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Check out Desicritics.
If you'd like to be a Desicritic, check this out, and send an e-mail to desicritics@gmail.com. We look forward to adding more quality writers to our rolls.It's been a pretty good month, far better than one expected when we conceived of Desicritics.org as an online magazine delivering quality news and opinion on all things South Asian with a global focus. Conceived by Eric Berlin as an extension of the successful paradigm established by Blogcritics publisher, Eric Olsen, and technically powered by Phillip Winn, I've been honored to do my part in creating a new reality, closer to the heart.
I do believe Desicritics, Blogcritics, and the ilk are the harbingers of Media 2.0, a citizens' response to big media, embodying the best of blogs as a personal communication medium, and the power of the collaborative, interactive paradigm. The paradigm reflects South Asia, the world's perceptions of the region, and vice versa through the blogosphere's ability to diffract news via opinion, delivering something more than news and opinion.
Eric Olsen commented once on the concept behind Blogcritics,
It's a place to the advantage of both the writers and the readers - they can interact - because we have open comments. You as the reader can participate in the ongoing discussion: you can agree, you can disagree, you can bring in new facts, you can reference materials that you think are important. I think that's something that sets us apart from the traditional media.The exceedingly fine writers on Desicritics have consistently delivered a delightful variety of news and information on topics ranging from Rang De Basanti to the Cartoon protests. We've covered Arcelor, and joisted on the Indian Army in Kashmir. We've been noticed by the media and the blogosphere as well, and our regular readership continues to grow daily.
One month on, we've got over 160 writers, 100,000+ page views, we added on two more editors (temporal & Sujatha) and we're only just beginning.
Desicritics come from Pakistan and from Australia, from Bangladesh, Toronto, and Bangalore.
As I turn off of the
Off to the left of the dais, past the sound system, its snaking wires and the loudspeakers, is the gate that leads to Noor Ayesha's house. The gate opens to a long corridor at the far end of which is the front door that opens to a room about 8 feet by 12 feet that is filled to capacity with people and is buzzing with activity.
Noor Ayesha, petite, reed-thin and bubbling with energy is resplendent in a shimmering green and pink chudidhar. She has a constant stream of guests, some already seated in molded plastic chairs that dot the front room of the house, others still arriving, removing their slippers at the front door before coming in. She is at once in command of the goings on in her house and shies at all the attention she is receiving.
Noor's male relatives are busy lifting low, long school benches lined along one wall of the front room and taking them outside. The women of the house, other than Noor, are busy in the kitchen getting out paper plates, snacks and fruits.
Noor is busy attending to little children, guiding them to a bench in the far corner of the room, getting them to sit. The children are dressed in their best clothes and their faces made up as if for a performance. They sit quietly and patiently and watch the adults.
The room itself has a showcase built into the wall to the left of the front door. The showcase is full of children's notebooks, blocks and puzzles. Number charts, alphabet charts, fruit, vegetable and flower charts hang along the wall facing the front door. A little higher, towards the left of center of the wall, hangs an illustration of
In short, Noor is a foot-soldier in the war against illiteracy in
Today, Noor Ayesha and her children are celebrating their school's Annual School Day.
She started out as an Akshara volunteer in their 'Community Outreach' program (of which the pre-school or 'Balwadi' program is one of four components) in November 2004. She went around from house to house with research provided by Akshara (number of children in the household, how many are in school, how many are not and why not) and urged parents to send their pre-school aged children to her house for a few hours everyday so she could school them.
For eight months, she ran her pre-school under Akshara's banner and received all the necessary teaching materials and a monthly stipend from Akshara. Within a few months, she had the experience and a sufficient number of children in her school for her to contemplate going independent. So she took the training offered by Akshara on how to run a self-sustaining Balwadi in April of 2005. From June onwards, she has been running her pre-primary school with the fees she has collected from the families and with some help from her locality's Corporator.
Now Noor has 54 children in the age group of 2 and a half to 6 years old and she's hearing from parents who want to send their children to her even earlier. Initially, her language and math classes were conducted only in Urdu. Following numerous requests from parents, she has now hired an English teacher and offers classes in both Urdu and English.
Enabling Noor to accomplish all this within a span of a few months are her family, her neighborhood and the leadership in her locality. Her in-laws were both school teachers and are fully supportive of their daughter-in-law's efforts to get children in their community on the right track. Her family is investing in building an entire floor above their existing ground-floor house to help her expand her classes. Her local Corporator, known as Mr. Tipu to his constituents, encouraged Noor's efforts by donating books to the school, mementoes for functions, funds to Noor to help her get started when she went independent and fees to families who struggle to send their children to her pre-school.
Although Noor has been on her own for close to eight months now, the Akshara volunteer coordinator looks in on Noor often to check on her progress and help her address operational problems. On the day she celebrated her pre-school's annual day, Mr. Tipu arrived with his entourage to grace the function and exhort the audience to send every child to school and praised Noor's efforts. The Chief Operating Officer of Akshara Foundation, Col. Murthy Rajan attended the annual day celebrations as well, along with Lata Devi, the Balwadi Coordinator for
The success Noor has had not only in starting a Balwadi in her area, but going on to become independent is a sign of the level of demand for education at the pre-primary level. There are no government-run pre-primary schools in
Unfortunately, by that time, they are already behind in terms of the things they could have learned in the crucial formative years of their lives. This leads to learning problems in the primary schools and government primary school teachers are overwhelmed by the amount of work necessary to bring the children up to speed. Schools resort to social promotions until the fifth grade with no attention to what the children have actually learned in the intervening years. All these factors collectively result in children dropping out of school altogether somewhere along the road.
This is where Akshara's Balwadi and the government's Anganwadi programs step in. While Anganwadis try to provide health, education, and other essential services that are not accessible to the poorer communities, Balwadis, which became operational in
Noor's is one of 94 self-sustaining Balwadis in
On this day, Noor, who has not summoned up enough courage to go up on stage, is standing on the ground next to the dais, the microphone pulled low to her height and is welcoming her guests and the parents of her school children. She nervously tugs at her duppatta willing it to stay around her head, her fingers gripping the microphone and adjusting her duppatta by turn. After every sentence, she turns to the English teacher in her school, who has Noor's speech ready in her hands. Together, they make it through the welcome speech.
The audience, mostly women in the front rows, but a sizeable group of men from the community as well in the fringes, many with young children on their laps, are appreciative of Noor. They listen intently when Mr. Tipu speaks, turning to look at Noor every time her name is mentioned.
Noor has moved off to the side now, and is organizing her children. She is already intent on the next stage of the program. This is what the Annual Day is all about. It's about how far her children have come in the span of a year, and it's about showing the parents and the rest of the community why it is important they go to school and stick with it. The children are as excited and nervous as she is. They are about to perform on stage showing off all they've learnt in their Noor teacher's school.
Over the past months, a few of my friends and acquaintances have delivered babies. All of them have gone to private hospitals here in
Well, what is out of the ordinary is that the fact that almost all of them have delivered their babies by Caesarean Section (C-Section).
The Indian medical academic community (see p. 6 of that article) estimates that the rate of C-Sections in private hospitals in
There are innumerable cases all around us in Indian communities in which relatively ineligible (say not good looking) girls have found highly eligible boys by the weight of the other factors, often dowry, and most marriages have been stable, if not successful.And, by coincidence, R, the lady who helps me with the chores around the house recounted this story about an elderly couple in whose house she's also employed in our apartment complex.