It’s all about coming out of inertia
It’s been
long time since I penned down something, not so well taken time but I read
somewhere ”vision without implementation is hallucination” & realized that
globe cannot get greener & artic sheet can’t stop melting by adding few
more write-ups to the web, nor one can reverse the dent in ozone layer by
adding few more trees.
Though “Little
drops of water & little grains of sand; still makes the mighty ocean &
the beauteous land.”
Anyways that’s not something that brought me here; it has
to do with a recent debate that I just
finished watching on 2014 union elections, which rejuvenated the long lost debater in me. Series of thoughts of
all kind are mushrooming in mind.
Of all the thoughts the predominant one is what is culture in true sense?
How it grows & shapes up? Even
though human anatomy is same all across & even brain is wired more less the
same way, yet how thinking process differs from one region to another? What
makes certain nations so well regulated in every way while others demonstrates
entropy in managing every sphere ranging from environment to common people’s needs
to women safety? Why in some of the countries
women managed to flourish while in others their number is on constant decline?
What
is Indian culture in true sense? Even though early human life commenced in savannah
& flourished on the banks of Tigris & Africa makes for one of the most
resourceful continent on earth, then why it mothers one of the poorest people of
the world? Well! All cannot be addressed at a go, yet I will try to look for
some of the answers.
Culture certainly is more than lighting Dias
on Diwali or playing colors on holi. It’s
a summation of subconscious behavior executed by set of people living over a
defined piece of land. So if they show extreme male chauvinistic attitude
that become talibanization, on the contrary, if they show up moderate attitude
& somewhat respect & equality for all in thought, speech & action
that becomes somewhat occidental.
Coming on to Indian culture, that’s obscure,
for we are country of extremes & not
just extremes, plentifully extremes;
Either We have drought or we have deluge; either we
have farmers committing
suicides or we have scions offering kilos of gold to deities; either we have
extreme intelligence or we have gross ignorance; so as such we can’t zero upon an agreeable standard to calculate
deviations from, & in that case neither mean works for us nor median or
mode.
The growth
of a civilization is somewhat similar to growth of a child. It commences from
no intelligence to basic intelligence to reactive intelligence to situational
intelligence to proactive intelligence to perfection. However to grow, post basic intelligence phase , one needs to apply knowledge in
logical & rationally correct way that suits the present situation & not
just execute traditional algorithms set
up by ancestors, & if one does not do so, the growth stops, life stagnates & civilization sucks…
We are a country of 1.25 billion people. For
an event like the mahakubh, a whopping not
sure but some 100 million(approx.) people emerged from the length & breadth of country, to take a dip in
the holy river that nurtures & carries the burden of about 400 million(approx.)people,
living in one of densest delta of the world .
The river
that supports & nurtures us, demands us to extend our tradition &
culture to show some care towards its ever shrinking glacier, to make her live up to her standards of
purity & sacredness as mentioned in scriptures & to save its children,
who thrive on its polluted water every day & are meeting the accidents in EMI’s.
If 100 million people who bore boarding
& lodging expenses running in thousands make a contribution of 1000 rupees
each as well, that makes 1,00,000 million which could be utilized for cleansing
of the river,that’s tradition. Off course we need to create smart & intelligent investment
grant monitoring systems to keep a check
on how the funds allocated are utilized, & introducing such systems may
bring outright rejections & resistance to an extent of civil war ,but at
some point of time the change need to be introduced & one needs to come out of inertia.
Coming on to farmers committing suicides,
has always surprised me. Its ironical
that a
nation that is famous for its agro exports, a nation whose cotton &
spices made British to leave their ports,1.25 billion population it supports
,one of the biggest consumer markets we have, yet a mercurial monsoon drenches
down its farmer into irrecoverable loans. The delta profit of middle man in these particular
sectors like agriculture, FMCG etc. is sometimes as high as70-80%, shrinking
the margins of profit that should rightfully go in our farmer’s pockets. Adding
to it, the self-managed, local loan rendering systems on hopelessly high
percentages further worsens the scenario.
By now one thing can be concluded, too much transparency in system may introduce instability but opacity in
system is a complete sin & that must be
done away with & when it comes to introducing transparency, it reminds
me of the lokpal protests, & looks like
there is only one problem engendering all sorts progeny problems…opacity & the benefitters of opacity will do anything &
everything possible to continue the opaque
culture.& once again I would say & introducing such transparent
systems may bring outright rejections & resistance to an extent of civil
war ,but at some point of time the change need to be introduced & one needs to come out of inertia.
Coming onto female feticide, ever since the evolution of life commenced,
every milestone in the evolution of life of is defined by some new form of intelligence that life acquired.
The
prokartyes learnt mitotic division, eukaryotes learnt single celled existence,cyanobacteria
learnt
to leverage on sunlight, plants transformed earth into a delight, reptiles
further crept & crawled, aves (birds) added third dimension to life &
mammals finally took charge of life. The
one commonness to all the survivors is newness, value addition & new
dimension they all added to life. Carrying
forward the tradition, man redefined the pace of evolution & evolution now was
no more about evolution, the evolution called life got elevated to revolution
called life.
Agriculture, army, pottery, business, astrology,
sailor, constructor, artisans, musician, writer, poets, engineer, architect, each
day man the wonder child was adding something new to his belt, becoming one of
the most versatile & celebrated form life on earth while women on the other
hand were busy mothering dozens of children & hence lost the status of
poster child to men at the very beginning of civilizations itself. Anyways, we
are born in best of times when service sector has become one of the major
contributors to GDP & that offer best opportunities for growth. If one
continues the way things are changing, in next 15-20 years such issues will get
resolved by themselves. For in a world
that’s one quarter land & three quarter water, the tortoise that walks
slow, knows how to swim as well,so every form of life has its own relevance .
Anyways, there is no end to list of issues
that can be thought & talked about & may be all
of them need to be
addressed at microscopic level as well, however if we have to figure out one
common macroscopic solution for all, I see a change has already commenced with Unique Identification Authority of India (AADHAR
CARD) SCHEME, followed by initiative like support my school program, Azim
Premji foundation .Infosys foundation.
It’s
like the way a farmer uses weedicides to enhance his quality & quantity of
crop production, in case of next generation children, we can’t weed them out, instead
we need to be proactively intelligent in monitoring them & refraining them
from transforming into weeds. The best thing about our nation again is, we are
plentiful in extremes, for millions of unattended children, we have another
millions of well attended children. This in itself is a great relief as it limits
the scope of children who needs attention & care.
UID is one such colossal step in this
direction .The first proactive step towards monitoring such children is to have
their whereabouts information available at the click of a mouse & second
giant step is to have intelligent data analysis techniques to analyze their requirements
& progress & this all needs to be done at war footing. Their monthly, quarterly, annual ,subject wise & interest wise progress needs
to be monitored not just locally at school level & but at centralized level. Information
that could be intuitively analyzed; Information that could channelize right
growth;Information where deviations could be caught ;Information that
mobilize the masses forth. One generation brought up with careful upbringing
can change the face of entire nation & 90% of the issues will die down. Finally again I will say, it’s all about
coming out of inertia.
These may sounds like utopian ideas, but every idea has to go through its own journey of
growth from being a queer thought to quintessential thought, where once again timeline from inception to realization is directly proportional to the time being taken in coming out of interia.:)
Looking forward for your views & additions.
discussed global warming ad nauseam & the outcome is :Globe is still getting warmer,coral reefs are still dying ,oceans are still becoming acidic & to top it all species are still extincting.
