When Maneka Gandhi did an online ‘Ask Me Anything’ Q & A session with the ‘aam junta’ on Facebook, not only were we surprised at the kind of questions put to her, we were even more surprised at the way she fielded them, with wit. In fact she created quite a buzz on social media and soon began trending on Twitter.
First of all, let us agree that Indians like to flaunt their knowledge and ask fancy questions during these Q & A sessions; it doesn’t matter whether we are really interested in the replies or not.
Unfortunately, this can manifest in two extremes – either the questions are really intelligent or they are totally absurd and weird.
[fb_post]https://www.facebook.com/FacebookIndia/posts/895472300489692[/fb_post]
We saw both extremes on this Facebook conversation thread, but it was the minister’s witty response to the weird ones that tickled our fancy.
When a person from Ladakh told her that he just popped in the session to wish her a ‘good day’, she responded, “You too have a vegetarian Thukpa for me.”
She answered a question from someone called Varun Gandhi by saying – “This sounds like a familiar name!” (her son, Varun, is a parliamentarian from Uttar Pradesh).
And, somebody actually complained to her about being chased by stray dogs, pat came her reply,”find a tree”.
Or when somebody went on about how we use plastic bottles to store drinking water despite it being environmentally unsafe. ‘What is the alternative to plastic,’ he asked and pat came the reply, ‘Glass!’
But there were many questions regarding burning issues in our country like women’s rights, violence, rape, child protection schemes, and pets!
On Rape:
When she was asked ‘Why is our Indian law not strong enough to stop the rape????? I think you don’t have answer for this.’ She gave a reply that made so much sense to us.
‘The law is very strong,’ she said. ‘But as long as men want physical power over women to overcome their own inadequacies, rape will happen. Technically we are one of the countries in the world with the lowest instance of rape. Sweden which is so well off and happy has a huge statistic compared to us. So what is the trigger – who knows?’
On Violence:
“All the violence is male generated,” Gandhi said in response to a question, prompting men to cite the Indrani Mukherjea case.
The minister said one of the ways to tackle violence is at the school stage. “So we have started something which will go into effect in a few months called Gender Champions: boys who have been particularly respectful and helpful to girls and deserve to be emulated and rewarded. These prizes will be given to a person in each class annually. It can also be given to a girl who has been outstanding in her bravery/attitude etc,” she announced.
On Eggs in Midday Meal:
She also endorsed the Madhya Pradesh government’s move in banning eggs from Midday meal, saying, “Good decision. Eggs need a cold chain in order to remain fresh. If they are left in the heat for even a few hours after being hatched, then the egg is full of very deadly bacteria like salmonella – of which thousands of children die every year. No village system has a refrigerator that will keep eggs. Then there is the possibility that poultries will sell their bad and leftover eggs to the system.”
Good going Manekaji!
Image Courtesy: BCCL
More on>> Balancing Act
