Sulabh India -English Issue (September 2018)

23rd NIKKEI ASIA P NIKKEI A 2018 23rd SULABH INDIA PRIZE 2018 23rd NI ASIA PRIZE 2018 23 NIKKEI ASIA PRIZE 23rd NIKKEI ASIA P 2018 23rd NIKKEI A PRIZE 2018 23rd NIK ASIA PRIZE 2018 23 NIKKEI ASIA PRIZE 23rd NIKKEI ASIA P 2018 23rd NIKKEI A PRIZE A steady step2018 23rd NI ASIA 2018 23 on a long PRIZE journey NIKKEI ASIA PRIZE 23rd NIKKEI ASIA P ISSN: 2230–7567

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NIKKEI ASIA PRIZE 2018 Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak dedicated this award to the downtrodden section of the society for whom he is waging a campaign for more than five decades. He said, “This award will be another milestone in my commitment to the service of the society in Asia in particular and the world in general”.

SEPTEMBER 2018, ` 20/-

Editorial

NEW MANDAte and GREATER CHALLENGES

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Awadhesh Kumar Sharma

t gives me immense pleasure in reaching out to you with a new issue of Sulabh India evincing new flavor and fervor.

At the outset I consider it my bounden duty to congratulate Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak on behalf of Sulabh India, Sulabh International, readers of Sulabh India and the whole nation on being conferred upon one of the most prestigious awards, Nikkei Asia Prize in Tokyo, Japan, on 13th June, 2018 for community and culture. It is in recognition of Dr. Pathak’s constant pursuit of improving hygiene and removing discrimination, the two challenges which our country has been facing for a long time.

ideals and principles of ‘May all become happy, all be free from illness, all see what is auspicious and no one suffer’.

It is heartening and encouraging to note that the present government under the leadership of Shri Narendra Modi has done a lot to create in the masses a sense of awareness of the importance of sanitation and cleanliness in their day-to-day life. Sulabh has been doing it for the last fifty years under the guidance of its Founder, Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak. It will be a real achievement and true homage to Mahatma Gandhi if by 2019 India becomes completely clean and defecation in the open stops for good and all.

Last month on the 15th of August we celebrated our Independence Day. It is a day to remember and pay our homage to all those freedom fighters who fought against the foreign rulers to liberate the country from their illegal occupation through whatever means they deemed fit, spending the precious years of their lives in prison or underground. They all had a vision of free India. The question before us today is to ask ourselves whether we have succeeded in making India of the dreams of those freedom fighters who underwent all kinds of torture, trials and tribulations and suffering, including martyrdom, to free India from political slavery and make it an equitable and egalitarian society not only politically but also socially, culturally and economically. They wanted the fruit of freedom to percolate through to the last person in the society. The question is: has it happened? If not, why? Let us all put our heads together to find out the answer to this ‘why’ and take a pledge to make the dreams of the likes of Bhagat Singh, Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose and others come true. That will, of course, be our true homage to the freedom fighters and that is how we will succeed in making India stand in the first line of the countries of the world.

Sulabh India is the voice, the manifesto of Sulabh International Social Service Organisation. We aim to provide our readers with something of everything and everything of something. Our focus area, no doubt, is sanitation, water, cleanliness and environment, but we are quite sensitive to and conscious of the fact that along with this there should also be articles from various areas pertaining to science and technology, social sciences and humanities to cater to the needs and interests of people of all disciplines and age groups. Our attempt is to present articles written by renowned scholars on topics of high seriousness but in a simple language easily comprehensible for common readers.

Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, which Dr. Pathak founded in 1970, is an idea, an ethos, a mission, a movement the motto of which is to make the world clean, beautiful and completely devoid of poverty and discrimination based on caste, creed, religion and gender.

Inspired by Gandhi and based on his principles of truth and non-violence, it is a world in itself governed by age-old

Creating awareness about sanitation, cleanliness and environment is our prime aim, but alongside this we also want to create in our readers a kind of scientific, intellectual, cultural and spiritual temper. If our houses, our neighbourhood, our surroundings are neat and clean, if there are trees and plants, bushes and shrubs around, if the food we eat and the water we drink are free from impurities, then we are bound to be happy, healthy and strong. The areas and fields in which Sulabh works are all related directly to human existence. That we exist is no obligation to nature and earth, but we are certainly obliged to maintain them for our own sustainable development. We must leave behind a better, cleaner, healthier, happier, and more beautiful world for the generations to come. Our aim is to build a new India, a clean and healthy India, a developed India, an India of the dreams of Vivekananda, Gandhi and Abdul Kalam.

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dmfd ISSN: 2230-7567

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Editor-in-Chief Kumar Dilip

SULABH INDIA A Clean Revolution Changing India

Editor Awadhesh kr. sharma Editorial board S.P.N. SINHA S.P. SINGH ARJUN PRASAD SINGH AARTI ARORA TARUN SHARMA DEBABRATA CHATTERJEE NIGAR IMAM ANIL KHANNA SHASHI DHAR CHANDA Advisory Board PROF. DAMODAR THAKUR PROF. BHIM SINGH DAHIYA PROF. ANAND PRAKASH PROF. RAM NANDAN SINGH Printed & Published by Ram Chandra Jha on behalf of Sulabh International Social Service Organisation Published at Sulabh Gram, Mahavir Enclave Palam-Dabri Road, New Delhi - 110 045 Ph.: +91 11 25031518, 25031519 Fax: +91 11 25034014 Email: sulabhinfo@gmail.com / info@sulabhinternational.org / editorsulabhindia@gmail.com Website: www.sulabhinternational.org / www.sulabhtoiletmuseum.org Printed at Xtreme Office Aids (Pvt.) Ltd. WZ-219A, Street No. 7, Lajwanti Garden, New Delhi-110 046

Entire contents (C) Sulabh International Social Service Organisation. All rights reserved. Reproduction or translation in any language in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. Requests for permission should be sent to Editor, Sulabh India.

Opinions expressed in the contents are the contributors’ and not necessarily endorsed by the publisher who assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited material, nor is he responsible for material lost or damaged in transit. All enquiries/correspondence regarding editorial, advertisement, subscription or circulation should be addressed to the Editor, Sulabh India, and sent on the address given here in above.

R.N.I. Regn. No. 49322/89 ISSN: 2230–7567

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Cover Story Nikkei Asia Honours Dr. Pathak

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Padma Bhushan Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak: An Inspired Genius

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Old Ties and New Linkages: Analysis of Indo-Japan Relations

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Who am I and who are we all ?

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POEM The Return

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World Women’s Writing : An Overview Literature and Environment Physics for Mankind Have you heard of ESP?

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C O N T E N T S Where the Mind is Without Fear

Now Plastic is a Threat to Human Civilization

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Aakrant Captures the Essence of Tribal Life

Assessment and Educational Processes

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State of the Global Economy

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Debate on Sanitation is over and Toilet wins

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Distinguished Guests

Narrative of Tribal Consciousness

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64 Sulabh News from States

The Last Leaf

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COVER Story

Nikkei Asia Honours Dr. Pathak Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, Founder, Sulabh International Social Service Organisation was, on 13 June, 2018, honoured with the prestigious and coveted Nikkei Asia prize 2018 for Culture and Community at an impressive ceremony in Tokyo, Japan.

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Dr. Pathak and Mrs. Pathak presenting coffee table books, ‘Narendra Damodardas Modi: The Making of a Legend’ and ‘Fulfilling Bapu’s Dreams – Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Tribute to Gandhiji’ to Mr. Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minister of Japan

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adma Bhushan Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, Founder, Sulabh International Social Service Organisation was, on 13 June, 2018, honoured with the prestigious and coveted Nikkei Asia prize 2018 for Culture and Community at an impressive ceremony in Tokyo, Japan.

The award was conferred on him

by Mr. Naotoshi Okada, President of Nikkei Inc. The two others who received the award under different categories were Ma Jun, from China, who leads a non-governmental organisation that produces an outline pollution database and publishers indexes of corporate work to benefit the environment, spurring provincial governments and industry to strengthen their protection efforts; and Nguyen Thanh Liem, from Vietnam, a leading pediatric physician and director of Vinmec Research Institute

of Stem Cell and Gene Technology, who introduced robo-assisted surgery and other advanced technology that has brought life-changing treatments to children.

The Nikkei Asia Prizes, designed to recognize outstanding achievements

The Nikkei Asia Prizes, designed to recognize outstanding achievements of people and organizations that have improved the lives of people, contributed to the region’s sustainable development and to the creation of a better future for Asia.

of people and organizations that have improved the lives of people, contributed to the region’s sustainable development and to the creation of a better future for Asia. The Nikkei Asia Prizes were constituted in 1996 to commemorate the 120th anniversary of Nikkei Inc’s major Japanese language newspaper, The Nikkei. They give away awards for outstanding contributions to the development of Asia in three fields, a. Economic and Business Innovation, b. Science and Technology, and c. Culture and Community. Nominations for these prizes are invited from experts across the Asia-Pacific region. Candidates are not supposed to nominate themselves and Japanese citizens and organizations are not eligible for these prizes. Some of the other Indians who have received these prizes under different categories in the past include

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COVER Story

Nguyen Thanh Liem (Vietnam), Ma Jun (China), and Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak (India) – Recipients of Nikkei Asia Prize 2018

Dr. Manmohan Singh, Mr. N.R. Narayana Murthy and Dr. C.N.R. Rao. The Chairman of the Award Committee, Mr. Fujio Mitarai, while presenting the award averred that Dr. Pathak was being given the honour for ‘tackling two of his country’s biggest challenges – poor hygiene and discrimination’. The Nikkei Award Committee recognizing his tireless efforts of over five decades, wrote that ‘Bindeshwar Pathak founded an NGO in 1970 that has built Sulabh flush composting toilets throughout India, contributing to better sanitation, safety for rural women and freedom from the manual labour of removing human waste, long a source of stigma in Indian society’. It is another feather in Dr. Pathak’s cap which is already studded with more than a hundred awards and honours from different governments and organizations the world over.

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Dr. Pathak addressing the audience after receiving the Nikkei Asia Prize 2018 in Tokyo, Japan

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

THE 23rd NIKKEI ASIA PRIZE 2018

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak* Ph.D., D.Litt.

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xcellencies, friends from the Nikkei Asia Prize, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

I feel humbled and honoured to receive the prestigious Nikkei Asia Prize. At the outset, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the award committee for recognizing my efforts for the advancement of culture and community.

Ladies and gentlemen, it was my ardent wish to be a Professor of Sociology at Patna University in the state of Bihar. But little did I know that my destiny had something else in store. I began my career as a school teacher in the very school I studied.

Later, I joined the Bihar Gandhi Centenary Celebration Committee in Patna as a social worker in 1968, which was formed to commemorate the birth centenary of Mahatma Gandhi in 1969. The centenary committee assigned me a challenging task of rescuing the untouchables (human scavengers or untouchables that belonged to the lowest stratum of caste-based society) from cleaning human excreta of others and integrate

them in the mainstream of society on a par with others, which was one of the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi.

At that point, I remembered an incident from my childhood: I had once touched a woman from the untouchable community. Hence to purify me, my grandmother forced me to swallow cow dung, drink cow urine and cleansed my body with the holy water of river Ganga on a bitterly cold morning in January.

But as a social worker, I was nonetheless asked to take forward Gandhi’s mission of improving the lives of the untouchable community.

So, I went to a colony where the community lived. It was in Bettiah, Champaran in Bihar, from where Mahatma Gandhi had started his freedom movement.

One day, whilst working there I witnessed a harrowing incident.

I saw a bull attacking a boy in red shirt. When people rushed to save him, somebody yelled that he is an untouchable. The crowd instantly abandoned him and left him to die.

This tragic and unjust incident shook my conscience to the core. That day,

I took a vow to fulfill the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi, which is to fight for the rights of untouchables but also to champion the cause of human rights and equality in my country and around the world. This became my mission. But the million-dollar question was how to rescue the untouchables from their inhuman occupation of cleaning human excreta of others. I realized to do this difficult task, there was an urgent need for an appropriate, affordable toilet technology. I then assiduously started looking for a solution.

In those days in India the villages were full of stink as everyone used to defecate in the open. Women had to suffer the most. They had to go for defecation either before sunrise or after sunset. Because of darkness, they were vulnerable to snakebites and animal attacks and remained exposed to criminal assaults by anti-social elements. Children died because of diarrhoea and dehydration.

Girls did not go to school as no school had the provision of toilets. In urban areas 85% houses had bucket toilets cleaned by untouchables and public

* Action Sociologist & Social Reformer Founder, Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement Brand Ambassador, Swachh Rail Mission Member, National Committee for 150th Birth Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, Government of India

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ACCEPTANCE SPEECH places like railway stations, bus stops, markets, religious and tourist places had no public toilets. Not only the foreigners but even the Indians themselves felt inconvenient if they had to attend the call of nature.

Here I am reminded of a quote by Dr Daisaku Ikeda, one of the most respected Buddhist spiritual leaders from Japan, who too like me has been inspired by Mahatma Gandhi. “A great inner revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, will cause a change in the destiny of humankind.�

My story resonates with Dr. Ikeda’s quote in the sense that I could, with great willpower and desire to see change, transform the lives of untouchables, who were once ostracized. Today, they sit with upper caste people and share meals with them.

Change in society is possible if we ourselves become the agent of change.

I have acted just like a change maker and my inventions were the tools of social change.

Distinguished audience, let me confess that I am neither a scientist, nor an engineer or a technologist. But with pure application of mind and determination, I invented a number of technologies which were crucial in solving the problem of sanitation, improving the culture of sanitation and promoting hygiene and good health for most of the people of my country and particularly the former untouchables.

I invented the two-pit flush ecological compost toilet popularly known as Sulabh Shauchalaya (Sulabh toilets) for household usage.

In this technology, there are two pits. One pit is used at a time, the other is kept on standby. The base of the pit is earth-based, and the bacteria present in the soil converts the human excreta into bio-fertilizer containing nitrogen, phosphorus and

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potassium, good nutrients to raise the productivity in the fields. This Sulabh toilet technology is also eco-friendly.

Ladies and gentlemen, most inventions make life convenient for others, but my invention has achieved what no technology has ever done: it has redeemed the untouchables from their inhuman occupation which they practiced for 5000 years and further restored their human rights.

It has made remarkable difference in the safety and security of women in public places as they could use toilets with dignity. There was a dramatic rise in the attendance of girls in schools across India as Sulabh toilets were built in schools. It further contributed in reducing mortality rates. With Sulabh toilets, I was able to bring a sea-change in the sanitation scenario across India.

In 1974, I introduced the system of maintenance of public toilets on payand-use basis. At that time, it was a new concept in India but as it became popular, Sulabh Public Toilet models

were built all over the country. I am pleased to inform you that the biggest public toilet in the world is now in Pandharpur, Maharashtra, which has been constructed by Sulabh with financial help from the Government of Maharashtra. It has 2,858 toilet units and nearly 400,000 (four hundred thousand) people can use the facility every day.

In 1977, I invented another technology of providing energy from human waste in which the biogas could be produced from human excreta to be used for burning lamp, cooking food, and warming bodies and converted into energy to supply street lights. The water from public toilets is also treated so well that it can be used as fertilizer and even if thrown in water bodies like rivers, there is no chance of pollution.

I would like to say with a sense of great pride that we have built 1.5 million Sulabh toilets in individual houses and more than 9000 public toilets throughout the country. The

"I am neither a scientist, nor an engineer or a technologist.

But with pure application of mind and determination, I invented a number of technologies which were crucial in solving the problem of sanitation and hygiene in India" Government of India has also built 60 million toilets based on Sulabh design. Now these facilities are being used by 20 million people every day.

Today, these technologies are helping to end the practice of open defecation, improving the lives of untouchables and also contributing to the Government of India’s Clean India Campaign. Thus, the dreams of both Mahatma Gandhi and our Hon’ble Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi are being fulfilled.

BBC has featured the Sulabh technology as one of the five unique inventions of the world. UNDP, WHO, UNICEF, UN-Habitat and other international agencies have recommended the use of this technology.

I have also worked tirelessly to rehabilitate human scavengers and bring them into the mainstream.

Towards this end, I have set up skill development training centers and

have taken a number of initiatives to economically empower them. I achieved it by providing resources for upward social mobility so that such empowerment can lead to social integration based on equality.

These women have been trained as beauticians, in food processing, sewing and embroidery. They have also taken courses in personality development. Earlier they earned 4 to 5 dollars a month but now with initiatives taken by me they earn 200 to 300 dollars a month.

On similar lines, I have been helping widows living in India especially in the city of Vrindavan after a request from the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India. I took a number of measures to empower the widows and ensure that they lead a life of dignity in the final years of their lives. Now they celebrate Indian festivals like Diwali– the festival of lights, Holi– the festival of colours

etc. where their participation was earlier a taboo.

The Sulabh nationwide campaign trains women how to make sanitary napkins, inculcates in school children, a sense of awareness for safe health and hygiene practices and teaches them dignity of labour by training them to clean toilets.

Additionally, to educate people and children about the importance of sanitation, health and hygiene I have set up a Museum of Toilets which is only one of its kind in the world.

I would like to point out here that our technologies have been adopted in China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, South Africa, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, Ghana, etc. In 2007, in the poor and war torn nation, Afghanistan, we constructed 5 public toilets with biogas plants which functioned effectively even when the temperatures went down to -300 Celsius. These public toilets are still working very well. On my recent visit to the United States of America I was also requested to export our technology for building toilets in American villages that do not have sewerage system and therefore use septic tanks. Besides, I can say with full conviction that our technologies can solve the problems of 2.3 billion people on the planet, especially in the three continents of Africa, Asia and Latin America where people have no access to safe and hygienic toilet facilities.

I take this opportunity to extend my cordial invitation to everyone in the audience here to please come to India, visit our campus, Sulabh Gram, in New Delhi and see the work we are doing.

With these words, I thank you again for conferring this prestigious award on me. This award will be another great milestone in my commitment to work for the prosperity and development of societies across Asia and the world.

Thank you.

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personality

Padma Bhushan Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak

An Inspired Genius n

Awadhesh Kumar Sharma

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genius is born only once in a while. Such people prove their worth and greatness in everything they do and observing them we feel like speaking out loud to the whole world, ‘Look, what a wonderful person is living on earth, and we consider ourselves fortunate if such a person is living in our midst.

Born on April 2, 1943 at Rampur Baghel, Vaishali, Bihar, as the son of Late Rama Kant Pathak, Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak is one of God’s noblest and most precious gifts to India in general and to the downtrodden and the outcast in particular. He is a man of a very large and comprehensive soul who cannot see people in

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distress. Early in his childhood he was punished and purified for touching an untouchable scavenger lady and while still young he could see people distancing themselves from an untouchable boy who was ultimately killed by a bull. These incidents left an indelible mark on the mind and heart of young Bindeshwar, so much so that after completing his M.A. in Sociology (later in English also) he worked for his Ph.D. on ‘Liberation through Low-

Cost Sanitation’ and for his D.Lit. on ‘Eradication of Scavenging and Environmental Sanitation in India: A Sociological Study’. As luck would have it, when Dr. Pathak joined the Bihar Gandhi Centenary Celebration Committee, Patna in 1968, he was asked to work for a solution to the problem of open defecation and an alternative to human scavenging in order to restore the human rights and dignity of the untouchables and

The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.

-Dr. Samuel Johnson

bring them into the mainstream of the society. For the purpose of having the first hand understanding of the problem and also establishing a rapport with the untouchables, he not only lived in their midst but also carried night-soil on his head to share their experience and feel their miseries, humiliations and agonies, and took a vow to provide those untouchables with a life of dignity and social respectability.

For doing away with manual scavenging Dr. Pathak realized the need of a technology which he invented after extensive research and application of common sense.

And that one technology – Two-pit Ecological Compost Toilets – led to a series of subsequent technologies – ‘Pay and Use’ Community Toilets, Biogas from Sulabh Public Toilets, Effluent Treatment Plant, Purified Drinking Water and many more.

These technologies were so effective and foolproof that not only the Central and State Governments in India but also the International Organizations like WHO, UNICEF, UNDP, UNHabitat, WSSCC and many others undertook the programme of building toilets in houses based on the technology invented by Dr. Pathak.

Alongside this his tireless efforts of social upgradation, training and rehabilitation of the scavengers, their education, empowerment and upward mobility continued with great momentum, with the result that at many places these erstwhile scavengers have been converted into Brahmins. He has made pathbreaking and tremendous contributions for the society. He succeeded in doing away with untouchability, social discrimination, defecation in the open and also giving a life of honour and dignity to the widows living in Vrindavan, Varanasi and Uttarakhand.

The English-medium Secondary School and the Skills Development Centre are also making significant contributions in their respective areas.

A social scientist and a humanist, a scientist and a spiritualist, a leader and a crusader, a reformer and a revolutionary, a writer and a poet, a composer and a singer, a human rights actionist and a messiah of the untouchables and widows, and over and above everything, a friendly, compassionate and perfect human being, Dr. Pathak is a point of convergence and a confluence where all streams of knowledge coalesce and get synthesized Sulabh International Social Service Organisation which Dr. Pathak founded in 1970, is the largest NonGovernmental Organization in the world where over sixty thousand associate members are rendering their services, that is to say, over sixty thousand families are being nourished and nurtured by this Organisation.

Besides having its branches all over India and in some foreign countries, this organisation also has its wings which together cover a vast space related to the theoretical and empirical aspects of community health and sanitation. Some of them are Sulabh Sanitation Mission Foundation, Sulabh International Public Health Institute, International Centre for Women and Child, Sulabh Mahila Evam Bal Kalyan Sansthan, Sulabh International Museum of Toilets, International Academy of Environmental Sanitation and Public Health, Sulabh International Centre for Action Sociology, Sulabh India (Publications) and so on. All these wings are actively engaged in their respective areas with singleminded devotion and dedication. An English-medium Secondary School and a Skill Development Centre are also being run by the Organisation.

In these institutions more than fifty percent students are from the families of the erstwhile scavengers and other poor communities and the Organisation bears the total cost of their boarding, lodging, clothing,

books and stationery. Through all these inventions and social services Dr. Pathak, like Oscar Wilde, declared nothing except his genius.

A social scientist and a humanist, a scientist and a spiritualist, a leader and a crusader, a reformer and a revolutionary, a writer and a poet, a composer and a singer, a human rights actionist and a messiah of the untouchables and widows, and over and above everything, a friendly, compassionate and perfect human being, Dr. Pathak is a point of convergence and a confluence where all streams of knowledge coalesce and get synthesized. The greatest thing about him is that he translated his knowledge and feelings into action.

He not only studied humanities and social sciences but also lived them.

Usually, thinkers are not doers and doers are not thinkers, but Dr. Pathak is at once a thinker and a doer. It is heartening to note that gradually his contributions to the improvement of community health and hygiene, ecology and environment, drinking water and sanitation as well as his social reforms have been recognized and acclaimed both nationally and internationally.

He has received so far not less than a hundred awards and honours from national and international organizations and governments for his work in the areas of health, hygiene, sanitation and community development. The latest in the series

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personality

Dr. Pathak along with the manual scavengers carrying human excreta on their heads for disposal after manually removing the same from the bucket toilets at Arrah, Bihar

was the Nikkei Asia Award given by the Nikkei Inc. in Tokyo, Japan on 13 June, 2018 for his contribution to the enhancement of community and culture. He is one of a handful of Indians like Dr. Manmohan Singh, Shri Narayan Murthy and Dr. C.N.R. Rao to have been awarded this prestigious prize. A nominated member of scores of national and international committees, Dr. Pathak has both organized and attended over a hundred seminars and conferences in India and abroad. He is an action sociologist and father of the Sociology of Sanitation which at his initiative is being taught in more than a dozen universities in India.

It is evident from the biographical details of the early life of Dr. Pathak that he was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. In other words, he was neither born great, nor was greatness thrust upon him by any godfather. He pulled himself up by his own bootstraps overcoming poverty and backwardness by education and social consciousness to become the Founder of the biggest philanthropist organisation of the world. Imagine a boy from an orthodox Brahmin

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family in a backward area of Bihar in the sixties living in the company of scavengers, carrying night-soil on his head just to experience their plight and share their agony. His early struggle and those hard times when he had no money, no support and over and above these the jeers and taunts of the unfriendly and hostile people as well as of his relatives must have been harrowing and nightmarish. He must have an inexhaustible fund of patience, positivity and equanimity to face these situations like a Karmayogi, a Gita Purush. He had no inkling whatsoever that there would come a time when he would be given scores and scores of awards and honours.

It appears that an invisible power made him the instrument to remove untouchability and fulfil the dreams of both Gandhi and Ambedkar. For creating the new social culture, he worked day and night. He still works day and night but without strain; it is the labour of love that provides him with vigour and energy. He is a veritable Sthitaprajna. His language, his style of discourse, his postures, all are those of a person steady and stable in wisdom. He is neither anxious or

restless nor excited or overjoyed, but ever smiling, thinking creatively about the welfare of poor men, women and children. He believes in ‘service is religion’. Inspired by Gandhi and treading on the path shown by him, Dr. Pathak at times moves ahead of Gandhi. Prof. Rajmohan Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi made an appropriate remark when he said, “I am the son of the son of Mahatma Gandhi but Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak is the son of his soul. If we were to go to meet Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, he would first greet Dr. Pathak for the noble work that he is doing and then meet me. Dr. Pathak has restored human rights and dignity to people engaged in the manual cleaning of human excreta which they carried as head-load”. W.H. Auden rightly said, “Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do”. This statement applies to Dr. Pathak in letter and spirit.

To conclude, I wish Dr. Pathak a long healthy, happy, active and creative life and many more laurels for him in the months and years to come.

JAPAN

Old Ties and New Linkages: An Analysis of Indo-Japan Relations

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I

Amna Mirza

n the book, Politics Among Nations, Hans Morgenthau defined international politics (IP) as “the struggle for power”. He asserted that “The aspiration for power, is the distinguishing element of international politics.” “The struggle for power,” he continued, “is universal in time and space and is an undeniable fact of experience.” In order to discuss Morgenthau's contention one has to have an understanding of the 'power' that he regards as the main idea of international politics. This is because power is a broad term that can encompass many factors, for example, man's power over nature; or over the

means of production or consumption.

However today nations are realising and analysing power in a much more holistic approach.

For all the talk of transformation in IR about power, international relations remain a multi-level phenomenon.

These levels have been defined in various ways. One is by geographic size: as a global system, within which exist territorial states, and within which in turn exist sub-state units.

Some define the levels horizontally: as a mutual interaction between a globe-spanning ‘world of states’ led by governments concerned with their domestic constituencies and an equally

globe-spanning ‘world of humans’, as interacting as individuals and through their own organisations across state borders. However, while realism alone is insufficient for understanding international relations, its insights remain necessary to that enterprise.

In this same line of argument, looking at various ideas, India-Japan relations have traditionally been strong. The people of India and Japan have engaged in cultural exchanges, primarily as a result of Buddhism, which spread indirectly from India to Japan, via China and Korea. The people of India and Japan are guided by common cultural traditions including

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JAPAN

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shakes hand with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

the heritage of Buddhism, and share a strong commitment to the ideals of democracy, tolerance, pluralism and open societies. India and Japan, two of the largest and oldest democracies in Asia, having a high degree of congruence of political, economic and strategic interests, view each other as partners that have responsibility for, and are capable of, responding to global and regional challenges.

Today when we look at Indo-Japan ties, there has been an exponential increase in cooperation and friendship.

There are remarkable instances to note, participation by Japan in the Malabar trilateral (naval) exercise with India and the US. Every year, the level of the exercise has been growing.

Technology transfer from Japan to India has always been favourable.

The products from Sony and Japanese cars are a product of this long tradition of manufacturing. The most prominent Japanese company having an investment in India in automobiles is multinational Suzuki, which is in partnership with Indian automobiles company Maruti Suzuki, the largest car manufacturer in the Indian market, and

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a subsidiary of the Japanese company.

International Politics has an impact on domestic issues. This is why diplomatic relations are also focusing on supporting development in the North-east Region and enhancement of connectivity in surrounding areas in India. Attempts are also being made to foster people-to-people contact. There is a remarkable similarity of views in Indo-Japan relations. India shares Japan's views on opening up the Pacific region. It is a good synergy. Every time when heads of both countries meet, they reconfirm the importance of this strategy focusing on values of freedom of navigation, unilateral trading system and democracy.

The Indo-Japan ties gained a new momentum with the high-speed railway which will provide a lot of benefits to the people of India in the form of a very stable and safe transport system. It is expected that it will create a lot of job and business opportunities in the region. The project will be very beneficial to the local people and will also bring in Japanese technology to the railway sector. Experts and other stakeholders are working on ways

to deal with highly complicated and sophisticated system where safety matters most. Further deadline and the project being completed on right time are other essential factors.

The development of India-Japan relations has seen an interplay of soft power and hard power. During the entire Cold War period, Japan favoured pacifism and India followed nonalignment. Soft power started featuring prominently in India’s foreign policy only in the post-Cold War period. The second factor was strategic orientation of foreign policy which was also absent during the Cold War. Although this situation has started changing the use of strategic thinking or hard power is still in a developmental stage in Indian diplomacy.

However, in contemporary times, relations hold much potential and importance for both countries.

Economic and Business Innovation, Science, Technology and Environment and Culture and Community are the areas where India and Japan can collaborate to give Asia a new standing in world affairs. There are organisations that take diplomacy to grassroots and get individuals in their significant role to give Asia a unique image. To state here as an example, ‘Nikkei Inc.,’ one of the largest media corporations in Japan, has been presenting awards since 1996 to honour people in Asia who have made significant contributions.

The Founder of Sulabh International Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, was recently honoured with the Nikkei Asia Prize in Japan for his contribution to Asia's development.

India is not the only nation worried over the aggressive expansionist strategies of China. Japan, which has been a strategical ally of the US and remains under their defence umbrella, has been striving to bolster infrastructure investments in key Indian Ocean ports to counter and contain Chinese belligerence. This

also explains why India-Japan Defence Partnership and Relations blossomed.

It is due to Chinese hostility and belligerence at the Indian Ocean.

India and Japan have collaborated on various defence projects around the Indian Ocean, besides partnering in the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor.

Countries find ways to manage their bilateral and multilateral ties, even if they do not see eye to eye with each other. At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, subtly hinting at the example of the Belt and Road, Prime Minister Modi said that these initiatives must be based on respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, consultation, good governance, transparency, viability and sustainability, empowering nations and not placing them under an impossible debt burden. The quadrilateral format of U.S.-Japan-India-Australia is one of the many multilateral dialogues in the region, and not directed against any country. It is not part of the IndoPacific region concept outlined by Prime Minister Modi in Shangri-La. There was no mention of the word “Quad". Whenever any attempt is made

With Economic and Business Innovation, Science, Technology, Environment, Culture and Community collaboration, India and Japan can give Asia a new standing in world affairs in terms of describing the grouping of the United States, India, Japan and Australia, 'Quad' is significantly evoked. Further, it is widely perceived as a counterbalance to rising China’s presence in the Indo-Pacific. This also is a significant departure from the earlier established perspectives.

Today, the world is moving in a different direction.

Trade frictions and protectionism have arisen owing to the uneven distribution of trade benefits among and within nations. Countries are watching how the world's two biggest economies will iron out their trade differences. China has emerged as a vocal champion for free trade while the United States has turned inwards under President Donald Trump.

Amid concerns of increasing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, there are concerns over the way China bypasses ASEAN. It is an agreed fact

that China has the capacity to do many things on the military and economic front, but experts also say that big powers are judged not by the power they wield but by the restraint they exercise and the respect that they show for other countries. In this regard, Japan's affirmation that the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy, which promotes high-quality infrastructure and freedom of navigation in the region, is "inclusive and has Asean centrality at its core". India also gains here. In many ways, the two economies of India and Japan are complementary to each other. There is a lot of scope to work together in areas like connectivity and development; regional security, including counter-terrorism and nonproliferation; humanitarian assistance and disaster relief as well as maritime cooperation and they should find a way to put issues in perspective and look forward.

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 17

PHILOSOPHY

Who am I and who are we all ?

An attempt to give brief description of answers ancient Indians gave to pronoun-based questions n

Damodar Thakur

S

cience is a study of objects: micro-objects like atoms, electrons, protons and neutrons, day-to-day objects like trees, liquids, and gases and macro-objects like planets, stars and galaxies, for example. Spirituality tries to answer questions like “Who really am I?”, “Who really are you?” and “Who really are we all?” In this sense, science is a study of nouns and spirituality is very largely a study of pronouns. This short study is an attempt to present a brief description of the answers that the ancient Indian spiritualists, sages and seers gave to these pronoun-based questions.

There are people who believe that we are all sinners. On the basis of our virtuous deeds we can raise ourselves above the level of sinners but essentially we are all sinners. In support of their belief they mention the original sin committed by Adam and Eve. In the Garden of Eden, God wanted Adam and Eve to stay off the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and not to eat the fruit that was on this tree. But, persuaded by Satan, who appeared in the shape of a serpent,

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Eve and then Adam tasted a fruit of that tree.

God took that act of disobedience to be a sin, and since then Adam’s descendants, all the human beings in the world, are born sinners. These people do

not realize that legendary tales and mythological stories are metaphorical narratives. The truth they present needs to be understood not in terms of historical facts but in terms of poetic imagination which takes facts to a level of understanding higher than the one attempted by history. History tells us about actualities related to a certain time and place. Mythology tells us about those global, universal and the eternal shades of reality that the elders in the past wanted to be hidden beneath the surface of interesting stories, stories that can be easily remembered and can be easily handed down from one generation to another. In support of their mistaken belief these people quote out of context the following lines of the Bible.

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. (Psalms 51.5) It would be wrong to assume, because of this sentence in the Bible, that this mistaken belief is an essential part of Christianity. There are a number of statements in the Bible which say in unambiguous and categorical terms that man is God-like and not really a sinner. It has been repeatedly said in the Bible (Genesis 1:26, 27; Corinthians 11:7; James 3:9), for example, that God created man in His own image, meaning thereby that God intended man to be like Him. The Bible also makes it clear that all men are children of God and so there is no question of man being essentially a sinner.

Ye are gods; and all of you are the children of the most High.

(Psalms 82:6) But the Biblical pronouncement that God created man in His own image has always been ignored and the notion that every human being is a sinner has been rubbed into people’s psyche again and again for such a long time that it has become an inevitable part

Darwin, in his controversial book 'The Origin of Species', not only said that man had descended from animals; he went to the extent of saying that man was still basically an animal in the sense that he had retained some of the characteristics of an animal of their world view. The basic logic of the situation has turned out to be this: “I am a sinner. We are all sinners.

Adam and Eve committed the original sin. Being their offspring, we have all inherited that sin. Our children, grandchildren will all keep inheriting that sin. We are all sinners! We cannot deny that! We are all sinners”!

There are people in the world who believe that essentially we are all animals.The year 1859 and then the year 1871 were years of very important happenings in the history of ideas. It was in 1859 that Charles Darwin’s controversial book The Origin of Species was published. In this book Darwin argued that all species of life have descended over time from a common ancestry. As an inevitable corollary of the theory propounded in this book, Darwin’s second book The Descent of Man1 appeared in 1871.

In this book he presented evidence and arguments in support of his view that man had not been created by God and that he was the offspring of his animal ancestors. The publication of these two books turned out to be like a tsunami. Just as a tsunami deluges and devastates large tracts of land with its giant waves, Darwin’s theory of evolution created a huge storm of controversies. It devastated or at least seemed to devastate some of the ageold ideas about man’s origin and the place that he occupies in the history of the life force on this earth. There were people who thought that Darwin had made a discovery of unprecedented scientific value; but there were others who looked at it the way people looked at witches during the Elizabethan period. Darwin came up with his revolutionary idea that species had not been separately created and that man had descended from apes and originally from the lowest form of animal existence through a process of evolution and natural selection. This theory had a great impact on a large number of intellectuals all over the world, particularly on the intellectuals in the West. Richard Dawkins, for example, said: Along with William Shakespeare and Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin is Britain's greatest gift to the world.

He was our greatest thinker2.

Darwin’s theory had a deep and pervasive influence on scientists, poets, painters, philosophers, and, most importantly, the non-specialist elite all over the world. Langdon Smith (1858-1908), an American journalist and a celebrated "one-poem

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PHILOSOPHY poet", wrote his poem beginning with the line: When you were a tadpole and I was a fish Stephen Hawking, the renowned cosmologist of our age, said: We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. . .3 Darwin not only said that man had descended from animals; he went to the extent of saying that man was still basically an animal in the sense that he had retained some of the characteristics of an animal. He said: . . . man with all his noble qualities... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.4 With the ancestry of man at the back of his mind, Francis Picabia (18791953), a dadaist/surrealist painter said: Let us never forget that the greatest man is never more than an animal disguised as a god.5 The fact that man had animals as his ancestors was firmly established in people’s mind, so much so that some well-known thinkers went to the extent of saying that man was not just an animal, he belonged to one of its bad species. James A. Froude (1818 -1894), an English historian, novelist, and biographer, for example, said: Wild animals never kill for sport.

Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.6 Samuel Butler (1835-1902) said something harsher than that: Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.7 Mark Twain reiterated the same idea: Man was created a bloody animal and I think he will always thirst for blood and will manage to have it.

I think he is far and away the worst animal that exists; and the only untamable one.8 Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), one of the greatest intellectuals of his time,

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made a similar observation: It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.9 The statements quoted here are by no means intended to be an exhaustive list of all that was said by the intellectuals of the last two centuries about man being an offspring of animals and his being essentially the same as and often worse than animals. These quotes are only intended to be illustrative of the fact that Darwin’s views about the animal ancestry of man seemed to have gone deep down in the collective unconscious of the intellectually alive and alert people in the West. It was an ideational tsunami that devastated the entire mind-set of the West and then created tornados that affected the mind-set of the rest of the world as well.

Ancient Indian sages and seers understood man’s essential being entirely differently. Their great pronouncement in this context was.

I am Brahma [Aham Brahmasmi].10 This Upanishadic saying can be elaborated as follows: There is no need for me to be ashamed of myself. I am not a sinner, a rogue, or a villain. I am not basically an animal, or the offspring of an animal. I am the manifestation of that dynamic spirit that pervades the whole universe. I am the manifestation of that universal spirit which is above time and space. I am not the effect of a cause. I am an entity that caused itself.

I am never really born. Nor do I ever die. There was never a time when I did not exist. Nor will there ever be a time when I will cease to exist. I am not really my body. My worldly desires and passions are not me either. I am not like God; I am God. I am God in the sense of being a manifestation of God. To know God is to know myself.

To learn subjects like astronomy, grammar, rhetoric, phonetics and phonology is a prerequisite for me if I want to understand my inner stillness, my inner purity and sublimity. I do not

You mistakenly identify yourself with your village, your city, your job, your nationality, and your geographical location

intend to conquer any other country.

I have to conquer only my own self, my negative and debilitating passions like anger and hatred. Just as fire is covered with smoke, a mirror is sometimes covered with dust and the foetus inside the mother’s womb is covered with a jelly-like substance, I am covered with ignorance. Beneath that cover of ignorance I am all pure, beyond good and evil.

Another philosophically profound statement that the ancient Indian sages and seers made in this connection was: Tat Tvam Asi - Thou art that [Thou art that; you are also the same as I am.]11 , this aphoristic saying can be elaborated as follows: You are also Brahman as I am. There is no essential difference between you and me. Your name and form are not your real self. You mistakenly identify yourself with your village, your city, your job, your nationality, and your geographical location. You mistakenly identify yourself with your body, with your complexion, with the colour of your eyes, with the colour of your hair, with the shape of your nose, with your facial appearance. These are your accidental attributes; they are not your real self. Your real self, the real you, is the luminous centre of your spiritual being, the stillness, the divinity, the absolute purity, the cosmic energy hiding in the innermost layer of your psyche. You are in the prison of your passions, your negative and debilitating emotions, your anger, greed, jealousy and unhealthy ambitions, for example.

You need to come out of that prison to realize who you are. Your real you is Brahman, a point of radiance, of endless luminosity. You are in no way inferior to me. Nor are you superior to me. Superiority and inferiority are mundane parameters for worldly entities. You are above all these parameters as I am. You and I are both manifestations of the same absolute spirit known as Brahman.

The third very important philosophical statement that the Indian sages and seers made in this connection was Ayam Atma Brahma - This self (Atman) is Brahman

The overwhelming loftiness of this Great Saying can be realized if we compare it with some of the views held by others. Aristotle, for example, is said to have advised Alexander to deal with the Greeks as a leader but with the ‘barbarians’ as a master, to treat the Greeks as friends and kinsmen, but treat the others as animals or plants.12 Ironically, Bertrand Russell says that Americans would agree that they have no social superiors because all men are created equal, but they would not admit that they have no social inferiors. Whether this is true about Americans now or not, it is certainly a fact that one notices here, there, and everywhere. In spite of the fact that lots of people belonging to the ‘sudra’ community have given an excellent account of themselves, there are upper caste people in India who think that the sudras are their inferiors. Vedanta philosophy is an open war against such discriminatory attitudes. A true Vedantist would say.

‘Intrinsically, you are as great as I am.

Every one of us is potentially divine.

We are all manifestations of the same divine spirit’.

The third very important philosophical statement that the Indian sages and seers made in this connection was Ayam Atmā Brahma - This self (Atman) is Brahman. This Great Saying occurs in Māndukya Upanishad13, which is an Upanishad of the Atharva Veda. In the first Great Saying discussed above, the focus of attention was the first person pronoun, “I”. In the second Saying, the focus of attention was the second person pronoun, “you”. In the third Great Saying, the focus of attention is the third person pronominal “this”14 . But

though a third person pronominal has been used here, the expression Ayam Atma (this self) is intended to be an allinclusive expression. It includes the referential domain of “I”, “you” and “all others”. It refers to the essential inner essential self of each and every human being This Great Saying can be elaborated as the following: Our real self is not our outward appearance. It is our Atmā. Ātmā is that eternal spark of consciousness which constitutes the very essence of our being. Brahman is the cosmic consciousness. It is the existence of all that exists. That which is everywhere, is also within us, and what is within us is everywhere. It fills all space, expands into all existence, and is vast beyond all measure of perception or knowledge. It includes everything, and there is nothing outside it. Every human being is a manifestation of this cosmic consciousness and so every human being is potentially divine.

Just as fire assumes the shape of the object it enters, Brahman, this cosmic super-reality, assumes different forms in different individuals. Just as the air takes the shape of the pot that it enters, Brahman assumes different shapes and forms in different individuals15.

From the point of his potential divinity, no one is superior or inferior to anyone else. All human beings, whether black or white, from the East or the West, young or old, rich or poor, strong or weak, man or woman, are manifestations of the same cosmic spirit.

The fourth profound statement that these sages and seers made in this connection was: Prajnānam Brahma - Consciousness is Brahman. This Great Saying occurs in the Aitareya

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PHILOSOPHY Upanishad16, an Upanishad of the Rig Veda. The content of this Saying can be elaborated as follows: The Brahman that constitutes the essence of our being is not inert matter; it is pure consciousness.

Consciousness, as it is understood by science, is a state of alertness, awareness or wakefulness caused and sustained by the millions of neurons and by dozens of neurotransmitters in the brain. It is the mundane consciousness of day-to-day reality. This is what we can call normal waking consciousness.

The Upanishads consider this to be a low level of consciousness. According to the Vedanta philosophy propounded by the Upanishads, there are four levels of consciousness: (i) waking consciousness (ii) consciousness during dreams (iii) consciousness during deep sleep and (iv) transcendental state of pure awareness

known as Turiya or Nirvikalpa. This is that state of consciousness in which the individual consciousness merges in the absolute purity of the cosmic consciousness. In the first two states of consciousness, i. e., in the waking state and in the dreaming state, reality appears essentially in terms of two: the subject and the object, the self and the not-self, the perceiver and the object(s) being perceived, the “I” and the others. These are two cognitive states in which one is aware of oneself and one’s environment as two separate entities. Consciousness is not completely absent during deep sleep; it is the consciousness of nothingness.17 The consciousness that by far transcends these three mundane levels of consciousness is the exalted personal awareness of the cause of all causes, a direct ecstatic perception of the primordial reality that is the

existence of all that exists. At this level of cosmic consciousness, duality disappears altogether. The “I am- ness” of the individual evaporates into the vast oneness of the Absolute. In this state of transcendental consciousness, there is no “I”, there is no “you”, there are no “others”. Reality is just one undifferentiated, seamless state of being. The individual sees himself in everything and everything in himself. The Upanishads, therefore, raised an ideational revolt against the discriminatory attitude of those who see the superficial differences and ignore the underlying oneness and they said: e`R;ks% l e`R;qekizksfr ; bg ukuso i';fr mrtyoh sa mrtyumāpnoti ya iha nāneva paśyati He goes from death to death who sees [only] differences here.

The full name of the book is The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. http://homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Quotes/Life/Science/Evolution.html www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1401.Stephen_W_Hawking Charles Darwin, “Selection from The Descent of Man” http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/darwinselection.html www.brainyquote.com; www.famouslifemottos.org.

Arthur T. Morgan (ed), Handbook of Quotations, (Delhi: W. R Goyal, 1999) P.150 www.thinkexist.com.

Twainquotes.com; quoted in Clara Clemens, My Father Mark Twain (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1931).

9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_animal.

10. Brihadāranyaka Upanishad, 1.4.10.

11. Chandogya Upanishad, 6.8.7.

12. The Greek author Plutarch of Chaeronea mentioned this in his speech on Alexander. The speech Alexander's fortune and virtue (328c-329d) translated into English by M.M. Austin. For details look up www.livius.org/aj-al/ alexander/alexander_t30.html.

13. Mandukya Upanishad, 1.2.

14. The word “this” in this Great Saying has been used as a determiner and not exactly as a pronoun. Some grammarians may also describe it as a pronominal adjective. That is why the word “pronominal” and not the word “pronoun” has been used here to refer to it14 Katha Upanishad, 2.3. 9-10..

15. Katha Upanishad, 2.3. 9-10.

16. Aitareya Upanishad, 5.3.

17. Some people may argue that during deep sleep there is no consciousness at all. It is true that during dreamless sleep one is not conscious of external or internal objects; however, that does not mean consciousness is not present there.

It is like saying 'I don't see anything in darkness'.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

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Poem

The Return See, they return; ah, see the tentative Movements, and the slow feet, The trouble in the pace and the uncertain Wavering!

See, they return, one, and by one, With fear, as half-awakened; As if the snow should hesitate And murmur in the wind, and half turn back; These were the “Wing’d-with-Awe," inviolable.

Gods of the wingèd shoe!

With them the silver hounds, sniffing the trace of air!

Haie! Haie!

These were the swift to harry; These the keen-scented; These were the souls of blood.

Slow on the leash, pallid the leash-men!

Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972)

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23

World literature

WORLD WOMEN’S WRITING : AN OVERVIEW Illustrating the varied spirit of women writers through time and age n

Bhim S. Dahiya

W

riting by women, despite Troy; she did not spare their universal subjugation a [single] thought for her [ch]ild in all civilizations, is as old nor for her dear pa[r]ents as men’s writing in world literature. but [the goddess of love] led her If Homer is the earliest male writer astray in European literature, who recited [to desire] his long poems to the Greek audience

… for … in eighth century B.C., Sappho, the

… lightly … w[hich Greek woman, composed her lyrics

r]emin[ds] me now of for raising the issues of women in the Anactori[a] sixth century B.C. A small poem titled

[although far] away Anactoria and Helen amply illustrates

[who]se [long] desired the interrogating spirit of Sappho’s footstep, whose radiant, sparkling face radical poetry:

Anactoria and Helen [So]me an army on horseback, some an army on foot and some say a fleet of ships i[s] the loveliest sight o[n this] da[r]k earth; but I say it is whatever you desire;

and it is [per]fectly possible to make th[is] clear to [a]ll; for Helen, the woman who by far surpassed [all oth]ers in her beauty, l[eft] her husband– t[he b]est [of all men] [behind] and sailed [far away] to

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I would rather see [before me] than the chariots

of Lydia or the armour of men

who [f]ight wars [on foot]

… impossible to happen

… mankind … but to pray to [s] hare

unexpected[dly].1 It is important to note here that in Sappho’s poem just cited not only the narrator is a female but also the subject of the narrative is Helen, not Achilles. Re-writing the story of Troy, making it Helen-centred, as against Homer’s male-centred epic on the same subject, is a radical departure from the established tradition. As Natania Meeker has rightly pointed out, “It also challenges the militaristic values of the male world, by implicitly setting (female) erotic love against ‘the chariots of Lydia or the armour of men?”2 The poem is no less remarkable for challenging the traditional concept of heroism, which it does by pitting Helen’s heroism in making a free choice in leaving her husband against

the physical prowess of Achilles in committing slaughter. In her holding love superior to war, willpower superior to physical prowess, Sappho is reverting the traditional value system in a more radical manner than Milton did in Paradise Lost over two thousand years after Sappho. Even the much touted same-sex love of our time can also be seen as one of the central concerns in Sappho’s poem on Helen. To quote Meeker again, “…

Helen, Anactoria, and the speaker/

singer are all linked in what has been described as ‘a chain of female desire in which each figure is both loved and loving’. Helen is both desired by the speaker/singer … and herself actively desiring … In this way, this poem manages to evoke a notion of female erotic love which is full of movement and possibility…”3 Interestingly, in the same century in which Sappho wrote her feminist poetry, we had in the Buddhist India a woman more worthy of note than even

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World literature the aristocratic Greek.4 Vimala was one of those early Buddhist women who moved from sexuality to spirituality and wrote poems signifying the female experience of emancipation from exploitation. Vimala was a prostitute before becoming a nun. Showing the rare force of will and supreme selfconfidence, she reaches a stage in her spiritual journey wherefrom she can view with complete detachment the life defined by the binary of gender and sexuality, where women are dominated by men and gods.

Liberated from that world now Vimla stands by herself, feeling independent of men and gods; in other words, she experiences freedom from the fetters of social and religious orders. Note how one of her poems expresses this experience of total liberation: Young intoxicated by my own lovely skin,

my figure,

my gorgeous looks,

and famous too

I despised other women,

Dressed to kill

at the whorehouse door,

I was a hunter

and spread my snare for fools.

And when I stripped for them I was the woman of their dreams;

I laughed as I teased them.

Today,

head shaved,

robed,

alms-wanderer,

I, my same self,

sit at the tree’s foot;

no thought.

The

All ties untied, I have cut men and gods out of my life, I have quenched the fires.5 poem reveals Vimala’s

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In the same century in which Sappho wrote her feminist poetry, we had in the Buddhist India a woman more worthy of note than even the aristocratic Greek - Vimala - who moved from sexuality to spirituality and wrote poems signifying the female experience of emancipation from exploitation supreme confidence in her profession first as a sex-worker and then as a spiritual leader. She does not betray any sign of having felt oppressed by the male sex; rather, she looks at them as fools. Later, when she becomes a nun, she feels fully liberated from the society’s ‘men and gods.’ It is quite clear from the poem that Vimala’s choice of the spiritual profession is not for its own sake only: it is as much, in fact more, for seeking liberation from an unjust society – unjust to

women – as for seeking spiritual attainment. Decidedly, Vimala prizes her freedom more than anything else in life, including all her material interests. One may not view Vimala’s gender consciousness as radically feminist, but one cannot miss her keen awareness about the unequal status and role assigned to her sex.

Moving further to the Medieval Period we find in the eighth-century Iraq, a Muslim woman named Laila of Shaiban-Bakr of Khwarij sect, known

for its antagonism to centralized state authority in favour of egalitarian system of government, with belief in democratic election – and rejection – of their leaders.6 The Khawarij Movement continued its ideological and political resistance and armed rebellion against the imperial Muslim government for several centuries.

Laila’s own brother died fighting against the imperial army near the river Khabur in Upper Mesopotamia around 795 A.D. Strange though it may sound to us in our time of hardened racial prejudices, especially about Muslims, it is a fact that after the death of her brother Laila took command of her brother’s army and fought two battles before being deposed by her own tribe. One of the poems she wrote on the death of her brother gives strong evidence of the revolutionary spirit Laila displayed both as poet and political activist.

The elegy in question clearly shows us the manner in which she practiced resistance: On Nubata’s hill is the scar of a grave that appears on all hills marking the land; closed on a hand that was open, free, on the spirit of action, the heart of resolve.

God lighten the burden cast on a man who never balked at his people’s needs.

If Yazid and his men have unhorsed him now, how many the squadrons and ranks he outfought !

Rise, people, against calamity’s tide and a fate implacably bent on the best !

Rise for the moon that fell from the stars, for the sun that for him would darken her face !

O tree by the river Khabur, how green – if in truth you grieve for the son of Tarif ! for him who sought no gain but the Faith, sought no possessions but lance and sword, nor pride of horses but chargers swift and steeds that know their footing a field.

We miss you, brother, we miss the spring, and with thousands gladly would ransom your life.

Be not disconsolate, brothers alive, for I see death set on the gallant, the great.7 As Natania Meeker has observed, “… the link between Laila’s acts of resistance as a warrior and that of poetic composition is not an obvious one. First and foremost, Laila’s work calls into question the adequacy of oral or written representations to reflect reality.”8 Laila’s taking to male attire and assuming army’s command is not a case of cross-dressing in an Elizabethan comedy but an event in the history of an Arab community which establishes the equality of genders even in matters martial.

Although written in traditional style of ritualistic mourning, Laila’s elegy does point to the intricate relationship that clearly exists between acts of resistance and acts of representation as they work through women’s lives.

In the historical context of her age and society, Laila’s writing acquires an importance of its own, shining like a star in a dark night.

From the viewpoint of female activism and resistance, Christine De Pizan of France in the fourteenth century is much more important than even Laila of Shaiban-Bakr.9 Often described as the first professional female author and woman of letters, she is also considered as the primary

Although written in traditional style of ritualistic mourning, Laila’s elegy does point to the intricate relationship that clearly exists between acts of resistance and acts of representation as they work through women’s lives

source of the French feminist thought.

Although famous for lyric poetry and socio-historical criticism, Christine achieved the greatest fame for her active intervention in the querelle (dispute) over the portrayal of women in the French medieval classic The Romance of the Rose.10 Interestingly, this most renowned woman writer in French literature and feminist thought was not a French national; she was born in Venice, Italy, and came to Paris when her father joined the court of the French King Charles V as an astrologer.

Christine’s critique of Jean de Meung’s edition of The Romance included her attack on the views on women as expounded by the editor.

Further, she made these very themes addressed in her critique the central subject of her famous works titled The Book of the City of Ladies and The Book of the Three Virtues.11 It is also important to note that she initially turned to writing when, in 1387, she had to support, after the death of her husband, her three children, her widowed mother, and a niece. No wonder the difficulties and sorrows of widowhood form the focus of her writings. Christine was one of the first authors who wrote in vernacular and personally supervised the publication of her books. A single sentence from her critique of The Romance would show how sharp and stinging is her rebuttal to the male prejudices and accusations against women: And since he so strongly prohibits telling secrets to wives – who are so avid to learn them, so he says (and I wonder whereby all the devils he found all that bilge and all those empty words he assembled in composing that weary indictment) – I beg all those who claim him as their authority and lend him their faith to please inform me how many men they have seen accused, killed, or hanged, or blamed in the streets on accusation by their wives.12 As can be seen, Christine’s outrage

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World literature against blatant gender discrimination in the social order finds a forcefully argued expression in her writings.

Relying upon reason and reality, she is able to make out an unrefutably convincing case for a radical relook needed to ensure justice to the ‘second sex.’ Christine is, thus, worthy to be considered as the first Feminist writer in the sense in which the term Feminism has come to be known in our time.

Further, in the modern period after the European Renaissance that came about in the fifteenth century, the movement of women writing became highly activated and resistant to social and sexual discriminations. The leading female writers in the West, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Virginia Woolfe, are well-known to us. What is not so well known in the Departments of English, however, are women writers from the East. When we think of radical women on the Eastern side, the name that comes to mind above all others is that of Qiu Jin (Ch’iu Chin) at the end of the nineteenth century. Born in 1877, and executed in 1907, daughter of a scholar civil servant, Ch’iu Chin took to such unconventional activities as martial arts, horse riding, drinking, and crossdressing. While she grew up at Hunan, a centre of the West-influenced Reform Movement that emphasized female education, her later life was spent in Beijing, where, faced with an abusive and prostitute-addict husband, she became an activist against political and domestic repression.13 As a mark of her rebellion, Qiu left her husband and children to study in Japan, where she became a part of the ongoing Feminist movement.

Wearing man’s dress and sporting sword, she firmly committed herself to political activism, including writing feminist and revolutionary articles, founding a magazine devoted to democratic revolution and feminism.14 Once again, women’s cross dressing

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The solitary preoccupations of the theory-blind feminists of our time in rewriting cultural histories or re-interpreting literary texts is no better than the past-time activity of nettwitter or mobile SMS. There is a need for narrowing the enlarging gap between what we say or write and act or do comes up as a costume that carries messages beyond the Elizabethan stage conventions. Having learnt to make explosives, she was recruited for the Revolutionary Alliance against the foreign rule in China. Her manifesto for the magazine opened with the following address: Fellow Women Citizens of China: We, the two hundred million women of China, are the most unfairly treated objects on this earth.15 The address deplores blatant discrimination against girls, their foot binding, domestic isolation, arranged marriage, and the double standards.

On the reformist side, Qiu stresses the need to educate girls for both their financial independence as well as for social extroversion. As she puts it, the treatment of women in China created for them a “black prison” of “darkness and ignorance” which robbed them of the will to act and resist and divorced them from reality.16 When Qui returned to China in 1905, she soon became a local leader of the Revolutionary Alliance and Principal of a school where she trained girls as a women’s army. When her role in planning a rebellion got known to the ruling authorities, she was arrested, tortured, and executed in 1907. One of her well-known poems would reveal the substance and style of her writings: A Song: Promoting Women’s Rights Our generation yearns to be free; To all who struggle: one more cup of the Wine of Freedom!

Male and female equality was by Heaven endowed,

So why should women lag behind?

Let’s struggle to pull ourselves up, To wash away the filth and shame of former days.

United we can work together, And restore this land with our soft white hands.

Most humiliating is the old custom, Of treating women no better than cows and horses.

When the light of dawn shines on our civilization, We must rise to head the list.

Let’s tear out the roots of servitude, Gain knowledge, learning, and practice what we know.

Take responsibility on our shoulders, Never to fail or disappoint, our citizen heroines!17 As it clearly stands out here, Qiu, like the other women writers we have considered since the sixth century B.C., is a woman speaking to women. Also, all these women as radical feminists preached what they practiced, and practiced what they preached. Committed as they firmly and forcefully were to their feminist convictions, they also had courage corresponding to their conviction to live, and even to die, for their ideas of self-esteem and gender-equality.

When we turn to the twentieth century, we discover that most writers, including women, have withdrawn into their ivory towers, living in their exclusive world of letters, having no dealings with the world of actual happenings of life. Even more than the women writers, our critics carrying the banner of Feminism are found to have withdrawn into a space far

removed from real life. This class of elite women writers, the critics, have turned specialists who not only live in their closed world of theoretical constructions but also write in a code language which only they and their followers comprehend to their verbal satisfaction.

Thinking of this issue of the widening gap between what we think and what we do, or between what we write and what we act, I am always reminded of the ancient philosophy of the Greeks, and of our own Indian philosophy which, valued action (Karma) rather than thought. When Aristotle insists that plot is the soul of tragedy and places character and thought at the lower steps of the tragic plot in the hierarchy of the six elements of drama, his message implies the same old wisdom – that you are what you do, not what you say or think.18

Since plot is a chain of incidents that call upon you to act, it is your character in action, in history, not your idle or isolated thoughts, that show what in reality you are in terms of your beliefs and convictions. The Hindu philosophy enshrined in Bhagvat Gita also advocates the primacy of action over thought, reposing faith in Karma, not in thought.19 After the Renaissance, a clear split came about between character and thought. As Hamlet pronounces, ‘Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’20 Hence, as Matthew Arnold emphasizes, dialogue of the mind with the mind, which he designates as ‘the modern disease.’21 The solitary preoccupations of the theory-blind feminists of our time in rewriting cultural histories or re-interpreting literary texts is no better than the past-time activity of net-twitter or mobile SMS. More

than ever before, therefore, there is a need in our time for narrowing the enlarging gap between what we say or write and what we act or do. And to achieve that most desirable, and most laudable, goal, we can seek inspiration from the lives and writings of these radical women writer-activists from the East as well as the West whose writings reflect their lives and whose lives enact their writings. They truly illustrate Gandhiji’s utterance, that “My life is my message.”22 Today’s Theory-based literature and literary criticism, unfortunately, is twice-removed from reality, based as it is on the reductive and nihilistic Nietzschean philosophy constructed in the closet rather than comprehended from life. Let us give, therefore, a call for going back the composite life that unites thought and action in writing as well as working!

Notes

1. See Women Imagine Change: A Global Anthology of Women’s Resistance, Eds. Eugenia Delamotle, Natania Meeker, and Jean Ozbarr (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 213-14.

2. Ibid, p. 211.

3. Ibid, p. 211.

4. See Women Imagine Change, pp. 41-42.

5. Ibid, p. 44.

6. See Women Imagine Change, pp. 260-61.

7. Ibid, p. 262.

8. Ibid, p. 261.

9. See Women Imagine Change, pp. 284-5.

10. Ibid, p. 284.

11. Ibid, pp. 284-5.

12. Ibid, p. 286.

13. See Women Imagine Change, pp. 493-94.

14. Ibid, p. 493.

15. Ibid, p. 493.

16. Ibid, p. 493.

17. Ibid, pp. 494-5.

18. See “Poetics,” in Aristotle: On Man In the Universe, Ed. Louise Ropes Loomis (Roslyn, New York: Walter J. Black, INC., 1943), pp. 424-5.

19. See Bhagvat Gita: The Song Celestial (Gorakhpur: Gita Press, 2012).

20. See Hamlet, Ed. John Dover Wilson (London: Cambridge University Press, 1934), pp. 46-47.

21. See ‘The Scholar Gipsy”, The Poems of Matthew Arnold, Ed. Kenneth Allott (London: Longmans, 1965), pp. 331-33.

22. M.G. Gandhi, An Autobiography OR The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1927).

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literature and ecology

n

T

Anand Prakash

he perspective we might evolve for dealing with the question dwells on the safety and preservation of the planet earth— humankind’s home and a great source of life’s sustenance in general. We also are to be conscious of the earth with its flora and fauna as well as the everchanging human existence from the standpoint of common masses who have been acute sufferers of injustice in problem-ridden societies, particularly

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in the Third World. The creative component of human existence through the arts and literature might also come in purview to make sense of what we confront at present. Let us consider the issue in broader terms.

Literary writing in early India enjoyed a close association with nature, even as it grappled with difficulties of organized living. If the human being at the time was considered a social as well as thinking-

speaking animal, he had something to do with his surroundings, and the penchant for ensuring that humans were safe and reasonably satisfied.

Close association indeed was the connecting thread between the said human animal and the swaying and lively world of greenery that afforded food, shelter and inspiration.

None among ancient writers knew the aspect better than Kalidasa, the writer of Abhigyan Shakuntalam. In

Literature and Environment The creative component of human existence through the arts and literature might come in purview to make sense of what we confront at present

became aware of personal bonding and emotional exchange.

It goes to the credit of the poetdramatist Kalidasa that he showed the readers visions of togetherness and linkage of humans with elements such as water, the sun and the earth. This is an example of an active and energising ecology in a broader social formation, so spontaneous in its bearings that one did not even feel it existed—the regular converse between humans and wider plant or animal life.

Amazingly, it comes across to us through literature, taken popularly as something imaginary and ethereal. In the play, itwas concrete and palpable.

Nearer our time in modern India, we saw emergence of a specific

trend that swore by the freshness and beauty of nature. This happened in the nineteenth century. Tagore projected the trend emphatically. He spotted in rivers, trees and flowers an arena of spontaneity that was missing in social life informed by life’s dull routine unleashed by newly introduced market economy. There was also in Tagore a sharp negation of blind tradition and stunted dogma.

In a significant sense, Tagore drew attention to simplicity and honesty of purpose in women, and a sweet curiosity in the child. Were these not rooted in the village life that ticked according to rhythms of the planet, with the sun and the moon being its constant companions? Tagore was

this work Kalidasa imagined a young woman Shakuntala growing up in the green forest and talking intimately with animals and plants. She would sit next to a creeper and share with it her emotional longings and creative concerns. Her environs had been so softly educative and wisdom-giving in the dramatized description that King Dushyant, a hard-boiled leader of men and immersed in controlling shared existence became humanised—he

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literature and ecology pained to watch the assault on life by forces of money and superficial pleasures. He recognized in the supposed increase in resources a denial of true fulfilment. His fulllength play Red Oleanders (its original Bangala title being Rakta Karbi) comes to mind. In it, he presented senseless pursuit of lucre at the cost of natural resources. This was a new trend and Tagore reacted sharply to it.To him, this was detrimental to human life as well as to the expanse of fields and forests that were further away from villages and towns. The phenomenon of industrialization did not pay necessary heed to the protection of climate. Tagore found to his dismay that the increasing base of profit-oriented production had assumed dangerous proportions and was threatening the ecological balance. In Red Oleanders, he gave an account of digging the earth for gold in terms highly condemnatory. See the following comment by the character named Professor: PROFESSOR: Yaksha town is a city under eclipse. The Shadow Demon, who lives in the gold caves, has eaten into it. It is not whole itself, neither does it allow anyone else to remain whole. Listen to me, don't stay here. When you go, these pits will yawn all the wider for us, I know, -- yet I say to you, fly; go and live happily with Ranjan where people in their drunken fury don't tear the earth's veil to pieces. [Going a little way and then coming back.] Nandini, will you give me a flower from your chain of red oleanders?

(SK

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Tagore projected the trend emphatically. He spotted in rivers, trees and flowers an arena of spontaneity that was missing in social life informed by life’s dull routine unleashed by newly introduced market economy Das. Ed. The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore. Sahitya, rpt.

2008, 213) Mark that the comment does not merely critique the lust for a precious resource such as gold but also provides a positive alternative through the red flower that for Tagore holds more value than a gold ornament. Further, the idea of wholeness is stressed as meaningful in comparison with one or a few of its parts. Life on the earth where each segment may be visualised as seeking unity with the others is indicated as the desired goal. Also, the contribution each makes

to the other has equal worth, none is rated less or more significant.In Tagore’s writing, concerns for nature assume culture-oriented character that is deeper in significance than a direct replication of the phenomenon would suggest.

Tagore spent his childhood and youth in the nineteenth century and went on to live in the twentieth century for three decades. He is recognized as organically related with his predecessors as well as those who succeeded him. Through Tagore, we have before us a long period of India’s society that can be stretched to early years of the nineteenth century on one side and the first half of the twentieth century on the other. The cultural wholeness was of a piece with a crystallized view of freedom that Young Bengal and the Romantic trend elsewhere stood for. The latter came to be represented as Chhayavad in Hindi writing that influenced literary imagination across north India. The phenomenon could be directly linked with English Romanticism that included such radical dreamers as Wordsworth, Keats, Southey, Byron and Shelley. This group of Romantics were opposed to the squalor and misery that industrialism had caused. What they particularly emphasized was the havoc wreakedon

nature. This received a graphic description in some of the novels, such as Dickens’David Copperfield and Hard Times.

The warning coming from writers of the nineteenth century involving threat to ecology and valuable resources came handy to social reformers as well as campaigners.

Through a questionable link between a colonial power and a colony, as was the case with British-Indian connect, came up a message of care for the health of socio-geographical surroundings. This was in the form of Western Romanticism enlivening concern for natural living in Indian writing.

Literary expression in our age enjoys unique distinction of being individually produced. This puts the onus of opinion and choice of subject on the producing individual. That in turn gives a sense of responsibility to the author—s/he is to take credit or blame for the written piece. This makes the endeavour a serious affair.

The writing is voluntary. Interestingly, there is no direct outside pressure on the writer to perform the act of writing. Does that make writing yet more challenging a venture than other creative forms in terms of taking a risk and prepare oneself to defend it in case one ruffled feathers. Come to think of it, the burden of the said defence makes the enterprise crucial in society from the point of view of impact. In it, the odd part is that the production is individual and consumption is sharable with a large reading section.

I make this point in some detail to suggest that literature invariably has

ideological and political implications; this indeed gives an aura to writing and a power to influence minds at intellectual and emotional levels. In that proportion, the value of writing increases. Placed in the context of a social situation touching ecology, authorial opinion and standpoint may work to the disadvantage of certain interested parties. Important writers yet engage with burning topics of this kind courageously, the act investing them additionally with a power to intervene which in turn renders their role meaningful. One would have noticed in the course of one's reading that great writers in every age assert hope and a lofty sense of standing by life on the earth.

Writing of significance and vision in literature is deeply situated in collective life which itself is a part of the larger human and natural parameters. Humans and the elements sustaining our planet work in unison to maintain harmony and togetherness. Think of England of the seventeenth century struggling with an outdated monarchy to move ahead with help from its inner dynamic. The all-powerful king enjoying support from divinity and tradition had not felt secure for decades, particularly in the period following Queen Elizabeth's death in 1603. The political turmoil of the century's early decades had told on the cultural health of the nation; it could not cope with the energy and motivation of the too ambitious English merchants. The phenomenon of social uncertainty may have given rise to a scenario the truth of which the great poet John Milton was to

Writing of significance and vision in literature is deeply situated in collective life which itself is a part of the larger human and natural parameters because humans and the elements sustaining our planet work in unison to maintain harmony and togetherness

poetically articulate in his famous Paradise Lost. In it, the poet took issues with unbridled production to assert that frugality and self-control were desirable for appropriate upkeep of nature. Milton demonised the god of wealth who indeed for author was nothing more than the vice of greed. In his characteristic style, Milton pointed an accusing finger at the fallen angel Mammon who gets busy about his job as soon as Satan and his followers decide to settle down on the surface of Hell. Milton’s eye is on the destruction that the mission of Mammon involves.

To quote: “There stood a Hill not far whose griesly top/ Belched fire and rowlings moak; the rest entire/Shon with a glossiescurff, undoubted sign/ That in his womb was hid metallic Ore,/ The work of Sulphur. Thither winged with speed/ A numerous brigade hastened. As when Bands/ Of Pioners with spade and pickax armed/ Forerun the Royal Camp, to trench a Field,/ Or cast a Rampart.

Mammon led them on,/ Mammon the least erected Spirit that fell/ From heaven, for even in heaven his looks and thoughts/ Were always downward bent, admiring more/ The riches of Heaven’s pavement, trodden Gold,Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed/ In vision beatific.”

(PL, I, 670-684).

Here, distorted preference is targeted for its shallowness that is strangely embraced by the supposedly mighty. The modern campaign of saving the earth from rapacious forces in our midst can derive appropriate support from great writers of literature in the past. In a crucial sense, literature remains wedded to the cause of placing ideals higher than the pursuit of senses alone. In life and literature, agreement between resources and social needs is the value to be cherished. The case cannot be over-emphasized.

(The writer is a senior academic, and taught English Literature in Delhi University till 2007.)

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science

Physics for Mankind Deep and vast knowledge engraved in vedas and puranas intricately connect the mysteries of the Universe in its ontological perspective n

Ram Nandan Singh

C

ontemporary Physics, an interdisciplinary subject, has strived long to understand the visible and the invisible parts of creation, and in turn, its safe utilization to the services of mankind. Back in history and both Indian, Greek philosophers and seers interpreted the existence of universal identities in their perspective wisdom and the prevailing languages of the time.

Deep and vast knowledge that are engraved in vedas and puranas intricately connect the mysteries of seen and unseen virtues of the Universe in its ontological perspective. Little technologies, were available those days for their physical verification and scientific documentation, in contrast to modern technological era. It has been a long journey for ontologists to travel from the ancient to modern

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metaphysics to reach the crux of Universal knowledge.

Modern physics has played a formidable role in deciphering the mysteries of physical evolution.

Let us preview some of its current engagements which range from the tinies (trillionth of unit) to the giant observable Universe (nearly thousand million million km away from the Earth) whose main constituents are dark matter and energy.

Many of us wonder – can Physics

be understood or revealed without an equation? Yes, why not? As a matter of fact, equations and formulae are shorthand writing of physical facts and principles. It only follows once the laws and concepts are clean. The most well-quoted equation is the Einstein mass-energy equation (E = mc2, E-stands for energy, m for mass and c is the velocity of light). It is unique in the sense that it connects visible (mass) to invisible (energy) which are integral parts of creation. One can draw parallels to our physical body to invisible soul. It is always simple and advisable to describe the key facts that embody the laws of universal truth in equation forms.

Physics evolved over a time from the days of classical physics (Archimedes, 287 BC; Galileo 1564; Faraday 1791; Maxwell 1831) to modern physics (Bose 1858; Einstein 1879; Bohr 1885; Schrodinger 1887; Raman 1888; Fermi 1901; Heisenberg 1901; Chandrashekhar 1910).

Grossly speaking the visible part of natural creation is dealt with classical laws (dealing with mass, length,

time, charge, temperature), wherein, the modern physics is mostly delved to invisible part of creation dealing with the tiniest objects. Deep quest for the origin of fundamental forces, fabrication and the characterization of smart nanomaterials – are among the some of the challenges for Physicists.

Unification of various kinds of short and long range forces (or grossly speaking energies), like the gravitational forces (a push or pull between celestial bodies), friction (a dissipative force which acts between contact surfaces), electrostatic and electromagnetic forces between charged particles (electrons carry negative charge and protons are positively charged), interatomic forces and very strong nuclear (centre of the atom) forces are the most challenging fields in physics. Some of these forces are weak in magnitude while others are quite opposite. Physicists have long believed there is some underlying simplicity in nature and therefore it should be possible to find a single common origin of all the forces in nature. A quest towards absolutism!

Smart and nano materials have great potentials for applications in healthcare, biocompatibility, energy generation and conservation, toxic detection useful for security and defense, textiles that can change color and pattern to suit the appearance of surrounding environment

J.C. Bose (1858-1937)

C.V. Raman (1888-1970)

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science

Graphene

Such a knowledge with extreme precision is essential to understand the role of the creator and the created.

On the application side, nanotechnology is a rapidly developing field of applied physics. It enabled the advent of smart or nanomaterials (of the order billionth of a meter) which has effectively changed and recombined the shapes and size of the usable equipment such as, nano sensors, nano computers and nano machines. These smart materials readily respond to the neighboring environment, and to the ease and comfort of users. They could be empowered with properties engineered to change in a control manner under the influence of external stimuli. Smart and nano materials have great potentials for applications in healthcare, biocompatibility, energy generation and conservation, toxic detection useful for security and defense, textiles that can change color and pattern(camouflage) to suit the appearance of surrounding environment, surveillance through nanosized machine , sensors and wireless communication devices.

Graphene has been one of the most talked nanomaterials discovered recently. It is the name given to a novel substance composed of a single layer of carbon atoms. Its strength, flexibility, conductivity and invisible size make it a potentially ideal material for bendable smartphones and television screen. It paves the way to synthesize various human organs.

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Fluorescence microscopy captures the splitting of human cancer cells

Despite being one atom thick, it is impervious to liquids and gases. It is stronger than diamond, but more flexible than rubber. It possesses many contrasting properties simultaneously which were not achievable otherwise to date. It offers the possibility to create membrane – “the ultimate water purifier” – which might someday create the drinking water readily available from sea without much hassle. It is incredibly useful in the field of medicine to simulate sophisticated human organs, may aid drug delivery to building new tissue for regenerative medicine. Equally, it is useful to enhancing solar cells and to improve the working life of battery, efficient sensors.

Kinetic charging is already used to some low power devices such as watches and sensors. Taking a stroll may soon be enough to recharge your mobile phone as researcher developed a way to generate electricity from human motion. Humans, generally speaking, are very powerful energy producing machine. Power generating mats can be installed on railway platforms or walkways to capture the vibrations of thousands of commuters to produce electricity.

For more than a century, optical

(light) instruments are used to observe the tiny objects using light sources (like, visible light and X rays). There was a limit, however, that objects smaller than millionth of a meter cannot be seen. But that barrier is broken. It is possible now to see features of the order of billionth of a meter scale using “florescence microscopy” where glowing molecules are used as a source.

It has provided visual window into the living cell (tiniest building block of living organism). The technique lets scientists peer into the depths of bacteria and viruses. A glimpse of clumped proteins that creates disorders such as Alzheimer, Parkinson and cancerous cell is possible. Unlike electron microscopy (beam of electros is used in place of light beam for imaging) which harms and kills the target, florescence microscopy can observe bacteria without destroying them – to say, “they can be studied in real time while they live and prosper”.

It has always been a matter of curiosity – is telepathic communication possible, or can one move things with our mind power? All over the world, there has been a belief in the supernatural throughout ages. Often, it is claimed that if anyone goes to a rightmaster with a question in his mind, the master will know the question without any dialogue by just reading his mind. All these extraordinary powers are in the mind of capable man. Similar cases exist for thought

Brain-to-brain communication between humans

process which exhibits the continuity or synchronization of minds. Swami Vivekananda had shown miraculous power of reading other’s mind. When he was in London, he did experiment and proved it by reading the questions in the minds of the audience.

These are mind to mind communication. Recently Physics has unearthed the scientific technique involved in such communication. True, the greatest power lies in the fine, not in coarse – the doctrine of “Quntum physics”. The transfer of properties of one particle to another without any physical link has until now only been achieved with laser light. Now it is becoming possible to make contact between two distant located objects.

It is basically the transfer of quantum states between separate objects. Two distantly objects can have related properties even when they are far apart.

Side by side, the quantum concept provides the possibilities to perform computation at supersonic speed.

Unlike digital computing (algorithm of 0 and 1), superposition of both states, 0 and 1, at once is possible in quantum computing. It can provide suitable platform for simulation of many visible or invisible phenomena that still are least understood.

Nucleus, again very tiny (of the order of millionth of a billionth meter) and at the center of the atom is loaded with huge energy content (for example, source of nuclear bomb) and most

A young black hole forming in the midst of interstellar dust.

Since the ancient time, creation of both physical materials and life has been a matter of great interest to both pure scientists as well as social scientists. They have interpreted the existence of universal identity in their respective wisdom and languages valuable source of hidden information (creation of matter and universe).

Protons and Neutrons, which are constituent of nucleus, are being smashed at high speed accelerators in search of fundamental particles (like quarks) which can provide the ultimate source of answer to the creation of universe. New advances in particle physics protons and ion beam) are leading to a new generation of cancer treatment in place of conventional radiotherapy. Cancer cells can be successfully targeted with antimatter subatomic particles causing an intense biological damage to harmful cells.

A beam of charged atomic particles can be uniquely focused unlike many other radiation beams. Little or no energy is deposited beyond the cancer cells target. The localization effect of focusing of such beam will help patients suffering from cancer cells close to spinal cord, brain heart, eyes or ears. With this new possibility, dose of irradiation can be reduced to half or even one-tenth of the conventional irradiation.

Creation of both physical materials and life has been a matter of great interest to both pure scientists as well as social scientists. Since the ancient time they have interpreted the existence of universal identity in their respective wisdom and languages. It has been a long way to travelling from ancient to modern metaphysics to reach the crux of the universal knowledge. Modern Physics has played a vital role in deciphering the mystery of physical evolution and is vigorously engaged in its technological harvesting.

Journey from trillionth to trillion of

unit has been very fascinating – energy to fundamental material particle, to elements, to matter, to planets and stars, to massive black holes, and finally to the open stretch of Universe (order of thousand million million kilometers away from Earth). It is firmly believed by scientists that the main constituents of Universe are dark matter and energy rather than the shining stars which we observe in a clear night. Our sophisticated telescopes on Earth are receiving light signals from space that are coming from 10 billion light years away (one light year is the distance travelled by light in one year, about 7 trillion kilometers). Universe could be some 2 billion years older than the oldest known star.

Black holes are some of the strongest and most fascinating objects found in outer space. They are very heavy objects (mass could be as large as 20 million times the Sun’s mass), having extreme density with unimaginable strong gravitational pull that even light can not escape from their grasp if it comes near enough. Virtually nothing can escape from them. It reminds me of the Virat Roop of Lord Vishnu revealed by Lord Krishna in Mahabharat. The strong pull of black holes creates observational problem for scientists. The stars and stellar materials annihilating into the black holes emit intense X rays, visible light and launch jet of materials outwards at nearly speed of light which form the source of our observation on Earth’s radio telescope.

Acknowledgement: The original sources of information and pictures are gratefully acknowledged.

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English language

Have you heard of ESP? No, it is not Extra Sensory Perception, nor is it Electronic Stability Program.

Rather it has to do with the learning of English either for academic or professional purposes

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One distinguishing feature of ESP is that it is based on needs analysis. This concept has developed from training and development programs, which have nothing to do with language to English for Specific Purposes, which simply means the teaching and learning of English either for academic or professional purposes. The latter is called English for Occupational Purposes and the former is called English for Academic Purposes.

ESP is a significant area of applied linguistics which is a multidisciplinary discipline of theoretical linguistics.

Applied linguistics subsumes major areas of study and research, including Language for Specific Purposes to which ESP belongs. It belongs to applied linguistics because it deals with the use of a particular variety of English in a specific context of use and based on learners’ needs. This implies that ESP concerns all those who use English to study science, economics, hotel management, etc, or to work in companies, corporations or international social service organizations, such as Sulabh International.

This article is an attempt to provide the readers with information covering some aspects of ESP: history and development, principles and features and its strands and areas. I will try to avoid jargon and technical terms as possible as I can . n

Abdulhameed Ashuja’a

T

he abbreviation ESP does not stand for Extra Sensory Perception, nor for Electronic Stability Program. Rather, it refers

History and Development: Teaching English as a Foreign language (EFL) started long ago in the British colonies scattered around the world, including most of the Arab world and the Indian sub-continent, where English language was

introduced to local schools at early stages of education. Pupils at schools were deliberately exposed to heavy and dense English literature which represented the colonizer. In other words, the focus of teaching English was to spread the foreign culture, not to develop communication skills. This was evident when school students finished their high school and some of them wanted to join science colleges; they were not able to communicate effectively in the science college although they had studied a lot of English literature. This way of teaching English continued until the 1950s when people concerned with the teaching of English to non-native speakers (applied linguists) wanted to help those high school leavers to have better skills of using English in a more effective and meaningful way.

Then there was a shift of focus from teaching English through literature to grammar. Teaching English through grammar had two versions: situational method in the UK and audio-lingual method in the USA. The latter method made use of repetition drills of grammatical structures, whereas the principle of the former method was to design courses around situations; each unit of the course would be about one situation, such as At the Post Office, At the Airport, etc.

These two methods which were adopted in some parts of the world of teaching English for non-native speakers led to a change in the

For a more technical review of ESP, kindly refer to: “Developments in ESP: from register analysis to a genre-based and CLIL-based approach”. By: Isabel Negro Alousque. http://dx.doi.org/10.20420/rlfe.2016.0096 1

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English language learners’ skills of using the English language. Compared to students who studied English through literature, college students who were taught English by the new British and American methods had better skills of using English effectively.

However, this improvement in communication ability on the part of students was still not satisfactory to the applied linguists who were very much concerned with the development of EFL. For this and other reasons, a conference was held in London in 1969 to discuss the situation of teaching English to nonnative speakers. The ultimate goal of this conference was to agree on some principles that would help achieve better results of teaching English.

An agreement was reached to narrow down the objectives of teaching

English from integrative objectives into instrumental ones, i.e., to shift the focus from general and broad objectives to specific and restricted ones. In other words, the conference call was to stop teaching English for no obvious reasons (TENOR) and move to ESP. This trend came to the fore under the slogan “Tell us what you want English for, we will give you

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that: no more, no less.”

This move was accompanied by developments in linguistics, educational psychology, economic and commercial demands in the world after the WW2 and growth of science and technology. In linguistics, there was a revolution when linguists shifted their focus from structure to function of language and from linguistic competence to communicative competence. The development in educational psychology was that the learner became the cornerstone of the teaching/learning process; any teaching should be learnerbased. Further, oil discoveries in the Arab world, the economic boost in India and Asia and the international commercial exchange have made non-English speaking countries turn heavily to the use of English language which became the language of commerce, education, and science and technology.

Principles and Features: The underpinning principle of ESP which it revolves around is “communicative need”. Without considering communication needs,

the teaching/learning of ESP will be a waste of time, money and effort. This implies that every group of learners will have communicative needs different from other groups. In their book English for Specific Purposes: A Learning-centered Approach published in 1987, Hutchinson and Waters rightly stated that knowing the learners’ needs and reasons for learning will enable course designers/ teachers to decide on the content of the course and the method of teaching that content.

Another feature of ESP is that it is cost-effective and yields immediate returns. For example, if a company spends $5000 on training a few members of its staff during one month, it may gain very quick benefits and returns when these members start using what they have learnt for the good of the company.

One distinguishing feature of ESP is that it is based on needs analysis. This concept has developed from training and development programs, which have nothing to do with language. It may also be used by marketing specialists to identify the consumers’ needs so as to respond to them by providing the market with the required products and services. Similarly, in the ESP context the job of needs analysis is to bring the authentic world, be it academic or professional, to the learners in the classroom, so that they get familiarized with the target situations in which they are going to be active language users.

To achieve this, there are three types of needs that should be investigated and identified: present situation needs, learning needs and target needs. If you want to go on a journey, you will need to specify you lack and require (present situation), make the things you will be using during the journey ready and keep checking these things during the journey (learning needs) and think of your destination (target needs). Once we know these needs we will be in a better position to respond

to the learners’ needs: no more, no less. English courses which are needsbased will enable the learners to become successful users of English in academic and professional settings.

In order to collect information from and about the learners, needs analysis can be conducted by various methods, including questionnaires, interviews, focus group discussions, language tests, language analysis, shadowing, etc.

ESP Strands: The first strand of ESP was English for Science and Technology (EST) which started in the 1960s. A lot of research and studies where done to identify the difference between general English and scientific English.

Many researchers from academic institutions which use English as the medium of instruction, including the Indian Institute of Technology, have contributed a lot to the development of EST since mid-1960s. Research studies done in this area revealed certain features of scientific English, such as technical vocabulary and special use of grammar. For instance, if a scientist has been carrying out an experiment, then he would have three ways of reporting his results: use of past tense if the results are not generalizable; present perfect tense if the there is only some generality in the results; and present simple tense in case the findings of the experiment can be generalized to other situations and contexts.

In the field of Business and technical English, studies showed that certain verbs such as attach, enclose, appreciate, refer, forward, request, advise and thank, were more frequently used in the administrative correspondence than in General English. Other findings indicated that passives and modals were more used in administrative writing than in formal and informal speech. In scientific reportage, it is normal to find a high incidence of passive

Needs of the society for English keep changing, developing and diversifying. TAs ESP is based on communicative needs, therefore there are various types of ESP courses, covering almost all walks of life voice. If the writer is an instructor and not a reporter, then simple verb groups dominate over passives.

In addition to grammatical items, some discourse functions, such as to report, to persuade, to convince, to lie, to explain, to describe, etc were also considered. This movement towards the functions of language indicates the revolutionary move from a structural view of language to a functional view which is more realistic and represents the nature of language as a human phenomenon meant for communication.

Linguistic studies of non-fiction English texts continued to reveal very interesting results. A good example is the use of metaphors in economic and scientific texts. If a student of economics wishes to become a successful writer of economic issues, s/he should have special training on how to use metaphors effectively to attract the readers’ attention.

As ESP is based on communicative needs, needs of the society for English keep changing, developing and diversifying. Therefore, there are various types of ESP courses, covering almost all walks of life.

This can evidently be seen in the number of published course books on professional English which are geared towards the needs of the workplace for English language. To illustrate, international publishing houses, such as Oxford, Longman and Cambridge, publish scores of ESP course books every year. Examples are: English for Presentations, English for Technicians, English for Hotel and Tourism, English for Social Workers, English for Intentional Development,

English for Marketing, English for Negotiations, etc. This clearly indicates the increasing demand and significance ESP has assumed.

In conclusion, graduates of the Departments of English in a number of countries, particularly non-English speaking countries, who wish to work as teachers, translators or administrators in their local markets or in the regional ones, are badly in need for ESP courses. In fact, our graduates tend to lack sufficient knowledge and skills in areas pertinent to the labour market. Most of the courses offered in such departments are not fully related to the market needs. Further, it has been a persistent complaint that English courses to students at university are irrelevant, insufficient and mechanical; they are not marketoriented. That is why a large number of graduates of English Departments and other disciplines seek additional training, either during their college study, or after graduation, so as to prepare themselves for the market and meet job requirements.

Therefore, it is imperative that local educational authorities in nonEnglish speaking countries should enable English course designers, writers and teachers to conduct needs analysis of their students so as to become aware of their reasons for learning English and to accurately respond to their needs: no more, no less. This procedure would help learners become successful users of English in either academic or professional settings. In this way, educational authorities as well as the learners will save time, money and effort.

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ENVIRONMENT

WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY

n

I

B.N. Srivastava

ndia being a major producer of plastic had hosted the World Environment Day celebration on June 5 last. Plastics accumulate in garbage dumps and landfills and are sullying the world’s oceans in ever greater quantity. And plastics and their additives are not just around us; they are virtually present inside every

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one of us—in our blood and urine in measurable amounts, ingested with the food we eat, the water we drink and from other sources. Adverse effects of plastics to human health remain a topic of fierce controversy, though a growing consensus is emerging that plastics and their additives are not always the benign companions we

once assumed them to be.

Two broad classes of plastic-related chemicals are of critical concern for human health—bisphenol-A or BPA, and additives used in the synthesis of plastics, which are known as phthalates. Plastics are polymers— long chains of molecules usually made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and/or

NOW PLASTIC IS A THREAT TO HUMAN CIVILIZATION silicon, which are chemically linked together or polymerized. Different polymer chains can be used to create forms of plastics with unique and useful properties.

Civilization is all about building roads, factories, cutting trees, killing pests and everything else to create a shining world of crisis-prone lifestyle

A UN report has made the shocking prediction that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Before the world is drowned in plastic, we must create awareness among the people to wean away from the addiction to plastic.

Maharashtra has taken the lead by announcing a ban on the sale and use of plastic throughout the state.

which will bring about the end of the world sooner than we fear until the humankind decides to stop this savagery and learns to live at peace with nature.

In 1955, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein issued an appeal to the people of the world, asking them to set aside nationalism and .other strong

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ENVIRONMENT

feelings and consider themselves "only as members of a biological species which has a remarkable history and whose disappearance none of us can desire." But their advice had not left the world any wiser because it continued the fight over the control of the planet through technology, war and conquests which together have created great uncertainties if the world will live at all for future generations to be secure and grow together.

The source of the problem is conceptual. Adam Smith (1723-90), Scottish economist, envisaged global three per cent compound global growth forever. It is more than 200 years, when mankind has been explanting nature, plundering its resources and redefining happiness as destruction of nature, calling it growth and modern civilization. This flawed concept has caused catastrophe in the world when our civilization has become an existential threat.

As a matter of fact much of human history has been written in terms of

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Humans have been locked in a life-and-death struggle against "Mother Nature" where we have been winning battle after battle, but, sadly, we have been losing the war an ongoing struggle of "man against nature." The forces of nature— wild beasts, floods, pestilence, and disease—have been cast in the role of the enemy of humankind. To survive and prosper, we must conquer nature, kill wild beasts, build dams to stop flooding, find medicines to fight disease, and use chemicals to control pests. Humans have been locked in a life-and-death struggle against "Mother Nature." We have been winning battle after battle. But, we have been losing the war.

We, the humans, have killed so many "wild beasts" that non-human species are becoming extinct at an unprecedented rate. How many more species can we destroy before we lose more than we can afford to do

without? How many more battles with Mother Nature can we afford to win?

And at what cost !!

We can quite easily kill insects, diseases, weeds, and parasites using modern chemical pesticides. This has allowed us to pay the lower food prices brought about by a specialized, mechanized, standardized and industrialized agriculture. But we still lose about the same percentage of our crops to pests as we did in earlier times. In addition, health concerns about pesticide residues in our food supplies and in our drinking water are on the rise. In addition, rural communities have withered and died and industrial agriculture has replaced the family farm. Good paying jobs in cities are no longer there for people

forced off the land. How many more pests can we afford to kill before we kill ourselves? How many more workers can we displace before we displace ourselves? How many more battles with Mother Nature can we afford to win?

Sustainable Growth

To avert this catastrophe a new model for living in harmony with nature is evolved. Sustainable systems must be capable of meeting the needs of those of us of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs as well. In simple terms, sustainability requires that we find harmony between others and ourselves as well as between us of the present and those of the future. The sustainable model is also based on the assumption that people are multidimensional, that we are physical, mental, and spiritual beings. We have a mind and soul as well as a body. All the three determine the quality of life—what we think and what we consume. The industrial model has focused on the physical body, the self-getting more and more to consume. The sustainable model focuses on finding harmony among all the three—the physical, mental, and spiritual — on leading a life of balance.

Spirituality is not religion. It refers to a felt need to be in harmony with some higher unseen order of things.

Spirituality assumes a higher order to which humans must conform.

Harmony cannot

The industrial system of farming, that has destroyed the family farm as a social institution, has caused rural communities to wither and die, and has changed the social impact of agriculture on society in general from positive to negative be achieved by changing the "order of things" to suit our preferences.

Harmony comes only from changing our actions to conform to the "higher order." A life lived in harmony is its own reward.

The industrial system of farming, that has destroyed the family farm as a social institution, has caused rural communities to wither and die, and has changed the social impact of agriculture on society in general from positive to negative. A sustainable agriculture must meet the food and fibre needs of people, but it cannot degrade or destroy opportunities for people to lead successful, productive lives in the process. A sustainable agriculture must be in harmony with our nature of being human.

Plastic Plague Peril

A UN report has made the shocking prediction that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.

Before the world is drowned in plastic, we must create awareness among the people to wean ourselves off the addiction to plastic. For example, one million plastic drinking water bottles are purchased every minute, five million single-use plastic bags are used worldwide every year, half of all plastic produced is designated to be used only once and then thrown away. India is not left behind in

this plastic plague peril. Every year more than five to seven million tones of plastic waste is generated of which 40 per cent remains uncollected and lies scattered. Eventually it enters rivers and oceans and the food chain and the balance is mostly sent in landfills or burned ! The people have become so accustomed to the use of plastic material that while trekking up in the Himalayas for Everest, they discovered tones of plastic material lying scattered at the foot of the Mount of Everest. At the moment what is needed is to address the challenge at its source. The plastic manufacturing companies must join the everlasting clean up by reducing unnecessary plastic at source, design less harmful plastic and develop the best recycling processes.

The Government of Maharashtra last week announced a ban on manufacture, use, sale, distribution and storage of plastic material such as one-time-use bags, spoons, plates, PET and PETE bottles and thermocol items throughout the state. There will be heavy fine for violating the ban.

This will hit the plastic industry very hard by the loss of Rs 150 million, leaving nearly 3 lakh people jobless overnight but in long run it will ensure safety, health and environment of the people.

The people are happy with this ban on plastic as is evident from a recent case. Setting example for others, a youth hailing from a village in Odisha married a girl without any dowry. In the invitation card, the groom’s family mentioned that there will be no use of plastic items during the reception ceremony.

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EDUCATION

Assessment and Educational Processes Assessments have been nightmare for learners, repudiated by academicians and cursed by stakeholders, like parents and employers, for different reasons

n

Rajesh Kumar

‘T

eaching to test’ and ‘washback effect’ are the two phrases used frequently to refer to the undesirable but not unwanted effect of assessment on teaching/learning processes.

Complaint mainly has been regarding the limitations of testing being unnecessarily imposed on teaching/ learning processes leading to the inevitable narrowing of educational processes. Such an approach promotes pedagogy which is neither in sync with

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Instead of trying to learn, Learners often try to crack the mysterious code of the test and do things that will help them secure better marks or grade, at times even at the cost of learning which defeats the very purpose of education

the theories of learning and knowledge construction nor is it compatible with the nature of discipline, but an unnatural product of the limitations of the type of testing being used.

This gradually and stealthily in a very subtle way leads to a reductionist view of the discipline and teaching learning process which usually goes unnoticed for a long time culminating into a myopic view of education as a whole.

Assessments have been nightmare for learners, repudiated by academicians and cursed by stakeholders like parents and employers for different reasons. Learners have been made to believe that assessment is the final word on their learning and hence on their academic and social worth as an individual. As such they, instead of trying to learn try to crack the mysterious code of the test and do things that will help them secure better marks or grade, at times even at the cost of learning which defeats the very purpose of education. Academicians assess the assessments and are usually dissatisfied with its validity which they find being eroded. There appears, to them, a clear mismatch between the aims of education and what is being assessed. Test constructors usually take shelter under reliability and practicability which doesn’t hold much water. Parents and employers find the school graduates unable to think through situations and deal with real life tasks and problems independently.

All this has been in discourse around assessment and systems, institutions, organizations and academicians have been trying to address the issue differently. One of the major issues within the field of assessment in the 1990s has been a concern with the systemic validity of tests – the wash back effect has "....joined validity, reliability and practicality as one of the Big Four considerations in evaluating the worth of a test" (Bachman, 1990). There has

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EDUCATION also been a school of “us and them” which believes in “If we don’t test it, they won’t teach it” (King, 1994).

This "us and them" view of the purpose of assessment can perhaps best be viewed as a skills-based, as opposed to aknowledge-based approach – this is not, of course, to suggest that "knowledge" and "skills" are mutually exclusive. But the more things have changed the more things have remained the same. One system/ set of assessment has been replaced by the other generating hope among practitioners and stakeholders just to disappoint later. However, there has also been growing a tendency toexplore the possibilities of using wash back effect to promote pedagogical ends, of "working for washback" (Swain 1985). Brooke and Oxenham (1984:175), for instance, recommend that "...a prime line of reform should bend examinations to fit the wider objectives of education. By that kind of judo trick, examinations.... should promote and reward better teaching and learning."

Reports of education commissions and policy documents have expressed the need for examination reforms.

Kothari Commission Report (1966) observed “...internal assessment or evaluation conducted by the schools is of greater significance and should be given increasing importance. It should be comprehensive, evaluating all those aspects of students’ growth that are measured

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by external examination and also those personality traits, interests and attitudes which cannot be assessed by it.” (p. 84). NPE (1986) also recommended “continuous and comprehensive evaluation that incorporates both scholastic and nonscholastic aspects of evaluation, span over the total span of instructional time.” (8.24 iii). The Government of India while making education a fundamental right of the child (RtE 2009) took this into consideration and recommended ‘comprehensive and continuous evaluation’ (RtE 2009: Chapter V; Article 29 (2) h).

Comprehensive and continuous evaluation (CCE) looks at assessment as part of teaching/learning process.

CCE, therefore, aligns itself to the theoretical and practical demands of the nature and pedagogy of the discipline and not to

the limitations of the reliability and practicality of assessment tools and techniques. Looking at assessment as part of teaching/learning process opens up the possibility of close observation of child’s engagement and development during the process of learning which helps the teacher do away with the limitations of reliability and practicality of the tests seen as appended to the teaching learning process for whatever reason and purpose it may be used. Growth and development of the child is a continuous process rather than an event, and hence its assessment has to be built into the total teaching learning process spanning over the whole session rather than be appended at the end of it.

Such an assessment makes its own demands on teachers and institutions of

understanding the aims of education, teaching/learning processes, and the nature of the discipline; devising, adapting or adopting suitable pedagogy; identifying the attitudes, dispositions and capabilities/skills to be developed; delimiting the issues and defining stages to be achieved progressively with certain degree of flexibility; and then planning ways to assess learners’ engagement and development in such a way which is valid, reliable and practicable.This new form of assessment focuses more on recording achievements rather than failure, saying what an individual student can do, rather than taking a norm-referenced view of how well an individual performs inrelation to the entire peer group.CCE assumes that all this can be done by no one else but the teacher herself. Suggesting ways to do that, recommending particular techniques or formats of assessment as CBSE and other boards have done and might do can be useful, but only to the extent of providing an example to make the teachers understand that this is just a way to do it – neither the best way nor the only way to be blindly

followed by the teacher.

CCE, in fact, is not just a mode of assessment which prescribes certain ways and means to assess the child learning process. Rather it originates from a comprehensive view of education which connects to the quality debate in education.

Education as approached in RtE 2009 can be nothing less than education that promotes rationality, autonomy and sensitivity in the child that will serve as harbinger of a society based on justice and equity. Various stakeholders of education may have conflicting aspirations which have to be resolved keeping in view these basic principles. CCE, therefore, assesses not only the quantum of the discipline knowledge or the skills that the child might have acquired, but it also takes into its purview the growth of child into an autonomous learner with a positive disposition towards learning.

Both government and nongovernment organizations have been trying to influence teachers’ understanding of the nature of discipline with a view to improve

CCE, in fact, is not just a mode of assessment which prescribes certain ways and means to assess the child learning process

teaching/learning practices through workshops, trainings, curriculum and material development. Despite sincere and persistent effort in this area situation has more or less remained the same. ‘Teaching to test’ has been blamed for this phenomenon. One might also say that the scaffolding required to support the pedagogic practices which might have been provided by the system has been missing.

A natural response to this situation will be to develop a framework of assessment which is true to the aims of education and teaching/learning processes. This framework will call upon the teacher/evaluator to look at the whole course at a time and identify stages, and corresponding objectives of learning. This understanding of the teacher will help her in planning suitable pedagogic practices to realize the objectives. While doing all this a constant eye has to be kept on the learning of values and dispositions that need to be developed in the child. Aims, objectives, materials and pedagogic practices all must be geared towards making child an autonomous leaner capable of knowledge construction. These tasks, though written in a particular order, may not necessarily go in that order – there is a possibility of significant amount of shuttling back and forth and give and take among these three major stages.

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Economics

A compilation of key themes from among the plethora of intricaies of the global economy

State of the Global Economy n

Apurva Anand, Director, Barclays Bank PLC, UK*

E

ach one of the 7.6 billion inhabitants of planet earth contributes to the functioning of the global economy in varying degrees – no disrespect to the animals that are also major contributors. Let me set expectations by making it clear that it is nearly impossible for any individual to fathom the intricacies of the global economy; so this is just a compilation of what I consider to be key themes.

Trade War The tariffs being proposed and imposed by the US and countered by other economies has a potential to escalate quite rapidly. We have already witnessed the EU, China and India counter US tariffs with tariffs of their own. Most countries haven’t fully recovered from the recession of

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2008-10 and this has the potential to send us into another recession.

Oil Prices The decision by OPEC to cut oil production early this year/late last year has led to a spike in oil prices not seen in the last 4-5 years. Countries such as India and China are dependent upon oil imports for smooth functioning of their economies and supply chain. Almost instantaneous impact of oil price rises can be felt by consumers through increase in prices of commodities from food to fuel.

Interest Rate Rises At the back of the recession of 2008-10, the Federal Reserve Bank, European Central Bank, Bank of England and other Central Banks around the world cut base rates to

historic lows to enhance credit and liquidity in the economy. However, the Fed and BoE have had at least one rate increase in the last year and the ECB announced recently that it is ending its QE program. While the rate rises are expected to be gradual and over a number of years, there is a risk that customers who are over-borrowed might go under.

Eurozone Crisis The European Union is currently the second largest economy in the world behind the US – with the Euro being the dominant currency used by 19 of its 28 members. The area, however, has been mired with one issue after another for the last decade or so and these don’t seem to go away.

- The PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) are still an issue.

High unemployment and political and economic instability continue to plague the countries.

- Brexit saw EU’s second largest economy, the UK, voting to leave the union. The full impact of this is yet to materialize for both parties as the separation hasn’t happened yet.

- There has been a wave of right and left wing parties gaining popularity and even forming government (Italy) around EU. These parties tend to be more nationalist than unionist which doesn’t bode well for the future of the European Union.

If the Eurozone crisis came to pass, there is no doubt in my mind that the global economy will witness an unprecedented turmoil.

Finally, I cannot close the article without commenting on the state of the Indian economy. The key themes, according to me, are the following: - Unemployment: India produces ~10 million graduates each year. However, there is a lack of meaningful job opportunities for them. This is driven by 2 factors – • Quality of education, which means most graduates aren’t job ready. The lack of practical training and imparting of real world skills impacts the employability of graduates.

• Structural issues – traditionally, agriculture and manufacturing have been big job providers. However, the youth today is less inclined to move into agricultural sector and India does not have a big enough manufacturing sector to absorb all the graduates.

- Banking sector: The banking sector, especially PSBs, have been saddled with NPAs to the tune of billions of rupees – by some estimates greater than the capital they hold. This leads to 2 issues: • Being the guarantor, the government will have to shore up the capital for the banks.

This means diverting funds that could have been used elsewhere in the economy.

• Since the banks are short of capital, they cannot lend freely implying a lack of liquidity/ credit for businesses and consumers.

- Inflation: Inflation in India over the last few years has been under control largely due to low oil prices but also due to reasonable food output/prices. With the recent rise in oil prices, however, there has been an uptick in inflation which has 2 effects: • The consumers feel the pinch of rising costs through a reduction in disposable income.

• RBI has raised interest rates which further reduces available liquidity in the economy.

- Elections and Reforms: There was anticipation around the world that the NDA government would bring about big bang economic reforms leading to greater economic growth.

While there have been reforms there haven’t been nearly enough. Land acquisition, Labor reforms and government approvals still seem a long way from being efficient.

With elections due next year, there is anticipation that as usual there may be populist expenditure by the government leading to unnecessary strain on the exchequer.

Of course, these are my musings, these may be non-issues or there may be bigger issues lurking around.

Let’s hope and pray that there is more optimism in my next article and the list of issues is smaller. In the meantime, as they say, watch this space. (*The article reflects the author’s personal views and are not reflective of Barclays’ views. The author is not responsible for any monetary implication as a result of use/interpretation of the views.)

Words often Mispronounced • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Liaison Yummy Zeitgeist Vivacious Vacuum Embarrass Harass Haphazard Hackneyed Aphrodite Breakfast Bouquet Communiqué Champagne Connoisseur Debut Elite Forte Messiah Niche

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tribal culture

The leaders among the more developed communities of the human race n

Narrative of Tribal Consciousness

B.P. Sinha

E

ntering the field of tribal literature, one discovers a wealth of tribal folk tales and vibrant folk songs. Although they are economically underdeveloped, they can be, from the cultural point of view, treated as leaders even among the more developed communities of the human race. The rich oral tradition of tribal songs expresses the mysteries of life and nature.

It is to be noted that if we try to investigate oldest literature, it would be found in some cave. We do not know who the writers of these oral narratives were. But the first writer and artist used to live in a forest in his old world. He used to find pleasure in making sketches on the rocks, making faces and singing and he was not only singing he was the first archer who was fighting with the wild animals.

The oral narratives cover a long list of genres of oral traditions of folklore such as tales, fables, legends, social and historical ballads, epics, myths, personal narratives, anecdotes and autobiographical accounts and the study of this folk narrative now considered as the concern of various disciplines of Culture Studies, Social Sciences and Humanities.

The tribal communities are having other forms of folklore with the oral narratives and that include tribal paintings, tattooing, various performing arts, tribal worships and rituals. Thus the oral narratives are inseparable from the social and

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cultural life of the tribal and non-tribal communities.

The incorporation of memory into history is a powerful device employed by the writers to ensure the preservation of tribal stories. Memory permits the invocation and retention of past experiences, imagined and real. Reviving memories is necessary, however, for tribal people because; the only history for them is memory.

Memory is how the past is recalled; memory is also how we heal from the past. Re-memory is a combination of historical memory and the imagination.

Tribal music has myriad functions.

It is a feast not only for the eyes, ears and mind of the people but it is also a heritage of knowledge and wisdom of the tribal people. The theme of the music is derived from the eco-environment of the tribe, their society, economy, history and politics including their philosophy and world views.

The tribals have been pushed to the forest far from the civilization but even then they are continuing their dialogue using their flute, nagara, mandar and their dance forms. They have a long history of 5000 years. They have a long history of oral narratives, in which there is history of the earth. The

tribals are trying to find out their own history, their own language and their own literature.

The tribals of India who live in farflung areas are our oldest inhabitants.

Their contribution to Indian society and culture is immense. These tribals are called in Sanskrit literature as Asur, Nisad, Dasyu, Vanar and Rakshash.

When Aryans landed in India the non-Aryan communities were already living in India. The Aryan God Indra used to fight against tribals for a very long time. It will be interesting to go deep in the excavations of the Indus Valley Civilization. There we find the statue of Shiva surrounded with animals. His costume was like tribals. He was considered ancestor of Rakshash, Vanars and Asurs. In Aryan society he was always considered God of lower category. This is to be highlighted that the Oraon tribes consider themselves as dissidents of Ravana. Another group of Oraon tribe supported Rama when he had gone to Lanka to fight with Ravana. Hanuman is considered to be of Oraon tribe and in Jharkhand people worship the place Anjan gram where he was supposed to be born in Jharkhand.

Oral narrative of a tribal community transmits knowledge orally from one generation to the next generation. This unique knowledge system is rooted in their social environment. These narratives portray their ethnic belief system and identity.

These narratives are the history of the community which has been passed down since time immemorial. Folk narratives are stories which are passed from generation to generation through verbal telling.

It is really very sad to know that most of the tribal languages in Jharkhand are dying other than the language mentioned like Kudukh, Mundari, Ho, Santhali and Kharia. We always talk about government apathy.

We always look to government for preservation of tribal art and music

but to my mind the preservation of tribal ethos can be achieved only by collective cultural consciousness.

The literature of Jharkhand is not only musical but philosophic.

When we read tribal literature in all its earnestness we find that the tribal literature has tremendous romanticism.

There are references of several words, flowers, trees, waterfalls and pure love.

That is what makes the tribal literature of Jharkhand praise-worthy. It may not be as revolutionary as the Dalit literature but sill we find that there is a cry of helplessness and injustice meted out to them. I am sure in future academicians and researchers will find time to look and pierce into the psyche of tribal literature of Jharkhand.

Tribals are responding to the challenges of modern times by writing literature of emerging sensibility.

They are singing songs of their own age-old tragedy. It is really a matter of great concern that, as per the survey of UNESCO, 196 languages are endangered and majority of the languages are tribal language. The tribals have preserved the history of Indian civilization which is set to be 5000 years old.

In the whole of Jharkhand there is alienation of the region’s tribal population in favour of a few powerful elements, resulting in starvation of the tribal. These rich exploiters not only rob the tribals of their wealth but also treat them with contempt. They create division and tension among these simple peace-loving people through their machinations. They create communal hatred between the tribals and the non-tribals of the area.

The Adivasis, who are by and large illiterate, live in isolation and have very little outside contact. Their only contact with the outside world is at the market place where the Mahajans snatch away their meagre produce at throw-away prices and make exorbitant profits out of their work; or with the petty bloc officials who

harass them for a chicken or a cup of rice beer; or with the forest contractors and businessmen who make them slog for existence. In such a situation of utter neglect and perpetual starvation, disease, superstitions and bondage of old and new kinds of problem plague their lives.

In spite of all this, for the last 5000 years along with keeping their race in recognition, they also continue to keep their language, culture, and lifestyle recognised. Today, they are searching for their own history. In his journey, a tribal either could not establish his script or it was lost. Even then, the folk literature is still alive because of tribal vocal traditions. Now, the tribals have held the pen and they are creating poems of nature’s protection and human sensitivity. The tribal in their literature are describing the fertility of the soil, about the shelter providing trees, the life providing nature and about the pain of their displacement and of exploitation. The thought of saving the forests, saving water, keeping the land from being barren are the key themes in tribal literature.

Tribal literature is seeking an answer for the destruction of forests. A tribal pen is waiting to become an arrow.

The tribal discourse is the discourse of their identity. On different level of folk art, music, dance, culture, language, narrative and scripts the tribal consciousness is gradually unfolding. The tribal literature is becoming subject of very wider discourse. When we go deep into the undercurrent of tribal literature we find that the tribal literature does not discuss only their frustrations and exploitations but on the other hand we find their deep concern for the maintaining of ecology and universal love. The tribal literature is deeply rooted in life; it is a literature of commitment. It is the literature of confrontation. It is the literature of making people aware about tribal psyche.

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STORY

n

The Last Leaf

O. Henry

T

o Greenwich Village, which is a section of New York City, many people came who were interested in art. They liked the bohemian life of the village, and they enjoyed living among so many artists.

The buildings and apartments were often very old and dirty, but this only

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added to the interest of the place.

At the top of an old three-storey brick house Sue and Johnsy had their studio. One of them was from the state of Maine, the other from California.

They had met in the restaurant of an Eighth Street hotel. Both were artists who had recently come to New York

to make their living.

That was in May. In November, a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called pneumonia, visited the city, touching one here and one there with his icy finger.

He touched Johnsy and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted

iron bed, looking through the small window at the blank wall of the opposite building.

One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hall.

"She has about one chance in ten to live", he" said as he shook down the 'mercury in his clinical thermometer.

"And that one chance depends upon her desire to get better. But your little friend has made up her mifid that she is going to die. Is she worrying about something?"

"She wanted to paint a picture of the Bay of Naples someday", said Sue. "No, something more important — a man perhaps?"

"No." "Well, perhaps it is a result of

her fever and her general physical weakness. But when a patient begins to feel sure that she is going to die, then I subtract fifty per cent from the power of medicines. If you can succeed in making her interested in something, in asking, for instance, about the latest styles in women's clothes, then I can promise you a one-to-five chance for her instead of one-to-ten."

After the doctor had gone, Sue went into her own room and cried. Later, trying not to show her sadness, she went into Johnsy's room, whistling.

Johnsy lay under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking Johnsy was asleep. But soon Sue heard a low sound, several times repeated. Sue went quickly to the bedside.

Johnsy's eyes were wide open. She was looking out of the window, and counting 2 backwards.

"Twelve", she said, and a little later, "eleven", and then "ten" and "nine" and then "eight" — "seven."

Sue looked out of the window.

What was Johnsy counting? There was only a gray, back yard and the blank wall of the opposite house. An old, old vine, dead at the roots, climbed halfway up the wall. The cold breath of autumn had blown almost all the leaves from the vine until its branches were almost bare.

"What is it, dear?" asked Sue. "Six" said Johnsy very quietly."

They are falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred.

It makes my head ache to count them.

But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now."

"Five what, dear? Tell me!" said Sue.

"Leaves. The leaves of that vine.

When the last leaf of the vine falls, I must go too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?"

"The doctor didn't say any such thing. That is pure foolishness", said Sue. "What connection have those old leaves with your getting well? And you used to love that old vine so much.

Please don't be silly! The doctor told me this morning that your chances of getting well soon were excellent. Now try to take some of your soup and let me get back to work so that I can make money to buy you some good port wine."

"There's no use buying any more wine", said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed on the blank wall of the house opposite. "There goes another leaf.

That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go too."

"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her. "Will you promise me to keep your eyes closed and not look out of the window until I have finished working? I must deliver these drawings tomorrow. I need the light; otherwise I would pull down the curtain."

"Can't you draw in your room?" said Johnsy coldly.

"I'd rather stay here with you", said Sue. "Besides, I don't want you to keep looking at those silly leaves."

"Tell me as soon as you have finished", said Johnsy, closing her eyes and lying white and still. "Because I want to see the last leaf fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking."

"Try to sleep", said Sue a little later. "I must go downstairs for a minute to get Mr. Behrman who is going to sit as my model. But I will be

"I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind and the rain. It will fall today and I shall die at the same time" SULABH INDIA

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STORY .right back. And don't move and also please promise me not to look out of the window," Old Mr. Behrman was a painter who lived on the first floor beneath them. He was more than sixty years old. Behrman was a failure in art.

He had always wanted to paint a masterpiece, but he had never yet begun to paint it. For many years he had painted nothing, except now and then something in the line of commercial or advertising work. He earned a little money by serving as a model for those young artists who could not pay the price for a regular model. He drank much whiskey and when he was drunk always talked about the great masterpiece he was going to paint. He was a fierce, intense little man who considered himself as a watch-dog and protector for the two young artists living above him, of whom he was very fond.

Sue found Behrman in his poorlylighted studio. In one corner of the room stood a blank canvas which had been waiting for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the promised masterpiece. Sue told him of the strange idea which Johnsy had concerning the last leaf, and Sue said that she feared that Johnsy would really die when the last leaf fell.

Old Behrman shouted, "Are there people in the world who are foolish enough to die simply because leaves fall from an old vine? I have never heard of such a thing. Why do you permit such silly ideas to come into her mind? Oh, that poor little Miss Johnsy."

"She is very ill and very weak", explained Sue, "and the fever has left her mind full of strange ideas."

Johnsy was sleeping when they both went upstairs. Sue pulled down the curtain and motioned to Behrman to go into the other room. There they looked out of the window fearfully at the vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking.

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And then they found a lantern, still lighted, a ladder, and some other things which showed that, during the wind and the rain, he had climbed up and painted a green leaf on the wall of the house opposite A cold rain was falling, mixed with snow. Behrman took a seat and prepared himself to pose for Sue as a model.

When Sue woke up the next morning, she found Johnsy with dull, wide open eyes, looking at the window.

"Put up the curtain. I want to see", Johnsy said quietly.

Sue obeyed.

But, oh, after the heavy rain and the strong wind, one leaf was still hanging on the vine. The last leaf.

Still dark green, it hung from a branch some twenty feet above the ground."

"It is the last one", said Johnsy, "I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind and the rain.

It will fall today and I shall die at the same time."

"Dear Johnsy", said Sue, placing her face close to Johnsy's on the pillow. "Think of me if you won't think of yourself. What shall I do?" The day passed slowly, and even through the growing darkness of the evening they could see the lone leaf still hanging from the branch against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night, the wind began to blow again, and the rain began to fall heavily.”

But the next morning when Johnsy commanded that the curtain be raised again, the leaf was still there.

Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue. "I've been a bad girl, Sue", said Johnsy. "Something has made the last leaf stay there just to show me how bad I was. It was a sin to want to die.

You may bring me a little soup now — and then put some pillows behind me and I will sit up and watch you cook."

An hour later Johnsy said, "Sue some day I want to paint a picture of the Bay of Naples."

The doctor came in the afternoon.

"You are doing fine", he said, taking Johnsy's thin hand in his. "In another week or so you will be perfectly well.

And now I must go to see another patient downstairs.

His name is Behrman. He is some kind of artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is very severe. There is no hope for him, but I am sending him to the hospital in order to make him more comfortable."

The next day, Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay. "The doctor tells me that soon you will be perfectly well again", Sue said, putting her arm around Johnsy. Johnsy smiled at her happily.

"Isn't it wonderful?" Sue continued.

"But now I have something important to tell you. Old Mr. Behrman died in the hospital this morning of pneumonia. He was sick only two days. They found him in his room the morning of the first day helpless with pain and fever. His shoes and clothing were completely wet and icy cold. They couldn't figure out where he had been on such a terrible night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, a ladder, and some other things which showed that, during the wind and the rain, he had climbed up and painted a green leaf on the wall of the house opposite. Didn't you think it was strange that the leaf never moved when the wind blew. Ah, darling, it was Behrman's real masterpiece, — he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell". (1862—1910)

POETRY

Where the Mind is Without Fear

-Rabindranath Tagore Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake SULABH INDIA

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FILM REVIEW

Aakrant Captures the Essence of Tribal Life n

Nishant Nirvana

T

he textual theme of Aakrant is socially and culturally constructed on exclusions leading to marginalization of individuals and communities on the basis of identity markers. The narrative of Aakrant revisits rhythm of tribal life which is lost somewhere in the discourse of multiculturalism and globalisation.

A film by Vinod Kumar, writer, director and dramatist, invariably arouses inquisitiveness, both among cine-goers and critics. It is even more interesting if it happens to be the first film of the director and the subject it deals with is being portrayed on celluloid for the first time.

The ground has just been broken by a theatre artiste, writer, and director Vinod Kumar whom the people know more as a pathfinder of group theatre in Hindi. His maiden debut as a film director in Akrant has caused a sensation, in Jharkhand and also elsewhere.

Vinod Kumar has told the story in a manner which would pervade the human mind all over the world; the story of people who are still being denied the basic human rights of justice and fair play. Their womenfolk are still subjected to man’s eternal desire.

The hunger of the jungle engulfs the young boy Teju whose father, Bandhan, was murdered by some

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brick-kiln owners where he worked to earn a few rupees. The village Mahajan connives with the forest contractor to rape Phulmani, the young, vibrant wife of Bandhan.

That was 12 years ago. When Karma, his friend, goes to the thana to lodge first information report about the rape, he is arrested on a false charge of theft. Phulmani is again raped within the police station and Karma is whisked away and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. Teju is a silent spectator to all this.

The story of Akrant does not end there.

The tyranny goes on till an empathetic Forest Officer appears on the scene, but he is also transferred

by the mechanization of money power wielded by the mafia. But, an activist comes to the rescue of tribals, who counsels them on their rights and privileges and teaches them how to revolt. The darkness in the forest suddenly lit up with hundreds of mashals against the system and the quietness comes alive with the beats of the drum. The night, hitherto an ally of the mafia is suddenly transformed into an adversary.

For the first time, a film will have tribal music with local instruments.

It has also some Nagpuria songs.

Padmashree Dr. Ram Dayal Munda has conducted the tribal music. It is a film which has the essence of a tribal life which is essentially subhuman despite

The Adivasis are getting restive; they would become aware and aroused. Their conscience will prick one day and that moment may not be far-off

proclamation of Indian independence several decades ago. The light of freedom has not penetrated through the dark shadows cast by evil demons, who are eating into the vitals of humanity in Jharkhand. If one desires a glimpse of the simmering discontent among the tribals in Jharkhand, the film Akrant is an excellent guide.

Yet, it is not a picture just to document the theories of tribal exploitation. It goes on telling you the sad episode and the saga of tribal life which until a few years ago was so peaceful, so eloquent in dance and music that it seemed that the Subarnarekha stood still in the backdrop of Ranchi hills. The song of the deep and dark Saranda forest could be heard from afar and river Koel

A

would have flown in tranquillity.

But, the peace has been broken.

The people have been put under duress, as the industrialization of the valley progressed. The wouldbe beneficiaries become the first casualties at the altar of the civilization.

The Adivasis are getting restive; they would become aware and aroused.

Their conscience will prick one day and that moment may not be far-off.

It is here that Vinod and his team of film makers passes with flying colours.

Except for three from Bombay and one from Kolkata all other artistes are locals, who are acting for the first time, yet they act with the same aplomb of any experienced actor or actress.

Sreela Majumdar from Kolkata appears in Phulmani’s role while

Sadashiv Amarapurkar as contractor, C.D. Dubey as Mahajan and Shakila Majid as Sugni from Mumbai.

All other roles are played by local artistes including Bandhan (Kishlay), Karma (Vishwanath Oraon), Teju (Rohit), junior Teju (Master Abhay), Sukra (Baldeo Thakur), Banke Behari (Trilochan Jha), Sanichara (Kanu Sarkar), Masood Jami (Range Officer of forest), Tapas Chakravorty (Activist) and director Vinod Kumar in Divisional Forest Officer Rahul’s role.

The film is a silent scream of tribal consciousness, a journey of discovering passion for justice and equality for those who are marginalised and fighting for justice and existence.

Eureka! Eureka!

rchimedes was a Greek scientist. He lived in Syracuse nearly 2200 years ago. The King of the land wanted to wear a Golden Crown. He gave some gold to a goldsmith to make a suitable crown. After few days, the goldsmith brought the finished crown to the King. The crown was weighed. The weight of the crown was equal to the gold given to the goldsmith by the King. The King looked at the color of the crown. He had a suspicion. The goldsmith could have stolen some gold from the gold given to him. The King wanted to find out the truth. He asked his court scientist Archimedes to find out. The King said, “Find out how much gold had been stolen?"

How to find out the truth? Archimedes thought about the problem day and night. One day he was about to have his bath, but he was busy thinking. He did not notice the bathtub. The water in the bathtub was already full to the brim. He slid into the bathtub.

Immediately a large quantity of water flowed over the brim of the bath tub. He noticed this suddenly. His brain wave worked suddenly. He jumped out of the bathtub, shouting, “Eureka! Eureka!" Eureka in Greek means “I have found it."

Different metals of the same weight have different volumes. Objects, put in water, will displace water. The displaced water will be equal to their volume.

For example, an iron cube weighing a kilogram will disperse some water. But an aluminium cube of the same weight will displace more water than the iron cube.

Archimedes knew all these theories. Using this as the basic knowledge, Archimedes worked out a plan to find out the purity of the crown.

Archimedes took two bowls. He filled them with water to the brim. Then he placed each bowl separately in the middle of the large vessels. He placed the crown in one bowl. Water overflowed. It collected at the bottom of the outer vessel. Then he took a cube of pure gold. This cube of gold was equal in weight to the crown. He kept this gold cube in the middle of the second bowl.

Here also water overflowed. Water got collected at the bottom of the outer bowl.

Archimedes then measured the quantity of water in the two vessels. He found out the difference in the water overflow. The crown had sent out more water. The cube of gold had sent out less water. But both the crown and the gold cube were of the same weight. So, they should have sent out the same quantity of water. Therefore, the crown had some other metals mixed in it. These metals took up more space in the water than pure gold.

Archimedes reported this finding to the King. The King demanded the truth from the goldsmith. The goldsmith then confessed.

He had stolen some gold. He had added some other metals.

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Sanitation

Debate on sanitation is over and toilet wins Great ideas or statements of good intention don’t work if they do not take into account the context, history, values, level of economic development, education and social prejudices, piled up layer upon layer over many centuries. Nor can law alone end evils; our Constitution has abolished untouchability, dowry, child marriage, caste system and many more evil practices in society but they are still practised in full view.

Similarly, we have law to end manual scavenging which will not take full effect until we launch social campaigns, educate the masses to create a habit of toilet use and provide technological options. n

S.P. Singh

W

hen the Sulabh Founder, Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, said in a speech, “Sanitation is our religion”, it was dismissed as rhetorical flourishes and we wondered how sanitation and religion could mix; religion is faith while sanitation is science. But when the two distinguished leaders of India’s two

largest parties–Mr. Narendra Modi and Mr. Jairam Ramesh–talked of toilet and temple in the same breath (though in different ways), we discovered that sanitation is divine, the way Gandhiji said “Cleanliness is Godliness.”

Stripped of political controversy, both the leaders are on the same page; for both of them advocated passionately

to build toilets before temple ("Pehle Shauchalaya, Phir Devalaya") or toilet is more sacred than temple. Here, for once, the two parties were united to promote sanitation – an issue for which Dr. Pathak has worked all his life to raise it from the stinking dark lanes of broken houses to become the top national concern which is manifest

Spears, Dean , July 2013, "Coming up short in India" Accessed at : http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/xj6CrTVwZZwZg0EYRQEc0M/Coming-up-short-in-India.html

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by the statements of two distinguished leaders.

Let it be noted that the Indus Valley Civilization was great because its cities had a developed sanitation system when most Western countries were hunters, Normans were rampaging Europe and America was not even discovered. It was an enlightened and developed civilization which set the pace for modern world. Herodotus says those who ignore history will have to relive it. We have forgotten our history hence, we have sanitation problem of such a scale that it threatens the life of people, growth and our dreams of a great nation of this century.

World Bank quotes that the country loses about $54 billion (Rs 3,24,000 crore) annually in premature deaths and treatment of the sick, wasted time and productivity and lost tourism revenue. More than 5 lakh children die every year and more diseases are caused by bad sanitation. Half of the population defecates in the open and the lack of modern sanitation is the source of diarrhoea and other

diseases. Economist Dean Spears says the stunting of Indian children is because of bad sanitation and not so much due to malnourishment because bad sanitation reduces the ability of children to absorb food nutrients .

Why Excreta Matters Environmentalist Sunita Narain says in her book, Why Excreta Matters that

The Indus Valley Civilization was great because its cities had a developed sanitation system when most Western countries were hunters, Normans were rampaging Europe and America was not even discovered

many cities are drowning in their own excreta. Many drains (Najafgarh in Delhi and Buddha nullah in Ludhiana) were earlier rivers. The Mithi in Mumbai was a river and now it has vanished because the city has filled it up with wastes, and people encroached the land. She says that the Yamuna, the Cauvery, and the Damodar rivers will also vanish like the Mithi river some day. This all started following flushing of toilet waste and industrial effluents into rivers. The urban waste will someday wipe out modern civilization and reduce it to become history. The fact is that mountains of statistics are available to highlight the importance of sanitation. Rather, it has become a pastime now to quote sanitation figures and its consequences in books, articles, and speeches. But as Karl Marx has said: “We know history, but the problem is how to change it.�

Dr. Pathak has spent almost all his life working in the field of sanitation and on abolishing manual scavenging.

He completed his Ph.D. and a series of academic works while setting up the Sulabh Shauchalaya Sansthan in 1970 which later evolved to be renamed in its present avatar as Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, working all over the country and in many countries abroad. He says "the first most effective way to end open

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Sanitation defecation is to set up Sulabh toilets, based on two-pit pour-flush on-site scavenging-free technology, which is affordable, culturally appropriate and adaptable in different social, economic and climatic conditions." The onsite waste disposal system is a new concept which, if adopted universally, will largely keep our rivers pollutionfree and cities clean. It does not need manual scavenging and is absolutely sustainable and socially, economically and culturally acceptable.

Until now, we have the standard sewage waste disposal system which is costly, and which needs scavengers. With a sense of great pride Sulabh has built 1.5 million Sulabh toilets in individual houses and more than 9000 public toilets throught the country. The Government of India in collaboration with the State governments. has also built 60 million toilets based on Sulabh design. Dr. Pathak liberated more than 2 lakh scavengers from the inhuman system of manual scavenging who were victims of the worst form of untouchability. The Sulabh toilet system is addressing all these problems. The Sulabh system has been applauded both nationally and internationally. Now the facilities provided by it are being used by more than 20 million people everyday. However, best of ideas don’t work if they don't take into account the context and history.

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No progress in human affairs is possible until men and women can be found who challenge the accepted beliefs, social order and prevailing technologies. For that matter, the Sulabh Founder, Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, has set up a new standard in public conduct and low-cost technology innovation.

The sewerage may have been good in Western context but costly and requires expensive maintenance in developing countries. Even in India out of 7935 towns only 929 towns and cities have sewer lines and that too partial. Only 160 towns have sewerage treatment plant (STP) and in the remaining towns/cities sewerage is disposed of in the rivers, nallas etc.

BBC Horizon has featured

Sulabh technology as one of the five unique inventions of the world, UNDP, WHO, UNICEF, UN-Habitat and other international agencies have recommended the use of this technology. Thus, Sulabh can say with full conviction that its technologies can solve the problems of 2.3 billion people on the planet, especially in the three continents of Africa, Asia and Latin America where people have no access to safe and hygienic toilet facilities.

However, there is no last word on technology which has produced the modern world. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is inviting new ideas to build a toilet which “should be a waterless and hygienic toilet that does not need a sewer connection or electricity and which costs less than five cents per user, per day.”

Great idea may look like a hunt for the holy grail in the beginning. But great things have small beginning.

(The Sulabh on-site concept is one).

Technology has averted famine, and produced enough food for the world; it has reduced diseases, ended many social prejudices. Technology has also produced weapons deadly enough to wipe out continents on a push of a button. To be true, we live in a very dangerous world which wisdom, more than technology, can save.

Manual Scavenging We have many social evils like manual scavenging, untouchability and social discriminations which have been associated with toilets and they should also be addressed sooner than later. Law alone will not end manual scavenging; the State governments and the Central Government have passed laws and have allocated funds for scavengers’ rehabilitation 13 States have identified 13,368 manual scavengers up to Aug. 2017.

After liberating the untouchable scavengers, Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak developed a holistic plan to restore human rights and dignity of female scavengers and bring them into the mainstream of society. Firstly, he got them relieved from the work of cleaning human excreta manually by converting dry latrines into Sulabh flush toilets. Thus, the owners of the bucket toilets got the Sulabh flush toilets. Secondly, he set up a centre called Nai Disha at Alwar and Tonk in Rajasthan to provide liberated scavengers with education and vocational training to earn their livelihood. They are being paid a monthly stipend of Rs. 3700 to each of them as subsistence allowance

by Sulabh. The centre has been set up exclusively for the women scavengers. So far more than 500 woman scavengers have been liberated and rehabilitated in other dignified occupations and freed from the stigma of untouchability and assimilated in the mainstream of the society.

Social Values The solution, Dr. Pathak says, lies in changing the habits, imparting social values through education, and training and social mobilization carried over a long period. Sulabh has set up such training and rehabilitation centres in Alwar and Tonk in Rajasthan, and has demonstrated how social change can be brought about, not by law or punishment, but by education and persuasion. Sulabh believes that as long as there are people among us who are considered untouchables by birth, the country cannot progress and the dream of Mahatma Gandhi cannot be fulfilled. Dr. Pathak has written in his books how he had to swallow cow-dung and urine to clean up when he touched an “untouchable” Dom woman in his childhood. This is the common experience for many of us.

Social untouchability has become a habit which routinely we practise as a religious practice. We have to change it.

This is also true of using toilets.

The government has built 8.7 crore

household toilets under the Swachh Bharat Mission launched by the Government of India, but still many people don’t use toilets; rather they use them for household purposes like storing grains etc. And as many as 3.5 crore toilets are reported “missing” .

The fact is that they are used for other purposes. Use of toilet is not the “felt need” in the rural areas. We have to make that.

Thus, when we talk of toilets, we are talking of the whole civilization– economy, social values, mindsets, religious beliefs, political culture, and habits–which have piled up over many generations and which cannot be changed in a small timeframe.

Social change takes its own time to happen, related as it is with social development, economic growth, education and social values. Now we have to start the process. Sulabh has done that and covered a long distance towards a social change by building a full sanitation regime as manifest in the statements of the two political leaders, both of whom are changemakers. Sulabh welcomes it.

Telegraph, April, 2013, "Toilet scam leaps out of closet", Accessed at : http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120418/jsp/frontpage/story_15387948.jsp#.Umj_8I3raUk

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D

istinguished Guests

June 04, 2018: Ms. Jessica Skjonsby, Public Health student of 2nd Year Master Degree from Saint Katherine University, USA, Prof. Awadhesh Kumar Sharma, a Former Professor of English, Dr. Arvind Kumar, Vice-Chancellor, Indira Gandhi Technological and Medical Science University, Arunachal Pradesh, Dr. Anil Dutta Mishra, Former Professor, Political Science, Rajarshi Open University, U.P. seen with Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, Social Reformer and Founder of the Sulabh Sanitation Movement, after the morning prayer at Sulabh Gram. Sitting in the front former scavengers liberated by Sulabh.

June 05, 2018: Shri Narasimhan Eshwar, Senior Vice-President, (South Asia), and Shri Ravi Bhatnagar, Head External Affairs and Partnerships, Reckitt Benckiser, looking at the Sulabh two-pit pour-flush compost toilet model, during their visit to Sulabh Gram.

June 07, 2018: Dr. Meenu Kumar, Adviser, Oisca International Tokyo, Japan, her son Mr. Vignesh Kumar and Ms. Laxmi Dayal from Uttarakhand seen with Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, and some students of the Sulabh Vocational Training Centre after morning prayer assembly at Sulabh Gram.

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June 08, 2018: Mr. Ramesh Chander, and Mr. Yajuvendra Singh, Managers (Operations) CSDCI and Sameer Rawat, Asst.

Manager, looking at the different artefacts being displayed at the Sulabh International Museum of Toilets, during their visit to Sulabh Gram.

June 09, 2018: Ms. Subhaisa Sar, Ms. Pronalika Sarkar, and Ms. Debbani Sarkar, students (MSW, 1st year) from Visva Bharti Shantiniketan University, West Bengal, with Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak at Sulabh Gram.

June 20, 2018: Mr. Rohit Kumar, Director (States & State Development Council) PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry, New Delhi, smelling a flask of effluent treated water through the Sulabh Effluent Treatment Plant, rendering it odourless, colourless and pathogen-free, during his visit to Sulabh Gram.

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D

istinguished Guests

June 20, 2018: Mr. Sameer Verma, Mathura Municipal Commissioner, looking at the procedure of warming oneself using methane gas harnessed from biogas plant linked with Sulabh Public Toilet Complex, during his visit to Sulabh Gram.

June 22, 2018: Mr. Archit Agarwal, Chief Executive Officer, Redroom Technology, New Delhi and a student of IIT, Delhi, being briefed on the activities of the Sulabh Ideal Health Centre, during their visit to Sulabh Gram.

June 25, 2018: Mr. Abhishek Raj, former Site Engineer of L&T, Patna, looking at the Sulabh Water ATM which provides one litre of purified water for Rs.1 during his visit to Sulabh Gram.

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June 30, 2018: Mr. Tim Rupnarain, pursuing Masters Degree in International Development, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA, Ms. Alexandra Card, pursuing Bachelors Degree in History and Political Science, University of Michigan, St. Clair, Michigan, USA and Mr. Divas Vatsa, studying English Literature and a ConsultantSocial Impact, University of Delhi, being explained the procedure of making sanitary napkin at the Sanitary Napkin Facilitation Centre, during their visit to Sulabh Gram.

July 02, 2018: Ms. Brenna LaPerle, Public Health student from Massachusetts College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences, USA, Ms. Hannah Lindgren, and Ms. Julia Adams, both undergraduate students from Lawrence University, USA, Ms. Sarah Clifford, undergraduate student from Washington and Lee University, USA, Ms. Whitney Rader, Public Health student from Oregon State University, USA, Ms. Harleen Marwah, and Ms. Ghazal Rashidi, both 2nd year Medical students from the George Washington University, USA relaxing at a Sulabh Swachhta Rath during their visit to Sulabh Gram.

July 03, 2018: Ms. Nirmala Paranavitana, Minister, High Commission of Sri Lanka, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi, along with her daughter receiving a copy of the book “The Making of a Legend” from its author, Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak during their visit to Sulabh Gram.

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Sulabh News from States

RAJASTHAN

Jaipur

Five-seater Modern Community Toilet Complex opened in Jaipur Corporation premises President, State Women Commission, Mrs. Shalini Chawla, Councillor, Ward 52, officials of the Municipal Corporation, associate members of Sulabh International Social Service Organisation and a

number of dignitaries from the city attended the ceremony. There are separate toilets and bathrooms for men and women. The toilet complex will be managed and maintained on pay-and-use basis.

Hon'ble Mr. Kalicharan Saraf inaugurating the newly-built toilet complex at Gaurav Tower, Jaipur

M

r. Kalicharan Saraf, Hon’ble Minister for Health, Rajasthan inaugurated a five-seater community toilet complex near Gaurav Tower at Jaipur on June 16, 2018. Mrs. Suman Sharma,

Ajmer Toilet Complex for Women

H

on’ble Mr. Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Central Minister for Minority Affairs, inaugurated a 100-seater Sulabh Toilet Complex for women at Kayad, Rest House, Ajmer, on March 19, 2018.

Mr. I.B. Pirzada, Nazim and C.E.O., Dargah Committee Khawaza Saheb Ajmer, Mr. R. Rahman, Secretary and C.E.O. Maulana Azad Education Foundation, associate members of Sulabh and many other dignitaries were present.

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Mr. Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi discussing some points with Mr. Surendra Giri, Controller Jaipur

Jammu & Kashmir

De luxe Sulabh Toilet Complex near Tawi

Mr. Rajesh Gupta, Hon'ble MLA, Jammu (East) inaugurating the newly-built toilet near River Tawi front Park, Vikram Chowk, Jammu on February 12, 2018.

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del uxe Sulabh Toilet Complex having 5 W.C’s for ladies, gents and Divyang, 2 baths, 3 urinals and a caretaker room costing Rs. 13 lakhs near the Tawi river front park of Vikram Chowk, Jammu, was inaugurated

by Mr. Rajesh Gupta, Hon’ble MLA (Jammu East) on February 12, 2018. This toilet complex has been constructed and will be maintained

by Sulabh International Social Service Organisation on pay-and-

use basis for 30 years. Mr. Anil Kumar Singh, Hony. Controller, Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, Jammu & Kashmir welcomed, the Hon’ble MLA and spoke on the sanitation activities being done by Sulabh International.

He disclosed that Sulabh is working in 28 States and has constructed 10,500 public toilets which is being maintained on payand-use basis. Sulabh has also constructed 13 lakhs individual toilets

(Sulabh Shauchalayas) so far.

Mr. Rajesh Gupta appreciated the work done by Sulabh International Social Service Organisation throughout India in the sanitation sector. He said that some more deluxe Sulabh toilets would be constructed in Jammu under ODF scheme. Joint Commissioner (W) JMC, AEE JMC, JE JMC, senior BJP leaders, media persons, police officials and Sulabh volunteers were present at the function.

The newly-built Sulabh toilet complex near river Tawi front Park, Vikram Jammu2018 69 SULABH INDIA Chowk, September

Sulabh News from States

Jammu

Foundation-stone of two Sulabh Toilet Complexes

Mr. Kavinder Gupta, Hon’ble Speaker, J&K Legislative Assembly and Ch. Vikram Randhawa, Hon’ble MLC, Jammu at the foundation-stone laying ceremony of the toilet complex at Narwal Chowk Near PHE Office Jammu on April 24, 2018.

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nder the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Mr. Kavinder Gupta, Hon'ble Speaker of the J&K Assembly, laid the foundationstone of Sulabh toilet complexes at Satwari Chowk on Airport Road and at Narwal Chowk near PHE Office, Jammu, on April 24, 2018 in the presence of Ch. Vikram

The Foundation-stone laying by Mr. Kavinder Gupta, Hon’ble Speaker, J&K Assembly at Satwari Chowk on Airport Road

Randhawa, Hon’ble MLC, Jammu.

The complexes will have 4 W.C’s for ladies and gents, 1 W.C. for Divyang, 2 baths for ladies and gents, 3 urinals and one Caretaker Room. The toilet complexes will cost Rs. 10.5 lakhs and will be constructed and maintained by Sulabh on pay-and-use basis for 10 years.

Mr. Kushal Chand, Jt. Commissioner, Mr. Anil Kumar Singh, Hony. Controller, Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, Jammu & Kashmir, senior BJP Leaders, shopkeepers, media persons, police personnel and Sulabh volunteers were present.

Sulabh Toilet Complex at Bishnah W.C. for Divyang, 2 baths for ladies and gents, 3 urinals and one Caretaker Room. A large number of people, party workers, media persons, the SHO and Sulabh social workers were present.

In his address the Hon’ble MLA said that Sulabh has played a

marvellous role in the Clean India campaign, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.

Sulabh has constructed a beautiful A C toilet for gents, ladies, Children and disabled persons also. Mr. Anil Kumar Singh, Hony. Controller, Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, Jammu and Kashmir, spoke on the activities of Sulabh all over India.

Hon'ble Dr. Kamal Arora (MLA) inaugurating the Sulabh Toilet Complex at Bishnah Tehsil

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fully air-conditioned Sulabh Toilet Complex costing Rs. 14 lakhs and funded under the CDF scheme was inaugurated at Bishnah tehsil of Jammu by Dr. Kamal Arora, Hon’ble MLA, on March 16, 2018. The toilet complex has 4 W.C’s for ladies and gents, 1

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The newly-built Sulabh toilet complex at Bishnah

Sulabh Toilet Complex for Channi Himmat

Hon'ble MLC Mr. Vikram Randhawa laying the foundation stone of a Sulabh toilet complex near Shankar Market, Channi Himmat, Jammu.

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nder the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the foundation-stone of a Sulabh toilet complex having 4 W.C’s for ladies and gents, 1 W.C. for Divyang, 3 urinals and one caretaker room costing Rs 10.50 lakhs was laid near Shankar Market, Channi Himmat Jammu, by Mr. Vikram Randhawa, Hon’ble MLC, on March 23, 2018. This toilet complex will be constructed and maintained by Sulabh International Social Service Organisation on pay-and-use basis for 10 years.

On this occasion Mr. Kushal Chand, Jt. Commissioner (W) JMC, JEE, JMC, AEE JMC, Mr. Anil Kumar Singh, Hony.

Controller, Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, Jammu & Kashmir, senior BJP Leaders, shopkeepers, media persons, police personnel and Sulabh volunteers were present.

Telangana

District Bhuvanagiri

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ulabh International Social Service Organisation has constructed recently toilet blocks for boys and girls in government schools in and around Choutuppal Mandal Yadagiri, Bhuvanagiri district, Telangana State, namely 1) ZPHS-Anikireddy Gudem, 2) ZPHS-Jaikesaram, 3) ZPHSKuntlagudem, 4) MPPS-D Nagaram

At the function the Sarpanch of the Tangadapally Village Mr. Mutukuloju Dayakarachary appreciated the role played

by MIDHANI in allotting CSR Funds for Environment Cleanliness.

(B), 5) MPPS-D Nagaram (G), 6) ZPHS-Chinna Kondur, 7) ZPHSNelapatla, 8) ZPHS-Malkapur, 9) ZPHS-Tangadapally, 10 MPPS- B.C. Colony under the limits of Mishra Dhatu Nigam Limited “MIDHANI”, Hyderabad under the CSR Scheme at a total project cost of Rs. 61,26,553.

A new toilet complex was inaugurated at the Zilla Parishad High School, Tangadapally by K. Rameshwari, Hindi teacher along with Mr. K. Anand Kumar, Additional General Manager (HR), Mishra Dhatu Nigam Limited on June 8, 2018. “MIDHANI”, Mr. K. Shankar Reddy, Head Master of Schools, Mr. M. Dayakar Chari, Sarpanch, Gram Panchayat, and Hony. Controller of Sulabh International, Telangana State and other officials participated at the inaugural function.

The School Toilet Complex, inaugurated at the ZPH Schools, Tangadapally Village, Choutuppal Mandal by K. Rameshwari, Hindi Teacher in the presence of Mr. K. Anand Kumar, Additional General Manager (HR & CM) Mishra Dhatu Nigam Limited (MIDHANI) and Mr. Dayakarchari, Sarpanch, Gram Panhayath. This Toilet Complex was aided by CSR Funds of MIDHANI.

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Sulabh News from States

Karnataka

Mysore

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Community Toilet at Cheluvamba District Hospital, Mysore, was inaugurated by Dr. Nanjaraj H. (Dean & Director) K.R. Hospital. Funded by Antrix corporation Ltd. (ISRO), Bangalore under CSR Scheme, Bangalore, the toilet was constructed at a cost of Rs. 31 lakhs.

Dr. S. Radhamani (Medical Superintendent), Dr. Gangamma (Resident Medical Officer), Dr. Srinivas (Medical Superintendent), Dr. Rajesh (Resident Medical Officer) K.R. Hospital, Mysore, Sh. Purushotham (Office Superintendent), Mr. Mohan (First Division Assistant), Mr. Krishna (First Division

Dr. Nanjaraj H. (Dean & Director) K.R. Hospital inaugurating the toilet complex at Cheluvamba District Hospital, Mysore

Assistant) Mrs. Parvathamma (Nursing Superintendent), Mrs. Janakirani (Nursing Superintendent) of Cheluvamba Hospital, Mysore, Dr. Ranganath B.K (Director (CSR)

Antrix Corporation Ltd. and Mr. M. Viswanatha (Hony. Deputy Controller) Sulabh International Social Service Organisation and Sulabh officials were present on the occasion.

Kerala

Mr. C.K. Ramesan, Chairman of the Thalassery Municipality, inaugurating a Sulabh toilet Complex at Thalassery.

Mr. C.K. Ramesan cutting the ribbon marking the inauguration of the toilet complex in the presence of Mr. Bimal Kumar Jha, Hony. Controller.

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Mr. George G. Tharakan, Director, Airport Authority of India, Trivandrum, cutting the ribbon to inaugurate the men’s wing of the toilet in the presence of Hony. Controller Mr. Bimal Kumar Jha, Kerala region, at the International Airport, Trivandrum.

Mrs. Vasanthi Suresh, Joint General Manager (Civil), Airport Authority of India, Trivandrum, cutting the ribbon to inaugurate the women’s wing of the toilet at the International Airport, Trivandrum.

madhya pradesh

Bhopal

Inauguration of Public Toilet Complexes in M.P. cities

M

r. Alok Sharma, Mayor, Municipal Corporation, Bhopal, and Mr. Surendra Nath Singh, M.L.A., Central Bhopal, jointly launched a Public Toilet Complex at Indira Nagar, Bhopal on February 21, 2018. This complex, having 18 toilets separately for men and women, was constructed

by Sulabh International Social Service Organisation and funded by the Municipal Corporation, Bhopal, under the Swachh Bharat Scheme. Mr. Surjit Singh Chauhan, Chairman, Municipal Corporation, Ms. Santosh Hirway, local Councillor, officials of the Corporation, associate members of Sulabh International and others were present on the occasion.

Newly-built Sulabh toilet complex at Indira Nagar, Bhopal

Indore

The Sulabh toilet complex at Gita Bhawan in Indore

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new toilet complex constructed by Sulabh and funded by the Municipal Corporation under the Swachh Bharat Scheme, was inaugurated near Gita Bhawan in Indore. The complex has separate toilets for men and women.

A large number of people, including officers and employees of the Corporation and associate members of Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, attended the ceremony.

The newly-built Sulabh toilet complex at Satya Sai roundabout in Indore

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Public Toilet Complex, constructed by Sulabh International Social Service Organisation and funded by the Municipal Corporation under the Swachh Bharat Scheme, having separate toilets for men and women, was inaugurated on March 26, 2018 at Satya Sai roundabout in Indore. Officials of the Municipal Corporation and associate members of Sulabh International were among those attended the ceremony.

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Sulabh News from States

Uttar Pradesh

Inauguration of Public Convenience Centre at Dhavarra

Hon'ble Dr. Dinesh Sharma, Deputy Chief Minister, U.P. with Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak and associate members of the Sulabh at the inauguration of the Sulabh Public Convenience Centre at Dhavarra.

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Sulabh centre for public conveniences fully equipped with modern amenities and constructed by the Madhya Pradesh branch of Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, was launched at Dhavarra, (U.P.) by Dr. Dinesh Sharma, Hon’ble Deputy Chief Minister, U.P. The Sulabh Founder, Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, associate members of the Sulabh and a number of dignitaries and social workers were present on the occasion. The centre is fully equipped with modern amenities and has separate toilets, urinals and bathrooms.

The centre also has bio digester, solar plant, sanitary napkin machine, vending machine, handdrier, rainwater harvesting system, toilets for children and the physically challenged and waterless urinals. This is the first pay-and-use type centre of its kind in the rural area in India which is being managed and maintained by the Madhya Pradesh branch of Sulabh International Social Service Organisation. The power is being supplied by solar plant here.

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The newly-built Sulabh toilet complex at Dhavarra (UP)

23rd NIKKEI ASIA P NIKKEI A 2018 23rd SULABH INDIA PRIZE 2018 23rd NI ASIA PRIZE 2018 23 NIKKEI ASIA PRIZE 23rd NIKKEI ASIA P 2018 23rd NIKKEI A PRIZE 2018 23rd NIK ASIA PRIZE 2018 23 NIKKEI ASIA PRIZE 23rd NIKKEI ASIA P 2018 23rd NIKKEI A PRIZE A steady step2018 23rd NI ASIA 2018 23 on a long PRIZE journey NIKKEI ASIA PRIZE 23rd NIKKEI ASIA P ISSN: 2230–7567

R.N.I. Regn. No. 49322/89

NIKKEI ASIA PRIZE 2018 Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak dedicated this award to the downtrodden section of the society for whom he is waging a campaign for more than five decades. He said, “This award will be another milestone in my commitment to the service of the society in Asia in particular and the world in general”.

SEPTEMBER 2018, ` 20/-