Important resource for Alternative Media

Alternet
AlterNet is a project of the Independent Media Institute, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to strengthening and supporting independent and alternative journalism
http://www.alternet.org/

openDemocracy
openDemocracy is an online global magazine of politics and culture, and a source for the media for analysis, debate and discussion of global affairs
http://www.opendemocracy.net/

Indymedia
The Independent Media Center is a network of collectively run media outlets that aims to present radical, accurate accounts of the truth to counter the versions presented by the corporate media
http://www.indymedia.org/

Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders, an international news website devoted to press freedom, works to ensure the right of all people to be informed and to this end, fights to reduce the use of censorship and the use of laws that restrict press freedom
http://www.rsf.org/


Sarai
Sarai, a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies/CSDS is a space for research, practice and conversation about contemporary media and urban issues
http://www.sarai.net/

India Media-Watch Institute
The India Media-Watch Institute (IMWI) is an international media watch group that seeks balance, fairness, accuracy, and diversity in the English language media's reporting of events and the analyses of issues pertaining to India
http://www.media-watch.org

South Asia Citizens Web
The SACW is an independent space on the internet to promote the exchange of information between and about citizens initiatives from South Asia and its diasporic communities
http://www.sacw.net/


Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.

Be a Social Entrepreneur,be a Changemaker

Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change.

Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors, social entrepreneurs find what is not working and solve the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution, and persuading entire societies to take new leaps.

Social entrepreneurs often seem to be possessed by their ideas, committing their lives to changing the direction of their field. They are both visionaries and ultimate realists, concerned with the practical implementation of their vision above all else.

Each social entrepreneur presents ideas that are user-friendly, understandable, ethical, and engage widespread support in order to maximize the number of local people that will stand up, seize their idea, and implement with it. In other words, every leading social entrepreneur is a mass recruiter of local changemakers—a role model proving that citizens who channel their passion into action can do almost anything.

Over the past two decades, the citizen sector has discovered what the business sector learned long ago: There is nothing as powerful as a new idea in the hands of a first-class entrepreneur.


Why "Social" Entrepreneur?

Just as entrepreneurs change the face of business, social entrepreneurs act as the change agents for society, seizing opportunities others miss and improving systems, inventing new approaches, and creating solutions to change society for the better. While a business entrepreneur might create entirely new industries, a social entrepreneur comes up with new solutions to social problems and then implements them on a large scale.


Historical Examples of Leading Social Entrepreneurs:

* Susan B. Anthony (U.S.): Fought for Women's Rights in the United States, including the right to control property and helped spearhead adoption of the 19th amendment.
* Vinoba Bhave (India): Founder and leader of the Land Gift Movement, he caused the redistribution of more than 7,000,000 acres of land to aid India's untouchables and landless.
* Dr. Maria Montessori (Italy): Developed the Montessori approach to early childhood education.
* Florence Nightingale (U.K.): Founder of modern nursing, she established the first school for nurses and fought to improve hospital conditions.
* Margaret Sanger (U.S.): Founder of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she led the movement for family planning efforts around the world.
* John Muir (U.S.): Naturalist and conservationist, he established the National Park System and helped found The Sierra Club.
* Jean Monnet (France): Responsible for the reconstruction of the French economy following World War II, including the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The ECSC and the European Common Market were direct precursors of the European Union.

Source: Ashoka.org

So What are you waiting for ,make your impact,be a leader,make a change you want,world is waiting for you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.

Mizoram's unwanted citizens

Forty-five-year-old Tajirung Reang, who was once a happy resident of Bhangmun, a picturesque hilltop hamlet in western Mizoram, is now a refugee in her own land.

One winter night 12 years ago, hundreds of Mizo youth armed with machetes, and a group of Mizoram armed police, attacked her village, torching houses, killing people, raping women.

“They broke into my house, raped me and hacked my husband to death. They threatened us with dire consequences if we did not leave our village,” Tajirung says with tears in her eyes. “The young men and members of the armed forces looted our chickens and pigs and the grain that we had stored. The orgy continued for a fortnight.”

When the family went to lodge a complaint with the police at Kawrthah police station in Mamit district, she says, the officer in charge advised them to leave Mizoram, saying they could be attacked again. “I fled my village with my family that night, with hundreds of neighbours, and took shelter in the jungles of north Tripura district. We got relief material from the Tripura government around five to seven days later.”

Recalling that night of horror, October 15, 1997, A Sawibunga, advisor to the Mizoram Bru Displaced People’s Forum (MBDPF), told visiting journalists that Mizo youth and members of the Mizoram armed police attacked 44 villages in Aizawl and Mamit districts, torching houses, looting cash, belongings and domestic animals.

Nine villagers were shot dead and an unspecified number of women raped and molested on that fateful night. Zonunsanga Meska, a resident of Bhangmun village in Mamit district, witnessed his wife and daughter being raped before his very eyes.

Today, Tajirung lives in an evacuee camp at Naisinghpara in the Kanchanapur sub-division of north Tripura district bordering Mizoram. She is not alone: 37,000 people displaced in the ethnic clashes live in six makeshift camps. The camps are made from bamboo and straw collected from the surrounding forests. Families of five to seven huddle in a single room. Life is miserable: “We shiver in winter, and sweat in summer. There is no electricity in the camp,” says an inmate.

The Mizoram government has apparently agreed to take back 35,000 Bru/Reang refugees sheltered in the camps. The decision was taken at a meeting in Aizawl, on April 31, 2009, between representatives of the Mizoram government, headed by Chief Minister Lalthanhawla, and members of the MBDPF. (A Congress government headed by Lalthanhawla came to power in the state defeating a coalition of the Mizo National Front (MNF)-BJP, headed by Zoramthanaga, in the last assembly elections held simultaneously with the recent general elections.)

Despite this decision, Bru leaders remain sceptical.

“Unless the repatriation starts we are not sure whether we are returning, and we doubt whether the government will abide by all the conditions of the agreement. After all, the government is run by Mizos who treat us like tuikook, meaning ‘insects of water’,” said one refugee leader who preferred to remain anonymous.

According to the president of the Mizo Bru Refugee Committee (MBRC), Bruno Mesha, the trouble started when the Brus (as the Reangs are known) demanded an autonomous district council (ADC), under the sixth schedule, to protect and safeguard their language, culture and ethnic identity. Mesha argues that if the Lais, Maras and Chakmas living in Mizoram are able to enjoy the benefits of tribal district councils, why shouldn’t the Brus? Why should the Brus, who constitute a substantial number and have a distinct culture and ethnic identity, not be recognised? The Mizoram government has ruled out the possibility of a tribal council for the Brus claiming it will lead to the state’s division.

Mesha claims that the names of a number of Reangs were struck off the voter lists before the assembly elections of May 2009 to prove that the Reangs were not original inhabitants of Mizoram.

Meanwhile, conditions in the refugee camps are pathetic. Inmates suffer malnutrition and diseases like malaria and gastroenteritis, says the doctor in charge of the Naisinghpara health camp organised by the Tripura government. These two illnesses have claimed the lives of at least 200 people this year. Another doctor at the camp said 250 patients were being treated every day, although the situation is now under control.

Camp residents also have acute drinking water problems as only four of the 13 tubewells function properly at the Naisinghpara camp where more than 17,000 refugees have taken shelter. “Before the monsoon, all natural sources of potable water like streams and wells at the foot of the hills dry up. Our children are forced to climb down 2-3 km to dig pits in the stream beds to collect water. They then trek up the steep hills with their water containers. It is not an easy task,” says an old camp inmate.

“This is a tough time for us because no edible forest produce is available now except for some wild potato tubers,” she says, adding, “the amount of ration and subsistence allowance we get from the central government is not enough”.

According to the sub-divisional magistrate of Kanchanpur, one adult is allotted 600 grams of rice and Rs 5 per day; minors get half this amount. Clothes are distributed to everyone once a year. He says he is unaware of any malnutrition deaths at the camps.

When 40 huts were destroyed in a recent fire, the government promised Rs 16,000 to the victims. But nothing has been paid so far. When asked about sanitation and bathroom and toilet facilities, a lot of eyebrows went up. “We bathe in cherras (rivulets), and the open forest is our toilet,” the inmates said.

Although there has been a huge baby boom in the camps, newborn children face an uncertain future. “The kids do not go to school because there is no school in the camps. An NGO, Banavasi Kalyan Ashram, runs a few small schools where some students study.”

Elvis Chorkhy, President, MBDPF, explains that the state government had engaged around 72 teachers from among the camp residents. They are being paid a salary of Rs 1,000 per month, under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan scheme. But there is no school building, so the school cannot run!

Inhabitants of the area, who are members of the state’s backward tribes, many of them Reangs, are at loggerheads with the displaced Brus over livelihood. “They get rice and cash from the government, but they still collect forest produce, cut trees for fuel, kill wild animals like snakes, wild fowl, rabbits, etc, and do not allow us to earn our livelihood from the forests,” says Subal Debarma, a local resident.

The repatriation of displaced people hangs in the balance as successive governments have given no clear assurances of taking them back and resettling them properly in Mizoram. The state’s former Chief Minister Zoramthanga has said on several occasions that only 16,000 of the refugees are from Mizoram and that they will be rehabilitated if they are willing to return.

Refugee leaders say, however, that everyone at the camps, except newborn babies, belongs to Mizoram and that they all have official proof in the form of citizenship certificates, bank passbooks, ration cards and birth certificates. Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar has also stated that the refugees are from Mizoram and that the Mizo government should take them all back.

At a high-level meeting in New Delhi to discuss the refugee problem, it was decided that 16,000 refugees would return by October 30, 2000. This decision followed a directive by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to the Mizoram government to take back the displaced people. The NHRC also instructed the Centre to play an active role in arranging the repatriation of the Brus. Nothing has happened since.

The Mizoram chief minister says repatriation will begin only after it is clear that the returnees belong to Mizoram. All displaced people will have to produce documents like ration cards, voter ID cards, birth certificates, citizenship certificates, etc. NGOs will be engaged to help in the identification process. It has been decided that Rs 30,000 per family will be provided as housing assistance, Rs 50,000 in cash grants, and one year’s ration after repatriation. Also that special development projects will be launched in Mamit, Kolashib, Lunglei and Aizawl districts in Mizoram.

But, says Chorkhy, sites for the repatriation are still to be decided; the chief minister asserts that they must be carefully selected and boundary walls built to properly mark them out.

Chorkhy adds that two extremist outfits -- the Bru National Liberation Front (BNLF) and the Bru Liberation Front of Mizoram (BLFM) had come ‘over ground’, following the signing of an agreement with the government five years ago. But even they were not repatriated properly.


By Jayanta K Bhattacharya is a journalist based in Tripura.


Source: http://infochangeindia.org/200908057858/Human-Rights/Features/Mizoram%E2%80%99s-unwanted-citizens.html


Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.

Why Rich started having more childrens

It was once a rule of demography that people have fewer children as their countries get richer. That rule no longer holds true.

ONE of the paradoxes of human biology is that the rich world has fewer children than the poor world. In most species, improved circumstances are expected to increase reproductive effort, not reduce it, yet as economic development gets going, country after country has experienced what is known as the demographic transition: fertility (defined as the number of children borne by a woman over her lifetime) drops from around eight to near one and a half. That number is so small that even with the reduced child mortality which usually accompanies development it cannot possibly sustain the population.

This reproductive collapse is particularly worrying because it comes in combination with an increase in life expectancy which suggests that, by the middle of the century, not only will populations in the most developed countries have shrunk (unless they are propped up by historically huge levels of immigration) but also that the number of retired individuals supported by each person of working age will increase significantly. If Mikko Myrskyla of the University of Pennsylvania and his colleagues are correct, though, things might not be quite as bad as that. A study they have just published in Nature suggests that as development continues, the demographic transition goes into reverse.

Dr Myrskyla looked at the world as it was in 1975 and as it is now (or, at least, as it was in 2005). He compared two things. One was the total fertility rate (the number of children that would be born to a woman in a particular country over the course of her life if she experienced the age-specific fertility rates observed in that country during the calendar year in question). The other was the human development index for that country. The HDI, a measure used by the United Nations, has three components: life expectancy; average income per person; and level of education. Its maximum possible value is one.
Curiouser and curiouser

Back in the 1970s, no country got anywhere near one. Of the 107 places the researchers looked at, the best was Canada, with an HDI of 0.89. By 2005, however, things had improved markedly. Two dozen of what were now 240 countries had HDIs above nine—and something else remarkable had happened. Back in 1975, a graph plotting fertility rate against the HDI fell as the HDI rose. By 2005, though, the line had a kink in it. Above an HDI of 0.9 or so, it turned up, producing what is known in the jargon as a “J-shaped” curve (even though it is the mirror image of a letter J). As the chart shows, in many countries with really high levels of development (around 0.95) fertility rates are now approaching two children per woman. There are exceptions, notably Canada and Japan, but the trend is clear.

This result is both important and unexplained. Its importance lies in the change of assumptions that policymakers will have to put into their models of the future. The nadir of fertility appears to be 1.3 children per woman. Not every country drops that low before making the turn, but if those that do were to stay there, they would need to import immigrants equivalent to 1.5% of their population every year, for those populations merely to remain static. With the best will in the world, absorbing that many migrants would be tricky. Dr Myrskyla’s data, however, suggest the ultimate outcome of development may not be a collapsing population at all but, rather, the environmentalist’s nirvana of uncoerced zero population growth.

Why this change has come about, and why the demographic transition happens in the first place, are matters of debate. There are lots of social explanations of why fertility rates fall as countries become richer. The increasing ability of women in the developed world to control their own reproductive output is one, as is the related phenomenon of women entering the workplace in large numbers. The increasing cost of raising children in a society with more material abundance plays a part. So does the substitution of nationalised social-security systems for the support of offspring in old age. Falling rates of child mortality are also significant. Conversely, Dr Myrskyla speculates that the introduction of female-friendly employment policies in the most developed countries allows women to have the best of both worlds, and that this may contribute to the uptick.

No doubt all these social explanations are true as far as they go, but they do not address the deeper question of why people’s psychology should have evolved in a way that makes them want fewer children when they can afford more. There is a possible biological explanation, though. This is that there are, broadly speaking, two ways of reproducing.

One way is to churn out offspring in large numbers, turn them out into an uncaring world, and hope that one or two of them make it. The other is to have but a few progeny and to dote on them, ensuring that they grow up with every possible advantage for the ensuing struggle with their peers for mates and resources. The former is characteristic of species that live in unstable environments and the latter of species whose circumstances are predictable.

Viewed in comparison with most animals, humans are at the predictable-environment and doting-parent end of the scale, but from a human perspective those in less developed countries are further from it than those in rich ones. One interpretation of the demographic transition, then, is that the abundance which accompanies development initially enhances the instinct to lavish care and attention on a few offspring. Only when the environment becomes super-propitious can parents afford more children without compromising those they already have—and only then, as Dr Myrskyla has now elucidated, does the birth-rate start to rise again.

How far the process will continue, and whether it will spread to holdouts like Japan and Canada, remains to be seen. Indeed, the whole exercise is a warning of the risks of extrapolating the future from present trends. But, on present trends, things do, indeed, look hopeful.


Courtesy: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14164483


Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.

White Paper 2009: Global action by the UK government to help make a fair, safe and sustainable world

We live in an increasingly interdependent world. We have made great strides over the past decade in tackling global poverty and suffering.

But despite this progress, the developing world is facing its most profound challenge in a generation. The worst global downturn in 60 years threatens to put 90 million into poverty. Climate change and conflict threaten the lives of the poor.

The UK’s new White Paper on International Development, Building our Common Future , argues that rather than turn away when things get tough we need to redouble our efforts. Development is not only morally right, but it is in our shared interest.

So using new approaches, new partnerships, and working through the international system, we will help the poorest countries confront global challenges and build a fairer, safer and more sustainable world for all people.


Our common challenge

Never before have people from so many countries been connected in so many ways. We depend on one another. Our futures are tied together.


Big challenges

Our world faces the most profound challenges in a generation.

* 1.4 billion people live in poverty and the global downturn means many are at risk of staying poor.
* Too many people are trapped in poverty and endangered by war and instability.
* Climate change, mostly caused by developed countries like the UK, threatens the lives of poor people and ourselves.


Shared problems

Problems faced by poor countries affect all of us, including the UK:

* Prosperity. Britain's fastest growing export markets are in poor countries. The economic downturn, weak financial regulation and unfair trade affect us all.
* Security. Poor government and social exclusion can be a source of conflict, and threaten peace and security around the world.
* Climate. Climate change will force many people to leave their homes. The UK summer floods in 2007 cost the country around £3 billion


Read detail White Paper here: http://www.dfid.gov.uk/About-DFID/Quick-guide-to-DFID/How-we-do-it/Building-our-common-future/

Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.

Too young to marry

Too many teenage girls are getting married in Bangladesh today, say health specialists.

According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) State of the World’s Children 2009 report, more than 64 percent of girls marry before they are 18.

But with early marriage comes early pregnancy. One-third of teenage girls aged 15 to 19 are mothers or pregnant in Bangladesh today, with adolescent mothers more likely to suffer birth complications than adult women, the British Medical Journal reports.

Teenage mothers are twice as likely as older mothers to die from pregnancy- and childbirth-related complications, with mothers younger than 14 facing the greatest risks.

In fact, research shows that the risk of maternal mortality could be five times higher for mothers aged 10 to 14 than for those aged 20 to 24, while babies born to mothers younger than 14 were 50 percent more likely to die than babies born to mothers older than 20.

Teenage mothers are more likely to suffer from obstructed delivery and other severe childbirth- and pregnancy-related complications, say health experts.

This results in higher morbidity and mortality for them and their children, according to the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) 2007, released in March 2009.

A third of women are either pregnant or mothers by age 20, and this proportion is not declining, the report observed.

The BDHS 2007 shows that the median age at marriage for women is 16.4 years, against 16.0 in the previous DHS (2004), but still 18 months below the legal minimum age, indicating that laws or policies alone do not guarantee implementation. The legal age is 21 for boys and 18 for girls.

Parents encourage early marriage out of fear that the dowry price will increase as their daughter ages. Young girls are often regarded as an economic burden to their families; marrying them off at a very early age is seen as reducing that burden.

It is also a way to ensure that their daughters are “protected” from sexual abuse or illicit sexual contact, and making them financially more secure.

But with early marriage, many girls drop out of school. Studies show that girls who marry as adolescents attain lower schooling levels, have lower social status in their husband’s families, report less reproductive control, and suffer higher rates of maternal mortality and domestic violence.

Moreover, early marriage extends a woman’s reproductive span, thereby contributing to larger family sizes, especially in the absence of contraception.

According to the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases and Research, Bangladesh, these individual outcomes suggest larger social consequences, including higher population growth, higher rates of maternal mortality and a higher number of orphans.


Raising awareness

To counteract this, several NGOs are working to raise awareness of the risks of early marriage.

In February, a conference of social workers and women in Dhaka underlined that 70 percent of girls in Bangladesh were forced into marriage while still in their teens.

“The burden breaks the health of young mothers. Many die at delivery, or at least suffer untold health problems. The major casualty is the education of teenage girls. It denies them the awareness they need for taking the decision that affects their life most - marriage,” according to one of the papers presented.

“The young brides, lacking education, become the malnourished mothers of undernourished children and little else,” Rahela Rahmatullah, an anti-child marriage activist, told IRIN.

Working in 45 of the country’s 481 sub-districts, Rahmatullah’s volunteers seek out cases of child marriage in local communities and discuss the problems facing the underage mother with the young mother and her family.

“We persuade and train her to tell her story to adolescent girls and their families. We organise courtyard meetings where the trained mother describes the problems she faces as an adolescent wife or mother and advises others not to accept any marriage proposal before they are at least 20,” she said.

But in most cases, the issue is not so simple.

“In most rural families girls are never consulted on their marriage. The parents and the family seniors choose the groom, fix the date and manage the wedding ceremony. Seeking a girl’s consent on marriage is still considered a taboo in most families,” Rahmatullah said.


Source: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=85516

Refere cases to TV Show: Aap Ki Kachehri-Kiran Ke Saath

The TV show - Aap Ki Kachehri-Kiran Ke Saath , needs your support to get cases from NGOs to refer them to Aap Ki Kachehri, the shoot-schedule is coming near i.e. on 25th August 2009.


The show is going to be on air from 5th August 2009 at 8pm on Starplus .


Contact details are as follows:
022-30865101
022-30865165
022-30865172
022-30865170

Ashwini Jadhav
counselor
ashwinij@synergyadlabs.com



Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.

Urban Poverty On Rise In Jammu And Kashmir: Micro-Finance Institutes A Solution

Over the past two decades, unrest in Jammu and Kashmir has affected the valley people, especially the urban poor, either by displacing them from their livelihoods or leaving them without any. Their poverty levels are aggravating and seek an urgent but long-term solution. Although some organizations have started working for the development of the area, there is ample scope for microfinance institutions to help the urban poor.

According to a BPL survey of Jammu and Kashmir by the Directorate of Economics and Statistics (DES), over 2.21 lakh people fall under below urban poverty level in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. And in the district Srinagar alone, there are over 73,262 BPL population, according to DES mid-year estimates (2007-08).

The fact was that there are many organizations that are focusing on the rural parts of the state but somehow the urban areas are missing from their developmental plans. While the skilled ones manage to get employed anyhow, it was the large majority of the unskilled people who are forced to work in the unorganized sector. Many of them live in urban areas with low and unsustainable income.

Here, microfinance could play an important role in poverty alleviation. Since majority of the urban population who fall below the poverty line (BPL) have no access to basic financial services, there is always the need to create opportunities for city dwellers to augment their income and to assist them through soft and hassle-free loans.

Recently a news report in a local daily mentioned how the state has been diverting developmental funds to secure their vote banks in rural areas. It stated that under Indira Awas Yojana — the biggest housing scheme in the country aimed at providing shelter to homeless people living below the poverty line in rural areas — Rs. 25,500 in plain areas and Rs. 27,500 in hilly areas was given to beneficiaries under the previous government.

The report also alleges that most of them were workers from different political parties.

Not many organizations in the valley, either local or international, appear to be keen to focus on the urban poor. There is an existing trend, especially among the NGOs, to view poverty as purely a rural problem. Very often urban regions are sidelined by them as more ‘developed’ spaces.

Over the years, Jammu and Kashmir has seen considerable increase in urban poverty. In Srinagar, majority of the people manage their livelihood solely depending on the service sector. But owing to many reasons, the latest of them being the global economic melt down, the service sector is providing far less opportunities and forcing many to shift to the primary sector (agriculture) for their economic survival. But they don’t have the resources either – particularly land – at their disposal. Finally, they continue struggling in the declining service sector.

Another visible trend in the valley is the increasing urbanization. With the rural population continuing to arrive in the city, it is putting strain on limited resources available and triggering the urban poverty further. As a result, there are many parts of the city – particularly in the downtown areas – where every second house suffers due to unemployment, under-employment and lack of resources. To substantiate their meager income — which amounts to no more than US$1 a day — most of these households have retained their joint family structures.

Setting up a microfinance institution, which can focus on the urban poor and would identify the needy persons who have a positive bent of mind to work for themselves and for the society at large, will go a long way in helping alleviate urban poverty.

The other issue that needs to be highlighted is the gender aspect. This relates to improving the access and availability of basic amenities, and also addressing such external concerns like shelter space, transport and overall security level of the poor women, so as to enhance their standards of living and to facilitate their participation in the urban market.

This should not mean dividing the rural and urban populace, but of locating poverty beyond the conventional notions, in a wider framework. If such steps are not taken, there is a great possibility that this divide will increase and have serious repercussions in near future. To avoid such a situation the issue of urban poverty needs to be tackled seriously.


By Bilal Hussain ,a Master's degree in Finance and Control from the University of Kashmir.


Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/hussain030809.htm


Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.

Lights off for India's night schools?

Ganesh Kuban was forced to drop out of school when he was 10 after his father died. He has been supporting his family ever since by fixing scooters at a roadside mechanic's shop in central Mumbai.

But when the shutters come down at his workplace every Monday, the slim 19-year-old joins other young mechanics, hotel and restaurant boys, couriers and maids for three hours of evening classes.

"I want to become an engineer," he said.

Ganesh's night school is one of about 210 in Mumbai, a city that attracts hundreds of thousands of poor Indian migrants each year with the promise of jobs and money.

The schools were originally established at the turn of the 20th century for children from southern India who were sent to the city to work in restaurants.

Children of migrant workers from across India are on the roll call today, attending classes as they fight to survive in Mumbai's slums and crumbling tenement blocks.

Students are aged between 14 and 21, and have often dropped out of formal education to provide for themselves or their families.

But their one decent chance of escaping from a life of low pay now appears to be under threat.

"Night schools are a must but without good funding they're doomed," said K.S. Panse, from the Night School Headmasters Association.

The schools, mainly owned and operated by religious organisations or community groups, operate six nights a week, typically in classrooms at state day schools, and have long relied on goodwill to survive.

Most teachers have already spent the day at the blackboard before the young workers squeeze themselves behind the battered wooden desks for their evening studies.

Charities and individuals make one-off donations of cash or equipment to help students work towards their state secondary school examinations.

"The government is only giving a meagre amount of funding," said Panse, who has been a teacher for 60 years. "They're only paying the teachers' salaries but that's not the only requirement. We need chalk, dusters, notebooks, so many things. The future is bad," he added.

One local non-governmental organisation is hoping to put night schools on a more secure footing by lobbying civic authorities for more cash and support.

"These schools have existed for more than 100 years and the problems that existed 100 years back still exist, and will continue if we don't do something about it," said Nikita Ketkar, chief executive of the charity Masoom.

The charity already works in Ganesh's school in the working-class district of Parel and another in nearby Worli.

While the state government provides a total of 50,000 rupees (987 dollars) a month for teachers' salaries at both schools, Masoom provides everything else, from textbooks to paper and other essentials.

Ultimately it hopes to support five schools by 2011, with a view to the state government eventually taking over.

According to the United Nations children's fund UNICEF, 20% of Indian children aged 6-14 do not attend school.

Half of all girls and nearly one-third of boys do not enrol in secondary school. The country also has 12.6 million child labourers, the highest number in the world.

Ketkar said the night schools are a lifeline for youngsters who have been forced into the world of work too soon.

"If they were not engaged for those three hours, they would be there in the slums indulging in vices. It could be drugs, it could be drinking, it could be smoking, it could be something anti-social because of peer pressure," the former civil servant added.

The headmaster of the Maratha Mandir Night School in Worli, P.S. Kadam, is in no doubt about the benefits of a formal education- at whatever time of day.

He talks proudly about successful former students who have gone on to become top ranking police officers, lawyers and even government ministers.

Panse, a night school headmaster for 25 years, also knows their importance and says they desperately need more money.

"The students are bright and they want the future to be bright," he said.

For Ganesh, who currently earns 250 to 300 rupees a day, night school offers a glimmer of hope in a difficult world.

"I want to move upwards, earn more, have a better life, a better home and living conditions for my family," he said.


Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lights-off-for-Indias-night-schools/articleshow/4373213.cms


Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.

Private airlines strike

The maid who works in my house was telling me that things are becoming very expensive. She told me that the rice she got for Rs.8/- per Kg. in 2005 had become Rs.18/- per Kg. now. I have not seen my personal expenses going up in that proportion. In 2005 February the round trip from Mumbai to Delhi had cost me Rs.14,000/- for an economy class air ticket. Now I am able to undertake the same trip for about Rs.8000/-. Thus, whereas rice and other essential food items have gone up by a huge proportion, the cost of air travel has gone down substantially. I had thought this was the result of the magic brought about by the Economies and Vision of invincible private enterprise which had changed the entire scenario of air travel in the Country. Coupled with this was the fact that our Airports are becoming better since have also been handed over to the efficient private sector.



The private airlines are now saying that they are losing money and the Government must bail them out. And who is paying for the losses? It appears most of the Money for paying the loss is made available by not paying for the aviation fuel supplied by the public sector oil companies. The Airlines have threatened to go on strike, and the signs are that the Government will capitulate since the Nation would otherwise suffer. It is ironical that Private Enterprise first declares its great efficiency and reduces prices to 50% and if it does not make money arm-twists the Governments to help them. It may be that the Airlines have created great capacities which can only be sustained at very low prices. They are now demanding that the Nation must reduce taxes so that they can become profitable. The Government should allow the Airlines to take care of themselves, and go on a strike if they wish. A monopoly in the skies may help Air India’s bottomline. If it is Heads private enterprise wins, tails and people lose.





By Shailesh Gandhi
shaileshgan@gmail.com



Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.