Plastic Preaching -2

When we were in school, all students wore black Bata shoes. The shoes could be bought from anywhere but I called it black Bata shoes. On Games and PT days, we wore white canvas shoes. There was always a chalk available to make our dirty shoes look white. The concept of sneakers or sports shoes came much later. It was a total foreign phenomena. If you had relatives abroad, you had chances of owning a pair of sports shoes. I learnt the word Sneakers only when I came to Mumbai. And then when the children grew up, I learnt that 'Snickers' is a brand of chocolate. I knew the word ' sniggering'. We did a bit of that in school. Learnt in my higher class  that P.T. was Physical Training. The Bata shop was the best looking shop in the whole of Jharia with red and white Laminate. We called laminate as 'Sunmica' which was brand name of the Laminate. Like I still say 'Xerox' for photocopy. All our stationary shops also put up a board saying "Xerox for Re.1".  Now schools everywhere have introduced expensive branded sports shoes as daily school wear. The Reebok Sports shoes in black are heavy, soak in a lot of rain water and do not dry. They are so bulky for children's feet. They add extra weight to the child who is already carrying a heavy school bag. Schools do tell you do not carry textbooks in your bag but in reality it does not work that way. Children need to write down meanings, underline or see the written word to understand what is being taught. These expensive black school shoes have to be bought from a Reebok or a Nike store only . In some cases, from a school vendor preferably as Reebok very smartly does not sell these shoes in their stores. The children were wearing Canvas shoes or the black buckle shoes all along which were all-weather. They were light and child friendly unlike these bulky Sneakers. For growing children we need a new pair of shoes every 9 months and we have to shell out much more money per pair of shoes. It has become all about branding of schools and I fail to understand how shoes will help the brand image of the schools. These schools do not realise they are responsible for the pollution which has increased multifold with introduction of Sneakers. Now there is plastic covers available for school sports shoes so that the shoes do not get wet. Whoah, some more plastic for us to chew on.

The Khakhi canvas school bag no longer exists. That  bag lasted us for years. Now, there are all the fancy synthetic bags. The school canteens giving food in one time plastic use containers. The school canteens were earlier run by school mothers or someone needy who managed to make good clean food. The new age Moms do not want fresh home food for their child with chillies which increases the natural immunity of the child. They want food cooked hours back or better still uncooked, packed in plastic or aluminium foil and having preservative laden stuff inside like bread, butter, cheese, jam and sauce.

Maharashtra plastic ban is like the Odd Even car rule of Delhi. It is bound to be a failure. BMC is only fining the Poor. The laws made are already pro Rich and pro Corporate. BMC has not built any recycling plant. There is no garbage segregation even now by the BMC. Housing societies used to segregate the garbage but the BMC garbage vans just took it all together . Our weather is not such that we can store garbage for days. Fail to understand why Mumbai votes for a corrupt party year after year and then suffers due to Monsoons and poor infrastructure. Even the recent bridge collapse, BMC so shamelessly wants to  pass the blame to other Government agencies. We deserve the corrupt, if we vote for them. BMC is so powerful and corrupt that they do not respond to anyone and are not answerable to anyone. Corruption with Power makes things scary.