Anna Hazare and Anti Corruption Drama

People are raising their voice across India against corruption, led by Anna Hazare. The government of India is completely at sea in its attempt to deal with the situation. But there is something seriously amiss in this whole scenerio.

It seems that people who are participating in this movement think that corruption is something that is perpetrated by some others who are in power or who are rich. This is partly true but not the absolute truth.

Corruption is entrencehed in the system because of people like you and me and the so called anti corruption agitators. Ask yourself a simple question; How will you respond in a situation where the easy way out is by bribe or influence (Sifarish)? Will you stand in a long queue and wait your turn, or visit a court to pay a traffic fine or would you rather hand over a 100 Rs note to the traffic cop and go home?

There are numerous situations where this choice arises; be it admissions to an educational institutions, getting a driving license, making a file move in a government office at a faster pace than others and so on...

Corruption and bribing is not something the nation and its people learnt over night. We have thousands of years old tradition of bribing our gods for favours asked. If such and such event happens or such and such problem or ailment vanishes I will donate a prasad of Rs. xyz in the temple. It is the same mind set which is carried by the common man when he visits the office of power.

Is it only the people who take bribes corrupt or the giver is equally responsible? The fact is that the petite bourgeoisie-auto rickshaw drivers, and constables, if Haryana Police Sangathan support for Jan Lok Pal's bill is any indication, and low paid government officials and assorted elements-have no idea that they are very much part of the corruption. They believe it is a disease outside them, primarily endemic to the government and its institutions, when they are active players in the drama.

The only major difference in the bills drafted by the government and Anna Hazare, apart from bringing the PM into the bill's ambit, seems to be that the government wants to set up a separate investigative agency while Anna and his team want an existing investigating agency like the CBI to report to the Lokpal committee. That would eventually mean the Lokpal evolving into a parallel power vortex, and might make Parliament redundant. In other words, the people elected by you will not have as much say as those appointed or government nominated Lokpal committee members.

As far as political parties go in India, they have clearly failed to represent the people. They do not have the interests of common man in their agenda. Their primary purpose seems to be how to keep clinging to power and make some money for their future generations rather than think of the benefit and problems faced by the masses.

The system has become such that it is virtually impossible for and outsider to find his footing in the political system without money or connection.

This movement should be more of an awakening call for the people to do a self search rather than the Political parties, which anyways seem numbed and have noy been able to come up with any proper response to this anti corruption movement.

I truly hope that this movement helps wake up the common man to stop bribing officials and seeking favors from political masters in their lives. That would be an eye opener for politicians, bureaucracy, police and the powers that be.

I ll finish this article with some tongue in cheek comments later on..cause this is too insipid for my taste.

CBSE Class X Result and Grading System

The new Grading System of CBSE is here for the Class X results 2011. Here is a brief guide to understand the grading system of CBSE.

CBSE Grading

(i) Assessment of theory/practical papers in external subjects shall be in numerical scores.In addition to numerical scores, the Board shall indicate grades in the marks sheets issued to the candidates in case of subjects of external examinations. In case of internal assessment
subjects, only grades shall be shown.

*(ii) Letter grades on a nine-point scale shall be used for subjects of external examinations. However, for subjects of internal examination in Class X the assessment shall be made on a five point scale I.e. A,B,C,D & E.

(iii) The grades shall be derived from scores in case of subjects of external examination. In case of subjects of internal assessment, they shall be awarded by the schools.

(iv) The qualifying marks in each subject of external examination shall be 33% at Secondary/Senior School Certificate Examinations. However at Senior School Certificate Examination,in a subject involving practical work, a candidate must obtain 33% marks in the theory
and 33% marks in the practical separately in addition to 33% marks in aggregate, in order to qualify in that subject.

(v) For awarding the grades, the Board shall put all the passed students in a rank order and will award grades as follows :

A-1 Top 1/8th of the passed candidates

A-2 Next 1/8th of the passed candidates

B-1 Next 1/8th of the passed candidates

B-2 Next 1/8th of the passed candidates

C-1 Next 1/8th of the passed candidates

C-2 Next 1/8th of the passed candidates

D-1 Next 1/8th of the passed candidates

D-2 Next 1/8th of the passed candidates

E Failed candidates

Notes :

(a) Minor variations in proportion of candidates to adjust ties will be made.

(b) In case of a tie, all the students getting the same score, will get the same grade. If the number of students at a score point need to be divided into two segments, the smaller segment will go with the larger.

(c) Method of grading will be used in subjects where the number of candidates who have passed is more than 500.

(d) In respect of subjects where total number of candidates passing in a subject is less than 500, the grading would be adopted on the pattern of grading and distribution in other similar subjects.


The results have been extremely good this year and most students have performed well. The new grading system has also been well received by both students and teachers.

Complete Comprehensive Evaluation means the focus has shifted from rote memory of lessons to overall development of the student. Students have managed to register a good performance.

A student who has got grade D and above is qualified for admission to Class 11. Those who have scored below D will be eligible for improvement of performance or not eligible.

CBSE Class X Results 2011

There has been some major goof up in Declaring Class X results of CBSE by the board. Although the CBSE Class X results 2011 for Chennai and Delhi Region have been announced after some hiccups there has been considerable delay.

The CBSE Class 10 Results for ( Allahabad, Ajmer, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Guwahati and Patna regions) Rest of India are yet to be announced and is expected around 4 P.M. Today.

Click here to Check your CBSE Class X result on line

Or check the Website below

http://cbseresults.nic.in/class1011/cbse1011.htm

We wish all the students and their anxious parents best of luck with their results.

A MOMENT OF SILENCE, BEFORE I START THIS POEM

I Know it takes time to read the written word but I think this one deserves to be read.

Before I start this poem,
I’d like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September 11th.

I would also like to ask you
To offer up a moment of silence
For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned,
disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes
For the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.

And if I could just add one more thing…
A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence for the million-and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S. embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem,
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country.
Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of
concrete, steel, earth and skin
And the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam – a people, not a war – for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives’ bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of a secret war … ssssshhhhhhh…
Say nothing
we don’t want them to learn that they are dead.
Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia,
Whose names, like the corpses they once represented,
have piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem.
An hour of silence for El Salvador …
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua …
Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos …
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas

25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.
And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west…

100 years of silence…
For the hundreds of millions of Indigenous peoples from this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears.
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness …

So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be.
Not like it always has been.

Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.

This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then:
This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971.
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977.
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.

And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.

If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the
Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton’s 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence,
Take it.
But take it all…
Don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.
But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing
For our dead.

P.S. NO! you were not tired of it because the Poem was too long or repetitive but because it made you too uncomfortable. Think about it!

Emmanuel Ortiz is a third-generation Chicano/Puerto Rican/Irish-American community organizer and spoken word poet residing in Minneapolis, MN. He currently serves on the board of directors for the Minnesota Spoken Word Association, and is the coordinator of Guerrilla Wordfare, a Twin Cities-based grassroots project bringing together artists of color to address socio-political issues and raise funds for progressive organizing in communities of color through art as a tool of social change.