Cast out Caste

Let me recall the punchline of Popeye the Sailorman : “That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!” . Cast out caste from our social system, it is killing talent based on the merit. The paragraphs given below are the the reproduction of a part of the interview of N. Murthy , Infosys Founder.

" The Indian society is a society of ideas. It is a society that has revered talk. In this society, articulation is mistaken for accomplishment. We are quite satisfied with our voice, with our writings. This is not a society that is focused on execution.

Frankly, the problem is due to our caste system and the dominance of Brahmins in our society for long period. The Brahminical system said my job is to think of the higher worlds. My job is to think of connecting you people with God. I don't want to do anything that has a relationship with the real world.

Now that is a problem that has played havoc with the Indian culture. So, here in this culture, if you do anything with your hands, it is considered less honourable that anything to do with your brain. Here everybody wants to be an engineer, nobody wants to be a technician. So when a society does not value implementation, execution, what happens is you create more and more reports and nothing gets done. "

We are not a nation of doers; we are a nation which believes that our articulation is our accomplishment.

I have put the view of N Murthy here for the gentle support of Anoop who put it eloquently as: Indian academicians and intellectuals are not ‘lazy’ but highly incompetent as they are the product of a society where merit is at premium. A caste-ridden society, where the caste interest and caste-pride take precedence over everything, can never produce genuine/objective scholars and academicians. Then, Anoop puts his emphasis on the fact --- Why have the Brahmins not produced a Voltaire? . Don't worry about my bashing to priestly clan of Hinduism, here comes Interview of Prabhas Joshi with his really valid points to give thoughts of other side of coin.

Apne hi pani mein pighal jana barf ka muqaddar hota hai.

I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks. I am doing this job but I am unable to understand if I am really doing the job or it is just for the sake of doing something. Confusion is there and no direction is clear to me. I am unable to decipher to whom I should take advice. This post is gentle expression of my wrath on me and everything.

Currently, I am unable to express myself here. It may sound like some idealistic and impractical but its not road map of utopia, it is mine day dream of the happy world. Read Bhagat Singh's India for more glimpses of true feelings buzzing around my head. It is more review of history of my country, on whose base our future will be written.

Every monumental crisis shakes the people and society of each generation. The art, literature, cinema matures from it. Every unjust decision pushes us in the direction of becoming more fearful, more regressive; and surely there is always enough time for us to undo old injustice. America emerged stronger and richer after the second world war, while Europe lay in ruins, "the great American dream" had no rivals anywhere in the world. Gertrude Stein once said: America was the oldest country in the world since it was the first to be modern. With its wealth, unique inventions and distinctive "way of life", the US had shaped the experience of western modernity.

India is a diverse and dual society with islands of elite affluence amidst vast oceans of poverty of the masses. This poverty is primarily due to inadequate income-generating employment in the rural countryside and employment would not come from capital-intensive industrialization. Indian science and technology has allied itself with the elitist pattern of industrialization from the west. The need of hour is to devote itself to the generation of an alternative pattern of capital-saving labour-intensive technologies of relevance to the rural poor.

Today, India is just copying American lifestyle without seeing its consequences of implication. I am just requesting all of you to change the world by sacrificing your little luxuries for the needs of others. The others are not from the alien lands, they are our brothers and sisters only. You will know my point after going through an old interview of this year Magsaysay Award winner in the field of Community Leadership, Deep Joshi. Worth Reading for all engineering guys as this person is passout of MNNIT, Allahabad & MIT.

Noel Hatch once commented that for people like us only: "So go where the people are - adapt the messengers, not the message. Don't take them for granted, value them as people you can't do without. Expect to be surprised by them, they're the people you've been waiting for. Share your success and they will commit even more. Embrace the mess, you need rules for radicals not robots. Don't just make it blood, sweat & tears, give them leadership and a smile. Don't just get people on your dance floor, get them to run the show and they'll join your revolution. "

As the topic header "Apne hi pani mein pighal jana barf ka muqaddar hota hai " shows that the path of salvation of an individual goes through welfare of his family, community and society. My inspiration is for making India as place free of prejudices and discrimination where everyone can get the chance to raise his voice.

The history of writing

Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow. — Some dude.

I was really flattered when Rajneesh pinged personally and congratulated me for this blog-post in which I stated about my feeling of loneliness. For a mediocre guy like me, to produce magic of ecstasy for friends through written words give intense pleasure. I have frozen frame of the moment in my memory when Himanshu Gupta applauded me for enjoying a healthy and detailed chat on diverse topics. Topic started with him explaining about science in a movie AI to me and continued 3 hours at the lobby of Morvi Hostel (IT-BHU). A sense of confidence was born from inside. It is one the most encouraging memory to cherish till this date.

I always go slow and hate the stopwatch mentality of the world. Deadlines drives me crazy and nervous till this date. The line between an intellectual and a pretentious bore is at best thin. Hence, I feared much in expressing myself. I was like sponge as a kid soaking all in it. Hence, there was so much to tell to this world. Wisdom is learned by 3 ways in the life: Reflection, Imitation and Experience. Imitation gives only outer shell. Experience is most bitter of all. Reflection is the best in all learned retro/ intro - spection.

Imitation kills initiative and discourages independent thought and effort in long run. Foreign words became insufficient to express the experience and thoughts. A sense of dissent for western metaphors or simile is there inside me, as they take mine unique Desi identity and makes me more English. As English isn't my first language, expressing myself through it creates a mental hurdle of translating. Hinglish education had changed my habit of thought and scale of values. Prolonging intellectual serfdom in classic English leads me to indiscriminate adoption of alien wonts and usages. I always try to avoid it. I always like the writing of Salman Rushdie due to his use of Indian English. A sense of Desi belongs in it and English language transforms from British background to urban India. But, I can't adapt his lucid style of complex statements and have deep impact of Premchand's simplicity in Hindi. Hence, imitation way was not for me. Then, I learnt that I had to carve my own way for establishing myself.

Experience comes with passing time through reading and writing ; Advice through comments gives feedbacks of the proactive writing. The reactive comments help in knowing the minds of readers. This stage of experience writing is best expressed by me in a previous blog post.

Reflection makes you strong from inside and a crystal clear point of view appears. Take the seed idea and develop in its essence. That is called adaptation with reflection in my books. The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule or the law of the vital few) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. I think that both every distributive system follows this principle. And personal reflection is that 80% in the mine writing. It may be only small part but its effect is massive.

The three stages are always going in different proportions in writing about any topic. If something is worth writing, it is worth making it extraordinary in the nature. As John Quincy Adams rightly said: If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. So, I am creating anonymous leaders in blogland...

FYI, Abhishek Arora and Vivek Tripathi have started there own blog. Cheers for them...

How Populism Works ?

I'm reminded of the well-known satirical novel by Robert Escarpit – The Literatron. I haven't read the novel but just a summary of its review is reproduced from eurozine article. It explains in subtle about how populism works....

I'm reminded of the well-known satirical novel by Robert Escarpit – The Literatron. The Literatron is more or less a machine for creating texts similar to a computer. The idea of its creators was to generate the perfect novel based on the best images from world literature. In response to the highest of expectations, the machine produced a bestseller – Virgin and Typesetter! When the Literatron was asked to compose a political speech the outcome was even more scandalous. After processing the entire history of political rhetoric the machine spewed out a series of gaffs such as: "This politics thing the more it changes the more it stays the same... There are no two ways about it, the clever people are the most stupid of all... All you have to do is hang a few of them (politicians) and things will improve...". This line of thought fits perfectly with an eloquent phrase from the Bulgarian transition, wrought by another merciless critic of his time, the Bulgarian satirist Aleko Konstantinov: "They are all rogues, on both sides!" The speech generated by the literatron was welcomed with raptures by the electorate and the politician whose job it was to make it quickly became a star. Every attempt to deviate from the absurd scenario led to vigorous disapproval.

I can't remember what happened to the literatron, whether it was destroyed as a malicious invention or if it destroyed itself. What was more important was the principles on which the machine operated. Its aim was universality and in the process it purged all nuances, simplified the meaning and looked for an arithmetical mean. The aim was for the text to reach the widest possible audience. The greatest irony was that a message meant for all was in practice a message for no one. This undermined its purpose, since it would have left its audience completely indifferent. The literatron is clearly a metaphor for populism as a leading principle of the political machine. However, populism works. If it didn't, politicians wouldn't resort to it so often.

The story is over dudes..

Justice and Democracy

The seed of post was sown when Joie de vivre commented in mine recent post that we live in the country where Logon ko democracy ka D bhi nai pata. She was absolutely right that Indians have a long way to go to understand the values of rights and duties of citizen. Personally, I don't have very strong belief in democracy but have a faith in swift and vigilant justice. Yet democracy seems to me as best way of giving voices to myself and the people. This is my naive attempt to understand the complex relationship of justice and democracy.

Democracy is ethically right but intellectually void.-- Max Kislanski

I once asked my father why people rate parliament above supreme court running on constitution. He replied me that constitution is made for serving the people not the vice-versa. When representative of people at Parliament veto supreme court verdict, they are abiding the rule of people only. I was silenced then. After many years, this memory resurfaces in studying Shahbano Case. I got my reply that while voting in Parliament just supports majority, it may or may not be the right voice. A wrong decision by majority may lead to injustice and may provoke decay of values and law in the society.

Justice is wisdom on merit and democracy is the choice to take different opinion. Too much democracy is like free market without any control. This is what Fareed Zakaria (former editor Newsweek) calls the tyranny of the majority. He argues that democracy, overwhelmingly, has had wonderful consequences. But the construction of a rich, diverse and complex social order needs a multitude of ideas to flourish. Democracy as a single ideology across politics, society, arts and business is akin to religious dogmatism where faith dictates every aspect of life. This is a very important argument. Democracy has proven itself to be the most acceptable form of political governance where the will of majority forms the basis for legislature. Still mindless ‘majorityism’ is dangerous. A journalist and novelist Pankaj Mishra points out this flaw of democracy ---

"When last week in Ha'aretz the Israeli historian Tom Segev judged Israeli "apathy" towards the massacre in Gaza as "chilling and shameful", he brought on deja vu among Indians. In 2002 the Hindu nationalist government of Gujarat supervised the killing of more than two thousand Muslims. The state's chief minister, Narendra Modi, who green-lighted the mass murder, seemed a monstrous figure to many Indians; they then watched aghast as the citizens of Gujarat - better-educated and more prosperous than most Indians - re-elected Modi by a landslide after the pogrom. In 2007, a few months after the magazine Tehelka taped Hindu nationalists in Gujarat boasting how they raped and dismembered Muslims, Modi again won elections with contemptuous ease. Though prohibited from entering the US, Modi is now courted by corporate groups, including Tata, and frequently hailed as India's next prime minister. As the Israeli right looks likely to be the latest electoral beneficiary of state terror, it is time to ask: can the institutions of electoral democracy, liberal capitalism and the nation-state be relied upon to do our moral thinking for us? "Trust in the majority," they seem to say, but more often than not the majority proves itself incapable of even common sense. " [Origin]

Our society is driving towards consumer culture and lack of awareness about ground realities is hurting our chance of progress. People aren't dumb but they take time to retrospect its decision. Impact of popularism is like mob madness. Each person involved in the mob takes his own time to return from the state of hysteria. People deserve better but they don't know about other options. A balancing act is done by media by providing voice to the lost causes and people living on periphery of society.

A sense of power to control is what the media is in turn giving to public in reality shows. It’s the manipulation and unreliability of methods media use to determine what people want. What media should fix is error in the systems, not the society. A democracy should encourage a person to tell the truth as it is, the truth about the truth. The freedom and liberty are more greater than the idea of democracy or theocracy or dictatorship.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable. --- Aldous Huxley