What is he thinking??

Just saw this article on Times of India,'Rahul Gandhi assails security focus on VIPs' .
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Rahul_Gandhi_assails_security_focus_on_VIPs/articleshow/3824194.cms

How lame is that? Is he actually supporting the fact that our 'VIPs' get so much of over-protection?? How can he justify saying this, especially when the figures clearly show that the budget for protecting the VIPs is more than for protecting the nation? How I wish I could ask him this!!!

Liberated?

Nita's post 'Women at Work', made me ponder on women working in India - how equal are we?

Women have been working for ages in India - as domestic helps or doing manual labour. How do we classify this? Are these women not forced to work in order to earn a living? When we talk about feminism - where do these women figure? Are they liberated or are they being used?
I used to have a maid servant who had a husband who used to turn up just once in a while to beat her up and take any money that he could lay his hands on.. It used to make my heart break to listen to her. Despite all that, she was determind to try and get her daughter and son educated - so that at least they have a chance at a better life!

Even in case, of educated working women, how many of us have husbands who help us out at home? Even if they do - the main responsibility seems to lie on the women. Why is it, that true equality is just not happening? It is assumed that everything related to 'home' is the women's responsibility - so what if she has an equally , if not more challenging job outside! There was one time, when my own husband - who is extremely lazy, was lying in bed when I got back from work - and I had just sat down, to take a breather - when he said - ' You are sitting down? - can't you see, I am hungry!' That made me see RED!!! I was like, 'oh really? Well I am certainly not cooking anymore- If you are hungry make something yourself!' Anyways, that resulted in my husband getting hold of a cook the very next day- which certainly made our lives much easier - but the unfairness of it still irks me - and I have still not stopped reminding him:)

So is 'working women' in any form - a liberation? I would think so in a lot of ways , and again in a lot of ways, the true liberation is to be able to decide when you want to work and when you want to stay at home. To be fair to my husband - he has always been supportive of me in my decisions to work or not to work. When I was working - he was always supportive, and when after 8 yrs of working , when I wanted to be a stay at home mum to my 1.5 yr old - he was equally supportive. To think of it, I do feel liberated that I have the choice - unlike so many of our fellow women - who have to work, whether they like it or not.

The Girl Child

One of the things, high on my to-do list when I get back to India is to join a charity or an NGO to help improve the condition of the girl child in India. This is something very, very close to my heart and I want to do what I can, to help.

It is a sad statement, that in a time where we have everyone talking of minorities - there is one minority which is essentially ignored and treated badly almost across religious barriers - the womenfolk. Even in today's modern world, where women contribute as much (if not more)- they are just not given their due place in society.

I have been brought up in a culture which values girls - we have a matrilineal society - so I have never felt this discrimination. The very first time, that I was aware of this distinction was when one of our neighbours in Jamshedpur, had a baby boy. Now, they had 4 daughters already and when the boy was born - they actually had a party which could rival any wedding! What was exceptionally shocking was, that for the 7 or 8 years that we lived there - never had we seen a single birthday being celebrated for those girls. I wonder what must have gone through those girls' minds to see such blatant discrimination.... It was also a very common practice for families to send their sons to English medium schools and daughters to Hindi medium schools. And all this was among educated families - so I shudder to think what must happen in the less educated ones...

It pains me that even today, female foeticide is common , and totally acceptable in several parts of India. I guess, it might be more shocking for them to hear someone say that they would prefer to have a girl. What is most shocking is that this happens even among the educated people . This was something I always knew, but what shocked me more was that it was even prevalent among Indians(Asians as a whole) in the UK. When I was pregnant( I was in London, where they tell you the sex of the baby), and was told by the ultrasound technician that I was expecting a girl - my joy knew no bounds. I was however stunned when he asked - ' Are you guys OK with it? Your community prefers boys, don't they?' I was surprised that he ( he was not Asian) knew about this. This prompted me to look it up on the Internet only to find out that in several areas in the UK where the Asian population was high -they actually avoid telling people the sex of the baby, for fear that they would abort it!

The sad thing in India is, that despite the fact that it is not allowed by law to find the sex of a foetus, it is still done and foetuses aborted without a second thought. This mainly happens because the society is still fixated on boys being the harbinger of all things joyful and girls being a burden. The main difference being that for a girl, you need to give dowry. I have heard of families who start saving up from the time that they had a girl. That reminds me of a maid, who used to stay at our outhouse. This lady, apparently, did not feed her baby girl for 2 weeks after she was born, because she just did not want a girl. At the point when my mother first met her, she used to treat her son and daughter very differently. Her daughter was always asked to give everything first to her brother and the boy was never, ever asked to share. Slowly, in the 3 years that they stayed there, my mother managed to make her understand that she needs to treat both her son and daughter equally and to try and give both of them equal opportunities. The best part was that the daughter was much, much smarter than the son - I do hope she has not forgotten everything my mother had managed to drill into her!

I guess, such examples abound in our society and things will never change until each of us do our bit to fight this menace. I do believe that we can all do our bit to help remove this stigma. I would like to sponsor the education of a girl - so that at least one girl gets a better chance at life.. I do hope that by the time my 2 yr old daughter grows up - she will never have to be shocked that these kind of things still exist in our society.

Other interesting links on the subject

Stop female foeticide!

http://unwantedgirlchild.blogspot.com/

http://wordpress.com/tag/unchaahi/

Security and the Indian Politician..

My husband and I was discussing about how over-protected the Indian Politician is, when he mentioned reading the article in Times of India which actually gives the statistics..

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3786239.cms

It was such a shocking read, that for a nation of 1 billion people, they actually have budgeted less than for the security for the political class. It is not just shocking but also disgusting! These heavily protected people - all with the money, that we pay as tax-payers, give little thought to the people who they supposedly represent. It is such a sad state of affairs that the corruption has reached such a point where it could actually cause physical harm to the people of India. I also read somewhere that Black Cat protection, for certain politicians, were actually negotiation points for providing support during confidence votes. It just shows the degree to which our political system has degenerated.
The only thing I hope for, is that, this is indeed, the turning point and the people's anger propels forward a new face to Indian politics.

We can do it!

Almost everybody I speak to , or I read about, is talking about 'clean politics', 'new leadership' , 'change the system','clean up politics'...

As I was reading through various blogs, I remembered that a group of IITians had created a new political party. So I decided to google and find out what happened to it.

The website for this party is http://www.lok-paritran.org/. From the look of it, they certainly look like they really want to make a change. Seeing their qualifications and the fact that they have certainly abandoned highly lucrative careers - they probably mean it. For me, it is enough to see some faces that different, for haven't we been voting for the same bunch of politicians(or their families) for ages - isn't it time to try giving others a chance. I certainly hope, we get to see more of these types of political parties - full of young people with a vision... and who knows, we might even find our vey own Obama...

Links to this post - The Indian Homemaker

Addicted!

Its official! I am totally addicted to blog surfing. I am avid reader - I can read anything and everything and I am always with a book in my hand. This has now changed. I still read non-stop but I have started reading blogs instead! I am hooked on the mobile phone, surfing blogs incessantly. And I am finding it extremely difficult to stop.

This is my tribute to all those wonderfully talented blogger who have made my blog surfing experience so very worth it! I am following some of my very favourite blogs
Doing Jalsa and Showing Jilpa - Krish Ashok's sense of humour is absolutely amazing.
Let's Put Da - Ramesh Srivats take on the current events is great.
The Life and Times of an Indian Home Maker - I love her posts - especially the ones on feminism - they are truly inspirational.

And life goes on...

It is almost a week since the terror attacks on Mumbai..and I am ashamed to say that after 4 days of being glued to the television and almost non-stop discussions - now things are back to normal at my home.
Ofcourse, I am in faraway Leeds - faraway from Mumbai - so I guess it is probably normal. This just made me wonder if this is how our politicians feel - distant and cocooned from everything that the common man in India endures. Maybe with all the Z category security, they just donot feel the impact as much. That must be the reason why so many of them have come out with such callous statements. These statements, came from across the cross-section of parties - that just re-affirms my faith that every party in India is the same - full of the same kind of people.

The silver lining, this time, is that, thankfully, the Indian Government seems to have been forced to take some action - in both tackling the gaps within our security as well as putting the pressure on Pakistan. We also seem to be having the tacit support of the US - that hopefully will make some difference.
Most importantly, I do hope that this serves as the turning point that everybody is talking about. I hope that the Indian public anger results in
1. Rooting out the criminal elements in our political class.
2. Forcing the political class to be accountable,
3. Making the politicians realise that they cannot take the Indian public for granted,
4. Encouraging a new wave of fresh politicians who do not treat politics as their family business, instead, are really interested in trying to lead India to a glorious and safe tomorrow.