Free Mind from shoddy Mindsets

Tomorrow is Independence Day. It is raining on and off in my city, from past three days. Needless to say, it has left roads in a horrible state. No, my intention is not to write about the improper drainage system, inefficiency of governance and freedom with which obnoxious nexus between contractors and ‘sarkari babus’ , openly and brazenly, misuse the exchequer’s money. A lot has been written about all that by many people.
Well, While inching through these water logged roads last evening, few things worried me deeply about where we were heading as society. At the same time, few memories of earlier read works came flashing to mind that I could relate to with the situation. It was shocking to see that even in this situation people were honking horns and were trying to overtake from any side. Independence had given them this right to do freely whatever they thought was in best of their interest.
Balraj Sahni a famous Hindi actor, writer and thinker who belonged to rare class of intellectual actors, once narrated this incident in an excellent convocation address at JNU in 1972 . He recounted “I was going by bus from Rawalpindi to Kashmir with my family to enjoy the summer vacation. Half-way through we were halted because a big chunk of the road had been swept away by a landslide caused by rain the previous night. We joined the long queues of buses and cars on either side of the landside. Impatiently we waited for the road to clear. It was a difficult job for the P.W.D. and it took some days before they could cut a passage through. During all this time the passengers and the drivers of vehicles made a difficult situation even more difficult by their impatience and constant demonstration. Even the villagers nearby got fed up with the high-handed behavior of the city-walas.

One morning the supervisor declared the road open. The green- flag was waved to the drivers. But we saw a strange sight. No driver was willing to be the first to cross. They just stood and stared at each other from either side. No doubt the road was a make-shift one and even dangerous.  A mountain on one side, and a deep gorge and the river below, both were forbidding. The engineer in-charge had made a careful inspection and had opened the road with a full sense of responsibility. Still, nobody was prepared to trust his judgment, although these same people till yesterday, had accused him and his department of laziness and incompetence. Half an hour passed by in dumb silence. Nobody moved. Suddenly we saw a small green sports car approaching. An Englishman was driving it; sitting all by himself. He was a bit surprised to see so many parked vehicles and the crowd there. I was rather conspicuous, wearing my smart jacket and trousers. "What's happened?" he asked me.

I told him the whole story. He laughed loudly, blew the horn and went straight ahead, crossing the dangerous portion without the least hesitation.

And now the pendulum swung the other way. Everybody was so eager to cross that they got into each other's way and created a new-confusion. This hurry to crossover before others from both sides created chaos and road was blocked again for few hours. The noise of hundreds of engines and hundreds of horns was unbearable. That day I saw with my own eyes the difference in attitudes between a man brought up in a free country and a man brought up in an enslaved one. A free man has the power to think, decide, and act for himself. But the slave loses that power. He always borrows his thinking from others, wavers in his decisions, and more often than not only takes the trodden path 
“Chitto jetha bhayashunyo (Where the mind is without fear) , written by Gurudeb Rabindranath Tagore is among one of the most quoted poems . It was written before India's independence and every line of it represents Tagore's vision of free-thinking, aware, undivided and vibrant India.
"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action --
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."

Independence has given us not only freedom of speech but also a power to think and act. While the former has been used quite eloquently the other two have somehow remained dormant beneath pity shallowness and self interest. How horrifying it is to see the madness of educated and financially well off individuals to somehow get ahead of others without realizing that they were blocking the traffic coming from other side and were only adding to miseries of self and others. If there is a vegetable seller pushing his cart hard through the rain water and from comfort of my car I blow horn urging him to speed up then I definitely should not count myself in human category .As Mahatma Gandhi said “It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”
To quote Stephen R. Covey “You have the freedom to choose your actions, you don't have the freedom to choose the consequences of your actions”. Why have we become so passive and so indifferent towards consequences of our actions? Why such insensitivity? Why such nonchalance? Why are we not able to accept or reject thoughts in accordance with our own will ? Why someone has to impose,dictate or tell us about consequences of cutting the branch on which we are sitting? Despite all the peppy doses of education, why has our conscience gone into hibernation mode?
The biggest faculty of human existence is mind and the virtue of free will.Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom. The power to choose, to respond, to change. There is fire in all of us and our capability constructive and destructive extreme is infinite but it is for each individual on the basis of his reasoning and ethics to decide how he wants to use the fire within him. This independence day should not we pledge to rekindle that spark and tell our leaders that we love our nation and it is high time that they as well……

Poverty Eradication over seven course dinners

“Common sense is so uncommon” and our official machinery proves this axiom right time and again. Latest in the series of tomfoolery is the decision of forest department to conduct a seminar on poverty eradication in tribal belts. The subject event will be held in the costliest five star hotel at Udaipur where many rooms have been booked and lavish arrangements are made for the delegates by an event management firm.  The distressing part is that money spent will be from 400 million rupee aid received for the proposed poverty eradication program.

A British tabloid once called India a ‘poor country of rich people’ where beds are more fertile than the land. It definitely sounds an overstatement considering the progress we have made especially in service sector. Global perception about the country has definitely altered but not a lot has changed for a poor man in the country. A couple of steps ahead of polished uptown locale are bound to bring you face to face with pathetic scenes of the human life vegetating in slums. We talk about being an IT superpower and still a portion of the population is forced to sleep hungry .India truly is kaleidoscope of extremities.

The poverty can be reduced not by doing charity to poor but by giving them work near their place of habitation. Strengthening of infrastructure, apt conversion of population into human resource and a thorough check on corruption are the only ways we can reduce poverty. It sure cannot be done in this extravagant get-togethers of elites who still cater to the misbelieve that poverty can be reduced by floating another scheme , setting another committee and by demanding another allocation  .

I was truly not able to come to terms with logic of our education minister and his brigade of supporters who think that exam and education are the only reason for stress in students. Now this news of planned poverty eradication program in this extravagant manner makes me understand whose poverty and whose stress they want to reduce…

Preside over us, don’t please us

Congress was never the party I favoured, but the election results have pleased me.

The electorate's verdict has proved that people cannot be fooled by words, what is really heartening is that the returned candidates are relatively honest and those who had suffered and sacrificed at least for the good of their state and city. The best part is people have risen above the petty politics of cast, creed, mandir and mosque. The vote has been for the vision and not for baseless promises which if implemented will only increase the division.

Today we the people are looking forward, starry-eyed, to a new direction, and to a new way of true governance and not just populism. In these times of recession Dr. Singh and his brigade of minister will have to take more governmental decisions than political decisions.

It is high time that we the people of this country realize that the government spends our money. If Government takes a decision to revise some price or puts a restriction over something, we should be willing to cooperate. At the same time Government has to ensure that the tax payer’s money is spent on nation building and not on development of vote bank. William Thackeray once observed: "Men serve women on their knees. When they rise, they go away." It is the same with our electorate. They love and worship their leaders. But when the spell is broken, they unfailingly transfer their commitment elsewhere. The country can never prosper or be saved through the efforts of only ministers and civil servants. The people must be associated at all stages with the formulation and implementation of policies.

The agenda of the government should be to exercise fiscal discipline, to remove corruption from the governmental machinery and to do all that they can to achieve apt conversion of population into human resource. This is easily said then done because this will require tough decision making, but if it is not done now it will be too late. Please govern us and not just please us ,build a nation that we can be proud of.

The path ahead is not rosy and as small humble nothing I can only say:

"Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore;
Let the work not delay, time and the arm not waste;
Let the clay be dug from the pit, let the saw cut the stone;
Let the fire not be quenched in the forge. "

Do we deserve Democracy

Election time again.

You look anywhere it is either elections or IPL.

A series of musty allegation and fusty counter allegation, clichéd promises and stale dream selling is viciously present in the air all around. Lincoln wisely commented “you can’t fool all the people all the time but you can fool enough of them to rule a country”.

Where this democratic sham of choosing between thief and robber takes us? How good is this cheap form of socialism that feeds on slogans and promises?

Will Durant, after a lifelong study of various civilizations, summed up that: "Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since it requires the widest spread of intelligence".
Our Constitution was aimed at making India the land of opportunity; our politicians have converted it into a land of opportunism.

Who is responsible? This is democracy, right ? This incredible army of pudding-headed mercenaries or present day kings that we have are our selection. So the enemy in is no one else but we. We the voters who have elected them to rule us. But then what choice did we have? We had to choose between devil and Satan.

Can a jewish king improve the situation? Do we need a dictator or army rule? There cannot be many substitutes to democracy but the people of character will have to come and assume the reigns. People who are successful in other walks of life and do not enter politics for profession will have to remove the stink with fragrance of their character.

The mortals like you and me should not be indifferent to the world around us. We need to react and keep the rein of these politicians in our hand. We the youth of this country shall pledge to ask questions that from where they will provide the rice and wheat at 2 Rs per kg.What plans they have to reduce the govrnmental expenditure?We the litrate need to question their vision. We as tax payers should be aware about what these insensate kings do to exchequers money in their fetid exercise of cheap and opportunistic politics.

Please, please do react, even the most contradictory word will prove we are alive……………..

victory of our silence will mean demise of democracy.