Celebrating Independent Dependency

On this Independence Day, “Buy 2 get 1 free” HURRY! All of a sudden, eruptions of sales, discounts and bonanzas especially on 15th of August sweep the Indian market. Who is celebrating with us? They are foreign “Multinationals”. There was a time when Britishers’ considered our country their golden bird and we collectively despised their unfair trade practices.
Earlier it was fair for them and unfair for us, the colonized world but now on the 63rd year of our Independence it is fair for both of us. So what exactly has changed? India was the biggest trading venture then, now it is the biggest partner.   What is the contrast? Earlier it was Britain extracting cheap raw materials and even now the situation appears ‘similar’ when they do outsourcing for cheap labor. As it has become a bit fashionable to say “I work for a British multinational.” Rules have changed, power has been transferred, yet the business remains the

same.
India and UK share a historical association over three centuries and if we revisit history we will recall that there had been many movements associated with our Independence against the British colonial rule. One of them, which is very distinctly registered in our minds is the Non Co-operation Movement when our Freedom Fighters refused to buy British goods and promoted indigenous goods and tried to uphold the values of Indian honor and integrity. When Nehru gave the famous ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech, declaring India’s independence, the whole country celebrated with great fervor. Even now we celebrate this historic event but the contrast is that United Kingdom from whom we got our independence, is now celebrating with us. Someone has correctly said” History repeats itself” but if we look it in our Indian context, it will be like “History does repeat itself but with added flavors of Independent dependency.”

Searching For Sure Like Never Before!

                      

When you search for sure like never before? When you always wonder how? There are only few who stood behind an idea of truth, conviction, passion, resistance, innovation and freedom. Wherever you are, whenever you want and whatever it takes. You have the power to face the future.

Every single idea, any breakthrough that illuminated the entire world was defied at first place with resistance and outcry. Anything that is or was not regular was always looked down upon with suspicion. The suspicion arose from the doubt of self. When you overcome the suspicion of self you rise and create. And, you own what you create. The seed of creation originates from the soul. From the spirit that every human being on earth is endowed with but few understand and apply.

When Columbus set his voyage towards India, he ended up being in North America. Had he ever given a thought of earth being flat, he would have ended falling off the cliff. Leonardo Da Vinci, he was probably the first one to have conceived the idea of how a working model of airplane can look like, about centuries ago. Every idea generates in the art form first, science and technology is the later part. The Wright Brothers churned that idea into reality. The impossible becomes a possible. Buddha was the preacher of simple things like peace, non-violence and integrity. Born centuries ago, but the relevance of his teaching won’t ever die. It continued to inspire many great people like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and many unknown achievers. If, world famous scientist Thomas Alva Edison would have lost faith in himself I wouldn’t have been able to write an article with my bare eyes at night as I don’t have the supernatural ability to glance at things at night like an owl.  Henry Ford, the inventor of the first commercial car once said “"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Steve Jobs, who died recently due to pancreatic cancer, was one such person in the present world who achieved what he believed in. The aesthetics of design and technology sparked the vision to carry forward the legacy of what we know as “Apple Inc”.  

Every one of them voyaged towards their own freedom in some way or other. So, when I talk of freedom, I mean to say you breathe when you heart beats, with every beats goes a second or more. And every second you give yourself a death, when your thoughts acquire someone else’s.  It’s quite an easy alternative to find when you can’t have your own “thoughts”. Whenever in your life you feel like you are at the receiving end of how you wanted to shape your life. Just start concentrating on your own belief system that makes you. Start revolving around your life. You are the star of your own life and others will always be like your planet. The day you start caring too much about any relation you destroy your own relation with life. Share your emotions but never share your life. The dreams that you have about your own passions.  Any passion like a fire in your heart warms up the entire world and rekindles the flame of what a human being is all about.

I Am Honest

Ever felt that "Yeah I did wrong but I was never supposed to be like this". Guilt of not responding to your guts out of fear is humane. Being true to your self is quite difficult a thing sometimes. When we were small children we had one thing in common in between all of us and that was innocent and honesty. As the time passed by, we all grew up and things certainly changed. We used to be fearless as kids. Honesty was the best policy for us till then. So, what exactly happened to our guts of saying what we liked ,what we had in mind and what we wanted to do. Did all earthly things came in between you and your honesty. No, it was the slow deterioration of our faith on our best trait that we had or have if it exists somewhere within each one of us.
So, when was the last time when you had this wonderful feeling after confessing something that you always felt was rocking your life upside down?When was the last time you really stood out for a cause that was honest and genuine? And so on , many questions arise and the answers lies in our mind itself. Just an exploration of our own-self solves it all. Accepting what we are,the way we are and not how the world shapes us is the solution.

Faces change but its always the character that makes a soul, a great one to be remembered for lifetimes to come. Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln ,Gautam Buddha and many other other unknown honest and great souls on earth had one thing in common i.e. Honest,Genuine and Non-Violent.
Just remember one thing in life"Simplicity and Genuineness of Purpose overcomes even the most difficult times".

The Sixth Sense!

We all grew up interacting with the physical objects  around us and they are in enormous numbers which we use in our everyday life. Unlike our most computing devices they are mostly fun to use. When we talk about objects one thing that comes automatically attached to it, is gesture. How we use gestures to manipulate this object and to interact with them as well interacting with each other.Gestures like waving hands for saying bye can automatically be understood. We don’t need to have training classes for that or a gesture of Namastey can be easily understood in India as wishing someone with respect. It automatically comes as a part of our everyday learning. So the thing is how can we leverage our knowledge about everyday objects and how can we use them to interact with the digital world. Rather than using a computer or a mouse why can’t we  interact with them the same way we interact with the physical world . We humans are never interested in computing but all we are interested is in getting information. Laptops plus smartphones lets effortless access to computing power .But how can we move a step further rather than looking like a machine sitting in front of a machine to gain that information. Why can’t we carry all the information ourselves rather than searching it on our laptops, smartphones or any other machines. How can we assimilate our digital world with the real world?

Perhaps the most interesting areas of creativity and technology now are where the digital and the real worlds meet. Pioneers in gestural interfaces promise to bring that. Movies like Minority Report or Microsoft’s Project Natal controller-less game system already has given us the exciting peek into the future. But outside of that, perhaps never has the future been so amazingly captured as in Pranav Mistry ‘s demonstration of something called sixth sense. He is one of the inventors. He is a research assistant and a PhD candidate at MIT Media Lab. The Sixth Sense prototype is a wearable device like a pendant that allows users to interact with all modes of data and virtual information with physical gestures. It is comprised of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. According to Mistry it’s made up of trouble-free features, but it does some crazy things. In the demo, Mistry is seen holding up his hands in a photo framing gesture, and actually taking a picture , then browsing pictures on a nearby surface ,then sending photos by dialling numbers on his hand.

Recently, SixthSense has engrossed worldwide attention .Just imagine, the ease with which you can access all the information available as you carry it yourself. By simply drawing @ sign in air on any blank wall or piece of paper you will be able to check your mail. Imagine a system that can display the reason of your flight delay on the boarding ticket itself which your holding in your hand.

 Currently, the prototype costs less then Rs. 15,000. This technology when fully developed will have open source software as Pranav claims and he will provide all demonstrations on how to use it. Well, it will be giant leap in technological evolution. We always observe anything, any place or come to any decision through our five senses. But arguably the most useful information that can help us make the correct decision is not naturally perceivable with our five senses, specifically the data, information and knowledge that mankind has accumulated about everything and which is ever more all accessible online. SixthSense bridges this gap allowing us to interact with this information via natural hand gestures. ‘SixthSense’ frees information from its confines by seamlessly integrating it with reality, and thus making the entire world your computer.

Lobbyist : Nobody tells me What to Do or Say?

 I had lunch at Luytens’, played golf at the exclusive greens of Delhi Golf Club and had a private party at Minister’s official residence and dozen other places. Who am I ? Currently, in India I am termed as an ambiguous phenomenon. People scream from rooftops to curb me ,dismantle me, regulate me and so on. I belong to a super-exclusive group which have members like Niira Radia,Tony Jesudasan, Deepak Talwar, Suhel Seth,  V. Balasubramaniun, Dilip Cherian etc.. I am a Lobbyist.

According to Wiki’s description, “A lobbyist is a person who tries to influence legislation on behalf of a special interest or a member of a lobby. Governments often define and regulate organized group lobbying that has become influential”.

Hail the world of the influencers who fit in to a small breed of men and women. The clan who understands that to generate more money out of money, you must manage power. In addition, power is managed in many ways. Slick conversation, apt response, subtle pressure, camouflaged media reports, a coordinated design of public good and always the last resort: personal profit. They carry forward these skills and resources to benefit their clients. Finally, the question arises “Who are the clients”? They are big MNCs’, politicians, businesspersons and numerous other people or organisations. It engages people from all quarters like senior retired bureaucrats, lawyers, PR agents, media persons with some legitimate and influential industrial lobbying groups like CII, FICCI etc. to push forward the influence in policymaking. An industrial organisation may claim of playing political advocacy. But even they know that advocacy is always a nicer replacement for the term lobbying.

In United States and elsewhere on the globe, lobbying is a legitimate activity. Lobbying firms are prevalent in every public sphere of influence. Some lobby for greenery, some for more oil and some for civil rights. Yet , the good thing is ,they are regulated with laws at place. But, in India it is something far more unclear. Lobbyists here, fancy to be heard rather than being overheard .Overheard here is meant for the people who are none of their businesses. Definitely, Niira Radia got overheard. Even if she didn’t try ,her leaked out tapes of 2G spectrum allocation scam did push that doomsday button. She didn’t scream out but her tapes did about how a policy is influenced by most powerful in India. The tapes affirmed the facts about how these powers do manipulation regarding which minister to have a certain portfolio, what flexible policies to be made in near future and to move forward the names of person to discard who develop into bone of contention, with a sole motive to benefit the influential. What followed thereafter was a natural progression demanding for lobbying laws in our country.

Unquestionably, lobbying has reached either a point where it influences or attempts in who holds the ministerial rank. What we need is revelations. For sure, lobbying is not legal in India but it’s not illegal as well. At this point, resisting lobbying is never a solution but regulating it though a flexible law certainly is. As too stringent laws on regulating or restricting it too much threatens people’s interest. We must realize that. Politics is all about the conflict of interests. Especially if the citizens demand, the importance lies in greater  disclosure, transparency and sincerity because public do have a distinct right to know why policy makers are formulating the decisions they do and who has influenced the taking of those decisions. India must open up to lobbying, to legalize it and make it apparent for the public interest. Someone quoted it right “The President is people’s lobbyist”. That’s why Lobbyism shouldn’t be subject to dismantle but certain lobbyists should be.

Freedom Of Speech & Common Sense Do Run Together !

A few centuries back French philosopher Voltaire quoted “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Freedom of Speech or Expressions is such a right. The devoid of it is despotism. With this indispensable freedom for human race come two associated requisites: One is rationality and the other is accountability. We as a citizen of India are equally responsible of what we express and how we express without crossing the limits of common sense that prevails in all of us in some way or other. Everyone does have a right is a right word in democracy .Although ,when it is not understood or exercised in true perspective of freedom subsequently it release fumes of hatred, ,violence, misinterpretations and hostility among the same people for whom it was meant.

There are numerous instances concerning why at times this inevitable requirement backfires at our own institution. Way back in 1996, India’s most celebrated painter Maqbool Fida Hussain created furore in Hindu community by painting the naked deities of Goddesses Saraswati, Parvati, Durga and Draupadi on canvas. His creative autonomy did allow him to do so, but the free will was not aimed for such negligent artworks in a country where people are relatively sensitive over religious issues. He certainly failed to recognize that. Besides, he has  got no right to hurt the sentiments through his artwork every other day and then come apologizing for the same thing done again and again. This entire episode was not a story of Islamic prejudice but a story of Hindu sensibility getting insulted. Even the people and extremist Hindu organizations affiliated with them had no right to sabotage his artworks. Knowingly or unknowingly, if Hussain misunderstood the belief on canvas so did the extremist Hindu groups by vandalizing it. Both lie on the same side of a coin who misapprehend the whole idea.

Recently, noted author and social activist Arundhati Roy gave a provocative speech underlining her full support for Kashmir’s separatist movement. Nothing new by her as Pakistan has been airing such sentiments from rooftops for decades. Furthermore, Roy says Maoists are “Gandhians with Guns”. Anyone with even an ounce of an idea about the diligent non-violent freedom struggle by Mahatma Gandhi can say that this particular declaration by her really disagrees with the Gandhian philosophy. Roy’s blatant comment without doubt tells us how to differentiate between a scholar and squalor. Any citizen can’t render his/her political or artistic statement depending on their personal mood swings. And if you think all these comes under the right and I have it, to use it as I want and wherever I want to ,than even the government has got the power to curtail it whenever  mandatory.

Although a political statement is an art of how we choose words and craft accordingly but having some common wisdom should always be the keyword to it. A political comment on any political situation must be judged politically rather than as a right. Freedom of expression is not an art but an essential political power of any citizen in India. Still, at the end of the day any seditionist speeches or defamatory artworks are not liable to be curtailed until it becomes a real threat to the unity and integrity of India. The principle behind this idea is far more essential then any individual. Using this liberty for the rationale of publicity is a disregard of this right.

We all are free to say anything as long as our speech or expression does not invade the fundamental freedom of others or cause damage to anyone. The basic design of this belief is not at the expense of causing harm to others. However, in reality what counts as harmless is a complex and unresolved issue. Eventually, the solution remains in reasoning it through our common sense. The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. Therefore, the power given to us must know and sense what to overlook. At last finishing with a famous statement that says  “A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew.” So, prior to actually biting more than you can chew, it is highly recommended to have some common wisdom in understanding this idea.

Why we can’t have a unifying base Language For Mankind ?

Language is such a complex and diverse system of communication that no one actually knows when it started and how it started. A language like the mother of all languages is a highly debatable issue. It is a significant development that happened to human history of evolution, yet one can’t conclusively trace the history of it or be sure to say where actually language originated from. Spoken language requires speech from vocal tracts of human body. So how humans started producing sound for speech?

Researchers claim that our first sign were primitive gestures and sounds developed much later. Around 50,000 years ago humans were supposed to have developed the behavioural modernity .That modernity laid the foundation stone for the evolution of language. Currently it is estimated that around 6000 to 7000 languages are spoken in the world. The first thing that anyone discovers while learning a foreign language is the diversity as the primary characteristics of human language. A language can never evolve if the contact between person to person is more than enough to communicate. There can’t be a unifying base language for humans as some sentence structures have no basis at all in some culture, so automatically the concept of universal grammar dies.

Recently , a linguist researcher named Daniel Everett contradicted what Noam Chomsky, the most important linguist of our times proposed. Back in 1957 Chomsky proposed the idea of universal grammar. He believed that power of language is biologically given and all sentences spoken at any moment all over the world follow the same rules of processing done by our organ of speech. Everett researched on a Brazilian tribe named Piraha who formulate sentences without using any subordinate or dependent clauses. A dependent clause begins with a subordinate conjunctions like ‘after’, ‘as’, ‘once’ etc. or a relative pronoun like ‘that’, ‘who’, ‘whom’ etc. and will contain a subject and a verb. This combination of words will not form a complete sentence. It will instead make a reader want additional information to finish the thought. According to the grammatical rules of almost all the languages in the world we need to use dependent clauses to complete the thought of a sentence while structuring it but the Piraha tribe doesn’t need them at all to formulate the sentence which is indeed quite shocking and contradicting as well to what linguist researcher Chomsky believed in. The language of Piraha has a simple sound system which includes three vowels and seven consonants for women and eight for men. So, this research really contradicts the universal grammar concept moved forward by Chomsky and about the inborn ability of all people to structure their speech using certain grammatical rules. The paucity of the language that Piraha tribe use is what makes them special. Even the way they count is entirely a different concept.Suppose you put three apples infront of them , then they will bring another three to show the exact numerical figure of apples. But they won’t retain the exact number in their heads for long and that happens because the abstract concept of ‘three’ is non existent for them.This again contradicts Noam Chomsky and his followers who believe that counting numerically is an innate quality of human beings. To Everett it is more of a cultural invention and a kind of storing technology. Dan Everett has been there with the tribe for almost 30 years learning and researching on their language. Paoxaisi is the name by which the Piraha know Dan Everett.

Well, more the research goes on, the more we come out with new, unexplored and never known facts. No one can possibly provide a one thumb rule regarding the diversity of languages here and how it is related to the inborn quality of human beings towards the language. Almost all languages run on the basis of grammatical rules but the language of Piraha doesn’t follow grammar at all in structuring their sentences. Ultimately, humans are too complex a phenomenon to have some certain rules regarding languages set to them and followed thereafter. The debate continues to rage on forever from where and how language originated and evolved. The sheer beauty and diversity of various languages makes it a complicated phenomenon to understand.

 So, the final conclusive words on it’s birth, evolution and development seems never ending and highly debatable.  Of course there can be one language which majority can speak up and understand but it is impossible to have a common language which everyone will understand and speak.

Are We Conditioned?

During the early 1800’s, British faced a peculiar problem in sub-continent regarding communication. As a ruling class they found it quite difficult to bond India due to linguistic diversities the country had. The entire education structure in India consisted of many languages and dialects. So their plans to educate Indians became quite a complex issue of understanding. The cultural differences were huge. The entire education set up was vastly different then what they had in their own country. The education survey and research was done about what can be done and what needs to be done to bond each and every Indian by some common spoken language. At that point of time Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic were the classical traditional languages spoken and but not widely understood by Indians. The Council of Education was formulated and given the task to restructure the education system. But the members of the council themselves were divided on which language to be chosen as the medium of instruction. The council was presided by a British gentleman named T.B. Macaulay who was appointed by then Governor General William Bentinck. On 2^nd February 1835, he gave a speech regarding that in British parliament. He said “It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.” What he meant was to bond and educate Indians by common superior language English as their medium of instruction.

Even a century and half later his "Minute To Education" continues ringing on our education system. The British Empire may have vanished into pages of history but the legacy doesn't seem to end. Knowingly or unknowingly, what Macaulay did to our education system is known as conditioning . 

From then onwards English got inserted into education system. Teaching of native religious books or literature in the foreign language conditioned the entire pattern of thinking. Elite class got heavily influenced and preaching as well as practicing English got heavily imbibed into our education system. People started forgetting the importance of their own mother tongue. Don’t you think that it is a disregard to call a great poet like Kalidasa ‘The Shakespeare of India’s. Kalidasa was born centuries before the Shakespeare happened. It is not about comparing the work of literary geniuses of different eras but more about demeaning the work of one because of the other. We consider foreign products more superior than the indigenous ones. Officially almost all works in central government is done in English medium rather than our vastly spoken language of Hindi. Today we are the largest speaking nation of English language. Isn’t it such a contrast to see things happening in this way. If given a choice , education abroad, working abroad or even settling abroad is preferred more over our own country. The phenomenal growth of English medium schools are a perfect example of our preference of English over Hindi. The entire brain drain phenomenon arises out one single thing  , that is conditioning of our minds since we were born in our country. The education system conditions our mind in such a way that we start disrespecting our own culture. India is nation where sex is a taboo subject to discuss and yet it is also a land where Kamasutra was born. So what a contrast, the things we taught the world regarding sex education is now looked down upon. Foreigners flock Khajuraho more than we Indians do. Why Suit and Tie is a formal dress code for us,why not our own traditional dresses.That is western way of formal dressing not the Indian way .Why we start picking up poem of Humpty Dumpty more quickly then ‘Yeh Kadambh Ka Ped Agar Maa Hota Yamuna Teere’?Why is Hi or Hello slowly replacing Namastey?

 It has been famously said that creativity and originality can hardly find expression in a language other than the mother tongue . Is English our mother tongue ? Absolutely not ,then how can we expect ourselves to be original or creative. This is what conditioning is all about and it is too deep rooted a problem. And the solution lies is questioning ourselves on how ,when and why this happened and why we get succumbed to it quite often rather than making Lord Macaulay our favorite whipping boy.

Whistleblowers Unlimited !

A saying goes like “When a canary is singing , our environment is healthy but when it stops singing or it is silenced, it signifies grave dangers ahead”. A whistleblower is like a canary to any organisation  or  body of people, who raises a voice concerned to any malpractices or wrongdoings going in the same. Daniel Ellsberg, Michael Paul, Paul Moore, Jeffrey Wigand, John Lennon, Satyendra Dubey and Manjunath Shanmugham to name a few ,where the one who blew up the cover that covered the organisation’s scams, swindles, rip-offs an atrocities. And mind you, it is a legitimate act of bravery which can never be carried forward by faint hearted person.

A way back in 1971, the most famous case of a whistle blowing happened. Daniel Ellsberg, a former U.S. marine and a Vietnam war veteran exposed how the successive U.S. governments had dragged the country into the immoral war with Vietnam . The top secret defence documents were exposed and the scam came to be known as Watergate Scandal. The U.S government didn’t sit quiet after that and they instantly responded by prosecuting Ellsberg on multiple false charges. But even after deploying all the tactics against Ellsberg ,the hue and cry over the prosecution ultimately led to the downfall and impeachment of President Richard Nixon at that point of time. Physical attacks, mental torture ,defamation, threatening calls and everything worse that could have been done was simply played on Ellsberg. But that didn’t deterred him or the truth from unfolding out. This was first big whistle blowing incident and legendary of sorts in it’s own way. Many such Ellsbergs have followed thereafter.

But the uncertainties regarding the security and protection of a whistleblower plays a requires immediate attention. Many whistleblowers have been assassinated after they have blown up the cover. Therefore, protecting the lives of whistleblower remains the main hiccup. So far democracies like U.S.A, U.K., New Zealand and Australia have been successful in enacting the protection bill. The first bill regarding the Protect Act was placed in U.S.A  in 1989 and it got amended as a law in 1994. It safeguards and protects the public interest disclosures made by federal employees.

 In India NHAI engineer, Satyendra Dubey was killed after he disclosed the irregularities and malpractices regarding the Golden Quadrilateral Project in a letter to PMO. Inspite of his insistence on masking his identity the letter was forwarded to various concerned departments which finally led to his murder. On November 19 2005, Manjunath Shanmugham, an IIM graduate and a sales manager working in IOCL was killed when he reported and exposed the mafia racket behind petrol adulteration in India. All these led to huge public outcry ,resulting in filing of numerous Public Interest Litigations which ultimately led our Supreme Court to act and seek a permanent mechanism to protect whistle blowers. So ,in 2009 Public Interest Disclosure Bill was placed in our Parliament for safeguarding them. The bill is yet to get passed in the legislature. This is yet another revolutionary Bill after the RTI was enforced as law in India.

If the bill gets passed , some people may act and some may not act out of fear or whatever. But one thing that is quite certain to happen is that, it will definitely minimize corruption to a great scale. Mr. We need whistleblowers to curb and dismantle those who are damaging the social strata for their own personal benefits. That’s why whistle blowing in need is a whistleblower indeed.