'Nuns on the Bus' taking America by storm - Share link via NDTV.com

'Nuns on the Bus' taking America by storm

Signing autographs along the way, a group of Catholic nuns is taking a road trip across America to stand up for the poor. The media-savvy "Nuns on the Bus" tour kicked off in the midwestern state of Iowa on June 17 and is making a slew of stops around the country to convey concern about social injustice.

Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/nuns-on-the-bus-taking-america-by-storm-237906

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Gujarat:Myth and Reality by Bhalchandra Mungekar (Times of India June12th 2012)

                                                                                                    Gujarat: Myth and reality

                                                                                                                                                                                            -Bhalchandra Mungekar,Jun 12, 2012, 

 

Please click on the following link to read the item:

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                                                                                              A war of words has erupted between the chief ministers of Bihar and Gujarat. Bihar's chief minister Nitish Kumar has slammed Narendra Modi for taking potshots at the state's slow socio-economic growth. The altercation began with Modi saying that caste politics has ruined states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Hitting back, Nitish has said that Modi should look at the conditions in his own state before criticising others.

For the last several years, Modi has been successful in projecting his "vibrant Gujarat" as a role model of economic growth and himself as ''Vikas Purush". Though one must give due credit to Modi for his effective skills in making projections, one must also critically analyse this "growth story of Gujarat" based on facts and figures. Regretfully, as one examines the facts since Modi came to power in Gujarat in 2001, the story appears to be hollow and, at times, contrary to what is being projected.

First, about the rate of economic growth. During 1995-2000 and 2001-10, Gujarat increased its annual rate of growth from 8.01% to 8.68%. But so is the case with other major states such as Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. In fact, Gujarat was ranked second after Rajasthan (8.34%) in the first period and third after Uttarakhand (11.81%) and Haryana (8.95%) in the second period. What is remarkable, Bihar and Orissa, the two most backward and poverty-stricken states, have also shown growth pick up from 4.70% and 4.42% in the first period to 8.02% and 8.13% in the second period. Even smaller states like Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh have registered growth of 11.01% and 8.96%, respectively.

During 2001-04, the rate of industrial growth for Gujarat was 3.95%, and during 2005-09, it was 12.65%. In isolation, this appears to be a phenomenal jump, but not so when compared to some other states. During these sub-periods, industrial growth for Orissa was 6.4% and 17.53%; for Chhattisgarh 8.10% and 13.3%; and for Uttarakhand 18.84% and 11.63%. Thus, the hitherto industrially backward states have far surpassed Gujarat

.In FDI, too, Gujarat has not been a leading state. During 2006-10, Gujarat signed MoUs worth Rs 5.35 lakh crore with potential of 6.47 lakh jobs. But Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu with Rs 4.20 lakh crore and Rs 1.63 lakh crore worth MoUs, expect about 8.63 lakh and 13.09 lakh jobs. To top it all, Chhattisgarh and Orissa have signed MoUs worth Rs 3.61 lakh crore and Rs 2.99 lakh crore more than Gujarat without much fanfare and Modi's much-hyped industrial summits.

In the area of credit-deposit ratio, Gujarat is far behind other major states. In 2010, Gujarat's share in total deposits of the scheduled commercial banks was 4.70%, as against 5.42%, 6.20%, 6.34% and 26.60% for Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra, respectively. The share of Gujarat in total credit disbursed by these commercial banks was 4.22%; while the same for Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tami Nadu was 29.75%, 6.71% and 9.61% respectively.

The amount of per capita deposit and per capita credit for Gujarat was Rs 37,174 and Rs 24,268; while for Tamil Nadu, it was Rs 42,580 and Rs 47,964; Karnataka Rs 49,598 and Rs 38,154; and Maharashtra Rs 1,10,183 and Rs 89,575. Even Kerala did better than Gujarat with Rs 43,890 and Rs 27,912.

In terms of per capita income (PCI), in 2011, Gujarat ranked sixth among major states with PCI of Rs 63,996, after Haryana (Rs 92,327), Maharashtra, (Rs 83,471), Punjab (Rs 67,473), Tamil Nadu (Rs 72,993) and Uttara-khand (Rs 68,292).What about inclusive growth in Gujarat? Though Gujarat, with 31.8% people below the poverty line did better than Maharashtra and Karnataka, it still lagged behind Kerala, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, where poverty levels were 19.7%, 20.9%, 22.9% and 24.1%, respectively.

On three important social indicators, viz life expectancy at birth (LEB), mean years of schooling (MYS) and school life expectancy (SLE), Gujarat is far behind some other states. In Gujarat, the LEB during 2002-06 was 64.1 years and it ranked ninth among major Indian states. In the areas of MYS and SLE, during 2004-05, it ranked seventh and ninth, respectively. Kerala ranked first in all three indicators. Even Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka performed much better than Gujarat.

With respect to Human Development Index (HDI), Gujarat's story is devastating. The HDI for Gujarat, in 2008, was 0.527 and it ranked 10 {+t} {+h} among major states. Kerala stood first (HDI: 0.790), Himachal Pradesh scored 0.652, Punjab 0.605, Maharashtra 0.572 and Haryana 0.552. With respect to three HDI components - income, health and education - Gujarat does not present a shining story. In this respect, states like Kerala took the lead in every sector, while Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal did better than Gujarat.

It is found that inequality with respect to income, education and health is higher in Gujarat than some of the major states. Shockingly, in terms of hunger - as revealed by the 'State Hunger Index 2008' - Gujarat ranked 13th among 17 big states and worse than Orissa.

In Gujarat, the percentage of women suffering from anaemia has risen from 46.3% in 1999 to 55.5% in 2004, and amongst children from 74.5% to 80.1%. The conditions of dalits and women have deteriorated during the last decade; while those of Muslims and tribals are still worse.

Thus, Gujarat's growth story as claimed by Modi is more a myth than reality. But it is also imperative that other states in the country make concerted efforts to secure higher and also inclusive growth, rather than getting enamoured with the Gujarat growth story. Also, for the people of Gujarat, it's time for introspection and putting right efforts in the direction of making Gujarat a truly "vibrant" state.

(The writer is a member of the Rajya Sabha and former member, Planning Commission.)

Fr. Cedric Prakash sj
PRASHANT   (A Centre for Human Rights, Justice and Peace)
Hill Nagar, Near Kamdhenu Hall, Drive-in Road, Ahmedabad - 380052,
Tel :079-27455913/66522333

Fax:079-27489018

A different kind of courage.

 

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                                                                                                                A Different Kind Of Courage. 

 

I was jolted by an email I received a few days ago announcing the death of Fr.Pierre Ceyrac. I had never met anybody quite like him, with his boundless love for human beings. He was almost ninety-nine when he died, an age which many of us will never live to see.

 

Even in his younger days he had a wrinkled grin on a weather beaten and unattractive face. Everything about him was gauche. I am doubtful if a pretty woman ever fell for his looks. He had a goofy smile, disarming in its own way.  If you did not know him you could take him to be a simpleton. In fact one foreigner referred to him as a 'ga-ga priest', meaning that he got excited about everything and everybody in a naive sort of way.

 

But all this is besides the point. Let me explain.

 

When I was sixteen, and a pre-university student in Chennai, I happened to walk down Chetpet bridge on a sweltering hot summer afternoon. In those days I was extremely self-conscious and did my best to walk elegantly, which often produced the opposite effect. People even embarrassed me by asking if I limped. In any case it was rather hot that day and there was nobody watching for me to affect any elegance. There was little traffic on the bridge and only a few ambassador and fiat cars were to be seen. I remember hurrying so that I could get out of the heat and find a tree lined road. When I was almost at the bottom of the bridge I found a foreigner on his bullet motorcycle stopping and parking on the side. From the tucked up cassock I knew he was a priest.

 

Why had he stopped, I wondered. There was nobody at the foot of the bridge. It was an unlikely spot for a pee-stop. He walked up the bridge, which seemed an odd thing to do, considering he had a motorcycle. And then, to my utter surprise he began helping an old man who was struggling to pull a hand cart up the bridge.

 

I had not noticed the old man. A man pulling a cart is such a common sight that nobody pays any attention. In fact I suspect that some people might even subconsciously put up their defenses, preferring to turn a blind eye to anything that reinforced the notion of India as a backward nation. 

 

Fr.Ceyrac was now pulling the cart alongside the old man, who was still getting over the initial surprise and discomfiture of a foreigner coming to his assistance. White men ruled over us for a couple of centuries, and we considered them superior to us. How could a white man become the equal of a sweating, dark-skinned old man, a no-body in his own society? I don't think that any of these thoughts crossed the old man's mind; he was too embarrassed by what was happening. The old man would not have expected a local to have come to his aid, let alone a foreign apparition.

 

It took several minutes to get the cart up the bridge and then down the other side. It was probably as unusual an event for me as it was for the old man, for I watched with utter curiosity. Even today, forty-five years later, the images of that afternoon are still etched in my mind.

 

Over the years I got to know Fr.Ceyrac fairly well. I remember accompanying him to several colleges where he addressed students. He would stand before a hundred students, sometimes five hundred, and say, " This is an extraordinary country. Extraordinary people!". And then with a choked voice and watery eyes he would remind us that we had five hundred and fifty million brothers and sisters in the country, and we had to think of them. To all those who listened it was an unforgettable experience. No one else had  stood before them and cried for the millions of people who had difficulty feeding themselves. Hardly any Indian would cry for the poor, unless it was in a movie theatre; poverty is taken for granted.

 

I was myself a student then, and Fr.Ceyrac's words made me take notice of two middle aged women who came and picked cooked-rice grains from a drain next to our hostel dining hall. These were grains that clung to our fingers after lunch, which we washed away at the row of taps, which in turn flowed down the drain to the two squatting women. They would carry these drain-soaked rice grains back to feed their families. 

 

Many years later I heard an economist saying that India had moved from mass starvation to mass hunger.

 

Inspired by Fr.Ceyrac a few dozen young people took to working with the poor. Some worked sincerely, others cut corners to eventually secure a middle class life-style. But even the most compromised among them didn't lack compassion. After having encountered such a man there was no way they could be indifferent and uncaring.

 

Even today, so many years later, I still wonder if this man's compassion had to do with his Christian commitment or whether he was innately endowed. There are so many others I know who see themselves as believing Christians, but not a single one would measure up to him. Compassion was a gift he was born with. Perhaps Christianity deepened his compassion somewhat, but even this I am not sure.

 

In the mid-seventies I had moved to Paris, where I met Fr.Ceyrac's niece, Veronique, from time to time. I was also aware of Fr.Ceyrac's brother Francois, a leading corporate personality in France, who was then the president of the French business association. His photograph appeared in the newspapers fairly frequently. In May 1981 the socialist candidate Francois Mitterand got elected the president of France, the first ever socialist to be elected president in the Fifth Republic. It was a time of hope for the French left. Shortly after the elections I spoke to Veronique and asked her how her uncle Francois had taken the results. "Oh, he was badly shaken," was her reply. " As soon as he knew the results he went to his terrace and chopped off all his rose bushes".

 

The symbol of the socialist party was a red rose and Francois Ceyrac had vented his anger on his poor rose bushes.

 

I laughed at the moment, but couldn't help comparing the two brothers. Fr.Ceyrac often worked on a piece of land in one of the driest parts of Tamilnadu, a semi-desert region called Manamadurai. He tilled with the workers, who he hoped would inherit the land one day, as a cooperative. Francois Ceyrac, on the other hand, had known only luxury. Socialism, which promised a degree of equality, was anathema to him. I am sure he admired his brother toiling beside poor, lower caste, agricultural workers. But Francois wouldn't have survived an hour with a spade in his hand, in that terrible heat

 

I repeated the story of the rose cutting spree to Fr.Ceyrac on one of my visits to India. He was deeply embarrassed. But I knew that he loved his brother dearly and he was not going to let the incident get in the way of the deep bond that existed between them. In any case Fr.Ceyrac did not understand ideology too well. He was not the kind who would let the ideological override the human. At the time many of us saw this as a major weakness in him. Today, in hindsight, that was perhaps a significant strength.

 

Fr.Ceyrac was a simple bhakta. Greatness and simplicity often go together. Christ himself was no complex philosopher. I do not remember Fr.Ceyrac articulating any sophisticated theology, although he did admire a few Liberation theologians like Kappen and Rayan, who combined Marxist analysis with Christian compassion. At the time Liberation Theology was the spirit of the age within radical social action circles, and Fr.Ceyrac, I suspect, just went with the tide. Ideologies would come and go but what was non-negotiable for him was a total commitment to the poor.

 

Over the years I have wondered why India is such an uncaring society. I must confess that I don't have a clear answer. Perhaps caste was such an ingrained value in our consciousness that we could only think of being of some assistance to members of our own community, but even this concern was never pressing. The decades ahead will be even bleaker for the poor, as climate change kicks in.

 

Those of us who were smitten by Fr.Ceyrac's spirit know that we are condemned to act, come hell or high water. We are called to act, not await the fruits of our action, as the Bhagvad Gita reminds us.

 

Siddhartha.

(Fireflies, Bangalore)

Health care for the poor, a dream worth dreaming By AAMIR KHAN

 

 

The Aamir Khan Column: Health care for the poor, a dream worth dreaming

AAMIR KHAN

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/article3462853.ece

What is the point of having a great GDP if as a society we are unhealthy?

I am a bit of a dreamer. I dream that one day we will be living in a country where things will be different, and where the rich and the poor will both get the same, good, quality health care. To many it may seem like a totally impractical, and an unachievable dream. But it's a dream worth dreaming, and one that has every reason to come true.

Irrespective of whether you are rich or poor, when you lose a loved one, the pain is the same. To watch my child suffer and die because of an incurable disease while I am unable to do anything is truly sad. But if there is treatment available which can save my child, and I am unable to save my child because I can't afford it — and can only helplessly sit by and watch my child die — that is unimaginably tragic.

What is stopping us from having a great public health-care system?

A number of us pay our taxes. Some of us don't. And most of us don't earn enough to be required to pay direct taxes. A host of indirect taxes are also collected by each State. Each time we buy something, big or even small, we pay some or the other tax. So it turns out that the poor are also paying for public health care. Only they don't get proper services in return. Less than two per cent of our Gross Domestic Product — 1.4 per cent to be precise — is allotted to public health care.

Why?

Experts who work in this space say that it should be at least six per cent for a very basic level of public health facilities. I am neither an economist nor a doctor, but I would prefer to err on the safer side and say eight to 10 per cent is what it should be.

What is the point of having a great GDP if as a society we are unhealthy? Economic strength will come only if, first, we are healthy; and it will be of some use only if we are healthy enough to enjoy it.

Importantly, health is also a State issue and each State collects only indirect taxes. Why isn't more of our money spent on setting up more public hospitals, and more importantly, on public medical colleges? Why are there not enough public medical colleges with attached public hospitals across each State?

With a vibrant young population, more public medical colleges are the need of the hour. But it seems the government at the Centre, and all the State governments, are concentrating less on opening government medical colleges, and therefore, the great need of young students wanting to become doctors is getting filled by — you guessed right — private medical colleges, who, I am told, charge Rs.50 to 60 lakh as an unofficial donation.

In most cases, private medical colleges are basically springing up as businesses. Many of them don't even have proper working hospitals attached to them, which is mandatory. I sometimes wonder how competent the doctors who are coming out of these private medical colleges would be.

We need to firmly tell State and Central governments that we want more public hospitals with attached public medical colleges.

Private hospitals are most welcome, but let's concentrate on our public health-care system and make it so strong that private hospitals have to work harder to compete, and therefore, we as a society get better services.

When a student sits his/her MBBS exams and is asked what the prescription medication for a patient suffering from diabetes is, he or she might write "glimepiride." This is the salt commonly used to treat diabetes. When this student becomes a doctor and a patient who has diabetes comes to him/her for treatment, he/she might write the medicine name as Amaryl. So, is that young doctor prescribing the wrong medication? No. Amaryl happens to be one of the brand names by which the salt "glimepiride" is sold. So what is the difference between the two, apart from the names? Well, a strip of 10 tablets of Amaryl costs around Rs.125, while a strip of 10 tablets of the salt "glimepiride" costs Rs.2. Both are essentially the same thing. We pay approximately Rs.123 more for the brand name.

Here are some more examples:

The common cold is one of the most prevalent illnesses. The salt name of the medicine used to tackle it is cetirizine. Now, the manufacturing, packaging, transportation costs of this generic medicine, including a decent margin, is Rs.1.20 for 10 tablets. But the branded version of the same medication, for example Cetzine, costs over Rs.35 for 10 tablets.

A common injection used to treat blockages that cause heart attacks is "streptokinase" or "urokinase"; these injections cost Rs.1000. However, in their branded form they cost over Rs.5000 in the market.

Malaria is a big killer in India, especially among children. A critical injection used to treat resistant malaria is available for as little as Rs.25 for a pack of three injections; however the branded versions cost Rs.300 to Rs.400.

In the case of diarrhoea, another big killer of children in India, the vomiting that causes dehydration can be stopped with a medicine whose salt name is "domperidone," which is available at Rs.1.25 for a strip of 10 tablets; its branded version, Domstal, sells at Rs.33.

How can our poor, or for that matter even our middle class, afford medication?

Generic medicines are the answer.

In this regard we have to applaud the efforts of the Rajasthan government. It has set up shops selling generic medicines across the State in an effort to make good quality medicines available to people at the lowest possible rates.

Roughly 25 per cent of all ailments go untreated in India because of financial reasons. Think of the difference generic medicines can make to every Indian! If the Rajasthan government can do it, why can't other State governments do the same?

An interesting piece of information: the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers offers Rs.50,000 to anyone wanting to open a shop selling generic medicines, and at their discretion they sometimes offer space to open such a shop.

Looks like my dream of good, quality, public health care being available to the rich and poor alike may be possible after all.

P.S: Can our doctors please write out the generic name of the medication when they write out our prescription, and allow us to choose the brand — or not.

 

Jai Hind. Satyamev Jayate.

(Aamir Khan is an actor. His column will be published in The Hindu every Monday.)

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"PENTECOST IS...!!!".. A Reflection by Fr. Cedric Prakash sj - 26th May, 2012

 

 

"PENTECOST IS…….!!!"

-Fr. Cedric Prakash sj*

 

As the great feast of Pentecost approaches, there are several dimensions of this festival which strike me.  These include:

 

Pentecost is SPIRIT

It is the celebration of the birth of the Church. The Lord breathing the wind and fire of his Spirit upon his Church fifty days after he rose from the dead. It is the day when we allow the Lord's Spirit to permeate the innermost core of our being: to touch us, to transform us, to make of us Spirit-filled people; visibly and vocally, his disciples in every sense of the word.

 

Pentecost is STRENGTH

The one great sign of this feast is the fact that once they were filled with the Lord's Spirit, the disciples showed incredible strength. The courage to stand up and speak out. To proclaim who Jesus is, what he did, how he lived, died and rose from the dead. The strength to face hostility of every kind; in order to stand up for the truth; to speak truth to power; the strength to be a fire in order to kindle other fires.

 

Pentecost is SOLIDARITY

Pentecost symbolizes solidarity among all peoples and all nations. The disciples, we are told were able 'to speak in tongues'. A more profound understanding is that people from across the spectrum, from every race and nation, were able to understand them; the ability to be open to the working of the Lord's Spirit in spite of their differences. A real bonding which was able to transcend the narrow confines of nationality, ethnicity, race, colour, caste, whatever The event truly created a union of hearts and minds.

 

Pentecost is SERVICE

"Not all who say 'Lord, Lord' shall enter the kingdom of heaven but he who does the will of my Father" is a strong remark given to us by Jesus. In this context, Mary becomes the symbol of Pentecost. She is there with the apostles accompanying them in their desolation and their loneliness.  She provides them with a new hope in the Cenacle, serving them, ministering to them. On the day of Pentecost, she is surely the motivating factor, encouraging them to go out and serve the whole world. In her selfless service, she is the Queen of the Apostles.

 

Pentecost is SUSTAINABILITY

Pentecost is not a once-and-for-all event. It cannot be limited to 'the feast of harvest' or to 'the feast of the weeks' or 'a commemoration of the Law that was given at Mount Sinai'. It is essentially the beginning of a lived faith which is meant to be sustainable and renewed every moment of our lives. It is a celebration of life: a life that gives life to others!

 

"Come Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of your faithful

And enkindle in them the fire of your love.

Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created

And you shall renew the face of the earth".

26^th May, 2012

 

 

 

(* Fr. Cedric Prakash SJ is the Director of PRASHANT, the Ahmedabad based Jesuit Centre for Human Rights, Justice and Peace)

Address: PRASHANT, Hill Nagar, Near Kamdhenu Hall, Drive-in Road, Ahmedabad - 380052

Phone: 079 27455913, 66522333
Fax:  079 27489018
Email: sjprashant@gmail.com     www.humanrightsindia.in

We need to learn to laugh at OURSELVES...and to LEARN from OUR MISTAKES!!!

 

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/an-online-guide-to-indias-political-cartoons/

 

 

May 16, 2012, 5:33 am

An Online Guide to India's Political Cartoons

By MALAVIKA VYAWAHARE

R . Prasad/Mail Today A recent cartoon published in the Mail Today newspaper, carried caricatures resembling West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram.

If India's parliamentarians, who were recently incensed by a 63-year-old cartoon, decide it is time to eradicate any political cartoons that might offend, where should they start? India Ink has put together a short compilation of potential targets, compiled for cartoon lovers and outraged politicians both.

While cartoons that appear in textbooks have loomed large in the news, it is newspapers, of course, which have spawned thousands of distorted caricatures and wickedly satirical cartoons.

Courtesy of Surendra/The HinduA cartoon by Surendra that appeared in The Hindu on April 14, 2012, caricaturing Mamata Banerjee after her government arrested a professor.

The Times of India carries "Ninan's World" by cartoonist Ajit Ninan, who earlier produced the "Just Like That" cartoon series along with Jug Suraiya, published bi-weekly in the Times of India.

Courtesy of Ajit Ninan/The Times of IndiaA cartoon by Ajit Ninan resembling politician Amar Singh that appeared in The Times of India Mumbai on Sep. 7, 2011.

Mr. Ninan, incidentally, sides with the politicians on the Ambedkar-Nehru cartoon issue. "The cartoon drawn by Shankar was perfectly valid, for its time, but a cartoon has absolutely no business in textbooks," Mr. Ninan told India Ink.  "I do not blame the government or the protesters for what is happening, it is the babudom that is responsible. Somebody in the NCERT made mischief by putting the cartoon in a textbook."

The Times of India also hosts a gallery of pioneering cartoonist R.K. Laxman's work on its Web site. Mr. Laxman is a Ramon Magsaysay Award winner who created the hugely popular character "The Common Man."

It also started a series called "Dubyaman," which began as a spoof of former United States president George W. Bush's policies but acquired a more national flavor later, poking fun at Indian politicians and politics.

Courtesy of Shreyas Navare/The Hindustan TimesA cartoon caricature resembling Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal by Shreyas Navare, published in Hindustan Times Web site on Dec. 6, 2011.

The Hindustan Times has its very own blog "Dabs and Jabs," where cartoonist Shreyas Navare jabs his pen into some political balloons. Mr. Navare firmly steered India Ink away from a conversation on the politics of cartoons when contacted by phone this week.  "I make my political comments through my cartoons," he said.

"By trying to keep students away from cartoons they are being denied the fullest scope of what democracy offers through a unique art form," said Mr. Navare, when asked about the recent controversy surrounding a six-decade old cartoon of India's constitutional authors, B.R. Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru.

Courtesy of Shreyas Navare/The Hindustan TimesA cartoon by Shreyas Navare in Hindustan Times, published on May 16, 2012.

Cartoonist Surendra adds color to the pages of the otherwise politically conservative daily  The Hindu.  "The Nehru-Ambedkar  cartoon controversy is good and at the same time bad. This particular cartoon may have been all right 60 years ago, but is definitely offending to [a] large section of people. The people who chose to put it in textbooks did it for wrong reasons." Mr. Surendra said.

Courtesy of Surendra/The HinduA cartoon by Surendra in The Hindu, published on May 12, 2012, based on an earlier cartoon by Shankar depicting Jawaharlal Nehru and B. R. Ambedkar.

Outside the newspapers, there are dozens of private blogs, carrying the published works of India's famous cartoonists  and of amateur artists. There's everything from Cartoon India, which claims to be the "first daily updated cartoon Web site"  to Cartoon Watch India the "only monthly magazine" dedicated to cartoons.

Then there is the Indian Institute of Cartoonists, which the Web site claims is the first of its kind in India, and the Kerala Cartoon Academy based in Kochi.

Courtesy of Indian Institute of Cartoonists/Media Voice The cartoon by Balraj K.N., that won second-prize in the Maya Kamath Memorial Awards Competition-2011 organized by the Indian Institute of Cartoonists.

The Kerala school has been proactively taunting politicians — it launched an online exhibition of cartoons about West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, after she had Prof. Ambikesh Mahapatra arrested for allegedly circulating a cartoon of Ms. Banerjee. Recently it organized another online exhibition to honor Kesava Shankara Pillai, better known as Shankar, who penned the Ambekar Nehru cartoon at the center of the recent controversy.

 

Hilarious Current Affairs Cartoons by Ajit Ninan in the Times of India!!!

 

-

 

 

 

http://kafila.org/2012/05/14/cartoons-all-politicians-and-self-seekers/ 

Cartoons All! Politicians and Self-Seekers

MAY 14, 2012

tags: Ambedkar cartoon, NCERT textbooks

by Aditya Nigam

The uproar over what is being referred to as the 'Ambedkar cartoon' in the class XI textbook prepared by NCERT first began over a month ago, that is to say, almost six years after the books have been in circulation, been taught and received high praise for their lively style and a critical pedagogical approach (more on this below).  It was a political party – one of the factions of the Republican Party of India – that decided to kick up a ruckus over 'the issue' – that is, the 'affront' to Dr Ambedkar that the cartoon in question supposedly constitutes, and the resultant 'hurt sentiments' that it has caused. Very soon everyone began to fall in line, and practically every member of our august Parliament was vying with one other to prove that  they were indeed more hurt than their colleagues. One of them, Shri Ram Vilas Paswan has even demanded that the NCERT itself should be dissolved!

Good old Jurgen Habermas – and good old Habermasians  - have always invested a lot in forums like the parliament, that are to them the hallowed institutions of 'rational-critical discourse' where through reasoned argument people convince each other. That is how the voice of Reason ultimately prevails in democracies. I have always been suspicious of this claim and have thought that Habermas' empirical work on the decline ('structural transformation') of the public sphere was more insightful than his normative fantasies. Long long ago, his empirical work on the transformation of the public sphere showed that it was the rise of political parties that had actually destroyed all possibilities of 'rational-critical discourse', where organized passion in the service of immediate political interests carried the day.

But believe it or not, the text book and the cartoon that is now in the eye of the storm, isnormatively speaking a Habermasian tract. In other words, it invests too much in this fantasy of rational communication. The text below the cartoon (reproduced above) says:

" Cartoonist's impression of the snail's pace with which the Constitution was made. Making of the constitution took almost three years . Is the cartoonist commenting on this fact? Why do you think the Constituent Assembly took so long to make the Constitution?"And much as I personally disagree with this  romantic representation of what went on inside the Constituent Assembly, here is what the textbook it self has to say, perhaps as its own answer to the question posed in the text below the cartoon:

"Each member deliberated upon the Constitution with the interests of the whole nation in mind. There were often disagreements amongst members but few of these disagreements could be traced to members protecting their own interests…

The Constitution drew its authority from the fact that members of the Constituent Assembly engaged in what one might call public reason. The members of the Assembly placed a great emphasis on discussion and reasoned argument…The very act of giving reasons to others makes you move away from simply a narrow consideration of your own interest because you have to give reasons to others to make them go along with your view point. The voluminous debates in the  Constituent Assembly, where each clause of the Constitution was subjected to scrutiny and debate, is a tribute to public reason at its best." (pages 17-18)

One of the reasons for the delay was perhaps, in the view of the text, this emphasis on deliberation. It is this textbook, by the way, that perhaps for the first time, gave Ambedkar the place in the history of modern India that he deserves,  a fact lost today in the cacophony that marks Parliament, as the cartoons inhabiting it strut about making speeches outdoing one another in idiocy.

What is worse, of course, is that now Ambedkar has become the excuse for all manner of politicians to claim that it is not just him but all politicians who are being denigrated by the use of cartoons in the textbooks. Apparently a 40 member body of parliamentarians is now seized of the matter and has taken up the task of cleansing the textbooks. According to a report in The Indian Express, a letter by Saroj Yadav, head of the Department of Education in Social Sciences (where??) has written to one of the supervisors of the NCERT textbooks, that the forum of MPs felt "the cartoons show disrespect to politicians and depict them in a very poor way. " Apparently the esteemed members held that "depicting politicians in a poor light in textbooks for children of impressionable age erodes their faith in democracy and in politicians (the tautulogy is in the original letter as cited in the TOI report) in general."

So it is not really the multi-crore scams that politicians are involved in, the loot of the mineral and other resources that they make possible, the fixing of ministers, the cash for votes in parliament, MP's watching porn on their laptops while parliament is in session – it's not any of this that really erodes people's faith in democracy. The real culprit is the depiction of this in cartoons!

We need to go back to the cartoons – each one of those that the MPs want deleted, and have a public debate in the only place a reasoned debate is possible – outside the parliament, in the public, in academic institutions, in seminars and discussions. And let us call all the self-righteous MPs to come and explain to us – bewildered citizens – what is it that they are objecting to and why.

In conclusion, some background about these textbooks, placed on record for what it is worth. The NDA government had reduced NCERT to a pathetic forum  peddling the ruling Hindutva ideology in textbooks, and after its exit, the question of rewriting textbooks came up afresh on the agenda. That was when the National Curriculum Framework 2005 was produced, evolving out of an uncommonly democratic process, involving about three hundred people all over the country – teachers, academics and educational activists – over a period of seven months. After the NCF 2005 was released, it  was followed by a prolonged public debate. One opinion then expressed was that in order to 'detox', we needed to simply bring back the old, pre-NDA textbooks which upheld secular values etc. As opposed to this, there was another opinion, espoused by a large number of academics and educationists, that we needed to upgrade the textbooks in more ways than one. For one thing, many strides have been made in the field of knowledge and we cannot simply revert to older text books. Our new books should reflect the latest developments in thought. Secondly, the pedagogical question should now be placed on top of the agenda. The old textbooks that gave ready-made 'gyan' to students that they had to then memorize, should be replaced by more creatively produced textbooks that pushed students to think for themselves. The idea was to raise questions that would  encourage critical thinking among them. This also meant a move away from the boring, pedantic style of old textbooks. It meant further that even supposedly settled questions like those of 'secularism' would not be taught as if there is nothing to debate there. In this attempt to refashion textbooks, a huge public debate took place, first around the NCF 2005 in which hundreds of the best social scientists of the country participated, followed by an even more intensive collective process of textbook writing.

The process of actual writing of textbooks that followed, involved literally hundreds of teachers and researchers throughout the country. This process would not have been what it became but for the stewardship of the new NCERT Director, Krishna Kumar who made it into a veritable movement for writing textbooks across all disciplines. So it is misleading to see these textbooks as the outcome of the fertile imaginations of one or two individuals who became the public face of part of the process.  Indeed, some others like historian Neeladri Bhattacharya who co-ordinated the writing of the history textbooks, and educationist Sarada  Balagopal who co-ordinated the text-books on Social and Political Life, deliberately emphasized the collective nature of the process and placed themselves outside of any high profile publicity. It was over months of intensive collaborative discussions of drafts and repeated writings and re-writings, that these textbooks finally saw the light of day.

Now that politicians and MPs are seized of the matter, will the old debate be rekindled in the old way? Are we to go back to textboks that stifle the imagination of the learner? To get back to those good old days when no questions were encouraged?

But after all, text-books are only part of the universe of the student. How will you stop students outside the classroom from thinking for themselves, and and seeing for themselves who the actual cartoons are?

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