Looks like the whole country and its youth want to become master-jis and masternis. We thought that they only wanted to be Paanchvi Pass or take part in Ekta Kapoor’s new tele-dance contest, but instead they have been signing up in droves for the TOI’s ‘Teach India’ campaign. Strange. They haven’t even been offered a free Dubai shopping holiday, let alone an invite to the Tiger Balm Filmfare Awards Nite. On the contrary, they have to do all the free giving, two hours a week to teach underprivileged kids. Miss, Miss, i am not understanding this lesson. Young-young peoples in colleges and bigbig peoples in corporates want to help smallsmall kids instead of hanging out at in lounge bars? They’ve gone mad or wot?
Yet it’s a fact. ‘Teach India’ has sparked a huge response, and i’ve been trying to figure out what has really caused this Buzz of the Spelling Bee. On the surface, the campaign might appear to be the long-awaited answer to the common dilemma of ‘I want to climb out of my selfish life, but don’t know where to find the ladder.’
It’s all very grand to turn the whole of India into a classroom without walls and windows, not just without blackboards, but you can’t fool me. It can’t be as simple as that. There has to be some hidden agenda behind this altruistic giving of time and talents. Remember, we are now in the India which has flung out its socialist baggage, and drooling-ly jumped aboard no-malls-barred materialism. Face it, baby, no one ever got a foothold on that train by giving someone else a leg-up.
My theory is that this whole campaign is not about Illiteracy Hatao, but about hataoing ethically illiterate politicians. I suspect that ‘Teach India’ is secretly about teaching our leaders a lesson, creating a huge mass of empowered citizens who will be able to sternly order them,‘Get out of the ruling class!’; ‘Stand in the corner!’; ‘Stand on the bench. No, not on the Opposition Benches!’
What i can’t figure out is, why did the TOI have to resort to this elaborate ‘Teach India’ guise? Why didn’t it khullam khulla and straightaway launch a ‘Teach Neta’ campaign? The public would have signed up even more eagerly because this is the glaring need. Once again our leaders have shown that they are lacking in even the basic 3Rs. The Left cannot read the writing on the wall, and every party thinks arithmetic is a zero sum game. They keep waving their numbers as if they are the Tambola Queen of the Karol Bagh kitty party circuit.
The BJP urgently needs memory-strengthening lessons because even its head boys can’t remember what they wrote in their previous nuclear test. The CPM needs a lesson in chemistry instead of going hammer and sickle at whoever it supposedly supports. The Congress does not need any more physics lessons on the correlation between external pressure and hot air. The SP and the BSP strangely seem to be in the same spirituality class because, for both of them, it’s nothing but Maya.
Fortunately, the hard-pressed ‘Teach Neta’ campaign can defer its Einstein’s formula lessons to the next term. In any case, that entire school knows that Elections=Manipulation, Corruption 2 times over.
So, it is obvious that the TOI campaign first needs to educate the political Class of 2008. Or those notorious netas will turn ‘Teach India’ into ‘Leech India’. Just as they have been distorting their mandate of ‘Lead India’ into ‘Bleed India’.
Alec Smart said: ‘‘What’s the new Sinhalong? ‘Old Manmohan has a deal. IAEA-O!’’
Yet it’s a fact. ‘Teach India’ has sparked a huge response, and i’ve been trying to figure out what has really caused this Buzz of the Spelling Bee. On the surface, the campaign might appear to be the long-awaited answer to the common dilemma of ‘I want to climb out of my selfish life, but don’t know where to find the ladder.’
It’s all very grand to turn the whole of India into a classroom without walls and windows, not just without blackboards, but you can’t fool me. It can’t be as simple as that. There has to be some hidden agenda behind this altruistic giving of time and talents. Remember, we are now in the India which has flung out its socialist baggage, and drooling-ly jumped aboard no-malls-barred materialism. Face it, baby, no one ever got a foothold on that train by giving someone else a leg-up.
My theory is that this whole campaign is not about Illiteracy Hatao, but about hataoing ethically illiterate politicians. I suspect that ‘Teach India’ is secretly about teaching our leaders a lesson, creating a huge mass of empowered citizens who will be able to sternly order them,‘Get out of the ruling class!’; ‘Stand in the corner!’; ‘Stand on the bench. No, not on the Opposition Benches!’
What i can’t figure out is, why did the TOI have to resort to this elaborate ‘Teach India’ guise? Why didn’t it khullam khulla and straightaway launch a ‘Teach Neta’ campaign? The public would have signed up even more eagerly because this is the glaring need. Once again our leaders have shown that they are lacking in even the basic 3Rs. The Left cannot read the writing on the wall, and every party thinks arithmetic is a zero sum game. They keep waving their numbers as if they are the Tambola Queen of the Karol Bagh kitty party circuit.
The BJP urgently needs memory-strengthening lessons because even its head boys can’t remember what they wrote in their previous nuclear test. The CPM needs a lesson in chemistry instead of going hammer and sickle at whoever it supposedly supports. The Congress does not need any more physics lessons on the correlation between external pressure and hot air. The SP and the BSP strangely seem to be in the same spirituality class because, for both of them, it’s nothing but Maya.
Fortunately, the hard-pressed ‘Teach Neta’ campaign can defer its Einstein’s formula lessons to the next term. In any case, that entire school knows that Elections=Manipulation, Corruption 2 times over.
So, it is obvious that the TOI campaign first needs to educate the political Class of 2008. Or those notorious netas will turn ‘Teach India’ into ‘Leech India’. Just as they have been distorting their mandate of ‘Lead India’ into ‘Bleed India’.
Alec Smart said: ‘‘What’s the new Sinhalong? ‘Old Manmohan has a deal. IAEA-O!’’
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