Some links-worth to read

The rediscovery of India by Gopalkrishna Gandhi

The first three Bharat Ratnas saw the future with clarity by Gopalkrishna Gandhi

"Indian capitalism is the single biggest obstacle to further economic reform. It still inhabits a world of deals rather than rule"

Fixing Governance with Reforms and Economic Freedom

New “eight millennium aspirations, in a Buddhist sequence”

Yes, the “former administrator, diplomat and governor” Mr. Gopalkrishna Gandhi crafted another “eight millennium aspirations” thankfully not a “goals”. The following are his “aspirations”:

With the experience of two decades of self-admitted failures behind us, we should own that more of the same would not work any longer. We need something new. Can we consider not in substitution, certainly not in competition, but in co-extensive mutuality with the eight MDGs the following eight millennium aspirations, in a Buddhist sequence, for the urgent needs of today’s world but with specific salience to India:

* Understand that the expropriating of our scarce resources will leave us nowhere;

* Think about the whys and wherefores of food insecurity to see how different the determinants of food security are today from those of the past;

* Speak to farmers, herders, fishers, who are going to face a worsening of soil degradation and sharp water scarcities, in order to learn from them about as much as to suggest to them ways of coping with those that will be ecologically intelligent;

* Act with speed to check the loss of plant and animal diversity that work as a natural bio-shield;

* Retrieve livelihoods from manipulators and monopolists, including from those trade unions and NGOs who by their creation of dependence bring trade unionism and voluntarism into disrepute;

* Set in motion efforts by those NGOs and trade unions or ‘faith groups’ to ensure that bulk users of energy and water cut waste and callous extravagance, and are not able to hide behind the ‘per capita’ principle;

* Be mindful of how rapidly villages are becoming towns, towns turning into cities and cities morphing into metropolises, see if we are not consigning ourselves to a future where we will all have to wear masks before venturing outdoors;

* Contemplate that the good intent of all those at the third summit, hope against fears that India which can stop a Vedanta in its tracks, and make the Lower Subansiri Project answer the world’s questions on its advisability, can also give us that gift of seeing, as U. Thant might have done, the practical wisdom of the Tathagata, or (adaptively) the ‘One Who Walked That Other Way’.

Instinct and intuition of Kocheril Raman Narayanan and Gopalkrishna Gandhi

The grand son of M.K Ganshi Gopalkrishna Gandhi writes in today’s HT:

“An individual can resolve the conflict between one right path and another through his or her instincts. But what about a State? Does the State have instincts that help it choose one of the two, or does it rely on objective reasoning alone?

In a totalitarian regime, the supremo’s instinct decides everything. But to the extent that a democracy elects thinking, feeling individuals to office, its leadership cannot but use both intelligence and instinct, intellection and intuition.

In India’s integrated acoustics three major forms of utterance can be segregated: the grammar of authority (sarkar/siyasat), the prose of faith-systems (dharma/mazhab) and the free verse of human instincts of the finer kind (svabhav/jazba). The first two, the grammar and the prose, are strong baritones. The ‘free verse’ of human instincts illustrated powerfully in Sufi compositions and in the writings of Kabir and Surdas, is soft. This is not just because it is un-pedestalled and unamplified but because it is plural, like a choir’s. The framers of our Constitution were aware of the importance, as well as the fragility, of this voice, the ‘inner voice’ of India. The preamble to our Constitution, beautifully rendered in Hindi as ‘Uddeshika’, is the seat of that voice.”

I miss my Beach Walk

Walking on the Marina beach in Chennai is a thrilling movement. It is thrilling movement because the music played by is eye-catching waves on the shore.

I had two kind of walks on the beach: one is I walk alone for some time to breath myself and muse through the language of waves whom I can talk to for peace. Secondly, I use walk with my close friend whom I consider next to the wave. We use to talk all kinds but love and passion about the waves dance. I miss him too!!

What brings me to remember is the former Governor of West Bengal Mr. Gopalkrishna Gandhi has a piece in today’s HT:

• “The beach in Chennai’s Thiruvanmiyur draws morning and evening walkers who, in their ardour and ambition for fitness, rank next only to those who walk along the Marina. Young fathers training their small children in aerobics; middle-aged dodgers of coronary and cerebral strokes; youthful couples in love; once-youthful couples in mutual toleration; ‘foreigners’ sprinting; ear-phoned professionals in a hurry; hearing-aided pensioners in none — all jostle to beat the sun, burn adipose, and prepare to face another harsh day. The Coromandel coast is at its most moody and playful here, ebullient and sluggish, smiling and snarling.
• The beach has three kinds of visitors. One, those who come to burn their calories. Two, those that come to cool their nerves. And three, those who come ‘simply’. Despite valiant efforts by the city corporation and NGOs, this third category of ‘beachers’ deposit on it in a relentless flow of every manner of non bio-degradable garbage. The beachline here has a remarkable group of volunteers who clear the litter to the best of their ability. There is also a company that hires cleaners who remove the litter each day.
• I asked a serene-looking aproned woman who was raking some plastic bags and rubbish off the road onto a mobile bin how much she was paid by her employer. “Rs 3,200 a month,” she said. I offered her an invisible genuflection with the thought that if our decorated artistes and medallioned professionals, our Shris, Bhushans, Vibhushans and Ratnas deserve the nation’s segmentised admiration each for his or her field of achievement, this untiring woman with her unthanked broom deserves our unsegregated admiration and our unqualified apology.”