I cried in Anguish...

.....that is what I could do immediately, after seeing that disgusting video.


I knew this will happen, I could have avoided. But, I wanted to go through the pain (at least mentally). That was the least and immediate thing I could do for that lady in suffering.

I know, that is not needed or that does not help her. My heart bleeds (that is the best I can describe). The same old feeling that leaves me in vacuum engulfing me- Helplessness.
   
I know, I should not have written this and spread the word. Its sheer negativity. But, that's the least I could do for her.

I know I am just another person who will overcome this pain because it is not inflicted upon me. But, at least this keeps my sense of purpose alive. Help! Help!

I know, I cant do it immediately.
But,  I know, I will do it. Definitely I will.

I know, everyone else feels the same. But, do not know what to do. The least you can do is educate, spread the word that ,

WOMAN IS NOT A TOOL. 

Religion- an Elective- My Distant Dream

Religion- a concept, phenomenon, tool abused by many, mystery, an answer, an unifier, a separator, a food for thought and discussion, a taboo etc.

All in all, one that has a multi-dimensional definition and purpose. I could never fathom its depth and purpose. This piece of writing is just my attempt to baseline my thoughts on Religion and use it as a tool to refine my understanding as I evolve. Was long pending from my side and as it is a very complicated thought I was letting my thoughts to crystallize and will take it slowly from here.

Of course, the trigger point being the re-conversion/ conversion debate going on in the country and definitely PK   :D.

First of all, I am yet to find out why anyone feels so close to something that they have not worked for but attained by just BEING BORN INTO IT. No one has ever struggled to become a Hindu, Christian, Muslim etc. I understand the fact that religion is very close to heart of many. This "many" includes, an illiterate from a rural background to a scientist who heads a national organization that sends satellites. But, Why? The answer may not be simple at all, because it is not one but combination of answers. For some, it is Hope-Generator, positive anchor. For some, it is binding factor that brings people together to help them in need.

So, I will not try to answer the above question here, as it is beyond my realm of understanding. However, I will try to build an imaginary scenario where Religion is CHOSEN and NOT GIVEN.

I, often thought, what if we define Religion as some path of spiritual life or a path that someone adopts as their Approach to unravel or answer some pertinent questions in their lives. As if, it is extension or part of their education. Something like an Executive course or part of Continuous Education that you pursue after you are "ready" ( I don't know when someone will be ready to handle this). So, one will be born Religion-Neutral. One will not be a Hindu because both or one of her/his parents is a  Hindu. This, I feel is very important, because the conditioning of tender minds will form the basis of different perspectives they form in their adult lives. The concept of Religion will be dealt as if something that is done or talk after you are an adult. You see, like going for a late night new year bash ;). 

I envision there will be Schools of Religion under every University headed by a religious Guru who is well versed with the concerned religious texts and mythologies. Also, we may have Departments of Atheism, Agnosticism etc. As you grow and are "ready", you may enroll in one or many schools. From there on.. you can include all the concepts that a new-age education system has- electives, theses, assignments, projects, labs, exams, scores, placements (OF COURSE!! and Spiritual or Religious Entrepreneurship will be encouraged! There is lot of money there :D). How nice! 

My whole attempt is definitely not to mock the concept of religion but penning down a dream that I feel, may resolve some of the losses we have today because of gross misinterpretation of Religion. 

Satyameva Jayate-4

So, it has become a Sunday affair to watch SJ. This time it was about our Health Care System (if at all it exists :D). We had enough of this and it is a well-know fact about extreme commercialization of our hospital care. I choose not talk about that. I want to look at it from a larger perspective rather than criticize doctors. Because, the issue is not with doctors, but, with our (Indians') approach to life.

• As we project, I think, Indians are not so emotional lot. Probably, we are selectively emotional. We are a very materialistic group. We have very "practical" (read beastly) approach to life and we call it "jugad". 
• Means is the most important thing. There is no problem with loving money. But, its definitely important how you earn it. As Mr. Khan said it rightly, if you are interested in making money, please invest your capitation fee in doing some business. But, the appalling fact is that majority of Indians do not care about whether someone is operating within the legal framework or not. "Violation of law is our birth right" and it is very well accepted if your means of earning money is "slightly" off the legal track.
• Indian lives are cheap. Sorry to say that so bluntly. I think, India is pharma companies' haven. You can perform any kind of clinical trial and no one cares if someone dies. So, as someone said in the show, Health care is one of the least-priority items on the list. Who cares about uterus (being removed with no reason) of an economically backward Indian village woman? Crap! I got lot of better things to do in my life (like, say browsing FB?).
• We believe in bribing (or giving commission) everyone including, THE GOD ALMIGHTY. 

Satyameva Jayate-1, 2 & 3

Thanks to Aamir for his wonderful show "Satyameva Jayate" (SJ). The show awoke the blogger in me after so many months of dormancy. The show is simple and to-the-point. I am not expecting it to be a big changer of "Indian Attitude". However, if it brings change in even one individual per episode, I think, the purpose is at least half served. I suggest Aamir should have the tagline of the show as "Re-discovery of India". The show reflects on the horrible attitudes we, Indians, accept, ignore and rationalize in the name of traditions or rather "largely accepted" societal norms. This helps many to rediscover, who we are, as a nation.

The first show covered the topic "Female Feticide" that is rampant in India. The insights and statistics given in the show reflect the kind of attitude Indians have towards women. And, in a larger context what kind of an arrogant crowd we are. 

I could not get a chance for the past two weeks to finish this off. So, I have decided to write about three episodes together.

The three episodes were focused on the "weaker" sections of our society- Women and Children. I remember, there was a saying (or some leader said that) which means that a society is really civilized if the weak in the society are not exploited. By those terms, we (Indians) are far from being civilized.

My Insights after watching the three episodes:

1. The first and the third episode, deal with how we treat our women. Whenever someone talks of "culture" in India, it is mostly related to oppression of women. Men, somehow, are born superior.
2. The Indian Psyche itself is democratic in nature. It is "For" the people "by" the people and "of " the people. Most of them actually live by these principles literally. They live, their lives for others, do things approved by others and their actions , decisions and whole life is "of" others. This nature of ours has a terrible impact on how we bring up our children. This is one major cause for child sexual abuse in India or rather for any atrocity, like, the well-accepted dowry system, domestic violence etc. Any practice accepted by the majority makes a mad-thing into a serious custom.
3. I am not sure whether any of us actually remember the aspects of being human. We kill our own kind, we exploit our own kind (rather tender ones), we have brutal instincts, and in what way are we different from any of the wild beings?
4. Indians live in a constant state of denial. And this denial takes different forms. It helps us to rationalize our deeds or misdeeds. The attitudes of , "It is OK as long as it does not happen to me". "It is OK as long as the other person is suffering" " It is bad only if others do it" etc. , is rampant and appreciated.
5. Education- largely misunderstood word in Indian context. Earning a degree is considered education and "trivial" things like building a positive character, become a socially conscious citizen are not considered to be part of this Education. And, no one cares. All the three episodes show that all these crimes are mostly committed by the educated lot. What a joke? How many educated are really Educated? I think, we better start calling them degree-holders. As everything is done in India, even Education is also part of those umpteen status symbols like car, refrigerator, TV etc. 

There are many things that crossed my mind, jotted a few and will jot down as we sail through coming episodes of SJ.

The "Deadly" perspective

Death- (sounds deadly, isnt it?) to me is the inevitable reality and the life's (or lack of it) truth . Any news of death creates an emotional turmoil in me. My rational and emotional selfs get into a mental sparring mode. This leads to some refined perspectives that help me to evolve as a human.

The following are few of those perspectives:

• Life is about racing towards the grave as each day, hour and minute passes by and nothing much.
• Life is nothing but keeping ourselves busy till we die. Keeping ourselves so busy that our logical self denies the fact of us not existing sometime in future.
• Our senses ( the famous five :) ) help us in this path of deviating from the inevitable reality. They keep our brains busy by making us hungry, thirsty, sleepy etc etc.
• Humans are out-and-out irrational, complicating their lives so much that they, in effect, speed up their race towards the grave. The funniest part is, they do not realize this irrationality even on their death beds.
• We are so arrogant about our existence. On the other hand, we should be so humble accepting the fact that "Humans are so weak that we cant even control our own existence".
• One perspective that helps me in most of my bad days is the feeling that says , "Atleast I am alive and breathing and there is something I can do about this task at hand."

I will keep adding the perspectives as they are churned out. But, seriously, isn't it a strange feeling that, we are after all a biochemical mass that will decompose one day.

I am not saying this in a sad way but with a feeling of astonishment, that it is all around us and we dont sense it or we actually dont want to sense it. So, are we really rational?

Subsidizing Higher Education

An article in The Hindu , dated , March 16 2011, title: Is IT enough, what about basic sciences?, triggered a desire in me to write this piece.

Subsidy- the mantra used by our government to show their concern towards any section of the society. Much of this is heard in the context of agriculture. As, it is true with every policy that is made by our "well-learned" representatives (lets not call them leaders), granting subsidy alone is one inefficient way of providing a platform for development.

Let me explain this in the context of higher education in India. Most of the higher education in Government-run institutes is subsidized. The intention behind is good, however, it will not suffice to meet the social obligation that these institutes have. Yes, these institutes do have social obligation as the education is being subsidized using tax payers money.

I remember, once, the then director of IIM A , said that , "no one is denied admission due to lack of money". Thats definitely true. Banks have become more open to give loans seeing that their loans will be paid by the graduates more easily. However, the point everyone is missing is, the socio-economic environment that does not allow every student a fair chance to enter these institutions (where subsidies are given).

In most scenarios, the institutions where subsidies are offered have (near) world-class facilities and faculty. These will be most sought-after for the same reason. Most of the students who aspire for these institutions (not even getting in) are urban born and have well-placed parents. I am not sure that how many from a two tier town in India know about NLSIU (Bangalore), Indian Statistical Institutes , CCMB, CDFD, AIIMS etc for that matter any "elite" government institute.

I think when these institutes were established (post-independence), they must have seen students only from elite backgrounds (like sons/daughters of bureaucrats and elite urban populace). This is clearly evident from the fact that once a farmer's son makes it to one of the IITs , it hits the headlines. I feel, in one way , it strikingly shows how inefficient are these institutes in terms of social responsibility. This clearly shows that, just by subsidizing the fees, the Government is not meeting its objectives. This is failure of a socialist nation, which, instead of creating class less society through education, it actually created a larger divide.

As someone said, these institutes were helpful in creating the industry of coaching classes which is flourishing ever since.

I am not saying that no effort has been taken in this direction. For example, I know IITs have a concept of coaching SC/ST students who missed the JEE cut-offs by a reasonable margin. However, my argument touches even more basic point. I bet, that these candidates will definitely be from a well-to-d0 urban background. (Readers please enlighten me in case you know of any measures that were taken in this direction).

My suggestion:

1. These institutes should use their autonomy in creating awareness in larger section of society about their presence. Around 72.2% of population lives in villages. So, ideally, the students' profile in these institutes should reflect the same. But, is it even close to that? Awareness can be created through campaigns by faculty and students in surrounding villages of these institutes. Or even better urge students to do that when they are on vacation.
2. One novel approach is to take these institutes to the villages. By this, I mean that they can run virtual classes by opening VSAT centers in these villages. These classes may be the basics of sciences (or humanities) and encourage them to join these institutes.
3. These institutes can adopt some surrounding villages and get the children from these villages to these world-class campuses, so that the children are aware that such institute exists and at least one out of them is inspired to get in there.

Please add more ideas as you read on.

( I was half way through my article and this Sunday's (13/3/2010), titled, out before they are in, inspired me further to publish this).

We (humans) are ideally not ideal

I am just jotting down my ideas on this piece. I am not sure of the structure and may be i may deviate from the theme mentioned.

I feel humans are not so ideal, rather not rational the way we are defined are at least "supposed" to be. I put forth the following thoughts to contemplate

1. Every human has her/his own realm of thought. And, surprisingly no one ever realizes about this. Also, we are so deep into our realm that all other realms of thought seem ridiculous and stupid.
2. We lack empathy. This is very tricky, we sometimes act that we "understand" things. But, the unfortunate thing is that we understand things the way we want to understand. The way we are conditioned to understand.
3. We do not honestly seek feedback. In one way we are not honest to ourselves. One thing that strikes me a lot is every body seems to be so interested in "NOT KNOWING" about us that we are totally blind to our wrong doings.
4. We are so indulgent or addicted to avoid being rational and just live the moment in utter irrationality. This addiction clouds our rationale and closes the two-way communication process.
5. The most funniest (intentional grammatical error to emphasize) thing is that we not only expect but also think that the world is an ideal place and all humans should and must behave ideally. Ironically, this applies only to others not to self, because we define what is "ideal" and the problem is this "idealness" varies with each one of us.

I will append this list as I evolve day-by-day. feel free to comment and help me add. Hopefully, this will help me to discover myself.