As you may have read in recent headlines, the state of Andhra Pradesh has spent the last few weeks anxiously awaiting the release of the Srikrishna Committee on Telangana’s report.  The Srikrishna Committee was officially commissioned by the Government of Indian, on February 3rd, 2010, to look into whether  Telangana should be granted independent statehood, or if it should remain part of the current state body, Andhra Pradesh. This issue of division can be traced back to India’s Independence, when national  borders and state lines were being drawn, and the Andhra and Telangana regions were  fused to become what is now AP. For a more detailed explanation of the root of the current Telangana separatist movement, you can start here.The Srikrishna Committee report was originally scheduled to be released on December 31, 2010, but was delayed due to concerns that AP was not prepared to handle the potential fallout from the announcement, and rescheduled for release on January 6th. Thus, after police and paramilitary units have been deployed across the state, many Hyderabad now hunker down at home, avoiding public transport, and waiting for the afternoon’s news.

As is characteristic of separatist movements, the parties involved are extremely passionate about their respective cause, and each cause is, of course, more complex than it first appears. The push for a separate Telangana state is inextricably knotted into a plethora of social, economic, and political issues that exist within AP, and throughout India as a whole. At stake are government job and education “reservations” (a sort of affirmative action or quota system that is intended to promote the advancement of the disadvantaged, but often lands in the hands of politicians eager to offer slots to their own support base,) water access, centers of commerce, government funding, etc. The distinctive scent of xenophobia floats over the whole matter, each group – Telangana and Andhra – resenting the incursion of the other into their lives, eyeing each other suspiciously as potential job usurpers, and painting the “Other” as something horrid. This is slightly baffling to me, as many Andhras have lived in Hyderabad for generations, making them as much a part of the fabric of this community as any other group of people.

Many of the most vocal advocates for Telangana statehood are young, University-aged males, who find their rallying base at Osmania University in Hyderabad. Kara and I have spoken with a number of older teachers and neighbors – both Andhras and Telanganas – who feel that the main public figures and agitators – older men, who have been disgruntled about the union of Andhra and Telangana since it was first formed – are careless with their acerbic rhetoric, and use their public positions to incite the youth to violence. I certainly don’t know enough about the entire movement to declare any sort of judgement on the matter; however, as a pacifist and an advocate of mediated community dialogue in general, I simply cannot accept frequent small-scale riots, bus burnings, transportation disturbances, and city-wide bandhs, as well as all the collateral damage that comes along with them, as justified means of achieving the desired ends.

This morning, I received a hurried call from Neha, one of our teaching assistants at the Railway Girls School. She told me that she had been on her way to the school when her bus was blocked by a large groups of police and boys throwing stones. She realized that many bus routes were being shut down, but managed to find a bus that would take her back home. Unfortunately, that bus also encountered groups of agitators, and the passengers were forced to disembark and find autos to transport them home. While getting off the bus Neha was hit by one of the stones the boys were throwing, which cut her thumb. She’s confirmed that she’ll be fine, but to me, the violence and senseless injury it obviously causes, are upsetting. As you would expect, today’s TMS class at Railway was canceled.

I’m safely waiting things out in Abids, keeping an eye on my Google newsfeed and hoping that as in the case of the recent Ayodhya verdict, the actual reaction to the Srikrishna Committee report will be far calmer than that predicted by some in the media. We’ll know in a few hours.

A few weeks ago, before the exams began and school was off for the winter break, Kara and I handed out a homework assignment aimed at helping our girls imagine what their lives might be like ten years from now. The worksheet was designed to look like the front page of a newspaper (in this case, the imaginary “Railway School Chronicle”), and dated “Thursday November 26th, 2020, with space for a Headline, a cover image, an image caption, and an article. We asked the girls to imagine themselves ten years from now, and to write an article about an accomplishment they’d achieved.

The students’ responses were incredibly creative and wonderful to read. The girls put a lot of effort into finding photos or making collages to match their stories, and their grand ambitions and dreams are evident in the articles they wrote about their future selves. Many of their imaginings are what you might consider the typical dreams of 13 year old girls around the world: surprise stardom, wealth, top athletic achievement, etc. However, if you consider that many of our students’ own mothers, older sisters, or Aunty’s are housewives, it is particularly heartening to see the girls’ desire for success shining through these stories. It is a large leap for some of the students to imagine a career that takes them beyond school and into adulthood – whether that career be in Bollywood, or on the Olympic field.

The class decided to use “Choices and Decision Making” as the theme for their final multimedia piece, and they are currently wrapping up a series of component projects that all touch upon this topic. I hope that by engaging the students in a variety of activities that catalyze creative and critical thought, we can help them explore the wonderful possibilities they can pursue in their future. It’s a well-worn phrase, but I believe it’s quite fitting: If you can perceive it, then you can achieve it!

Below are three students’ homework sheets – click each image to view a larger version on Flickr. To see more students’ “Railway School Chronicle” homework sheets, you can visit “The Railway School Chronicle” Homework Flickr album.

We’re only three days into the New Year, and it’s already off to a great start!

As Kara has shown in previous posts, our classes at Sultan Bazaar have been proceeding wonderfully. After the first class, we divided the class into three groups, each comprised of four or five students, and one teacher. Each group worked together to brainstorm lesson topics for which they could create supplementary classroom multimedia. The three groups independently decided to focus on: Natural Resources, Cotton, and Triangles (the former two being used in natural science classes, and the latter in a maths class.)  With only a few more workshops to go, the students and teachers have been hard at work brainstorming, creating storyboards, writing production plans and scripts, and filming and photographing!

While each student and teacher made her own initial storyboard during the brainstorming process, each group collaborated to eventually choose one storyboard out of the five or six available. Below is a sampling of the wonderful storyboards that the students and teachers produced. Click each image for a closer look! The students’ drawings are great.

Cotton (front)

Cotton (back)

Minerals (Natural Resources)

Badam (front)

Badam (back)

Triangles (front)

Triangles (back)