Thursday, May 29, 2014

 

Education and Character


A mail forward is going viral with educational qualifications of Ministers of HRD / Education ever since we got our Independence. Great luminaries with even better accolades of educational qualifications. Target being our current Minister of HRD & Education being a 12th pass candidate. Allegations being that she lied in some affidavits of her educational qualification. We have a Prime Minister now, who was shy from declaring his marital status and something which was declared only recently. So which is better? Someone who lacks character of acceptance of his marital status, is now going to run the country, or someone who is not a graduate and ‘maybe better off in character’.

What are the educational qualifications of all the jokers who are in Parliament? What is the character displayed in Parliament? Chairs being flung, idiots getting into the well of the house, missiles of microphones pulled and flung, stalling proceedings of the house, watching pornography on their cell phones, enjoying subsidized food at rates unbelievable, and having a swell of a life at tax payers cost. Is this all fine ‘even presuming’ all of them are educated? What have all the ministers prior holding the portfolio of HRD / Education done for education? Are our professional qualifications even recognized globally? Our Doctors are not recognized in Europe or America and are made to go through additional local qualifications of the country for them to practice.

Is our education system vocational based? After ten years of schooling most of the students till date do not know what to do and it is herd mentality of college education which does not guarantee any prospects. It’s only a very thin wafer crust and many a times the privileged that get into professional colleges and make a career, and most of them, who would just want to look abroad and have no values of character to contributing to the nation. Some of ones who stay back their lack moral values and we have cases of Doctors running sex determination test / abortions / kidney trading, etc. Engineers who compromise and we have the state of roads and infrastructure we are living with. Only place where there is efficiency is the government sector, where there is excellent efficiency of corruption.

Where is research in our country happening? Which technology innovation can we think of where we are exporting to the world? Once a self-sufficient country in food, today we have to even import food. Our defense sector is ‘dependence sector’ on imported technology. So where is all the education gone when we had great intellectuals heading the HRD / Educational Ministry till yesterday. Today the current HRD / Education Minister’s qualification is questioned, as to what can she do when she is not adequately qualified? What are the qualifications of some of the Ministers who hold key responsibilities? It is not just only qualifications that can judge the capability, but it is three things more prior, and that is Character, Responsibility and Integrity.

We have had all this while murders, rapists, thugs and even idiots from inside prison running some states in our country. We have had ministers who have managed Sports Ministry. What sporting achievements can we boast of in the International sporting arena? We opiate on cricket which is tainted and tarnished with match fixing. We have other sporting events where players don’t even basic facilities. Whatever sports is now being today promoted, is more from the private sector, which is purely another expansion into their businesses.

We have a ministry looking into Child and Women welfare, when child labor is rampant and rape news today don’t even stir the conscience of the average man. We have a law ministry and cases are dragged on for years. We have a ministry for forests and forest cover is decreasing. We have a ministry for agriculture and farmers are committing suicide and agriculture land is slurped for real estate in the alleged garb of nation development. What development are we talking about when till date there is no basic right to education, and we question the qualification of the HRD / Education Minister?

Tuesday, May 06, 2014

 

Piss off


An anonymous group in Bombay armed with a water tanker, water cannons people urinating on the streets. A viral video of the act shows people watching helpless people getting water cannoned, as funny. The group named ‘Clean Indian’ is out to clean the streets of people urinating on them. Ajit Pawar deputy Chief Minister of Maharastra who was once concerned about the draught in the state once remarked “If there is no water in the dam, how can we release it? Should we urinate into it? If there is no water to drink, even urination is not possible." Now we have a group armed with water having issues with people who urinate, what a dichotomy?

No one would want to urinate on the streets, if there were public toilet facilities. How come the ‘Clean Indian’ group, be not be an ‘Intelligent Indian’ group, and not understand this problem first? Why hit at soft targets who have no place to relieve themselves? What is law machinery doing about people taking the law into their hands? So if a ‘Clean Indian’ group can do this and get away, what can stop some other ‘Idiot Indian’ group come with some moral code of dressing and start spraying people who are not modestly dressed. Come to think of it is happening in Delhi the most, just that there do it by rape. Politicians who are raping the country and defecting cities with posters during elections, the ‘Clean Indian’ group cannot see that. In fact if you look at the faces of the politicians on these poster they even look like feces. Who cleans that up? On the contrary they stink with their feces like faces staring at us, long after elections are over.

Not that I am any political party supporter, but this election I punched the button with the broom symbol. At least some ‘Brave Indian’ group is attempting to make a change. Change can be only made from inside the commode of the dirty system, than trying to change by targeting those who don’t have a commode to relieve themselves. For those who feel all parties are the same and did not go to vote, could have at least opted to punch the NOTA button. I felt proud taking my wife to vote who hates to vote, as she only complains saying what is the use? I told her to exercise the NOTA option. She realized when one punched NOTA option, they do not support any of the candidates. Later asked her what the acronym NOTA stood far and she instantly replied it meant ‘None of the Ar##Holes’…………what an ‘Intelligent Indian’, I mean wife.

So this ‘Clean Indian’ group could have gone about educating Indians about NOTA, if they did not favor a party. Gone about cleaning the city of feces faced politician posters. Used the water to serve the many who stand for hours for a pot of water……….or done ‘Gandhigiri’ and washed the walls where people urinate, in front of them to drive a message. Instead firing them water cannons, unless the aim was to make funny home videos, where you see the bystanders watching the spectacle, laughing their guts out. Why can’t this ‘Clean Indian’ not create an awareness of cleanliness? How many people will they water cannon? How long will they water cannon?  

Who gives these guys to moral police or hygiene police? We have cops who can’t do normal policing and target young couples for indecency at beaches or places where they seek privacy, when there are rapes, robberies, and other menace happening under their nose. We have political parties who police morality of cultural values by making a noise on Valentine’s Day, when political leaders are indulging in extra marital affairs. We have regional parties that police outsiders from other states to theirs, when there is infiltration from the borders, and terrorists come and bomb our cities.

The ‘Clean Indian’ group is a ‘Deaf and Blind Indian’ group as they cannot see the bigger mess that needs to be cleaned. They go around with a water tanker that is named the ‘Pissing Tanker’ with a message that reads “You stop. We Stop”. The point if we have to go, we have to go, we cannot stop. You either help with a solution or just ‘Piss off’

Thursday, May 01, 2014

 

Father don’t preach


Father Frazer Mascarenhas’s recent email to his students, was like another boring sermon at a Sunday Mass. Nothing new was said besides someone new saying the same thing. Encouraging youth to vote is excellent but why only target Gujarat model? Is this not a veiled influence trying to be projected? Why was not Bengal taken as a point of discussion? A state which threw out Tata’s, a corporation lauded for nation development.

Tata’s never ventured into Bengal only for business growth and making profits, but also to make a change in the quality of life for the people of Singur. Since the political system is deep rooted with corruption, one can’t just pin down on one state to prove a point that the leadership from that place is flawed. At the same time when a priest wants to make a change he is suspended, Father M.T. Stephen from Trivandrum archdiocese, who was running as an independent candidate in Kerala, was suspended after refusing to end his candidacy. How come Fr. Frazer Mascarenhas has not challenged this? Just because Canon law 285.3 states that clergy are forbidden from holding public office whenever it means sharing in the exercise of civil power. Similarly there was a canon law that forbade a priest from washing the feet of ladies to commemorate a ritual that Christ did before the last supper, where he washed the feet of the disciples. So when an Indian priest later Father Hugh Fonseca wanted to set a new trend which would have given respect and equality to women, he was asked to avoid it. At the same time when Pope Francis did the same it was considered a path breaking change.

So if a white priest makes a change it is a wow factor. That time the law is shoved into a canon and fired into space. If an Indian priest attempts a change, the canon law is aimed at him. How come Father Frazer Mascarenhas never raised a voice to this? So many fraudulent land deals were done ‘by the Church’ in the backyard of Father Frazer Mascarenhas in Bombay, but he cannot see that, but he can comment on Gujarat. Maybe he is far sighted is what one can term it. He was vocal when a political body opposed Rohinton Mistry's book 'Such a Long Journey', at the same time he is deaf to Dr. Zakir Naik, who through his television channel goes about proving Christianity and the Church wrong. Why is Father Frazer Mascarenhas never questioning the low standards of office, Indians have in the Vatican? When will the question on why an Indian has never been a Pope, be raised by Father Frazer Mascarenhas? How long are Catholics going to be fooled by a bunch of majority white Europeans who gang up together and con to be praying for the Holy Spirit to guide them to elect a Pope? Could it be that because the Holy Spirit is depicted as a dove so only a white man can rule? Surprisingly Father Frazer Mascarenhas states that “No magic wand or divine miracles will come to the aid of the Indian people”. At the same time for electing a Pope it is divine intervention.

Father Frazer Mascarenhas citing the example of education, “Schools for the ordinary populace show abject neglect with a very high dropout rate in the last 10 years. Higher Education has not been allowed to move forward. To take just an example, St. Xavier’s College Ahmedabad, thrice NAAC accredited with an equivalent of the A grade, has not been able to gain permission from the Gujarat Government for Academic Autonomy, for the last 10 years and has finally won a battle in the High Court to approach the UGC directly for this status”. The question is with the best of educational facilities that Catholics Institutions can boast off, how many Catholics end up really educated? Where is awareness for education, social contribution, entrepreneurship an inward movement before trying to trumpet an outward movement of change? How many Catholics can we pride to look at as leaders, or entrepreneurs or academicians or scientists or for that matter anything?

Another example of Father Frazer Mascarenhas's statement is about a massive investment in health and education that is sorely needed in our country of widening disparities and those who support big business and its unethical profits will never agree to such public expenditure for the masses. In fact, the worsening situation of environmental degradation and depletion, in the lunge for growth and profit, shows up the real intentions of the greedy. Through my blogs I have been trying to drive a point for years why can’t we Christians stop the practice of burial of the deceased and start donating the body for organs that be used by the needy? Is there a Canon Law that restricts Christians doing this? Imagine the no. of eyes that could be donated in this process, the amount of skin that could be harvested for burn victims, and better quality of education for Doctors who don't have cadavers to study one despite being a populous country. Intentions of greed are so well highlighted by Father Frazer Mascarenhas, but lack of charity even after death is worse than greed. A minority community the Jains are the largest eye donors in India. Instead of only praying and fasting on Good Friday Chirstians could instead go and donate blood to commemorate the Bloody Crucifixion of Christ. Like Christ Blood, Christian blood may not save the sinners, but it could definitely save a lot of lives.

It is definitely wrong and needs strong condemnation of parties who raised their voices to the views of Father Frazer Mascarenhas. He has the complete right as Indian individual who has the freedom of speech to express his views. My point is why the reach of the speech only limited to Gujarat, and not covering the limitations and short comings in the Catholic faith and community.

So Father Frazer Mascarenhas, let us start by removing the log in our eyes before we attempt to remove the thorn in the way of development of Gujarat. Till then Father don’t preach.

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