In their years of work in tri-media, the Rai couple engaged the free services of one of the most ideal and critically astute partners that one can employ: Their daughter.

Shruti is all of nine years old, with genes of intelligence obviously acquired from her parents. The Indian girl has shown early signs of leadership qualities, gathering new acquaintances in Johannesburg to sell trinkets and conference stuff, even helping man an international festival secretariat in Tokyo.

In school, she is atypical because of her extensive travels and experiences. Even her school teachers are awed by Shruti’s profundity and prodigious talent. She not only draws but can handle videocams like a pro. She can edit with a keen eye. She has stage managed events and hosted programs, the most recent being a series of fora for children. Shruti oftentimes does all these with minimal adult coaching and coaxing. Yet she is not your run-of-the-mill type of young celebrity. Vinay and Meenakshi have seen to that.

Recently, little Shruti surprised her parents when she e-mailed the president of India. Shruti wrote Madame Pratibha Patil, India’s first elected woman president, about the forum she wanted to stage, an effort to mount a corollary counterpart to the adult event her parents were preparing called Chinh India. The New Delhi gradeschooler thought that if her parents were anxious about the way television was affecting children her age, she and her peers should in turn tell the adults the way it is.

She then surprised the entire Indian nation when the president replied! She and her small gang of like-minded gradeschoolers were invited for an audience recently at the Indian President’s Residence called Rashtrapati Bhawan.

It was expectedly a rough and tumble day for security as the highly-charged group broke protocol, asking questions only kids can conjure: Were you scolded as a child, to which the amiable lady chief executive replied with "yes, for not coming to school on time!"

Shruti was curious how the president’s day looked like. The leader gamely described a typical day full of meetings, functions and speeches. Irrepressible Shruti gushed that it must be boring. The smart gradeschooler then half-mandated the President to attend their Chinh Children’s Forum on Dec. 9 to 11. Tall order indeed from a nine-year-old to a head of government!

Kids indeed say it like it is. Many of them nonchalantly questioned why the snacks served them in the stately Ashoka Hall were mediocre compared to what they got in a simple forum elsewhere that day. To which a parent exclaimed that it could be that kids are not important in government affairs, an observation shared by hundreds of millions of parents across continents.

We were told by our informant who was with the visiting children that the extremely paranoid security detachment confiscated autograph books and the greeting cards prepared by the kids for presentation to the leader. No one was allowed to take pictures either.

Sensing the distress among her kid guests, Madame Patil asked for an official group photo with the juveniles, an order greeted with glee and shrieks. As they huddled for the momentous shot, the kids managed to nag her about showing up at their all-important forum.

If the Indian President, who finds time for dignitaries and wealthy businessmen, shows up in solidarity at the Chinh India Children’s Forum on the International Children’s Day of Broadcasting, she would not only have paid the kids of India a moral debt but would have also shown the rest of the world the stuff that a genuine leader is made of.