speech

I’m not here to talk about the school rules or the use of I pods or the bus rules, I am here to talk about something else, something very close to my heart, my idea of the student counsel, my opinion of some of the things it should stand for and work towards.

We all know the school is a massive lumbering behemoth of bureaucracy, take the beautiful jeans move, finally give permission to wear jeans after three years of lobbying, knowing that your are going to institute the uniform in a few weeks, rather smart. Anyways it has been molded that way and it works that way, I am not here to criticize it. I am here to appreciate the fact that the school has realized that if it wants its students to get of their lazy butts and do something about anything they need to be organized and given some authority, those are the principles on which this counsel has been founded, our school has realized that the students can do so much more with their existences if given the opportunity.

I first saw this counsel as another useless bureaucratically challenged nightmare and I wasn’t going to run for elections, but I’ve seen a couple of things, that have changed my mind and made me realize that it is such a potentially powerful and beautiful tool which can organize the students and unite them in common goals, and allow our school to set an example for a lot of other schools, businesses, organizations and governments.

Well what made me change my mind? While we were running around school trying to set up this garbage segregation system with all the guys who were helping us… I realized how pointless it was for a bunch of jackasses to go around classes making these heartening speeches and trying to get something done on their own. But I also saw something else. When we organized the bins in the high school quadrangle in order to stick labels and send them off to various classes, no less than 60 kids of all ages, sizes and classes, didn’t step forward but charged forward to help us with frantic enthusiasm. It was amazing to see all these people from class 6 - 12 who on a normal lunch break probably wouldn’t have even acknowledged each other’s existences, running around manically in circles, prepping 25 bins for dispatch in school. It was supposed to be a pilot programme for 5 classes but every single other class came up to us and asked, where the hell are our bins, we want to do something, we want to be involved, we want to try and make a difference.

Look at our position its crazy. The influence we have in our student’s parents. Every head of major corporation or business in India probably has a son or daughter here, for god sake the big bosses at Indus and Canadian school have their offspring here. Don’t tell me we don’t have the resources. We can use the counsel as a tool for getting so much done, upscale this garbage segregation thing, export the ideas to school around us, to the Yelehanka community. Work with NGO’s from plastic management and rainwater harvesting all around this area. Spread some awareness on global warming issues on environmental degradations, stop making the poor teachers run around looking for schools and societies where we can help out at to pass SUPW , lets take the initiative as students.
We as students can actually do something about these problems, something more than looking away or blaming it on the government or the adults or the school or the un or humanity as a whole.

If the students are given the opportunity to cast aside their cynicism, their laziness and join together and see some work actually being done, I think there is no limit to what can be achieved. And that is where I believe the student counsel can come in. I want the counsel to look beyond and deeper inside everyone of us and give us the coordination and the strength and unity to make anything possible so that we as a school can set an example to everyone else who has turned a blind eye or looked away from the problems be it environmental, social, anything, In complacency, denial or despair. We can’t sit doing nothing, this is our opportunity to organize ourselves, come together and get something done. All I care about is that this opportunity is not wasted. In unity lies strength, in unity lies wisdom and in unity lies action and now is the time for action, which must happen here and now, in school as students, on all our parts.

Why am I doing this, cause I’m tired of hearing about what we can do, what we should do and that we can do it. I want to see it done, just to reaffirm my faith in humanity, to reaffirm my faith as a human being, as a person as a student. I want to know that I can do something for that starving kid on the road or that leper eating human shit off the railway tracks.

As students undergoing our education, the biggest lesson we have to learn is that we are not helpless and most importantly we are not alone but can be united. Knowing that this world actually gives a shit, knowing that we can come together and make a difference. Not only knowing but seeing it happen and doing it with our own hands through the support of this community and everybody in it. That is something you cant learn in Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge

Those are the lessons that make us human, lessons, which we have forgotten but were once taught to us by great people like Gandhi and Teresa.

But I want it to be done by us. Why are we mindless drones to have everything dictated to us by school in the form of community service, SUPW or PSE. We have the energy, the resources the opportunity to set examples as students and push forward where other bodies of people are too afraid to move onwards.
We can really set an example to the Yelehanka community, to big businessmen and to large organizations. Why should we just sit there, being aware of all the problems and not do anything about them.

Lets help to break down the barriers between what we say and what we do, let the counsel bring us together into some really meaningful action, I mean students as supposed to be a deadly formidable force, all through history if there’s any revolution or fight for justice you have students protesting, rioting and getting killed for what they believe in, and we cant even get ourselves organized to solve some of the problems without having the teachers and administrations lead us by the hand
I’ve seen the power and potential we posses when we band together, lets use it to make a real difference, so when someone like mallika sarabhai comes for a performance we can say as a school and each individual person in that school that we have done something huge, or better still, lets make her hear about us in a conference in Texas or china.