Tag: parents

‘The Disciple’: A Meditative Enquiry Into the Hypocrisies of Tradition

Chaitanya Tamhane’s film is set in the world of classical music but is a metaphor for the Indian way.

A young man on a bike, a serene night, an empty Mumbai road. A voice from the earphones fills his mind, hypnotises his being. The bike glides in slow motion, respecting the meditative voice. “Saints and ascetics have attained this music after thousands of years of rigorous spiritual pursuit,” she begins. “It cannot be learnt so easily. There’s a reason Indian classical music is considered an Eternal Quest. And to embark on that quest, you’ll have to surrender and sacrifice. If you want to earn money, raise a family, then perform love songs or film songs. [But] if you want to walk this path, learn to be lonely and hungry.”

The listener is Sharad Nerulkar (Aditya Modak), a young classical singer, the speaker Sindhubai Jadhav — or Maai (Sumitra Bhave) — his guru’s guru. She’s long dead, but Sharad often turns to her recorded lectures for inspiration and solace. Chaitanya Tamhane’s second feature, The Disciple, now streaming on Netflix, enters the world of classical music and tells a singular Indian story of the politics of devotion — and the opaqueness of authority.

The drama pivots on the guru-shishya parampara — the mentor-mentee tradition — a long-standing feature of the teaching of Indian classical music. Their ubiquitous presence marks and defines this film. Sharad’s guru, Pandit Vinayak Pradhan (Arun Dravid), trains and performs with him. Sharad follows his teacher, cares for him as his own father: massaging his legs, calling the doctor, paying for the treatment. Vinayak remembers his mentor, acknowledging that eternal debt, even in his old age. “We could not utter a single word in front of Maai,” he tells Sharad. “We just kept our heads down and sang.” Maai says, “I sing only for my Guru and my God.” Sharad’s first music teacher was his father, a man whose sincerity outsized his talent.

Also read: For Pandit Rajan Mishra, Music Was Both Extraordinary and Ordinary

The linguistic root of gharana (ghar, or home) — a community of musicians bound by region, apprenticeship, or musical style — and the frequent reference to the Almighty, and the divine-filial reverence for mentors indicate the intersections of three key figures in The Disciple: parents, gurus, and gods. Sometimes they coalesce into one. These figures of authority induce unambiguous reverence and unwavering allegiance. The disciple then faces a paradoxical conundrum: How can he find his voice by losing his own?

Tamhane is perceptive about the nature of such relationships. For Sharad, Vinayak’s approval is paramount. The whole world may have a different opinion, but Vinayak’s word can annul them all as, for Sharad, his mentor is his world. But when even that feels inadequate — due to self-doubt or the persistent worry of finding success — he turns to Maai under an open-sky, wearing earphones, driving a bike. What does she tell him? “If you want the truth of the Raag to spontaneously reveal itself, you’ll have to rid your mind of falsehood, greed, and impure thoughts”; “you don’t just practice music but also endurance and perseverance”; “technique is merely a medium to express your inner life — technique can be taught, Truth cannot.” Maai’s teachings can be distilled in two questions with probable interconnected answers: What is a good artist — who is a good person?

Sharad is virtually an orphan — his father is dead, and he presumably has a strained relationship with his mother — so, for someone like him, Vinayak and Maai are his quasi-parents, a relationship that runs one-way: He doesn’t question Vinayak; he can’t question Maai. The expectation of authority is obedience, resting on a simple presumption: That the mentor is (always) right, that she knows it all, that she is pure. But what if she, like everyone else, is human — jaundiced, parochial, hypocritical? What if the guru is not an overflowing and transparent fount of wisdom but sly, evasive, and insecure? Where does a disciple float his questions if the mentor doesn’t have an answer? Where does a believer go if the gods have sullied the temple?

The Disciple is not overtly political, but it compels us to consider penetrating concerns, melding the political and the personal, hiding in plain sight. Like Maai, many Indian parents have expounded some key tenets of propriety to their children — sanskar (values), tyaag (sacrifice), tapasya (austerity), mehnat (labour), among others — linking personal virtues to professional success. But the very same people in the recent past have supported — and cheered — draconian political decisions, revealing their bigoted, callous sides.

Also read: Tamil Movie ‘Karnan’ Serves a Note of Caution to Mainstream Politics of the Marginalised

Tamhane’s drama, then, prompts a crucial question: How do you process betrayal when it comes from parental figures? Who were these people all along — their old version, the hardworking breadwinners, or the new, holding a glass of single malt and rubbishing Article 370, championing the CAA-NRC and the Ram Mandir? Perhaps both, as ‘people contain multitudes’, but how should their progenies reconcile the contradictions? Because every other form of duplicity can be reasoned, even forgotten and forgiven, but not from people who are — or were — a part of you. This deceit burns hard because it reveals less about the mentor, more about the disciple.

This is such a light wondrous film that invites multiple interpretations. Receding from imposing meanings — and leaving enough gaps for the audiences to fill — The Disciple allows us to find our own stories. Since it is centered on a close-knit subculture, its echoes find recognisable parallels in other silos. It is also a distinctly Indian drama, because it understands the culture of reverence — and our innate fixation on creating hierarchies, folklores, and demigods — in a country marked by limited opportunity and limitless mediocrity. The Disciple elicits an ever-pertinent question: Can we only convey admiration through (borderline fanatic) devotion?

Tamhane’s minimalist approach could have contradicted the maximalism of Indian classical music, but this contrasting superimposition helps him find a distinct voice. It is a calm assured method that mutes the noise and focuses on the heart of the story. There are no excessive camera movements, no snazzy cuts, no contrived lunges. His philosophy is deceptively simple: one shot, one story. The static frames are immaculately composed, comprising strategically placed characters that capture our instinctual visual interest. Many scenes deploy wide shots and deep focus, often filmed in natural light. It does two key things: a) makes us a part of the audience absorbing the musical performances, b) peels away the layers of intimidation marking the mythical world of the performing arts and makes it life-like — and shows how ordinary, how dispiriting and disillusioning, it can be. It also heightens realism, as even solemn performances are pricked via daily mundaneness: someone serves water to the singer, someone enters the auditorium, someone finds a seat.

Also read: Satyajit Ray’s ‘Devi’: When It Was Still Possible To Interrogate the Primacy of Faith

Unlike many directors, Tamhane doesn’t film his conversations via the conventional ‘shot-reverse shot’ method. His camera is often placed at a perpendicular position with respect to the characters, filming them in profile shots. This technique, too, aids the story as we can see only one side of a character’s face — in a world that prizes performance, where people hide their true selves and frailties, this choice speaks reams. It also makes us feel like we’re watching a play — a live performance, complementing the film’s story and themes — where the director can’t flip perspectives. So, it makes absolute sense that The Disciple derives key dramatic potency from a 2008 play, Grey Elephants in Denmark, directed by Tamhane himself. And when he changes that style, such as in the crucial conversation between an old music critic and Sharad — placing the camera close to the speaker, slowly zooming in on the listener from an oblique angle — that choice is deliberate. That slow camera movement also recurs in scenes where Sharad is performing on stage, isolating him from the rest of the world, imprisoning him with himself.

Even the editing (by Tamhane) imbues the film with an appropriate musical rhythm. Many scenes, especially those involving Maai, transition through a J cut — an editing style where the sound from the next scene overlaps with the visual of a preceding scene — reinforcing her omnipresent divine status: someone who ‘calls’ Sharad. Some scenes of hers end with an L cut (the opposite of a J cut) underlining a key facet of their relationship: Maai is present even when she’s not.

Comprising non-professional actors, The Disciple features excellent performances — especially by Modak, who plays two versions of himself, the 24-year-old (in 2006), and the other, 12 years older. If the younger Sharad is sincere and naïve, then his mature self is beaten and jaded. This transition is not conveyed through flowing dialogues or pressing mannerisms but Modak’s cold impassive eyes watching the world elude him in disorganised fragments. Disconnecting from the world — snapping the cords with purported sanity — marks The Disciple’s second half. His old friends and collaborators are performing in the US, while Sharad is stuck in Kalyan. Sometimes, he’s compelled to write an angry retort to a YouTube commenter dissing his performance. Some of his other counterparts have been co-opted by the myth-making industry of reality shows — called The Fame India — auto-tuning their stories of ‘struggle’.

But Sharad is different — Sharad was different. He listened to his masters. He respected the medium. He offered sacrifices. But was it enough — was he even good enough to begin with? Could he “separate fact from fiction”, distinguish the piece from the puzzle? Like a hapless orphan, this disciple found a deluded parent and lost himself.

Video Used to Push Misleading Claim That Hathras Victim’s Family Performed Her Last Rites

Sister-in-law of the deceased alleged that the police placed someone near the pyre to falsely project that the family was present during the funeral.

A 19-year-old Dalit woman in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras was allegedly tortured and gang-raped by four upper-caste men on September 14, 2020. She succumbed to her injuries on September 29, 2020. The UP police reportedly cremated her body in the dead of the night early September 30, 2020, as family members and villagers attempted to stop the funeral process.

The accused were charged with gang-rape and attempt to murder ten days after the incident based on the victim’s statement who was fighting for her life in Delhi’s Safdarjung hospital. Following her tragic demise, the UP police said there is “no proof” of rape. Hours later, she was cremated without the family’s consent as cops blocked relatives, the media and protesters from the funeral ground.

The police denied that the woman’s last rites were performed without her family’s permission. A video has been pushed on social media platforms to support the police’s version of events. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Haryana IT cell head Arun Yadav tweeted, “Victim’s family did her last rites themselves.” He blamed the media for ‘propaganda’.

The video shows a person behind the camera questioning an elderly man’s relationship with the victim. While the old man is barely audible, people around him say, “Ladki ke baba hai ye (He is the woman’s baba.)” The word ‘baba’ could mean father, grandfather or an elderly male relative/acquaintance. The voice behind the camera then says, “Aap baba ho na? (You’re her baba right?)” to which the man nods his head in affirmative. “Acha thik hai (Alright then),” the person behind the camera says, following which the audio is muted for six seconds. The subsequent scenes show people, including the elderly man, performing rituals around the pyre.

Also read: UP Police Now Claims Hathras Victim Wasn’t Raped, Matter ‘Twisted’ to ‘Stir Caste Tension’

The same video was tweeted by Priti Gandhi, social media in-charge of BJP Mahila Morcha.

BJP UP spokesperson Shalabh Mani Tripathi retweeted the video posted by Prashant Patel Umrao.

Several BJP members and supporters also shared the video — Vikas Pandey, @BefittingFacts, Ritu Rathaur, @chintanvedant and @BobbyGandhi3.

Hathras District Magistrate claimed that the deceased’s father and brother consented to the funeral and her family members were present during the last rites.

Did the victim’s family members participate in her funeral?

India Today journalist Tanushree Pandey was reporting live from the ground in the early hours of Wednesday. She tweeted a video where villagers and family members are seen blocking the ambulance and begging the police to let them take their daughter home. The pleas, however, fell on deaf ears and a burning pyre could be spotted at a distance.

The victim’s brother confirmed to Alt News that no one from his family was permitted to attend the cremation. He also said that his grandfather died in 2006 which means that the elderly man in the video cannot be the woman’s grandfather.

Several other outlets showed visuals of women blocking the ambulance carrying the victim’s body. Mojo spoke with the woman’s father who stated that the police locked the family inside their house and conducted her funeral in their absence.

NDTV spoke with relatives locked inside their houses alleging that neither did they consent to the funeral nor was the victim’s body handed over. One of the men says that the deceased’s father consulted relatives and decided that the funeral will be held in the morning with all customs and rituals.

Also read: In Hathras Rape Victim’s Village, Caste Discrimination Is an Everyday Reality

However, the police did not permit the family to attend the dead-of-night cremation.

The father’s statement was also taken by NDTV at night when the cops formed a human chain to disallow people, including media persons, from entering the funeral ground.

CNN’s Marya Shakil reported that the family’s wishes to conduct a funeral with Hindu rituals were not met as the police performed her last rites. The victim’s mother said, “They [police] did not give my daughter’s body. They took her away. They could’ve at least let me see her face one last time. But they didn’t let us bring her body home. We pleaded but they didn’t listen.”

In another video, the mother can be seen inconsolably wailing and saying that she wants to perform her daughter’s last rites with Hindu rituals.

The victim’s brother also said that her dead body was forcibly cremated.

Her sister-in-law alleged that the police placed someone near the pyre to falsely project that the family was present during the funeral.

Journalist Arvind Gunasekar wrote that the Uttar Pradesh government claimed that the victim’s ‘uncle’ performed her last rites. However, her parents maintained that they weren’t at the site.

According to an NDTV report, “Amid spiralling outrage, the Hathras police claimed the cremation was carried out with the family’s consent and some members were present. It turned out to be one uncle – not her parents – who was called and shown the cremation.”

Initial reports from the ground do not support the UP police and state administration’s claim that the funeral was not conducted forcibly. Scenes from early hours of September 30 show a distraught family begging cops to let them take their deceased daughter home one last time.

Their pleas were met with coercion. Family members were locked inside their homes while the police formed a human chain around the funeral ground where the alleged rape victim’s body burnt without her parents in sight. A video of a frail elderly man tossing logs of wood in the pyre was used to claim that her family performed the last rites. The man, however, was not a part of the victim’s immediate family.

The article first appeared on Alt News. Read the original here.

Why Do Kids Call Their Parents ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’?

You can say “Mom” in any country in the world and people would pretty much know who you meant.

Once, a long time ago, one of us, Bethany, fell behind at the grocery store and was trying to catch up. She called out her mom’s name, “Mom!,” and to her frustration, half the women there turned around and the other half ignored Bethany, assuming it was someone else’s child.

How was Bethany going to get her mom’s attention? She knew a secret trick that would work for sure: Her mom had another name. She called “Denise!” and magically, just her mom (the other one of us) turned around.

But why do almost all kids use the same name for their parents? This is the kind of question we enjoy investigating as scientists who study families and human development.

The sounds heard ‘round the world

All around the world, the words for “mom,” “dad,” “grandma” and “grandpa” are almost the same. Other words aren’t nearly as similar.

Take “dog,” for example. In French, “dog” is “chien”; in Dutch, it is “hond”; and in Hungarian, it is “kutya.” But if you needed to get your mother’s attention in France, the Netherlands or Hungary, you’d call “Maman,” “Mama” or “Mamma.”

You can say “Mom” in any country in the world and people would pretty much know who you meant. And did you notice that “Dad” is also similar across languages – “Papa,” “Baba,” “Tad” and “Dad”?

Scientists have noticed the same thing. George Peter Murdock was an anthropologist, which is a scientist who studies people and cultures. Pete, as his friends called him, traveled the globe back in the 1940s and collected information about families from all over. He discovered 1,072 similar words for “mom” and “dad.”

Pete handed this data over to linguists, the scientists who study language, and challenged them to figure out why these words sound the same. Roman Jakobson, a famous linguist and literary theorist, then wrote an entire chapter on “mama” and “papa.”

The first sounds infants make are those that are made with the lips and are easily seen: m, b and p. These sounds are quickly followed by other sounds that can be easily seen: t and d. It’s possible that as infants practice making these easy sounds (mamamamama) or produce these sounds while nursing or drinking from a bottle, the mother hears “mama.” She then smiles with joy and says, “Mama! You said Mama!”

Of course, the baby is happy to see the mother happy, so the baby says it again. Bingo, “Mama” is born. Similarly, the baby may practice “dadadadada” or “papapapa” and the parents’ reactions result in the baby repeating “dada” or “papa.”

These words refer to the two most important people in most babies’ lives, followed closely by similar words for grandparents – nana, tata, bobcia, nonno, opa, omo – who often play important roles, as well.

Reinforcing everyone’s roles

But there’s more to this story. Once children can say many sounds, why don’t they call their parents Ella, Zoheb, Dipankar or Denise?

It’s because we all have rules that most of us follow. These are rules related to our cultures, our societies and even our families. We have rules for how to greet people (shake hands, hug), how to use forks or chopsticks, what to call our teacher (“Mrs. Bell”) and even where to sit at the dinner table.

We don’t think of these things as “rules”; they’re just there. One of these kinds of rules in most families around the world is that parents are the heads of the household and children are supposed to listen to them. By calling parents “Mom” or “Dad,” it helps everyone stick to their roles.

Some parents feel that if you call them by their first name, you don’t think they are the boss anymore (and parents generally don’t like that). But every family is different, which is part of what makes life so interesting. Some families have their own rules that might differ from your family’s rules.

Most kids call their mom “Mom,” but some kids don’t and that’s OK. For example, for our family rules, our kids may occasionally call us “Denise” and “Mom Bethany.”

The next time you call out “Mom!” in the store, whether in New York, Paris, Hong Kong or Durban, watch how many mothers turn around. It’s all because of a mixture of biology (easy sounds to see and make), environment (parents being happy you said this and smiling) and culture (rules).

If you have children when you grow up, what do you want them to call you?

Featured image credit: Joshua Reddekopp/Unsplash

Bethany Van Vleet, Senior Lecturer in Family and Human Development, Arizona State University and Denise Bodman, Principal Lecturer in Social and Family Dynamics, Arizona State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

‘Let’s Spend Some Family Time’: The One Statement I Dread These Days

My main motive of writing this piece was not to crib, but to simply acknowledge this huge gap that exists between parents and their kids.

At the very beginning, let me clarify that I’m beyond grateful to be at home during the pandemic. However, that gratefulness doesn’t stop me from feeling the way I do about some other aspects of being at home.

I’m not used to seeing my parents around all the time since childhood. I may speak of it casually today, but it wasn’t easy in the beginning.

I used to burst into tears seeing my mother get into her car with Papa and leave for office and scream from my room’s tiny little window. I was audible, but they left anyway.

Nani used to console me for hours and then treat me with my favourite meetha pua. That, by the way, happens to be my favourite memory of my childhood. I can still smell the hint of cinnamon. And then Nana, being an educator and author, introduced me to something he thought I might find solace in: books. And he was right.

The crying, however, continued for a few more years. And then what was supposed to happen happened. We got used to it. We got used to the physical absence of our parents since they were always so busy.

With absolutely no fault of ours, my sister and I had made our peace with it. Having Mumma and Papa away meant long hours of TV, meetha pua, reading, playing and, well, becoming each other’s best pals. And trust me, after years of crying in vain, we were done with complaining about it.

And you know what became troublesome then? Having our parents home on Sunday (working, because well, there was too much work). It might sound strange maybe, but there’s only one family vacation I can remember from my childhood days. Mumma and Papa said that ‘they were working for us’ and well, what argument could we give to that?

Also read: ‘Break the Pattern Before it Breaks You’

We simultaneously started focusing on school, participated in every co-curricular activity, doing as many stay backs, because we liked being in school and having company. Now this goes unsaid, but I’ll just say it anyway – my mother and father couldn’t even make it to our annual day functions or sports day, or any stage plays.

And yes, you guessed right, it was because they were busy. And no, we were not hurt. We had gotten used to it.

Now, both of us are in college, but because of this pandemic, we’re all home together. But things aren’t quite the same – there’s now a constant pressure on us to spend some time with everyone.

And when we are not able to deliver as expected, we get to hear remarks like:

‘They’ve become too cool to sit with us!’

‘Zyada hi badi ho gayi hai.’

I know of quite a few people who have been in situations like this while growing up, even if the factors varied here and there. My main motive of writing this piece was not to crib, but to simply acknowledge this huge gap that exists between parents and their kids.

We didn’t want to stay away from you. You made us. And we became okay with that. No matter what reason you had, that doesn’t compensate for the fact that a communication gap exists – one that we grew comfortable with since you refused to give us the time of day. There’s also no point in playing a blame game or analysing why it happened in the first place. This gap happened, and we – all of us – let it happen. We’re all at fault. So what now?

Well, talking is always touted as a solution to any conflict and rightly so.

Parents, if you’re listening, talk to your children instead of passing remarks, and help them let go of this anger they have for you . Sounds complex? It’s the easiest way out. Didn’t get time to do family stuff earlier, well, you’ve now got a decent amount of time till I don’t know when. Turn this quarantine into a boon for your family.

It’s important to start such conversations, even if it is only for your own peace. After all, we’re the generation that has been breaking the silence on mental health and wellbeing.

Now that I’m finishing college and will be joining the working world soon, I understand my parent’s point of view and I respect their struggle a bit better. However, I might still be a little hurt, and that’s okay.

Your parents will probably have a tough time realising this and initiating such a process, after all, they most likely never intentionally widened the gap.

We are so used to keeping our parents on a pedestal that we expect to see godly traits in them. But that’s not right, they’re human as well. They’re imperfect, just like we’re imperfect.

Featured image credit: Aaron Burden/Unsplash

Govt May Not Send Excluded Children to Detention Centres if Parents Are in Final Assam NRC

Around 19 lakh people have been excluded from the NRC.

New Delhi: The government has decided not to send to the detention centre, pending a final decision, the children who got excluded from the NRC in Assam but whose parents are included in the list, Lok Sabha was informed on Tuesday.

The Union Minister of State for Home, Nityananda Rai, said the approved standard operating procedures for disposal of claims and objections had specific provision for children who got left out from the draft NRC, while their parents had been included.

“Attorney General for India stated on January 6th 2020 before the Supreme Court, that the children of parents included in NRC, Assam, will not be separated from their parents and sent to detention centre in Assam pending decision on the application,” he said in a written reply to a question.

The NRC exercise was carried out in Assam under the supervision of the Supreme Court and around 19 lakh people did not find themselves in the final list published in August 2019.

Crow: A Poem About Growing Into Our Parents

I will be different, ever so slightly. Won’t I?

My mother
Often speaks to crows
“I see you have come.
There is no food.
Begone!
Begone, before father drives you away”
Mother of mine.
Lover of crows, dogs and cats.

My father
Doesn’t talk to animals
A loving, intelligent man
Always working,
Forever cleaning
Lover of order, discipline.
All things family

What an odd couple!
So little in common,
And much to contest,
Yet, love springs
unexpectedly
Like rain
On a sunny September day

They were once
More than human
All power. All love
All lessons, All deference
No more

No more heroes
But people
Of flesh, bones, flaws
And stories

Of shared memories
Simpler childhoods
Of hunger and droughts
And cats stealing their only meal
Now do you understand,
Why loving an animal and memories collide?
Tales of trials and adjustments
All that makes them
What they are
And what I am to be

I am becoming them,
Slowly
From the ashes of rebellion and desire
To be my own person,
Free from history, flaws and quirks
All for naught
I become them, slowly

I am no longer alone,
in the mirror
It is a bit of one, or the other
It changes,
But there is now,
their youth, their features and their feelings.

I will be different,
ever so slightly
Won’t I?
Will be better
Or worse?
But not the same
Of course, I inhabit
A different time

Time changes us all,
And gives hope
But also reminds me of death
Dreaded and inevitable
Uncertain but final
No parent should have to bury a child
Agreed
But can a child do it any better?

On nights like these
There is no sleep, nor excitement
Nothing wrapped in dreams, nor bathed in fire
On nights like these
I feel the urge to clean
Or wait for the dawn
To go speak to a crow.

You can know more about The Flaky Pastry by checking out @theflaky_pastry on Instagram. 

Featured image credit: Alexander Sinn/Unsplash

This Bengaluru Start-Up Has Created the Baby Monitor of Parents’ Dreams

Raybaby is a wall-mounted device that makes sure there is no direct skin contact or intrusive wiring or batteries, thereby not imposing on the baby or interfering with comfort and hygiene.

Raybaby is a wall-mounted device that makes sure there is no direct skin contact or intrusive wiring or batteries, thereby not imposing on the baby or interfering with comfort and hygiene.

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Aardra Kannan Ambili, Sanchi Poovaya, and Ranjana Nair. Credit: RIoT

“You have all this technology to monitor your baby in the womb, but as soon as the baby arrives, there is absolutely nothing,” says a frustrated expecting parent, quoted on the website of a company that is hoping to change the scenario for parents-to-be.

Meet Raybaby, the world’s first non-contact respiration and sleep tracker for babies, invented by a Bengaluru-based start-up company called RIoT (Ray IoT) Solutions. Founded in 2015 by three women scientists and engineers, Aardra Kannan Ambili, Ranjana Nair, and Sanchi Poovaya, it is the first Indian company to receive support from the multinational Johnson and Johnson (although the details of the support are confidential), as well as the first to get funding from the Chinese ‘Silicon Valley’ hardware accelerator HAX, of over Rs 1 crore.

While there are several devices and apps that monitor babies (and now, a new device called Aristotle can even talk to babies), they usually involve skin contact, chest bands and bracelets, or having to place hands on the baby’s chest, while the wireless ones tend to focus on capturing video and audio of the babies. Raybaby, on the other hand, does more.

It has a camera, but also uses ultrasound technology — ultra wideband radar, to be precise, a technology that has been used to monitor the movements of babies in the womb — to track the respiration rate (the number of breaths per minute, with 25-40 considered normal). It uses radio waves that have the same emissions as that of a digital alarm clock or a toaster, to track the tiniest movements of the baby’s body.

And most importantly, it is a wall-mounted device that makes sure there is no direct skin contact or intrusive wiring or batteries, thereby not imposing on the baby or interfering with comfort and hygiene. All the data is sent to a phone-based app, and the inferences apparently have 98% accuracy — even when the baby being monitored is hidden under a blanket. And it’s small enough to fit into the palm of your hand.

Aardra Kannan Ambili, a scientist with a background in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, who co-developed the technology, tells me why they decided to focus so closely on tracking breathing. “The four aspects you would monitor for a newborn baby in an emergency room — the ‘vitals’ — are temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration. Because of limitations in technology, we couldn’t create a product that would monitor all four at the same time. We chose respiration, because disrupted breathing can be a sign of more than respiratory illness. It is one of the most significant medical markers of the onset of serious conditions like epilepsy and asthma. ” she explained.

Neonatologists have expressed a certain amount of scepticism about baby monitors helping parents track babies’ health, or preventing sudden infant death syndrome. Also known as ‘crib death’, it is a leading cause of death in young infants under the age of one, which can cause babies to die in their sleep for no apparent medical reason. The British Medical Journal, which focuses on family planning and reproductive healthcare, suggested in a 2014 study that the ‘peace of mind’ that parents hope to get from using baby monitors might be ‘illusory’. However, this criticism was in reference to expensive and wearable monitors, whereas Raybaby appears to have gone a step further through its non-contact feature. According to Sanchi, a mechanical engineer by training who works on Production and Operations for the Ray IoT team, the fact that Ray also monitors sleep patterns is crucial. “Sleep training is a hugely important process and we’ve heard of so many parents complaining about sleep deprivation for the first few months after birth. This way, they can have access to movement data and observe their baby’s sleep patterns without worrying.”

The product being priced at $250 (Rs 17,000) will be steep for Indian consumers (particularly as basic video monitors are available from as little as Rs 550), and Dr Ajay Gambhir, President of the National Neonatology Forum of India, an organisation of paediatricians across the country, clarified that this could be an obvious deterrent for many parents: “Although the device could be useful, the cost-effectiveness of the technology, and whether it will reach the masses is an important factor to consider”. However, it might well be feasible for parents elsewhere: The price, for instance, put somewhat in perspective by research, suggests that parents in the US spend up to $6500 (Rs 4,43,000) on baby supplies prior to the birth.

The team connected two years ago when Aardra became flatmates with Ranjana (the company’s CEO), who had moved to Bengaluru, and met Sanchi through her. According to Aardra, Bengaluru provided for a great learning environment, where they had access to institutions like the Indian Institute of Science, and were able to engage in dialogues with researchers about electronics and hardware engineering. The women began to discuss how problems could be addressed through 21st century technology and recognition systems. Although initially they were planning to create a device with a panic button to enhance women’s safety, they realised the market was crowded. “We wouldn’t have been able to make a strategic mark in that market as a company. We needed something original, which people didn’t know about, and nobody was doing.”

And HAX, the China-based hardware accelerator certainly agreed on Raybaby’s ‘originality’. A representative from the company applauded the Ray initiative, and told The Ladies Finger, “We pick the best teams across a rigorous selection, and Ray IoT fit our philosophy: a great founding team, an advance in technology and an excellent understanding of their market. The product targets a very important market — concerned parents — and has a worthwhile mission (peace of mind) because parents often check to see if their children are breathing. We are looking forward to seeing Ray IoT’s crowdfunding efforts as well as its innovative business model pay off, considering how much effort the team has put into the building phase.”

But the inspiration for Raybaby, Aardra says, came almost out of the blue, when a parent of one of the team members, also an electronics engineer, warned them against placing electronic devices on sleeping babies.  Last year, in Perth, Australia, a mother warned parents about the hazards of baby monitors after one which had lithium-ion batteries exploded near her baby’s cot. These stories led the team to begin researching the potential dangers of battery-powered baby monitors, and they arrived at the conclusion that there should be a way for parents to monitor babies without placing any electronics on their bodies.

The team went to China in September for three-and-a-half months to meet with industry experts and be part of a PR program that ended in mid-December. They introduced the product at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, and at Demo Day by HAX in San Francisco on 10th January. In the meantime, they’re preparing to launch Ray on Kickstarter on 31st January, where they will be collecting pre-orders. They are giving away their products for $99- $150 for early bird adopters.

Aardra feels optimistic about Raybaby, because although the public hasn’t had a chance to use it yet, the feedback she’s received about the idea of the device has been exhilarating. “On one of the demo days, I got into a conversation with a representative from Nestle, who was expecting a baby. I explained the importance of vital monitoring, and non-contact devices. She said ‘Thank god. This is going to address so many of the concerns and fears that new parents have.’ Hearing that from her was more than just validation, and it made me feel like what we’ve created is a genuine contribution to parenthood,” she recalled.

Ray IoT has managed to strike an impressive balance between engineering innovation and consumer needs, and we’re waiting to hear whether it’s a hit with new parents.

This article was originally published on The Ladies Finger.

Can Surrogacy Ever Escape the Taint of Global Exploitation?

Surrogacy is a technology. And like any other technology we should not attribute to it magical properties that conceal its anthropogenic character.

Surrogacy is a technology. And like any other technology we should not attribute to it magical properties that conceal its anthropogenic character.

If we think of surrogacy as a form of work, it doesn’t look that different from many other jobs in our increasingly casualised and precarious global economic context. Credit: Alick Sung/Flickr

If we think of surrogacy as a form of work, it doesn’t look that different from many other jobs in our increasingly casualised and precarious global economic context. Credit: Alick Sung/Flickr

Surrogate motherhood has a bad rep, as a murky business far removed from everyday experience – especially when it comes to prospective parents from the West procuring the gestational services of less privileged women in the global South. So while middle-class 30- and 40-somethings swap IVF anecdotes over the dinner table, and their younger female colleagues are encouraged by ‘hip’ employers to freeze their eggs as an insurance policy against both time and nature, surrogacy continues to induce a great deal of moral handwringing.

The Kim Cotton case in 1985 was the first attempt to arrange a commercial surrogacy agreement in the United Kingdom. It set the tone for what was to come. Cotton was paid £6,500 to have a baby for an anonymous Swedish couple, and her story provoked sensational press-fuelled panic. British legislators, too, saw surrogacy as likely to lead to exploitation, with poorer women coerced into acting as surrogates out of financial need, and with intended parents taken advantage of by unscrupulous surrogacy brokers. Their action was swift: within just months of the Cotton story breaking, a law was passed banning for-profit surrogacy in the UK.

With the growth of an international surrogacy industry over the past two decades, worries over surrogacy’s fundamentally exploitative character have only intensified. Worst-case scenarios such as the Baby Gammy case in 2014, involving an Australian couple and a Thai surrogate, suggest that surrogacy frequently is exploitative. But that’s less because paying someone to carry and bear a child on your behalf is inherently usurious than because the transaction takes place in a deeply unequal world. The Baby Gammy case was complicated by other unsavoury factors, since the child, born with Down’s Syndrome, seemed to be rejected by his intended parents because of his condition. Then it turned out that the intended father had a previous conviction for child sex offences, which rather overshadowed the potential exploitation experienced by Gammy’s surrogate – and now de facto – mother.

I am not arguing for a laissez-faire approach to regulating surrogacy, but for thinking more deeply about how surrogacy reflects the context in which it takes place.

We need to step back and think critically about what makes people so driven to have a biogenetically related child that they are prepared to procure the intimate bodily capacity of another, typically less privileged, person to achieve that. We should also listen to surrogates, and try to understand why they might judge surrogacy as their best option. Intended parents are not always uncaring nabobs, and surrogate mothers are not just naïve victims; but while the power dynamic between them is decidedly skewed, each is subject to particular cultural expectations, moral obligations and familial pressures.

As for the larger context, we increasingly outsource even the most intimate tasks to those whose labour is cheap, readily available and less regulated. If we think of surrogacy as a form of work, it doesn’t look that different from many other jobs in our increasingly casualised and precarious global economic context, like selling bodily substances and services for clinical trials, biomedical research or product testing, or working as domestic staff and carers.

And surrogacy is on the rise. Both in the UK and in the United States, where some states allow commercial surrogacy and command the highest fees in the world, increasing numbers of would-be parents are turning to the international surrogacy industry: 95 per cent of the 2,000 surrogate births to UK intended parents each year occur overseas. With the age at which women have their first child increasing, more women are finding it difficult to conceive; and there’s now greater access to fertility treatments for single-sex couples and single people. In addition, surrogacy has become the option of choice for gay couples, transgender people, and single men wanting a biogenetically related child.

For me, as someone who has studied surrogacy, the practice is problematic because it reveals some of our most taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature of family. It also tells us much about work, gender, and how the two are connected. This is why it is so challenging.

At a time when parent-child relationships often appear to be one of the few remaining havens in an increasingly heartless world, surrogacy suggests that there might not be a straightforward relationship between women’s reproductive biology, their capacity to produce children, and their desire to nurture. The usual debates that focus simply on whether or not surrogacy is exploitative sidestep some of these uncomfortable truths, and make it difficult to ask more complicated questions about the practice.

There is a parallel here with abortion debates. Trying to define and defend the sanctity of life is important, but this also obscures highly problematic issues, such as the gendered expectation that women should look after children; the fact that women typically bear responsibility for contraception (and the disproportionate consequences of not using it); the prevalence of non-consensual sex; and the pressure on women to produce children to meet familial obligations.

Surrogacy is a technology. And like any other technology we should not attribute to it magical properties that conceal its anthropogenic – that is, human-made – character. It’s all too easy to blame surrogacy or the specific individuals who participate in it rather than to ask why surrogacy might make sense as a way of having children at all. We should give credit to intended parents and surrogate mothers for having thought deeply about their decisions, and we should not hold them individually responsible for surrogacy’s ills.Aeon counter – do not remove

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

Don’t Make Experts the Enemy in Framing a New Education Policy

By focussing on inputs from parents alone, an illusion is created of democratisation and decentralisation, while allowing the government to pursue its pre-determined agenda

By focussing on inputs from parents alone, an illusion is created of democratisation and decentralisation, while allowing the government to pursue its pre-determined agenda

School in Rajasthan. Credit: depinniped/Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

School in Rajasthan. Credit: depinniped/Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A proposed National Education Policy has been in the news for the past few months with much written and said about the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s fresh approach to policy making. We are told that this is a democratisation of policy making as never seen before, with every village education committee in every panchayat across the country discussing the kind of education they want for their children.

As the minister has reminded us on many occasions, thus far, it was “academics and experts”, who decided what should go into a policy; now, for the first time, we will have the voice of the people that will dictate. After all they know what is best for their children, and therefore they should be able to decide what goes into a policy? Sounds perfectly reasonable, even laudable. But is it?

For one, as has been pointed out in several commentaries, parents are not necessarily represented in the fora that have been designated for consultations. And, even if these fora have members with school-going children, the children are unlikely to be attending government schools. The National Policy is essentially geared towards the vast numbers of parents who send their children to government schools – parents who rarely find representation in local bodies. But, let us assume for arguments sake, that they will get a say. It is still worth examining what they are being asked to give suggestions for and why their opinion should be privileged over that of ‘academics and experts’.

Two, why are academics and experts being decried in the manner they are – as a class of people incapable of knowing what the people want? Ironically, this raises questions about the role of education itself, and of the functioning of the current education system. It would imply that the entire education edifice (largely state-supported) has been a monumental failure for creating and housing academics and experts, whose inputs are considered unworthy of policy making.

Illusion of consultation

But, let us begin with the bottom-up approach and the assertion that parental voice will be represented in policy. Who are these parents who are presumed to be better placed than academics and experts, to determine what goes into the National Education Policy?

These are parents who have not been able to send their children to whatever private options are available in their vicinity or beyond. They are the more than 50% of the rural population (going by SECC estimates), that are themselves virtually illiterate; they are those that are unable to provide academic support to their children at home; they are parents who avoid coming to PTA meetings for fear of being rebuked by the teacher for sending their children “dirty” to school; they are parents who are sent the school management committee registers at home for signatures, as they have not been informed about the meeting that took place in their name; they are parents whose children attend school irregularly, because they have to look after siblings, or move with them when they migrate. They are parents whose children can barely read even after five years in school.

These parents have been asked to give their opinion on questions such as:

  • How to use technology to ensure real time availability of teachers?
  • What can be done to overcome shortages in qualified teachers for Science and Mathematics?
  • How can we engage with DST to address the needs of Science & Maths teachers?
  • To what extend can ICT be used in schools to enhance teaching-learning process?

 In addition there are separate themes (with more lists of questions) dedicated to the use of ICT in school education; on school management systems; and on what is called, “New Knowledge, pedagogies and approaches for teaching of Science, Maths and Technology in School Education to improve learning outcomes of Students”.

Surely this is the stuff of experts, not of parents, or even local body representatives. Not only is it impossible to answer these questions by lay persons, they are not representative of the people or their concerns. In fact, the themes and questions are heavily biased towards technology and skill building, indicating the focus of the Central government, which is moulding education to serve industry. In fact, recent interactions of the HRD Minister (uploaded on the MHRD website), clearly give away the inclination of the government. Hence, an illusion is created of democratisation and decentralisation, while allowing the government to pursue its pre-determined agenda.

There is no doubt that peoples’ opinion matters – that checking with people is important, even critical to obtaining accurate information on how the system actually functions on the ground and to base policy on those facts. The elected government, and the executive wing that assists it, must put into place robust systems of public verification of information that it gathers on a regular basis and record it accurately in data systems accessible to people and the local self-government. It must also develop new – and strengthen existing – platforms of  participation that allow people to voice their concerns on an on-going basis, and create a system that can give a role to people in developing plans through processes that are genuinely decentralised and reflect their needs and concerns.

Unfortunately not a single theme or question is devoted to decentralisation or creation of space for local concerns or building of systems for information sharing, verification and participation in planning or policy-making. And, none of the constraints they face, as described above, are part of the themes or questions being posed either. Surely, peoples’ participation is not achieved by simply ticking off a box by the government – to be re-visited after another 30-odd years when the next National Policy is being debated.

Academic experts and industry experts

The misrepresentation of representation apart, what is surprising is the denigration and shunning of academics and experts.

Admittedly, there are academics whose work is more esoteric and less connected with ground realities, but there are many others who have built their careers and reputation on field-based research and analysis. They have spent large amounts of time in schools, understanding their functioning and the education system in great detail. Not only are academics trained to gather information accurately – using methodologies and increasingly cutting-edge technology – they also have years of study behind them on schools and systems from other parts of the country and the world. This wider perspective gives them an advantage not shared by lay people. Why would all this be seen as not useful, especially given the highly ‘technical’ nature of concerns delineated in the themes for policy reform?

It is worth considering if the government would follow a similar process to formulate its economic policy – skipping experts and going directly to the people? The answer will surely be a resounding No. Is it because the government believes education, as a discipline, does not have experts or does not need experts to determine policy? The oft-repeated “anyone can teach” refrain, which has gained ground in recent times, resonates with the approach being adopted in policy making. Ironically, it follows from ‘expert’ opinion in economics pointing out that the government cannot afford to pay qualified and trained teachers a professional wage. Similar expert opinion is readily accepted from industry that is seeking to align “make in India” with a skilling programme, with scant regard to basic education. It would appear, then, that education policy – if steered by ‘experts’ on economics or industry is acceptable – but not by experts on education.

Kiran Bhatty is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi and a Founder Member of the Forum for Deliberation on Education