Mouli reacts to my concerns about expanding population!

It seems I really provoked my dear friend Mouli to get this reaction.

Nidhi, Don't let these do-gooder J types put a topi on your head ! These English spouting writers sitting in ac rooms giving out their pathetic vedic utterances and suggesting slogan like solutions read and read and talk and talk and then write out the same stuff that Swami Vivekananda spotted a Century ago.

I quote R J: 'There are five things we have to fix quickly: education, labour markets, economic policy, governance and corruption.'

Mouli retired as teacher and this is what he says about (fixing?) Education.

EDUCATION stupid EDUCATION. Unlike our days of school (in suburban city environment) when we were basically left-on-our own, there are five asuraas (Devils) who will never let any good happen or last longer than they wish ! The Neta, the Baabu, the Laala, the Jhola and the Daada. (The leader-politician, the bureaucrat, the business man, the journalist-intellectual and the godfather!)

Here is a window from a UNESCO/NCERT committee that looked at the status of girl's education- in rural India and in slum India: Most girls from below or marginal poverty levels stop going to their broken down, often no teachers, blackboardles, benchless, bookless schools and 65-to-a class rooms at 12 or below; know why ?

Not because of the previous finding ! They begin menstruating around 12, and there no bathrooms ! Wait; crores have been sanctioned for this very necessary facility( one hole in the ground, bucket of filthy water and a plastic mug, no roof) at so many bathrooms per girl etc. The women members of this" great committee" who spoke to the girls and their parents and women teachers reported this as the PRIMARY reason for girls not going beyond grade 6/7.( Boys of course race to the nearest walls and bushes)

Where did the crores go ? Into the deep pockets of the asuraas. Asuraas also pocketed money sanctioned for free school lunches and gave these hungry kids stone filled rice with water called sambar !.

Thank God ! Kerala, Tamilnaadu and some parts of Karnataka( old Mysore and the two Kanaras) came out relatively well. Some of these asura ridden districts have Central ministers as their MPs. who are educating their kids at expensive boarding or private schools. Let me finish: schools located in Dalit and BC areas came out worst with no hope. The ones with a majority of ruling castes( Jaatis) came out better !

More about Governance, Labor policy blah blah. (Hopefully later?)

No need to talk about corruption. Listen to Justice Hegde Karnataka's Lok Ayukta on this subject..

Then Sethu, another NRI just returned to India, said this;

'was chatting with a real estate broker y'day- he told me that for a 100 crore project, the builders have to pay approximately 25 crores as payments/bribes etc to various authorities! The magnitude of the % took me by surprise...

Reminds me about a civil contractor who told me 50 odd years ago 'We should have a subject in our engineering colleges on how to give bribe effectively'. He was so disgusted with the system that prevailed at that time! Obviously nothing has changed, except for the magnitude of projects and thus bribes!

There must be an answer to all this! But at the moment I am at a loss for words except to echo another pathetic utterance I hear often 'There is no hope!'