Year End Posts

Another year is ending and almost a last day is left. The year gone is filled with full of changes with all kinds including many negative change! And I liked them! But the understanding gone in to it is not measurable and only the future will tell me the really use of it in life and work.

Nevertheless here are some good reading, though nothing new is discovered. The fools piece on Reimagining India is really stupid one!

Intractable, vulnerable and contestable by Subir Gokaran

The year of #outrage by Veena

India can win the gold game by S Gurumurthy

Why I’m not on social media by Akar Patel

"Fools" Reimagining India

RSS: Shah, Singh and Rangeela

Aakar has narrated a wonderful story about the fall Indian one party power rule. His conclusion is not entirely new discovery but is extremely sum's up the present state of society and governments at State and Central level in India. 

• "The position of Manmohan Singh is almost the same as that of Muhammad Shah, who called himself Rangeela—the colourful.

• Not all of Rangeela’s rule was bad, and this was the positive aspect I referred to earlier. His patronage gave us Sadarang, composer of many popular Hindustani bandishes (Bhimsen Joshi said when he forgot theantara’s lyric in a song, he would wail “Sadarang!” to fill space).

• Ending his four-volume Fall of the Mughal Empire, Sarkar stepped back to assess what he had studied for six decades.

• “Corruption, inefficiency and treachery disgraced all branches of the public service. In the midst of this decay and confusion, our literature, art and even true religion had perished.”

• The 86-year-old scholar concluded that our condition is the result of “the rottenness at the core of the Indian society”.

It is worth to spend your time to ready the full article from here.

Arundhati Roy, a Ghost, has got it all wrong!!

I never expected this wonderful surprising commentary article by Aakar Patel who refutes on well grounded basis, the false propositions of cunning socialist and communist leaned Arundhati Roy. 


I must say that when I read Roy's article which was based on a lecture she gave in Mumbai some time ago, I was deeply worried about the false propositions against folly ideas of her.


Patel concludes that:

• When all’s said and done, the solution to such problems in dysfunctional societies like India is simple, though boring. Communities must start taking responsibility for themselves. They cannot wait for a revolution to come to their doorsteps and clean their neighbourhoods, or to care for their infants, or to teach hygiene to their women or to educate themselves. Nor can they entirely depend on the state either, though they must vote against those who fail to help them do this.

• Experience has also shown that in tribal areas where external influence has been allowed, it can be a force for good. The tribals of Mizoram have 90 per cent literacy because of work done by the Presbyterian church. Shielding tribals from the outside world keeps them just as they are. This might have aesthetic appeal for some, but most tribals don’t think so. That is why the Salwa Judam militia attacks those who are their brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, this isn’t the sort of thing we can blame the whole world for, and so it isn’t good material for belles lettres.

Multipolarity of modern India

Aakar Patel on Anatomy of an ‘Indian’: answers to the FAQs 

“Indians are nationalists” but “not patriots”

“Indians are opportunists” but they are “religious and pious”

“Indians are secular” but they are also “racist”

“Indians are communal” but they are also “hypocrites”

“Indians are not conservative” but they are “liberals” and also “not tolerant”

Find it easier to view things

When I read the two lines below a decade back I was not really sure of how many of them know about. Even if they know how they tend to believe in it. Of course I read in details with the help of my friend who is always interested in knowing of not just who writes about it but also how they personal education matters in public life and things life that.

“The Nehru-Gandhis were all dull students. Rajiv failed in Cambridge, Indira failed in Oxford, Sanjay failed in high school and Nehru didn’t shine at Trinity”

Read full column “The catholicity of Soni” by Aakar Patel in today’s Mint

Same evidence keeps slapping us in the face.

Aakar Patel writes:

• “Its architects Hirsch Bedner say their estimate for it is around $2 billion. That is Rs9,000 crore, and four people will live in this house. That is Ambani’s contribution to our culture.
• The Birlas built schools for the rich, and the Ambanis made a school for millionaires.
• BITS-Pilani’s fee is Rs1 lakh per year, Birla Vidyamandir’s fee is Rs1 lakh per year and Dhirubhai Ambani International School’s fee just for classes XI and XII is Rs7.57 lakh.
• At the Aditya Birla Memorial Hospital (“Compassionate Quality Healthcare”), a check-up for headaches costs Rs2,850.
• At the Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital (“Every Life Matters”), the wellness check-up costs Rs5,000.
• At the Tata Memorial Hospital, which treats cancer, healthcare is free.
• Rajashree Birla says Indians “don’t have the mindset to give away large amounts of money to charity”. The act of leaving “just a little bit for their children”, she says, “happens only in the US”.
• “It calls for very large-heartedness,” she says, “I don’t see this happening in the Indian context in the near future at least.”
• She’s right about our mindset and culture, but wrong in assuming that the problem is about large-heartedness: It is actually about a lack of civilization.
• She’s wrong also about this not happening in future: It already has happened in India.
• Of Tata Sons’ 398,563 shares, 65.8% is held by charitable trusts (Ratan Tata owns 0.84%).
• How much money are we talking about? Tata Sons’ net profit last year was Rs3,780 crore.
• Tata Sons owns 74% of Tata Consultancy Services and 84% of Tata Motors. If wealthy Indians want to give back to society, they need only buy Jaguar and Land Rover, and not Mercedes and BMW. Tata Sons owns 31% of Tata Steel, 20% of Tata Teleservices and 22% of Tata Tea.”
  

Greatness in India comes from appearing great, from externals

Aakar Patel asks Why Mayawati is casting her legacy in stone

• “We could argue of course that Taj Mahal looks better than Dalit Dome. But that is a matter of taste. And to be honest, if foreigners such as Mark Twain weren’t so excited about the Taj Mahal, Indians wouldn’t have been this proud of it. Humayun’s tomb is just as beautiful but needs to be salvaged from ruin by the Aga Khan.
• Mayawati will go down as a revered figure in history for Indians. We will have no idea what her struggle was like, what she stood for or what her rise to power meant to Dalits. Few Indians have read her autobiography and few ever will. Her corruption, her ugliness, her bad dresses, her appalling administration will be a footnote.
• She is guaranteed to become great because Indians will be awed by her grand monument.”

What else would be better? Education, through the Macaulay plan.

Aakar Patel on Independence Day

• The British left in 1947, and they left too soon. We celebrate Independence Day, but another six decades of dependence as Great Britain’s colony would have been good for us. We could have learnt how to run cities. No harm in admitting what is obvious for all to see: We cannot even manage traffic.
• Europeans, of course, told us who and what we were. After 3,000 years of illiteracy, we learnt of the existence of the Indus Valley civilization from John Marshall in 1924. The identity of our greatest emperor, Ashok (died 232 BC), whose lion capital is our emblem, whose wheel is on our flag, was revealed to us by James Prinsep 175 years ago.
• Our Aryan ancestry (or fantasy) was gifted to us by William Jones in 1786, when he reported the link between Sanskrit, Ancient Greek and Latin. The barbarism of Muslims at Vijayanagar was revealed by Robert Sewell, when he translated the 16th century work of Fernaos Nunes and Domingos Paes. Between 1879 and 1894, Max Muller translated the entire Upanishad, Vedas and Dhammapada. This helped Vivekanand go lecture the Americans on India’s greatness at Chicago in 1893.
• Growing up in Surat, the only books I had access to were in Andrews Library, built in 1850. This is because Gujaratis, a mercantile people influenced by Jains, have no use for literature. The British stuffed it down our throats like medicine, educating the first reformers, people such as Narmada Shankar who attended the Elphinstone Institute. Shankar compiled Gujarati’s first dictionary in 1873, but the native instinct was strong and he reverted to Vedic tribalism in the last decade of his life.
• That is the cycle South Asians normally follow: illiteracy, awakening through contact with European culture, and then a belief in our superiority.
• But our bombast is groundless. America’s First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Article 19(1)(a) of our Constitution also gave us the absolute right to freedom of speech. Within one year, the government amended that, denying us that freedom—and wisely. That was because we cannot have freedom of speech in a country where you can get killed for what you say. Or start a riot. It was different for Periyar and Manto because they lived under rule of law.

Sambhog is a theory of free market economics which never applies to SOCIALISM

Reading modern history of economics is like having long chat with my girlfriend in villages where there is no road, electricity, television, telephone, mobile, newspaper etc. But MY THOUGHT GOES TO HER LOVABLE HEART!

What is globalisation? If anything changed on the present phase of globalisation it is this that Sowell emphases in his book The Applied Economics chapter Labour. Precisely Sowell argues that if anything changed like revolution it is the labour choice to work in traditional profession or the modern free market creations of millions of new professions which unfold even now may be forever.

Aakar Patel had a column in mint which track quite exactingly the love of labour and gains out of it.

He writes:

• “Jobs are opening up to millions of young people across India who are leaving traditional professions, or farming, and becoming office workers. They are equipped for this work because they have learnt English, a new language: Most of them are the first speakers of it in their families. When they come to the office, they are trained to execute tasks; they are instructed to improve themselves through the process of evaluation. There are seniors, and managers, in the office who have done the work before and tell them how to be more effective.
• They become individuals in the Western sense; they are judged by what they do and not who they are, as their fathers would be in their communities.
• They encounter office hierarchy and Indians instinctively know how to address someone above their station, and below.”