Tag: Nobel prize

Chokher Bali: The Book Review

Cover of Chokher Bali (1903) in Bengali

Introduction

Rabindranath Tagore’s 1903 Bengali novel Chokher Bali is often referred to as India’s first modern novel, where he highlighted the issues of women’s education, child marriage and the treatment of widows in 19th and 20th century Bengal. It was first serialised in the Bengali literary magazine, Bangadarshan first founded in 1872 by Bankim Chanra Chattopodhay and later resuscitated under the editorship of Tagore in 1901.

Rabindranath Tagore

About The Author

Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali  Polymath —poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He reshaped Bengali Literature  and music  as well as Indian Art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of the “profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful” poetry of Gitanjali, he became in 1913 the first non-European and the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore’s poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his “elegant prose and magical poetry” remain largely unknown outside Bengal. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society.  Referred to as “the Bard of Bengal”, Tagore was known by sobriquet: Gurudev, Kobiguru, Biswakobi.

Aishwarya Rai Bachhan as Binodini in Chokher Bali (2003)

Storyline of The Novel

The plot revolves around four protagonists- Mahendra, Ashalata, Binodini and Bihari. Mahendra is the only scion of a rich family based in Calcutta. Bihari is his childhood friend, who frequents his house. Mahendra’s mother wanted him to marry Binodini, her friend’s daughter. But Mahendra refused. Then his mother requested Bihari to marry Binodini and save the poor girl which Bihari refused. Eventually, Binodini got married to a man who died soon after marriage. Meanwhile, Mahendra married Ashalata, a poor orphan girl. Mahendra was besotted with his wife when Binodini came to live in their house. With time, an extra-marital relationship develops between Mahendra and Binodini, which threatens to destroy his marriage with Ashalata. But soon Binodini discovers that Mahendra is a self-obsessed person, unable to provide a safe shelter to her. So she inclines towards Bihari, who lives life by principles. Throughout the novel, there is an implicit implication of Bihari’s affection towards Ashalata, though he never crosses the boundaries of the relationship. In the end, Bihari falls in love with Binodini when realizes her feelings for him. He proposed to marry her, which Binodini refused saying that she doesn’t want to ‘dishonour’ him further. During that period (the novel was written in 1902), widow remarriage was not well accepted in society. That may partially explain the reason behind Binodini’s refusal. In the end, Binodini leaves for Varanasi– a fate that awaited most of the widows in those days.

Aishwarya Rai Bachhan as Binodini and Raima Sen as Asha in Chokher Bali (2003)

Analysis of The Storyline

The term ‘Chokher Bali’ literally means a sand grain in eye  in Bengali  and metaphorically means to be a source of irritation or disturbance in someone’s eyes, which is what Asha and Binodini become for each other. Binodini is presented in many avatars a hopeless widow, a friend, a temptress, and a remorseful woman. Tagore gives readers an insight into her desires and longings, the feeling that many widows at the time had silently undergone. On the other hand, Asha is presented as naive and innocent, which combined with her illiteracy initially results in her subjugation. The narrative almost becomes an implicit debate on love and morality, urging readers to understand Asha and Binodini outside of the social norms of Bengali society. The central character Binodini is not an idealised Indian woman but a woman with shades of grey and very human flaws. Binodini cannot come to terms with her life as a widow, as she is still young and has wants and desires. She feels wronged as she believes she is superior to Asha in all respect and deserves the life she is living. Tagore’s depiction of Binodini is impressive as she subverts the expectation of society for widows to forgo all worldly desires.

Tota Roy Choudhury as Bihari and Aishwarya Rai Bachhan as Binodini in Chokher Bali (2003)

Criticism of The Storyline

The story of this novel delves deep into many facets of human relationships and how a single wrong decision can make the life disharmonious. Jealousy and deprivation of happiness can result into an emotion strong enough to forget all other ties and relationships.Tagore shows the intellectual interchange between the characters, possible due to education and the interception of letters. The innocent and illiterate child bride Asha fails to understand the exploitation she faces at the hands of her husband and dear Bali (Binodini) whom she trusted blindly. Tagore does not justify Binodini’s actions and actually is sympathetic to Asha, perhaps stressing that Asha would have been able to avoid Binodini’s interference in her marital life, if she were educated enough to understand the intentions behind her friendly nature. However, one of Tagore’s greatest regrets in the novel is the ending. Despite his progressive portrayal of Binodini and Bihar, he does not allow them to marry at the end. Although, today we may see the girl marrying the guy as regressive today in Tagore’s time a widowed woman was not permitted to re-marry. Thus, ending the novel with Binodini and Bihari marrying would have been the most revolutionary.

Scene from Chokher Bali (2003)

Movie Adaptation of The Novel

Adapted from Tagore’s Chokher Bali, the movie with the same name was released in 2003, directed by eminent Bengali Moviemaker Rituparno Ghosh, starring Aishwarya Rai Bachhan, Raima Sen, Prosenjit Chatterjee and Tota Roy Choudhury in the lead roles. The movie won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Bengali and was nominated for the Golden Leopard Best Film award at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2003. Aishwarya Rai won the Best Actress award at the Anandalok Awards 2003.

Conclusion

A century after Chokher Bali, education is still a struggle for many women to access easily globally. Tagore’s novel is radical and unconventional presenting a viewpoint that is ahead of the conservative times of 19th and 20th century India. Through the story of Binodini, Tagore questions the societal norms. He condemns all kinds of taboos and unjust customs which deprive women and especially widows of their rightful freedom and autonomy; confined to live a mournful colourless life. As a man from a privileged background, his understanding of the emotions of Indian women and his empathetic attitude towards them is remarkable.

The Marie Effect

Maria Salomea Sktodowska was born on 7 November 1867 in Warsaw , Poland. She was the 5th child born to father Vladislav and Mother Bronislava sklodowska , who were both teachers. Because of bad investments, the family lost its savings and had to move to a private school where her mother taught.

Maria started her schooling in 1874, and she was the youngest and the smartest in her class. During that time, Warsaw was under Russian rule which banned polish dictums. Russian government forbade any polish women to attend university of Warsaw. So Marie and her older sister Bronya ,would pool their finances so that first her older sister ( Bronya ) could complete her education, and then Marie could attend University of Paris. Manya ( as Maria was also called) spent 6 years as governess and taught peasant children how to read and write.

She also attended secret meetings of “Floating University ” where they read scientific studies. By 1891,she had collected enough money to continue her studies in Paris. She moved there and lived with her sister and her husband and changed her name to Marie. She attended the Sorbonne University and then later moved to the student area , a tiny attic sized housing. In 1893,she earned her master’s degree in Physics, and then studied Mathematics on a scholarship.During this, she also got a job to study magnetism properties of various types of steel for French company.

She later met Pierre Curie and they got married in 1895 , and gave birth to daughter Irene the following year.

Later she decided to make French physicist Henri Becquerel and his discovery of mysterious Uranium rays in 1896 as her topic of physics doctorate. She began studying Uranium type rays radiated from other elements and found that Thorium also gave out such rays. Most of Uranium type rays given off by rocks called pitchblende- gave more radiation than she expected.

She announced in July,1898 that she found a new element and named it POLONIUM , after Poland and also invented the word ‘ radioactive ‘ , and later she also founded Radium.

To prove that she had indeed found those new elements, she had to produce pure radium. And finally on 21 july 1902 she reported the weight of 1 radium atom. In 1903, she became the first woman in Europe to receive doctorate in science. Radium began to be used for treating cancer cells, and the new treatment began to be called ‘ Curie treatment’. Marie and Pierre were awarded the Humphry Davy medal ; England’s highest award in chemistry.

The same year , she and her husband ,along with Henri Becquerel , were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics .In 1906, Pierre died by falling off horse drawn wagon.

In 1911, Marie won Nobel Prize in chemistry for her work in radioactivity.

She died in 1934 of aplastic anaemia due to prolonged exposure to radiation .

Later, in 1935,Irene and her husband Fredrick, were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry .

Alleviating poverty through education

In 2019, Abhijeet Bannerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer received the Nobel Prize in Economics for their experimental approach to alleviating poverty. Poverty is one of the biggest issues faced by mankind. It is associated with social problems such as malnutrition, poor education and health. Poverty alleviation is the method of systematically reducing poverty by improving peoples’ education and job opportunities and in turn drastically improve their standard of living.

Their approach was very simple. To tackle the big problem of how to remove poverty, break it down into smaller, manageable questions. Once you find those questions, try to answer each one of them with a field experiment. A field experiment is a randomized controlled trial in which participants make choices in their normal day-to-day environment. Some of these experiments were carried out to find out how exactly education plays a role in reducing poverty.

Michael Kremer rounded up a large number of schools that needed some kind of support and split them up into groups. These schools were given resources that they were not receiving before. These resources varied from textbooks to free school meals. The outcome of the resource distribution was randomised. Due to this, researchers could find a connection between the various types of resources and how it helped children learn better. Surprisingly, textbooks and free school meals proved to make no difference in the learning of the students. It was observed that lack of resources was not the major problem that the low-income schools were facing. The biggest problem was that the teaching happening in these schools was not in accordance with the students’ needs. Banerjee and Duflo analysed remedial tutoring in Mumbai and Vadodara by providing schools with teaching assistants who helped students that had special needs. They discovered that helping the weakest student was a very effective measure in increasing the quality of education.

These experiments showed us that teachers lacked incentive and accountability, which showed in a high level of absenteeism. Reforms had to be made to bring teaching in line with students’ needs and the experiments showed that extra resources are of very limited value.

After the field experiment, this is what Banerjee and Duflo had to say on education policy formation:

  1. They believe that if the cost of schooling decreases, it would lead to a sizeable increase in school enrolment. If some financial barriers and non -financial barriers (e.g: distance to school) are removed it would certainly result in better school participation,
  2.  Awareness about the benefits of education should be spread. If the underprivileged know that there is a wage gap between the educated and uneducated, they would certainly want to be educated. Providing information about jobs would lead to an increase in education investment.

3. More attention should be paid to weaker students. Teaching assistants should be provided to make sure all students are able to cope with the level of teaching and should ensure no child is left behind.

This was how field experiments in education proved to be useful in alleviating poverty.