Admissions in good schools are a real scare in many parts of India. One must move speedily to tie-up collaborations with resourceful people to start manoeuvres to push their children into schools even before they are born. I had a friend, who had a bout of depression immediately a few months after his marriage as his wife had conceived. No, he wasn’t afraid of parenting problems but the schooling. He ran helter-skelter in the quest of breaking the sacred codes of admission of the high-walled fortresses of reputed Montessori schools, leading to a fast track possibility into the conveyor-belts of primary school admissions.
“Register the name first,’ someone in the knowhow whispered in his ears and he reached me the same evening. ‘I need names urgently,’ he pleaded. “Boy or girl?” was my logical question. The first-time father was flummoxed as he was unaware. “Needless to worry, I assured,” dishing out a few unisex names that could help him tide over the crisis. “There AKAs in India, ‘also known as, where you can coin a pet name, a regular name and/or a religious name, those which can be flaunted at a school during admission.” Satisfied he left, never to comeback and I learnt he had got it ‘fixed.’
The incidence has no connection to poll-bound Gujarat, but is merely a preamble giving an insight of Indian ‘Jugadness,’ the Indian term sneaking into English dictionaries too as ‘a flexible approach to problem-solving that uses limited resources in an innovative way.’ How apt! There can be thousands of examples of Jugaad, normally invented by people to either overcome the handicaps or to bypass the rules, by playing with words or things or time or all of them to suit their purpose.
Now I come to the subject of the election business. Never in Independent India, as far as I remember, counting dates have been announced without polling dates, 18th December for both Himachal and Gujarat. Poll date has been announced for Himachal as 7th January, but Gujarat Assembly election dates have not been announced yet, drawing ire of the opposition and the constitutional experts. Gujarat will have to complete the polling process on or before 20th December, well before Himachal Pradesh elections and thus mathematically the dates ought to have been announced together, or in advance.
What could be the reason? The Election Commission, an autonomous body, giving jitters to the earlier governments, have peeped out and meekly whimpered that it is due to the floods in Gujarat the announcement of poll date is withheld. Any poll date announcement will hamper flood relief operations as the Model Code of elections set in! Sorry, the nation cannot be taken for a ride with this unacceptable theory. Today, all the newspapers across India carry full page advertisements of a ‘first of its kind world class RORO ferry service.’ Pray enlighten me friends, can you explain what relief the flood affected people will get from ferry service now?
Ram Rajya was promised and Modi was elected. He should act like Ram and not take refuge under ‘jugadness’ for crafty fixes and claim that no rules have been flouted merely because the election dated have not been announced!
Sampath Kumar
Intrépide voix
