think`

How do I get people to think about their own situation? I might be faulted here for assuming that they do not, so let me try to re-frame. How do I inspire people to think about some particular situations that might be impacting their lives? Again, I could be faulted here by asking how do I know so much about what impacts their lives? My doctorate degree tells me......Ah...this is difficult. Anyway, we will go into that in a later phase. How do I get my daughter to think? By involving her in a play, a game, a contest, something she is interested in (why is she interested? because it gets her some tangible/ intangible reward, benefit..) and by her participation in the exercise (for lack of better word!!), by her engagement she is driven to thought. I did not do anything here, I just used my so called "expertise" to invent a game/ an exercise/ provide the necessary resources because I have them. Compare this to the child reporters process in Koraput. What did we do in the CR process? We provided resources, were at hand to listen, to respond if someone reached out and asked them to think and write. Keeping questions (who are we ask them etc..) aside, if we can provide resources (no questions asked), be around whenever someone reaches out, inspire with our selves, then maybe people can engage at various levels, engage with different levels of consciousness, ask questions that were never asked before.......inspire themselves.....will this also bring social change...?

Reading critical theory

why do I tend to be dismissive of the people who are of privileged backgrounds? why do I feel, that the very fact that person is from a privileged background disqualifies him or her to champion the cause of the subaltern? Is it a reflection on myself? Or is it plain, pure jealousy? Postcolonial scholars as a rule come from the same privileged background that they criticize and continuously disown. Their research is exemplary, their words make meanings, sense, they cry out for social justice....but they live the same bourgeoisie lifestyle..Bapu said, be the change that you wish to see in the world. But with my comfortable diggings, life, access the highest form of academic articulation, how can I speak about deprived people, the subaltern, the marginalized. I who never have known hunger and at present am never short of food, what can I speak or write about hunger apart from restating the obvious? Is it the sophistication of my language that makes me unique? I feel more inspired by the one gesture of my bourgeoisie cardiologist father who treats poor patients for free and gives them medicines than all these glorious statements of the scholars. Why am I bent upon taking a holier than though attitude? Is it dismissive? To what level of consciousness must I rise up to....Telling daily to understand my privileges and get rid of them, I revel in terms like solidarity and reflexivity but still drive the 22,000$ car and stay in a million dollar home, use the best of technology and work on the indigenous people....how much of a hypocrite am I? Is this not hypocrisy? .....Maybe I am missing something here...let me read more and analyse...Lord Krishna says,

" कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।

मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोस्त्वऽकर्मणि॥"

Paradigm I belong to!!

Am I a positivist? Is this internal tension within me to find the right path? Do I ascribe to a certain set of knowledge because I think that is the right thing to do? Does that make me a positivist? So, what does it mean really to not be a positivist? Who constructed these terms anyway? Can I live my life claiming to co-create reality and construct as it happens? Then, how do I get involved if I do not have a stake? Are these naive questions or an attempt to engage in theoretical sophistication? In the end what do I value most and which is my political position? Am I afraid to get pigeon holed into a category?

In this search and turmoil, why am I continually coming to 'holier-than-thou' position time and again and that becomes a position for me to privilege my approach/ thinking and dismiss the rest. Isn't that what politics is all about?

Afgan beauty school and Debbie Rodriguez

One my peers is doing a post-colonial study on the Afgan women images represented by the book chronicling Debbie Rodriguez's adventures in Afganistan. Well...ripe stuff to go at. Debbie is a typical mercenary and its a selfish account. As millions have done before and doing now, she is one more person who is participating in the exploitation of the vulnerable and in making them into exotic objects, objects of desire. Equally at fault is Random House...well the ultimate aim is to make money. And we as researchers, we must critique and pull it apart..why? Because we need a dissertation which rocks!! We need a subject to pull apart and establish our credentials. Maybe a book criticizing this book and the way it portrays the Afgan women. Here, my comments are more to do with the enterprise of research. Research has been and always will be a political enterprise and a colonial one at that. We create spaces like post-colonial, neo-colonial to highlight our scholarship, we choose eminent scholars and their articulation as a beacon not only to get direction but to have an anchor to our scholarship; to belong to a political group. Research has been and always will be a colonial enterprise. We use terms like solidarity to reinforce our positions and somehow convince ourselves and peer scholars that we are on the same footing as pour research participants. We use terms like foregrounding participants' voice..where? in our papers of course!! Somewhere in all this, the Afgan woman is lost, the voices silenced somewhere, someplace. ...