Mangaluru: We have already brought to your kind attention the racket going on the name of mid brain masters all over the country in a previous press note. This is a ruse to exploit the gullibility of parents and children into parting Rs.25,000 for joining a course which has not shown any proven benefits except for the organisers who can make profits out of it. Since summer vacations are approaching there will be new offers for this period. Through this report we want to bring to kind knowledge of parents to take precautions against falling for such dubious devices.
While claims of stimulating the mid brain to bring about extraordinary mental powers has been going around from past few years, the hysteria is now reaching epidemic proportions. There are a number of such enterprises offering such courses in a number of cities in India, the mode of seeking publicity and also attracting clientele are through handouts making a number of wild claims with pseudo scientific jargon being used freely to attract gullible parents who always have an impression that one’s progeny is the most unique, intelligent thing on the planet whose real potential has not been realized or recognized by the world at large!
While we had taken up such in Mangaluru where I had challenged an enterprise called as Spoorthi Foundation to allow us to check the claims made in an offer document to the public, the response had been from one Rajiv Ahuja from Bengaluru Mid Brain masters who had invited us to come to Bengaluru to witness the activities. In response to his invitation we had sent two activists from Bengaluru freethinkers Dolly Koshy and Atheeb to visit their premises on the 1st of March. They were not allowed to investigate any one of the children, they were prevented from questioning them, were not allowed to take any photographs too. The famous blind folded reading technique was shown to them and when Dolly performed the same, she was accused of peeking through the gap between the nose and eyes. When she replied that the same was being done by the children, she was attacked!
That takes us back to the famed ‘blind folded’ reading techniques. The whole edifice of this so called Mid brain development rests on their claims of being able to make children read blind folded! They post videos of these on their face book pages, make claims on media about such feats, try and get their names in books of world records and such. One such link to a report in the New Indian Express can be accessed here. It claims that a girl of ten years performed ‘feats of blind folded reading’ which is a ‘world record’ of some sort in the august presence of some VIPs which included a judge of the Andhra Pradesh high court.
However, this stimulation of mid brain activity is no social service. It is a totally commercial activity promising ‘high returns’ to franchisees, charging a cool 25,000 rupees for those who are gullible enough to admit their child to the course. The activation is possible only for children between five to fifteen years of age! All their ads and blurbs feature cute kids! One can wonder why- the answer lies in attracting people and having excuses to prevent any proper investigations into the claims- in this example when a crusty old balding, grey haired, bearded old man is pitted against a cute ten year old who can always burst into tears when the going gets tough, there are no prizes for guessing where the sympathies will be!
The whole purpose of making claims with kids performing apparently amazing feats of blind folded reading is to prevent any proper investigations into the claims. When Limca book of world records was contacted they replied that there was no such on their records but they were willing to consider it. The editor also added the note that she had witnessed one such blind folded display and had been surprised by the unique talent exhibited by the child! Like many others she too had not bothered to check the effectiveness of the blind fold!( photo graph of the blind folded child is attached)
This Mid brain stimulating activity had been going on all over the country from quite some time. Some of our organizations in Maharashtra have already exposed the same and have even offered awards to conduct the same under controlled conditions. Since the Mid brain masters are a commercial under taking keen on taking more and more customers we had already made an offer to them of Rs.5 lakhs if they could prove that their students can read things under fool proof blind folded conditions that we shall enforce. We have been told that they are not interested in awards! But, as a commercial enterprise they must be interested in getting more customers!
So, we herein agree to sponsor two hundred students from socially and economically backward sections of the society studying in govt. schools for their program if they can prove their claims of children seeing things blind folded. However, the tests shall be conducted under conditions to be specified by us. This is because we want to help these children to stimulate their mid brains and come up to the high standards claimed by the enterprise marketing this scheme. Since the offer document for the course states that children can ‘identify color, shape, numbers, letters without ordinary sensory inputs’ , we would like to conduct fool proof tests for the same with material provided by us including blind folds.(the offer document is enclosed as an attachment)
These trials will be conducted at Mangaluru in the presence of media and the specific conditions shall be laid down by us. The date for this is tentatively fixed for the 14th of April since it happens to be the birthday of Dr.Ambedkar the architect of the constitution of India and a brilliant scholar whose mid brain would certainly have been activated to accomplish all that he did though he was born in a dalit family in a remote village!
