Why NO Dharmic Education in our Indian Basic Education?

Krishna in Srimad Bhagavad Gita says “A Dharmic Life is necessary for purity in mind”.

It is such a simple thing. There is no dispute in that. We need pure mind with love for the world and no hatred for anyone and anything. A dharmic life will give that. Now how do we develop dharmic life? By developing children through dharmic education.

I feel we Indians are so stupid. We just ape the west! We are such a rich nation of religions, philosophies, diversity. We have given raise to such varied thoughts. So many religions co-exist peacefully here. It is so pervasive in our life. Our names are after our gods & prakrithi. But still we keep Dharmic education out of our primary education. Why?

Our society values are deteriorating. Child abuse, women abuse is rampant. Society is very corrupt. We care less for nature. Powerful people don’t care for lesser sections of the society. Economic disparity is all time high. There is no equality. We show pity but no empathy for the poor. We give alms but snatch their land & water.

Aren’t these a sign of deteriorating morals in the society as a whole? Should we not seriously debate to include Dharmic education in our primary education? We have made education as birth right. Almost every child in India goes to school now. Nook & corner of India has schools. Government infrastructure is good, not bad at least. School education covers basic maths, science, English & some language. It equips a youth to get a job & earn his living. But most important for life is goodness in life. Should we not impart that as an education to children of our country?

If we have taken in so much from western culture, should we also not take some good culture from our own ancient Gurukula system of education? In ancient education only Dharmic education was there as primary education. The Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bhagavad Geetha was primary education. The Shastras, Smrithi, Vedas, Upanishads, Kavya, Alankara were advanced studies. The maths, science, art, architecture, astrology, medicine, law were higher education depending upon interest evolved by the youth.

We got independence from British. But not from their education system. When are we actually going to get Independence then? Lord Macaulay architected an education system for Indians to neutralize the society of its pride & self-esteem & primarily to make them slaves. It makes the child bland, prideless of its culture.  In his own words the intention of imposing the British education system on the Indian largesse is:

“

to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect

“

His topics in his parliament paper presentation depict his intentions clearly:

19. 7. INDIANS CANNOT BE EDUCATED BY MEANS OF THEIR MOTHER-TONGUE: ENGLISH IS THE LANGAUGE

19. 13. EXPENDITURE ON SANSCRIT AND ARABIC LEARNING IS DEAD LOSS

The paper he presented to the British parliament in full text is in the below link:

http://www.languageinindia.com/april2003/macaulay.html#minute

Whatever his narrow minded intentions were, it has made a significant damage to our self-esteem across the nation, lasting for nearly 200 years now. Isn’t it time we open our minds and debate genuinely loss or gain by bringing back Moral Value Education back into our basic education?

When we debate the inclusion of Dharmic education in our primary education, several questions come up. Lets take a dig at it.

1.       Why Dharmic Education? Let it stay out of Basic Education. Let it be in Mutts, Temples only.

Answer: Why not? What is wrong with it making it universal? It builds up a good character in an individual. It teaches what is good and what is bad. It will bring out the inquisitiveness in individuals of determining what is good and what is bad. It teaches society living in harmony. It teaches ‘Be good, Do good’, ‘Speak the truth’, ‘Respect elders, women, children’, ‘Help the needy’, ‘Don’t hurt others’ ‘Don’t discriminate another human’ etc., It teaches these basic goodness through simple stories and ballads. The stories and prayers will imprint well upon the child’s mind. When they grow up and come across bad actions, situations, their subconscious mind will lead the person to tread the righteous path.

The mutts & temples are there for certain lucky sections of the society. And not all go there. And even those who go there ask God not education but results.

But the Indian government education is for all. It is common for all. It is basic. Dharmic education should be part of basic education. It should be made compulsory for all. Many institutions in India today teach Bhagavad Geeta recitation, Yoga, Pranayama as part of their curriculum. Ramayana, Mahabharata teaching and exams are conducted by certain institutions across India. But they are not under the ambit of Government’s basic education curriculum. By making it common for all, India should hope to build everyone as Dharmic citizens.

2.       What makes up Dharmic Education? There are too many scriptures. There is no end to it. What about language of teaching?

Answer: There is no end to anything in this world. But can we stop studying because of it. We must start somewhere. The scope, syllabus will all come out if there is a will. If we all ask for it, then the government is by the people for the people, so they’ll make a committee and do it.

Language should not be a barrier. At least for learning good way of life people should choose their mother tongue. I prey in god some pride prevails about our mother tongue in our mothers and fathers.

3.       What about Christians & Muslims? They’ll demand their holy texts to be part of it. Then it becomes religious education & not Dharmic education.

Answer: Fine. What is wrong? They are Indians. Their texts also teach Dharma. They have good texts, ballads, stories even if they are foreign. They can be taught in respective mother tongue. They should also form committee to recommend their syllabus. There are 100’s of sects and religions in our India. Jains, Veerashaivas, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsees etc.,. So let there be options to choose. Let Government form committees who recommend syllabi for all 10 standards of our basic education for each of the options.

It will all take few years to iron out what should be there. But right now there has to be a healthy debate for inclusion of Dharmic Education in our basic education. That is an absolute necessity. This is India. We should be tolerant. We should show the world the right way. We should develop tolerance to learn various tenets of all religions of the world.

I believe Dharmic education is different from Religious education. Religion is associated with specific God or Gods. Whereas Dharma is basically Manava Dharma teaching the basic essence of ‘Be Good & Do Good’ & what are our duties as world citizens.

Different religions give different names to God. And impart the Dharmic education in the name of that God. So it becomes difficult to differentiate and make a single syllabus. This is my feeling. But if we can crack it for our India, then it would be phenomenal. And we should make a sincere attempt.

4.       But some of the holy texts in some religions have hatred for specific named sects; Idol worshippers as non-believers; Hatred & Discrimination based on various differences in living. That will create hatred in the society. So it is equivalent to Government creating hatred groups through systemic education?

Answer: Those sections of hatred should be removed. It is that simple. But then there would be uproar by the custodians of that religion to edit & interpret their holy text. There should be open debate on why they support hatred by faith, way of life, way of worshipping. Such people should be alienated while creating the prescribed syllabus. The committee should hold responsibility to bring out moral value education through these religious texts to build up a good society by education kids in the right way.

5.       What about the infrastructure? Teachers? Equipping & training them? Exams, evaluation?

Answer: We already have much of infrastructure in place. This is just an additional subject. Of course it will have options. Many options. So accordingly the schools have to provide options as much as possible. According to the locality, demographics, teachers available in the village/ area, the schools will need to be equipped accordingly.

It is similar to how we are handling language options. World’s all languages are available as options to our kids in the curriculum. But not all schools can afford to give all that. But they do give local language for sure depending upon the demographics of that region.

Exams and evaluations need to be evolved slowly. Not necessarily it has to be made a compulsory passing subject. However the oral recitation should be given importance. I had written previously on the importance of Time & Memory: http://npraveer.blogspot.in/2014/09/time-memory-character-building-in-child.html

Also another unfortunate thing is parents are not caring for their mother tongue. So for example in Kendriya Vidyalaya, Bangalore, there is no option for any of the Indian languages other than Hindi & Sanskrit.

In Kumaran’s a prestigious school in South Bangalore, 50% of the school kids choose foreign language at the cost of losing their mother tongue or local language. It is their parent’s choice that they grow up indifferent & ignorant of their own culture & richness of their mother tongue or local language.

6.       So the chances are that even in the Dharmic subject choices, the parents will choose different subject than their own religion?

Answer: That’s possible. How can we control that? It is upto parent’s intellect.

7.       What about default option? In rural, remote areas there will be limitations for multiple options?

Answer: It has to be localized. The villagers have to decide and implement what is good & feasible according to their demographics.

8.       They say State & Church should be separate. So they say Religious education should not come into universal primary education. Religion is personal and should not be enforced upon all.

Answer: This concept of State & Church is separate is a western concept. It should be properly debated. Should we follow blindly what the west says? Should we not look at our ancient times how well we prospered in peace? How did our society give raise to so many philosophies which is in practice today? How the different faith practitioners coexist peacefully and respectfully even today as they did yesterday? None of those saints who proposed alternate theories were hanged or crucified. It is a tolerant society yesterday and today.

So we should not be afraid of religious education giving raise to dogma as in the west. In fact we should oppose such education which will say only this text is holy, nothing else. That is what caused much friction in western world declaring finally State & Church are separate. Our holy texts should be allowed to be thoroughly questioned and explored. For example in India, as much we regard Sri Rama as Maryada Purushothama, we question his decisions from the first to last. Putting him to test and putting ourselves into exploring what is Dharma? Why did he kill Tadaka taking up Sthree Hathya papa? Why did he side with Sugreeva to kill Vali from back? There are 1000’s of such questions that our philosophy poses and answers convincingly. 

Our education should blossom a child’s mind, expand it and let it explore. We should bravely adopt this for the good of the society.

So my point is the implementation details will open up lot more questions and difficulties. But the educationists, policy makers have to seriously attempt to introduce Dharmic education in the universal primary education. It is the need of the hour. Dharma should be given equal importance if not more than Maths & English. 

Increasing Child Abuse Incidents

Bangalore woke up to the shock of series of child rape incidents recently. For the tolerant cosmopolitan nature of Bangalore the child rape incidents have marred its image. Parents across the city gathered for protest. Candle light vigil was held. Government was blamed for lethargy. School authorities were blamed for indifference. The culprits were arrested. Police commissioner was changed. But the incidents continue to occur. Elsewhere in the state another incident of child abduction and rape happened on close heels of these incidents.

It seems like people just like to fix the problems in a jiffy. Just blame the system, government, police, school, all things around us, make a spark protest and move on. People believe this is a quick fix solution. But is there any long term solution at all?  There is. But multitude of things should come together for it.

Government – Should bring in a strong deterrence for erring individuals

Society – Should develop a community culture of good assimilation of different cultures

Individuals – Should dedicate some time for the society and involve in community bonding

Education – Should give equal weightage to Society Value building. Dharmic education should be brought into the primary education compulsorily. 

Parenting – Should spend quality time every day with children for their good upbringing.

The Government

The Government is just a reflection of the society. After sometime the people forget the incidents, leaving the victim’s kith & kin to fight for justice alone. The media will have some other flash news to chase. The Raja (government) will forget the Raja Dharma of protecting the Praja (common man). Instead he will become accompli with the powerful perpetrators and forget the common man.

This should not happen. There is a constant threat to the upright officers in Government. Government heads (politicians) should support & empower upright officers. They should let them perform their duty and bring the culprits to the books.

Government should enact stricter laws for such heinous crime & implement it strictly. It will become a strong deterrence for repeat offenders.

The Culprit

We think the culprit is a Psycho. But one of the victims is a family man with wife & kid. So what drove them to such heinous crime? In all cases, the easy access to the filthy scenes on mobile, internet, etc., made them addict to it. They share it with friends and enjoy the vulgarity. Female becomes an object of lust. It can happen to anybody. The individual has to resist such wrong temptations. Individuals having some good upbringing (Sanskara) will have a subconscious guilt for such wrong deeds & resist such temptations. A weak person succumbs to temptations & enjoys it. A hapless girl child in school becomes the victim.

Child crime by an adult is the most heinous crime. He should be dealt with the strongest possible sentencing by the law of the land. It will deter a criminal from repeat offense.

But can we prevent such crimes altogether in the society? For that entire society needs to create a good upbringing environment. Can we create that environment?

  

The Urban Society

The biggest responsibility lies on society as a whole. But who is society? It is boils down to individuals. Every Individual has to become vigilant & caring.

The individuals in Urban society are increasingly becoming indifferent. We are becoming too much aloof. We are always in a hurry. We are losing connect with the society. We fear talking to strangers. We don’t take any elders advice. We don’t stay with elders. Our only form of entertainment is TV, Gadgets & Mall. Those make us individualistic. The entertainment is also material & money based. Simple chatting with neighbors & saying a hello to the passersby, is a thing of the past now.

Everyday thousands of people migrate to cities. For Bangalore kind of city, people come from all over India. The city becomes a melting pot of cultures. But instead of taking in all the good culture, the society is becoming indifferent or intolerant to the different cultures. So the easy way out is to take to Individualistic culture viz., TV & Mall Culture.

The urban society should reconnect with the roots of our social culture. The apartments, colonies should encourage daily community gathering. It may be for any good purpose. It could be for charcha, pravachana on any social topic, or, group singing, Bhajans, Satsang etc., All people should get a chance of participation. It need not be for religious purpose only; it could be for any social topic like Kannada Sahitya, Filmdom, Drama, Cricket etc., Let it not be current affairs as it leads to another TV kinda debate without much depth and only rhetoric. If it leads to some constructive society and community bond building that would be the best. As much it reduces the TV & Mall culture that much is good. It may not remove it altogether, but it should reduce.

People at their locality should come together for intermingling and appreciating each other’s culture and diversity. It is not busy life which prevents it. But it is our ego. We must become conscious of our ego and try to overcome that. The society bonding will kill that ego if we step out of ourselves and mingle with different people.

The Education

In the current education, value education is missing. Full focus is on skill building for bread earning only. In ancient India, the basic education was Ramayana, Mahabharatha, Bhagavad Geetha. Skill building was part of the process and not the main aim. The value building was the main purpose of education.

But today bringing in Bhagavad Geetha into basic education will face toughest resistance as; it is termed religious education by intellectuals who don’t have time to understand Bhagavad Geetha. So people must find their own solutions for it & not leave it to Government to decide what is best for the kids. People must contribute time & energy to build simple Balabharathi, Bala Gokula classes for community education. Through Shloka recitation, Veer Katha, Geeth, understanding local culture, local deity, we develop a sense of pride & patriotism & good values of life.

The general public should demand “Dharmic” education as part of the primary compulsory education in the system itself. Let there be healthy debate on how to introduce it. How to make it plural considering so many different religions, class, caste, language, creed etc., But it must be debated rather than shunning it as unnecessary crap. It is a NECESSITY for building a good society.

As the child grows up as adult, this value education will deter him to become a pervert in the society. He will also become alert of such perverts around and take necessary action to curb it. And as a child also awareness is created & if he sees something wrong happening around, he’ll raise alarm.

The Parent

The important thing is both parents should bring up their children. Both must dedicate some quality time every day for the child upbringing. They must impart values in the child’s life. They must sacrifice their TV time for some face to face time with the child. Bed time story reading, singing songs together are some good & fun time pass one should adopt. Parents should encourage children to participate in sports. It will bring up basic value education of team bonding, healthy competition, rules adherence, etc., in children. It will also teach the children the good touch, bad touch aspects of life. 

I am not a Communist; I am a Socialist

Who cares? But anyway here I am.

Some of the articles I have written made many believe I’m a communist. They did brand me a communist. Someone commented on me as a bleeding heart communist in reply to a detailed comment on an article in the social media:

http://www.thenewsminute.com/news_sections/1007#at_pco=cfd-1.0&at_ab=per-2&at_pos=7&at_tot=15&at_si=53f9d20f52059760
 
So I thought let me clarify what I am. I’m a proud Indian. I’m a proud Hindu. I’m a proud Kannadiga. I’m a proud Madhwa Brahmin. I’m a householder. I’m a nationalist. My writings and thoughts are deeply sociology based. Hence I am a socialist.

I’m proud of who I am and all characters stated above. I can defend to a great extent all of it & why I should be proud of it.

All oppositions I do and write also reflects these characters only. Be it opposition to large dams, opposition to industries for personal wealth, opposition to personal transport, opposition to faith conversion through violent, bribery means, opposition to propaganda based education, opposition to capitalism, large conglomerates, Loan based economy. Etc.,

My support for many things also stem from my upbringing through who I’m stated above. Like for example, It is Hindu culture to worship nature & protect it through strong communities who are custodians of nature for many millennia; It is Kannada culture to fight inequality; It is Madhwa Brahmin culture to embrace debate culture and oppose propaganda based education.

What is socialist? Why am I a socialist? We’ll delve in this article. A socialist is not communist. A communist claims to be a socialist.

Do I oppose communism? Yes I do. Clearly. Let’s first see what it is.

What is communism?

It is a failed theory in Russia as well as failing theory in China. Some argue what is followed in China & post Lenin Russia is not communism at all. But the fact is, it failed first & hence it went corrupt. In any case it is rather new theory and is yet to prove itself if at all it gets a chance. My argument is it has inherent problems to succeed. I’m not an expert though in this subject. Not well studied but I had to write as I wanted to veer away my branding.

Inherent problems in communism:

Communism is completely state driven. State drives everything. State determines what is good for the society and imposes upon it. There is little individual rights. Think tank is supposed to be centralized and determines what is good for the state. Communism believes society is not mature, it cannot govern itself. In the name of equality, State owns everything. Individual owns nothing. Every individual works for the state. He needs to work what is determined and directed by the state. So an individual, who wants to explore inner self, spirituality, explore the world, nature’s creation, who created nature etc., will not be supported by the state nor will allow citizens to support him.

Religion is defunct under communism. In fact, Karl Marx says, Religion is like Opium. This will get them into trance and forget the worldly life.

Communism, I believe developed in a context of the Christianity’s domination of state in the European region. So communism only responds to Christianity as Opium.

Christianity dominated European state post the decline of the Roman Empire. Roman Empire declined due to its excessive emperor-slave divide. And raising slave unrest.

Later rulers across Europe conveniently used Christianity as a tool to suppress the salves rising against the state. The rulers through the church preached them to believe in God and forget misery.

For centuries this authoritarian rule bread inherent unrest. As a result, people protested against authoritarian church. Renaissance came. Science & inventions, exploration came. Protestants came. Industrialization happened. Industrialization ushered in new found wealth by excessive exploitation of the earthly resources. Industrialization created wealth in few hands increasing the slavery through organized labor. So it created again big inequality.

Communism rose through Marxism. It said religion is opium. Religion is making laborers compromise on their rights. Marx said all have equal rights and have to claim it. So it devised a state driven equality based Industrialization. So everything that laborer produces belongs to state. And then state will distribute the wealth equally amongst all.

So it created a powerful state. It created “Concentration of wealth for the purpose of Distribution”. Power corrupted the people at the top. People at the bottom became complacent. Their freedom suppressed. Productivity plummeted. State became more authoritarian to push people to produce more. Unrest followed & overthrew the authoritarian communism.

So in China today, there is much authoritarian rule. There is much unrest building up. Tomorrow it might explode. Usually when an internal unrest builds up, authority looks for external aggression to raise patriotism and sacrifice by its citizens. So there is an imminent threat of aggression over India. It might happen in a decade or in few decades. But that threat is imminent and looming large.

Indian politicians are fools to not consider it and be prepared.

What is Socialist? Why am I a Socialist?

Socialist is someone who sees strength in society, unity, and people. Socialist believes empowering society. Society should build up state. It should be bottom up approach. Society in every region should be independent, self-sufficient. It should govern itself through society building and respecting it. It should contribute to national wealth. It should contribute to state machinery like – administration, legislation, police, military, and economy.

Especially economy. Society should determine its own strength, region’s wealth, form cooperative societies, extract earth’s wealth in sustainable manner and contribute to state’s exchequer. Develop entrepreneurial attitude and support it, harness it and control it within exploitation limits.

Yes it is all possible. For that we have to read Mahabharatha, Kautilya’s arthashastra and various other our own ancient texts. On local economy & its strengths, how to harness and how it is better than global economy I had written 2 blogs earlier posted here.

Only in military & external affairs, the decision should be top down. State should determine what is right. For security purpose industrialization & transportation should be planned. Those plans require sacrifices from regions and societies. State should reason with the locals and rehabilitate first before opening up their factories, highways and railways.

Education

Most importantly society should educate children. State should very minimally intervene in education. Local society should build education curriculum & infrastructure. We have to evolve ‘Gurukula’ system to modern day needs. Pass, fail, exam, certification should all come beyond 10^th standard. Let there be universities like Nalanda, Takshashila for higher education to explore the world with passion for learning. Not education through propaganda & factories like colleges producing certificates without knowledge, exploration, questioning, analytics.

But before that in primary education, we should educate children on sociology, community strength, regional strength, regional diversity, importance of keeping diversity towards strengthening unity, regional heroes, regional culture, weather, contours, regional wildlife, flora-fauna, its specialties, regional grains, vegetables, its importance for health. There is whole lot in each region in India. We don’t even know our own lakes, who built them, what rivers flow in our taluk, what grains we produce, what birds thrive here, who are our heroes? Why are they regional heroes? Education in local language, its strengths, beauty, diversity, dialects are important. Let the child open up its brain to innumerable variety around its vista.

For my son, 4^th standard exam question was: Where was Jesus born? I had asked my son to write Jerusalem for anything to do with Christianity, Judaism, Islam. So he got Zero. Our kids don’t know who is Purnaiah, Madakari Nayaka, DVG, Visweshwaraya. But those are unimportant for Indian educationists.

5^th standard social studies text book says Chicago is the largest Cow Slaughter Industrial hub. And that must be mugged up for important questions in the summative exams.

How important is all this? What patriotism are we building in them? Why are we so obsessed with global culture? International languages? People ask why should we learn Kannada at all. People chose Spanish/Japanese for kid’s third language. Why? Because it gives job opportunities. 

We are so afraid of jobs. Everything we learn has to be to earn living. Stomach filling is the only aim in life. Once we get a job, nothing else is important. We stop reading, studying, knowing, teaching, wondering about the world, construct of the world, societies etc.,.

Our current education is to soften our pride, by pass, ignore teaching children on the richness of local culture. Once they realize our education did not give a shit to our culture, tradition, scriptures, heroes, they grow up to become indifferent to all of it. They become indifferent to protect their heritage. Once they become tomorrow’s educationists, administrators, politicians only through mugged up knowledge and certifications, they look at money & their personal living as ultimate goal. Society concept is broken. Individualism becomes important. They will be ready to sell anything for money & living. That’s the culture we are cultivating through our current education.

We also studied like that only. That’s why we don’t know what DVG wrote, what Bendre wrote, what is Kautilya’s arthashastra, Vidura Neethi? We are ready to sell our society, nature, wealth at the altar of foreign traders, companies & countries.

Our Current Jobs

One generation back, take any of your parents, uncles, aunts etc., They used to work for something connected to our society. Either in Government offices, teaching, public sector, insurance, bank, farming, trade etc., They knew their customer, their vendor. They knew exactly why they are working, who gets benefited and how.

Today, take for example export oriented industries, the biggest employment industries. We produce largest software services & sanitary napkins. Who uses it? The world uses it. In India it is least used. We don’t produce for ourselves what is necessary. Or we don’t use what we produce. We have created a huge divide between India and Bharath. India is producing big things for all countries and taking cash. The middleclass who get that cash, keep it for personal luxury – cars, bikes, houses, multiplexes etc.,

Our luxuries are costing earthly exploitation, forest destruction, and river drying forcing people to migrate to urban slums. Do we care? We have become indifferent. We lost our connect with our society.

For getting a job in these personal money earning industries do we use the education we did? For example, to become a software engineer I cracked Shakuntala Devi maths puzzles. That’s it. Not engineering studies. After that since last 15 years I have never used all that engineering subjects I studied nor primary school subjects. I have used some basic arithmetic, basic analytical, logical skills. Apart from that it is majorly commonsense that is utilized. English language conversation I picked up after joining job.

Lets say, if you were from a Gurukula system studied upto 10^th standard, got around some basic maths, English language, and you cracked the entrance test for your job and interview as per their current evaluation and requirement, would you not have been as effective today?

Similarly in textile industries, the largest employment generation industry, none of what they studied in school is used. So why study Global culture in primary education?

Isn’t Our Society important? Should we not study society, our life style, life style effect on society? Individualism is detrimental for the country. But is somebody listening?

With all this writing still, I live like an individualist, typical urban middleclass, with an indifferent lifestyle. But I do think at least & I write. May be it will lead me somewhere or make others think and change their stance. But thinking is important. It will change things ultimately.  

So anyway if you have reached till here, I hope you know by now, what is socialist and why am I a socialist.

Smart and Clean Cities For India

This article is about the state of our cities and how we can improve. As nation's people what changes we need to adapt to make it happen. There is a bit of sacrifice, there is a bit of service, there is a bit of fighting spirit required from all of us to make it happen.

Filthy Cities of Today

Transportation is the backbone of city. Our cities have become filthy by perennial traffic jams. The average speed has become 10-12KM per hr in the city. Pollution is the order of the day. Noise & Smoke fill the air from dawn to dusk. Excessive production & selling of cars, bikes has certainly made the country rich in money circulation. But it has made the cities ugly. Families buying private motorized transportation feel rich. But are they? Middleclass families have more private vehicles. But that has not made them rich but retained them as middle class only. That has not made them reach their office, schools, market faster. The upper class has got more luxury cars. But that has not made them reach their destiny any early.

There was very less or no slums in yester years. But a city today cannot grow further without the slums contributing to its wealth! Every major city in India has at least 40% living in filthy conditions. How can we boast of progress achieved? They lack clean water, air, sanitation. Where did they come from? They were driven from rural environs where they had at least clean lake, river, hills, forests, desert, plains, to laze, graze and live on god given natural resources.  Money was not a need to live. Why were they driven or opted for slums? Because the government snatched their environment & land and auctioned it off to businesses. For what? For the development. But that development has made our cities neither fast enough nor beautiful. Rural environs and people are also destroyed. Is this what is development?

So much of coal, petroleum, gas, minerals extraction; cars, bikes manufacturing has pushed people to be slaves at pittance losing their land and environment. It makes country rich on paper. Currently Economy is important. People are not. Large dams, coal mining, aluminum, iron, manganese all metal mining at a rapid pace is important for the country. Production of large quantities of cloth, metal, vehicles, phones, and its export are important for the country. Large consumption of milk, cereals, meat, vehicles, metals by few lucky city dwellers is most important for the country. Left out people of this luck are not important. This over production & over consumption brings down hills, creates artificial hills, concrete jungles, sucks up lakes, creates filthy rivers. Large dams have submerged many forests, villages. People still survive. Where will people go? They migrate to city slums. Few lucky get into apartments.

Number of people living in apartments and number living in slums are equal almost. So what development achieved?

The main thing is to imbibe and educate “ಸರ್ವೇ ಜನಾಃ ಸುಖಿನೋಭವಂತು” (Sarvey Janah Sukhino Bhavanthu: Means let all people be happy). It is not correct to say someone has to sacrifice for someone’s development. Those who “have” should control their consumption to leave something for “have nots”.

Smart City Concept

For a smart city, we should have very good public transport. Metro, Bus connectivity should be improved for long distance commute. Metro especially will be safe and fast. But metro doesn’t reach your home and office. The last mile connectivity is the key. Lack of it is one of the main reason for high number of private vehicles on road.  

For last mile connectivity we need to have shuttles. How shuttles should serve the locality?

• They should be electric non-polluting or non-motorized vehicles. Something like buggies in golf field. Or maybe something more robust.
• They should keep running in locality covering 1-2 kms radius continuously. It should connect people from near door to nearby main road corner
• High frequency connectivity; But low speed for keeping up safe environment.
• Hop on hop off service to be provided;
• Ease of ticketing, multi-mode payment, seamless smart card integration with metro & bus services

Apart from this, city should encourage and adopt cycling mode of transport. It is all possible and not a fancy story. Most of the European cities have become safe with zero road fatalities by adopting cycling as a chief mode of transport. http://www.copenhagenize.com/

And especially in India it works. Because Indians are civilized, obedient & tolerant by and large.

Owning and driving private motorized vehicles should be made extremely expensive in cities. That much reduction in vehicles will lessen that much burden on earthly extraction of aluminum, iron, petrol, gas. That will retain our beautiful rural environs.

To limit Consumption, Limit Production

Another most important factor is to make private vehicle production prohibitively costly. Because actually it is costly. Since we treated environment & people as cheap commodity, we have reduced the cost of production. We have shown apathy to environment and people, getting environment clearance, giving false assurance to people about job generation, the production goes unbridled. A Factory gets clearance for one million ton ore production but goes on to produce 100 tons. They get clearance for paper, plastic, rubber, vehicle production, many such things only to flout the clearance guidelines, brazenly producing more than approved. River pollution, lake sucking, canal diversion goes on unbridled. When a strict officer occasionally comes and hits at it, people get divided and oppose the closure. Because they feel they lost jobs. But jobs can be generated if they work for themselves and not for someone else as slaves. But that needs a very long education.

One solution is to treat the mineral rich lands as ones belonging to those local villages & not to the government. The current system of auctioning off the mineral rich hills, forests by the government to individuals, companies, foreign companies should be stopped.

So when government identifies that area is mineral rich, then it should educate and enable villages to join together to form cooperative societies. Cooperative society should constitute all sections of people from land owners to landless laborers, tribals etc., And they should be given education, equipment, technology to do the mineral extraction and provide to the industry/ factory.

Who should run the factory? That needs entrepreneur. Highly educated, specialist or a scientist will generally become entrepreneur. But again, if he is all and sole owner, however nice person he is, the power corrupts that person. So government should enable policy to make villages to be stakeholders of the factory. So that the decision process is democratized in favor of people of locality, and not in favor of the productivity.

All these will put delays in production, initiation, clearance. It will limit production too as the stakeholders are the dwellers around the factory. And they take decisions people centric and not productivity based. But that is fine. What is the hurry?

Or like America, we should also outsource all manufacturing, mineral extraction, mining industry to other hapless countries.

Production of military equipment, nations security related, railways production should take priority in getting government clearance and building consensus with the villagers.

Education

If government doesn’t interfere in rural people’s lives, they do live happily. They don’t need government subsidy, food card, PDS, etc., to live. They just need to be left alone. They find their way by utilizing what god has given them. They make indigenous solutions to their life problems. If at all they need anything from the government it is Education & Health care. Even disputes, quarrels, violence breakouts can be quelled within themselves by their own indigenous set up.

Education should teach them about their environment and surroundings:

• To be proud of their surrounding and protect their surroundings. It should teach them that they are the collective owners of their hills, lakes, river, forest etc.,
• Government cannot and should not snatch it from them without their share or consent.
• Government should not auction it off to some individual or a company or a foreign state for exploitation

While we cannot put blanket ban on urban middleclass consumption, we can certainly educate children. Right things taught in early age will mend their brain and will remain a habit through their life for long. For example there are chapters for children today on deforestation, wildlife destruction. The causes for deforestation are taught as cutting trees, poaching, polluting industries etc., But why cutting trees, why industries? That is not taught. The root cause is over consumption, over indulgence on luxury & creating high demand on the environment. The linkage between the consumption based economies to the ecology destruction has to be simplified and educated in young minds. Growing up they themselves will resist their parents in indulgence. And also they become good citizens.

On the one hand controlling consumption, on the other hand, community ownership of our surrounding will be the right recipe for controlled growth and development. Villagers, tribals have to be taught to own their surroundings. They need to be educated from primary levels to involve in decision making process of their area. If factory, mining, dams are coming up they need to be able to question and own that themselves.

Swami Vivekananda says “The national ideals of India are renunciation and service (ತ್ಯಾಗ ಮತ್ತು ಸೇವೆ). Intensify her in those channels and the rest will take care of itself”   

Damn the Large Dams

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/a-hunting-community-in-nagaland-takes-steps-toward-conservation/

A Hunting Community in Nagaland Takes Steps Toward Conservation. The above link is an article in NYTimes on this subject. It is actually about the conservation of the migratory birds from the hands of the Naga tribes. But the underlying problem is the way we are civilized and getting the tribes civilized. 

Dam construction in India has done much irreplaceable damage than it has brought in corresponding gains. In the above article, one of the recent big dam constructions in Nagaland shows the vicious circle just beginning. Till date, lots of dams were constructed across main land India. And most of north east was not touched. Now in the NE states suddenly there is a sprout of lot of projects bringing much money to the states. But nothing to the people, because what is money to the people? All the pristine terrains, air, the rivers, forests, mountain ranges, are going to be permanently damaged. Hectares & hectares of the flora and fauna loss will never again be recovered. The lives of the indigenous people are going to be thrown out of gear. Their culture, language, ingenuity will be gone. They will be called the clue less poor people by the civilized world, which will put them in museums and wonder how they ever lived once without piped gas, water and electricity. Those folks will be forced to migrate to nearest city and live in ghettos.

 

Citizen Activism

Most of India has citizen awareness groups, activists, who strengthen and fight against resource exploitation. Many projects are stalled, but not cancelled. For example, Gundiya project in western ghats has so much opposition, but it will never get cancelled. And when someday, somehow it starts off with lots of restrictions, those restrictions will be on paper. By mistake the earth movers will move more woods, hillocks. Opposition starts by activists, and by the time, it goes up various courts up to Supreme Court for stalling, few more hillocks are gone. The culprit proven in court will be a driver who would be dead by then. The case will be closed with irreparable damage done to the environment and very little benefit to the fast paced world which is chasing enigma. Environment clearance procedure is there albeit insufficient; there is currently no monitoring mechanism. Only citizen activism by the affected people in those areas can save anything. And in most cases, citizens loose life, loose hope and migrate to work in inhuman conditions in cities.

In Kudremukh mountain range after a sustained fight in Supreme Court for almost a decade, the green brigade finally got the company to stop mining further. But by then a few mountains are gone. Kudre Mukha in kannada means Horse face. And it is not there now.

For the protection of the western ghats, there is a lot of fight going on now. There was Gadgil report earlier mandating to protect 70% of current green. Then government itself felt too much. Kasturirangan report revised it further and said 40% of current green should be kept up. There is uproar in all ‘affected’ states by coffee growers, industrialists, contractors, miners, timber merchants, and tourism industry and even the church & Kannada sahithya parishath!

What happens to the affected people?

Along this exploitation, we generate some learned beings and a lot of unlearned labors. The learned beings either go for secure jobs in city living to increase the demand, OR join further exploitation brigade. That means they become contractors, officers, politicians, migrant labor contractors. The last one of the kind is the worst one. These guys ensure, the unlearned labors get transported to bordering states. And the labors remain forever indebted to them for simple living needs.

So what happens to these unlearned beings? Why are they not learning and fighting?

The landless are generally unlearned and unorganized and unassertive. They hardly get absorbed in the same area where they are from. The labor contractors ensure they get transported elsewhere. And to this area someone else from other areas comes and works. This way the resistance, rising voice, rights claims are silently suppressed. When they are migrating from one place to the other, whither education? Children will get deprived of their pristine environs and get adjusted to dreaded conditions, deprived of education.  The unlearned labors get indebted to the contractors due to their alien conditions and culture in a neighboring state or district. And the promise of the government to provide employment to the affected people will be successfully defeated by the labor contractors transporting people across regions. Government will not intervene. And even if it does it can hardly provide jobs for about 10% of the affected locals. Why do contractors bring in outside labors? Because the affected people in another region are desperate to work for living and hence available cheap. So that’s how this locality people will be made desperate to work for living and will be transported to another state.

Rising Middle class demand

Demand is very high, so we are going far and wide even if there are transmission and transportation losses. We are tapping the available resources unhindered and not caring from the earlier learnings. Besides who has to learn? The learned will learn to only exploit further. The unlearned will never get to learn. If I consider myself as one of the learned one, I don’t exploit, but I simply live and demand further. Where I grew up in my village, 1 chocolate as a gift by a visiting uncle or aunt once a year or twice at most was a luxury. Now 1 chocolate per day is essential for kids! And this is just an example which can be extended to dresses, shoes, toothpastes, brushes, running water, burning lights, number of cars, motorbikes, joy rides, roller coaster rides, joy trips, pilgrimage trips J, treks, wilderness trips, foreign trips. We are just living like no one ever lived before!!  Our demands are very high today. Our simple lives before was close to nature, close to people & hence beautiful. Today’s life is boxed, physically secure, mentally insecure, always talking or communicating yet not connecting to people, demanding everything from the world to make life easy. Or is it easy?

So I just live demanding further from government. Government furnishes the urban citizen demands. The government is made up of learned executive officers and people’s leaders (who are learned or unlearned). Learned officers, identify the further demand can be met by further exploiting earthly resources. The leader of the region identified for exploitation, asks the people. People ask what they get? Land owners get lot of money. Landless get to work at dam, a false promise to which they fall prey to. Everybody happy.  Money is anyway funny. Leader, land owner, contractors, officers, and all the learned people get lot of money. All good land, water, air will be messed up permanently. But they got money which can buy all of it back by exploiting the next river!

In one of the Purana’s Hiranyaksha the brother of Hiranyakashipu loves gold and likes to amass it. Gold is a representation of earthly wealth. He went on exploiting the mother earth so much that earth lost density and lost its course!! Then Narayana came in Varaha avathara (incarnation) cleaned up the mess, killed the demon and his subject’s insatiable desire, and restored mother earth back on the orbit. So what do we learn? We have hope in Narayana! And we continue exploiting the earth!!

Primary Education

In the above article of hunters of Nagaland taking up conservation of migrating birds, school going children play a role. They get educated about the conservation necessity and benefits in schools. And they discuss it in home and ask their parents to not do what is wrong. Parents definitely listen to kids in most cases and feel ashamed to oppose their wise words.

The primary education is very powerful. It molds the young minds. It shapes their growth and makes responsible youth. We have underestimated its strengths. If we pay attention and strengthen their sense of responsibility towards environment, and importance of its conservation, it can turn miraculous. The locals can become active and claim their rights over their regions and prevent outsiders exploiting their beautiful locales.

More questions to answer

All this poses a lot more questions. Dams are symbols of development. How will development happen if we oppose it? What will happen to Electricity, irrigation, poverty elevation? Is it wrong to expect continuous electricity, running water, highways, buildings, signal free roads, flyovers, bridges, cities? GDP, country’s current account deficit, imports, exports?

On the other hand, how will you give strength to the exploited? Or should we leave it as survival of the fittest? Are we animals? Or humans are different?

Can the society ever be able to balance the development and sustainability? Should our demands come down? What education to be included? Will religious education help? Should we inculcate Renunciation and Service as part of education?

There is a need for the urban middle-class & upper-class to live lite and not become burden on earth. How lite is lite etc., is next step. But first every family has to realize the necessity. And then start taking baby steps towards lite living. We must support the green and oppose its exploitation at all costs. It might sound anti-development, but certainly it is not. It is the only true development. Our lives will change. It will change the lives of our kids. But it will be towards better and not worse.

We need to debate, discuss. Only by giving voice to the voiceless, strength to the weak, education to uneducated, awareness to the unaware, we can answer to the questions. Someone who gives voice to the voiceless has to brave a lot of odds. One has to stand almost against the entire state itself. Not easy, it needs courage. But state must give voice, strength and a chance to the people of the region affected. The state must have leaders who are compassionate and who truly represent the masses for the locale. The locale and community has to elect leader from their own group and community. That will be a successful democracy.

It is a subject of grave concern. It has many angles. I intend to continue writing. Hope it brings some awareness and personal impact to the reader to take up some personal steps. If our slowly increasing simple demands have created havoc on environment the same can be reversed also by individual awareness & restraints too.