Thursday, July 28, 2011

India Today - Story -October 6, 2008 - Driving home a point

India Today  - Story -October 6, 2008

Driving home a point

GREAT IDEAS, GREAT MINDS—SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Siddharth D. Shanghvi
In India, politicians have come down with politics as if it's a sexually transmitted disease; an affliction, a bane. Under the guise of governance, genocide, rape, torture have become institutionalised in India, all instruments in our War against Terror.
Image associations with politicians scare me. Say Narendra Modi and I see flames. Say Raj Thackeray and I see broken glasses. Say Lalu Prasad and I see cowsheds of cash.
While all countries have corruption in their system, only India has a system within the corruption; our system is officially a sleaze ecology. For when our politicians are not whorishly auctioning their votes on nuke deals, they're brokering development contracts with builders' lobbies.
To claim, my engagement with politics arose from my interest in considering large, dramatic ideas on justice, and public policy not only sounds lofty but also insincere. I came to politics-and political ideology-to understand what I own: in real terms, in cultural equity, in philosophical cavalry.
To consider what is mine allows me to recognise what is not mine, and this distinction allows us all to live fairly in unfair times. The phrase "a political writer" has always carried such a whiff of self-importance that I always shied from its weight: not because I'm vain enough to think myself as modest, but because there are more dignified ways to be self-important.
The devastating 2005 Mumbai floods killed over 400 people and left many homeless
The devastating 2005 Mumbai floods killed over 400 people and left many homeless
However, once I started to think of myself as a writer who happens to be political, a lowering of the semantic volume encouraged me to think powerfully and purposefully about the idea of what it means to be a citizen and to be politically engaged.
In the process, I discovered my definition of being political is neither strident nor pacifist; it is not directly concerned with state bodies although it has to deal with them; it is not only personal but it is also ineluctably fused with my personhood.
Perhaps, Aristotle was right when he wrote that "to live an ethical life it is impossible to not engage in politics". I am more interested in an ethical existence than in governance: so politics became my means to an end.
Because I live in a big city-almost 16 million shack up in Bombay-I had to find ways to break down enormous, anonymous aggregates and identify small, specific pockets to protect, and preserve within them what is singular and ineffably significant.
I started with Juhu, the north Bombay suburb where I was born and where I live. Luckily, Juhu's constituency has an energetic, determined sense of political engagement. Advanced Locality Management models were established early on here.
MPs and activists like Shabana Azmi are from Juhu, as was her Communist father, the poet Kaifi Azmi, who lived in Janki Kutir. Comprising an educated urban middle-class, Juhu is responsible for the election of India's first independent councillor, Adolf D'Souza, as well as being the first residential zone in Bombay to go green (plastic bags were recently been banned in Juhu).
Land tracts along the Juhu beach (above) were turned into ecologically sensitive gardens by its residents
Land tracts along the Juhu beach (above) were turned into ecologically sensitive gardens by its residents
Citizen groups cleaned up Juhu Beach, turning land tracts along the beach into ecologically sensitive gardens. Juhu, from all accounts, is not afraid to get its hands muddy.
Civic engagement with local governance, Sherly Singh assured me, is reassuringly vigorous in Juhu. Singh, 41, a wife and mother of two, a hotelier and volunteer in a Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) school, is secretary of Juhu Scheme Residents Association.
Feisty and industrious, Singh's Juhu home was flooded in the 2005 Bombay deluge. "It was surreal," she said. "My living room was suddenly a swimming pool, and our cars floated off into the tide."
Incensed by BMC apathy in preventing further flooding in Juhu, she kept tabs on monsoon management in Juhu. Singh discovered that according to the Chitale Committee Recommendation, the Irla Nullah, a conduit for storm water to flow freely to the Arabian Sea, had to be widened by 15 metres.
On his visit to Bombay, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh handed the BMC a cheque of 400 crores, the first installment for Brihanmumbai's Storm Water Drain (BRIMSTOWAD). Now the BMC had the dough to kickstart the Irla Nullah widening project. "But nothing was happening on the ground," Singh recollected.
Ignore the power broker. It's a call to arms for the middle classes, time to wrest politics from the politician's hands.
"So my organisation-Juhu Scheme Residents' Association-filed an RTI." In the file reading of the RTI, numerous details emerged: the tenements eligible for slum relocation, the contractor issued to do the job, the project deadlines.
If the money was in place, if the Chitale Committee Recommendation had provided directives, then why wasn't the BMC getting on with the project?
As part of this project, 207 encroachments on either side of the Irla Nullah had to be relocated. Once this was accomplished, a key thorn persisted: the 5,000 sq ft offices of a private business, TRIG, owned by Swaran Salaria, continued to forcibly occupy the nullah.
A single sq ft in Juhu can retail for up to Rs 25,000; so Salaria wasn't about to give up prime real estate. In January 2008, the Konkan Divisional Commissioner, Shreekant Singh, dismissed Salaria's appeal and passed an order to demolish the illegal offices of TRIG. Unsettlingly enough, Revenue Minister Narayan Rane stayed this order.
"At first, I felt helpless," Singh said. "But I'd come to the movement to resolve my helplessness and not despair even more. I knew I could either give up or go on. And I choose to forge forward."
"What did you do?" I asked her.
"We filed another RTI application to uncover why Rane stayed the commissioner's order, and if his stay order was valid."
"And what did you find?"
"I've used innumerable RTI applications to get information and then act on the data. This was the first time my RTI drew a blank. Obviously, our opponent had friends in all the right places."
When the RTI resulted in naught, local residents and activists, including Singh, went on a fast to protest political intrusion in development projects. Some claimed that the Trig Guard Force, a team of several hundred men, was often summoned by politicians in self-protection or for raising a ruckus but everyone, naturally, dismissed this rumour.
Singh and other Juhu residents swiftly swung into action and petitioned to meet Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. A meeting, led by filmmaker and Juhu resident Mahesh Bhatt, was organised.
Deshmukh affirmed that the Revenue Minister had absolutely no right to stay the demolition order-only the housing department could issue a stay order in this matter. Tables turned.
Six months after the stay order on the demolition order, Rane had to rescind his directive. In July, the TRIG offices were demolished, a landmark, heartening verdict for local citizenry, who audaciously took on political clout. And won.
Singh called on me earlier this year. The BMC, she pointed out, had done little to ease flooding in Juhu. Would I pitch in, she said, as I was also a Juhu resident? I promptly wrote a public letter to Jairaj Pathak, the BMC Municipal Commissioner, asking him to do his job-or get the hell out of public office.
My letter pointed to a massive green zone in Juhu, owned by the Airports Authority of India, a catchment area for monsoon excess. But this green zone, over a hundred acre, was exploited on one end by the dispossessed-a slum-and on the other, by the rich-a parking lot. In the bargain, this oval, the lungs of Juhu, no longer holds the excess rain water.
Rs 400 cr was the amount that prime minister gave the BMC to rectify flooding in Juhu. But nothing was done until an RTI.
And this water, in the bargain, floods our streets, and our houses. "We're working to insure the land stays a green zone, and the status of the Juhu Lake is secure," Singh assured me. "We want open spaces to remain open. For land to catch water. For air to be clean. If we don't do this for our children, who will?"
Men and women across India now see that politics, when it's practised by a few, even within a democracy, can be a threat to their personhood. Women like Sherly Singh, mothers with day jobs, recognise that unless they don't wrest politics out of the hands of politicians, their world is going up for grabs.
This makes their singular action of interrogation and resistance almost incendiary, and always heroic. Now the challenge is upon our leaders: for the middle-classes, they assume, anaesthetised by television are actually active associates in decisions that shape the future of their children.
This constituency is ready to take the babu brigade to the cleaners. Don't you know, Tracy Chapman sang, "They're talkin' about a revolution". If our leaders don't sit up and listen hard, whispers of millions of Indians will be loud and lyrical enough to blow up their ears and bring down their roof.
___________________________
The author, who lives in Mumbai, won the Betty Trask Award, the UK's most prestigious award for debut novels, and Italy's Premio Grinzane Cavour for his first novelThe Last Song of Dusk.
His new novel, The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay, long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize, will be published in December.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/story/Driving+home+a+point/0/16172.html

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Celebrations at MPS School

Memorable days at MPS School

MPS School is managed by Nagriksatta
Class photos of MPS on last day 2010 -11 



Sports Day Celebrations 2010-11

Sports Day Celebrations 2010-11

Sports Day Celebrations 2010-11

Sports Day Celebrations 2010-11

Sports Day Celebrations 2010-11

Sports Day Celebrations 2010-11

Sports Day Celebrations 2010-11

Sports Day Celebrations 2010-11

Sports Day Celebrations 2010-11

Christmas Day Celebrations 2010-11

Christmas Day Celebrations 2010-11

Christmas Day Celebrations 2010-11
Christmas Day Celebrations 2010-11

A unforgettable day with Mrs. Sonia Gandhi

A unforgettable day with Mrs. Sonia Gandhi

Geeta Nirumpam, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, Me, Rachel, Shivani & Sanjay Nirupam

Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, Me & Rachel