Cong resurrects Peter Bleach to counter BJP's Afzal attack, 15 Dec 2007 - I wish someone had the sensibility to understand the meaning of death even if it were for a condemned man. On the CNN some time, back the headlines read as “crowds of Afghans cheered at the sight of Najibullah's beaten and bloated body hanging outside the presidential palace”. Whether it is an aberration or is it a true picture of human nature and the society which we have failed to evolve; this event was not pre renaissance, it was quite recent. I do not know how many of us would really enjoy the act of death by hanging even of that of a condemned man as an eyewitness to the event. I wonder how many of us have enjoyed live beheading of Daniel Pearl, or the judicial handing; if it were shown on the television or people were give a free ticket to witness the act live early in the morning. If society was looking at setting an example of punishment for the crime perpetrated by the individual; unfortunately, it has failed. It has never been a deterrent to subsequent events in society. Although it may be dated, Camus - reflections on the guillotine, has a meaning even today, and I must quote him here "People will turn to arguments that were used centuries ago, even though these arguments must be contradicted by measures that the evolution of public sensitivity has made inevitable". Unfortunately, in us such sensitivity are very slow, limited; with every step forward there has been a retrograde steps backward forced on to society by unscrupulous, selfish people – people with limited foresight and indifference to all except them. Such debates, rhetoric by BJP, Modi, etc are not that of civil society. Because they have risen from the same society, they may not be much different culturally, evolutionarily; but for political compulsion and some good, the Congress should not fall in the trap of the desperate, retrograde, counterproductive debates.
On - The India we want - 2 dec,2007 - Freedom of expression lies within the constitutional framework of promoting or rather maintaining or not jeopardizing public or countries harmony. The rights are loosely defined. It works favorably in enforcing harmony, buying peace. But at the same time it enforces a retrograde culture of appeasing unwanted, sometimes potentially dangerous passions to withhold and buy peace. In the bargain, it is a small price that individual proponents of freedom of expressions is expected to pay in an unprepared democracy; not educated and matured to offer a better choice. For, there are people, civilized, not fighting on the streets with swords and RDX; but people with deep, silent passions who see, hear, agree, disagree, and argue against what is being expressed by people of free divergent opinions, possibly benign. It was suppose to be a free society. However, as a nation, we are given to wanton appeasement; not clear and sometimes whimsical in imposing restriction. It is only when we have fairy large base of educated people, and governed by equally educated or civil people that India can guarantee individual creativity. The result is, at the moment the individual freedom of large, hidden and silent mass; of people who accept, analyze, agree, differ or provide opinion is governed by the loud dangerous dominant public opinion of the active, overzealous, small but visible mass. The non-political, individual expressions of creative writers and artists are benign when compared to passionate speeches of Mr. Togadia, Mr. Singhal, or many of the Maulana ’s; speaches and actions bordering on and inciting dangerous fanatic loyalty for chaos, gore and blood. And, we do not have a desire, passion or political free-will to disturb their expression. I wonder how the individual responsibility in the context of constitutional freedom of individual expression is defined.
On - Where paradoxes reign supreme - 25, nov,2007
“The paradoxes of India say something painfully real about our society”. We seem to be moving north for a small mass but truly for the larger section “life has been drawn just this side of the funeral pyre”. We as nation, the more successful ones have been paranoid about illusions created by being famous; we purchase personal jets as gifts and we settle marriage entertainment bills of $60million. And, when we have become famous, we seek to part with a small token to become even more famous, rather socially acceptable. I wish we see the plight of majority, Shashi Tharoor article is not a Sunday morning routine reading, it should touch us deep down, and make us look and feel sad about the way we have – the other side of our paradox of glitter; it should raise in us a sense of deep feeling to correct the paradox of unequal.The effect of 20K will not touch majority of mass of this country in the next several years. I was reading a book by Jeffery Sachs "End of Poverty"; if I have to use his words we would need to have a clinical diagnosis (from an economical developmental point) of reasons of hunger, identify the urban slums and villages where this problem is more acute. The next step would be larger-better budgetary allocation, key accountability of resource utilization are a must in short term. In a waste country, in short term, we would also need more health care provider’s participation along with the economists in identification of and in customization of resource for stratified regions. The corporate world can contribute in adoption of villages for providing and ensuring at least one good meal for each man, women and child in the adapted village; at the same time the corporate world can ensure (through internal resource or hired agencies or in alliance with NGO) education of people, particularly the women and children for certain preventable reasons of malnutrition; villages can be given loan to ensure freedom from debt-trap and the vicious cycle of poverty trap and hunger. In this process employee can contribute voluntarily a percentage of monthly salary to ensure that the corporate movement is live and working towards the short term and median term goals. In this regard, the country’s budgetary allocation has to increase in future to focus on future job opportunities to the identified masses through education on vocation, health, family planning.
On Slow Isn’t Beautiful – Timely Completion of Projects - I am not a economist nor have a fair understanding of political sciences; yet I am educated citizen with fair intelligence; thus I find it fair to conclude that: we need political stability at national and state level (we cannot afford political swings like Karnataka, Goa, Jarkhand, others); we also cannot afford to dissolve the parliament and have elections every two years. We cannot have parties taking their bit of flesh for the survival of dead ideologies. We cannot afford to transfer beaurocrats now and then with change of political masters. In the midst of these, businessmen suffer or gain depending on their situational affiliations; the unscrupulous ones do manage to gain among the chaos. The overll result is quick grants of projects, and equally quick closeout or hibernation of the projects, loss national wealth and a feeling of regret for those who shell out tax to the nation in the hope of better road, better railways, clean towns and adequate electricity.
On Red Terror – Naxals Killings -The idea of any form of killing is abhorable. But for the dominant mass of Naxalites being rebels is not a subject of choice; it’s more to do with apathy with which we have subjected people in North East, Chhattisgarh, Jarkhand. Humans, at least the majority do not chose potential close encounters with taking life and dying young. If they do, there is something that we indeed need to introspect. These human are no different from those from any other major town in India - genetically, culturally, and ethically. It is incorrect to say that they are social malice, and that we are infected with this malice. If they indulge in historical brutality or merciless slaughter; we share a responsibility; if they today are not as civil as one of us or if they are not aware of laws and consequences. India’s wealth and prosperity has to reach them, fast, if we are sincerely looking at peace in these small focuses of lost, often misdirected and deprived community.
On Nationalist, Revolutionary Nationalist and Terrorist – With time the definitions of terms acceptable to society in large changes. It is not spontaneous, but grows and becomes adapted with development of society. What may have constituted war against oppressive nations now constitutes genocide. In India we have Kashmiri terrorists as we prefer to call them; yet some call them nationalist; fighting for a sovereign land and freedom from claimed oppression. It’s not a national phenomenon, we have people in Palestine, Myanmar, and Tibet to name a few; fighting for individual freedom of community against oppressions; some communities have largely followed peaceful process, some follow violent philosophical approaches to emancipation. The definitions are mere convenience of the society where we live and how it wants to interpret terms; as we can change the names of our roads and monuments we can change terms to satisfy the masses, we can write history in whatever form depending in which nation it is written.
On Speaking Tree “Unlike science, religion is not a tradition”- The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect; it's just the best we have. And to abandon it with its skeptical protocols is the pathway to a dark age. The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas. There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly all right; they're the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny". These are the words of Carl Sagan of Cosmos fame. The noble laureate Richard Feynman wrote "You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here". Science is not tradition, it is established hypothesis, sometimes fact, but changeable as science finds new evidence. On the contrary, religion is based on beliefs, sometimes just beliefs, sometimes established rituals, sometimes flawed beliefs but opposing changes to its established norms. There is no doubt, it is good to be religious if it is good to the humanity at large, but we must have an open mind and accept any flaws and be acceptable to change as we do in science; we must avoid getting stuck to tradition and unfounded beliefs.
On Tehelka Operations and Election in Gujarat – Mr. Modi may be right; Rahul Gandhi may fail to convince the electorate of Gujarat. The chief minister has been a good administrator, and has managed Gujarat well; he is bringing wealth and prosperity to Gujarat; but the foundation on which he might has risen is currently stained with human tragedy and the least he can do is to give adequate support to the nation’s investigation to find the law, to find justice for those how are guilty and for those seeking retribution. The brave Mr. Modi wishes to face the people’s mandate and come clean; but let us not forget that for majority of us religion and faith is subject that can make us passionate; it is something that can find common grounding, an easy target for political parties to exploit; for the reason it may not be difficult for Mr. Modi to win the elections in Gujarat. The very purpose of the sting operation is defied if people further themselves from seeking truth in an faith based polarized atmosphere created by desperate people trying to hold on the power.
On The two-edged tragedy of Priyanka Todi -Ithink sympathy for Prinkya is unjustified. She could not have gained much by way of speaking in defence of her dead husband; while she could have gained by defending her father or remaning silent on the subject, which she might have done. Human loyalty is subject to his -her circumstances, in this case, under public scuritny her sham loyalty towards the dead will be a result of public pressure than anything else.