Chetan's Musings

As the horrifying news of the mid-day meal tragedy in a government primary school in a village in Saran district near Patna burns the airwaves, I'm reminded of the day I spent at such a school in Samastipur (a district bordering Saran) some two years back. The meal being served to the children that rainy day had seemed anything but edible, even then. A look at the way it was being cooked (picture on the right) convinced me that such a tragedy was just waiting to happen. My mind also traveled to a conversation I once had with the Director of Primary Education of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD - which has since been trifurcated into three separate Corporations) a few years back. Commenting on the humongous task of ensuring cooked meal that had to be served to nearly a million children in about 1800 primary schools of the MCD every day, with a budget of just over Rs. 3 per meal, she lamented the politics behind the much touted mid-day meal scheme (MDMS) of the governmen...

In a recent casual discussion, the CEO of a prominent CSR foundation shared her lament about how youngsters who join the social sector prefer to spend their time at the office, noses buried in their laptops. Going by my observations of some of these youngsters as well, this indeed appears to be a disturbing trend. The social sector is all about causing a positive change to the lives of those who've been left behind. Much of this is to do with basic human requirements such as health & nutrition, education, livelihoods, clean water, and dignity. As in any other social discipline, the traditional classroom can only at best provide a theoretical perspective - the real learning can only be found in the field. To that, no alternative exists. And this learning is seldom apparent in one or even a few visits. The field reveals itself gradually - layer upon layer - and that too, only to the discerning, non-judgmental eye. For a newcomer to the sector, it would take several vis...

It's been exactly a week since "Nirbhaya" passed away... The crowds around Jantar Mantar have dissipated...Happy New Year messages are flying about as usual...the TV channels are busy dissecting India's defeat to Pakistan at the Eden Gardens yesterday...the FB regulars are back to posting pretty pictures and rants about the freezing weather....we're back on our workstations, making plans for the weekend... Life goes on as usual..."It has to! What else can we do?" we ask! We the concerned, whose marrow stirred on hearing Nirbhaya's story. We the cocooned, who quickly go back to our little zones of comfort. But, there are things we can do to bring about the Change we wish to see. Central to the ideas that follow is that we all wish to see a more equitable society; that we do not want any more Nirbhayas; that we do not want any child freezing to death on the pavement for want of clothes or shelter. We could organize ourselves into small gr...