Questioning the Answer

This time lets play a brain game. This is about the most dangerous question in the world. A set in fact - but, it begins with this simple one: 'Are you happy?'

To which anyone would retort with an impulsive-compulsive-response, 'Yes(!)'. Just hold them there. The quicker the response, the more preconditioned and thoughtless they are. Catch them there; tell them that you really want them to know how happy they really are. Shoot Question two: 'What makes you happy(?)'

Remember: You still haven't got the answer for Q.1.

Allow the person to reflect. Let them list. It may include the normal, regular and boring: music, books, games, food and a long list of other B.S. Look interested, keep listening all the while exploring and wondering why these things - each thing - on their list makes them happy. If you are a seasoned mind reader or a gifted psychoanalyst, you must have already started to understand the subconscious drives and subliminal desires of the person; if not, understand that the tip of the iceberg reveals only a bit of the mountain it hides.

Remember: Q.2 is still inconclusive. 

This is when Question three touches the bottomline: 'Would you still manage to be happy doing the things that you do that really don't make you happy(?)' 

This is the point when retrospection really sets in when the person will try to recollect and count the things that are mundane, an unescapable list of tasks and ritualistic endeavours undertaken to be validated. Most of us do what we do just for validation without gratitude. We do things, wear things, speak things and pretend to like or even dislike something to avoid being named, labeled, branded and sealed as 'misfits' and the 'unfits'. In short, we pledge our life to be drafted according to other's opinion. And in it lies our unhappiness. 

Remember: Q.3 cannot be answered.

So when we clear off this smoggy vision of self-created illusion of happiness, we tend to see in bits, pieces and fragments the ruthlessly guiltless, shamelessly raw and fearlessly liberated parts of ourselves - caged, confined and battered over the years manifests. In these fragments across the maze lies the puzzle of who we are. In it lies the undeniable self - only if we dare to see. 

The best resort for those who don't wish to see... don't take the question.        

Boring People

We have innovated everything I suppose. What we do now is just 'improvize' on what already exists. All the 'clever' questions that can be asked, have been asked and all those 'witty' answers needed to be given, have been given... in case we have not found the answer to a question yet, it only means that we have not searched enough.
At large, we are a 'stuck' generation with nothing more to ask and nothing new to answer that one has not already heard of... we are just one stuck generation with all the questions and solutions and with nothing new to find... 

Can Social Work Be Licensed In India

The Two Requirements to get a Social Work license in the West as I understand (with my limited perspective) are:
1. Formal Social Work Education (A promotive strategy)
2. Test for Licensing (A restrictive strategy)

Though I was worried about the latter, it seems like we have both working in India at present. UGC's NET is considered a test accepted by the Indian Government to test people for academic as well as (now) in non-academic recruitment drives too.

I am sure you would have read the headlines about 'A recent recruitment drive by Indian Oil Corporation that made NET crucial.'
NEWS: "Indian Oil Corporation is recruiting officers in marketing and human resource management. The written test for the selection process will be through University Grant Commission National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) examination, conducted by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on behalf of the UGC." (Source: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/indian-oil-recruitment-through-ugc-net-december-2014/1/398201.html)

With the two strategies in place and existing already, there would be no need to reinvent the wheel; and with no need for a new system to be formed I really don't realize why there must be a delay in 'licensing' being made compulsory and with immediate effect. There should be comfortably no delay in declaring professionals with MSW and with NET as licensed Social Workers. All we would need after that is a stamping authority to declare the same; that can be worked out signing an MoU with IFSW or any such bodies by making it clear to them about this scenario present within their disposal in India.

Ofcourse there will be objections that can be expected as in any restrictive practice; perhaps people in India know better that passing the NET will not be as easy as passing MSW once this idea is enforced. As for consensus in this regards, it is a fact that those who do not get through the restrictive strategy, will find a way to oppose the existing option and will divulge in the pretext of finding alternatives.

Now since we are used to copying models and systems directly from the West (At times with little or no relevance to our country), if these criteria are the ones we need to make Social Work a licensed professional practice in India, it is only a matter of time that we need to make this a reality by working on it fast and expose IFSW to this option already available and install a stamping authority to further move this cause. Seems as simple as that.

May be after my (ongoing) trial to include Social Work as an optional subject in UPSC, licensing Social Work with the available options must be my next attempt. What say folks?!...

In the mean time, I also need to think:
1. Is a foreign degree in Social Work acceptable for a personnel to be employed in India to practice? When it is not possible the other way around quoting irrelevance and the need to adhere to passing local tests and exams.
2. Is a foreign degree in Social Work acceptable for a personnel to teach in the Indian academia? When it is not possible the other way around quoting irrelevance and doubting our capability.
3. Can a foreigner be allowed to continue to work as a Social Worker in India?! Esp. without the knowledge of the local customs or language (criteria used to test us if we plan to go to a foreign land) and/or without undergoing a security check or signing child/elderly/gender protection policies and/or without a need to adhere to any eligibility criteria put forth as policies esp. Universities?
4. Can foreign interns who come on 'volunteer tourism' be provided tourist visas for their academic pursuits in India when the same possibility is not extended for an India intern?
5. Why is Social Work syllabus offered by different Universities different? Then how can we claim that we are professionally prepared to be the same when the foundations of our syllabuses aren't?!
6. Can those who are trained in a discipline in a University by unqualified personnel (who have not met certain standards in qualifying to be employed like NET, PhD etc.) be accepted as 'trained' professionals? Shouldn't they be disqualified automatically?
7. What must be the penalty for institutions who destroy a profession and student lives by recruiting trained yet unqualified workforce be?

Time to watch the pigs enjoy the filth

Sometimes getting people to read my blog makes me write the way others would probably like to read it, defeating the purpose of blogging in the very first place. Sometimes I look at blogs with a great hit counter and find the writing in there quite captivating... could be that 'Halo effect' created around it even before me setting in with the counter at the bottom highlighting hard-to-believe digits. If there is so much of traffic it has to be good... right?! Then I am reminded of the story of the 'Sour Grapes' that the fox could not reach and shut up.

Moments before I leave my temporary abode that has imprisoned me for the last couple of years, I look back at life and can't believe that I endured a one-straight road for this long. The initial days as usual was great. Exotic!... to a certain extent. Then monotonous melodrama sets in and you need to move before the boredom looms. Before leaving I just had a few questions connected no where with my movement that I wish to pen...

1. Why is Sonia Gandhi and Co. behaving like teenagers on heat (esp. after her visit to the U.S. of A for her so confidentially kept "health reasons") insisting on the FDIs and other foreign retailers to come into India despite the protests of the people in the so called "Demo(n)cratic" government I am asked to believe that I live in?

2. Why is there such a fuss to shut down a nuclear plant in Koodankulam even after the public don't want it there in the first place? If there is such a protest by the people, then can there be space for a doubt that they neglected public opinion and approval, considered mandatory before beginning the project? Such an ill planned installation-whose mistake is it that the PM insists on implementing? Why does this dictatorship form of ruling come in?

3. Chidambaram's nepotism has been brought to light; his earlier client, a hotelier has gotten an undue advantage, a letter of recommndation from this home minister to drop the charges against him and the BJP has the credit of taking up this fight from the media-light. Great! Great that this is happening as it always happens during the election time. This home minister however, is yet to be accused of GENOCIDE for labelling the people who tried to protect the natural resource of the country as "Maoists" and to promoting it sound like such an evil word and for organizing special forces and funding them with the tax-payer's money to eradicate the sons. daughters and children of nature all to give way for "Vedanta", a mining company to come into ofrce and plunder our resource, another earlier client of the minister... was the BJP and other parties dead when this was happening? Can there be anything more openly evil than this?

4. Why is there a toll charge levied on the road I travel in when I pay my taxes, both direct and indirect and to top it road tax and so on and so forth?

5. If my tax money was not used to build the road, then why do I see the picture of the UPA's mute PM and brute president on billboards on the same road claiming that it was an infrastructure development project by them?

6. Why is my country exporting food grains to feed the cattle of another country at a subsidized rate (European cattle to be exact) when the same is sold to the poor in my country at a higher rate and the farmer still kills himself unable to feed himself nevertheless his family?

7. Why does my country's highest court of justice sanction the exporting of 'endosulfan' when its impact on human lives has been witnessed in our own?

There is so much of cleaning up to do... cobwebs, dirt, filth and long decay, while cleaning it, I wonder how these that I dispose now, loads of them, got in and stayed in the first place. What was I doing when this filth was accumulating? "Busy" I suppose, the usual convinient excuse while living my mundane life. And now I am forced to take some strike-force action to throw all this out as I clean up. All this while contemplating about cleaning my house before I vacate... maybe these lines suit well for the country as well. If the cap fits let them wear it. Now, very few like my writing... still, very few care. let me pack.

Picture courtesy: http://cartoonmela.blogspot.com

Tell Me Why?...

From when wilt thou return

from the mountain dews?

From those high peaks that rub my imagination through.

Where oft doth thou disappear

from a fragile trail of foot prints that reappear?

From where the frantic cries of the reaper submerge dies.

What hath thou so wonderfully witnessed

from a town so tinsel lies?

From where the condemnation forked displayed.

When thou art gone

for what must I still low lie?

From whereever, tell me how, tell me now, tell me why?

Bottomline: “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” Mother Teresa