Images and Ideas
Every third statistics, the saying goes, winks at truth. A picture does doubly so. But, the statistics of primary education in Nepal shocks you on your face. According to the recent UNICEF report, almost two million Nepali children are deprived of primary education.
Caught by keen eyes of Kantipur lensman Shaligram Tiwari, these photos are an ugly example of this gloomy situation. He captured this rare moment yesterday afternoon in Nobel Academy where the kids of middle class Kathmanduites attend. As this raggedly dressed kid was mimicking his peers, clad in sweaters, well-ironed uniforms attending physical training session.
Shaligram told me the boy didn’t go to school. However, his elder brother who joined him a while later, studied in class one. If this happens in the heart of capital city, you can deduce what is happening in rural Nepal. Why is the state dillydallying with sloganeering such as ‘education for all’?
5 comments:
very disturbing. the slogan "education for all" is just a brand concept. Nothing more than that.. so very disturbing.
and yes, am a proud nepali coming from the beautiful state of sikkim. thanks for blogging in..pleasure to come across..keep blogging:)
Education is all about knowing your real potential which few educational insitutions have achieved. It doesn't really matter than whether it is primary or otherwise.
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> Hi Asian brother! :=)))))
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> I am well here in Germany, just having returned from a nice coffee and cake afternoon at my parents' flat. My sister and her complete family were also there. It was nice and my mother is still very fit for her 76 years she has reached today.
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> She was born in 1930, which should be 1987 B.S., so she has really witnessed an enourmous change of human life in her lifespan. From being born in a wooden house without electricity in northern Finland, over witnessing second world war and Finland being 'friendly' occupied by Germans and her nordic mothercountry finally collaborating with Nazi-Germany in her early teens, to studying and completing German and English language for being a teacher in Helsinki, the capital of Finland in her twenties in Europe after the war.
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> Then she came to Germany following my father and giving birth to me :=))) during the first year of her stay here in Germany. After ten years of raising her three children she joined German middle school as an English language teacher. Even after her pension she stays active and still is studying herself as well as giving tution lessons in English and German language to some students.
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> My mother is a woman from a generation, taking profit from the chances opening up for European women since the beginning of the last century. In most European countries around the year 1900 there were active monarchies and their conservative minds blocked women from education. But with the industrial revolution and related social revolutions taking part in several European countries, the people acquired more and more democratic rights and by this women education and voting rights were established all over Europe between 1890 and 1960.
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> Since then social science proves one unbreakable fact. A society is the more developed, the more women participate in power and decisionmaking. In fact the GDP, how much income is generated per head of the society, is rising proportional to womens' educational standards. The more highly educated women a society creates and the more efficiently they are integrated in the decisionmaking of this society, the better all members of this society are off and the better the society is developed according to all generally accepted patterns of human development.
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> Most developing countries underestimate the importance of education. Only a massive common educational effort can guarantee a stabile participatory society, where people can directly influence their decisions into the political decisionmaking by democratic means like regular elections or regular strikes. But Nepal is far from that average education standard needed to maintain a democratic system and to establish free jurisdiction and free media, to offer a sufficient control for the public society to control their leaders.
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> So most of the protests going on in Nepal suffer from the same lack of honour to be attractive to the simple common man. Although almost nobody among the common people likes the recent ruler and a big majority of his citizens take him responsible for the massacre on late king Birendra and his family in June 2001, the common women and men are not in overwhelming numbers taking part in the current protests.
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> My analysis comes to the conclusion, that the major reason for this failure of the recent democratic movement to reach out to bigger masses is in fact the almost guaranteed violent outcome of any form of protest used until now in Nepal. To this adds the rebel-party aggreement, which created the strange and shameful situation, that party cadres were countrywide mourning their murdered comrade, but failing to condemn the renewed murders of simple soldiers, simple policemen and commoners by the rebels in the same loud way.
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> Unless and until someone in Nepal dares to start a completely nonviolent, true people's movement this evil military powerstruggle between the guerilla and the royal military can go on forever in a terrain like Nepal. It is not only as mostly observed according to foreign power gambling, no, it is mainly due to the nonviolent passivity of the majority of this noble Himalayan people. They are in their innermost soul in majority disgusted and bow their heads in collective shame in facing such an enourmous collapse of human dignity and values in such a short period of time.
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> That the infamous bestiality of the rebels, commited during their punishment actions, is countered by similar behaviour of the royal military and the vigilante groups is not at all an expression of the will of the majority of Nepalese, this is mere inhumanity and against all laws of humanity and of the civilized Nepali society, that existed before the state was captured by crown and rebels.
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> Nepalese want this violence to be stopped. Too much blood of purely Nepali origin has been shed. Too many people have been tortured and shocked for life. For Nepal to be able to survive as an independent society, there is no other way than to stop violence immediately. The passive majority has to stop the two forces fighting this unwanted war on their land. What do we do to separate enraged animals fighting themselves to death, we take sticks and buckets of water to throw them on these heated and by hate blinded animals. Let us do the same with our blind homegrown manimals going out of control and take some risk and all our courage to stop this senseless war now.
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> Thanks go to all nonviolent, peacecreating humans and their movements on this planet for their helpful hearts and minds.
Yurgan in a letter to a Nepali friend, recently staying in Malaysia...
comments welcome to yurgansworld(at)yahoo.com
hey deepak... did you take that photo? it's so amazing.
I'm friends of Kabita, the artist :)
many blessings.
Hi Pamela,
No, I didn't take that pic. Its taken by Kantipur/The Kathmandu Post photojournalist Shaligram Tiwari. And, to share with u the good news, Nobel Academy has agreed to bear the educational expenses of the boy for his entire studies. So, the mission was accomplished!
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