Sparsh

Only a fool writes for anything but money, the compassionate and learned can share his knowledge about anything under the sun for hours. One should write for what one stands for and not what the people demands. Writing helps in facing our fears, aspirations, perceptions and illusions about ourselves with a frankness that makes the portraits and stories as engrossing as they are disturbing. There were three basic parameters for good writers considered by me. They are command over language, observation power and experience. 1- Language is natural fracture across communities and it will always be. I can't boast of proficiency in a foreign language like English without having a good command over my own mother tongue. Learning metaphors in a language is like deep water diving into clean ocean. Gradually, one enjoys subtle humor in generating charm through understanding of medium. 2- I was advised by a reader to observe at least for 10 minutes. I started this in local transport and fo...

I was reading an article about casteism by Aditya Nigam published under Caste Politics in India in an South Asian journal. Quoting a paragraph on Mandal commission will be necessary : "What was interesting about the agitation and the highly charged public debate that followed, was that it was entirely conducted, from the side of the opponents of the Mandal Commission, in the most immaculate secular and modern language of ‘merit’ and ‘efficiency’. The question was posed as one of dilution, if not the elimination, of merit at the cost of getting in ‘unworthy’ and ‘undeserving’ people simply because they happened to belong to certain castes. 'Would you like to be operated upon by a doctor who had became one through reservations?' 'Would you like to fly by an aircraft that was piloted by a reservation pilot?' Such were the kinds of questions that were asked by the anti-Mandalites in these discussions. Not once was the question of upper-caste and brahminical privileg...

I sit in the solitude to become aware of the world and I was preparing in the silence to sail around the world. Brief spot of consciousness has zero thoughts in it. Imagination complete the illusion and fabrication of the memory fills the void of time, it is just wonderful. And when one is faced with the prospect of death very soon, one begin to think very much about everything. One become very creative, not in a survival sense but in a exploration sense. One need to understanding own nature, as many times one can know too much to be able to have a sound understanding. Even good ideas are sometime encumbered by conventional wisdom. I learn and teach creativity and dissidence. It's not about exchanging one individual for another individual. To change the basis of the system, the basis of patriarchy, the basis of class, there needs to question authority and provision of the solution as well. Anybody if knows Mark Twain's dictum: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it...

I like three points in the recent reading material on the Internet. I don't know source of them but they are quite hard to pass by without a glance. 1- A market-led urbanization policy is the accepted norm in developed countries and one that is recommended in theory. However, we should not fall in the trap of making a fetish of markets. It is often the case in developing countries that the markets that exist are incomplete or legacies of past colonial regimes whose objectives might have been at odds with those of present governments. 2- India is facing a challenge that the developed world never did - of driving growth around an entirely new energy model. Coal based manufacturing or oil led industrial revolution. Here everyone competes to destroy as those natural resources don't clearly belong to any individual or community. That is why it will be over exploited since conserving them is of no individual's interest. 3- Acknowledging the existence of every single citizen...

Statistician Nic Marks asks why we measure a nation's success by its productivity -- instead of by the happiness and well-being of its people. He introduces the Happy Planet Index, which tracks national well-being against resource use; The Happy Planet Index Weblinks On Developemt :- Multidimensional Poverty Index : OPHI and the UNDP Human Development Report launch the Multidimensional Poverty Index or MPI – an innovative new measure that gives a vivid “multidimensional” picture of people living in poverty. Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index : The GNH index was created using the Alkire Foster method for multidimensional measurement. The 2008 GNH index took a strong view and identified any person who has not achieved sufficiency in all dimensions and all indicators as unhappy. The Alkire Foster Method : An Innovative Technique for Multidimensional Measurement used for measurement of the poverty. Index of Economic Freedom World Rankings : India is ranked 24th out ...