaj Jalote said it was necessary to sensitise students on issues of gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

“While rules can be made and should be made, sensitising and educating students should be a priority,” Jalote said.

Source: Hindustan Times, 8-03-2017