Democracy and India

I am disturbed by the thought of this topic for some time now; especially after Anna Hazaare's movement against corruption. Is our nation mature enough to absorb democracy in the real sense? And if not, what is the future for democracy in India? And if yes, what type of governance we may have in the coming days?

I have my own doubts about the brighter prospects for democratic values in India. Day after day, we see the erosion of democratic values in all walks of life - be it politics, administration, judiciary, defense services, business or education - all have become the victims of persistent apathy and rather, we are witness to a mockery of democracy.

And this erosion did not happen overnight.  It is a gradual process and this has reached a point of no return today.  How many scams have we seen since the Bofors? One bigger than the previous one.  Strangely not even one of them has reached the logical conclusion.  It is just miserable for the ordinary public, disappointing to the reformers and frustrating to the young hopeful people.  We have arrived at a point that nothing can change here.  What shall happen in due course?  People will lose their faith in democracy sooner or later.  We are already witnessing a sense of intolerance towards the democratic institution.  Clear signs of autocratic regime are emerging in the distance.  Intellectuals have unfortunately withdrawn from the active arena thinking that nobody can save this slide.  Administrators have either fallen in line with the power mongers or have become silent spectators.  Then who should save the country from falling into chaotic precipice? It is like the saying: "If everybody is somebody, nobody is anybody".  My vision is that either India will slip back to the pre-colonial era where it was split into hundreds of provinces and ruled by the regional satraps or some autocratic power will clamp its hand in the near future.  We have seen too much of democracy and finding it indigestible.   

Personality and economic background

Generally you can notice two types of people with regard to their attitude to money. There are people who are very generous and people who are very stingy or miserly. It is a very interesting phenomenon worth studying. You can find these two categories of people both in the affluent families and poverty ridden families. You can even call it the 'problems of plenty and problems of scanty'.

Some people, who are born and brought up in the poorest conditions, and who have faced and suffered all kinds of adversities in life, becoming very generous personalities later in their life when their fortunes look up. Mostly, they have a feeling that others should not have to face the difficulties they themselves experienced. You can take the examples many well known philanthropists who keep on helping others even though their own desires are not completely fulfulled. They find gratification in helping others and most often they are obsessed with this feeling throughout their life. I need not have to name anybody here because, you find such people everywhere around you doing their yeoman service in their own unique way. Some may come to limelight while others may not. What I am concerned about is their attitude.

You also see persons who are extremely stingy and miserly when they become rich and affluent later in the life. Mostly, it appears they have nourished a sense of insecurity all through their childhood. The result of that insecurity is so intense in them that they feel threatened as if they will be thrown back into that unhappy past; and in order to save themselves from that painful past, they do not want to part with their wealth. Their greed can reach the level of insatiation sometimes. They keep on adding to their wealth by all possible means. But this nouveau riche exhibit the qualities where their childhood haunts them. You can observe them being either lonely, wily, hypocratic, suspicious or insecure deep in the core of their personality.

The same phenomenon can be observed in the people born with the silver spoon in their mouth.. You have generous, empathetic and kind souls who give away everything they have, again for the sense of that gratification. You might have heard stories of many such people who later become paupers out of their own virtues. You can see equally stingy people who would not part with even one penny even though they can afford the moon. They are utterly miserly. George Orwell has written a beautiful essay on one such miserly man he came across. It is an extreme case of psychological perversity. But these people do not enjoy the life themselves nor allow others.

My question is, what do you attribute such personalities to? Is it a psychological phenomenon or genetic phenomenon?

Small things

Sometimes I keep on brooding over small but strange ideas. There may be so many others thinking on similar lines too. Here in India we, namely; leaders, politicians, intellecuals, business men, administrators etc. keep on dreaming and making tall claims that India is emerging as a strong and developed nation. We make India Shine. True, when we hear that or read about that we feel proud of our nation.

But, on the other hand it also makes me to introspect how true are our claims? The fruits of developed have not completely percolated down to the rural area. May be in terms of mobile communication it could be true. How about infrastructure facilities like good roads, good schools and good health facilities? We have a clear divide between Bharat and India despite the tall claims. I would like to testify my statement by illustrating one small example. Let us take a look at our National Highways, forget about the other small roads. You hardly find any decent rest room or decent hygenic food joint adjacent to the highways. I am not talking about the inconvenience faced by passengers travelling in their own vehicles - they can afford to go into the hotels in the cities nearby. Think of the ordinary passengers - specially women passengers - travelling by road transport services. Think of the humiliation they suffer through these ordeals. Or take the ordinary bogies in the train where there is no water, no cleanliness, no doors working properly.

This may sound like a very small thing. But is it not a part of a civilised and a developed society? When we can afford to spend crores of rupees on so many populist measures, can't we spend, a part of that at least, on these small things in the public interest? I strongly urge our netaas to pay heed to the common man's necessities and work out a national programme to address such small issues.

Learning Hindi language through music

Presently I am heading a project called Pathways in the Sahyadri Science College. The objective of the project is to identify bright students from the socially and economically deprived sections and train them to enhance their confidence level through life skills, soft skills and computer skills. The success rate is very encouraging. One of the innovative methods I am trying out to teach them Hindi language is through film songs. The students in this part of the state do not know any other language other than Kannada. English is taught as part of the curriculum but Hindi remains isolated. In order to address this problem, I am taking up a few celebrated good old film music and play them. The students are encouraged to follow the lyric and understand them word by word. On the one hand they learn new words and on the other they have learnt to enjoy music and literature. The students also get additional information about the music directors, singers, lyricists, year of production etc. The internet provides a lot of information. Sometimes we ask the students to browse the net for additional information. We have taken up songs on themes like devotion, patriotism, philosophy, happiness and sadness etc. Some of the songs have become a part of their cultural programme presentation too. It is a wonderful experiment.

Other side of the Garden City - Bangalore

I was in Bangalore a fortnight back. I had been to Whitefield area which I frequently visit for training and other purposes. Of late the scene in Whitefield is changing very fast. Once - not long ago- just five years back, it was full of greenery and pristine beauty with orchards of greenery all around. But today everything has disappeared giving way to the concrete structures thanks to the IT - BT boom. What I was worried about was with the expansion of the so called 'Garden City' transforming into a 'Concrete City'.

Is it right on the part of the Government to put all its eggs in one basket? No doubt, the city has all the conducive atmosphere to the enterpreneurs. But at what cost? Look at the perennial trafic jams, pollution of all kinds, rising criminal activities, sabotage, civic problems so on and so forth. No one is seriously bothered about this. The apartments have taken the place of plants and trees. Let us think of some improbables like the IT bubble burst, natural calamities like earth quake taking place or war or something of this kind. What could be the loss in terms of human lives or property? Just one heavy rain shower sends the city into chaos. Can we imagine about the calamities?

We shall consider about other problems. Instead of investing huge sums of public money in one city, why can't the Government think of developing smaller cities in other parts of the state? Uniform growth helps the healthier atmosphere and besides, stops the unnecessary exodus of the people thronging to Bangalore in search of jobs. Bangalore has virtually become the future destiny for all the job aspirants across the country. And on the other hand it is in the hit list of terrorist attacks too.

The city cannot just take that pressure any more. It is already too late to stop that. Let the planners, administrators and the netas think of the alternatives rather than hanging on to the over burdened and overloaded Garnden city.

Workaholism - What next?

The age of workaholic culture appears to be coming to its end. Man has worked a lot for the last one hundred years. All the time he was under the impression that he would find leisure with the machines taking up most of his burden. But on the contrary he has become busier at each stage of his progress. For all his maladies born out of his race against time, rest and relaxation are alone his solution. Today we have begun to use terms like green, nature, peace of mind, calm and quietness, serenity etc. All these words indicate that enough is enough of the material and mechanical advancement. We have developed head phones that beat out noise. We want to have our houses in a serene atmosphere. We want the food that is grown naturally or organically. Everywhere the buzz word is 'eco-friendly'. It suggests that nothing is as comfortable as the natural way of life. Nature has a rhythm of its own. It has a pace with which all the creatures have to adjust and proceed. Unfortunately we have created a pace that is not in tune with the rhythm of the nature. Workaholism has accelerated this pace resulting in all kinds of syndromes related to stress. Life cannot be healthy and peaceful unless the 'bio-rhythm' synchronises with the rhythm of the nature or what I would like call the 'eco-rhythm'.

You can observe that the pace of life has become faster over the last few years, especially after the second world war. It is manifested in our music, food habits, sports, thinking, listening, travelling, working - literally in every walk of life. When 'eco-rhythm' and 'bio-rhythm' do not keep pace with each other or in other words do not synchronise well, it results in stress. Workaholism is one of the worst kind of obsessions for which rest or relaxation is the only solution. It is like a rocket that has travelled too fast and escaped from the gravity of the earth. If at all we want to come back to earth once again, we need to slow down our speed and the process involves lot of problems too. So the clarion call, "Back to Nature", by Wordsworth way back in 1798, is more meaningful to us today.

How long do we advance?

Sometimes I begin to think how long do we progress at the present speed? Though the evolution is taking place since time immemorial, the pace of the progress probably doubled or trebled or even in multifolds only after the second world war. The invention of motor vehicle, specially the use of fossil fuels in the motor vehicles, has largely contributed to the fast pace of progress and advancement in science and technology. What could have probably taken a few million years to develop has taken only a couple of years now. Look at the development of electronics and communication. We never dreamt in our childhood that one day we would move with the mobile phones in our pocket. What an amount of information is available to us today? What an amount of luxury is available at our disposal?

But how long do we advance like this? At what cost are we enjoying all these benefits of so called culture? "Nothing comes out of nothing", said Shakespeare in King Lear. The laws of physics also believe in this principle. Something else must be at loss when we have gained. It is obviously the mother nature at whose cost we are developing. Many species of the animals, birds, aquatic life have become extinct. A large portion of forest has disappeared from the face of the earth. A great deal of fossil fuel has evaporated. Man has emerged as an unconquerable king. All this has changed in a span of just fifty years or so. Fifty years is nothing when compared to the life of the earth. If the nature minds it takes just a few seconds to throw us back to the stone age. How does this threat come to us? Will that be through our own creation or will it come in the form of natural calamities?

If at all it comes through our own creation, might be it may come in the form of another war or nuclear holocaust. The greater possibility, according to me, is the exhaustion of fossil fuel. Once the deposits exhaust, there is no other substitute to fill that vaccuum immediately. Eventhough we are searching for other forms of energy, we may not find an immediate success. The development shall suffer or take a step back by the time we find an alternative. There are already strong signs of this possibility. The day may not be too far. At the most it may be just a decade or another five years away now.

Understanding Stress and Strain

Stress and strain are the two words which are used very often these days. Recently I read in the news paper that all modern diseases are related to stress and strain in one or the other way. After all, the root of our health is in the chemistry of the brain.

I wondered that we in India, never heard such words just a decade or two back. We used to laugh at the people when they said either they were 'busy' or they were 'tensed'. We thought these things mattered only in the West. But things have changed now. The globalisation process has changed our lives and life style too. We are also a part of that rat race which has lodged us into that so far unseen, unheard, unimaginable 'world of stress and strain'. But luckily, majority of the rural folk in Inidia are yet to get into the grip of this modern malady, though they are catching it up slowly.

Many a times my students asked me if these two words 'stress' and 'strain' meant the same thing. Are they analogous? This question prompted me to think about it seriously. After a great deal of mental excercise, I have come to conclusion that the word 'stress' can be related to a mental attribute while, 'strain' can be related to a physical attribute. Though we generally assume them to be similar, there seems to be a difference between them. Let me elaborate it further with an example of a balloon. You take a inflated balloon and start pressing it slowly. Its shape changes gradually and ultimately at a point it may burst. Next, take a balloon that is not inflated. Stretch it slowly with your two hands. It stretches to a particular level and then it gets torn apart.

Now try to relate these examples with your mind and then to your body respectively. The analogy will be clearer. When you are bogged down or obsessed with your busy schedule and if you are trying to balance them with the limited time that is available to you, and if you think that it is difficult to manage, then you develop 'stress'. The mere thought of this helplessness and desperateness develops the feeling of stress in us. You can bear that to a certain extent and beyond that you 'burst'. And when you are in the process of 'bursting', your blood pressure goes up, your adrenalin secretion is over activated and probably your whole metabolism changes.

On the other hand, take your physical schedule. You have to get up very early in the morning though you feel like sleeping for some more time, do your routince in a hurry, run and get into congested bus to your office, do a lot of physical work related job and stretch beyond the limit your body can sustain- then you are strained. You have over exhausted yourself. You have not bothered about what you ate, how much you ate or drank. The body knows only that it has to rest and relax but you do not allow it to do that.

So, if you see this whole phenomenon, you will find that stress and strain are the resultant crisis that develop between our mental and physical abilities to cope with the situation on the one hand and the limited availability of time and resources on the other hand.

I urge the readers to correct me if I am not clear in my understanding.