The Anti -Nationals or Non-Nationals or Media-Nationals..

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup

 

"The serendipitous profile of the mainstream — Hindu, urban and mofussil, upper-caste, middle-to-upper-class, mostly north Indian, mostly male, and perhaps most importantly, liberal-to-Right in ideological persuasion — matches that of the majority of persons in the legislature, bureaucracy, judiciary, police and paramilitary force, the business and trading communities, white-collar corporate employees, teachers, and, tellingly, media workers (especially in the electronic media). It is through this media that this nation of a privileged minority sees itself, and only itself, as the true nation — the true ‘India’ (or ‘Bharat’, depending on linguistic and other ideological preferences).

But the vast majority of the population of India lies outside this profile. They don’t belong to this ‘India’, this ‘Bharat’. They live in the gutters and ghettoes, the fields and forests, the roadsides and ravines, the backyards and brothels of this nation. They are the rejects and the failures, the ones who didn’t or couldn’t acquire this profile. They are India, but they will always remain outside this ‘India’, and become anti-national the moment they question their exclusion".

 They are also India, agreed. Then the question is posed: So would anyone else who questions their exclusion, or who supports them, or speaks up on their behalf stand as potential criminals in the terms of the unstated law of anti-nationalism.

The answer is: certainly not. But the mainstream India as defined above by the 'questioners' themselves, does not see or acknowledge that the latter represent the rest of India, the underprivileged. It is in fact very apparent that the 'questioners' are just another section, often highly privileged, highly politicized, highly vocal, anti-rightists, or leftists and extremists who stage a self-righteous dance drama,  ostensibly for the underprivileged, but in fact for their own enhancement. There in lies the hypocrisy, the deceit, the perfidy of the left- of- center. They are the myopic drowsy Rip Van Winkles, the neotenic Marxists and Maoists who in fact, if history is any guide, prey upon the underprivileged.

That makes it prudential for the mainstream India to pick up each of these road show creatures with a pair of forceps and  examine it for what it really looks and sounds like. And you will find that under the lens they all have distinct stripes poke marks and scarlet colors. There are political recruiters who hurriedly make a beeline for enlistment and campus selection with promise of immediate stardom and  fat remuneration. These neo-liberal political corporate entities  are a new breed of failed business CEOs desperately scouting for some political and providential manna falling from the skies to feed on.

But it is sheer drought for them and obviously and drastically harakiri staring in face.

The Art of Maligning

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup

I have no hesitation to say that the current hullabaloo about the Yamuna flood plain destruction by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living World Culture Festival  is so much hogwash. The environmental activists now stalking the TV channels are a breed of glorified laymen masquerading as experts. Apart from their stereotyped verbiage, jargon  easily acquired from some pamphlets and brochures, and occasionally from some publications dealing with environment, all that they possess is disinformation wrought by naive and simplistic interpretation of this kind of warped knowledge. They are no scientists of any note, and I doubt whether the Green Tribunal has any reputed scientists who have enough credentials to sit there as experts.  If there are,  I have not heard any single scientist authentically explaining eventualities  related to the ecology of Yamuna. At present obstructionists  are mostly belonging to the tribe of activists, who are like masons  in place of engineers and  compounders or pharmacists  in place of doctors.  So I don't listen to that activist cacophony.

We should note that many great cities are built on the flood plains of great rivers.  Now those cities and towns have become part of these floodplain ecosystem as much as the original and modified biota. They are all part of its biodiversity. They are a category of riparian zones and systems. Since there is mostly a flood way as the core of the flood plains, latter is one of the easiest to restore to sustainability unlike grasslands away from water sources. Two to three year's leave-alone policy is enough to restore a flood plain, as the natural succession which is the best effective way will take over.

Wetting of the floodplain soil by rains releases an immediate surge of nutrients: those left over from the last flood, and those that result from the rapid decomposition of organic matter that has accumulated since then. Microscopic organisms thrive and larger species enter a rapid breeding cycle. Opportunistic feeders (particularly birds) move in to take advantage. The production of nutrients peaks and falls away quickly; however the surge of new growth endures for some time. This makes floodplains particularly valuable for agriculture. That is the reason civilization originated in the great flood plains of mighty rivers.

All the mumbo jumbo the differently interested activists mumble are just a smokescreen to hide their political motivation. Restoring the jamboree site  will not cost a paisa other than that for dismantling the structures after the mega event. And what was the earlier condition? Over the years the flood plains have been used as an illegal dumping ground of construction debris. 17 drains were dumping toxic waste in the Yamuna and creating a thick stench; it would be hard for anyone to stand next to the river for 3 minutes, let alone host a 3 day cultural event. Land will now be restored to a much happier and healthier condition which the activist obstructionists could never do.

That Women Are From Moon And Men Are From Mars Is No Longer True.

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup


  That Women Are From Moon And Men Are From Mars Is No Longer True.

  
Today is International Women's Day. The 2016 theme for International Women’s Day is “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality”. The United Nations observance on 8 March will reflect on how to accelerate the 2030 Agenda, building momentum for the effective implementation of the new Sustainable Development Goals. It will equally focus on new commitments under UN Women’s Step It Up initiative, and other existing commitments on gender equality, women’s empowerment and women’s human rights. Yes women's human rights are equal to those of men. Both are equal constituents of human race on this earth. It is no longer true to say that women are from  moon and men are from mars, emphasizing the difference, although the French man might still say 'viva the difference". And scientists say there  is only just less than 2 per cent difference genetically between the two, and that it has nothing to do with faculties!

The 2016 theme for International Women’s Day is “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality”. The United Nations observance on 8 March will reflect on how to accelerate the 2030 Agenda, building momentum for the effective implementation of the new Sustainable Development Goals. It will equally focus on new commitments under UN Women’s Step It Up initiative, and other existing commitments on gender equality, women’s empowerment and women’s human rights - See more at: http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/international-womens-day#sthash.YZ6aHuzw.dpuf

It won't be very wrong to say that the women's rights movement  began as largely a western product of the Era of Enlightenment in the European history. It then flourished more vigorously in the United States of America from which its evangelists spread the message across the elitist world. Naturally therefore, what rights are included under women's rights vary in time and cultures.

  In the States, Mary Wollstonecraft in  her 1791-92 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, now considered a classic of feminist history,  argued primarily for the rights of woman to be educated. Through education would come emancipation. The women's suffrage was fought for by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902). Her Seneca Falls (New York) Convention(1848) and

Declaration of Sentiments written byElizabethwhich was approved there, is credited with initiating the long struggle towards women's rights and woman suffrage. She was also active and effective in winning property rights for married women, equal guardianship of children, and liberalized divorce laws.  She died nearly 20 years to go before the United States granted women the right to vote.

When Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell were married(1855), they protested against laws of the time in which women lost their legal existence upon marriage and this protest was instrumental in providing legal existence and rights to women in marriage there. 

The modern women's rights movement began in the 1960s and gained momentum with the development of the scholarly field of Feminist Jurisprudence in the 1970s. In Britain women  gained equal voting rights with men only in 1928.With the end of the First World War many other countries followed – the Netherlands (1917), Austria, Azerbaijan,[132] Canada, Czechoslovakia, Georgia, Poland and Sweden (1918), Germany and Luxembourg (1919), Turkey (1934), and the United States (1920)

 Even today, there is some disagreement about what constitute women's rights. Does a woman have a right to control family size? to equality of treatment in the workplace? to equality of access to military assignments? Usually, "women's rights" refers to whether women have equality with the rights of men where women and men's capacities are the same.

In  India although Gandhiji incorporated women's movements into the Quit India movement and independent women's organizations began to emerge , it was only in post-Independent period women's right movement acquired momentum. However, Despite the progress made by Indian feminist movements, women living in modern India still face many issues of discrimination. India's patriarchal culture has made the process of gaining land-ownership rights and access to education challenging.[4] In the past two decades, there has also emerged a disturbing trend of sex-selective abortion.[5] To Indian feminists, these are seen as injustices worth struggling against

In modern context, women's rights refer to those that should govern in the economic, civil, socio-cultural, and political walks of life. The full economic rights that should accrue to them are in  matters of property rights,  profession, rights to income, in finace dealings, and for maternity leave in service. In civil rights they range in the fields of legal, marriage- diverse, family life and parenthood.  Socio-cultural rights demands are mainly in, sex and control over own body, reproduction and family size,education, religious worship, dress and moral codes, home roles. Lastly ,equal political rights.

Your Child Can't Be Anything.

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup


Your Child Can't Be Anything.

 

Many Parents as well as some books say to children that " you can be anything if you put you mind to it wholeheartedly.

What could possibly be wrong with telling our kids they can be anything? Plenty.

 First, studies show that pursuing overly-ambitious goals can be harmful. When researchers study organizations that set stretch goals for employees–goals intended to motivate high performance–they find that these lofty goals often have significant negative side effects. In particular, they find that when people are focused on a goal, and failure to achieve that goal has high costs, unethical behavior increases. Many kids report feeling intense pressure to achieve in school and beyond, and many more kids say they have cheated. 

 Some attentive parents may rightly emphasize the role of imagination :"What you can achieve is limited only by your imagination!". Some may also say that more important than imagining a goal is working hard to achieve it. True, but even if the message “You can do anything!” is broadened to include hard work, it still falls short.

This is because telling kids that they can do anything—whether fueled by imagination or hard work—obscures the critical role of chance in success. Not every child who wants to be a surgeon or sports star can become one, even if they work hard at it. At the same time, in every success story there is the grace of good fortune. Our futures are shaped by many forces beyond our control, including chance, genetics, and other accidents of birth. Then too, statistically speaking, most of us will be average

 This is not to say that parents shouldn’t expect their children’s best or encourage them to work hard and persevere, just that a focus on achievement per se ultimately does kids (and ourselves) a disservice. When we create a mindset that high achievement is better than being average–that high achievers are more special or deserving–we diminish kids’ ability to value both themselves and others. 





Annotated:www.washingtonpost.com

The Modern Micro Mahishaasuras of JNU

Posted by Dr. Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup


 The Modern  Micro Mahishaasuras of JNU

Those who want to hard sell JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, especially the anti-Modi -anti-BJP media lobby,  and see him as a lathi to charge the government, should  realize that the fellow  is a one-day summer sparrow  which doesn't make a profitable political summer for this media brigade.  I saw  Rajdeeep Sardesai and also the devil's advocate, Karan Thaper straining  their neck muscles hard   and turning blue in  face arguing that the learned lady judge of the Delhi High Court, Pratibha Rani,  has lesser wisdom than them and even lesser judicial acumen. How dare she depart from mundane legal jargon and write a powerful, evocative, and resounding judgment, which as another panel member in the discussion did maintain that it might well go down as one of a memorable and historic judgment that might one day become a text for the law students,  seemed to be their line!

These days the media is brain-starved of meaningful quotes, and so pitiably feed on whatever crumbs of banalities their blue boys mouth or eject as pearls of wisdom. Thus Rohit Vemula's parting lament cursing his Dalit birth as his only unwitting  crime, became instantly hailed as a pithy expression of anguish at caste-suppression. While I have every sympathy for the tender sensibilities he had which unfortunately the lad couldn't overcome, I am of opinion that Rohit should have realized that caste suppression was not a suddenly developed feature of universities or elsewhere but had centuries of history of condemnable ubiquitous practice in India. I would have been proud of him had he decided to live and fight the menace.

The latest is the hot selling quote of Kanhaiya 's "profound" revelation that, by shouting "Azaadi" amidst other references to Kashmir, and milling round and round like in an African tribal ritual, - which he must have been familiar with as the guy is said to be a  researcher in African studies, - he and his fellow leftist tribals  meant only (on second thoughts),  azaadi IN India and not from India. How sagaciously convenient!

And pray, let us know what kind of a "kaidi"( prisoner) he was when he , the son of a farm laborer earning just Rs. 3000 a month according to his own statement, could get admission to the country's prestigious Central university of JNU and also thereby getting his study expenses subsidized to the extent of over Rs. 3 lakhs per annum, with a fellowship to boot ( which he did literally)? What kind of a state prisoner he was when he could organize Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon days in the university campus, and in all probability could have got away with it scot-free but for the obnoxious slogans tantamount to biting the hands that feed him and his ilk?

Kanhaiya typifies that young impressionable generation coming from families of  poor to moderate means, and therefor harboring a deep- rooted grouse about their social strata, resenting their chick and well-off compatriots flaunting their opulence, and tit for tat desperately wanting  to overshadow the latter by taking the leftist union route. In the process they become leftist suckers rebelling indiscriminately against all that is conventional, established, prevalent and proper. Before they even realize it, their sense of patriotism becomes a casuality in that metamorphosis.