Starvation: by choice or otherwise

Today it will be five days of voluntary starvation by Team Anna as they like to call themselves.. for millions and millions in this country, this day is business as usual.. starvation forced upon them by poverty..Some cannot buy food because they do not earn anything, others follow the ead of Guru Dutt in his iconic ' Pyaasa.. quenching their hunger with cheap liquor.
This year rain gods have not obliged farmers on time.. Many a farmers would be saving some of their produce from last season for seed and labour payments..Yet another huge posse will stay hungry in hope of losing weight.. Starvation, by choice or forced, is flavour of season..
 I saw Satyamev Jayate last week, The program was about the true naure of Sujalam, Suphalam, Shasya Shyamalam Bharat Mata'. This week was about hope.. Hope that keeps so many alive by choice until that choice is taken away. Hope keeps the sheep grazing quietly till its time comes..
The starvation by Team Anna is about Citizens right to have a government that works for them rather than itself. It is also about responsibility that these people feel towards themselves and others..Starvation and anger and suicides in millions of homes are fuelled by responsibility that a familly feels towards each other's wellfare..
Starvation, rights, responsibillities, the weather is quite serious, There is hope ofcource, but it's dim, People no longer go on agitation sites, not because they are no longer angry, but because the famous resilience of Mumbai has spread all over India.. They have higher responsibilities, fewer real rights, the noose is tighter than before.. they just want to delay their turn at the efficient killing maching the state is..

Ponder

Once in a while i start thinking about things like meaning of life, meaning of existance, reasons for doing what one does, reasons for not doing so many things and so one.. there are two ways the argument usually goes. One treats this whole thing as an offshoot of idleness, hunger, thirst, frustration etc, essentially rather than finding the answers, one might learn to ask better questions, or not to ask uneasy ones, live life rather than spending it figuring out the theory behind it..
The other side says one must find these reasons, these answers even to achieve the worldy objectives.. It's been a long winding debate and i have been postponing the final showdown , handing out tactical victories to each side once in a while.
As the joker says, both the sides are equally correct, one must find balance.. but how does one find balance and know if it's not the balance of the kind out decadent empires maintained before someone with more purpose pushed them out?
We've all got only one life, this earth has one life, unverse has one life and no matter what we do, at present, that is how it's going to be.. there are two ways of looking at it again..one which say why care, the other say we've got only one chance so we must..
personally i have never been able to decide absolutely between the two..
what i increasing realise though is how this random freedom molds the environment, which in turn often gets back to us in ways one never fathoms.. the classical balls in random brownian motion...

the cultural noah..

few day back everyone was shocked to hear and watch what happened at a pub in mangalore..Some custodians of indian culture decided that best way to stop the flood is to beat & molest girls who obviously didn't know the great indian tradition for appeasing goons..
I was heartened to read catagorical condemnation from political leaders from all hues.
Now though it's time for them to do their own bit for culture. with chief ministers of rajasthan and Karnataka deciding to arrest "pub culture" one wonders why the poor sena men were arrested and pooh-poohed.
apparently they found it unpalatable that a small time goonda should hog all the lime-light.
while it is perfectly acceptable for our CMs to have rapes and murders and molstations and mujras desi style, they can not women enjoying themselves by their own free will, and from their own tax-paid money, a tax which is supposed to pay the government for citizen's safety among other things..
Why do our polititians seem to support all the wrong causes? be it communal rhetoric, mafias coming to politics, Quota sytem, N-Deal, Cash for vote brand leaders, Consipacy theorists such as Mr. Antuley, the retrogressive,sick ideology of moral policing, there is always one usual suspect- over beloved NETAJI..
We might speculate on reasons and go on but it doesn't help anything, people who should do these, the NETA and the voters, they have their petty interests to take care of.. for the voter. recollect a couplet-
sipahi chor hai, jo chor tha sipahi hai, yeh khel gaon ke bachho me ab bhi chalta hai,
isi liye main andheron se kuchh nahi kehta-ke har gunah ujaalon ke ghar me palta hai..

Who cares about niceties anyway..

These are turbulent times admitedly,Companies going belly up/turning turtle/turning Dodo and all. Everyone around is worried and everyone wants sometihng to be done. It becomes a classical case of too many cooks spoiling the party sometimes. We have a government which is fairly prone to such classics, it would have been funny had it not been at the expense of lives & livelihood of people.
Now out Urban development ministry wants to tax auto industry, add congestion charges, discourage private ownership of vehicles and and ask people to use public transport which is non-existant mostly or it does exist in form of blue-line buses and mumbai local with a death toll running into thousands every year.
All this at a time when automobile industry is running a battle of survival worldwide and there are about a million jobs on the brink in this country itself with whatever unemployment figure we have without this "help".
As it turnes out, another ministry in the same government is trying to help the same automaker out by encouraging government offices to buy new vehicles..
I am sorry to say but it sounds like only ministers and babus will have right to zip through and park whatever and churn-out whatever amount of smoke they wish.. all of it in public interest.
whatever happens to people working in the industries, whatever happens to thousands more added to already impossibly congested public transport, what we will have is industry churning out ambassadors for ministers and babus; a happy state to those who get rattled by people speaking out finally..

The Age of Shallowness...

In a week's time I'll be heading to watch the latest Aamir flick- Gajini. The USP of movie, A protagonist who forgets everything in 15 minutes. So interesting-A different take on the same we saw in 50 First Dates, the oh-so-sweet movie with Drew Barrymore & Adam Sandler.
What it reflects though is much more sad and in fact sinister; A reflection of our own 15 minute attention span to things trivial & to things vital a moment before.
It is definitely easier to lean on others for everything, our sitcoms, our news, our analysis, our worldview. it is surely much more easy to come on streets after every attack and demand war- clean and simple. against whom? with what objectives? at what costs? one might ponder and fret till the next big event- The kitsch lasts, everything else is transient.
It's easy to have candlelight vigils, It's easy to bleed tears for peace. talk about track-2 diplomacy when the blasts and murder has had its 15 minutes.
some take an ostensibly different view-they want to barter their safety with land- a land that does not belong to them, a land which is connected to lives of 'aliens'. few of these got a jolt in Mumbai and kept quiet for few weeks- now they are back again with another twisted excuse, another attempt at self denial.
We don't care really. there is an interesting story about a frog- you put it in boiling water and it will jump straight out of it, you put it in water and boil it slowly, the frog will stay in and die.
It's all about attention spans really. every 15 minutes, the page refreshes, the history is deleted, wiped out clean.
A great reason for why we could evolve into civilization has been our ability to accumulate our knowledge generation by gen ration and pass it on, build on it, draw inferences, correct our course.
It's under threat i feel, thus we see the same old ghosts revisiting us again. we had other important things to do in the meantime, there will be other who will exorcise, or take advantage of our slumber to wipe us out we do not know, for it isn't likely to happen in next 15 minutes, and it won't last beyond that anyway...

CESS-OIL- COMMON MAN

Globalization, Innovation etc…

Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.-Woodrow Wilson

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.[5]- Ayn Rand
These two perspectives, coming out from unlikely origins, one from president of a country known to be the paragon of’ laissaz Faire’
, The other from someone born and brought up in Bolshevik Russia of all the places; who chose deeply conservative US as her home.
The chasm may not be apparent to many, for on the face of it, these are two distinct subjects. Globalization and individualism support each other if anything one might say.
Mix it with endeavor of every global organization to instill ‘ONE-NESS’ among its workforce, add some spicy manager jargon about ownership et al and the pourri gets thoroughly confused, albeit mesmerizingly delicious.
It’s difficult to talk about globalization and leave sustainability; it’s difficult to talk about sustainability without talking about individual and his creativity, organization and its urge for innovation, and back to individual as a consumer as well as entrepreneur/ producer.
Forgive me thus for quite a few literary sins I have committed, two quotes to start a piece being one
. These serve a purpose though. As members of a corporate body a balance between seeking synergy and fostering innovation, giving enough fuel for our individual growth, and having faith and compassion about our work, these are some challenges that we face, or indeed the organization faces .( the concept of organization is quite an interesting one- but that’s left for later..)
Working in a place with a deep sense of history, I can not help but reflect, look back, through eyes of people who have seen the transition, who have affected the transition.
["Who is John Galt?" They say
"Don't ask important questions, because we don't have answers."- They mean
“WE were there once’”- many of us would recognize.
“Now you know” many would whisper secretively.]
Globalization is no longer a matter of debate for us; we are already all over the globe.
What drives us to grow bigger? What stops us, how do we change ourselves to become- to fulfill our destiny? How much do we want to change? Are we losing sight of our purpose as we turn round the bend?
These are some questions that we need to ask ourselves. Some of us might have the answers; some might have better things to do then reflect on vague questions, that’s because we like to deal with certainties, negate the unknown. They simply say “who is John Galt”?
There was a sanction victim defined as "the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of the evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim for the 'sin' of creating values."
This sanction has plagued so many of us, corporations, and society.
The sanction has been revoked, its leash battered, its power to choke us mitigated to a great extent. This has unleashed a new source of energy, because we no longer feel the need to hide our creativity, our quest for innovation, for achieving greater heights for fear of hurting those who cannot, or will not stand up.
I feel we have made this rather painful journey, and we have certainly come out better of it… I believe we can do business sustainably, That is because sustainability is built into our ethos, not apparent to many, but deep down somewhere, respecting our environment, respecting others, respecting work, respecting productive happiness, these are some of values that define an Indian.
We do not batter down doors, but we do try and command enough respect and trust that doors open for us.
As Indians, we have shown the world the only humane example of fighting a tyrannical occupier, and winning the war….

Now about being customer centric..

They say the best way to be customer-centric is to be one, slip into those shoes, (and shirts, trousers etc for people with imagination...).
The challenge is to ask this “can I make a product that will make me happy, and do it so that I derive greater utility from it than my investment? “
If I can, then I have been productive. I have reasons to be happy, and I might learn to share the physical and inspirational value that I create.
If I slip into those shoes then I wouldn’t like these shoes to bite my toes, I wouldn’t want them to expose me midway (pun unintended). I would like them to be sustainable. I would also like them to be different from run of the mill, I would like to Innovate to gain competitive advantage over my neighbor. ..
There is another way, so to speak, I might sneak in my neighbor’s home and take away his shoes, I get the old- used shoes, with no apparent cost, or I might intimidate him into exchanging my torn ones with his.
I could as well decry him for wearing shoes in both feet while his neighbor goes bare feet. (We as country are good at this one- asking for foreign aid, reservations, quotas, right down to divine interventions).
This choice one has to make. I choose the first one, because it at least gives me new pair of shoes- custom made for me..
They say it’s a free world; everyone is free to make his/ her choices, and to live /die with them…
Adios..