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‘The Child is father of the Man’, said Wordsworth and so it goes that kids in school must be taught that what will make them good men when they grow up. Yes, they must learn to read and write. They must mug up tables and dates. They must learn about the crops grown in outer Mongolia and which king killed who and how. They must learn the periodic table and how cockroaches breathe. But all this science, math, history, geography, grammar, literature is not guaranteed to make them into good citizens. No, sir. This is what the tykes need to write their competitive exams. For citizenship, we need to inculcate values of civic sense in them.

So the venerable Ministry of Human Resources Development forms a Copyright Enforcement Advisory Council and this council forms a sub- committee and this sub- committee meets on the 7th of October 2013 and it shall deliberate on the contents that should be developed for a chapter on ‘Intellectual Property Rights’ or ‘copyright’ for inclusion in the 10th standard student’s course curriculum. These students will then grow up to be citizens who will not buy pirated CDs and books. They will not download stuff from unholy file sharing websites like ‘torrentz’ or ‘pirate bay’.

It is definitely more important than teaching boys to respect girls so that they do not think it is cool to do ‘eve-teasing’. It is surely more important than teaching children about road safety, even though more teenagers die in road accidents than are murdered. Big ticket issues of this blessed nation like caste and corruption definitely must not be discussed in their tender presence.

But, COPYRIGHT? Oh, Yes. Burning issue, really.

 Umesh  Sharraf is an itinerant who is presently a government servant. He has taken up writing recently after having been at the receiving end from other writers all his life.