I was wondering why Gold is so precious. ..generally we cant do anything with it. we can't eat it and can't produce energy with it. Its just a"SYMBOL" of wealth...a converter ..using which bartering is easy...people can exchange goods and services ..but I think its too over priced because it has no inherent value. a kg of wheat or coal or a liter of milk or even a gram of uranium ..these can be used to get energy.. these have an inherent value..but gold..its just a mediator . its symbol of the mediator/broker/contractor class..or symbol of capitalism, who takes the product from the producer and supply it to end user..and for that it takes huge margin making fool of both customer and producer. Unfortunately poor producer is most disadvantaged! The high value of gold represent our social structure. The whole world is governed by few and the larger section is poor and powerless.
marriage and "man vs woman"
The institution of marriage is one of the greatest parts of civilized life. This is an equation which disturbs the equilibrium and tends to create a new one. Both the girl and the boy enter into a life full of responsibility, leaving behind a care free life full of freedom. As it is said that the man loses his bachelor’s degree and the woman get her Master’s! However, this great tradition is loaded with tonnes of expectations from each family. The husband is supposed to be treating the wife as the most important person, jokingly termed as “joru ka gulam” and the wife, who leaves her own family and accept the new house as her own is expected to follow the norms of her in-law's house.
But if husband ignores wife’s need, he is being a good man probably by not being “joru ka gulam” and if the girl tries to look for some autonomy, she is a rebellion. All the burden of family's pride and respect is always on woman .Our TV serials had played a great role in maligning sas-bahu relations, but that’s not the focus right now. All I need to say is that the girl is expected to adapt with new family while there is no such expectation on the other side. She certainly loses the comfort and independence of what she used to enjoy at her Mayka. Why is she supposed to call even the younger sister-in-law and brother-in-law as bhaia and didi. Why is she supposed to follow the instructions instead of deciding herself what to do and what not to? Why a mature, self dependent girl suddenly treated as naive to take her own decisions and expected to take permission for even small things. And if she doesn’t, she is too “modern” who don’t have respect for traditions. If the boy stay out at office for longer or go out to meet friends, it’s his fundamental right, but if the girl want to do same, she has to inform in-laws and take permission in advance, and mostly her such needs are not an important thing, even if it’s a matter of great significance for her. And generally the opposite sex friends and not welcome. Some people might counter argue here for giving rationale of respect for traditions and wish of elders for these prejudices against the woman. But there is no question of rational here, it’s the situation and it’s so deep rooted that even we can’t dig up to the rationale. Moreover, the tradition and the rational are not always in sync as the rational keep changing with time. If I give example of sati pratha ...contemporary people justified such inhuman tradition. You can say that sati was an extreme case, however the extremities help to understand the direction if not the intensity, and I want to emphasize the negativity of the situation here.
The question is probably too obvious with centuries of exploitation and suppression, the woman is certainly a disadvantaged group not only socially but also psychologically! I don't know what more to write about it. The opinion would be very subjective and a social change is always too slow.
Why i wrote about the evolution of God
Why a middle class Indian youth constituting our country’s intelligentsia is so indifferent to the burning issues around. Be it starving poor, or naxals or Kashmir or corruption. I get probably the answer by looking at my own past. During my college days I was bothered by disarrangement at hostels and pathetic conditions of toilets and labs. But I knew I could not do anything about it and I ignored it with my helplessness.( I said I could not because we tried and failed.) Then I got into job and got busy with life. And in rest of the time thinking about a good pass time, so called enjoyments...making friends and socialising. Still not much concerned about the society and having no tension from the family. When did I have the time from my leisurely luxurious time schedule to think about others? As the psychological principles say that we don’t feel empathy for the event happening at distances far away. Like we may not kill a person in front because of our human instinct but we may not hesitate much in firing a missile that would kill hundreds of man a thousand miles away. Even the animals don’t kill their own species. This instinct is unique to the great highly developed human. Till I had job/family/friend/social networking related responsibilities and pursuing my hobbies, I hardly get time to think about any issue bigger than the traffic jam on way to office or bad food at office canteen. I never bothered about political, economical and social problems of the world or the nation. May be I was not aware of or may be my psychological defence mechanism to save myself from the frustration and information overload avoided any attention to these issues. We, specifically people earning good enough like bachelor software engineers seems to be living in a pseudo reality....a world of the air conditioned offices or the big Malls or multiplexes and we think that everything is so good....we don’t see the things happening outside.)
But now, now I am in an identity crisis. What I am here for! What’s the purpose of my life...why I am what I am? What role I am going to play in this world. If things keep going like this, what will be the future or will there be any future at all? This put a big question before me questioning significance of every moment of my life...for me and for others.
I can feel a little pulse of how the youth might have felt during the British rule. ..The frustration and the helplessness...the quest to find a way to do something...to make a change! But it all looks in continuity. Oppression and exploitation be it by British or American or our own natives, how does it make any difference to the poor. May be that’s how life is. Or maybe now the rosy picture of the world is getting clear and it’s not so colorful at all. Now I understand why the subjects like religion and philosophy are so important. We can’t make sense of our life without them. That probably why we created the thing we need most..... the concept of God..to save us from ourselves!
Ideas for India
1. For drinking water issue
Essential commodities like water should not be left for exploitation by private industries. I see no rational why drinking water erstwhile available free should suddenly become 12 Rs per litre. It’s because of lack of political will and ignorance and hopelessness of public that we are ready to pay 12 Rs for bottled water but we want our domestic supply free. We can pay 10 Rs for a cold drink bottle which may not cost even 2-3 Rs to the company. The govt. should impose higher taxes on such industries and should give open declaration that money collected from such tax will be used in supplying pure drinking water for domestic supply. Govt should not interfere much with market but it should regulate it strongly. I see no reason why Railneer was also 12 Rs per litre. If govt sold Railneer at 5Rs per bottle, the prices of other brands would have immediately come down.
If natural resources like water, air, land, minerals, spectrum etc. will be left unregulated and uncared for, the few influential people will exploit it and the people of India won’t get anything from it, and we will remain a rich country of poor people. Most of such ideas are rejected as wishful thinking but they are not so. We need to restore public trust in the govt. and need a leadership with such vision.
We should have local level water treatment plants to filter at every outlet of a local sewage/nala to a river.
Increase awareness among public not to waste and pollute water.
MNREG schemes should be used for employing people for cleaning of rivers and water harvesting projects.
2. Increasing transparency and accountability
RTI is one of the biggest act passed by legislature. It has tremendous potential to ensure accountability and increase transparency of the system. Currently our bureaucracy (Babus) take it as a burden and it s not being used them as a tool to fight corruption. If all departments and offices make suo moto disclosure of their work including implementation of programmes and the account of the way public money is spent, even a corrupt person can’t dare to make money on loopholes of the system. The suo moto clause of the RTI act empowers officers to save themselves from the pressure of corrupt system and it will put a check on victimization of honest officers.
The finance is the backbone of any country. The weak payment and banking system can’t check while money getting converted to black money. A lakhs and crores of rupees starting from the center level are siphoned out before it reaches the grassroots. A direct payment system is a solution to remove such obstacles.
In this direction, including post offices in the banking system can be a major step forward. Thus govt. can be directly sending money to the beneficiaries to their post office accounts. India has a very huge network of post offices and every village have a post office. We can have a central database connected to state database further to district database and village database which will be connected through post offices. All records of beneficiaries will have account info, and their money should be electronically transferred.
Moreover, all the financial transaction should be made online. All payments for contracts and purchases should be done online so that all transactions are recorded in the bank statement. This will also help in accounting and auditing and will increase transparency.
3. Utilising tax revenue for social upliftment
The tax burden should be well targeted and directed for specific schemes. Tax can be used as a tool to regulate market and direct public money to where it should be spent.
1. Tax on soft drinks --> use for water treatment and free drinking water
2. Entertainment tax on private channels --> to increase education expense
3. Tax on alcohol and tobacco --> health expenditure
4. Tax and penalty on polluting industries --> for keeping air clean and river water pure
5. Either remove subsidy on diesel or impose higher tax on diesel cars/SUVs. Subsidy on CNG/LPG and electric cars and on public transport (not just metro but also better bus service for villages too)
4. Improving the system: Transport, health, education and administration
i. The market highly depends on the transport and supply.The increased cost should be handled by -making better roads so that less fuel is spent and less pollution
-making the supply system faster by removing bottlenecks on roads like making functioning of toll plaza smooth, bypasses from crowded cities, fencing NHs
ii. Removing role of middleman as much as possible specifically for agricultural products and making storage facility for products so that supply side bottlenecks can be managed
iii. More expenditure should be made to provide better teachers. More incentives should be given for rural school teachers.
iv.The routine functions of the district administration like issuing certificates etc should be fully automated and computerised so that IAS officers can spend more time in planning and development.
v.All data starting from panchayat level should be digitalised; it will make data handling easy.
vi. UID, census, land revenue management, certificate issuance and other public service can be directly served by such database.
vii.Higher education and research should be made more attractive by increasing the scholarships and stipends for research students.
viii.Video clinics should be established in every tehsil/sub-district level so that specialists can provide consultation to patients.
With cleaner air and water, we will have less diseases and load on health facilities will be less.
Natural resources should be utilised in a sustainable manner by public, the private companies should be regularised so that people's money is spent on people. Let us take back the public money to serve the people.
5. Understanding People
Suppose there is some garbage on the road. Now there can be five kind of responses
1. people see the garbage and start throwing more garbage there...making it worse just like people spit exactly where its written not to or park at no parking.
2. people see it, curse the other people and the system but don’t do anything. However, they, at least do not add to the problem
3. people see it, condemn it, and make effort to clean it by themselves...that’s out NGOs and active civil societies
4. there are the people who create awareness and lead people with a vision to keep it clean..our leaders, which are very few there for creative issues like this.
5. and finally people who make the structural arrangement to get it clean and make sure it do not get dirty again by strengthening the system. That’s the executives..our bureaucrats.
These last two have most important role and we need to include the civil societies with us. With a participative system we can easily get support of second and third too and then the first have no reason to make it worse.
Ultimately all power lies with the public but it is too ignorant or unorganised to use it.
Movie Review: No one killed Jassica
In the times when the cinema halls are flooded with pathetic soulless movies like "Tees Mar Khan" and "Yamla Pagla Diwana" etc, I started to think that Bollywood has lost it to just masala and cheap comedy..and they just want to make money by fooling viewers, "No One Killed Jassica" turned out to be amazingly good movie restoring my faith in film industry. Not just because its based on a sensational real life episode, but because it has lot of things that a good movie should have. The casting itself was very impressive and background music through out the movie was catchy. Very good performance by Rani Mukherjee and also by Vidya Balan. Coming to the storyline, this movie has very realistically depicted the whole episode. Its neither a documentary nor there is any overacting.
We all live in a world of our own and deny that anything wrong is going to happen to us.But when it happens in front of our eyes..we just can not sit and watch things to go on. Jassica episode was a symbol of how influential and powerful get away even after committing a heinous crime. The poor state of judiciary and helplessness of the police, everybody knows but no one does anything about it. The frustration of the inspector for not being able to convict the criminal is well represented in the movie.
How a small idea can become a nation wide campaign gives us a hope that if the public is made aware then public opinion can bring the accountability and check the powerful from buying the system. The inspiration for candle march as India Gate is one such example.
Some of the small scenes are superb. In one scene when a man teases Jassica's sister, She runs after that man and beats him to his embarrassment. At this her sister says .."Jaane do" (Leave it), she replies.. "Tu kahegi to chhor doongi...Ye dilli hai...ladna seekh..aaj chhoo ke gaya hai..kal rape karke jayega."
(I won't let him go unpunished..this is delhi..you should fight..today he has just touched you..and if you don't fight back..tomorrow he can rape you as well.").
This movie make us think that if we don't react and fight back...what kind of future we are going to have. When mistrust and insecurity are there, how can one say that "Viswas pe duniya kayam hai".(The world is running on trust).
I would say "Must watch" movie. I give it score 3.5 out of 5.
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