Wouldn’t it be wonderful for us parents, if life would come with warning signs like this?Against every peodophile, terrorrist, drug dealer and kidnapper that we imagine lurking in the shadows, each time we send our children out into the big bad world.
6.45am….Those glowing numbers in green were the first thing my eyes would see each morning when I woke up to the sound of the morning alarm, ever since my son started going to school.
That was nine years ago.
When that number changed to 6.30am, I can’t quite recall.
Why are 15 minutes such a big deal, you may wonder. Well, it’s not really the few extra minutes that matter….it’s what I do during those fifteen minutes that concern me!
The very first thing I do every morning is to switch on my mobile and check what’s trending on Twitter and then follow it by reading the newspaper! Nothing unusual about that, one would say. A lot of people read the newspaper first thing in the morning.
Sadly, the only reason I do it, is to check for any calamity in the world that day, before I send my children out into it.
I need to ensure there has been no bomb blast, flying nuclear warheads, no hazard that could potentially affect my children, before I wake them up. And the newspapers these days are just far more effective at shaking a mother out of her lazy slumber than the world’s most potent caffeine shot.
Every page is filled with articles on children being raped, kidnapped, murdered….and often all of the above. It makes my stomach churn and my skin crawl to think of the depraved levels that humanity has sunk to.
Maybe my morning routine reeks of paranoia. But I know I’m not alone. The recent spree of gruesome violence in schools and school buses have jolted our nation. What more can a parent do, besides ensuring they’ve dropped their children right into school?
Many parents blame the institutions for lack of vigilance, prior to hiring staff. Many questioned the schools that their children were studying in, to ensure their security systems are in place, many blamed the government, because we live in hope that things will change.
The sad truth is, that we are a generation of parents living with a constant underlying fear. Earlier keeping children safe meant ensuring they didn’t bump their heads on the coffee table or didn’t fall off the bed. Today it is practically a science and is every parent’s number one priority.
Technology helps and is fast becoming our new best friend. For instance, thanks to the RFID system, we already get an SMS when our children board their school bus. We can then track the bus in real time until it reaches school and then get another SMS stating they have alighted the bus. In the interim we can also call the ‘bus didi’ on her mobile for further queries.
But the worst of it is, that they’re still unsafe!!! How is that even possible?
Namely because CCTV is great in hindsight. To tell us what transpired. But how can we keep our children safe and reach them when they need us most? With every horrible gruesome attack on children, we keep trying to hunt for new solutions.
During my research I came across a fascinating piece of information.
“Schools in Australia and UK have mandated intrusion detection systems to be installed in schools to provide a real time safety tool to the law enforcement authorities. Schools, often mistakenly, believe that the scope of their security system needs to start and end with cameras and video surveillance. The key benefits to real time analytics lie in the technology’s ability to monitor an entire space in real-time, allowing for early detection of an intrusion and a much quicker response time to immediately apprehend suspects.”
Naturally intrigued, I fervently hoped it was possible to make this available and implement it in India too. Further research led me to an Indian company called Radiowalla.in, which among other things was providing a number of solutions to protect schools from intrusions. The latest being Facial Recognition Technology which was an advanced technique capable of eliminating an unwanted visitor from the school premises.
This system recognises visitors that have been pre-approved by the schools database and only such persons can be allowed in.
It also makes it possible to black-list unwanted persons in the database. The moment a blacklisted person comes in front of camera, the system alerts the authority instantaneously.
Nothing, as we keep discovering, is fool proof. But this seems to be another step in the right direction. Naturally, me and other parents have decided to forward this information to our children’s school, because we cannot afford to leave any stone unturned.
Although, I wish we didn’t need to. I personally feel it is a sad sad world that we live in, if we need to talk about installing cameras in every nook and corner of our children’s lives. And have an army of bodyguards following them around everywhere they go.
It is painful that RFID, CCTV, Facial Recognition have become colloquial words, part of our children’s daily vocabulary. Even more painful that our children will never know the meaning of true freedom! Of a childhood that is carefree, innocent and more importantly, private.
We have unwillingly sentenced them to our own surreal version of ‘The Truman Show’. Unfortunately, it is the need of the hour. And as extreme as our solutions are, they have become a necessity…until human beings find their humanity again!
(This post can also be found on my page, Occupational Parent, at mycity4kids.com)
Sunset Effect - Nitya Satyani 