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Is it NURTURE or TORTURE ?



 

NEWS: 
A hostel warden named Uma Poddar in the Patha Bhavan, Shantiniketan had made a 10-year old girl , Punita, drink her own urine as a punishment for bedwetting.


BACKGROUND:
When this incident had happened, the police officials in the area ignored it claiming it to be " Natural Instinct." They never considered it unfair and acted leniently with the ruthless warden. They arrested the child's parents for the child's mistake. The Supreme Court responded vehemently about the careless treatment by the police. 


MY OPINION:
There are two ways of looking at this mishap. One, from Punita's side. She was living in a residential school miles away from her parents. For this girl, the warden was supposed to be a motherly figure and obey her orders with full sincerity. After bedwetting which is natural at such an early age, she was made to feel "GUILTY". Scared of her caretaker, she got oppressed and when her parents complained they were taken into police custody.
 Second, from the teacher's side.The warden did not realise that her punishment was too brutal to teach the child a lesson. Children are like tender buds who need to be nurtured and not tortured. She probably did it in disgust but the teachers need to be trained. She probably won't have acted so brutally with her own daughter. Here lies the gap-- we need to train the wardens as well.
Shantiniketan is a very prestigious institution founded by Shri Rabindranath Tagore and is considered as a center for holistic development. Despite all this, the " condemnable " act by the warden is redolent of the fact that children are not being taken care of.

I firmly believe in the statement by Mahatma Gandhi that -
"Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.”
A child listens to the voice of the heart rather than the noise of the rod. 

Comments

  1. Unknown12 July 2012 at 10:51

    LOVE the ending! Very Powerful! :P

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Akshita14 July 2012 at 05:05

      Thank u. I strongly believe in it. Because you learn from your mistakes when you know why your doing was wrong not when you were hit for it!

      Delete
  2. Akshita14 July 2012 at 05:42

    CORRECTION:
    I apologise for a factual error - This matter never reached the Supreme Court(as mentioned in the post) , the intervention was done by the higher authorities of the state.The mistake occured due to some confusion.

    ReplyDelete

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