Been thinking a lot less about politics lately. Theres just so much going on in my life, but I guess thats how a good MBA program is designed - they try to suck every drop of your blood while you are here.
Ha ha, its probably not that bad, but still, the last few months have been hectic. There are so many new things that we are exposed to here, in terms of new ideas, ventures, initiatives, etc, that if i had to put a meter on where I feel the country is headed, I would probably put it at up!
The holidays are here, and another year is gone. I feel so old and with a feeling that I am not where I wanted to be, not achieved as much as I could. there are so many unfulfilled dreams, desires and actions.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
the evil within us
As I am preparing for my Social Development & Social Policy course, and I have to read the reports on most of the major social programmes being run by the Government of India today, I realize that there have been crores and crores of rupees that have been invested in development and social upliftment. If all of that money was really spent in earnest, then we would be riding very high in the world in development and social equality, but we are not.
On paper, there are some very big numbers that are spent on policies, but all of them fail the accountability and oversight test, and I think the amount of money pilfered and stolen is unfathomable.
Of course, I am merely repeating what everybody knows already, but it leads me to question our own abilities as a nation. Are we capable of ruling ourselves, or have simply given up on trying to manage a country this big, and people these many?
We are taught in History that Gandhi ji said that India lives in its villages, yet the great governments of this country have still been unable to reach all the villages of this country. When this world is moving ahead on technology and breakthroughs, our brothers in many corners of the country still do not have electricity in their homes!
There are so many schemes for rural upliftment, including building all-weather roads, building up other infrastructure, and the UPeeA government's flagship program, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Yet there is lethargy, unwillingness at all levels to actually put hard work in it.
I think the one thing that hurt me the most today was reading about the Mid-day Meal Scheme, now a national scheme, but with stark regional inequalities in its performance and implementation. These are the times when I question our ability to exist as a nation, and the ability of this society to take itself forward. If we can steal from the very food of our children, do we really deserve to succeed as a society?
The food meant for the poorest children is actually stolen by the very teachers who are supposed to teach them. Whistleblowers are tuamatized and harrassed, and it seems everybody is complicit in this thievery. Of course, the pathetic state of this country's education system could be a very reason for its downfall in the new economy, but can we blame the education system for the filth in our hearts, that prompts us to steal the food of our children? I really can't see any justification for it, even if our teaching class is one of the lowest paid in the world.
Somehow as we have moved across the centuries, our society seems to have turned into brutes, selfish, feelingless brutes. The most important people who affect our lives are the ones we give the least importance to. The people who have absolutely no bearing in our lives are the ones who we worship.
It remains to be seen if physical infrastructure will change the way the country looks, but what to do of the dirt in this society that shows no signs of going away?
On paper, there are some very big numbers that are spent on policies, but all of them fail the accountability and oversight test, and I think the amount of money pilfered and stolen is unfathomable.
Of course, I am merely repeating what everybody knows already, but it leads me to question our own abilities as a nation. Are we capable of ruling ourselves, or have simply given up on trying to manage a country this big, and people these many?
We are taught in History that Gandhi ji said that India lives in its villages, yet the great governments of this country have still been unable to reach all the villages of this country. When this world is moving ahead on technology and breakthroughs, our brothers in many corners of the country still do not have electricity in their homes!
There are so many schemes for rural upliftment, including building all-weather roads, building up other infrastructure, and the UPeeA government's flagship program, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Yet there is lethargy, unwillingness at all levels to actually put hard work in it.
I think the one thing that hurt me the most today was reading about the Mid-day Meal Scheme, now a national scheme, but with stark regional inequalities in its performance and implementation. These are the times when I question our ability to exist as a nation, and the ability of this society to take itself forward. If we can steal from the very food of our children, do we really deserve to succeed as a society?
The food meant for the poorest children is actually stolen by the very teachers who are supposed to teach them. Whistleblowers are tuamatized and harrassed, and it seems everybody is complicit in this thievery. Of course, the pathetic state of this country's education system could be a very reason for its downfall in the new economy, but can we blame the education system for the filth in our hearts, that prompts us to steal the food of our children? I really can't see any justification for it, even if our teaching class is one of the lowest paid in the world.
Somehow as we have moved across the centuries, our society seems to have turned into brutes, selfish, feelingless brutes. The most important people who affect our lives are the ones we give the least importance to. The people who have absolutely no bearing in our lives are the ones who we worship.
It remains to be seen if physical infrastructure will change the way the country looks, but what to do of the dirt in this society that shows no signs of going away?
Thursday, August 06, 2009
creativity and laziness
I think i am a very creative person, but I also think that I am not doing enough to do justice to it. Sometimes I think that I think so much (!) that my mind is constantly flooded with random and strange thoughts that I feel should be put down on paper. Yet I am so lazy or do so little to actually do something about it that I lose a lot of my good thoughts.
Many writers, other creative kind of people have many ways of taking care of this. I have seen many people carry around a pen and paper with them, and i guess they keep filling it as and when necessary. Then there is this kind of people carrying dictaphones, and they keep taking oral notes, which is a good thing too. And then a lot of people are very dedicated to their writing, and make it a habit of writing regularly. However, I am so stupid that I don't do any of these things, and yet for some reason walk around as if I need to be praised for my 'special' abilities. My mom is such a meticulous person that no matter what, no matter where she is, she will make it a point to write in her diary every day. I only wish I could be more like her.
There is one activity that has facinated me for a long time, and that is writing down my dreams. I have heard and seen many people do it, and read a couple of stories about it, but I just seem unable to get down to it. There was actually a class presentation recently about how to collect your dreams on paper. One way of doing it was to wake up an hour earlier than your usual wake up time, and the remaining hour that you sleep will be broken and not as sound, and a fertile ground for very vivid dreams. Its actually true too. I think i have had some of my weirdest dreams when I feel the time to wake up is coming nearer.
Usually when I wake up, i remember some of my most vivid dreams, and I tell myself that sometime during the day, I will write them down, and yes, like i had mentioned earlier, i stupidly forget to do so, and eventually forget them during the course of the day.
My lethargy is even affecting this blog of mine, and I just can't seem to push myself to write anything. All I do is rant and rant, and even then, I do not write down what i rant about, and I just want to punch myself for it. I feel sorry for my friends who have to hear it.
Many writers, other creative kind of people have many ways of taking care of this. I have seen many people carry around a pen and paper with them, and i guess they keep filling it as and when necessary. Then there is this kind of people carrying dictaphones, and they keep taking oral notes, which is a good thing too. And then a lot of people are very dedicated to their writing, and make it a habit of writing regularly. However, I am so stupid that I don't do any of these things, and yet for some reason walk around as if I need to be praised for my 'special' abilities. My mom is such a meticulous person that no matter what, no matter where she is, she will make it a point to write in her diary every day. I only wish I could be more like her.
There is one activity that has facinated me for a long time, and that is writing down my dreams. I have heard and seen many people do it, and read a couple of stories about it, but I just seem unable to get down to it. There was actually a class presentation recently about how to collect your dreams on paper. One way of doing it was to wake up an hour earlier than your usual wake up time, and the remaining hour that you sleep will be broken and not as sound, and a fertile ground for very vivid dreams. Its actually true too. I think i have had some of my weirdest dreams when I feel the time to wake up is coming nearer.
Usually when I wake up, i remember some of my most vivid dreams, and I tell myself that sometime during the day, I will write them down, and yes, like i had mentioned earlier, i stupidly forget to do so, and eventually forget them during the course of the day.
My lethargy is even affecting this blog of mine, and I just can't seem to push myself to write anything. All I do is rant and rant, and even then, I do not write down what i rant about, and I just want to punch myself for it. I feel sorry for my friends who have to hear it.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
dismal reading :(
"The prospects of participatory growth in India and India's ability to make good use of the opportunities of integration with the world market are significantly compromised by the extraordinary backwardness of basic education in this country."
- Dr. Amartya Sen, "Radical Needs & Moderate Reforms"
Read the above line and think for a second of the lie we have been living in for so many years. Economic integration is a topic that we have heard thousands of politicians, policy-makers and other commentators talk about, and indeed, the scope and range of economic reform is one of the most widely debated topics in this country.
Before I begin to expand on this, I am very glad I am in this course called Social Development and Social policy, but at the same time, I am also very distraught, because it is telling me essentially what I have heard a thousand times and do not want to hear again - India seems to have gotten nowhere since 1947.
Often politicians and other people in power blame the markets for its tendency to benefit only a small fraction of the population, and for this reason, they believe, it is bad and must be restricted. Now read the line by Dr. Sen again and think - it is not as much the ability of a market driven economy to reach out to the population, but the inability of the population to grasp it for any tangible benefits. Now that this simple intuitional fact has dawned on me, the examples are so apparent. What good is a computer to a person who can't read or write. How will a newspaper benefit anybody who can only see black characters on a sheet of paper, unable to comprehend the weight, the context those words carry?
I have heard of this conspiracy theory many times - the decision makers of this country want the people to be poor and illiterate and poor so they can continue milking this country of its wealth and rob it of its opportunities. This sounds very far fetched and extremist no doubt, but what if it is true - the politicians of this country are now lambasting the free market for being exclusive to hide their own failure in making most of the citizens of this country capable of benefiting from it?
If UP were a country on its own, it would be at the bottom of the world's human development indexes. The state that spearheaded the first War of Independence, the state that had great institutions of learnings, the state that is at the center of Hinduism, one of this nation's most important food bowls is now a land that is stuck in time. UP has effectively stopped growing socially, it seems to me.
Muslim communities in the state refuse to give polio vaccine to their children because they believe it is a government conspiracy of population control, he great universities at the time of independence, such as Allahabad, Lucknow, AMU, BHU, etc have been overtaken by more technologically savvy universities while they remain imbued in student politics, and all across the state, there is a steady fall in the quality of life - be it in education, healthcare, law and order and nothing seems to be working.
Governments have come and gone, and this time when UP voted in Mayawati with absolute majority, as she rode to victory with a toned down Dalit rhetoric, I actually felt for a few seconds that maybe she might do good. She did good alright - but only for the artists who created the hundreds of statues of herself and her mentor all across the state, and defiling the once beautiful city of Lucknow with her likenesses in stone.
The reason I cry is because UP is India, and India is UP. It does not matter if people are divided, or being divided, into castes or into regional groups or into religions, the fact is that they are taking a step backward from a better life. The saddest part is that we all have forgotten what we started towards in 1947. Today nobody remembers the real ends of everything we do. The statistics that are presented today to show our education levels, our nutrition levels and hundreds of other indexes seem to have become an end in themselves. We rejoice when the stock markets reach many thousand points, or there is a percentage increase in a social index, but we forget what it actually means for our society and for our country.
I think our leadership has conveniently moved onto issues that do not affect this country tangibly because it is incapable of tacking the real issues of development - most importantly basic education, healthcare, housing and nutrition. But no matter how much our leadship may convince itself, and the rest of us, everything else was, and will remain secondary, and India will remain the poor country it is.
- Dr. Amartya Sen, "Radical Needs & Moderate Reforms"
Read the above line and think for a second of the lie we have been living in for so many years. Economic integration is a topic that we have heard thousands of politicians, policy-makers and other commentators talk about, and indeed, the scope and range of economic reform is one of the most widely debated topics in this country.
Before I begin to expand on this, I am very glad I am in this course called Social Development and Social policy, but at the same time, I am also very distraught, because it is telling me essentially what I have heard a thousand times and do not want to hear again - India seems to have gotten nowhere since 1947.
Often politicians and other people in power blame the markets for its tendency to benefit only a small fraction of the population, and for this reason, they believe, it is bad and must be restricted. Now read the line by Dr. Sen again and think - it is not as much the ability of a market driven economy to reach out to the population, but the inability of the population to grasp it for any tangible benefits. Now that this simple intuitional fact has dawned on me, the examples are so apparent. What good is a computer to a person who can't read or write. How will a newspaper benefit anybody who can only see black characters on a sheet of paper, unable to comprehend the weight, the context those words carry?
I have heard of this conspiracy theory many times - the decision makers of this country want the people to be poor and illiterate and poor so they can continue milking this country of its wealth and rob it of its opportunities. This sounds very far fetched and extremist no doubt, but what if it is true - the politicians of this country are now lambasting the free market for being exclusive to hide their own failure in making most of the citizens of this country capable of benefiting from it?
If UP were a country on its own, it would be at the bottom of the world's human development indexes. The state that spearheaded the first War of Independence, the state that had great institutions of learnings, the state that is at the center of Hinduism, one of this nation's most important food bowls is now a land that is stuck in time. UP has effectively stopped growing socially, it seems to me.
Muslim communities in the state refuse to give polio vaccine to their children because they believe it is a government conspiracy of population control, he great universities at the time of independence, such as Allahabad, Lucknow, AMU, BHU, etc have been overtaken by more technologically savvy universities while they remain imbued in student politics, and all across the state, there is a steady fall in the quality of life - be it in education, healthcare, law and order and nothing seems to be working.
Governments have come and gone, and this time when UP voted in Mayawati with absolute majority, as she rode to victory with a toned down Dalit rhetoric, I actually felt for a few seconds that maybe she might do good. She did good alright - but only for the artists who created the hundreds of statues of herself and her mentor all across the state, and defiling the once beautiful city of Lucknow with her likenesses in stone.
The reason I cry is because UP is India, and India is UP. It does not matter if people are divided, or being divided, into castes or into regional groups or into religions, the fact is that they are taking a step backward from a better life. The saddest part is that we all have forgotten what we started towards in 1947. Today nobody remembers the real ends of everything we do. The statistics that are presented today to show our education levels, our nutrition levels and hundreds of other indexes seem to have become an end in themselves. We rejoice when the stock markets reach many thousand points, or there is a percentage increase in a social index, but we forget what it actually means for our society and for our country.
I think our leadership has conveniently moved onto issues that do not affect this country tangibly because it is incapable of tacking the real issues of development - most importantly basic education, healthcare, housing and nutrition. But no matter how much our leadship may convince itself, and the rest of us, everything else was, and will remain secondary, and India will remain the poor country it is.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
so much is over already
I havent posted in a very long time, and in between, here is what has happened - I spent two months in Hong Kong on my internship, the Con'gress led UPeeA came to power with such a force that I am sure even they were surprised, the Left got the worst beating of their lives in the national elections, and the BJP had their own shock and awe moment.
Right now I really have no thoughts on any of these, except I did get a chance to talk to a person who was involved in the BJP campaign, and he said that things were really bad in the camp. There is a lot of fighting going on, a lot of factions, and i would imagine a lot of blame game as well.
My one thought was this - the BJP still has a lot to learn in politics, especially handling power and most importantly, handling propaganda. The Con'gress are the masters of subtle advertising. In fact, if you do not know already, it is thanks to the UPA government's great policies that India won the T20 World Cup in 2007 and Abhinav Bindra won the gold medal last year. Yes, all thanks to their people friendly policies of equality and justice. Bastards.
Right now I really have no thoughts on any of these, except I did get a chance to talk to a person who was involved in the BJP campaign, and he said that things were really bad in the camp. There is a lot of fighting going on, a lot of factions, and i would imagine a lot of blame game as well.
My one thought was this - the BJP still has a lot to learn in politics, especially handling power and most importantly, handling propaganda. The Con'gress are the masters of subtle advertising. In fact, if you do not know already, it is thanks to the UPA government's great policies that India won the T20 World Cup in 2007 and Abhinav Bindra won the gold medal last year. Yes, all thanks to their people friendly policies of equality and justice. Bastards.
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