a solution

all i can think of as a solution is what i had always believed would be an ideal solution. all the reddies, velamas, kammas fighting for and against division should be given a separate state, or nation if possible, comprising 1-2 large districts (proportionate to their share in the population) and mr.tiwari should be made their governor or president..

their perennial squabbling would ensure that at least one person in the new state/nation could go about his business undisturbed, psyche and emotions untouched.

telangana: a little education

a couple of years ago, motivated by a certain impulse, i tried to check how many colleges, of all kinds, existed in all the regions (which today constitute the state of andhra pradesh) in 1948 (the year hyderabad state became a part of the indian union). i found this page on the ugc site useful- here are the results i had jotted down and saved:

vedaand sanskrit college..nellore 1926
a. u. college of science and technology , vizag, 1932
a.j. college, bandar. 1910
agricultural college, bapatla, 1945.
andhra christian college, guntur, 1900.
a.u.college of arts, sciences, 1931
andhra women's sanskrit college, rajahmundry, 1931
besant theosophical college, madanapalle, 1915
college of engineering, anantapur, 1946
college of engg., kakinada, 1946
college of fine arts, hyd., 1940
dr.gururaju homeopathy college, gudivada, 1945
govt., city college, hyd, 1924
govt college for men, kadapa, 1948
govt college for women, guntur, 1944
govt degree college for men, anantapur, 1916
hindu college, guntur, 1935
hindu college, bandar, 1928
islamiah arabic and tibbi college, kurnool,1923
n.s.z., college of music and dance, narsapur, w.g.,1934
p.g.college, secunderabad, 1947
pithapur rajah college, kakinada, 1852,1866,1884
osmania medical college, 1846
s.r.r and cvr govt degree college, v'wada,1937
s.v.j.v.sanskrit college, kovvur, w.g.,1912,
sir c.r.r college, eluru, 1945
sri maharajah college of music and dance, vizianagaram,1919
sri narasimha sanskrit college.,bandar, 1923
sri venkateswara arts college, 1945, tirupati
st.joseph's college of education for women, guntur, 1946
university arts and science college, warangal, 1948
university college for women, kothi, hyderabad, 1924
university college of agriculture, hyd, 1946
univ college of arts and social sciences, hyderabad, 1918
university college of engg, hyd, 1929
university college of engg., vizag, 1946,
univ college of science, hyd, 1919
univ college of technology, hyd, 1929,
vr college, nellore,1920

gudivada, bapatla, narsapur, bandar (machilipatnam), kovvur, madanapalle, anantapur, eluru, kadapa-- not many outside andhra pradesh would've heard about many of those towns. some of them have not crossed a population of one lakh even now.

i might've missed some names, the list itself might not be exhaustive etc, etc., but it does give you an idea of the status of educational infrastructure in both the regions. of the importance the ruling classes attached to education. it also indicates the aspirational levels of the middle classes in both regions, maybe. 28 colleges in the coastal andhra-rayalaseema region and 11 in telangana (all of them, except for one, in hyderabad-secunderabad). there were more than a dozen towns in andhra-rayalaseema where you could pursue higher education, or a graduate degree (as it is now called) in andhra-rayalaseema. and in telangana?

please note that the list does not include colleges in madras which was the major destination of a large number education-seekers in the andhra-rayalaseema region.

another important fact that one notices is that while almost all of the colleges in telangana (or hyderabad city, to be more accurate) were started (reluctantly, it'd seem in the last stages of the feudal rule) by the government, private initiative seems to have played a major role in the establishment of colleges in the andhra-rayalaseema region. you might ask what were the jagirdars of telangana doing? their major and only contribution to the field of education was the jagirdars' college (which was/is actually a school), now called the hyderabad public school. and to think that many among them actually owned tens of thousands acres of land (one actually owned over 1,50,000 acres)!

some lies rankle, and some half-truths rankle much more. the rosy picture of a glorious hyderabad and telangana that some learned people, professors and retired dons, try to paint rankles like hell. british india was definitely better.

villages without moonlight

as one poet described it, moonlight was stolen from too many villages in telangana for too long. the fear of police patrols in 'naxal-infested', as the media would describe it, villages was too strong for people to step out of homes in the evenings.

do you think moonlight was ever stolen from the lives of these two champion bull-breeding brothers?

those bulls, as the news report tells you, are an expensive passion: almost half a dozen moonlightless families could live on the money that's spent on them every month. until a week or so ago, the brothers were champion defenders of the ysr clan's right to rule the state (one of them was a minister in ysr's first ministry and the other is a minister in the current government). now they are champion promoters of the telangana cause, champion mike-grabbers who never miss an opportunity to tell opponents of the sacred cause that they shouldn't dare step into telangana.

one of the last scenes in the movie 'maa bhoomi' shows the upper caste jagirdars in the telangana villages stepping out of sherwanis and silk dhotis etc to don khadi kurtas and gandhi caps to join the indian national congress after the annexation of hyderabad by the indian state. yes, history repeats itself like it has run out of ideas. like its growth has been stunted by too little exposure to moonlight.

separated

sad that the telugus should allow 'higher' powers to manage their affairs. that they should celebrate their subjugation and call it freedom. that they couldn't share water, jobs and now cities.

i wish all telugus would ponder over the question: if delhi 'gives', and you 'receive', what kind of power do you have over your lives? some democracy.

mr.tharoor's high perch

soumitro das nails it:

If you ask a Bollywood filmmaker whether this is actually what he is defending, he will be surprised. He believes that the values he is defending in his film are universal — love, family, country, religion... The word ‘caste’ would never cross his mind. Then how do we say that Bollywood films defend caste society?

The arranged marriage or marriage with parental sanction is an institution that supports, that takes the load of caste society through absolute parental authority when it comes to marriage or any other kind of relationship with the opposite sex. This parental authority is taken for granted in Bollywood films. There is no need to even explain it. The world of Bollywood cinema is so cleansed of caste and religion that one is almost tempted to believe that one is dealing with a bunch of ultra-liberals for whom caste and religion do not define the human personality. But the real reason for this absence is that women must not make the wrong sexual choice that could lead to the collapse of society as we know it. So, the world of Bollywood cinema is shown to be a ‘natural’ world, where upper caste Punjabi men are linked up with upper caste Punjabi women without the problematic obstacle of caste ever coming in the way of their union. Whereas, in reality, especially for the middle-class, caste is an overriding factor in marriage in particular and sexual relations in general.

didn't expect the hindustan times to carry an article which contains such plain talk. and here's shashi tharoor, minister in the government of india, unveiling bollywood power:

That’s soft power, and its particular strength is that it has nothing to do with government propaganda. The movies of Bollywood, which is bringing its glitzy entertainment far beyond the Indian diaspora in the United States and the United Kingdom , offer another example. A Senegalese friend told me of his illiterate mother who takes a bus to Dakar every month to watch a Bollywood film – she doesn’t understand the Hindi dialogue and can’t read the French subtitles, but she can still catch the spirit of the films and understand the story, and people like her look at India with stars in their eyes as a result. An Indian diplomat in Damascus a few years ago told me that the only publicly displayed portraits as big as those of then-President Hafez al-Assad were of the Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan.

Indian art, classical music and dance have the same effect. So does the work of Indian fashion designers, now striding across the world’s runways. Indian cuisine, spreading around the world, raises Indian culture higher in people's reckoning; the way to foreigners’ hearts is through their palates. In England today, Indian curry houses employ more people than the iron and steel, coal and shipbuilding industries combined.

When a bhangra beat is infused into a Western pop record or an Indian choreographer invents a fusion of kathak and ballet; when Indian women sweep the Miss World and Miss Universe contests, or when “Monsoon Wedding” wows the critics and “Lagaan” claims an Oscar nomination; when Indian writers win the Booker or Pulitzer Prizes, India’s soft power is enhanced.

one'd think das and tharoor put their heads together, collaborated, to produce two contradictory versions of the same story.

i'd like to sit in mr.tharoor's enchanting armchair and watch india turn into a bollywood movie, starring miss worlds and miss universes, and wowing critics like mr.das and claiming an oscar nomination or two. wish manoj majhi could sit in mr.tharoor's chair too.

..and the wolves lying in wait

mostly upper caste 'settlers' from telangana in the u.s., expressing their 'solidarity' with 'kcr and telangana students'.

checked through youtube but couldn't find any uploadable videos of the brutal lathi charge inflicted on the mostly obc, dalit 'telangana students' participating in protest demonstrations in osmania university campus on sunday.

please look at all the people in the video carefully- you might find some of them in parliament or in the andhra pradesh or telangana legislative assembly sometime in the future. some of them, i am sure, had been serious contenders for tickets from various parties in the recent elections too.

what does it all mean? nothing, except the protesters in the u.s., were much more aware of the implications of the lathi charge in hyderabad, and the gains from it (and hence were quicker in expressing their 'pain' on you tube), than those who bore its brunt.

sacrificial lambs for a yaagam

kcr doesn't plan any major action without seeking any divine endorsement. he has to attend many pujas, visit several temples and perform a yaagam or two before he can step up to the cameras and announce his plans.

the students and agitators who were beaten up by the police yesterday were mostly from the always-good-to-be-lathi-charged lower castes. and the teachers and activists exhorting them to believe in the 'sacred' cause of telangana mostly represented assorted progressive streams of thought. what were they thinking? that a movement led by upper caste believers in irrational mumbo jumbo could bring about anything remotely resembling concrete social change?

my telugu blog

it's been limping along. but i promised myself recently that i'd post more.

how the bjp finances the congress or vice versa

The rise of the mining business of the Reddy brothers is a saga of crony capitalism and the close nexus established with politicians and pliant bureaucrats. By bending laws, getting new regulations and enactments to favour them and by blatant violation of forest and environmental rules, the Reddy brothers became a major beneficiary of the Rs 4,000-crore annual profits being reaped through the export of iron ore, taking advantage of the boom in the international iron ore prices due to the huge demand for it in China (the price of a tonne of iron ore shot up from Rs 200 to Rs 2,000).

This plunder, connived with the state, saw the government getting a royalty of only Rs 27 per tonne when the price it was being sold at was Rs 2,000. In 2005-06 alone, 35 mine owners got Rs 3,600 crore in profit. It is this ill-gotten wealth and assets which the Reddy brothers deployed effectively for the BJP. The Reddy brothers have not been shy of flaunting their wealth and influence. One of them is reported to have said during a heated exchange in the assembly last year: "People say we are worth Rs 100 crore. I want to correct it…. we are worth Rs 1,000 crore."

what mr.karat fails to mention is that the so-called reddy brothers funded or financed the congress party too in andhra pradesh. now it's gradually dawning on mr.karat's party which had been a part of an all party fact finding committee which had visited the mines leased out to the brothers in anantapur district of andhra pradesh sometime during 2004-05. his party members from andhra pradesh had not found anything irregular in the company's activities back then- was it because the congress was an ally? now it turns out ysr was one of the gaali or reddy brothers' biggest sponsors and also a major partner, perhaps.

crony capitalism is too poor a description. the same robber barons supporting the bjp in karnataka and the congress in andhra pradesh: we should let sonia gandhi or l.k.advani, both of whom have benefitted from their partymen's association with the reddy brothers, decide on a better phrase. i don't find anything particularly incongruous in the fact that the reddy brothers financed both parties: they both represent the same braminized classes, or hindutva family, if you like, in my view.

this recent turn of events has a lesson or two for both those politicians: the next time sonia gandhi decides to unleash a battery of spokesmen and crony mediamen to target mayawati's extravagant spending on statuary it'd do her a lot of good to check how many dozen times more her favourite chief ministers are stealing (not spending publicly, subject to all public checks, like mayawati) from the public in their own states. and l.k.advani has to admit gaali janardhan reddy is much more of an 'iron man' than he ever will be.

of unspeakable crimes

from the website of The Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (or simply, Claims Conference):

The mission of the Claims Conference over its 50-year history has always been to secure what we consider a small measure of justice for Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. We have pursued this goal since 1951 through a combination of negotiations, disbursing funds to individuals and organizations, and seeking the return of Jewish property lost during the Holocaust. [...]

As a result of negotiations with the Claims Conference since 1952, the German government has paid more than $60 billion in indemnification for suffering and losses resulting from Nazi persecution. Claims Conference negotiations have also resulted in the creation of funds from German and Austrian industry, as well as the Austrian government.
[emphasis mine].

the process began in 1951 when the claims conference was formed:

The Claims Conference had the task of negotiating with the German government a program of indemnification for the material damages to Jewish individuals and to the Jewish people caused by Germany through the Holocaust.

On September 10, 1952, after six months of negotiations, the Claims Conference and the West German federal government signed an agreement embodied in two protocols. Protocol No. 1 called for the enactment of laws that would compensate Nazi victims directly for indemnification and restitution claims arising from Nazi persecution. Under Protocol No. 2, the West German government provided the Claims Conference with DM 450 million for the relief, rehabilitation and resettlement of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, according to the urgency of their need as determined by the Conference. Agreements were also signed with the State of Israel.

The agreements were at the time unique in human history. All three entities involved—the Claims Conference, West Germany, and Israel—had not existed at the time of World War II, and yet all entered into an agreement for compensation for crimes committed during that time. [emphasis mine].

wikipedia has some related information on the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany page.

will india, like west germany, ever acknowledge that …unspeakable crimes have been committed..(against the dalits)...calling for moral and material indemnity?

lame excuses

the brahminized classes have such short memories. wasn't it almost yesterday that they were objecting to reservations based on population numbers collected as far back as 1931? now a.m.shah, former professor of sociology at the delhi school of economics (yes, yet another institution of learning, like the jnu etc., which depends on the unclean sweat and taxes of people like me to pursue 'clean' knowledge), is objecting to the collection of fresh data on castes through the 2011 census- look at some of his arguments:

It is true that caste boundaries are clear in a village, which is a small community, but the census has to count the members of every caste as they are spread in every village and town in a state and often more than one state. The population of small castes may be counted easily, but most are not so small. The Kolis in Gujarat, the Marathas in Maharashtra, the Jats and Yadavas in north India, the Kammas and Reddis in Andhra, and the Okkaligas and Lingayats in Karnataka are huge castes, with unclear boundaries.

counting the population of large castes is a problem? count me in if you need any volunteers. and what does he mean by unclear boundaries? very unclear.

To whom in a village or town would the census enumerator ask the caste question? Would it be every individual in a household or its head? Do we assume that all members of a household belong to the same caste? In which language would the caste question be asked? In Indian languages the English word ‘caste’ has more than one equivalent. In Gujarati, for example, there are five words for caste: jat, jati, jnati, nat, varna, kaum. Each has more than one meaning.

don't worry mr.shah, even if the enumerator uses gujarati in orissa or tamil in assam, i am sure every indian citizen would understand clearly what he's talking about.

How will the caste question be framed? Let us assume it is framed as follows: “What is the jati of your household?” The respondent is likely to give a name keeping in mind anyone of the meanings of jati mentioned above. There would therefore be confusion in collating responses.

confusion? really? most state governments have already compiled enough data on castes/sub-castes/sub-sub-castes to identify clearly the parent sub-castes or castes. check the central lists of dalit/adivasi/obc castes/communities.

It is well known that frequently members of a caste claim to belong to a caste higher than their own, and therefore different members of a caste use different names for themselves. Caste names are also used contextually: one in the context of marriage, another in the context of religion, and a third in the context of claiming a privilege from the state. There is rarely a straight answer to the question: “What is your caste?”

if some people want to give themselves a higher rank in the caste hierarchy, why do you wish to stop them, mr.shah? that'll kill caste a little (for the short duration of the process of enumeration). also reduce demands for more reservations, something people like you, the brahminized classes, would like a lot, i'm sure. or, if some people wish to give themselves a lower rank, to avail of some meager benefits doled out by the state, i think we can definitely depend on some youthful equality-seeking organization to soon find out the truth about them.

The definition of caste as an endogamous unit is questionable. Social scientists have known widespread practice of inter-caste hypergamy, i.e., a lower caste gets its girls married into a higher caste but the latter does not give its girls in return. The Rajputs are known to have received brides from a large number of castes all over western and northern India. A caste which appears to be strictly endogamous at the top of its internal hierarchy may be loose at its bottom. Anthropologists have also known tribe-caste hypergamy in many parts of India. Where hypergamous marriages take place, many members of the bride-giver caste or tribe use for themselves the bride-taker caste’s name as a mark of higher status. Hypergamy has been a long established negation of caste endogamy.

ah..that's a silly objection. if this hypergamy fad was anything more than a mere esoteric fad, caste would've died long ago. if it was really, truly statistically significant (in terms of the numbers of people indulging in it) our media would be talking about it almost every time the issue of caste or reservations crops up, to point out how caste is dead/dying.

Caste endogamy is negated by modern inter-caste, inter-religious, inter-regional and international marriages which have increased rapidly after independence. In an inter-caste marriage the husband and wife belong to different castes. To which caste do their children belong? A child of one inter-caste marriage may marry a child of another such marriage. Since such cosmopolitan marriages have been taking place for the last several generations, a large new class has emerged which is caste-less. What will be its fate in the census?

if inter-caste, inter-regional international marriages have become so rampant, why are you still talking about caste? do you watch a lot of bollywood, mr.shah? your surname somehow reminds me of gujarat and babu bajrangi and his valiant attempts to save the purity of patel-ness. perhaps, he'd agree with you. how large is this 'large new class that is caste-less'? shouldn't we all be happy to find out how large (or again, statistically significant) it actually is? maybe that'll drive some sense into those ignorant folks who practise 'honour killings' even in faraway lands?

i really should stop wasting my sweat and taxes on these elite institutions and their casteist teachers.

the heart of india

what's that? or, where's that? chhattisgarh, according to ramachandra guha and arundhati roy. and you thought they represented radically different points of view?

there's no evidence to suggest, not even in the most creative of hindu myths and legends which are considered the most authentic repositories of history by large sections of the brahminized classes, that hindus, in their 2,000 or 4,000 or 40,000 year history, ever treated the adivasis decently, euphemistically speaking. then how and when did they become indians? or the heart of india?

someone needs to seriously look into the sordid history of how adivasis were conned into becoming a part of independent india. but that's another issue, and what interests me right now is how all participants in the mainstream discourse on the 'heart of india' seem to know it's the 'heart of india'. none of them are questioning that premise. india owns chhattisgarh, the adivasis, their land. and reserves the right to deal with chhattisgarh, the adivasis and their land. the only difference of opinion is on the ways to go about it (some prefer 'democratic' methods, others suggest 'development' and so on), not on india's right to deal with chhattisgarh, the adivasis, their land.

what does the u.n., know about excellence or quality?

It is unlikely that a single UN resolution will radically change the landscape of social realities in India. Perhaps even the UNHRC is aware of this fact. Can its declaration be a tool to harass India then? Is it a clever ploy to keep the ambitious country on a leash in view of its abysmal human-rights record? The idea could be to push India to be answerable for discrimination based on work, descent and gender.

now the whole world seems to have come to the erroneous conclusion that there seems to be something called caste based discrimination in india. but the funniest part of the news report is when it says:

Some good has already come out of the UNHRC exercise, albeit indirectly. Rahul Gandhi, the architect of the ruling Congress Party's general election victory in May, has launched a recent drive to uplift Dalits. He is visiting Dalit homes across Uttar Pradesh and has ordered his party members to recalibrate their welfare programs in favor of Dalits. However, many see the Gandhi scion's move as a larger political game plan to erode Mayawati's base in Uttar Pradesh.

rahul gandhi has launched a drive to uplift dalits? digging up again what he had said (i'd commented on it in this post):

On his stay with Dalit families in Uttar Pradesh, Rahul said for him it was only a matter of trying to know the problems of the poorest of poor. "The press sees me as staying with a Dalit. I don't see myself as staying with a Dalit. This distinction (of Dalit and others) occurs only in the media. It does not occur in my mind,'' he explained.

somebody tell the u.n. the caste system doesn't exist. and if it thinks it does it needs to explain its stand with relevant data and also its understanding of how caste operates and what exactly the manusmriti says.

how can they say something that they don't even understand exists? there seem to be too many unmeritorious people in the world body. get someone from the national knowledge commission or the jnu to tell the u.n., about how to improve its quality. teach them about excellence.

it's not caste?

it's not caste, it's nepotism. malnutrition in india is worse than in sub-saharan africa: it's poverty, not caste? incomes in india, per capita, are better than in a majority of african nations. it's the population, not caste? china has a bigger population and lower malnutrition rates. it's democracy of course, not caste.

it's not caste? take a closer look before you rush to defend it. and why do you have to defend it so strongly?

no caste

rahul baba says there's no caste system. so, how's he the top leader of his party when crores of other members have more experience than him?

this old idea of india

smokescreen's interesting post offering a novel solution to link the indian nation. don't understand why 1) we need to link the indian nation through 1/2/3 languages, 2) if it is a nation, why does it have to be linked through synthetic policy solutions?

why not chuck the whole idea of building india along the lines of a conventional nation, and let the people link to each other? an unfinished, but very interesting, discussion with smokescreen and the recent debates around official/link languages, in the media and elsewhere, reminded me of this old article which gives you an idea of how small (when compared with the total population of any given state) migration from one state to other states even in the worst of times is:

Inter-state labour migration is an important feature of the Indian economy. Most of this movement has been from the most populous and poorest states with net in-migration being higher for the more developed states. Gujarat and Bihar provide an interesting contrast in terms of migration. The population entering Bihar was 364,337 and that exiting the state was more than three times higher at 1,226,839. (Census 1991) In contrast, the in-coming population for Gujarat was double that of Bihar at 716,190 and the out-going population 305,738, a quarter of the population leaving Bihar.

bihar's total population was 8.66 crores in 1991 and migrants from that state were less than 2% of the total population of the state. and bihar, let me remind you, has a long history of out-migration.

most indians prefer to stay or migrate within their own states. it seems to me, what they need are tools to help them connect, or link, with people in their own states first. and india later. should policy, in areas like education for instance, be directed towards helping the most privileged sections (of educated migrants) of that 2%, at best, of india's total population? and i'm not even going to talk about the seasonal nature of a large proportion of all inter-state migration.

a step back

PATNA: Rajput ‘paratha’, Bhumihar ‘poori’, Brahmin ‘kachauri’, Yadav ‘chapati’. Ever heard of these cuisines? These are allegedly served at Sri Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH), Muzaffarpur to the medicos. Here a 'thali' is identified with the caste of the customer.

why don't they go a step ahead, or take a step back, and serve 'education' that is identified with the caste of the student?

won't you come, mate?

in the indravelli hills
a squad is born
won't you come, mate?

every squad
gave birth to seventy hands
won't you come, mate?

to every tree the hands tied pots
and to every pot they tied the landlords' heads
won't you come, mate?

look! watching the vote yatras and the promises
mother india wept
and in the tears
mother gave birth
to the sun of rebellion
won't you come, mate?

in the singareni coal pits+
ants are born
and as every ant moves daggers are born
and every dagger gives birth to workers' powers
and those powers spill the contractors' blood
won't you come, mate?

in the dandakaranya
the kondhs'* jatara**
on hungry stomachs play the drums of protest
watch how they march to delhi
let's hand over delhi fort to the tillers
won't you come, mate?

that is my translation of a song written, composed and performed by one of my favourite folk poets/bards, vangapandu prasad rao of the jana natya mandali. i haven't been able to find the original lyrics, so had to jot down the lines while listening to the song- would update, edit this when i find the original lyrics. there'd be some lapses- i request readers to tell me about them. you can listen to the song here (first song in the list). it's a version of the song recorded for a film- so, naturally, it uses more instruments and orchestration than vangapandu, as he is popularly known, normally uses in his street/public performances. actually, he only uses a couple of intruments most times- the ghunghroos on his feet and a madiga dappu, perhaps.

* kondhs: he calls them kondollu (people of the hills)- he is obviously referring to the gonds of indravelli (adilabad district, which is adjacent to bastar etc) who are often called by that name by the plainspeople. adilabad and bastar, and other regions of the dandakaranya, have been the loci of many adivasi rebellions in the past 200 years. and also of brutal repression by the colonial and brahminized states. indravelli had been in the news in the early 80s for a tragic incident that occurred on 20th april, 1981- hundreds of gond villagers, part of a large gathering, a peaceful protest rally against atrocities and exploitation (by non-adivasi traders, landlords, babus, policemen and other outsiders), were gunned down brutally by the security forces (official estimates quote a lower figure).

[ here's a link to a news story, in telugu, on indravelli. and here's another account, in english].

**jAtara: fair, religious festival etc.

+ singareni coal pits: the singareni coal mines are spread over adilabad and a couple of other north telangana districts.

old wine in a modern bottle

upper caste boy can't marry lower caste girl, so he drowns himself in drink. people say that isn't rational. and they usually refer to the boy's actions or reactions. and this modern day take on that story says the same thing: the boy is weak. modern is to avoid discussing irrational constraints on girls and boys?

the doon school of egalitarianism

Karan Thapar: Let me question that. India is a poor country. I put it to you that this order of money could be better spent if you expand education, health and sanitation or if you use it to feed the 40 per cent of Indian children who are chronically malnourished.

right. let's check what percentage of indian children were malnourished last year. or the year before that. or ten years ago. or twenty years ago. or as far back as 1947.