SARKAR RAJ – Pre Release

Ambalal Kausty – an active, experienced and a person with involvement in political activities could not get help for his own family from the authorities. (“BJP can’t protect my family”, 25 March, Ahmedabad Mirror) 

How much assurance ‘Modi Sarkar’ provides that they would protect our families, our daughters from anti-social elements? Bugle blower of fighting terrorism, Mr. Modi & party appear to be unable of handling the social violence. It is alarming for any of us to be alert and aware of the domestic issues around our neighborhood. It is very usual to find bigheaded individuals in every locality. We ignore such things and our liberal approach towards them is often encouraging for such people, as Ambalal Kausty had their daughter-in-law left harassed by a local garage guy in Kankaria. They were even threatened and attacked with weapons. It’s a shame that even being an active member of a ruling political party Ambalal cannot get justice for his family’s honour. Why should someone even have to use his political connections to protect the women of his family? Are the law system and the police completely handicapped? Does a victim always need a political relation to get protected or to get justice? Common men’s honour and security are at stake, and have no value in this Modi’s hierarchical power planner. You will be served better, how better your relations are! This government is reaching the highest number of rapes, women assaults, child abuses and there are countless little problems around us. “The number of rape offences registered last year in Gujarat jumped from 253 in September to 336, by 2005 end.” (16 Feb 2006, Sourav Mukherjee , TNN). Our faces are still red with the shameful slap of Patan college incident. 

A few anti-socials are not just troubling some women or individuals but they are murdering the social dignity in daylight. Any development and technological industrializations are futile when they are ignoring the social security of the citizens, especially of women. No political party or no government had such an extreme dominance over the people and the social system in past, if we talk about Gujarat. We seem to be least secure with our lives, our dignity and our social disposition at present. Human lives have gone cheaper compared to material development. 

It is also not restricted to the individuals only, there are convicts who are pain for the whole locality, or to the organizations and still they roam free despite of getting charged for serious offences. They get out of jail merely within two days with their political powers. For instance, Gandhi Ashram residents suffer including some local innocent families and even some gandhians too. They are humiliated with the indecent activities around; they are abused with their belongings and bearing the damages to their reputation and businesses. Gandhi Ashram itself is being disgraced falsely by some individuals on regular basis. Ashram trustees are inactive and ignorant even about such serious tribulations in this heritage premises. Spiritless local authorities and political backing to such anti-socials work well and social integrity get killed here every other day. An immense amount of pain spills over when such things happen in a place which is the source of inspiration to non-violence, peace and humanity through the whole world. It is the place which gives Gujarat and Ahmedabad an identity through the world to feel proud of. It is up to us how much should we care about it?  

Sneh Bhavsar | 25 March 2008, Ahmedabad

Morality Declines!

Children are the real asset of the country. How much care we are taking of our national wealth? The beauty of childhood has lost over parents’ hyper-sensitive approach for their children’s success, be it in school examination or in a curriculum competition. Success at any cost! There was a time, mothers sang poems and fathers swung their children in parks. Sparing designated time to children’s study was a part of daily routine for parents. Utmost they could do is to provide extra tuitions and expecting more hard work from kids in order to reach the top results. But the appetite for success has gone beyond limits.  

Students are at immense pressure and it is more than ever. They spend hours at school, go for tuitions, spend their evening at learning swimming, cricket, singing, dancing or playing piano and then piles of home work and practice. Parents do not want their child to fall second in anything. We made up our minds before some time believing that it is a competitive age with the growing population and flooding opportunities in our country. We understood the seriousness of the contest in every domain. But we are facing moral decline against achieving success. It has been observed over the years that human morality is touching grounds in some cases, where people are vulnerable to any inhuman act. Money can buy anything and anything could be done to make money. This modern philosophy is seemingly eradicating moral values in this generation of people.  

As we have seen in recent board examinations in Gujarat, how money and power tried to rule over the ethos of education system. Last few days were completely shocking which ruined the trust over education system and teachers. We are yet to come over the pain of Patan incident. Teachers are playing evils and parents train their kids how to get success at any cost. Most basic sources of learning in a human’s preliminary life are not performing pure. Provocative media, conspiracies in public life, nudity served in news papers, pushing boundaries of entertainment world, and hardcore technological life style – all these have made our children grown before time and have left them with no ethical and disciplinary education. ‘Innocence’ has been isolated from children. Being responsible entities of the society we all – parents, teachers and all of us are accountable for it. It is in our hands, what we want our kids to be. The society expects and we are to decide between raising a clean human or encouraging corrupted success.   

Sneh

Ahmedabad | 19 March 2008

NUDE CUISINE

Your eyes may remain wide open when you would hear the children secretly, who are as little as 9 or 10. You must have also seen sharply speaking and amazingly loaded little champs on television. All thanks to our ultra metro media and news papers, who help them grow very quickly. The biggest responsibility of the media is to evaluate any kind of material before they present it to the people. They are often the carrier of social issues, trends and accurate news not stories. Let’s blame the media some other day, but have we ever raised our voices against the nudity they serve in your daily news paper? No! 

Times of India have been an authentic news group for long and now their supplementary edition Ahmedabad Mirror is at your doorsteps every morning. What you get is more than a few celebrities from Bollywood and Hollywood posing in two pieces. This has become the regular content. Why would you need them at all? Before nearly 5-6 years, even adolescences used to hesitate to touch the Gujarat Samachar’s Friday supplement ‘Chitralok’ contained with full size multi-colored celebrity pictures, in presence of their parents. But at present it is unavoidable as the leading news papers print them openly and every single day. They may argue, it is the news and we want to sell. There could be news about anyone but does it really need an attached nude image only? Accepting globalization, urbanization and being open-minded is good, but does it mean we get over our inherited culture and tradition of feminine respect and ethical preservation. How many of our parents do think seriously that what they want to give their child apart from education (which is also constrained to paying fees and hiring a school van only), food, clothing and other comforts? Most of them want their children to become an engineer, a doctor or a CA – how many of us think to pour in some values, ethics, public behavior and civic responsibilities to their children? Why don’t we protest against the local media for providing such immoral material!? I think we must. We need to open our minds rather than being over-open-minded.

Andrew’s Out (rageous)!

‘To err is human’. Of course, no one is perfect and flawless. It was a just another ‘very’ bad for Mr. Steve Bucknor not reaching the higher standards in cricket. Being a member of elite umpire’s panel, Steve has served the cricketing world for so long and has been fairly consistent over the years. Why nagging him for a few incidental Indian encounters!? Emotions apart, this is definitely a close call for the technologies to get involved in the game. One of the best suggestions came to light was, to provide 2 opportunities to each side to challenge umpire’s decision.  

Technically, we are done! But shouldn’t we address the ‘gentleman’ side of the game! Ponting and Symonds, they did not walk after their edge was taken clearly by the keeper. Moreover Symonds accepted, he was out and he was “lucky” not to be given. Where is the sportsman & his spirit of the game? This was a slap on human morality at first. Edged, looked back, taken & ready to go! But NO, the umpire said no. It was the outrageous moment in cricket when Symonds accepted that he was out, to corner Bucknor. I am sure he wouldn’t have any second thoughts like other Australian cricketers. “Is still cricket the gentleman’s game?”

 Sneh Bhavsar  |  Ahmedabad, 5 January 2008