Bharathi Baskar is a Tamil Orator and is popular for her debate talk shows called Pattimandram. She is also a Senior Vice President at Citi Bank, Chennai. A  Chemical Engineer from Alagapa College of Technology, Chennai, she pursued MBA from Anna University.

Bharathi Baskar started to participate in debate competitions since her school days. She is also a good writer and has written many short stories that were published in the Tamil weekly magazine Kalki. She pens many motivational articles in various magazines including Dinamani. She has authored a book named Nee Nadi Pola Oodikondiru which was serialized in Aval Vikatan magazine.

In an exclusive interview, Bharati Bhaskar shares with Marie Banu her thoughts on gender equality.

Does the debating platform offer solutions to societal problems? What are your favourite topics to debate on?

I don’t know if we provide solutions, but we can definitely give  a perspective and awareness about the problems and  get people to think about it. My interest lies on issues related to women. It could be about women empowerment, safety of women, or about how women are seen by the society. These topics are very close to my heart. Hence, whenever I get the opportunity, I prefer to select one of these topics to debate on.

Your thoughts on gender equality and women empowerment?

Women empowerment is about the overall human empowerment that one is talking about. If a very large share of the human population is always constrained and restricted to  kind of satisfy the other part of the society and not pursue the path of freedom that they think is very important for them, then I think it is a blur on humanity as a whole.

In the last 20 years, that I have seen, quite a lot of changes have happened. A lot of questions have gone away in the way we see ourselves. For instance, when I was 15, widow remarriage was an issue that was talked about, discussed, and approached with a lot of hesitation. But now, when I see the society around me, at least the urban society, I don’t think there is anybody who treats this issue differently. The issue of chastity, is also viewed differently today. Things are changing, but problems are appearing in new dimensions for women every day.

How can we ensure safety of girl children/women today?

The brutality of crime against women has most certainly grown up in the last two decades.  I think a very significant contributor for crime against women and children is liquor. When we were young, there would be one odd drunkard walking down the street, or lying on the pavement. Today, this is a common sight, especially in the state of Tamil Nadu. In every crime scene, you will definitely see a bottle of liquor being present. Unless, as a society, we stand strong and fight against liquor, the crime rates will not come down.

The abuse of social media and easy access to obscenity have caused a moral derailment in the society. The way we bring up our children–sons and daughters–is also a reason. There is an unconscious bias. While we take a lot of care to see how our daughters are spending their time, who their friends are, what they are doing, and what they are viewing on their screen–we don’t exercise the same caution with our sons. This difference is really the key to the solution that we are speaking of.

Boys should be brought up by asking the right set of questions and values need to be imbibed in them since birth. They should be made to understand that a girl should be treated like a friend, another human being, like a sister or a cousin. They are not creations of God made for man to enjoy and be served with.

Given the recent Pollachi  incident, one of the culprit’s mother is shown arguing that her son has done no wrong and that he has been victimized. This is how blinded one can get! For the mother, her son is a nice person and someone who cannot do anything wrong. Her own son is now a stranger to her. She does have a daughter, and I am sure that she has known her more closely. 

Such are the deterrents and unless addressed, I don’t see the crimes against women going down.

Your advice to the budding debators?

The success of a person – be it a speaker or writer – is directly proportionate to the reading habit of that person. Gone are the times when people used to have one or two ideas, and five or six jokes that they keep repeating in every place and claim to be a speaker. Now, you are on Youtube all the time. People watch you and you cannot repeat what you have said before.  You are constantly driven about talking about new ideas and only books can do that.

There is no prescription to a reading habit as all of us naturally tend to seek something which we are very close to.  For developing language skills, I recommend people to read in the language that they aspire to speak or write. They can start with reading books they find attractive – like fiction – and slowly move on to reading non-fiction and philosophy.

Reading habits should be cultivated when one is a child, else it is extremely difficult. If you want your child to be interested in reading, you have to read first. The child should see his or her parents reading books every day and discussing about the books they read. Advising the school to have a reading hour would not suffice.

If you start reading early, you will see your interests evolving. Start with bed time stories, child stories, and then graduate to mysteries, and teenage romance. You then search for a genre which interests you deeply.

I almost don’t read fiction now. Whatever fiction I read is for memories of my past which I have enjoyed and I want to relive. What interests me is biography and deep philosophy. 

It is not necessary that one has to choose only one type of book so you can choose what interests you.