Multi-layered Learning - Pallikoodam (Teacher Plus, August 2010)

Pallikoodam was founded as ‘Corpus Christi’ in 1968 by Mary Roy. Mary Roy is well known in Kerala civil society as the fiery lady who challenged and helped absolve the Travancore Succession Act of 1916 by which Christian women in Kerala were denied ‘Equal Rights of Inheritance’.

Mary Roy talks about what inspired her to start Corpus Christi on the school website: “My son was a happy seven year old at Lushington School, Ooty. Unfortunately, he began to identify himself as being British. He talked about 'those Indian children'. I realized it was time for him to go to an Indian school. The first day he came home carrying a bag with 16 notebooks and 10 textbooks and wept! This was my first glimpse of what was wrong with education in India.”

Mrs. Roy started operating with seven students at a hall leased by the Rotary Club of Kottayam. When the numbers grew, they shifted to the current location at Vadavathoor which was completely barren at that time. Today, the lush green campus is a sight to behold. The multi-layered architecture designed by the prodigious Laurie Baker is cost-effective, environment friendly and immensely beautiful. Umpteen varieties of trees, all neatly labeled with their common names (in English and Malayalam) and botanical names, grace the campus. In the words of June Jose, Vice Principal, they have all been planted by Mrs. Roy herself or by a bird! Unlike most concrete jungle school campuses, the only two colours in the landscape of Pallikoodam are brown and green – that of earth and nature. The splash of colours from children’s creativity, of course, does grace the walls.

New name, old values

Mrs. Roy asserted her allegiance to her roots by changing the English name ‘Corpus Christi’ to Pallikoodam (Malayalam for ‘school’) in 2000. She also wanted to do away with the Christian tag that the former name had. The same year, the school introduced Malayalam medium in nursery, Std. I and II.

“Malayalis have great adaptability. But the dangerous aspect of this nature is that we quickly give up on our roots and end up giving a step-motherly treatment to our own inheritance. With Pallikoodam, Mrs. Roy wanted to break away from our colonial influence and revive Malayali culture in school education,” says June. That is precisely why students here greet their teachers with a ‘Namaskaram’ rather than a ‘Good Morning Teacher’. They also refer to the older teachers as ‘Kochamma’ and the younger ones as ‘Chechi’ – ‘Miss’ and ‘Ma’am’ are banned!

That does not mean their growth is restricted by the shackles of regionalism. Rooted strongly to their mother tongue and native culture, they just grow up to become stronger trees with widespread branches. The school is proud of its alumni which has many global citizens as members. Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy, Mrs. Roy’s daughter and one of the first students of the school, is just one among them. 

Until recently, the school struggled to overcome the “expensive” tag. With no association with any organization – religious or otherwise – the only income for the management comes from students’ fees. One look at a campus with expanding land area and first class facilities makes it clear where the money is spent – in developing students’ learning environment. “We have had cases of children whose families went through financial crisis much after they joined. We immediately put them on scholarship. Money has never been and will never be a constraint for education here,” clarifies June.

On a different learning path

Although it is an ICSE affiliated school, Pallikoodam puts to use the council policy that only the board examinations in Std. X and Std. XII need be strictly adhered to. The process of preparing the students with skills necessary for those examinations is entirely up to the schools. While most schools take the easy way out by simply reading out from text books, Pallikoodam does it differently. “We follow the council syllabus only from Std. IX. Until then, teachers take a call on what needs to be taught. We refer multiple textbooks and resources to prepare course material and worksheets. Students study only from their lecture notes and these worksheets; there are no textbooks for them,” says Shylaja Ranjit, a senior teacher who teaches physics.

An informal group teaching mode is adopted until Std. IV. Children in each class are divided into groups. Activities related to different subjects are allotted to each group and thus multiple subject classes go on simultaneously. Even if a child is slower than the rest in the group, he/she can continue working on his/her subject while the others move on to the next one. This method calls for a greater amount of preparation on the part of teachers than the conventional lecture method.

The practice of ‘free writing’ is encouraged as well. English is introduced in Std. III through the phonetic method, emphasizing the spoken rather than the written word. After learning English sounds, they are made to spell words on their own. Given the anomaly in English spellings, they often make mistakes. The teachers, however, do not mark the mistakes in red or correct them. With the extensive reading they are made to do from then on, they eventually get a grip on correct spellings naturally. 

There are no annual examinations until Std. VII. Assessment is a continuous process and tests are conducted regularly to analyze students’ understanding of the subject. Children get only grades for these tests, not marks. However, in Std. VIII, the first two terms end with tests-with-marks as a preparation for their first annual examination. Even then, there is no system of declaring ‘ranks’. “The ISC topper may be from Pallikoodam, but it is not news that is shared or celebrated publicly,” says Shylaja. The school just does not recognize that the score in an exam is an indicator of anything at all.

There is no detention until Std. IX either as the school firmly believes that there is no problem child. “All children, by themselves, are brilliant. If there is a problem, it is elsewhere. It is our duty to identify that and give remedial help. There is no need to make a child lose an entire academic year,” explains June. With less than 450 students (including nursery and plus two), the average number of students per class is 35. There are no divisions. This gives ample room for teachers to understand each student – their strengths and weaknesses.

Leela Gopikrishnan, whose kids went to Pallikoodam, says, “There was an instance when my son had just scored well in an exam and I was asked to meet his class teacher. Instead of a compliment, she shared her concern over his carelessness. I was pretty impressed with the observations she had made before she told me this. Despite being his mother, I hadn’t noticed them!” Pallikoodam has a policy of not allowing students to live with any relative, but parents. If neither parent is in town, residential schooling is compulsory.

Parents are also strictly instructed not to arrange private tuitions for their children. The school understands that burdening kids with knowledge twice over is not a good idea. Also, there is every chance that children with help from outside the school won’t pay enough attention in school classes. An exception is made only for students who take up entrance coaching classes in Std. XI and XII.

Despite the economic meltdown and the pink slip aftermath, most Malayali parents still prefer that their children take up engineering and medicine. Schools also take pride in manufacturing engineer and doctor material and many of them, especially in the private sector, cooperate by providing entrance coaching after school hours. Pallikoodam begs to differ. June says, “We emphasize to every parent who comes here for admission that if you want your child to be a doctor or engineer only, this is not the right place.” From Std. VIII, students start receiving group and individual career counselling from experts who conduct tests to explore their aptitude.

The school believes in giving children all possible opportunities and helping them make the right choice. Swimming, drama, yoga, cooking, sewing and physical education are part of the curriculum and therefore non-negotiable. In addition, they can choose a minimum of two extracurricular activities from the options provided by the school, which includes kathakali, bharatanatyam, karate and music. If students are interested in something else, they are also encouraged to find and bring tutors to the school. Interaction with stalwart artists happens regularly so that students have high standards of reference when it comes to achievement.

The equal importance given to extracurricular activities, says Shylaja, is what makes Pallikoodam different – so much so that they cannot be called extracurricular any more, they are very much a part of the curriculum! When most schools relax extracurricular involvement of Std. X and Std. XII students, Pallikoodam makes it work as a stress buster for them to face the board examination calmly. 

The school also focuses on helping children grow as team players. Most of the graded activities are group efforts throwing the concept of individual competition out of the window. Every class does a theme assembly once a year which is an out and out group effort: participation from every student in the class is mandatory. This is also an opportunity for the class teacher to gauge the interests of her students. Regular assemblies happen every week in which teachers are not involved in any other way than attending them. There is no system of assembling and dispersing in lines as well. Discipline, the school believes, is something that must be silently inculcated as a way of life.

Establishing discipline differently wasn’t easy for Mrs. Roy when she started out. There were vehement protests from conservative parents of the small town Kottayam when she introduced swimming classes for boys and girls together. She showed the same grit that she had put to use at the Kerala High Court and had it her way. Leela remembers how Mrs. Roy had once brought a Jazz musician from Mumbai to ‘jazz up’ the interactions of boys and girls when she felt they were inhibited. As unconventional as it sounds, the underlying principle is just that children nurtured in an uninhibited environment become more responsible social beings.

This is exactly what reflects in Bala Bhu Bhadratha, an environmental organization started by the students of Pallikoodam. Their major project is solid waste management and implementation of Municipal Wastes Management and Handling Rules, 2000, in Kottayam. As a part of this project, they give composting units for bio degradable waste to every student’s family. The Citizen’s Action Forum is another group that functions from the school that takes up any issue related to Kottayam.

This school’s success illustrates how we need to be the change that we want to see. Many of us smiled in agreement when Aamir Khan preached jovially in the film, 3 Idiots, about the loopholes in our education system. And then, we moved on with the same old carrot and stick policy. Maybe there is a better way!

Changing Times For Tiny Tots (Teacher Plus, July Issue)

With inputs from Deepti Bharthur


“Surely, education has no meaning unless it helps you to understand the vast expanse of life with all its subtleties; with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and its joys.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti

The image of a proud little boy or girl taking off for school, excited to distraction is maybe something that only plays out on a Sarva Shiksha Abhyan advertisement. The Tabula Rasa approach to education doesn’t do for today’s generation of parents who will do anything to make sure their children get what they see as a much-needed edge to succeed in life.

With the spread of the corporate franchise preschools in urban India over the past decade, the notion of preprimary education in India has been fundamentally revamped. A fully developed curriculum, lesson plans, organised activity are all factored into the system, gearing towards preparing the child with a sound cognitive base for school.

‘Learning Readiness’ is the first of the three laws of learning developed by the renowned American educational psychologist Edward Thorndike. It is a simplistic concept that ‘individuals learn best when they are physically, mentally and emotionally ready to learn, and they do not learn well if they see no reason for learning.’ Although this concept can be applied to human learning at any stage, it is particularly significant for the 0-7 age group because any experience during this impressionable age has a long-term effect. Manju Shetty, an education consultant at Chennai says that if we initiate learning before children are ready, they may learn and perform. But by the time they come to class four when fractions are introduced, they will be saturated and lethargic. In other words, they become “schooled” in performing certain operations but do not truly “learn” in the deeper sense of the term.

The late Prof. N. Sankaran Nayar, eminent educationist and psychologist who contributed to the first authoritative nursery syllabus in Kerala back in 1963, says in his book The Concept and Practice of Preschool Education that readiness has two components – maturation and experience. While the former refers to the physical aspect (the child’s hand becoming strong enough to use a pencil), the latter refers to a background of related experiences. It is in providing the child with more experiences that preprimary education can contribute in ‘readying’ them for formal learning at primary school. Maturation on the other hand must progress at its own pace and cannot be forced.

Preprimary education has two phases in today’s Indian context – playschool and nursery (also known as kindergarten). Two years of kindergarten (German, means children’s garden) has been in vogue for some time now and it has almost become the first phase of compulsory education these days. While the notion of preschool has been around for over three decades in the country its apparent importance has increased in the recent years. Understandably, there is some confusion between the terms “preschool” and “playschool” because one refers to a phase of education while the other refers to the approach taken within education.

The huge increase in advertising for preschools and nurseries only leads to further confusion: are these spaces where children get together to play and be cared for in the absence of parents, or are they spaces where they are “readied” for formal school? Where the early preschools, slightly upgraded day care centres, were all about comfort and care, the newer ones focus on social and intellectual development - and therefore evince a greater interest in “method”.

Mr. J. Joseph, Managing Director of Sydney Montessori Schools based in Kerala, says, “I wanted to change the system of leaving children to under qualified people. Ayahs with minimal educational qualification are not equipped with the resources to provide a child during this important phase.” Joseph started Sydney with one student in a small town called Kottayam. The main challenge he faced was parents’ hesitation to pay fees of over a thousand rupees per month, especially since an older institution in the neighbourhood, run by nuns, was charging only a quarter of it. “We don’t mind spending lakhs on making our children engineers and doctors, but what is the point if we have ignored the most important phase of their lives?” he asks.

But word of mouth spread faster than he expected and within no time, Sydney became famous for the difference it was making. It now has six branches in three districts in Central Kerala. However, Joseph himself clarifies that although the school focuses on all round development of the child, character formation and finding their true potential, it does not completely follow the Montessori system as the name suggests. “There isn’t the right kind of environment for that in Kerala. It will be useful only if the child can carry on with it during primary education and upwards,” he says.

It is known that Montessori schools differ in their interpretation and practical application across the world because of the ambiguity in Maria Montessori’s work in describing the method itself; she focused more on the effects of the method. Take Anuradha Rao’s case, for instance. With the experience of running the Naval Wives Welfare Association playschool in Visakhapatanam, she started one at her house in Hyderabad after her husband’s retirement. She wanted to take it to the next level and attended a Montessori training program at Basheerbagh. “The classes went fine, but during a two week teaching practice session at a school, I saw multiple instances where the inner urges of children were being disregarded. The original Montessori style is about letting the child be. I couldn’t agree and so I quit.”

The Waldorf method developed by the Australian philosopher Rudolph Steiner has also gained niche popularity in Indian schools recently. Based on a more humanistic pedagogy, the Waldorf style is different from mainstream teaching methods. Manju, who also has 13 years of experience as a kindergarten teacher at Shloka Waldorf School in Hyderabad says, “We use the playway method. Our play materials and even the classroom ambience is the same in all countries. But we follow what is called the rhythm of the child – which starts with their heartbeat,” she says.

At Euro Kids, a leading preschool chain in India, a combination of playway method and Montessori style is put to use. Asha Swaminathan, Academic Coordinator for the Kerala Territory, says: “Our philosophy is based on this idiom - I hear, I forget; I see, I remember; I do, I understand. So instead of just saying A for Apple, we bring an apple to the class, make them smell, touch, peel, cut and eat. All senses are at work that way.”

However, preschool institutions are not all about fun and play. Teachers often encounter challenges while working with children from dysfunctional, unhappy homes or with a history of abuse. Manju speaks of a senior kindergarten student in her charge who was grappling with an incident of attempted molestation at a park. “Fortunately, nothing happened. But the child became so clamped. I requested the parents to give her one more year in kindergarten. They are so grateful for that one year now. She has forgotten it (the episode) completely.”

Joseph remembers having a four year old who was so tactfully sexually abused by her uncle that she developed a sexual interest. The parents had not communicated this, but her behaviour with older boys upped the teachers’ antennae. The parents, however, later confessed that they sent her to Sydney just so that she could get over it.

Parents are a problem!

Anuradha, who runs a non formal playschool (just three hours everyday), says she has had parents who were worried about their children not knowing the alphabet and numbers 1-20 while other kids did.

Manju confesses that the biggest challenge in her career has been dealing with parents, not children. “They should understand that children are like our five fingers, all are different but each one is indispensable. There is no point in comparing them.” But she herself says that ‘the parents who trouble you a lot are the genuine ones.’ That is precisely why Waldorf gives parents the opportunity to participate in the class for a day and watch their kid learn.

Euro Kids arranges a parent orientation program at the outset itself to avoid such ‘a conflict of interest.’ “We make it clear to parents what we will be doing and what the expectations from them are. They are equal contributors in their child’s development,” says Asha.

Joseph and his wife Jasmine have had a tough time dealing with indifferent parents. The attitude is that ‘we pay you and you are supposed to do this.’ There have been cases when the kids are bathed and sent home and they return the next morning without even brushing. Some parents even touch teachers the wrong way while handing over the child. Some come drunk to school to drop children. And most of them are completely averse to feedback as well.

But there are also parents like Jyothi Rao, whose daughter has gone to Anuradha’s school as well as Euro Kids in Kukatpally, Hyderabad. She can list the learning of her child in each place with the changes in her behaviour; such is the level of involvement!

An important factor to keep in mind here is that the nursery school is not a substitute but an extension of the home. Neither home nor school can take care of all needs and they cannot function in isolation as well. A coordinated approach working at an individual plane (parent visiting school and teacher visiting home) and a collective plane (parent teacher meetings to discuss common problems) is required. Of course, basic manners are not negotiable.

Teachers don’t just teach...

In many of these institutions, teachers have the freedom and responsibility to choose the school activities based on children’s interest and pace. They ‘prepare an environment’, as Maria Montessori puts it, where children do not have to be forced with either the carrot or the stick to learn.

Equating teaching with discipline gets a strict negative nod. Regimentation is a serious hazard to mental and emotional health of children at this age; what they need is a free permissive atmosphere where free activity is not only tolerated but encouraged. As Swami Vivekananda ardently advocates, teachers should help them manifest the perfection they already have in them.

The Waldorf system calls their teachers ‘facilitators.’ “We talk very little unlike in other schools. If a child asks why the sky is blue, we don’t give a readymade answer. We ask back, ah, why is it blue? This will make him observe and experience by himself that the sky changes colour as the day progresses,” Manju explains. At Sydney, teachers are given special training to understand that it is a re-rooting process for children, their first exposure to a world outside home, which calls for a lot of care. One teacher is assigned to each kid during the time of joining and it is her duty to see that the child is comfortable being away from parents and home.

Euro Kids employs a ‘reporting and inspection system’ to deal with the problem of widespread franchisees. Each school has to call the territory Academic Coordinator every day and give a report. Additionally, monthly inspections are arranged. Coordinators across the country meet once in four months to discuss feedback from teachers across the board and to amend the curriculum accordingly.

Getting the right applicants is a challenge faced by all these schools. Most schools consider good English communication skills and graduation a must and mothers are preferred. But an attitude problem among educated people in teaching at preprimary level is the biggest deterrent. ‘I did not do my post graduation to teach at a nursery’ is a statement that is often heard. What many teachers do not realize is that this is the place where he or she can make maximum difference to a child’s life.

Of course, the attitude problem has a lot to do with the poor salary scale of playschool and kindergarten teachers. At Sydney, every teacher gets a basic salary of Rs.5000 plus performance based bonus. Joseph says he knows many schools that are run with teachers who have just passed plus two and have undergone nursery teaching training and are paid as low as Rs.1000. Sister Nirmal, Principal of St. Lukes Nursery School, Gandhinagar says that all three teachers in her school have only completed these courses.

While enhanced pay scales will go a long way in attracting a better talent pool, a genuine interest in teaching young children is important for those who wish to make a career in it. Asha once had a post graduate who had come for the post of Counsellor, but the vacancy was for teaching. “She was averse to the idea, but I requested her to be with us for a month and see how things go. She loves her job today.” If that’s not enough, she vouches for it herself – “I have 100% job satisfaction.”

The early years of a child’s life must be handled with care and consideration - in terms of providing the right physical and emotional environment, and in terms of having the right kind of people around the child. While a warm and nurturing home may be the best place for a child to take early lessons for life, the space provided by a preschool can offer a valuable addition to those lessons—through peer interaction and play, which is after all, a child’s work.

In Conversation With Nasreen Munni Kabir (Channel 6, April Issue)

Even while living in London, you have kept your umbilical cord with India uncut by choosing to work with Indian cinema. Was it a conscious effort?

Most immigrants settled abroad, whether from India or any other country, are connected to their homeland through food, religious practice and language — it isn’t surprising that such a connection is there and unchanging. We might live 500 years abroad but we’re not white. We will always be asked: “Where are you from — originally?”

Like many others, I grew up watching films, and Indian films too. I wanted to work in cinema so combining the idea of home with a leaning to study and become a practitioner in films was exciting.

While filming, what is your perspective – of an NRI/outsider or someone closer home who is trying hard to give a piece of home to a whole lot of them?

Believe me when I started in 1978, Hindi films were not considered “cool” at all. The whole story changed in the early 1990s; I think through the popularity of film music and the arrival of the Khans — young people began to think of Indian cinema as something they were proud of. Before that, many middle class families looked down on Hindi films.

Once you know a subject well, you become an insider; at least you hope to be be considered as such. Outsiders usually study a subject in greater detail because they don’t take anything for granted as an insider might. I have been working on Hindi cinema for 32 years, starting in the late 1970s — organised huge Indian film festivals in Paris, programmed (and still do) Indian films on British TV, made over 80 documentaries and written nine books on the subject — so I hope the question of insider/outsider doesn’t arise anymore. The most important thing for me is having had the privilege of meeting so many wonderful people working in Indian films.

Your affinity to a certain era of Hindi cinema is apparent. Does that mean you believe that the quality of today’s cinema has gone down so much so that it is not worth studying or documenting?

You can’t study every period if you study cinema seriously. You just don’t have the time to go so deeply. If you do everything, you’d be a generalist and I prefer specialising. I really like the 1950s, and actually if I know anyone’s work really well it is only Guru Dutt. I’ve spent over ten years researching his life. It involved talking to people who knew him and thinking about his work and his approach to cinema. I am still learning about the 1950s.

Every period has their history-makers. And some top names today will impact the future. It’s not only the past that endures the test of time; each generation has a place in history.I hope this generation of filmmakers are documented too. I don’t see any great evidence of that. There are hundreds of TV interviews with actors and directors of today, but I doubt if these interviews have lasting value or give great insight.

Technology has made it possible to capture historical developments inexpensively. Yet there is no serious chronicling of cinema that happens these days. Most people indulge in frivolous conversations. Why do you think this situation has come about?

TV is a big monster that needs feeding; and quickly. It is hungry 24/7. When you do things fast, how can they be deep and thought-through? There isn’t the time to reflect. We also favour a culture of the “here and now” and chat shows satisfy that need. Do audiences like serious interviews? I think so, but do the TV channels think so? The big hiccup is that chat shows aren’t archival material — how many times can you see the same episode of a gushing presenter talking to a star, who often says the same things? Just about once. Archival value means something else.

You have often expressed the opinion that, as an art, cinema is not judged on the same plane of, say, theatre. Yet it is the most sought after and influential medium we can think of, especially in India. Isn’t there an irony there?

Yes, there is irony in that. But most-after things aren’t often considered art. Soaps may get high TRPs, but are they art?

Cinema is the greatest art form of our times and is recognised as such in the West. It combines art, music, theatre, literature, photography, performance, choreography — and has developed its own language to tell stories. But often for an art form to be recognised as an art form, people need to write about it. And that process has already begun — since the past ten years, there are more and more books written about Indian cinema.

Things have changed since you started your career. On one side, celebrities have been overexposed through the media flood. And on the other, access to them has becomes difficult. What have been your recent experiences?

Yes, access is more difficult because celebrities just don’t have a minute to breathe. But they give me time when they can, because they seem to like my work. My documentaries and books have done well like the book on Lata Mangeshkar or the documentary on Shah Rukh Khan which was called The Inner/Outer World of SRK.

Personal relationships mattered more in earlier times and it’s true of all professions. If you blog or tweet it doesn’t mean you’re a friend. Tweets to me are like weather bulletins — how am I feeling right now? With emphasis on the “I.” Not the “we.”

But we live in hugely complex times and to be noticed in the crowded market-place, perhaps you have to be a narcissist. I think today even Superman would not revert to being ordinary Clark Kent.

A little bit about your upcoming project with A R Rahman?

It’s a book of conversations. We’ve just started. Too early to explain its shape. But A R Rahman is a solidly genuine person and working with him is knowing that great artists can firmly have the ground under their feet.

The Irony Of Being A Girl

Most Indians believe that a man’s life is immensely blessed if two women come into his life - Goddesses Lakshmi and Saraswathi. After all, what more can you ask for than education and prosperity? But then, we also kill our girl children, if possible in the womb itself. Clearly, we are a country of cultural contradictions.

Achi is pregnant for the eleventh time and is a mother of seven girls. The rest of the girls have passed away thanks to lack of resources of the family. The one and only wish of her life is to deliver a baby boy, although by the looks of it, she is not in a state of health to go through such a demanding experience for the umpteenth time. She is confident while declaring that if her eleventh child turns out to be a girl, she will either kill it or sell it.

Out of the two tribal communities that are prevalent in Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh – the Chenchus and the Lambadas – the latter is a more enterprising bunch whose roots can be traced back to Rajasthan. They live in communes by the name Thanda and the one that Achi belongs to is called Katrawath.

Achi’s husband is indifferent about the whole issue. He seems to completely have submitted it to his wife to take the decision she wants. He disagrees with Achi when she says that their eldest daughter is 22. How she can be 22 while he himself is just 32, he asks. Going by the fact that the daughter in question herself is pregnant and looked old enough to be 22, the man could hardly be believed.

Dressed in elaborate Rajasthani costumes adorned with white plastic bangles running through the length of their hands, the older women of the community also care less. It is most likely that they too subscribe to Achi’s philosophy. Because of the lighter tone of their skin, a lot of Lambada women have been forced into flesh trade as well.

A couple of government paid social workers do try their best in spreading awareness. Shailu, an ASHA worker and a member of the community herself, tried to tell Achi how her girls could reach heights just like boys and that killing them is not the solution for anything. Achi snapped back asking her to provide for their upbringing and later for their dowry. Another Lambada woman Redi Bai, who is pursuing graduation through Open University and working in the Thanda anganwadi, also tried her level best to convince Achi that educating her girls was the answer to her problems; but in vain.

Not just that Achi is not apologetic about it, she thinks female infanticide is justified given the poor living conditions she has to deal with, day in and day out. That is the striking aspect of the rural parts of our country, where ironically half of the deities are female.

MRP – The Meaning And The Myth

Shopping for house supplies has never been such a ‘surprising experience’ before as it is in current times. Some super markets sell sunflower oil at half the amount of MRP and some celebrate ‘our price’ of 49.99 for a detergent packet worth Rs.50! The irony is that most of us, when at the local kirana shop or a street vendor shop, also will not mind if the shopkeeper asks for an extra rupee or two on MRP. ‘Poor fellow,’ we think.

Maximum Retail Price is by no means an unfamiliar term; even to a consumer who is just about average in awareness. But does that mean that all consumers understand what those words mean?

Of course, it is the maximum amount that a retailer should charge us for a packaged commodity. What most of us do not know is that we almost always pay much more than the cost of the product and a respectable margin put together, even when paying just the MRP.

So where is the glitch? From a layman’s point of view, it is because the manufacturer has the right to decide the price of his/her product. Government does not interfere in this process, and it is up to the consumer whether to buy a product at a particular price. This is why the fancy ‘Hang Out’ packs of Lays available mostly in theatres and malls cost Rs.15, but gives you almost the same quantity as a Rs.10 pack. Manufacturers simply customise the packaging for malls and put a higher price tag.

However, Prof. Vamsi Vakulabharanam from Department of Economics at University Hyderabad says: “As long as there is a competitive structure and private enterprising, it is alright if manufacturers set the price. It is actually the market which is mediating between the consumers and them. The market acts as a disciplining institution whereby prices are brought down to a minimum and hence there is no need for government intervention.”

May be, we should rewind a little bit to understand how this fancy price tag brouhaha came about. Until December 1990, Indian manufacturers had two options while printing prices on packaged commodities: Retail Price (local taxes extra) and Maximum Retail Price (inclusive of all taxes). However, when consumers flooded courts with complaints alleging that retailers were going haywire in charging the ‘local taxes,’ the Ministry of Civil Supplies and its executive wing - Department of Legal Metrology - decided to pull the plug. They amended the Standards of Weights and Measures Act 1976 making it mandatory for manufacturers to print the MRP that is inclusive of all taxes. If you still see packages with ‘Local Taxes Extra’ printed, they are indeed illegal.

Unfortunately, things are still not hunky dory. Local charges still vary from place to place. Since the manufacturer cannot mark the price of a commodity differentially, they build in the highest required margin into their products. This means that retailers, in places where local taxes are less, can either choose to make consumers pay the printed price or work with a lower profit margin and pass the benefit of lower local taxes by selling at prices lower than the printed price. This is one of the reasons why a lot of commodities are sold at prices less than MRP. Another, of course, is that the manufacturers themselves mark up the MRP considerably and ‘do consumers a favour’ by selling it at sometimes even half the price! This is a very common trend with many oil brands these days.

Interestingly, there are some opinions on the Internet that dig out the loopholes in the law that governs MRP. According to S K Ananda Thirtha, a member of the Mysore Grahakara Parishat, there are several Supreme Court orders which say that ‘Rules’ cannot extend the boundaries of the ‘Act’ under which they have been made (eg. Bharathidasan University v/s All India Council for Technical Education, (2001) 8 SCC 767). As of now, the Standards of Weights and Measures Act 1976 only mandates that MRP be printed on the package. However, the ‘Rules’ part of this Act (Standards of Weights and Measures – Packaged Commodities - Rules 1977) crosses the boundaries of the Act by stipulating that price charged cannot exceed the printed MRP. According to Thirtha, therefore, this part of the Rules is invalid making not printing MRP punishable, but not selling above MRP.

Then, is MRP just a fiction? Well, may be not. It appears that most consumer courts, probably unaware of the Supreme Court decisions, keep rewarding compensation against merchants who sell packaged commodities in excess of MRP. Thirtha believes that this is a case of a badly drafted law and its incorrect interpretation providing justice. In short, two wrongs making a right! Of course, the right way is to rectify the law.

However, even the Legal Metrology Bill 2008 which replaced the Standards of Weights and Measures Act 1976 does not contain any provision prohibiting of charging a price higher than the printed price.

So are restaurateurs using this loophole while charging more than MRP on bottled water and cool drinks? No! Another Supreme Court order (State of Himachal Pradesh v/s Associated Hotels of India, AIR 1972 SC 1131), which clarified that MRP is applicable only to retail sales (goods sold in shops), is the ‘culprit’ of food lovers. It is permissible to charge extra in hotels, restaurants and aeroplanes because what they are offering is a service. The ambience and the cooling level at which the drink is offered become part of that service and justifies the prerogative to charge what they want.

On the other hand, home delivery service cannot be interpreted on the same lines. In a case filed by Ankit Jain, who was charged Rs.35 for a 500ml Coke bottle (MRP Rs.15) that he had bought with burgers from Nirula’s in New Delhi, the apex consumer court held that home delivery service cannot be construed as a sale in restaurant where added services are offered.

So the next time you get you pizza delivered, check what you have been charged for the accompanying drink. While India’s law fraternity takes its time to rectify its Acts and Rules and what not, we should bask in the glory of their ignorance and demand for MRP, at least!

In Conversation With Jahnu Barua

What made you shift base from Assam to Mumbai and from Assamese cinema to Hindi cinema?

I have always had a lot of offers from Mumbai to make movies in Hindi. But I took time to decide. The obvious reason is that there are much better opportunities there and I do not have to face many constraints as with Assamese cinema. As an artist, you always want to reach out to a wider audience.

Do you miss home?

Not really. Mainly because home is where I am. My family is with me always. Plus I can go back anytime I want. There is nothing tying me down, so there is no forced feeling. In fact, I am keen on working on Assamese cinema from Mumbai.

What about the feeling of being an outsider in Mumbai?

All this goes on inside you. If you choose to think of yourself as an outsider, you become one. I am at home in Mumbai. I don’t know about what others think of me though. May be, they do look at me as an outsider!

You worked with mainstream Hindi film actors like Urmila Matondkar, Preity Zinta and Dharmendra in your recent films. How different or difficult has this experience been compared to earlier days of working with Assamese artists?

Frankly speaking, I hardly found any difference. It is mainly because the moment I don the director’s hat, I am who I am supposed to be whether to Urmila or an Assamese artist. I never let artists take advantage of their star status on my sets. If they come late, I sternly tell them not to repeat it. But surprisingly, both the girls – Urmila and Preity – were very professional in their approach during Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara and Har Pall.

You have won multiple awards for your work. How important are they for an artist? How instrumental have they been in your career?

They are important, but not to the extent that you make films just for winning awards. At the end of the day, you make films for an audience, not a jury. Awards are just tokens of appreciation, a bonus. They have helped me no doubt, and instil a level of responsibility to do better work.

You have been on the jury for National Awards and have won quite a few too. What is your take on the recent controversy of 2008 awards being rigged?

The process, as it is, is very democratic. But it depends on the jury that is appointed every year. We are all subjective at one level or the other.

Who are the Indian filmmakers who have influenced you the most?

None. It is one of the first lessons taught at FTII, not to be influenced by anybody. I have favourites, of course, and that includes Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Bimal Roy.

In Memory Of A Master

For a nation that is so doped on cinema as we are, we live too much in the present; often forgetting the glory of our past. A week long celebration held in Hyderabad to mark the centenary year of Bimal Roy, one of the finest filmmakers India has ever had, did a precious lot in reminding the city of this movie master.

Organised by the Bimal Roy Centenary Committee in collaboration with Moving Images, Hyderabad, from January 26 to February 1, the event presented an interesting concoction of slices from Bimal Roy’s work and life. It began with the screening of a short film Bimal Roy doesn’t live here anymore and unveiling of Reflections – on cities and spaces, an exhibition of rare architectural photographs shot by Bimalda, at Kalakriti Art Gallery. “The photographs were shot during my father's extensive travels where he captured structures, people and nature,” says Aparajita Roy Sinha, his daughter and convenor-founding member of Moving Images.

World of Bimal Roy, another exhibition of rare photographs from his life, some of them captured by his wife Manobina Roy, was on display on the first floor of Prasad’s Imax from January 27 to 31. The photographs were shipped from Kolkata exclusively for this event.

That music was part of Bimalda’s cinematic narrative as much as the story, is something that his admirers would vouch for. The innovations he tried to bring on screen while picturising some of the best melodies that S D Burman or Salil Chowdhury have composed were pathbreaking (remember the first ever telephonic love song of India ‘Jalte hain jiskeliye’ from Sujata?). So it was only befitting that the centenary committee honoured veteran singer Manna Dey and actor Jagdeep at a glitzy ceremony at The Marriott on January 28, which the city’s cream de la cream attended. The ‘90 years young’ singer also gave a live performance along with Geeta Varma which left listeners awestruck.

Bimal Roy Retrospective, a film festival that featured nine masterpieces of the director, was of course the highlight of the celebrations. Do Bikha Zameen, Bandini, Sujata, Devdas, Parineeta, Madhumati, Parakh, Yahudi and Udayer Pathey (Bengali, Bimalda’s first film) were screened at Prasad’s Imax and Cinemax from January 29 to 31. Remembering Bimal Roy, a documentary directed by his son Joy Roy was also screened as part of the festival. It gave a fantastic peek into the life of a man who, according to Manobina Roy, believed only in one ‘ism’ – humanism! “It was a spiritual journey for me to find a link to my father whom I hardly knew. While filming it, I discovered how much people loved and respected him,” says Joy Roy.

The first few shows of the festival had half filled audis. However, the houseful shows towards the end made it clear that Hyderabadis gave a lot of mouth publicity to the event. At the screening of the closing film Sujata, Bimal Roy’s daughter and documentary film maker Rinki Roy Bhattacharya commented to a gargantuan crowd, some even seated on the floor, that such a response was unimaginable in Mumbai where there were too many distractions.

The week long cinematic extravaganza ended on a sober note with a one day symposium on ‘Outsiders, Migrants and the Indian Middle Class in Bimal Roy’s films’ held at University of Hyderabad. Jahnu Barua, the national award winning Assamese filmmaker, Suresh Chabbria, the renowned film historian from FTII, Pune, and Maithili Rao, the noted film critic, were the speakers at the symposium organised in collaboration with the UGC SAP on Visual Culture by Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication.

Passionately For Pina

It was wild and mystical at the same time. It also magically encapsulated the passion of the artist the performance was dedicated for. For Pina…, a performance in homage to the German choreographer Pina Bausch, was put together by the Bangalore-based Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts (ACMA) on February 2 at Qutb Shahi Tombs. Pina, one of the biggest names in the global contemporary dance scene, had succumbed to cancer in June 2009.

Department of Tourism, Archaeology and Museums, Government of Andhra Pradesh, collaborated with Goethe-Zentrum Hyderabad in organising this site-specific promenade performance. This means that while the performers moved around utilising the space of the magnificient heritage site, in a choreography that was not confined to a stage, the audience shifted with them too.

Jayachandran Palazhy, trained at Kalakshetra, Chennai, and the London Contemporary Dance School, choreographed the performance. The theme was man-woman relationship in a contemporary context, a favourite of Pina too. Jay, also the founder of ACMA, had worked with her when she toured India.

Jay’s team of dancers, who oozed energy in every sense of the word, was a delight to watch. Like possessed spirits unconscious of their bodies, they soared far and wide. Draped in sensuous red, they illustrated perfectly how a performance that comes from the depths of artistes’ hearts can invigorate the souls of even those who are not trained in art.

The sound technology put to use was out of the world. Hyderabad has probably not seen before speakers shaped like dolphin, snail, horse and what not! Live Electronics specialists Lorenzo Brusci and Luca Cnciella created a surreal environment with their compositions and fancy gadgets. A video installation designed by Chris Zeigler formed the perfect background for the act. Particularly, the effects for the part where Jay enacted drowning were breathtaking.

The event, which was inaugurated by Information and Public Relations Minister Dr. J Geetha Reddy, also had Jayesh Ranjan IAS and Padmasri Dr. Ananda Shankar Jayant as Guests of Honour. Ananda also introduced the troupe and the act to a limited but keen audience. The performance was followed by the screening of a documentary on Pina Bausch.