It isn’t a site I would have normally visited. I wouldn’t even have known about its existence if it were not for the sponsored program that popped up in the middle of the old Hindi songs that I was listening to on FM Gold (100.7) the other day. I was annoyed at first because government programs are not known for their quality. About to switch the channel, however, I decided to listen for some time – just out of curiosity – to this program from the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

This time it was on preparing nutritious home-made food for a child. Predictably, the voiceover in Marathi had a forced gaiety about it and the words and phrases chosen wouldn’t have been employed by any Maharashtrian in daily use. I strongly suspected that someone who is not a Maharashtrian but knows the language a bit had prepared the content or it could have been translated from a Hindi version.

That said, I must also note that it was very informative e.g. a clear and simple recipe for Spinach Khichdi was given. And what was most surprising was that at the end of the program a website was mentioned - http://wcd.nic.in/.

Needless to say, on my next trip to the Internet I typed the address in the browser fully expecting to see the website down. Surprise again! There is a site - up and running. I checked out a few links – the pages seem to be all there though I am yet to read the contents. And there is a Guestbook section. Aha! Now I will come across a non-functional section, I thought. Wrong again! There were entries here too. Of course, some of them are yet to be approved by the Webmaster but there were quite a few praises and a suggestion here and there. One of them – that of adding a search option to the page – had even been implemented by the webmaster. I found a note to that effect at the end of that guest book suggestion.

Flipping through the guest book I came across the following comment by one of the visitors (the use of uppercase is the user’s original):

CHILD MEANS BOTH MALE AND FEMALE. HERE I SAWONLY PROGRAMMES FOR FEMALE CHILD ACCORDING TO GOVT OF INDIA POOR AND SUFFERING MALE CHILDREN ARE NOT HUMAN?

I don’t think he is entirely wrong!