Drag-Net of Virtual Reality

Picture or Word is Virtual Reality

A ‘Picture’ or a ‘Word’ for a tree is not a ‘Tree’.

Both are symbols. We assume its meaning by convention or as per our level of perception. Its Reality however is complex and multidimensional.

A word or a picture, sculpture, photo or movie... in many avatars – old / new – though they may seem to be attractive, it is never permanent, it is momentary, it is far from ground reality.

It is, therefore, necessary to go beyond it, experience and check it in the real world, keeping personal likes/ dislikes, beliefs, habits, dogmas away. This may help us enrich and develop our perception of reality. It also reveals us many dimensions of reality. This makes constructive creativity in thought and action possible, for anyone. This much is certainly possible for us, irrespective of our calling – a prince or a pauper or a pundit.

A word or a picture has limitations in an infinite space and in linear time. Over a period of time the meanings and references of words too change.

Instead of watching and enjoying a virtual reality in whatever forms, and to create its memorial means to be a victim or a slave of virtual reality, to get entangled further in its dragnet constantly. In other words it is living in the past, in other words, is to deny the present – to deny living Life itself.

In the present state of mechanical way of living, not only human life but also life of all living beings is being exploited. At such times any idea, theory, dogma, law, act... all could turn into terror and extremity in various ways at personal, societal, local, regional and/or global levels. It is no surprise.

A fact, any fact, continually changes; it is never a state of truth. Truth can never be caught in word/s. Truth, which is caught in words, does not remain truth.

Is there a way out from the drag-net of Virtual Reality?

Thinking 'within box' of a belief in civil society does not offer any answer! The beliefs are built over ages as customs, though they may be relevant in the bygone times. Not only the natural environment but also the social, political, economic environment goes through constant change.

However, civilized society is historically based on centralized power of class/caste and division of labour. Through ages this has never changed. The instrument of Virtual Reality is designed to support the present class of centralized power.


Imagine what was the population of India before the Aryans came, or even before the emergence of civilizations in India 5000 years ago? Later, invasions by many races continued to follow until the recent times of colonization, and now it is neo-colonization.

The warfare between Aryans and Non-Aryans, variously named in Indic languages, was primarily racial. Hitler in Germany is an extreme example of dogmatic Aryan extremity. There may be more...

In the social sphere it may be worth to consider: how far the four Varnas – classes – of Vedic times, in the following centuries, took ugliest dogmatic extremity in castes, sub-castes, and sub-sub-castes!  Cases of discrimination against women, by way customs of child marriage, Sati, parda, and atrocities by high castes males on the women of low castes are many. For example, after Kurukshetra war, Dhrutarashtra’s last rites were performed by his illegitimate son, because all his hundred sons were dead (Mahashweta Devi, After Kururukkshtra). 

Siddhartha Jatakas have many stories that explicitly condemn women; they were denied entry to the Sangha.

The Industrial Civilization has perfected its system of colonizing the masses through their education system. Learning is autonomous function of all the living-beings. But the British-made mass education system that we continue to follow is a primary cause of alienation of all those produced on assembly line of mass education. It produces the Culture of Contentment that leads to the alienation from the ‘Other’, may they be their kin.
Now there is wave of Virtual Reality through multimedia. It depends upon how to put it for constructive use for the well-being of all.

"There's no question that this is a time when corporations have taken over the basic process of governing." (Galbraith in a PBS television interview on The Newshour shortly before his death)

An Example: A Song, a Movie & Real Life India

Words, tones, meanings, emotions form a song. Then, could 'Chuk de India', the song be moved out from the movie? What is exact difference between to make such a movie and to happen in real life at entire India? Mere hollow slogan! Noise pollution inside out!

There is no other school like Family. There is no other college like Community, where the Family is its unit. There is no other Guru like Mother Nature.

However, when Family, Community, Society and Mother Nature are assaulted by the faceless power-hungry class, then what shall be the fate, who shall be the saviour of the new born or the yet-to-born? Or would that be their God (or branded gods) and the religious institutions founded by the civilized societies - civilizations?

Only a Community, i.e. cohesive collective, with autonomy could offer freedom from present Identity Crisis.

The so-called virtual communities on Internet Web sites are a magnificent illusion; it pampers only Ego, not a valid way out for the identity crises, but entangles more in Virtual Reality.

Could the affluent educated parents, elders and the youth build up such a community or several communities, of course, in cities?

End piece: Every person is creative

In a democratic republican State every person must get opening to her/his creativity. That goes without debate.

Creativity is not a prerogative of any class, race or any particular person – a genius. There are no hierarchies. It means that all the affairs of the collective must be changed from the root. Here the role of a government is merely of a facilitator without any bias.

Life is larger than all Arts, Sciences, Religions, Philosophies, trade, techs, State... through times and places.

8 March 2013

Note: 'Culture of Contentment', an essay by J K Galbraith describes American society believes it is classless, and ignores its functional Underclass. Aren't we, some of us lured / influenced by American Affluence!
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

WAYS TO WEALTH (POEM)

Ways to Wealth (Indian Budget - Year 2006)

1 
Once a god-adored adorned
many a head of door to an abode.
Now the gods take to the road,
beg for patronage. And the rich
beggars go globetrotting for
finance, know-how and trade.

2 
Once the children of communities
cohesive received learning free
in the life-supporting skills in
branches of wholesome life-tree.

Now in the forward societies
they buy it at the trading malls
turning their clocks fast forward
until late to their adulthood
to earn their dough of uncertain
value to buy the living and life-
supporting services from expertise
at the thriving market place.

3
Now the bureaucrats – the masters
from the branches of expertise,
at their highest level of incompetence
in Peter Principle – take chairs;
replace colours faded of feudal-powers,
at the helm of the people’s affairs.

Now no wonder the prostitution goes
rampant and the pimps thrive on
as they make it quick with smile on
the by-ways and highways to wealth.

4 
Now no wonder all the world children
– you and I, yours and mine –
are the cursed ‘unwanted generation’,
as much said, the ‘growing population’
by the stakeholder – the rational animal – man
as much done: the rape of Mother Earth.

Remigius de Souza | Mumbai | 04-03-2006
(Revised and updated)

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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Viva Obama! Viva the Black! Viva the Red Indian!

by Remigius de Souza

I write in solidarity with all ethnic/ aborigine communities and cultures of the World that still survive, as the Obama-frenzy of media cools.


We, here in India, Rejoice

Viva Barack Hussein Obama! Viva the Black in ghettos in the US! Viva the Native Americans, also called Red Indians, in the US Reservations!

Viva the Underclass of the US society, and of the World including India in the Third World India and the Fourth World India, which are the popular vote banks here for the First World India!

We, here in India, rejoice in the election of the first black President of the US: It’s a beginning!
The history of the US is the history of five hundred years, of the nation of migrants from Europe, of the black slaves from Africa, and of the Natives of America, and subsequently of the rest of the migrants from the rest of the World. It is the history of tow hundred years of nationhood of the US.

The Class (or classless) society of the US – the First World nation – lives at the fast pace of time set by the Industrial Revolution: the president elect Obama, of course, belongs there.

We hope this election is the beginning of the change for the better for the Underclass and the underdeveloped societies of the US, and also of the World, for their liberation from the tyrannies of colonisation and neo-colonisation (of the resources of the world by money and military power), at this historic moment, beyond the race, caste, class, religion, colour, gender, or political dogmas. It’s a payback time.

At this historic moment, when the boundaries of the nation-states are getting defused by the tsunami of globalisation designed by the vested interests of the few, we hope, there shall also be the end of neo-colonialism of the capitalist across the world.

Will the US and other powerful states retreat and withdraw from the lands they claim in the Arctic & Antarctica? They belong to the whole World. The – the land and the waters and the life there – are the World Heritage.

Of course, I can’t help remembering at this historic moment:
1. The warning in the book, ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed' by Paulo Freirre ; and
2. The hopes and dreams in the epic poem ‘The Mental Flight’ by Ben Okri; and
3. The recent research carried in the US suggests that “Even the most well-meaning liberal can harbour hidden prejudice. ...Even today, the study finds, Americans of various races still unconsciously dehumanise their black fellow citizens by subtly associating them with apes” (‘Racism still runs deep’, Editorial, New Scientist, 16 February 2008, p. 5). And
4. The words of Anand K. Coomarswamy, “Mark a final victory of the conquered over the conquerors.”

India is not an exception, but perhaps is the forerunner in this racial slur from the epic times of Ramayana, when the aborigine tribe of Hanumana–Vali–Sugriva clan was called monkeys. The Katkari tribe on the mainland near Mumbai claim themselves to descendants of Hanumana clan. We have heard Barack Obama carries a charm of Hanumana in his valet.

We also do introspect

Long before the words ‘India’, ‘Bharat’, ‘Hindustan’ etc. were coined for this nation / region, the aborigine communities have been living long before the civilised societies came. The boundaries of sovereign states have been changing time to time. The concept of ‘India’… as a nation was given to the elite Indian by the British. Earlier there had been many princely states and kingdoms.

Aryans had a service class or a caste called ‘shudra’, which perhaps later was treated as an untouchable caste, of course by elite castes of clergy and warriors. Aryans assimilated some of the aborigine people as ‘shudras’ (slaves?). Oppression of the untouchable casts is millennia old, which continues even today. They are now officially called Scheduled Castes in the Independent India.

Oppression of the aborigine tribes also is as old as that (civilised societies).

The late Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, from an untouchable caste, took the helm of write the Constitution of India. Neither that did change the lot of the untouchable nor his and thousands of his followers’ conversion to Buddhism. However they are taking education. They are politically aware. They are provided with ‘reservations’ in educational institutions and jobs (the reservations turned the elite and upper castes in loggerhead with the law.)… Even one of the untouchable castes became the President of India, in recent times, and many became ministers. Talking in numbers, still a large majority of the untouchable castes are languishing in poverty and illiteracy.

Despite a woman Prime Minister earlier, and now a woman President of India, the gender atrocities continue. The only difference is that some are reported, not all.

Before them, there were most revered saint-poets, both women and men, including those from the untouchable castes, over centuries (say, 11th to 16th centuries) but they failed to bring reforms to the whole society. With the growth of population, progress and development, the Indic society continued get more and more fragmented, leading to economic classes, where large majority, irrespective of their caste, languish in poverty. About 300 millions are Below Poverty Line.

Even before the saint-poets, 2006 years ago, came Gautama the Buddha, believed to be an Incarnation; but he failed. On the contrary Buddhism was driven out of India, of course, by the learned of the upper caste. However it is still being practiced outside India, mostly Asian countries.

Such is the power, and greed for more power, of the elite classes and castes.

The earliest example, which I know of the oppression of the aborigine, is of Ekalavya, a youth of Bhil tribe, in the Epic Mahabharata. He approached Drona, a Brahmin, and teacher of princes Pandavas and Kauravas, to teach him archery, which he rejected. Hence he learnt archery all by himself by self-access and excelled in the skill; he had installed Drona’s statue as his guru by proxy. When Drona came to know about Ekalavya’s skill, he demanded his right thumb as his fee, which Ekalavya dutifully complied. This is one of some of the sordid stories of Mahabharata.

The climax of this story is: The Bhil tribe practice archery without using their thumb for millennia to this date as a living memorial of Ekalavya. Bhils are excellent archers, but in the Independent India they don’t figure in any sports events, leave aside Olympics; there was a single exception of tribal from Rajasthan. On the contrary they are banned to carry bows and arrows. The reasons are obvious.

These are the lessons in the living history.

Five hundred years or five thousand years, it is a past. As for future it remains only as speculation. It is the present that matters: Time is the better judge.


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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

CREATIVITY: to create problems to create solutions to create…

Creativity is to create problems to create solutions to create…

WHY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN KEEPING AWAY from the institutionalized formal schooling even to this date? Without mincing words, it is because the prevalent British-made education isn’t relevant and/or the system is not appropriate for their sustenance.

Homo sapiens have a powerful weapon of language over other hominids and species. As script and writing were discovered with rise of civilization, the powerful classes or castes monopolized them and kept ‘the other’ – their subjects away; perhaps they promised them the physical and spiritual protection in the return of the exploits.

Over the centuries this majority, which still persists and is increasing, had known that the scriptures and the script have not been essential for the survival in real life in real world. Perhaps that is why Gautam Buddha, the rebellion, speaks to people in Prakrit – vernacular!

Those who go through the British-made western-style education become alienated from the people and society, from real life, and embrace ‘virtual reality’ of market, money and media. The people inevitably turn into a mass society, and subsequently face identity crisis.

Fortunately none of the ethnic and tribal communities and their members suffers from identity crisis. They are acutely aware of its irrelevance in their real life, and therefore cannot afford it, and opt to drop out.

The identity of Britain and the British is “East India Company” – the international Baniya – the traders. The East India Company baptised the elite India with trade and replaced clergy by traders who are invisible rulers.

It is not a discovery that a language or a script is ‘virtual reality’. With the development of science and technology more and more languages and scripts are emerging, such as, binary. This pushes the society to further fragmentation and chaos, and the powerful move to further alienation. Thanks to the progress of Electronic Technology/ Information Technology in leaps and bounds that perhaps a million odd persons are now marginally computer-literates. The brighter ones end up in silicon valleys to slave for the likes of the Gates.

An annual Union Budget may use Hindi language, but even the educated may not be able to comprehend its means, meanings and ends, or how economic language changes political equations, or who shall hijack its benefits by hook or crook. Then they need the modern-day gurus to interpret the scriptures of the country’s budget. Such monopolization of languages leads the experts to alienation from the real world, and pushes the ‘other’ members of the society to oblivion. Can anyone take a word of the rulers at its face value? The same could be said of all the fields of specialization and expertise; they remain exclusive but not universal.

See more
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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Inflation? Take Ju-Jitsu Action

Inflation? Take Ju-Jitsu Action

On the heals of the Budget 2008 India comes inflation at 7.4%, highest in the last three years, as if an earthquake at 7.4 magnitude on Richter Scale. While one pinches a belly, the other sends physical tremors. But inflation is manmade unlike an earthquake which is natural. In both cases the people suffer.

Market now in modern times is omnipotent, omnipresent force in our lives. Inflation, recession, or even famines, are works of human hands: All works of human hands are perishable, but all human problems have answers. The damage caused to humans due to earthquakes is also a human problem, hence have answers.

I heard on a TV news channel, a Negro man (he must be a celebrity) was making a statement “INFLATION WILL AFFECT ECONOMY” (as if humans are nonentity). They, the concerned people, also add “IT WILL AFFECT THE GROWTH” (after exploiting all the resources of the Earth that belong to all the living beings on the earth). Whose growth anyway?

What could our government do? It will give some promises. It will play some jugglery with numbers to take care of production, trade, industry… blah – blah – blah. They will postpone the problem for some time, like those newly built flyovers in Delhi, Mumbai etc. to solve traffic congestion created by city planners, only to shift the traffic jam to the next point. But the problems created by buildings – civil works are going to stay until next earthquake.

We all know what Ju-Jitsu Action is. Yet we go over it briefly to give a boost to the idea. The Buddhist monks, in self defense, developed it to face the menace of thugs, dacoits, thieves thy met on the way to China some two thousand years ago. They used no weapons but only the force of the attackers to defeat them.

There is no need to mention who the enemy is and its cronies are (inside or outside).

What Ju-Jitsu Action possible in the present situation, without using any force, without spending any energy? Just in two words:

BOYCOTT MARKET

Boycott market, at all levels, just for ONE DAY – 24 HOURS all over India, or Bharat, or Hindustan – whatever you call her.

Don’t travel by train, passenger bus, car, two wheelers, and/or planes.

Switch off radio sets, TV sets, telephones, mobile phones… Don't visit cinema houses, theatres, entertainment houses.

Don’t attend work – even the so-called essential services, schools – universities, examinations for a day.

Don’t buy newspapers.

Don’t go for any shopping, not even essential commodities, which are putting hardship due to inflation, even if it means to go hungry, fast.

One day’s fast is not going to kill us. There are 200-300 million persons below poverty line who are not sure of their tomorrow’s meal. There are millions among Hindus, Muslims, Jain, Christians who observe abstinence / fast for a period of time of year. There are tens of thousands of adivasis who for lack of food drink toddy to kill their hunger during lean period of summer.

There are 300 million mobile phones in operation in India. Imagine what effect it wrought on the market if they stop working for a day!

OBSERVE INDIA BANDH, as if it is a day of national mourning.

No agitations. No protest marches. No slogans. No placards.

Imagine who will yellow their pants (or sarees, or salvars, or whatever), not only in India but all over the world!

So much energy shall be saved!

TWENTY FOUR HOURS OF INDIA BANDH will break the backbone of the omnipotent, omnipresent MARKET and its great religion, the creed of Consumerism and its manipulators and their cronies.

We have heard of Gandhiji’s STATYGRAHA. I don’t know what truth is; but the truth will be out in just twenty four hours.

Ju-Jitsu Action works. (I have personally tested it on many occasions in my personal and public life, even though it may sound silly, impractical, even to some it may seem impossible, it works.) It is time tested weapon for those not in powers, for those who do not wield weapons. Even if they get to know such an idea is floated, they shall be shaken.

Remigius de Souza
12-04-2008

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Budget India ’08: A grand cover-up act

Budget India ’08: A grand cover-up act:
India’s Budget – A commoner’s View

by Remigius de Souza

Episode: India’s Finance Budget 2008, │ Main Cast: Finance Minister (Fin-Min) P. Chidambaram │ Date: Friday 29 February 2008

India’s Budget – A commoner’s View

The first World India has harnessed so much wealth that it (not she, not Mother India: note it) can waive 60K crore rupees bank-debts to the farmers: indeed a great cover-up. Very, very sexy! As expected it created a great buzz in the media.

The dead-by-suicide farmers and those had paid their loans, and those dying by hunger and malnutrition (reported / unreported) – the second-class citizens, the Third World India (and the Fourth World India) – are redundant.

The peasants and adivasis, displaced due to development euphoria, e.g. special economic zones (SEZs), dump themselves in the slums in metropolises, cities and towns to earn their daily bread with dignity rather than begging, in the past sixty years that still continues, are redundant.

This is apart from atrocities by the ranks and files the fundamentalist, the extremist, the regional/ provincial chauvinist of many colours and shades, the law and order lapses, the black money economy, the scams, rampant bribery and corruption – the man-made calamities that affect the poor most. When there are natural calamities we need foreign aid.


By waiving 60,000 crore rupees debt, the government has not really given the farmers anything tangible. Fin-Min says, it is ‘the accumulated dust’ (Interview, Times of India, March 2, 2008, p.15), perhaps, in the files or the system! No one really knows how many farmers, and where they are? They begin the count now, not when the calamities started.

Engines to uplift the poor

To uplift the poor (they are in great majority) the rulers have devised many engines, in the past and now, of course, with benevolent intentions. The engines, Bharat Nirman (literally Bharat Creation. They conveniently change India to Bharat on occasions: here it actually means the Third World India that also includes the Fourth World India, who are beneficiaries.), Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, National Rural Health Mission… to mention a few are from the long list. Several thousand crores of rupees are provided in the budget. But no one knows how these will be managed, who will manage them, and when would they materialise? This is sixty-one years old story. Time now flies faster.

It took sixty years for the rulers of the Republic of India to wake up to the fact (though not fully yet) that neither the great trickle down development/ prosperity nor the great engines, mentioned above, succour the poor (there are about 200 – 300 million persons below poverty line (BPL); their numbers, however, fluctuate with new definitions of BPL devised by the Planning Commission of India, time to time). The great engines remain promises if they fail to deliver results in time bound frame.

They are now devising yet another engine, Monitoring and Evaluation (Ref: Fin-Min’s Budget Speech, 115 and 116) that I quote below:

Monitoring and Evaluation
115. Robust economic growth has thrown up many new challenges, among them the need to put in place effective monitoring, evaluation and accounting systems for the large sums of money that are disbursed by the Central Government to State Governments, district level agencies and other implementing agencies. I think we do not pay enough attention to outcomes as we do to outlays; or to physical targets as we do to financial targets; or to quality as we do to quantity. Government therefore proposes to put in place a
Central Plan Schemes Monitoring System (CPSMS) that will be implemented as a Plan scheme of the Planning Commission. A comprehensive Decision Support System and Management Information System will also be established. The intended outcome is to generate and monitor scheme-wise and State-wise releases for about 1,000 Central Plan and centrally sponsored schemes in 2008-09.

116. Government also intends to strengthen evaluation. Some ministries have started concurrent evaluation. This needs to be supplemented by independent evaluations conducted by research institutions. The Planning Commission will authorise such evaluations of the major schemes and complete the task by the time of the mid-term review of the Eleventh Plan.

For the last sixty years the same stories repeat. The Five Year Plans are not implemented to the end; thousands of court cases remain pending and get accumulated; budgetary provisions are not fully utilized – either because of ignorance of the people or apathy of the executive bodies, or both; money and resources meant for the people do not reach the remote places (not by distance and time). Besides how much, what proportion of the money, provided to make engines work, goes for the executive personnel, and how much is hijacked by the undeserving persons is not known?

But why, why does this happen? Any sane person can tell that there are not enough persons – educated or even literate – motivated / rewarded persons to work in the rural areas.

The second reason: There is no scientific, economic and environmental evaluation of peasants’ work and their form produce. None of the social and natural scientists has done this study in the last hundred years from the late Justice M. G. Ranade to this date (I am ignorant if there is any). We are speaking of organic, labour intensive traditional faming, not mechanised farming with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Instead the feudal practices of yesteryear to treat peasants as subjects- now called beneficiaries continue. Are there any exception/s in foreign countries?

The third reason: The ‘haves’ do not want to share with the ‘have not’, their work, knowledge, education, skills and resources, which they monopolize, and which ethically should belong to all: occasionally they give out dole and charities. Why otherwise the planners, experts, policymakers, the creators of great engines to uplift the 80 percent people should fail to deliver?

The reason: They, in the first place, are the products (or victims?) of the great engine of education (that gives them the blinkers of compartments / departments) devised by the British rule. Hence, they continue to copy, collaborate and borrow from the West, and compare with the West, and ironically, also, want to compete with the West on borrowed technologies.

They don’t meet the 80 percent people on equal ground, on one plane. They utterly lack any sense of community participation – the millennia old ancient tradition that still prevails. It could have opened them to many time tested vital aspects of the people’s wisdom, knowledge and skills. The government could learn from the farmer’s action of watering the farms how to save money/resources during their distribution from pilferage and waste.

Even the street vendors (migrated from the hinterland) are better economists and planners; they sustain with right and affordable tools and right place, and don’t miss an opportunity to upgrade. Even a spider knows where and how big or small web it should place. Even a weaver bird (male), knows what resources to use, and where to place his nests; in fact all birds know.

To this date more than 60 percent people are illiterate; in some places, in any of the regions, up to 100 percent illiteracy prevails. This amounts to politics of literacy and politics of education of the First World India by denying the peasants and adivasis the right to education and the right education. Whatever model education they are receiving, if continues, will do more harm to them and the country, both.

The changing times demand appropriate education to all in all 600,000 villages and habitats in India.

"By the direct proportion to places and people in rural India (and the migrants in urban areas), the managers of country’s affairs should have started farming schools, colleges and universities, by the rule of majority then, and now.

As the count goes, the anticipated 600,000 schools should lead to 60,000 colleges and 6,000 universities spread over entire country, all of them from primary to higher education in the farming discipline to enhance the farming skills, knowledge understanding and practices of the people of India’s agrarian society; these must be added with non-formal education. To supplement these, the Farming Training Institutes (FTIs) similar to Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and polytechnics should be started for the adults and the school dropouts." (Farming and the Politics of Education in India: Challenges of 21st Century)

This must be stupendous job! The present rulers are not even mentally equipped even to think of it because it doesn’t fit their departmental protocol. It demands many disciplines to come together and above all the decentralization of power.

This is only a glimpse into one part of the budget, which is meant for peasants – the unorganized sector the Third World India. There are many aspects besides education that are ailing the peasant in India. The great promises will never work without the people’s participation; but here again the first requisite is the decentralization of power.

The other part of the budget is the reality management of the great realty bazaar of the First world India – the organized sector.

The two parts expose the Bharat – India dichotomy, the promises and the reality – the great Indian divide. Fin-Min’s great cover up act exposes the naked truth. Any half-naked, illiterate, the so-called backward peasant could tell you that, if he could even the text in any language.

The peasants have sustained themselves with their education and within their limited local resources – land and waters – for more than ten thousand years. This place then had no name – India or Hindustan or Bharat, there was no boundaries, and was no civilized society. They had then (as the scientists say) domesticated plants and animals (biotechnology), without any laboratory.

They, we, don’t need either Nuke-deal with the US, or we don’ need to go on the Moon.

We are 1100 million people strong human energy spread over 3,287,263 square kilometers land.

The first step is to put to creative work this immense human energy, and to reach the realities Down to Earth.
Remigius de Souza (06-03-2008)
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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

The Great Indian (Realty) Bazaar -2

The Great Indian (Realty) Bazaar -2
By Remigius de Souza

The kidney transplant racket by the doctors is one too many. How many and what other professions / occupations do indulge in such a black trades to make money at the cost of the poor, helpless, hapless, illiterate, the ignorant of the elite ways people?

How many do indulge in legal as well as illegal means market ― flesh and souls, land and waters, minerals and fossil fuels, plants and animals, to name a few ― at the cost of large anonymous majority people to mint money? It’s just for their unsuitable greed for power, profit and pleasure.

By claiming India an underdeveloped / developing country, it is the First World India thrives at the cost of the people in the Third World and the Fourth World ( of adivasi – aborigine people), by whatever means: beg, borrow or rob.

The words, ‘Democracy’ and the latter added ‘Socialism’ (why add such a tag? Isn’t democracy enough?), which remain dormant in the constitution, or are talked about to have an intellectual kick? The status quo is maintained to keep the social – economic – political disparity by denying, in the first place, equitable distribution of relevant education and the resources – tangible and non-tangible or natural and economic – to the large majority.

The kidney transplant racket is one of the many, reported or not reported, instances in this vast nation; a steps to annihilation of the poor. It is typical of militarily and economically advanced societies worldwide; the history is witness to it in other times and other continents.

However, they now notice the great lies, hollow slogans of development and progress, the glaring disparity (at that compares with that displayed in Bollywood / Tellywood exhibition of extravaganza and violence, in virtual reality, though with limited accessibility) maintained by the status quo of the Agency.

Yet, Democracy is rising; its sparks are flashing. The great uprising is due sooner or later. The People (not the population numbers favourite of statisticians) shall prevail, not only in India, but all over the world is history is witness. They shall come like a tsunami.

Sri Krishna says: “… Sambhavami yuge – yuge” – I shall reincarnate in ages after ages. In this age, however, a billion reincarnations!

~~~~~
Remigius de Souza
27-01-2008

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Indira’s Emergency Recalled – 2

Indira’s Emergency Recalled – 2

The Emergency (1975-77) imposed by India Gandhi made a mark of state terrorism, but with difference; it targeted the elite. It became a landmark of decadence. As I said before, it didn’t make even a ripple among the tribal and peasants, because they had/have nothing to loose. It, as usual, was born out of insecurity of those who held centralized power. However the seeds of terrorism have always been dormant in the pre-independence eras.

There have been other examples of state terrorism that targeted the people who protested the policies and practices, for example, the protest of the farmers against the compensation to be paid for land acquisition for the Thal-Vaishet project by the Government of Maharashtra when some farmers were shot dead. There are many more examples.

Indira’s Emergency also made a way for other forms of terrorism, widespread across the country in the following years, which continues till now. Terrorists’ attacks on public and private properties including one on the Parliament, the communal riots, and atrocities by the Naxalite, etc. are considered as criminal acts against the society at large. The glaring examples are the riots in Gujarat and the turmoil of peasants in Nandigram, which is burning on the eve of Divali - the festival of lights - in West Bengal, where one may question the role of the state. The tribal and the peasants are increasingly displaced from their homestead and/or are forced to commit suicides by the strong-arm of money-market-political powers.

All these acts of terrorism are initiated, managed and manipulated by the elite in high places. Their weapons as well as targets are ‘common’ people, or the second class citizens, who blindly fall for the incitement by those who hold power to create unrest and disrupt people, thereby the society at large.

But their real weapons that come handy are the widespread poverty, illiteracy, social-economic disparity and the lack of education in the fast changing environment. The root cause is the glaring lack of civic sense and hygiene – physical, mental and spiritual – at personal and collective levels, from the top to bottom – from princes/presidents/prime ministers to the paupers on a street. No occupation or profession or vocation or institution is an exception. To find an exception, we may have to search with microscope in the present fragmented and decadent global society.

At an individual level I neither can vouch for others nor for myself. While I was practicing as an architect planner I realized then, and later, how many holes I must have made in an ozone layer in my sphere! A sin, for example, committed in architecture (shelter?) and planning could be comparable to the mythical idea of Original Sin (see: Bible), which can never be absolved. The damage done to Life and to Mother Earth is permanent. Look at devastated Chernobyl!

Perhaps a simplistic answer to a question of civic sense and hygiene is to restore community, not communality; to restore plurality not dogmatic polarity; to restore holistic, not deductive, view of life; to restore leisure, not speedy pleasures; to restore universal education, not fragmented information; to recycle people’s time-tested wisdom, not graft compartmentalized expertise… You can go on adding to this litany: all issues address to civic sense and hygiene at local to global level. Industrialization has failed to supply quality to living is already proved beyond doubt.

Remigius de Souza
Mumbai
09.11.2007

____________________________________
Remigius de Souza
Post Mail: 69-243 S. B. Marg, Mumbai 400028, INDIA
My poetry homepage:
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Indira’s Emergency Recalled

Indira’s (1975-1977) Emergency Recalled

While Pakistan is going through the emergency I go into retrospection. Pakistan is a part of this subcontinent, and the entire subcontinent is going through volatile social, political, environmental, economic etc. crisis.

Architects of the Emergency (1975-77) – Indira Gandhi, her Opponents and the Opportunists – may, or may not, have foreseen and measured, then, its long-term effect on the Indian democracy and polity.

After the emergency all successive governments at the centre and some states became caretaker governments, by the political parties manipulating alliances in scramble for power.

In a tribute to the event I did some sketches, which I now dig out. My daily living had been hectic then, and I had been travelling for almost one-third of every year in struggle for survival. Many a times I visited interior areas.

The people in Mumbai were talking in hushed voice in public places during those days. The real estate prices nosedived. Grocery shops were displaying the prices and stocks of commodities on the boards in public view.

I have been visiting tribal areas and villages since 1960s, in and around Gujarat State, which also included the hills with dense forest that are now submerged in the infamous Sardar Sarovar Project, and from where thousands of tribal families are displaced. I noticed, the Emergency did not make even a ripple among the tribal.

The tribal have been perpetually living in a state of emergency for thousands of years. I recount two events from epic Mahabharat.

In one event, Dronacharya, the guru of Pandavas and Kauravas for military skills, demanded and took Eklavya’s thumb as his fees for being an absentee guru in archery. His descendants, the Bhil tribe in India, to this date, do not use their thumb in archery; it’s a living memorial.

Democratic India, of course, forbids the tribal to carry bows and arrows, being a weapon. The impotent imagination/creativity of the Agency could not turn archery as a sport for the tribal and treat them with dignity. Archery remains an exclusive domain of the elite, the Pandavas and Kauravas of modern India.

In another event, Arjun and Krishna were prospecting a suite for Pandava’s new capital. They selected Khandav-van, which was inhabited by the Nag tribe, close to present Delhi. (Nag were not snakes. Likewise, the Katkari tribe, near Mumbai, claim to be descendants of Hanuman and his clan, wh0 were called monkeys, in the Ramayana times.)

Arjun and Krishna put Khandav forest to fire and destroyed it together with the Nag people. One of them – Takshak – escaped. He took wow to destroy Pandava’s vansh – lineage, dynasty. King Parikshit, the last of Pandava’s, in fear of death lived in a foolproof, tight security. Takshak took to a form of “sookshmajiva” – minute life-form (or bacterium!), entered into an apple, which Parikshit ate; Takshak killed him from within. Will the history repeat?

The ruling elite minority, in whatever garbs, with power of money, military and knowledge, are playing horror in the lives of the tribal, the peasants and the poor of the minorities, in the name of development and progress (of money and economics). Have they learnt any lesson from the Emergency, and the Past or history that they glamorise with pride? But who will bell the cat?~~~~

Remigius de Souza (7-11-2007)

~~~
© Remigius de Souza. All Rights Reserved.

Who is the giver? Who is the receiver? [1]

On 60 years of India's Independence:

Navi Mumbai Development Plan

Who is the giver? Who is the receiver? [1]

(Poem written on 23-02-1997: I was writings a review of a workshop, "The Idea of New Town, Looking at Navi Mumbai". While writings I was stuck for many reasons. One of them was the stalwarts in architecture and planning from India and abroad attended the workshop. Sant Tukaram came to my help, and I composed the following poem. On the occasion of 60th Anniversary of India I re-publish it. )

Oh Vitthala*, while you stand steadfast
On a single brick, the foundation bestowing
Courage and joy through Gyanoba-Tukoba*:
There is no beginning – no end.

On the threshold of Third Millennium
Of "English" calendar, what are a few decades
Of life of New Delhi, Chandigarh, or New Mumbai
But specks of dust in a hay stack?
We have lived through cities thousand years old.

The sperms of Navi Mumbai were laid in an incubator
By an industrial corporate body, legitimized
By the CIDCO* of Swadeshi Raj here
Of your beloved Maharashtra and of the displaced.

Oh Vithoba1, your beloved people of India
Are blessed by Mother Earth for millennia,
Living in million villages, who nurtured and helped
To sustain cities of Gods, kings and Nawabs.

In the age of rape of Mother Earth
And ecological-cultural subjugation of the sons of soil,
Pushed them to the brink, to make a fast buck
While the sun shines, through manufacture and market;
The machine does not make maize neither milk.

Corporations know not "boundaries", – neither of values
Nor culture, – Their tentacles reach afar
Under different garbs and masks anew;
What are the new towns across the continents
In the name of urbanism – yet another mask?

Swarms of corporate locust devouring resources
In decades, what had been plentiful for millions
Of living entities for centuries, to leave behind
“Holes in the sky". City planners are by-products.

We witnessed the destruction of Hiroshima-
Nagasaki, calamities-man-made with impact;
the shudder of earth that reduced Kobe to debris.

You hold aloft Kedarnath – Kashi – Kanyakumari
Through the times of turmoil, age after age.
Bhagiratha4 brought Mother Ganga to revive
His five thousand ancestors in peril.

In the age of annihilation unsurpassed
His offspring struggle to survive in numbers.
Will the sons of soil survive or perish?
Oh, Vitthala, Give your holy verdict.

In the era of contraception - condoms - abortions,
The steel-glass-concrete jungles of modern towns
Are sprouting, sprawling, swelling, multiplying
To celebrate triumph of "Post-historic-Man".
Will New Town, living a hybrid life on life saving
Drugs, shall be or not be an abortion?

Desperate planners are gripped in two-three dimensions
When Newtonian Age passed away hither thither;
In spite of revelation of Time and Eternity;
And half-truth of second law of thermodynamics.

Tied to a mill of self-cantered ego, they go in rounds
Endless, locked in cells. Will some glimpse liberate them?
Oh Vithoba*, It is time again to release Vishwakarma*
from the bondage of Indra*, we pray.

We recite the past, or speculate the future in mechanical
Actions; run into political impotency;
when confronted to the Present, take refuge
of numbers in perpetuity, dividing, sieving, grading,
degrading the humanity at the cost of creativity.

Now the "Bhasmasura"* of modern technology is let loose
Shattering the ancient limits only to defile and displace
Land and Waters, to eliminate the living entities.
New Towns offer man a life of hydroponics.

His tentacles reach deeper and wider through his weapon –
"The Cities" – to bring slow death to regions afar without impact.
Oh Vithoba, heed to our invocation to give us Insight
Into the Present, the People, the Life, the Nature's Way.

At the end of second millennium, they struggle
In the narrow compartments of 2D – 3D to establish
Credibility; offer the urbanites "New Town Neurosis"
They are yet to awaken to hyperspace;
How could the planners be Visionary?

Architecture is poet's imagination to serve
The two in hundred of the world;
Planning demands vision in Universal Truth
Of a sage – of a humble farmer – who lives
In the timeless eternal NOW.

* * * *
Remigius de Souza
Mumbai
23-2-1997

Notes:
* Vitthala, Vithoba: Most venerated deity in Maharashtra (an incarnation of Vishnu).
* Gaynoba - Tukoba: Jnaneshwar and Tukaram are saint-poets of Maharashtra, India.
* CIDCO: City and Industrial Development Corporation, Maharashtra State, India.
* Bhagiratha: a character from Mahabharata.
* Vishwakarma, Indra, Bhasmasura: characters from Puranas. Bhasmasura is similar to Midas in the western mythology. However end of Bhasmasura comes reducing him ashes by his own folly, which is inevitable. There is no room for repentance.


(This poem was written on the occasion of the Workshop - "The Idea of New Town: Looking at Navi Mumbai", held at Coomaraswamy Hall, Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai on 21-22 February 1997.)

Remigius de Souza

Three years of UPA Government

Three years of UPA Government
by Remigius de Souza

Bureaucracy dominates here. Highest chairs – the Prez and the PM – are occupied by the ex-bureaucrats coming from their respective compartments in India.

Forget the ‘Pro-poor’ slogan election slogan now with time-lapse. Dr. Manmohan Singh in three years could not even make a dent on the ‘Babugiri’ – bureaucracy – that prevails in India. The farmers’ woes only accelerate with passing time, leading then now to suicides, which could not be foreseen by the grand infrastructure and expertise available to the great Indian democracy. Surely he must be well acquainted with how efficiently and effectively the ‘Babugiri’ works in his departments.

After all, ‘Pro-poor’ or any agenda, White paper or Red slogan, hinges on the bureaucrats; hinges need to be kept well oiled. Notice, how effectively and efficiently with foresight on profit the SEZs came in force! Even a child labourer, working in a roadside open cycle shop without a roof, will tell 'how the smoothly machinery can work with greasing'. Anybody’s guess!!

I quote recent news

India’s space agency, the ISRO, has announced plans to put a person in
space by 2014 and to land an Indian on the Moon by 2020, four years ahead of
china. The agency will seek US$2.2 billion in state funding – treble its current
annual budget – for its manned flight programme, and many times more for the
Moon landing. The plans, unveiled to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last month,
were endorsed by a cross-section of the scientific community at a consultative
meeting on 7 November in Bangalore. Formal government approval will be aught
before the end of the year, says ISRO chairman Gopalan Madhavan Nair (Nature,
Vol. 444, 16 Nov. 2006 p.255).

Indeed, how patriotic our scientists are! Our government can neither take care of the peasants nor nation’s boundaries, and they have ambitious plans where people don't figure; it’s no less than Bollywood sentimentalism. While China goes on claiming neighbouring lands, our scientists want to claim the Moon, though they not the first.

We should not be surprised if in near future the government policies go for the supply of ‘corn-bio-fuels’ to boost American-Bush-Fire, which might add to GDP but leave the peasants for slavery and starvation!

See previous post: Pro-poor election slogan by UPA 2004

Remigius de Souza
28-05-2007
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
© Remigius de Souza. All Rights Reserved

‘PRO-POOR’ – Election slogan by UPA-2004

“Good intention remains abstract until worked out in deeds and products.” — Christopher Day, ‘Places of the Soul’

WE OF THE RULING MINORITY have been using ‘economy’, alike religion, to corrupt and exploit people. We have been capitalizing on the poverty of the Third World India, and convert the ‘wants’ of the First World India using the mantras of ‘economy’. Invariably in virtual economy we fail to convert money into needs in real life.

Now that the United Progressive Alliance has come to power at the center in India, the citizens must watch carefully how all the instruments – laws, policies, planning and finance bill/s – are made relevant to the notion of ‘pro-poor’ at the micro-level on the ground in the coming years.

Of course the people – one billion people – need to be taken in confidence, to participate and to be educated in the national interest about the instruments of development and governance that are already in force and the proposed ones, until next election. We take two instruments for example:

1. WATER IS CRUCIAL ISSUE. The proposed project of ‘Interlinking Rivers’, even if it must be scrapped, should be taken to the public forum to the notice of one billion people, alike the state and national elections. Government should take it out of the safe custody of the experts, planners, legislators and executers. Let it be debated in all its aspects, mainly its Environmental–Ecological–Energy cost, not merely financial cost, and how this instrument would – or would not – reach the poorest of the poor. Obviously the project finances should be translated in real deeds and products at micro level on ground; how the money will be disbursed and what fraction shall reach to the land and people in the forests, hills, deserts, plains and cities; and how much of it will be consumed as administration (bureaurocrisy)) cost?

2. THE INSTRUMENT OF MEDIA also could be used for the purpose of educating the people. Radio (Akashvani) and television (Door Darshan) should help the illiterate who very between 60 to 90 percent in different areas. We, however, are aware that these instruments are not accessible to many people where even basic needs are not met. Leave aside illiteracy; even malnutrition and starvation deaths are not unknown. The question is how these instruments shall reach the people. Reaching out to billion people means to make it relevant to them to establish its credibility. Needless to say when such projects as “Interlinking Rivers” are placed before the people for the information and scrutiny it must be made sure of the ‘language’ they understand. Certainly they understand the language of environment, ecology and energy in the way and where they live. What’s more, even the plants and animals do understand them. In this course, perhaps, the experts and the bureaucrats etc. need to educate themselves in the “People’s Language”. They should also bear in mind where the majority in India lies, that it is neither in the corridors of power nor in the stock exchanges, it is there in the 700 – 800 million peoples of India.

The likes of Kalam and Singh, and many others inside and outside the governments, irrespective of their brands, ideologies, colours and monopolies, faiths and the two examples of instruments mentioned above are made to order to see and perceive reality through telescope. However in the matters of land, water and people it is necessary to complement their vision with the view of the reality through microscope. It is of vital importance to make all the instruments accessible to the people beyond metropolitan cities and towns in the six lakhs villages across the country.

We wonder on this two-point agenda of ‘Interlinking Rivers’ and Media, as water and education are crucial issues, and when the people are adequately informed and educated, then who shall win the elections and where? Perhaps the corporate world with its vested interests in the projects would wholeheartedly vote in a large majority. And yet there may be a time when even the alliances may not work. Viva Democracy!

(This article was published by the Journal of Indian Institute of Architects, and by CBS Forum on its website online)

Remigius de Souza
(27-05-2004)

One Step Quantum Leap in Education

Illustration 1: Children at Play
The children are at play at the bank of River Narmada at Bharuch City, Gujarat.

There are many dimensions to this event: Discovery (without Copy Right), leisure and learning by sharing, sense of community, free entertainment that helps health of body and sanity of mind. Besides they are swimmers. They would learn rowing, and fishing in course of time, i.e. higher education without fees, without grading, without failures... every one is accepted. They are familiar with the environment around: high tide and low tide, with that the change in water taste, the wild life, and also the presence of crocs in part of the river.
There is unconditional belief and trust that river is mother. Even any event mishap or demise is taken as part of life. And there are many more dimentions...

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One Step Quantum Leap in Education

by Remigius de Souza

Education is one of the vital four links, i.e., work, education, leisure and health to the development of an individual and the community / society / collective (Ill. 1). There are two prevailing education systems: one is universal, which is still followed by a majority that is not yet caught in the web of industrialisation, and the other - institutionalised mass education - is induced by the industrial revolution that took place in the West (Ill. 2).

EDUCATION, WORK, LEISURE AND HEALTH are four aspects through which plants, animals and humans follow the daily living throughout their life-span. Though they are categorized here (because of Author's civilised habits) in reality every aspect is synchronised with, or embedded in, the other three, and are supportive to each other. They neither are in sequence of priority nor separated in compartments. Any one without the other three is lame or invalid or unstable, which could cause mental or physical maladies or malfunctioning in a person and/or the collective.

More advance a civilised society more the division, fragments, hierarchies; all neatly put in various compartments, including the four mentioned above. It helps the ruler / ruling minority to control people by "Divide and Rule" principle. Throughout the history the advanced societies have successively and progressively been proved a curse on land, waters, people and life at large. The industrial civilisation is the worst of them all. It is also a double-faced liar. For example, it would hold population increase for the poverty, hunger and starvation. It would hold the entire humanity responsible for the climate change, rising sea level, depleting ozone layer, rising temperature etc.

Illustration 2: Education Systems
(a) Spiral of holistic education by experiential learning
(b) Linear reductionist mass education by teaching

(a) Spiral of holistic education by experiential learning.

Education here, as said earlier, goes with other three aspects: Work, Leisure and Health. Education is a life-long quest for excellence and fulfilment of the Self, neither for expertise nor personality development as is an in-thing in the modern society.


It works with free sharing / exchange of knowledge, accumulated over generations, between individuals and communities, which lead to improvisation. Even the aborigines today do not live in proto-historic state.

Education, here, is not a slot; it is interdisciplinary, and finds its application simultaneously to support sustenance with life-supporting skills. There is no room for superficial baggage, no need for grades like fruits graded for marketing.

At any point in its quest it - an individual - is full in itself and yet leaves scope for growth - development, like a seedling until it is fully grown in its life-span of four months, or eighty years or thousand years, until death. Qualitatively there is no difference, whether it is rice plant, or a human being, or a banyan tree.

For example, its model is present in the Third World India and the Forth World India (of the tribal communities). Or one may notice it in the remote history when humans came up with fire, lever, wheel, language, paintings, engravings, domestication of plants and animals, when none of this institutionalised education system was present. Ironically no one can fit this experiential holistic education in the prevailing institutionalised education system.

For example, architecture is fairly interdisciplinary course in the modern mass education. To his dismay the author observed for nearly twelve years while teaching that it couldn't reach a holistic level. No, holistic doesn't click. Almost all the students learn in slots, think in slots, and eventually work in slots. Invariably they turn out to be a part of bureaucratic ladder. They also develop autocracy to some extent. Perhaps the seeds are sown begins from their nursery schooling at the age of three!


(b) Linear, or the ladder of, reductionist mass education by teaching



It is based on grading and degrading the human intelligence. Started by the industrial revolution, it is designed for the benefit of capitalism and for easy management by the bureaucrats who claim to be educationists. Any adjustments / readjustments in the system remain within the established framework.


For example, a number of schools started by J. Krihnamurti - the Star of the East - at several places. After giving talks worldwide for decades on 'freedom from the known' he too could not escape 'institutions' started in his name during his lifetime. Such is the grip of capitalism! Even Red China's Star is eclipsed by it. And how many democratic governments do bend or bow before the global or local capitalist institutions - the invisible superpowers?
industrialisation (sometimes called 'social and economic development') is only an orientation of mind, a small fragment in Life, and cannot be called universal in any of its branch, or all the branches of its education and expertise put together. Education and the products from its assembly lines in this system is merely a consumer item for marketing. No wonder the First World countries are now trying to find new markets for their education industry in the Third World countries.


Now research and studies are showing some of the side effects and after-effects of the affluence of western societies. We cite some examples here."The average age at menarche - when periods start - has plummeted over the past 150 year in western societies from around 17 years old to 12 to 13." writes Mairi Macleod (New Scientist, 10 February 2007, p.38). This has social, physical, psychological, and moral if any, implications.


"Peter Gluckman of the University of Aukland, New Zealand, suggests, the problem however, is that in our complex modern society, the amount we learn means that we mature psychosocially much later than our forebears did. This creates a mismatch between the stage at which we are able to reproduce and the time when we have the social competence to cope with it. In his new book Mismatch: Why our world no longer fits our bodies (written with Mark Hanson) he suggests that radical changes in education are needed to help bridge this gap" (Ibid p. 40).


Psychiatrist Bruce Parry, in his interview, tells, "In the US alone, every year there are at least half a million cases of children found to have suffered from severe trauma or neglect. So at any time there are going to be between 8 to 10 million children with profound trauma or neglect-related dysfunction. ... If you look at a society that's badly affected by famine or war, then those numbers climb still higher", ('Nobody's children', interview by Liz Else, New Scientist, 10 February 2007, p 42)." He is a co-author of 'The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog'. (see http://www.childtrauma.org/ )


These examples relate only to children. What might be the situation of women, adult and the aged in the western societies? We only look the glamorous part and the affluence of the West. But the point is any person who has alert senses and observation would notice the changes that are taking place, or would honestly admit that s/he is not capable of looking after a child; perhaps animals would take better care of them: Parry fails to mention this in his interview.



There is no alternative


There is no alternative to the universal holistic education. It is organic and natural, and living beings, from bacteria (our ancestor in the distant past) to humans, have the learning ability bestowed by Nature. When a government has no ability to listen to the people, any democratic society must take its own charge, and restore their autonomy to educate themselves. In the present global circumstances, in the fast changing environment, which is forced by a few powerful, the people must accelerate their learning by their natural gift. That is, they must know, like the cells in their bloodstream, their enemy, and fight.

Any democratic government must recognise the people's education - knowledge and skills - in all the aspects of Education, Work, Leisure and Health. It must not victimise or suppress them by forcing alien systems upon them by taking them for granted. The people also should be spared from religious, racial, caste-ridden, linguistic, provincial fanaticism and fundamentalism, which is invented by the so-called higher-ups for their vested interest for the power. Last but not the least the hordes of activists, who are also the product of the industrialised mass education, should take some pain to learn from the people, and also change themselves. And avoid pushing them into the scramble on the ladder.

There are answers to all human follies. But there must be will to correct by drastic action: the gangrene growing on the society must be severed before it corrupts the entire body.First: recognise the people's education by legislative and legal action, not by lip-service, not by capitalising it, not by authority. The author of this article is not an authority, the people are.This must be coupled by the collective action to protect, preserve, restore, revitalise, renovate, and enhance the existing universal holistic system by legal and financial support.

After gaining the political independence, the people naively believed it is "our government", only to be disillusioned by the feudal mentality of its legislative and executive bodies, decade after decade. The political implications are clear: now face the hung parliaments and assemblies one after another, riots and terrorist acts, deaths by starvation and suicides, piracy in almost every field... the evil seeds of civil war are being sown by vested interests - the enemy within.



~~~~~~

Remigius de Souza

69/243 S. B. Marg, Mumbai 400 028, India
(04-03-2007)

Remi's poetry homepage>> www.poetsindia.com/poet/Remigius+de+Souza/

Politics of Literacy in India

Challenges of 21st Century

Learning to Learn: Squatters' children in Mumbai

 These children prove that learning begins at home! Learning is autonomous function of all the living beings, not only humans. It is bestowed by Mother Nature.

So simple! So unbelievable! You must be joking!

IN THE EARLY 1950s it could have been possible to achieve hundred per cent literacy in India in about five years. It was possible if some serious thought was given to the indigenous ways of learning of the people. We were forty crores then. At the turn of the 20th century about 40% i.e. about 40 crores persons are said to be illiterate. About 70% people live in villages. This is statistics of averages even if reliable. There are places where illiteracy is close to 100 percent; with perhaps a couple of percents are literate in the age group below ten years.

The statistics, however, do not show how many children attend, or do not attend, the schools regularly, and how many opt to dropout at various levels of schooling. Why do people keep away from the schooling even to this date when their survival is at stake? Yet the question remains how literacy is practiced/ utilised by all the sections of people – whether marginally literate or literate or educated – in the urban and rural areas? This leads to another question: how literacy becomes a crucial ‘need’, in what situations, for the illiterate?

By now we must be aware that mere election propaganda for the parliaments, assemblies, district or village panchayats, being connected to political power, is not an enough motivation to be literate. Even an annual Union Budget, being connected to economic power, is not a sufficient reason to be literate. To be MP or MLA, or even a Sarpanch of village panchayat, for an illiterate person is solely circumstantial. (We remember the late Phoolan Devi with reverence.)

Development begins with people, not PMs

‘BY BEING LITERATE, or rather educated, one gets a job, work, employment to earn livelihood’, is a bet often used by those who give, or sell, education, of course, is a white lie; people are sufficiently informed and disillusioned by now. Hence the crucial question of ‘need’ to motivate the illiterate is to know how literacy is applicable or useful in their ordinary living conditions.

In the industrialized societies the institutionalization works almost in every aspect of personal and the collective life. Even Gandhiji’s concept of ‘Buniyadi Shiksha’ – basic education – was institutionalized for a brief period. Inevitably it was discontinued. ‘Buniyadi shiksha’ is about ‘education’, not ‘literacy’. We are speaking here of ‘literacy’, that is ‘reading and writing the letters and numbers’, the script in any language – vernacular, regional or international.

‘India is a nation of villages and 70% people live in the villages’ is another often-repeated catch phrase that doesn’t go beyond lip service. There may be a genuine desire by the managers of the country’s affairs to take the nation to rank with the developed industrialized nations. And they seem to be in great hurry. Are they working for the 100 plus crore people or the ‘economy’?

Unfortunately for the last five decades the development or prosperity isn’t visible at the people’s level, whether it is literacy or poverty line, deaths by malnutrition or starvation or diseases by land-water-air pollution. They have been ceaselessly talking of percentages. It doesn’t elevate people to earn livelihood with dignity. The people, though helpless and silent, are intelligent to understand the ‘mid-day meal’ at school is a charity offered by the feudal masters, not a dignity.

Creativity: to create problems to create solutions to create…

WHY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN KEEPING AWAY from the institutionalized formal schooling even to this date? Without mincing words, it is because the prevalent education isn’t relevant and/or the system is not appropriate for their sustenance.

Homo sapiens have a powerful weapon of language over other hominids and species. As script and writing were discovered with rise of civilization, the powerful classes or castes monopolised them and kept ‘the other’ – their subjects away; perhaps they promised them the physical and spiritual protection in the return of the exploits.

Over the centuries this majority, which still persists and is increasing, had known that the scriptures and the script have not been essential for the survival in real life in real world. Perhaps that is why Gautama Buddha, the rebellion, speaks to people in Prakrit – vernacular!

Those who go through the British-made western-style education become alienated from the people and society, from real life, and embrace ‘virtual reality’ of market, money and media. The people inevitably turn into a mass society, and subsequently face identity crisis.

Fortunately none of the ethnic and tribal communities and their members suffers from identity crisis. They are acutely aware of its irrelevance in their real life, and therefore cannot afford it, and opt to drop out.

The identity of Britain and the British is “East India Company” – the international Baniya – the traders. The East India Company baptized the elite India with trade and replaced clergy by traders who are invisible rulers.

It is not a discovery that a language or a script is ‘virtual reality’. With the development of science and technology more and more languages and scripts are emerging, such as, binary. This pushes the society to further fragmentation and chaos, and the powerful move to further alienation. Thanks to the progress of Electronic Technology/ Information Technology in leaps and bounds that perhaps a million odd persons are now marginally computer-literates. The brighter ones end up in silicon valleys to slave for the likes of Gates.

An annual Union Budget, may use Hindi language, but even the educated may not be able to comprehend its means, meanings and ends, or how economic language changes political equations, or who shall hijack its benefits by hook or crook. Then they need the modern-day gurus to interpret the scriptures of the country’s budget. Such monopolisation of languages leads the experts to alienation from the real world, and pushes the ‘other’ members of the society to oblivion. Can anyone take a word of the rulers at its face value? The same could be said of all the fields of specialisation and expertise; they remain exclusive but not universal.

Literacy indigenous way

WHILE WRITING REQUIRES MOTOR ABILITY, reading is visual function of the brain, and language and script are cultural inventions. The scientists continue to read the human body. Describing our ability to read, Stanislas Dehaene, a cognitive neuroscientist, says that ‘the architecture of our brain is limited by strong genetic constraints though it retains fringe flexibility. … The primate visual system evolved to do a different job that was that was similar to allow it to be “recycled” into reading machine. … Even though we can’t possibly be born with specialised reading circuit, we all end up using exactly the same part of the brain.’

He speculates, ‘when we learn to read, we convert the network of neurons whose initial role was object recognition into specialized word-recognition system. The brain had neither the ability nor the need to create such a region from scratch. Our brain did not evolve reading. (See: Stanislas Dehaene, ‘Natural born readers’, New Scientist, July 5, 2003, pp 30-33). Many neuroscientists share the hope that the new understanding of brain will throw light on children’s educational difficulties, in maths as well as reading. They, however, must see before long that the advanced societies and the education progressively exist in ‘vertual reality’ divorced from nature.

To implement literacy all that a language needs is a script. Is it difficult to learn any script for persons who weave baskets or clothe, shape the pottery or build their own abode? Is it difficult to learn any script for a tribal woman who inscribes rangoli, alpana, kolam on a cow dung-washed floor, or paints fertility goddess on a mud wall? It is not that the illiterate have no language and no ‘script’; they do have them from the proto-historic times. Their language and script or signs are comprehensible to all the members of the community and are accepted means of communications.

Traditionally the people have been learning the life-supporting skills, crafts, and trades by sharing, experiencing and participatory process. This has been going on for thousands of years, even long before Homo sapiens domesticated plants and animals.

It is high time the ‘managers’ learn from the people rather than the West in the matters at home. There is a simple alternative to the ‘official’ system to implement literacy programme in India by indigenous way.

Ji-jutsu action is best weapon for the poor

BY THE SAME AGE-OLD INDIGENOUS WAY, any 3, 4 or 5 percent literate persons, kids or adults, from a village, or a neighbouring one, can teach the letters and numbers to entire village in five years. Children are the best teachers as they have better access to the woman folks and the aged. A thankless job!

Learning literacy, of course, should be in the people’s dialect or vernacular, the mother tongue. A language with script establishes its identity as well as that of its community, and self-respect. The language then comes out of obscurity. The learned and the educated then start respecting the language that has a script. It becomes a politically strategic action.

Not long ago there has been reconstitution of Indian states on the basis of language. Not long ago Konkani language received recognition from the Government. Its three dialects, Malvani, Gomantaki and Karvari followed Devanagari, Roman and Kannada scripts for number of years.

Indigenous way of learning literacy is bound to be different and away from the established ‘official’ ways of institutionalized schooling. The possible course may appear this way:

• A language may adopt a script, preferably a regional one, as Indian scripts are phonetically compatible;
• Ideally the language must be the mother tongue, people’s own dialect or vernacular language;
• The words and sentences would follow their own practice and describe their habitat – names of plants, birds, and animals, things they do and appliances they use for food, work and leisure;
• As it advances it should document their legends, myths, folklore, folk stories, folk songs, folk theater, plays and games, and their unwritten ancient laws;
• As far as possible the learning should keep away from the textbooks prescribed in the mass schooling, most of which is alien. They should evolve their own curriculum;
• They may start learning to write on earth, floor, use pigments or powders made from vegetables or soils… They also should not accept any conditional assistance from any person/s or governmental or nongovernmental organizations.

Routinely the bureaucrats, the experts, the educationist etc. will think of building schools, print books, decide curriculum, appoint teachers, prepare rolls of attendance, budgets, ‘Operation Black-Board’, talk big things in the parliament… They have no formula to reward such a programme of ‘literacy-indigenous-way’. If by any chance, some monetary incentive is provided, then a major part shall be sucked away by the channel itself – the intermediaries such as administration, establishments, and institutions on its way to the people. One should not be surprised if there happens a ‘slate-and-pencil’ scam like fodder scam and leather scam.
What then is their incentive? Modern theories of economics, leftist or rightist, have no formula to reward such a way of learning literacy. They cannot assess such work just as they have failed to assess value of farming and farm products as they do in case of industrial products, or the wealth of people’s knowledge. How could they, who look down upon them as second-class citizens, Dasyus, service class, ever even appreciate such concept or work?


PEOPLE’S RIGHT REWARD, perhaps, is that they can read and write their own language, and about their lives. It is larger than any award any establishment or the State can confer upon them. Their reward is they create a powerful political strategy in Ju-jitsu action. Is this why Kabir vehemently proclaims that he is illiterate?

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Remigius de Souza
13-03-2005

(Published in Janata weekly, Mumbai)