Pascal Chazot is a regular columnist in Ahmedabad Mirror

By Lissa C. on Sunday, 24 February , 2008 - 12:25 am

Pascal Chazot’s articles are being regularly published every Saturday in the supplementary edition of Times of India, Ahmedabad Mirror. The subjects are varied but often inspired by current news and interaction with wife, Anjou Musafir.

WHEELING – DEALING IN AHMEDABAD

Since the last 18 years that I have been in Ahmedabad, I have been asking my wife one traffic related question that has been intriguing me. Who is given priority on roads? In France, it is priority to the right. She started by counter-questioning “What do you mean right or left”? She then mumbled something about whoever can get in. Over the years as I kept asking the question on and off, she began to get defensive and now she stares vacantly into space giving me the royal ignore. (Thank God France does not play cricket, can you imagine what it would be like then!) I think I have figured it out. Its whose eyes you look into. Don’t get me wrong. I mean the code seems to be this. You look at each other. If the guy on the scooter nods it means, he is going for it. If he jerks his head diagonally, you make a dash. You can also ignore each other ostrich like and both lunge forward. The person with the bigger vehicle or higher speed, whichever comes first, gets the right of way.
Most Amdavadis tell me ‘If you can drive in Ahmedabad, you can drive anywhere in the world”. This is meant as a compliment towards those drivers who show more dexterity than Shumacher weaving in and out of traffic maintaining a constant speed. In fact, any rickshaw driver of Ahmedabad can give Shumacher a spin for his money. And hats off to those who have redefined multi-tasking. Our Amdavaadi rickshaw driver can drive forward while looking sideways, his foot stuck out right (in order to turn left), beedi in mouth, song in heart, rickshaw touching the road at odd spots.
Be that as it may, rickshaws in Ahmedabad like the tuk-tuks in Thailand, are so convenient and give our city that special charm.
An Amdavadi will be gentle, curious, hospitable and courteous when meeting a stranger or a known person. But give him a steering wheel and he is transformed into the Hulk or King Kong or whatever. Having a wheel invokes some latent primal need that transforms the lamb into a lion. Notice how on all small roundabouts each will nudge, push and bump with a ferocity that could inspire Stallone for another Rambo sequel. Big fish eat small fish is amply demonstrated with the buses and trucks eating the space of the cars who consume the two wheelers who in turn nudge off the cyclists. At the receiving end is the poor pedestrian. The more the wheels, the better the deal. Respect given is inversely proportional to the amount of wheels one has. Even the brave attempts at making footpaths have met with disdain. So these narrow landing strips for the pedestrian have been transformed into parking areas for two-wheelers, small shopkeepers and the like.

In Paris, the opposite is happening. The velib is a great success. For the rent of 1 euro (50 rupees) anyone can pick a cycle from the many stands that have been put up. Drive away and drop off the cycle at the velib stand near your destination. Some of my friends simply take the velib and bike slowly discovering their own city. What a pleasurable way of exploring a city or going to work. It combines environmental and health benefits at one go. No need to go to overcrowded Gyms and work on the treadmill and the cycle!

Now one reads about the affordable new Tata car to be launched. Imagine the chaos when each of the two wheels become four on our roads? Please someone, forget the wheels, reinvent the feet.

The Invisible Body

A few months ago, some of my students spoke of their experiences of punishment in prior schooling. It began by a student asking a friend who came from the same previous school ‘Remember, each time we spoke a bad word, we were asked to chew neem leaves?”. ‘Yes’, replied the other excitedly, ‘and we even knew which trees had the least bitter neem leaves, so we would go to that one!’ Another student laughs and said his teacher would put pencils between his fingers and crush them in an attempt to subjugate him. He laughed and said ‘I would keep on smiling even then and my teacher would get so infuriated!’  I heard many stories that made me feel anger and sadness at the sad, misguided attempts of teachers to ‘discipline children’.
Discipline is a word that I dislike even for pet animals. After all, we know what happens to dogs that are tied up and always on a strong leash. They strain more, they are more aggressive.

The notion of punishment and discipline comes from a desire and need for control that historically comes from an explicit framework of prison systems where the supervisor exercised control over the prisoners, according to the research done by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. Present school system, according to the same research, finds its origin there.
Sadly our schools and institutions are all (nearly all) based on this prison model. The students are objects. The eye of authority views the students as objects that must be disciplined, controlled and then made invisible.
The sad and shameful incidents of rapes of young girls by their own professors that one comes across in the press only reflect a deeper malaise in our society on attitudes towards students and children.
For one, the relationship between the teacher and student is often within the framework of the exercise of power and control. The student has been rendered an ‘object’. The visible body of the student is also thus an object on which control is exercised in different forms that range from subtle signs of submission such as ‘walk with your hands behind your back’, ‘finger on your lips’, ‘head bowed and eyes lowered’ etc to more direct possession of the body that is punished or in extreme cases, abused physically. The object thus is rendered invisible. It is voiceless, it has no scope of action. In each case of oppression, the oppressor possesses the ‘body’ of the oppressed. The oppressed person thus is subjugated, leading to a loss of control over the self that leads to a loss of identity, voice and action.
Objectification and exercise of absolute control can only lead to dangerous forms of perversion as we see in cases of physical abuse. The only way to get out of this is to allow the ‘object’ to become the ‘subject’ thus paving the way for a more humane centric education. The subject-student is then more visible and has control over his or her body. This means, at an early age, being able to go to the bathroom when the need arises rather than asking for permission to do so in class. This means being able to yawn, fidget and move when the need arises. These simple actions are viewed as disruptive by teachers whereas a person yawns when the brain requires more oxygen, a person fidgets in order to release the built-up tension in the body. There have been cases when children have been punished for such simple actions! The children must thus have control over their bodies first. The student ‘body’ thus must be made visible by giving it respect, allowing them freedom of expression by giving them a voice, and creating space for them to take decisions in school life.

Category: Newsworthy, Blog

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