If the ex RSS chief makes remarks it is quiet a possibility that he would have seen that unfortunate event of the assignation of Mrs Indira Gandhi or at least he would have other material proving his perspective. But from the point of view of an insignificant voter, one can only imagine the enormity of challenges that have made the personality of Congress president Sonia Gandhi of today. One doesn’t agree with many policies of the congress party, especially on the first amendment of the constitution, vote-bank politics, unfair electoral practices, land acquisition politics etc. Talking about the first amendment, it doesn’t mean that the recognition of two states, from what was remaining of the British Bombay presidency after the partition was wrong. Because it is a fact that even after the first amendment to the constitution declaring division of India by languages, the languages Marathi and Gujarati were not recognized, and it was only fare that the two were recognized later in keeping with the amendment. But my opposition is to the whole idea of linguistic states. What I mean is, we can see of that decision a generation and a half ago has done today; people think they have their leaders in their languages, and a designated land, exclusive to them, and the union government as a burden (Delhi Darbar they call it). I mean we are lucky at least today we have leaders of national appeal. But soon this pool would dry out, because a national leader is a one who can stand elected for any electorate from north to south and from east to west and such leaders even today would be numbered, may be one or two. And a couple of generations down the line, a leader from one exclusive state would have no appeal for the people of another exclusive state and with no one to lead the union, we all can imagine what we are heading for. And bringing change now is paramount and needs to be tackled with statesmanship above party lines and with most urgency. Second is the problem of obsolete and very byes, land acquisition laws and methodologies. Today if a farmer is living of the land. Even one crop in a year can sustain him and his family for one full year. And if by virtue of a land acquisition that livelihood and land is taken away the government needs to ensure the farmer’s livelihood. Because the farmer is naïve about money, he has never seen the kind of money he gets by the sale of land, and in his opinion the sale of land is his ultimate salvation, but the fact is that he is wrong. Indian and multinational business work world wide today sharing profits with local populations, what is the problem with sharing it at India. I think the problem is lack of adequate legal provisions. So such and many more are my concerns with the ruling party of the day, but beyond that as for the Congress president is concerned, I think she is a great woman. Just imagine. Imagine a dream of a beautiful love story of wonderful woman with the most admirable and a warm gentleman one could think of, their blissfully protected life, a happily married couple in a joint family. And one tragic morning she is awake, her dream is suddenly broken and she is holding her motherinlaw trenched in blood, wriggled with bullets. Imagine what would be her condition. The loss is enormous for the couple. For the son, losing his mother and even in such tender turn of life, put in to the shoes of his mother. And for her an entire family in pain and the tragic memories of that fateful day haunting her time and again.. But as time passes by she somehow limps back from the loss and the tragic and horrific sight of losing her mother-in-law in her own hands. The couple somehow learns to live with the reality, standing by each other in the toughest of times, and just as they think the worst is over and they start looking at life afresh, she is shattered with a bomb that blows up her husband beyond recognition. Imagine what would be her condition. It’s a very sad story but it doesn’t end there, With two young children in her tearful eyes she looks back at her loss with disbelief, she sees two ways, one pointing to an introvert life of confinement dedicated to her children, and second way pointing to the enormous burden of her husband’s dreams, his genuineness, his sincerity, a personality that no one but her could defend in his absence, the enormous heritage and the proud history of her family, so cherished by both her husband her mother-in-law. It is hard to imagine what would be going through mind when she decides to take the second path. Because it was an almost impossible task. We often praise the triumph of Asian and African people against all odds, against race discrimination, the suffering, and it is no doubt a very sad reality of the world. And today if the US. has a president born in Africa heading the most powerful office in the world, it is a great achievement, and beyond doubt it is all the reason to celebrate. But what is equally unfortunate that a similar triumph of a single European woman fighting the same odds, her triumph misses the limelight. But at the same I don’t support her inner voice theory. What I mean is if the people of India select her against all such discrimination and all the odds, and if she has to let them down bay saying that she doesn’t feel right about taking the responsibility, this in my opinion is a breach of trust. So all one can only say that the people of United States were lucky while the Indian people have to wait for another chance. Any way the above does not claim any knowledge or exactness to the story of the Congress president Sonia Gandhi, but just an attempt to revisit the enormous courage of a simple woman in such tough times. When she defies all odds, rises from the ashes and does the impossible. So coming back to the ex RSS chiefs comments about the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi. With the limited perspective available in the public domain it is far to imagine that a simple woman who in all probability would have not even seen the whole of Delhi, and until that tragic day may have never seen a hospital in Delhi, is faced with the enormous challenge of keeping herself together against the backdrop of her mother-in-law down in a pool of blood. And if someone says that she should have measured the distance of the nearest hospital…The statement sounds a kind of bizarre to me. And as for his comments about her being a CIA agent sounds most bizarre, surely I would not have any intelligence information on it, but had it been true she could have easily migrated to the US. or Europe after the tragic death of her husband, surely the Gandhi’s would have enough to provide for a nice lifestyle in such an event, and come back like a remote-control over Congress as a mentor and a star campaigner, I mean with so many scams around, she could have been the richest woman on the planet by now. So that’s why I feel such comments seem very unfortunate. Not because they look illogical but because such comments look to be originating from some personal disliking. But having said that the point that Mr. Sudershan was trying to make about the Ghost armies of the west and their involvement in the elimination of the heads of our nation has often surfaced in the media and is understandable. But for that I wonder if one single agency or nation can be blamed for that. Because if one looks back at the history of their involvement in Asia it has always been a collaborated affaire. If you look at what is known as the ‘cutting of the Chinese melon’ where the nation was drugged by British and their Indian colony for a hundred years. This weakened the nation moral was broken; corruption became rampant, and led to the political disturbance leading to American lead monopolization of China, dividing the monopoly between its different partners. It was called the ‘American open door policy’. It seems quit relevant that after the Second World War, the British did not see any point in owning and governing colonies. The US led open-door regime looked far more practical. And the partnership in Iraq looks like an example of the same open-door policy still very relevant. Under this backdrop then, researched documents of many journalists, about suspicions engagements seem very real. For example the late PLO supremeo Mr Yasser Arafat preempting Mrs Indira Gandhi of an international conspiracy to assassinate her etc. journalists writing about hedge funds in the US funding the LTTE, it’s a murky world of these proud secrete services of the west and I wonder what common people are supposed to make of it. I remember having come across a statement by Martin Luther King Jr, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools” So it is for the political fraternity to decide how far disagreements should go and that if they are opponents divided by Ideologies or enemies.
Opponents to enemies.
November 15th, 2010 No comments »
Walmart from a socialist point of view.
November 9th, 2010 No comments »Needless to say Walmart has been the favorite case study for a long long time now. Never the less if one were to decode what it has done to the US economy from a socialists eye, it is fascinating. I think US President Obama is a man of good integrity and a simple thought process. It seems the recent David Hadley episode is an example of his clear integrity, that is if today we know anything about Hadley, we owe it to the US president. I mean I cannot see a parallel ever in the past (of all that I know) that the US establishment had opened the CIAs dirty laundry for public consumption in India (it would have not surprised me had he just vanished). Equally I don’t buy the comments that the US did not have prayer knowledge of Hadley’s plans or activities, I just cannot believe that the most technologically advanced intelligence agency in the world let its agent stray and he signally was responsible for what he did. It seems to me that Hadley was continently overlooked as a part of the bailout package for half of the world out of the recession, because a war between India and Pakistan means a ticket for half the world out of economic trouble as it would make India n Pak spend a lot more on defense, but having said that, it does not mean that the US President went against the interest of his own nation in helping India avoid war. So what has all of the above to do with Walmart? What does the recent subprime crises and recession to do with Walmart? I think the difference between a normal global trade and Walmart economy is that of a natural ecosystem (an example from the nature) and an industrialized farming. Walmart for past many years is more or less became a pipe line for two way traffic of technology and creativity going in to China and products coming in to the US and the world. At the face of it looks very rosy and politically correct. But the devil is in the detail, when the US President refers to Harley Davidson as a symbol of American lifestyle and home manufacturing; he is living in the past. Such an idea cannot be reproduced today. So why has the US come to it? In the US with the advent of the soft economy, it brought in emigrants in large numbers, and that in-effect made the rentals and real-estate expensive and the assets owned by common American valuable. The banks readily accepted the assets as mortgage and there was wellbeing in spending. But imagine all this spending power without the industrialized supply chains. How many more Harley Davidsons would have come up, and how many jobs. So the summery of the above is not that we should not have FDI in retail, but I think it should be based on the ‘Auto sector’ policy of the I.K. Gugral government. He did not go for joint ventures with multinational companies at the cost of home grown companies; it was a simple policy of ‘Procure locally and sell globally’ and calibrated opening up to support this thought process. And this policy in my opinion can be the best way to open the FDI in Retail and also protect jobs and business in India, and making the local industry globally competitive. So I guess an open market is good and so is some amount of regulation.
But before going to Walmart let me talk about some of my opinions about the recent Obama visit (the following point deals with David Hadley and one thing commendable about Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government is that they skillfully leveraged the point without putting too much pressure on the US president in his personal capacity).
Because the problem in US seems far different from the defense industries reach. What I mean is that the growth horses of China cannot be halted suddenly. And I would not agree that the global recession is going away without more pain.
So I think they are a victim of their own deregulation, because I don’t think it would have diluted China’s growth in any way. In India we don’t have much of organized supply chain, but Chinese products still sell; only they are subject to open market and they create a lot of jobs and I don’t see anything wrong with it.
Sri Aurobindo.The Rishi from Baroda
October 30th, 2010 No comments »INC, BJP Or a personality who would you choose for your next vote? I will share what I think about them. By The Rishi from Baroda “Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism” further adding: “I say, of the Congress, then, this, - that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplishment is not a spirit of sincerity and whole-heartedness, and that the methods it has chosen are not the right methods, and the leaders in whom it trusts, not the right sort of men to be leaders; - in brief, that we are at present the blind led, if not by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed.” Sri Aurobindo. I think what Sri Aurobindo said about Congress then is relevant even today. It is not that I think, that Congress should not be cherished as a heritage, and preserved and nurtured for generations to come. But its monopolistic practices have created a dictatorship in the disguise of a genuine democracy. It has used every possible way of manipulating and misleading its opposition, that today we have nothing as an opposition party that common people can relate to. If today we have extremism of all kinds, so much that we are questioning the very existence of a nation. Its because we have locked up all possibilities of opposition and people have no way but to think extreme. Sad when people say that if this is what democracy and a nation is all about I don’t want it. All because one party has wrapped up all the undemocratic practices that it invented in some phony idealism and the ultimate irony of the situation is that not too long ago it had almost become a victim of its own design. The next topic deals with the RSS thought process, and how in a very congress way the foundation of it was destroyed pushing it to extreme right. Many say that the RSS thought process strengthened with Mahatma Gandhi, but much influence can be seen coming from Sri Aurobindo’s works in Baroda. Before division of India on linguistic ground the Marathi community was a loved people through much of India, they had a cementing effect for many things they symbolized, the social engineering symbolized by Chatrapati Shivaji in the south and later Chatrapati Shahu in the north, was symbolic of a progressive mindset, they symbolized the union of the north and the south, they symbolized a bridge between the Shaives and Vaishnavs. And most of all, they represented three hundred years of war against the Moguls (not Muslims because both Rajputs and Marathas fought for and against Moguls, and they had political differences India never had religious wars), two hundred years of struggle against the British. The three Anglo Maratha wars first one lost them Bihar, second Surat and third broke the Maratha Federation with the fall of Pune. It is not surprising then that in much of north India the Maratha states played a central role in the make and break of the struggle of 1857. The fall of the Scindias and later the Holkers in 1857 had such a psychological effect that the revolt could not hold. So the point is that the society looked at Marathi people with a lot of hope, and when Sri Aurobindo started sharing his opinion in Baroda, Madhya bharat and Bengal, it had a telling effect on the youth of that time and much of that lot was Marathi youth because of the proximity of the community in serving banks and education related activity, and the undercurrent spared like wild fire. Sri Aurobindo had met Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and it seems that had much to do with the rebel within congress and his change of opinion about religion (the man who opposed the child Marriage bill on religious ground to a man who challenged even the Sunkaracharya ). But the biggest strength of the RSS thought process was also its biggest weakness, it mostly grew along the borders of the Maratha states, the so called Hindi belt, and it also carried a certain image. This was the biggest strength of the congress, great leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Mohmad ali Jinha, and others carried the possibility of a new India, and that was most appealing to the length and the breadth of the nation. And I think the promise was a very real one, and all that it held was achievable, if the democracy was respected. The point that the above makes is that after the independence when congress came to power the Congress stated seeing the Hindi belt as a serious vote bank, and the best way to defeat any serious competition was to break it at its base. With the separation of Maharashtra the Marathi people were regionalized and so to say ‘the RSS was shown its place’. It seems this is the reason why an organization that was perceived to be slightly rightist became extreme rightist. And I guess they lost everything with it, they were merely reduced to an opposition party than any Ideology. But more than the loss of the RSS it was the nation that lost the most, the nation was divided on linguistic ground, something even the British Administration that is accused of the divide and rule policies did not feel proper, and it is commendable of the British Administration, we accuse them of partition but they could have done much more had they so intended. something that the free India is aspiring for. By changing the constitution for its cheep vote bank politics I don’t understand what the Congress have proven. They destroyed the very bases that gave India its character, its culture and they say they did it to protect India’s culture, how very sad. So much so that today India is seen as an alien power, an occupying force, a Delhi Raj by many. I hope both the thought processes the congress and the RSS will realize there doing and do away with this sad amendment to the constitution, and let the genius of the wise man Dr. B. R. Ambedkar actually see the light of the day. And most of all refrain from flippant changes to the constitution as if it is some toy. Today the BSP claims to be the true representative of Dr. BR Ambedhker his federalism his thought for equality and justice, but I guess they do not believe what they stand for, as they say STRONG ENOUGH, to bring about a perceivable change. The congress suggests that both the left and the right are not serious political parties and relates them to extreme groups. And it is quite possible it be true, but if they come clear. It is important to realize the significance of a reasonable Opposition.
(Part 1&2)Putting money where the mouth is.
June 30th, 2010 No comments »Putting money where the mouth is. (Part 1).
I have often wondered what makes countries like Korea, China so different from India. What makes them take big strides in the new age economy of technological novelty, and why we are no match for them?
India has some of the most ancient traditions of making wealth in the world. We all know that in ancient Indian mathematics, one could actually put a name to the distance between earth and the moon. So what was this business of padam 10 to the power 15, ‘shank 10to the power 17’ ‘mahashank 10to the power 19’ etc all about, why did they need all these numbers? Surely they did not need all these numbers to calculate the distance between the earth and the moon. So I guess these were tools for calculating wealth of our business communities.
So what has changed between then and now, our businesspeople are still wealthy, and they still have the same communication formats laid down from ancient times. So what is missing?
In the new age economy in Asia, Japan took an early lead in the technological excellence, and others learned from its success. India got integrated in the larger global resource pool of technology economy; we thought it ok to re-import our own brains and creativity as most wonderful imported things.
In India we have had a strong tradition of reverse engineering aswell; there was a time when duplicates made in India, performed the tasks of the original products just as well. But with time the crown has been taken over by Chinese products. I mean with all due respect to the Chinese ability to transfer technology to the grassroots, where have we lost? The answers are in the question itself. We have lost in the ability to bring technology to the grassroots, and this has coincided with our big strides in the IT. So can it be categorized as a classic case of brain drain? I think yes.
One thing that differentiates Indian and Chinese engineers is not the level of education or the ability to innovate but a simple thing called language. Indian engineers have far more options and job opportunities, ether to manage business or to get integrated in the global resource pool of engineers, which is denied to the Chinese engineers. So the language ensures a healthy supply of high technology to the grassroots industry.
I think if our leaders stop creating hate on account of languages like the Che Guevara line of thought, who believed hate is a tool, crucial for politics and revolutions. If all of them just sat to gather as brothers, and not as representatives of warring vote banks, and bring higher technological education to vernacular medium of education, along with the global English medium, it would bring in far more opportunities of employment and growth.
Putting money where the mouth is. (Part 2)
This quote is from SWAMI VIVEKANANDA’S CHICAGO ADDRESS and such is our tradition of tolerance and co-existence, and why I wish to point it out this is that we don’t have to be ashamed of our roots, that we are Hindus or Muslims or to extrapolate this idea, that we speak any language at our homes. It doesn’t make us inferior to anyone.
“Sisters and Brothers of America, It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us. I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions; and I thank you in the name of millions and billions of Hindu people of all classes and sects.
My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honor of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration. I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance.
We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth.
I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation”.
I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings:
- As the different streams, having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.”
There is a joke is Mumbai about Indian engineers, they say Indians are like Alfonzo mangoes, the best of them you can only find imported.
But jokes apart, there is not much to do in India by way of creativity or maybe there are better options then breaking the head in a pond when there is a sea out there (but I guess this is a thing of the past) the primary reason for such lack of opportunity in the past was the control on business. But now as the country prepares to liberalize the economy we have a drought of able engineers committed to nation building.
There was a time they say before independence, when people had the money and the will to put industries, but they didn’t have the technology, so people had to put enormous efforts and had to have the blessings of the government to keep going, we have iconic brands like the TATAs and the Birla’s of that era. Then came a time of companies like Reliance where they had the cheek and the gumption to put up large industries without much international help, thanks to the pool of engineers that the government owned PSUs were able to cap, alongside strong business leadership provided by the promoters. But going by this experience it is imperative that along with capital, industries need technology and capable people to handle such technology and even more important, learn from it to make ideas for future growth.
In today’s business environment people always compare India with China, but we often forget that, a Chinese engineer finds it far tougher to prove himself than an Indian engineer, and necessity is the mother of invention.
So the key to the growth in the future is in deregulating of the English medium for better private sector participation and subsidizing technology education in vernacular medium. I think there should be an IIT in every language and equal proportion of engineering collages.
They say there was a time before independence; one could find Tamil, and Marathi schools in Karnataka and Kanada schools in Tamilnadu. Gujarati schools in most of Mumbai and Marathi schools in much of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. This is just an example of the respect for religious and linguistic diversity this great land had before the independence.
I don’t know what happened after Congress government took over from the British government; it is good that the higher English medium education that was available to the elite is now in the grasp of common people. But today we have come a long way away from the description of India in the speech of the great Swami Vivekanand. Is it a different India he is talking about? or has votebank politics killed it?
I think the answer is more than obvious. The creation of linguistic states has killed the harmony and coexistence of hundreds of years of Indian languages and divided brother from a brother just as creation of religious partition killed the unique culture in the subcontinent. Religions always coexisted in this great land and all religions flourished Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Jain, Sikhism, Catholic, and Protestants, Zoroastrian, Jewish and so on, we never had crusades, everything coexisted.
There is a great need to break the bondage of stereotype and think original. Why if someone who has studied in a vernacular medium have fewer opportunities than someone from English medium, why even after providing subsidies to the small and medium enterprises the growth is nowhere near expected. Why after so much subsidy provided with tax money to higher education and Indian industries can never afford the cream of such education? The questions are many and answers are simple. All we lack is the will to bring about change and put money where the mouth is.
Kinnaree. A story of a mother (Part 1&2).
June 22nd, 2010 2 comments »I often feel amused when most of us men, like to think we are self made. I mean what is even the most powerful man in the world in front of his mother. He may own half of the world, but to his mom he is just one of her boys. She would have changed his nappies, bathed him, brushed his teeth, spanked him when he deserved it and most of all, loved him with all her heart like no other. And that love, selfless, unconditional, and unparallel forever in his memory, is enough to bend even the most powerful man to his knees. Men who like to think they are self made often forget to thank the women around them, their mom, their wife who would have brought their child to this world, without whom they were just a vagabond on the street. The sisters who they grew up with, who covered all his exploits, all his stupid love affairs, all his street fifths and what not. The friends who stood by him in his ups and downs, who gave him his perspective of the things around him, and so on. On the other side I have often seen the women very much self made, but they don’t like to make a big song of it and dance. I mean when a girl walks into a relationship and walks into a strange house and takes it as her own. What did she go in with? And what did she make it into? This story is inspired by a true story of a neighbor who married a man with love in young age, and suddenly one day the driver of the car of her life with two children on the back seat suddenly walked away (passed away) leaving her incharge on the driver seat, with her not knowing what is the wheal and where is a gear. (Part 1) The story starts in a small town called Bhusawal, the girl Kinnaree is a shy, seventeen year old, a middleclass girl from a comparatively well-to-do family. Kinnaree—- a teacher calling a role call in a crowded classroom, and a lost girl with a ponytail hanging from the back of her head suddenly awakened to her name being called says, -YES! Yes sir… The girl on the next seat asks -where are you? -Is it some boy! Or something else… An angry Kinnharee protests at being linked to some boy. -You know I m not into boys and stuff. But the fact was that that she was preoccupied with a man she met a day before at the shop nextdoor and his simple, stupid and obvious flirtations had haunted her all the night before. She had already made up her mind that if she came across that man again, she would teach him a lesson. She was sure that she could deal very well with roadside romeos and she was all charged-up to dealing with him. But it was equally true that she looked forward to seeing him again and she was waiting to go back home and to visit the same shop again. As she reached home from her collage she quickly changed and rushed to help her mom at the kitchen, things were moving at a feverish pace at the kitchen, her mom Prema asked her to bring some sugar from the shop nextdoor. By now Kinnaree had forgotten about the man that she met the earlier day, and there were other things on her mind the heap of cloths she had seen, that she would have to wash, the pile of utensils she would have to help her mother with. The novel she bought from the library that she would want to return. And all the things had put her on a high speed mode and she did not bother to see who was at the shop and who was not, she asked for a kilo of sugar and rushed back home, and just as she was returning she thought she was missing something, but she bullied herself back home. Later that evening after a nice afternoon nap she drifted towards the library to exchange the novel she was finding hard to digest. She called up a friend to accompany her to the library. But to her total surprise she saw her friend accompanied by the same man who was flirting the earlier day. It turned out that he was a distant relative of her friend and was called Raghu. Kinnaree because of her dearness to her friend was very quick to call him ‘uncle’. Kinnaree was very happy with her own achievement; she was secretly smiling to herself on the way to her friends place. As they reached home it turned out that Raghu was a businessman and had come to Bhusawal for some business dealings in the town. Next few days they kept bumping into each other and Kinnaree made her resistance for him very obvious and he made his intentions for her very obvious as well. It turned-out that he was a very unpredictable person, warm hearted and witty, and always wore a sensitive smile on his face. Part 2 Raghu was trying everything under the sun to see her as often as he could; he had an engineering supply agency in Mumbai, and was a frequent visitor this side. Kinnaree’s friend Lalita was now able to smell rat in Raghu’s insistence on accompanying her again and again. So Raghu had invented another way for his need. He had a few associates in the government department and he got the collage that Kinnaree was in to provide cleaner water for the students. He was now to provide assistance to the institute with better storage of water, filtration etc. This made him a frequent visitor to Lalita and Kinnaree. Every time they wanted to take a break from the collage he somehow fitted in, Raghu’s effortless charm was winning him lots of admirers in Kinnaree’s friend circle. And his honest and innocent appreciation of Kinnaree had started affecting her. The wax had started melting under the flame; she has started observing Raghu more keenly. But that did not reduce the open display of resistance for him. Kinnharee was a typical Indian woman when it came to displaying resistance to adventures men. And moreover her opinion about men was not all that good; she had learned it from the mistakes of her friends. She was wiser with the knowledge that, men often got what they wanted, and then the relationship became an obligation for the men; Kinnharee was quick to learn from other people’s experiences. It had become a routine experience for her during the garbha festivities, when all her friends would travel to Ahmadabad or Vadodara for playing garbha, and during the nine nights she would be a watchdog for her elder friends as they ventured into voracious exploration of new found adulthood. The girls would be laughing and bragging of how much they were wanted and make her feel like a child. But while returning back to Bhusawa they would be heartbroken and bitten by heard reality, and then, she would be laughing at them. It was a typical Monday morning that day and she had not seen Raghu the earlier day as she had gone to one of her relative at Dhule. She was looking for him in the collage all that morning and even till late afternoon there was no sign of Raghu. She finally inquired with Lalita. - Your cousin, Raghu is not visible today, I had borrowed his pen, and I want you to return it to him. Lalita smiled and said. - Yes sure, but I ll have to go to Mumbai to do that. Kinaaree was surprised, and she was even more surprised at her own reaction to the news. She was honestly very sad inside, but she somehow wanted to avoid showing it to Lalita. - Oh that’s why he is not to be seen since morning, what happened did he go or your father threw him out of your house. Lalita Laughed - No, he had to suddenly rush back for some important work. He said he will be back next month. She suspiciously looked at Kinaaree and added - I don’t know if he has some work this side or he has someone this side.
The decoupling theory.
June 11th, 2010 No comments »As the World Bank has put a word of caution of a possibility of a double dip recession, what are its implications on India? I think its important to learn from the past experiences. The last time the recession visited us, the investor confidence took a big hit, and the fears that pushed that dip in the confidence were not unfounded. we are living in an interrelated world and everything is interlinked. China’s ability to influence commodities across the world had brought rich dividends to Indian companies associated with manufacturing, mining and other industries. And factors like that brought in a good consumer confidence in the 16% population associated with the industrialization of India. Another 12% population directly or indirectly associated with providing services also saw assent. Aprox 7to10 percent related to other services including export of services already had seen the assent. The demand for infrastructural development picked up, better roads meant more cars, more income and liquidity brought affordability to housing and slowly the whole economy was mobilized. And that mostly fueled the consumption in the country, which accounts for the 60% of our GDP. So I think a prolonged global slowdown cannot be decoupled from the Indian economy. But the question is how deep can this recession be, and how long would it last? Personally I think that the present crisis is not about bringing down the currency and benefiting the exports from Europe. A fragile global economy cannot absorb such experiments, and more so because it would push the world into more serious political disagreements. The dilemma of the European governments repeatedly going back to the drawing board on the Euro is disturbing; there are serious doubts about the long term survival of the euro as a currency. And the possibility of this crisis escalating cannot be ruled out and worst also engulf fragile American recovery. I think when the World Bank is warning us of a double dip recession and its impact in the emerging economies. The World Bank has a point, because it says the impact would be direct on the ability of the developing economies to find suitable markets for trade. And such serious apprehensions deserve to be taken seriously. I think India should give up its decoupling theory and concentrate on bringing meaning to its socialism. Because if the recession has to come it is beyond us to overcome it, but if it fuels the irritants already well placed in the society, it could bring in a lot of difficulties. One would like to recount the post ‘socialism for sale’; it speaks about the inclusion of the owners of land into the development in the area. Today many industrial land acquisitions convince the displaced farmers of jobs, and such jobs become impediment in the growth of the relevant industries. If instead, the farmers are promised profits not just from the sale but also resale, and some kind of remuneration as a collective group. It makes a lot of sense both for the industry and the people. Today most of the problems are because of a lack of socialistic policy towards land reforms. And if the causes of the problems are kept alive in a global down turn, when the government may not have too much money to spend or attract more investments and industrial and infrastructural development. Such problems could get magnified many folds. And even if the world is lucky and a big double dip recession is not in the offering, they still need to bring in sensible reforms as far as land its ownership and its development is concerned.
Justice delayed is justice denied.
March 31st, 2010 No comments »
One is often puzzled by the enormity of everyday challenges in countries of Asia and Africa, and the people still happy with total disregard for such hardships.
If someone was to observe the pain of the people with often civil wars, riots, famines and sorry state of affairs as far as the economic conditions are concerned; any one would be moved to the core.
But in India we are used to looking at this blatant injustice on humanity as in partitions, if our brothers and sisters from the Sikh community became victims of enormous pain, and the justice still eludes them, we blame a particular political party and get away with it. If our brothers and sisters from Muslim, Hindu or Christine community become victims we blame another political party and get away with it.
In the back of our minds we all know that we are ourselves responsible for the sorry state of our country but the moment someone shout a slogan and tells us our language, cast, or gender we are divided even further and the white collared political criminals getaway with their crimes.
And for years people who became victims of crimes against humanity, continue to become the victims of injustice of the law of the land.
I think law of the land should apply only to interpersonal disagreements and other localized problems. Because most often the law of the land fails to protect people of the land against crimes against humanity because of lack of agreement in making laws that give justice.
I think the world should come together as one to create a common system that protects all of humanity by one common principle.
And it should be available to every individual, to protest against lack or delay in justice
Because justice is in commonsense and that is the basic human right of every one.
The ruling class. part2
March 12th, 2010 No comments »If one observes the nature, it gives a lot of inside in to human behavior. If while travelling to the country-side one comes across a few cows grazing in the fields and a couple of bulls fighting amongst themselvs, it is natural and doesn’t call for any attention. But it gives a lot of inside into human behavior. Men and women work together to make a living, but to make territories of power, of wealth, of knowledge, both have distinctly different attitude to it. If women were crazy about money and power, all the poor men in the world would have lived alone. In my opinion women are emotionally far more developed than men. Have you ever seen a mother of a child get angry with the child? She has an anger out of possession and owner ship of that child, that genuinely comes out of love for that child, whereas men burst out of uncontrolled disagreement. Coming back to the animal kingdom and its reminiscence in human behavior, have you ever come across a cow fighting a bull for territory? But she knows how to deal with him in case he gets too close without her consent. I think it is true of the human society as well; I have never come across one instance in history where a woman killed her father or brother to take up the crown. But brothers fighting brother, sons killing fathers, fathers killing sons such occurrences are very common. The male and female behaviors have always been topics of discussions, and so have been the relationship between the two. It seems because of the superior emotional quotient, women look for a protected environment for their emotions, and men because of the territorial outlook show off how well they can provide it. In working environments women generally exceed men in their meticulous efforts, but men tend to be better at claiming victories. People tend to interpret it in terms of inequality etc, regardless of the inherent differences between the two. Coming to the point of this discussion it is common knowledge that all the political parties are supporting women’s reservation bill in one or the other form; no one is principally against it. I wonder what prevents them from sitting together and deciding amongst themselves, identify the seats they want to contest with woman-only choice, and go ahead. What makes them change the constitution? I think it is an opportunity for some and opening for others. This reservation does not stop them from using money and strong arm tricks and the electoral manipulation they are used to. And couple of elections down the line the reservation would become a tool for preventing competition (specially the so called independents), and the families and friends of a few getting cake walk and they increasing their domain. Largely the reservation bill seems an instrument of creation of large power heads to be wiped into compliance or bought out. So that large scale disintegration and dilution of the nation and its assets gets a highway. It seems soon will come a day when more and more manipulation of the constitution would make the ruling party the rulers of the country, and its constituents billionaires.
Today’s society tries to equate both genders and try to scale both of them with the same scale. In my opinion it’s a wrong practice. I don’t understand what is the big deal about less number of women in politics than men; it is the quality that counts not the quantity.
The ruling class.
March 7th, 2010 1 comment » One is always perplexed by our political fraternity of the parliament and there very purpose. Talking about the women’s reservation bill, it is very encouraging that at the panchayet level the participation of the women is increasing because of certain amount of reservation, and one would not be surprised if a same effect is seen in all the politics of the nation, once the women’s reservation bill goes through. But there are many ifs and buts around this kind of reservation, any reservation for that matter. Reservation of any kind in an elected office, infringes on the basic freedom to choose. If a group of people try to limit your choice by telling you that you cannot chose your government. And if you do you have to choose from limitations, i.e. these casts that gender that community and so on. What does it make it? Democracy? I don’t know. Any way whatever it is, even if the reservation of the parliament is legal (I doubt), there is another question to it and that is the backdoor entry of the dictatorship of a ruling class. If suddenly they replace thirty three percent of the parliament with new and less experienced political leaders, who would mostly be there not because of people having chosen them, but because of lack of choice. And needless to point out their influence in finding place in such opportunity(family or friends), I think it is a device to make powerful more powerful. And the ruling class kings. I think incentivizing participation of women and other reserved categories makes much more sense than an across the board reservation. In many parts of the country the administration is faced with the devil and the deep sea, where they have a fine line between politics and armed citizens. And they say this is pushing the police through enormous pressure. It is not hard to imagine from the accounts of police officers in Mumbai to the media that, criminals they had once arrested, one-day come back in cars with red light and bullied them. It is not hard to imagine their condition in west-Bengal or even more difficult regions. And it is not hard to imagine the plight of the people, with examples like what happened in Vasai near Mumbai. The government was acting like a midlevel landlord, torturing villagers in vengeance, and threatening opposition. There are so many examples in the world history of civil wars, of mutinies, of enormous pain and it seems, it is always better to learn from history rather than repeat it. They say time lost is an opportunity lost. Lost time never comes back, if the elected representative waste time of the parliament with aimless discussions and meaningless walkouts , instead of making large scale land reforms, Police reforms, restructuring of linguistic states, of getting away from vote bank politics, who knows what time would have in store for us. Like in this budget session, although the budget is good but how can they dilute the assets of the country and use it to pay for the deficit. It is like a father selling the land of a miner son to pay of his dept. I think they should use the time of the budget session for the more important task of the economy and the security issues, the social unrest, the growing ruling class in India etc.
capital assets belong to the future generations as well, and funds from the sale of such assets should be used in investment, how can someone spend it.
Besides why do they want to sell it in privet allocation and not in public circulation is a mystery to me. Another point is about the currency as an asset class, as the world enters an era of economic cold war, currency has become one of the most risky asset-class. Any currency is a risky asset, and they need to have a policy in place for large scale reallocations, surely it may not directly relate to the union budget. But one has not come across any discussion about the financial policy in this regard. There are other things in the budget like the proposed growth rate, I don’t see any need for indiscriminate growth in such global environment, specially in the consumption side. They can definitely slowdown the economy in consumption related economy, and have a balanced growth of rural and urban instead of pushing more social parity.
Because as they say history repeats itself when people don’t learn from it.
Land reforms and Taxi-permits
February 8th, 2010 No comments »For once one would like to agree with parts of what the Thakre brothers have to say about the Marathi heritage. The opinion, that the triumph of seven hundred years of war first against Moguls and then against the Brits, not finding any place in congress scheme of patriotism. There are countless examples on this count.
The contribution of the Marathas in 1857,or when it came to making Indore the capital of MP. Baroda for Gujarat, or recognizing the contribution of Marathas and Rajputs in bringing back Devanagari that was more or less extinct in India and so on. All because the congress thought that the country should be exposed to linguistic vote banks.
The RSS had generally held views against it but when BJP came to power they more or less cloned the congress. But it does not end at this, their ideological shift is a puzzle. Their ideology on racism was always clear but why did they support BJP in racial discrimination of Congress President, Sonia Gandhi is a puzzle to me. How the image of Hindu- right wing came to them has always intrigued me.
Marathas and Rajputs did not fight some religious wars against the Moguls, in fact they fought with and against the Moguls, political wars of disagreement, and finally culminated in to the forces getting together in 1857, and later became a republic together. It is very different from the idea of crusades in the west, where the flourishing Islam was pushed back from Spain, Portugal, and other parts of Europe because they could not co-exist. In India religions have always co-existed. Of cores the mutual sensitivities cannot be written off but they can never qualify in to religious wars and become political issues.
Coming to the point of taxi-permits, I think congress and BJP have a point. It is a fact that Mumbai always existed and flourished as a European colony and its local inhabitants had to pay its price. They where marginalized by the Portuguese and the British and now the free republic of India under its linguistic structure is doing worst. Where are the local residents of Mumbai? Marathi and non Marathi people alike have sidelined them left right and center. And politicizing taxi permits is not going to help anyone as it would never benefit them. But that’s where the good part ends because no political party wants to bring land reforms to protect the rights of the local villages and communities and their collective wealth, nor would they recognize the need for restructuring of states on non linguistic lines.
And this is the fact not just in Maharashtra but all of India, what happened in Singur sez, or other SEZs was same as what has been happening in Mumbai. It was the attempts to push the local people of the land against the wall using the obsolete colonial land ownership laws and the people had nowhere to go.
The people of this country are exploited under every possible name. In the name of democracy, government, law, languages, casts, religions, development and I don’t know what else. The poor people today are taxed for every grain of food, every grain of salt, and what they get in return is exploitation, pain, and there wealth being taken away by the powerful. I wish there was a global consumer court for the quality of governments.
The formation of an independent republic cannot mean running the British colony as a republic. And speaking any language should not be a tool for exploitation.
I think villages and communities should be protected with a co-housing society laws, so that all have a say in sale or purchase of any part of any land in a village or a community. And they are collectively able to invite development in their regions, derive revenue structures and share the ownership and resale of the land they have contributed. To bring collective participation of the people who own the land and those who have modern perspective to develop this land come to gather in goodwill. so that our independence makes sense for all of us.
