Who can help them?

Two neighbours Sitha and Devaki both in their middle ages were going back to their homes after the usual morning temple visit. They were discussing all news relating their locality.

A young girl was walking hurriedly opposite to them, but she found time to stop and wish the older ladies with a big smile and then went on her way. Obviously she became the topic of talk then to the older ones.

Devaki started “Who can help these girls? Look at her! It will be a surprise if nobody hurt her”

Sitha joined the talk with much enthusiasm “You are right! In these attire she won’t be spared”

The young lady who passed the ladies was their neighbour. She wore a jeans and shirt. And she was going to her work place. These elders found her clothing today as undesirable as usual.

Sitha continued “Why can’t she wear decent dresses? These are inviting problems”

Devaki said “Who to blame, it is like this nowadays, there is no value for decency and manners. These girls bring police to houses. Even police can’t help them. Nobody can help them”

Then suddenly their talk halted in halfway by a motor bike rumbling, the speedster came so close to them, the driver made some dancing movements with the single front tyre balance and waved at them with both hands and then the vehicle rustled past them. It was Devaki’s second son. And both the ladies were happy to see him.

Devaki happily said “Where is he going in the morning? That was my son, you got that Sitha? He is such a good rider; he drives better than his father”

Sitha said “Boys should know all these. He is driving great even though he is still very young. That is good for you, huh? You can go with him anywhere, no need to wait for your husband’s free time”

Devaki replied “Of course! He takes seconds to go anywhere; he is such a good driver”

The thirteen year old boy with a new model bike without a helmet at 90 km speed in the village curvy guttered road is of course a good driver. No need of more proof.

In the evening police came to both the houses: the Girl’s as well as Devaki’s.

The Girl rescued a young kid from a group of molesters near her work place. A Minister came to her house to congratulate her; the police came with Minister’s escort.

Police came to Devaki’s house related an accident case. Devaki’s son met with an accident and he succumbed to that. Even the best doctor in the city couldn’t help him.

Malayali and Morality

    

      The protests of a group of ‘moral people’ against immorality and the protest of another group of ‘moral people’ against moral policing in Kerala gained attention nationwide (world wide?). There were a lot of follow ups throughout our country. The protests against the ‘kiss of love’ program by different groups were not come as a surprise considering the fact that a lot of girls in Kerala reprimanded by elders just for laughing public. So, how can people who can’t tolerate laughing allow kissing and hugging public? Well, the hugging and kissing protests was symbolical, they were protesting against the so called moral policing, they were not inviting everybody to come out and kiss, hug and make obscenity (that’s others called it) in public. It was a way of protesting and they were not compelling somebody to do that.

      Let’s check the whole plot. First a TV channel reported some immoral sort of activities at the parking lot of a restaurant. Then a group of people who belonged to the youth wing of a major political party came and vandalized the cafeteria (first protest). After that people who thought that shouldn’t be the way of dealing things and this type of moral policing can’t be tolerated in a democratic country united and arranged the ‘kiss of love’ program(second protest). Then the people who thought: in a very civilized society like us, this sort of kissing and hugging can’t be allowed in public came to the event place and made havoc (third protests) so that the police had to arrest the kiss of love activists to ‘protect’ them (ha ha). The third protest was very funny. That actually showed the unity in diversity in India. There were people from all political parties, religions, and other groups, each of them came with different banners and slogans. That showed, even for fighting against a common problem we need different groups on the name of religion and politics, real civilization! And there were more civilized people there to capture the moments of kissing and hugging. So what should be cleaned first, the so called young generation attitude or the dirty mind set of people who check for obscenity in everything?

      First thing whatever was being happened in the café; moral or immoral, which should be checked by the law and order of our system. Nobody wants something bad happen to our students and we don’t want them to be in inappropriate situation. And this ‘inappropriate’ should not be defined by some biased people with preoccupied minds. If somebody has a complaint against the café that should be dealt with our state police not the police acting goons. I don’t understand why these political parties are so much biased, if their MP’s and MLA’s amass wealth in improper ways or make harsh divisive comments which affect national integrity they just say ‘police will look into this matter, then if they find any mistakes law will take care of that’. Even with proofs like video and audio tapes they won’t take any action against such people, not even in the party. They wait for the law and order drama to come and waste some public money (oh, they themselves decide the law and order). But these parties allow their youth wings to act (violence) against anything they found ‘inappropriate’ among common people. So what? The police of our system are to play with fouls of political leaders and the ‘moral police’ to control the people? We don’t need such criminals to teach us morality. If we need any law intervention in anything, that will be provided by the legal framework of the country and nothing else.

      Moral policing is a part of our culture now. Even though majority of people does not agree with male-female intimacy (friendly talk to the love affairs), all are not volunteered into the moral policing. There is group of people who consider this as their duty to define morals and make everybody to follow their model. It has been here for so long. Ignore kissing and hugging, a boy and girl can’t be together, they can’t talk, walk or sit together. These people point out It is as against our culture and immoral. The so called culture protectors created a smokescreen around us which find hugging and kissing as immoral. It is not a shocking knowledge since most of the people in our state still consider love marriages as ‘wrong’ and arranged marriages as ‘right’. Falling in love is still a sin here. They think they hold some values and trying to protect them. But how can they categorize expression of love as immoral? Does kisses and hugs really obscene?        

    The law of this country prohibits its citizens from public obscenity. So what is obscene? Hugs and kisses are no way obscene. It actually depends on the people who do it. Everything can be obscene if the person of interest intends that. We live in a state where we are taught from young age to be decent. That means ‘mind your own things and keep distance from opposite sex’, and ‘don’t be close to them’. For a girl all the males she talking should be her relatives either blood relation or direct husband. There is no chance for a male friend, classmate, colleague she can talk to. I’m not saying, in our educational institutions or working places girls are not talking to boys or they are not friends. But the society still got a problem with that. It is still a great thing for some people to say about their son or daughter that ‘she never talked to a man’ or ‘he never looked at a girl’s face’. Well, I don’t know how many people of my age think such boy or girl is normal if they exist.

          We were taught that hugs and kisses are obscene, so it should be done in closed spaces. And this concept brought us another idea that whatever happens in closed areas are obscene. We were taught a lot of non sense things like these. In our families kids can see how their father play boss over their mother, or beat or abuse her, or treat her as a servant but they can’t be seen their father respect their mother or shows affection. So the girls grow up seeing this expect they are going to be treated like crap and it is normal and boys expect them to be the next masters and they are destined to be so. This is the ethics and morality that we are receiving. That is why the world around us is full of hatred than love. The so called pseudo moralists pressure us to hide our emotions and act like morons.

         Now back to the three protests. First protesters who couldn’t allow the immoral activity took the law in their hand and had done justice. They destroyed that café. The violence they showed there make them the real apostle of morality and ethics. They neither value other people’s effort and money nor respect the democracy. Such people should not be the part of our society for the sake of a good next generation (bad example). Second protest by the activists is something justifying their cause of protest. They were organized a peaceful union of people with their ideology against moral policing. That was symbolic, they called what is wrong a wrong. They just tried to say people are enough mature to define their morality and they don’t need supervision in their lives (otherwise, mind one’s own business). Third protest was against the mode of second protest (They actually protested against the right to protest of the activists). The way they protested disrupted the second protest or they just prohibited the activists from their protest. The first and third protests were depended on violence. The way of protests in everywhere in Kerala is by violence, even that is student unions or by any other groups. They can’t think about another way of protest than loud noises, fuss and violence. They thought something (the second protest) was wrong and because they thought so, it couldn’t happen. This is called as intolerance, we heard about that in history, it was always there in behind every war and riots.

          Here, people can’t agree (or even think) other people can be right. For them, there is only one way to do things. Whoever not following that are wrong. If somebody thinks that kissing public is wrong, he or she just can avoid that. But they won’t stop there. They try to impose their morality on others. This is happening in everything. People who live their lives on their own terms are called as impropriety. The narrow mindedness-es that rule the society try to demoralize others who wish to live their lives freely. All are capable of identify and differentiate between the right and wrong things. People are different and their priorities also differ, so how can somebody call the ones who walk in a different way as obscene? Such intolerance should be avoided. The activists were fighting for their right to choice and not to change others' choices. So it is the duty of the society to respect others' way of living. Don’t confuse the values we uphold with the different aspect of living.

          The society we live have the right to fight against the vices happening around us. But the vices should not be ‘all else which us follow’. The attacks against youth going pubs, the anti Valentine’s Day protests, orders to girls not to wear jeans and not carry mobiles, the rakhi tying drama etc showed the intolerance of a group of people which is a shame to our country. Some says all of these are doing to protect our girls and the immoral way of living today causing the frequent attack against women. Well, who’s attacking women, Aliens from Mars? The uncivilized customs that teach us female gender as inferior one is the reason for such incidents. Why girls need protection if there is no men to attack. We should not be taught the moral values which make us consider women as things to enjoy and second class gender. We should not be taught others are to be controlled. The unavailability of such proper practical society created the moral policing. Who taught these people violence and intolerance are our culture and tradition? To my knowledge Indians have the great tradition to accept and agree various types of lives while they opt for a different one. Everybody got equal right to follow their morals. Just don’t try to define others on your standards.

                Nothing do make following old tradition right and modern mode wrong (obscene). We just evolve according to the opportunities and facilities that we get. We change according to our convenience. Actually there is no such difference as old and modern. Our values remain the same. But we can’t follow the inequalities and superstitions in the name of religion, caste, language, region and gender now by saying those were part of our past. That does not belong to a civilized society. We need to progress not to go back to the stone ages. The etiquette we follow in a civilized society should not be decided by the preoccupied minds with biased thoughts and assumptions. Such assumptions and imaginations should not be ruled us. We should not spread the wildfire of pseudo morals and prejudice into young minds; that won’t make them the protective angels of culture; that just make them scared of the way they feels; that just make them to hide their lives.

Really very shocked to hear the sad and untimely demise of cricketer Phillip Hughes. It is a tragedy not only to the cricketing world but also to the entire world. It was an accident that shocked the cricket world two days ago and everybody hoped for the best. But it turned out be an absolute tragedy today. Prayers with Hughes family and especially with Sean Abbott.

PASSIVE DAYS

         It is a weird situation in which we have a lot of topics to write about. In fact such situations do not come handy. And the opposite situation is also equally weird. Sometimes we think a lot to find a topic, but won’t find something worthy of our effort. It doesn’t mean that there is nothing left for us or nothing happening around us. It just means, for some reasons we shut down our brains from outside, so we could see and hear everything but nothing reaching the upstairs as such. In our lives we could find such periods in which we do ‘present’ there but actually ‘not present’ there. We just see and hear things for the sake of mere seeing and hearing, nothing else. We don’t absorb anything and the thinking part is completely absent. So if somebody finds nothing interesting or scarce of topics in their life they just have to understand that somehow they are low now, sort of depressed and they need to open up. There are phases of everybody’s lives (generally) they find as dormant. It is just a matter of time; the seed has to sprout soon.

CSAT and the ‘C’ Region

      The CSAT controversy that burst out just before the preliminary exam of this year was discussed greatly not only by the Civil Service aspirants and high class people but also by the ordinary citizen of this country themselves. It is not a wonder since the result of the prestigious exam will be the bureaucrats, diplomats or senior law enforcement officers of the country and people are interested to know who are going to ‘rule’ them or ‘control’ them. Well, that’s a joke, but people want best officers, the most accurate ones for the job, the perfect ones to implement the public policies; that is for public administration. So the protest of civil service aspirants at different places and ruckus made by our MP’s at both houses of parliament on the CSAT issue easily gained public attention. Of course, we want the best officers, so we should deploy best ways to choose them from millions. I, certainly don’t know whether the way we following is the best to choose the topmost bureaucrats but it is a 3 step solid process. So if somebody, especially CSE aspirants themselves cry foul about the way of selection then it is concerning.

         UPSC, a constitutional body conducts Civil Service exam in India which takes almost 1 year long selection procedures each time. Lakhs of candidates takes part in Preliminary exam in which just above 10000 select for Mains exam and around 2000 filtered to face interview board. After interview nearly 1000 young bureaucrats emerges out as victorious then they go for the training sessions of their allotted posts (IAS, IFS, IPS, IRS etc). But this year there was great protests against the conduct of preliminary exam just weeks before the date of exam. The protest was against the syllabus of General Studies paper II (Civil Service Aptitude Test, CSAT). Let me remind you one thing, in past three years that is 2011,2012 and 2013 UPSC conducted the prelims with the same syllabus which was introduced in 2011. The main complaint was that the CSAT paper is helping non Hindi candidates very much and biased towards technical background students. The students from the rural and humanities background find this as a blow to their hopes and feared an early exit from the competition. Let’s see what exactly in the bomb shell.

        The CSAT paper has 80 questions including arithmetic ability, decision making, logical reasoning, analytical ability, mental ability, data interpretation, English comprehension etc. Well, I’m a student belong to rural area, not English medium, and pure science during graduation does not find any of the above as a herculean task to anyone, at least considering this is asking in such a prestigious exam where a country is searching for intelligent and capable minds to handle the ‘infrastructure’ or backbone of the country (public administration, law & order, diplomacy etc). Logic, reasoning or power to decision making is needed by bureaucrats than anybody. Everybody has logics and power to reason, so to answer such questions one needed to be preoccupied for such questions. One need a little bit practice to answer any kind of such questions than a technical or management background.

            The other issue raised was felt to me like a big one; which accused candidates of some regions for enjoying some advantages over Hindi speaking candidates due to the presence of some English comprehension questions. Well, let’s do the postmortem of question paper, and I’m taking the CSAT question of 2013 here. It had 80questions, out of which 48 were leaning towards mathematics range; problem solving, mental ability, decision making, logical reasoning etc. All these 48 questions had Hindi versions too (that is questions were in English at the left and in Hindi at the right side of the page). Other part has 12 passages and 32 questions from the passages to answer. Of these 12 passages three small passages at the end had no translations in Hindi that is this three were the actual English comprehensions. These 3 passages had 8 questions to answer and other 9 passages which had Hindi translations got 24 questions to answer. The main allegation was about these 3 passages that they are hard for students from rural areas and Hindi speaking candidates and they questioned the need of English comprehensions. “We could well communicate with our regional languages. So why do we need English?  The candidates opt IFS should be well versed in English, but that does not needed by the bureaucrats of our country” their arguments were something like this.

               Well, I felt all these arguments a lot childish. First the preliminary exam is an objective one, there is no need to answer or explain any views in English. When a candidate has to elaborate their answers that is in the mains exam or communicate their views that is in the interview, they are allowed to opt the language of their choice. In prelims UPSC wants to know whether the candidate is eligible to read and understand a simple passage with 10^th standard difficulty (that’s maximum) in English. If UPSC put that as criteria for the selection of officers it can’t be blamed. We need officers who can read and understand at least a notice in English. The ‘Protect and support our mother tongues’ campaign should have nothing to do with English; a language is not the enemy of other language, people use it defectively is. So if really want to support and spread our languages world widely we need to communicate with a wide range of people and we need English, not only for that but for raising our own standards. I don’t understand how someone can be considering oneself perfect for this topmost job when he/she got a problem with such a simple thing. They are never asked to perform their job in foreign language or never demanded to be fluent in English, are just asked to have the ability to understand English. Now, why is it English? Well, I think it is because of the reign of British in India years back, our education system has great influence by them; the one language or subject that taught in almost all part of India is English. And English is a global language that could connect all the regions of India as well as India with the world, at least I think so. An IAS/IPS/IRS officer can never stick with their regional language or mother tongue during their tenure as officers; they are the officers of a country with multitude of languages in use. They need to communicate with people efficiently wherever they go, so language can’t be a barrier. Then why is this strike against English when they are going to learn many languages during their journey. The protesters only need to spend the time with English than in protests, at least in the coming years.

            Now just have a look at the ‘advantage’ part. Some accused the candidates from the ‘C’ region that is non Hindi region have an advantage over others due to the syllabus that embrace English. Why? Are their forefathers British or American, so they have proficiency in English? I’m from Kerala; I don’t think I can tell about the feeling of the whole non Hindi region as I barely have an idea about the people and conditions. So here is what I feel as a keralite about this issue. In Kerala also children go to school state government, CBSE or ICSE syllabus mainly like other part of the country. It can be English medium or Malayalam (our mother tongue) medium. While English medium teach all subjects in English Malayalam medium has English as a language to study. All part of our country follows this pattern, classes in their regional language or English, but all has English as a subject to study. So how will there be an advantage for Kerala (or non Hindi) candidates over English language? Their mother tongue is not English. They also study English as a language during their primary education system like any other students. They do only have the acquired knowledge of English not inherited. So, advantage to them? Really! Let’s see the whole plot.

          As I said earlier the whole question paper had questions in both Hindi and English, not any other language. The Hindi speaking candidates get 72 out of 80 questions in Hindi. And of course other 8 questions can’t be in Hindi as they are English comprehension questions. Now what about the other non Hindi candidates, they don’t have an option! They too get the same question paper; English and Hindi versions only. So who do have the real advantage? Let’s just keep aside civil Service exam for some time, and have a look at other competitive exams, whatever it is, the central government, semi central government or bank, have you ever heard about questions in regional languages other than Hindi?  All exams in India for such jobs take place in English medium and the questions with a Hindi version too, not in any other languages. I have never seen a Malayalam question paper for exams conducted for the post of bank clerk, bank probationary officer, insurance company vacancies or even SSC conducted exams for central government jobs. But I had Hindi version along with English. This has been happening for years and candidates of the non Hindi are so accustomed to this system that they never think of the language. What to think of, they don’t have an option anyway. It is obvious people from places like Kerala always go with English, a better known language to them than Hindi. The people who ruled India after the British for years (until today) never had a thought about the non Hindi speaking people (job seekers; in this case). So when the English left the country they remembered to make the changes favourable for some people (exactly speaking, North Indians) but not for the entire country. They added a Hindi version question paper along with English, but completely forget about the non Hindi speakers. And what people like keralites did was, they mastered enough English to answer such questions. It would be difficult, but people did it, they are doing it. For them the questions are in English, they are not worried about the option they never had. Actually they converted the disadvantage to their advantage. Now if they have such an advantage then they worked for it and acquired it, not begged for it. The fun fact is that even the exams conducted by Kerala PSC (Public Service Commission) for many state government jobs have 10% English questions including vocabulary and grammar and most of the question papers (for posts need qualification above 10^th standard) are in English (yeah, only in English). The language for administration in Kerala is Malayalam and still nobody protest against English question papers and questions. Why should us, knowing others' doesn’t mean to forget our own legacy.        

          The protests against English comprehension by civil service aspirants at different places and the follow ups (UPSC omitted the comprehension part in 2014 prelims) infuriated some candidates (okay, read from Kerala). A lot of candidates around the country complained that creating such a fuss when the exams are at the corner was unnecessary. And the government decision to exclude some questions created confusions among candidates too. All the fuss was about discrimination of some against the other. Well, we saw who is actually discriminated and how. Even if there was a case of discrimination it should be discussed a lot before. The whole syllabus changed before 2011 prelims, then why was such a huge agitation just before 2014 exam. If such a complaint was there why that voices never heard before. And quite amusingly the MP’s of the party raised the voice first in the parliament were the ruling party till 2 months before the whole event. What were they doing when they were in power if they knew there is something wrong with the pattern of exam? And just to calm down all this, the ongoing government deleted some questions; problem solved! Well, I don’t think the problems are solved, not yet. There is an English language paper in Civil Service mains exam even though it is qualifying in nature. Aspirants who protested against the 3 simple passages will never be happy about the 300 marks qualifying paper. Let’s see what happens. I don’t think selection of topmost officers of the country should fall to some political agenda. If aspirants have issues with the pattern of exam that has to be solved but it should not be at the expense of quality of the exam.  We can’t downgrade the standard of exam. In case of the demand of question papers in regional languages it is reasonable. It is not justifying asking some candidates to opt from two outside languages when some other candidates have the luxury of questions in their mother tongue. If Hindi translations are allowed then the demand for regional language versions can’t be neglected. And if government decided to go for English only to maintain equality (it is the right decision for me, but will only be labeled as utopian thinking) then a lot of people will cry foul against the advantage for Nagaland candidates. Well, it will be better, at least that time (than the English advantage of keralites) as some of Nagaland people proclaim English as their mother tongue.

             The result of whole Civil Service exam is the administrative power of our country. We want high standard there. Well, will English bring standard there? I don’t think so, but elimination of English as a language is not possible there. We want to keep our standards high; we believe in progressive movements, wide growth, expansions, we can’t compromise with something that in anyway delimiting our abilities. Language barriers should not limit our resources for achievements whether it is in physical development of the country or the knowledge level of people. English as a language help us to open new windows of knowledge and development. We should accept that. The bureaucrats or diplomats of our country are facing and tackling challenges every day. They are trained for that. The Civil Service aspirant’s ultimate aim should not be to clear the exam; it should be to become the best public administrator. If they have a problem with the simple reasonable criteria of their selection, then how can they be eligible officers? The politicians of our country treat people as vote banks. They make noise especially when issues like religion, region, castes, languages etc arises. It will be better if candidates stay away from such divisive political policies. I don’t know what ‘politics’ is our parties playing on the syllabus controversy. If they are really concerned they should find a reasonable unanimous solution and the government should implement it. If UPSC wants some criteria for the selection of candidates and wants to maintain the standard of the exam then it should explicitly state it. An intelligent and right decision should be taken to avoid further problems in this matter. It should not be favouring anyone or discriminating others, purely a logical reasonable one.