What does India need?

There was a lot of hue and cry over which version of the Lokpal Bill should the government pass. Should it pass its own draft which really has given no real power to the Lokpal or should it pass the Jan Lokpal draft prepared by the civil society members which demands absolute power be given to the Lokpal. And there is this section of the population which is skeptic about either version. The truth is that the proposed Jan Lokpal Bill if implemented 100% can do wonders in India.

Just imagine there is this omnipotent Lokpal appointed by geniuses from different walks of life - senior judges, Nobel laureates, philanthropists, etc. He is a man of great integrity. He probes the corruption happening at high levels in an honest and transparent manner. People involving in corrupt practices realize that they cannot escape the clutches of law as before and the crime rates start coming down. In a year or so people start getting their work done in government offices without having the need to pay bribes. Money allocated for welfare projects reach the intended recipients fully. Poor children get proper education and health benefits. Young people land up in good jobs. Everything seems perfect... Though theoretically.

We do have examples of independent bodies being successful in their work in India - the best being our Election Commission during TN Sheshan's period, Justice Hedge as the Lokayuktha of Karnataka, the CAG office now with Vinod Rai as the CAG and a few others. But these success stories depend largely on the individual dedication and sense of responsibility of these people. Similarly Lokpal will succeed when the Lokpal is a man beyond petty partisanship, bias and greed.

Any institution is doomed to fail when a wrong person is leading it and what is the guarantee the Lokpal selected by people will always be right? If the Lokpal Bill is passed either the government's version or the Jan Lokpal version, we will have one more agency added to the list of other bodies that we have today. Politicians always will find a way of bypassing laws. So what does India really need?

REVOLUTION.

Not social, not economical and not political, but individual.

Yes. India needs a very big revolution within the souls of every Indian. This is not like the one that is happening in the Middle East nations. This revolution requires no person on the street shouting slogans. It requires every individual to be with himself and change the very basic way of his living. India is very different from all the other countries of the world. We have a huge population, with vast cultural and linguistic differences. Great men like Gandhi and Periyar were against gaining independence without reforming the mind of the Indian society. With this ever growing population and diminishing resources, we should learn the art of sharing and living. 

But exactly the opposite is happening here. People want to have everything for themselves. They say that Americans lead a rich life, Japanese lead a disciplined life. But those who say these themselves are not ready to bring the decency and discipline in their own life. Each and every activity of ours should be such that it benefits the society as a whole. Since we are a huge lot of people, we need to develop patience and crave for collective development. But rather than doing that we are completely impatient and everyone of us wants to develop in life at the cost of others.

To get our work done earlier, we don't hesitate to pay a bribe. To get our child into the best institution we don't regret paying huge capitation fees. When we don't feel ashamed of corrupting a system, what right do we have in demanding the system to be fair with us.

Any system has to bow down before a right doing citizen. It is normally said that if the ruler is good the ruled are good too. Why not put it differently? If the ruled lead a clean life, what moral courage will the ruler get to commit a crime. Any reform should begin at the grassroots level before reaching the top brass.

Starting from the very simple things like going to work everyday. Most of the upper middle class have cars and they crowd the road like anything during rush hours delaying everyone's journey by 20 minutes minimum everyday. People can use their cars on weekends and use public transport during working days. Also people living in close neighborhood and going to the same office can use the same car. This will reduce pollution, avoid accidents, bring down instances of traffic violations, and also bribing traffic inspectors if caught. If a simple act activity like this can reduce so many discomforts for the citizens, what can many such positive changes do for our society? Just think... Likewise a word of care, a deed of love to fellow beings can work wonders to our mind, health, career and life.

Mahatma Gandhi did not contribute much to attaining independence for India. But he did contribute a lot towards making Indians better persons. Many of his philosophies have been forgotten with time and now people have even started to blame him as being over sold. He said "Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well."

A Journey to the Corporate

Three years ago, when I was in the third year of my BE, I took the word "Campus Placement" seriously for the first time. Till then it was just a ritual that every pre-final year student undertakes. People laugh and cry over their successes and failures. Idiots get placed in well paid jobs; sometimes intellectuals get rejected by very good companies. "Campus Placement" is an arena where one gets to witness the most contradictory things in life.


To parents, getting placed in an IT company, no matter if it is in the same domain as what you studied for the past 3 years or not, is the ultimate destination. However for students it ends up being their "FINAL DESTINATION".;-) Somehow I too landed in a job in the Richie rich IT industry. The interesting fact here is that though everyone believes that the IT people have heavy pockets, in reality we end up bearing only heavy hearts and heavy heads.

The great world of Corporate - this is where I started serving foreigners who are so lazy that it is not enough if you just peel off the banana skin and give them but rather they expect you to feed it to them. My company listed me down as a human resource (just like a raw material in an Iron & Steel plant) instead of as an employee or for that matter just human. Doing a work for 8 hours a day and earning a living out of it is the most precious thing one can have in life. The work in IT industry is also not for more than 8 hours a day. But I don't know which great soul on earth started the owl culture of working at nights and roaming all day jobless.


The most difficult thing of all is working with dumb team mates who understand only less than half of what you know about the technology. Every team has a skilled developer to useless developers ratio of 1:5. So, in a team of 10, only 2 persons actually work whereas the other 8 don't know what they have to do or what they can do. But when the day of bonus/hike paper distribution comes, the useless 8 will be more proactive than the pathetic 2. I wonder what keeps them going. How do they clear the interviews? What is the use to the companies in recruiting a person with just good communication skills for the position of a developer where your hand is going to code and mind to going to think?

Most of the times people discuss about buying a new car, getting Pre.K.G. admission to their child by paying a donation of Rs.1.5 lakh, and other things where you just spend and gain nothing. IT life is dry. You see the same people everyday; No new customers wait for you service. Despite these factors, out of all the money minded people, we manage to find a good friend, a well wisher and a true mentor. That is the beauty of life. In the darkest corner of life, we find the faintest ray of hope which prevents us from discarding the darkness expecting the ray to become brighter. My opinion is it is always better to run away from darkness than waiting for light if the place is a dark jungle, because even if you find light, some predator is going to prey on you.

62nd anniversary of India's tryst with destiny

Tomorrow will be the 63rd time we celebrate the precious moment of our freedom from the shackles of foreign rule. Apart from the exhibition of our pride and happiness by painting flags on our faces and forwarding patriotic sms, it's time for some serious individual assessment of how far we have developed as a nation. Today there is no doubt that Indians are great intellectuals and have improved socially and economically. But what about India? It is sad to accept the fact that Indians are rich but India is poor. Today Mother India has 114.8 crore children out of which 30 crores are living (or merely existing) below poverty line (i.e) they are dependent on the government for their health, education and other basic needs.

Now is this what we call freedom? We made our people free from outsiders and had later enslaved them in their own nation. We say India is a democracy where people are the rulers. Whereas in reality India is ruled by the politicians with vested and communal interests, and it's economy is ruled by 60 billionaires whose net worth occupies 31% of our Gross Domestic Product. All that the successive governments have done is to waive the loans of farmers who commit suicide and provide stimulus packages for the sake of garnering votes. It is a widely established truth that the money never reaches the target population.

What the poor need is not a waiver of loans but a waiver of their burdens. They should be taught to use the limited resources they possess efficiently. Stimulus must be provided only for such purposes and also for their education. What is peculiar in the millions of farmers suicide case is that only the male members take off their lives. The women of the family are left to fight the bitter world around them alone. They deserve a great salute for having the courage to survive and strive against all odds of life to bring up their children even after their husbands had left.

At this time, when India is proudly announcing it's entry into the list of great nations of the world, when Indian entrepreneurs are recognised as super brains, when India competes the US, China and Russia in every field of research and development, I feel proud in paying my tributes to the silent heroes living in the unseen, unheard corners of my country. I salute the soldiers who guard my peaceful existence in India, I salute the bold wives and mothers of those soldiers, I salute the courageous women of the farmer families... In them lies the true pride of India...