Yesterday, I saw a movie about a puppy named Bolt, who is conned into believing that he has super-powers that he uses for protecting the little girl who owns him. Midway through the movie, he realizes that he has no super-powers; he is just an ordinary, helpless puppy. He feels crushed by this realization.
So Bolt faces a choice: to quit? Or to believe that he is still a hero, and keep struggling against the forces of evil?
The thought that his little girl still needs a hero helps him make the right decision: keep fighting. I think we activists face the same choice. India needs a hero; are you willing to try? Am I willing to try?
Yes, we are not cut out to be heroes. Yes, as individuals, we are full of weaknesses and limitations. But India needs heroes now. She cannot wait another 10 years for someone better to emerge. You and I are the only ones currently available. So we will have to say, “My motherland needs a hero. Yes, I shall be that hero, although I am weak, fallible and maybe even helpless.”
We are trying to improve governance with RTI applications, PILs, advocacy, letter-baazi and other methods. Sometimes we feel that our actions are powerful. We feel confident and courageous.
And at other times, we are crushed by the realization that our methods are inadequate, our actions are weak, and we are helpless in the face of a gigantic corrupt system. And then we say to ourselves, “Oh, forget it! Activism doesn’t work. So let’s just return to living our ordinary lives, and forget about the nation.”
I have had such moments lately. Overwhelmed by my own limitations — the many promises that I make to myself and others, but fail to keep – I sometimes think such thoughts. I think about withdrawing into my own private space again and gradually disappearing from the activist space.
My re-energizing moment – Picking up shit from the road
I want to share with you what happened on Friday morning, about 8.20 am. I was on my way to giving my weekly classes on ‘Creative English & Editing’ for Second Year law students at Vile Parle. In my bag were 4-5 old newspapers — discussion material. After getting off the suburban train and climbing the skywalk, I had a prayerful thought: “God, take my hand, take my mind, make me serve. Tell me clearly what you want. I’ll do it, I promise.”
Minutes later, at the other end of the skywalk near SV Road, I saw a large lump of shit. I saw it and passed by. And then I passed by a fallen piece of paper. I then knew what I must do. I picked up the paper, went back to where the shit was, picked it up neatly and put it into a large empty flower pot by the side – out of everybody’s path.
I felt happy. I had prevented the shit from spoiling someone’s day. If the shit had lay there long enough, a few people in the crowd would surely have stepped into it, and then walked, leaving a disgusting trail, for at least half an hour. Maybe they would have gotten into a rickshaw or train and ruined other people’s morning. Maybe they would have walked into their offices, and struggled in the washroom for half an hour to get the disgusting stuff out of the treads of his shoes. Or – if it was a businessman with an appointment – he might have cancelled it and just gone home to deal with the mess.
I felt energized. I had made my country and my city a bit better. And it was easy. I could do it, alone, quietly.
I thought about the previous day — Republic Day – when I had not done one single patriotic thing. Not one. I had not saluted a flag, not bought a flag from a street kid, not even watched the parade on TV, and not heard any patriotic songs by Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammed Rafi. I hadn’t even thanked anybody who sent me Republic Day SMSes. But today, I had justified my existence to my country and my beloved Mumbai.
Shit versus Personal Honour
However, as I turned the corner and neared the college gate, happy and self-satisfied, there it was again. More shit, a few metres from the college gates. Three or four large lumps of what looked like dog poop, right where people would walk.
Now I was in a quandary. Should I or shouldn’t do a repeat performance? I could easily ignore it and walk around it; after all, that’s what everybody else was doing. And why was it my problem? It was not. It was the job of the municipal cleaners, who may have come in half an hour. Or maybe they had come and gone, and this was fresh poop.
Some of the students walking in might be in my class. What would they think or feel, if they saw me bending and picking up poop with newspapers? Would they still respect me? I wondered. I could not just walk away from it. I had no excuse; I was carrying a bagful of old newspapers that I could tear up and use.
And so, for the second time that morning, I picked up poop from the road. This time, I threw it into a corner where nobody would walk.
My conscience as well as my hands were completely clean when I went up to class. We read 3-4 news items from the papers, and wrote about them. And then, near the end of our two-hour class, I told my students about my activities that morning. Going into flashback, I also mentioned how an activist friend – Vinita Singh — had scolded me over the phone, making me pick up my own dog’s shit from the road many, many months ago.
The collegians found the whole thing yucky, inspiring and hilarious… and yucky!
After we all had a good laugh together, and all the jokes had subsided, I asked them to write about it in any way that they wanted to. I explicitly gave them permission to make it a joke at my expense, or a fictionalized story or a factual account – anything they felt like doing.
Here are the pages from their notebooks: http://tinyurl.com/Students-on-shit-picking I think they were definitely more witty and creative than usual. The headings are priceless!
Expressing our freedom with small acts of service
It’s not only about shit on the road. It’s about a lot of other things as well. There’s a simple way to improve our country, and it does not involve any special knowledge or skills. It’s by being alert and answering the call to action every time we hear it or see it.
Every now and then, driving along the highway, I see a rock left by a trucker who drove away after using it while repairing a punctured tyre. Or I see a divider block that has fallen onto the road.
Seeing this, I curse the carelessness of others, and drive on. And then I wage an inner battle. Sometimes – and not always — after driving a kilometer, I tell myself that I too am equally careless. Because of my carelessness in letting that stone just lie there, a motorcyclist may have a bad accident while trying to avoid it in the darkness. I visualize his mother, his wife and his children after the accident. And knowing that I cannot face his family members if I have to, I take a U-turn and return to the spot. I roll up my sleeves and do the job that I wish others would do. I take the stone out of the way of motorists.
Sometimes I see drunkards lying with their arms and legs on the road, in the path of traffic. And I realize that it could easily be… God forbid, my father, my son or myself. (No, we don’t have drinks in our family, but that’s only by the grace of God.) And so I lift that person out of harm’s way, and make him lie down in a safer place. Yes, it’s a dirty job because drunkards lie in their puke and piss. But having dirty hands won’t kill me, but a dirty conscience might; I don’t know how to live with the thought that the person I ignored had his foot crushed under a car.
So what am I saying here?
What I’m trying to say here is: Let’s not get
too caught up with the methods of activism. It may be RTI, PILs, letter-baazi and petitioning, agitating on the road, organizing dharnas and morchas, fasting, public meetings or whatever. It may be all of those…
Or it may be none of those. I think our power to change the fortunes of India comes from our ability to do a job – not because it will bring us honour and fame, but because it needs doing. Life gives each one of us opportunities to be heroes many times over in our lifetime. It gifts us the opportunity to save many lives by just moving a rock out of the way.
Yes, we will ourselves never know how many lives we saved, and how many tears we wiped by preventing the bad news from happening… and maybe that’s for the best.
“Ask not for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee. Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die…
No man is an island, entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less… Any man’s death diminishes me Because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. . . .
– from Meditation 17 by John Donne
There is anonymity and humility in such activism. There’s no reward for our ego, no Padma awards and recognitions, no newspaper reports. Just quiet self-satisfaction for the soul, and the knowledge that when I was called to serve, I served. Isn’t that wonderful?
“India needs many heroes not a single hero – a home-grown one. International stars exist but what you always need is something that’s ours, that we can look up to and get inspired,” We do have many like Dr Subramanian Swamy and the Second Jayaprakash Nararayan. Don’t we? — S H Subrahmanian A Sr ctzn @ 76. A socialand RTI Activist mani@enablery.org
Select a WP Edit Snidget below to add it to your post or page. Yes, they can be used in content areas too!
is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, mental health care for the last decade of his forty year family practice career. He is a contributor to and an endorser of the efforts of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and was a member of MindFreedom International, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
While running his independent clinic, he published over 400 issues of his Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter, which was emailed to a variety of subscribers. (They have not been archived at any website.) In the early 2000s, Dr Kohls taught a graduate level psychology course at the University of Minnesota Duluth. It was titled “The Science and Psychology of the Mind-Body Connection”.
Since his retirement, Dr Kohls has been writing a weekly column (titled “Duty to Warn”) for the Duluth Reader, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota. He offers teaching seminars to the public and to healthcare professionals.
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">Gary G Kohls George Monbiot[/caption]
Studied in Oxford University, columnist with The Guardian newspaper, also the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed, No Man’s Land, How Did We Get into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature and other.
Prof Johan Galtung was born in Oslo. He earned the PhD degree in mathematics at the University of Oslo in 1956, and in 1957 a year later completed the PhD degree in sociology at the same university.
Prof Johan Galtung received nine honorary doctorates in the fields of Peace studies, Future studies, Social sciences, Buddhism, Sociology of law, Philosophy, Sociology and Law.
State Councilor of St. Petersburg, Russia. Founding President, Global Harmony Association (GHA) since 2005. Honorary President, GHA since 2016. Director: Tetrasociology Public Institute, Russia. Philosopher, Sociologist and Peacemaker from Harmony. Author of more than 400 scientific publications, including 18 books in 1-12 languages. Author of Tetrism as the unity of Tetraphilosophy and Tetrasociology – science of social harmony, global peace and harmonious civilisation. Director, GHA Web portal “Peace from Harmony”. Initiator, Manager, Coauthor and Editor in Chief of the book project “Global Peace Science” (GPS).
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First published at :
">Leo M Semashko Robert C Koehler[/caption]
writes for the Huffington Post, Common Dreams, OpEd News and TruthOut. He considers himself a “peace journalist.” He has been an editor at Tribune Media Services and a reporter, columnist and copy desk chief at Lerner Newspapers, Chicago. Koehler launched his column in 1999. Robert Koehler has received numerous writing and journalism awards over a 30-year career in USA. He writes about values and meaning with reverence for life. He is praised as “blatantly relevant” and “a hero of democracy”.
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First published at :
">Robert C Koehler Robert J Burrowes PhD[/caption]
has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘
He has been a radio producer (Earthstar Radio, San Francisco), organized and worked with the homeless, and is an advocate/activist in the nonviolent protest movement for safe energy, human rights, and peaceful solutions.
He is USA Vice President of the World Constitution and Parliament Association whose mission is to build a parallel world body to the United Nations, an emerging Earth Federation with a Provisional World Parliament under the Earth Constitution.
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First published at:
">Roger Kotila PhD Prof Richard Falk[/caption]
an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.
Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009).
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First published at :
">Richard Falk Dr Gray Corseri, PhD[/caption]
is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. He has published and posted articles, fiction and poems at hundreds of venues, including, TMS, The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine and Counterpunch.
He has published 2 novels and 2 collections of poetry, and his dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere. He has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum and has taught in universities in the US and Japan, and in US public schools and prisons.
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First published at :
">Gary Corseri Antonio Carlos Silva Rosa, Editor, TMS[/caption]
born 1946, is the editor of the pioneering Peace Journalism website, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, an assistant to Prof. Johan Galtung, and Secretary of the International Board of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
He completed the required coursework for a Ph.D. in Political Science-Peace Studies (1994), has a Masters in Political Science-International Relations (1990), and a B.A. in Communication (1988) from the University of Hawai’i.
Originally from Brazil, he lives presently in Porto, Portugal. Antonio was educated in the USA where he lived for 20 years; in Europe/India since 1994.
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First published at :
">Antonio Carlos Silva Rosa
John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist, Associate Professor Emeritus, at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory.
He is an Indian citizen & permanent resident of Australia and a scholar, an author, a social-policy critic, a frequent social wayfarer, a social entrepreneur and a journalist;He has been exploring, understanding and implementing the ideas of social-economy, participatory local governance, education, citizen-media, ground-journalism, rural-journalism, freedom of expression, bureaucratic accountability, tribal development, village development, reliefs & rehabilitation, village revival and other.
For Ground Report India editions, Vivek had been organising national or semi-national tours for exploring ground realities covering 5000 to 15000 kilometres in one or two months to establish Ground Report India, a constructive ground journalism platform with social accountability.
He has written a book “मानसिक, सामाजिक, आर्थिक स्वराज्य की ओर”on various social issues, development community practices, water, agriculture, his ground works & efforts and conditioning of thoughts & mind. Reviewers say it is a practical book which answers “What” “Why” “How” practically for the development and social solution in India.
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">Vivek SAMAJIK YAYAVAR Prof Ravi Bhatia[/caption]
worked as a mediator for the church in Belfast; as faculty at The School of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, and as Executive Director, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation. He has founded several Indian NGOs, is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
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First published at -
">Vithal Rajan Rene Wadlow[/caption]
is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
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">Rene Wadlow Baher Kamal[/caption]
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Baher Kamal
Egyptian-born, Spanish-national secular journalist. He is founder and publisher of Human Wrongs Watch. Kamal is a pro-peace, non-violence, human rights, coexistence defender, with more than 45 years of professional experience. With these issues in sight, he covered practically all professional posts, from correspondent to chief editor of dailies and international news agencies.
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Credits :
">Baher Kamal Rosa Dalmiglio with Lama Mongolia[/caption]
She is a member of the China Council Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe (special art, culture and humanity), which touches the hearts of all people and portrays the strong willpower so encouraging to 60 million Chinese disabled persons.
Ms. Dalmiglio is Intermediary Agent of CICE, Centre International Cultural Exchange, a direct subsidiary of the Ministry of Culture, People’s Republic of China. CICE is a comprehensive institution engaged in cultural exchange programs, professional publication and presentation of cultural art works such as exhibits, receiving foreign art troupes and artists, holding international cultural research programs, and producing intercultural and interreligious documentary films.
She is a member of China Disabled Person’s Federation, CDPF. She is also a member of the International Women Federation, which is concerned with the financial ethics of women s enterprises in underdeveloped areas.
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credits:
">Rosa Dalmiglio
Director, Guru Arjan Dev Institute of Development Studies.
A recipient of Cultural Doctorate of Philosophy of Economics from USA. He is an active member of various professional bodies, namely -
He participated and presented papers in various International/national/regional seminars, conferences etc.. He remained member of the Academic Council of Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar. An unwearied researcher has about 200 research papers published in various international and national journals of repute and 15 research monographs to his kitty. Besides, he has authored/co-authored /edited 15 books which have been well received and highly acclaimed during his three decades of professional career. He was honoured by various national and international awards, namely, Guru Draunacharya Samman, Vijay Rattan Award and so on.
Dr Ron Paul served in U.S. House of Representatives three different periods: first from 1976 to 1977, after he won a special election, then from 1979 to 1985, and finally from 1997 to 2013.
During his first term as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul founded the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE), a non-profit think tank dedicated to promoting principles of limited government and free-market economics. In 1984, Paul became the first chairman of the Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a conservative political group founded by Charles Koch and David Koch 'to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation.' CSE started a Tea Party protest against high taxes in 2002. In 2004, Citizens for a Sound Economy split into two new organizations, with Citizens for a Sound Economy being renamed as FreedomWorks, and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation becoming Americans for Prosperity. The two organizations would become key players in the Tea Party movement from 2009 onward.
Dr Paul proposed term-limit legislation multiple times, while himself serving a few terms in the House of Representatives. In 1984, he decided to retire from the House in order to run for the U.S. Senate, complaining in his House farewell address that 'Special interests have replaced the concern that the Founders had for general welfare.... It's difficult for one who loves true liberty and utterly detests the power of the state to come to Washington for a period of time and not leave a true cynic.'
He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry.
In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces.
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Credits:
">Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D. Jason Hickel[/caption]
He is international consultant of the UN – FAO and international consultant for sustainable development and sustainable future of humankind of Universal State of the Earth - USE.
On 8th October 2016 he was appointed as The Chairman of the Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment protection Committee of the USE, the Supreme Council of Humanity - SCH from Athens, Greece and London, UK.
He is researcher working on: Nature; the Nature, Space and Environment protection; the Climate change system; System thinking; Globalization and global studies; Networking, Complexity and Swarm research: Sustainable Development and Sustainable Future of Humankind. He was among the pioneers researchers (1986 – 1994) to apply nature, space, and environment protection in a local community by activities we call today Local Agenda 21 Processes – a holistic program for survival of our civilization under new challenges of the third millennium.“Commencing from Local Community Sustainable Future and moving towards Sustainable Future of the Global Community of Humankind”.
He is independent researchers with many domestic and international publications and talks. Together with many researchers in co-operation worldwide within philosophy, operational research, global studies, case studies and complex problem solving research, system thinking, requisitely holism, networking and complexity, swarm research, integration and disintegration of matter and energy and universal upbringing, education and lifelong learning. He is contributing a systemic, requisitely holistic and a better understanding of the present. His latest research within the system theory, system thinking, networking, complexity and swarm research may provide a possible answer enabling people to better understand our world of humans.
During 2014 he completed 50 years of research work (1964 - 2014). This year he completed 50 years of been Dr. Vet. Med. Since 1986 he worked on the protection of Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment and completed 30 years of research.
For research on the climate change system and the book “System Thinking and Climate Change System (Against a big “Tragedy of Commons” of all of us), Ecimovic, Mayur, Mulej and co-authors, 2002, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize 2003. His work on “The Information Theory of Nature” was his second nomination for The Nobel Prize during 2007 in Physics. His third nomination for The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 was for “The Environment Theory of the Nature”, published in the book “Three Applications of the System Thinking”, Ecimovic, 2010. Within last 10 years he has contributed trilogies: “The Nature”, “The Sustainable Future of Mankind” and “The Life 2017” – please see at: www.institut-climatechange.si
I grew up in Chile, got my medical degree there, began an academic career in 1970, and left for the USA due to the military coup in early 1974. My first job in the USA was working as a public nutrition professor in the international programme of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.
I started to travel to Africa in 1975, and worked a year in Cameroun in 1980 helping to prepare their five-year nutrition plan. I then moved to New Orleans, to Tulane University’s School of Public Health, and taught in the department of nutrition for ten years, before moving to Nairobi where I was an advisor in the Ministry of Health. Seven years there got me into extensive consulting in Africa, often on nutritional issues. In 1995 moved to Vietnam where I worked for two and a half years in the Ministry of Health as a senior primary health care advisor.
Many years of touching the reality on the ground, in Latin America, then the USA, then Africa and Asia, has made me understand that the real challenge is in the social and political determinants of malnutrition. I have devoted my writings and teaching to that. Over the years, I have found an important shift in my colleagues’ attitude and understanding towards acknowledging the basic causes of malnutrition. But yet I see little happening as a result. I submit that it is our guild’s lack of experience in the political arena that explains this dichotomy. I devote much of my energy to bridge this gap, and am a fervent advocate of empowering claim holders to demand needed changes from duty bearers. Nutrition is a perfect port of entry for that. Equity, social justice and people’s empowerment in a human rights sense is what really will make a difference.
There is no alternative but to deal with nutrition problems as indivisibly linked to social, political and environmental problems. We need to address them as such. The question is: are we all prepared to do that? The answer, in my view, decides whether we are part of the solution or part of the problem. Travelling and living in different parts of the world has reinforced my conviction that we need to get down from our academic ivory towers, and need to change the curricula of our young and upcoming colleagues, to give them the tools to act in such a context. To me, public health nutrition cannot be anything but that.
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">Claudio Schuftan Dr MD Prof. Ram Puniyani[/caption]
Subrahmanian S H
January 30, 2012 @ 12:07 PM
“India needs many heroes not a single hero – a home-grown one. International stars exist but what you always need is something that’s ours, that we can look up to and get inspired,”
We do have many like Dr Subramanian Swamy and the Second Jayaprakash Nararayan. Don’t we?
—
S H Subrahmanian
A Sr ctzn @ 76. A socialand RTI Activist
mani@enablery.org