Privileges

What we are is defined by how we use privileges given to us.

Whether in personal life or in professional. We are entrusted with privileges thinking that we will make good use of them and will not abuse them.

Entire social hierarchies and control mechanism have come into being because people started building tendencies to abuse such privileges.

Stop and think before you are doing so. Because you may soon find that these privileges are taken back from you. And not just you but even your peers.

You are not just affecting your own life but life of people touched by your existence.

Journey

Destinations are quiet places where we want to reach in the end.

Journey is what makes reaching there fun and enjoyable.

Journeys are where we make friendships and forge relationships.

Destination is just a carrot to keep us going, journey is what we really want.

Problem is we often realize that only when we reach the destination.

Perhaps we can start thinking less about destination and more about journey.

Good

Most times we have best things heart and yet we are often perceived to be bad.

As human race has evolved our minds are closing us into more and more paranoid thoughts. Because of this our mind has actually closed for things which are generally good.

Most of us dont like to pause and think about things which may seem bad but might actually be in our best interest. Might have been done in very casual sense with out meaning anything.

Because of this we have to focus more and more on being perceived good rather than on just being good. And being perceived good is far easier to fake and hence people can deceive you. Which will force more paranoid thoughts and more cheating.

World will be much better if all had a moment to think.

Eg - In India we have two major political parties - congress and BJP. congress is the one which has very successful faked in being perceived good where as BJP unfortunately a really good party has always been bad at that. Hopefully situation will change sooner than later.

Tangent - If you have seen a movie click by Adam Sandler then I have always related automation of mundane tasks to automation of emotion processing. We need to stop doing that.

Jealousy

Is your life based upon how others see you? How much bragging rights you have in group of people? Are you always tormented by inferiority complex about little things? Then you can never succeed in life.

Problem with jealousy is - it will always force you to be with people who are inferior to you. Who are perhaps not as gifted as you are or not as ambitious as you are.

Have you ever thought of planning your life in a way where you will have those bragging rights 10 years down the line in your peer group rather than in your friend circle?

Your mentor generally awakens you to see beyond immediate success and failure. That is the most important job of a mentor. Mentor will train you to detach from immediate short term satisfaction to long term persistent euphoria.

Do you have such mentor? No. You should start searching for one.

Example from Mahabharat - Karna's continuous jealousy towards Arjun was his down fall. Because of the jealousy and because of his longing for short term satisfaction he decided to challenge him for a dual during the graduation day contest and one thing lead to another and he found himself in eternal debt of the wrong man.

Do not let this happen to you!

Woman who almost became THE one

I used to write a blog about people who have became special for me. People who are part of me and will always remain to be so. On this day of World Women's Day, this post is dedicated to the one girl who really made me happy, while it lasted. You know I am talking about you.

Dear Princess,

A strange mistake is often termed as destiny. In our case it was almost destiny. You shared her name and that lead to so many things. That one mistake is probably the only mistake in my life which I will perhaps make infinite number of times given a chance. Unfortunately life is not simple and I wont get that chance now, ever.

Chatting with you almost 24 by 7, on chat, on email on phone. Waking up at 7am in the morning, after having just said good night at 6am never felt so good and perhaps will never feel so good again. Songs that we sang for each other and the dreams that we created for each other will always be cherished and that I know.

Where ever you are now, stay the way you are. You are too good to be true and perhaps that is the reason, we are not together. I never believed it is for real. Retrospecting, I should have believed it. I should have submitted to it. But alas, when its not meant to be its not meant to be.

My princess, rani, babes and darling - I will always love you.

Comment on current political wars in Maharashtra

India became a country about 63 years ago. Before that there was no existence of the country. We embraced a democratic and unified government with a build up to it from 1930, post The non-co-operation movement lead by Mahatma Gandhi. Actual realization of it happened in 1947, post a very troubling world war - II. Perhaps not much for India, but for most of the western of world as we see it.

Now how all of these things affect or are related to current Marathi asmita related problems. Please note - I am not trying to blame any one, neither I am trying to provide a escapist view that if these things happen, let them happen, lets all move on from one crisis to other.

Few notes -
1. India as a country is very young. Only reason we became a country is we all had a common enemy in British.
2. India is a very big country. Population of India is more than a billion and thats a lot of people.
3. We have many different cultures and languages with in the this country. But most of these cultures where never part of a unified government before British rule. And even under British rule, all parts of India did not have exactly same rules. Also some parts of India, even during british rule were governed by Kings, even if amount of power these kings had was nominal. Some of the areas were ruled by other outsiders like Portuguese, French or African Siddi's.
4. Many of these cultures have had a violent past with each other, based on political aspects. For example Suja's of Bengal and Peshwas of Pune clashed. Nizam's , Adilshashi, Chikkmangalaur's King, Chhatrapati Shivaji, Bundels, Gorakhas all fought with each other at some point or the other.
5. The north and south, typically above Narmada and below Tapi respectively, are 2 regions which were never part of same government. North saw dynasties of Vikramaditya, Shrung, Maurya, Mughals. Where as south saw dynasties of Satvahanas, Vijaynagar, Peshwas, Nizams etc.
6. If British rule was not there, India as a country would probably have never existed. We have had democracy, but in sub-parts.

So essentially, even though we are taught in school that we a country of different cultures and values, what we arent told is we as a nation, as country are recent concepts.

How this is different from other countries - neither country on this planet has such history. For example United Kingdom of Great Britain is still a sovereign state of four countries. Even though these four countries are bound by same governance, they still have their individual identity intact like 4 different cricket teams or Soccer teams etc.

So even though we can all debate about being a nation and one rule for all, we need to also understand that perhaps having one single rule and one single identity for such a big and diversified nation is perhaps not a good idea. I still love you all Indians and I know you all love me too. But it is my natural instinct and perhaps a right to protect my people. And when its comes to defining my people physical closeness is more important than governing closeness. I will care about the stranger living in my colony more than I can care about stranger living in some distant part of India.

Disclaimer - Idea behind this post is not to support any kind of violence or any kind of division based politics. But if we as a nation, as one single country cant solve Kaveri water issue in 40 years, perhaps we dont deserve to be one single nation.

Update: The questions that I am asking in this post are not for any individual, group, but for myself and perhaps my readers. I have been stuck with this questions since I learned about Riots against Sikhs and after I did a study about various regional debates happened in last 6 decades ie post independence.

Meaning of democracy

I remember to read a book which discussed true meaning of democracy in depth. I can not recollect name of the book as I read it long back when I was in school. But few things from that book.

Democracy by definition is for the people, by the people, of the people. Now if you look at current implementation of these democracies all across world, what you see is a large nation which has kind of a senate/loksabha where all parts of that nation sends representatives.
If you look at the Autocracies in history, especially if you dig deep into Shung Dynasty and how they ruled in around 500 years starting from 200 AD to 700 AD in Northern part of India ie above Narmada then it is completely different. What happened was there is one central decision making mechanism which decides bold points. It will be in control of decisions which affects all parts of the nation. For example foreign policy, military. It creates few simple rules which are implemented across all parts of nation.
Most interesting thing is, there is no fixed definition of the part. A village can be a part, a State or Prant can be a part. So what people get is micro level control in decision making process.
Courts, Tax structures, Policy making committees were defined at any of such Part level. Group villages can agree to become a single unit to form a larger part. Such groups can come together to form an even larger part and so on so forth.

The advantage is - People are involved in democracy.

Current implementation that we see across the world, be it parliamentary democracy is people involvement is limited to selecting representation. So the basic idea was that people will choose wisely and better people to represent them. But this assumption does not hold true, as people have chosen wrong representatives all the time. Many times due to lack of availability of good people who are interested in representing them.

In part-based democracy, we force people to be involved always, which makes sure that good people, better people who have the requisite qualities necessary to lead are also involved. People are not merely voters but also executers.

Voting is probably the least important responsibility for a person in democracy. Often we do glorify it to be the most important. Reason why I think it is least important is, voting is merely selection. But execution of decision making, development plans are more important than selection. Off course voting is also important but not as much as selection.

Second advantage - Fixed decision makers.

In current form of democracy, especially in India, what we see is some parties come together after election. They break away. People change parties all the time. Around the world also, there is not fixed party which runs the country for longer period.
Which means that lot of importance in given to administrative staffs, who are not elected members. They do not represent people. But yet they have decision making powers.
In part based systems, since the decision making is done by the part, which is a physical section of the larger nation, it essentially means that decision makers are going to be same people over a longer period of time. Off course, there will be migrations, immigrations which will affect this. But still I think around 90% of people will be similar. Who understand each other, who understand each others problems better.

One argument you can have is - In India there is already such system in place. From gram-panchayat to Loksabha we have micro to macro level of decision making levels.
But I doubt it is implemented correctly. In principal, yes it is there and we can be involved in the decision making and execution process. But only upto certain extent. That extent of participation is not at correct level.
For example, Nasik as a part can not decide its on tax structure. Tax paid by Nasik people, is used only partly in Nasik and there is no transparency to that as well. So money I earned and tax I paid from that is not used by government to provide me with better infrastructure, develop my own city or 'Part'. True, that tax paid by larger parts is used in development of smaller parts, but that should not have been the case. Why should I be responsible for development of other parts of my nation. We are enforcing a rule which is not correct in true sense of democracy. Tax is one such issue, and may be the most controversial one, but if you start thinking about it then, there are many such issues.

For example - Take case of the Tata Nano project in Singure. If we truly had the micro level democracy in place, the issue would not have blown so much out of proportion. All Tata would have to do is take permission from the micro-level decision making framework and execute the project there if they agree. Why the larger part West Bengal needs to be involved. Its their land and they should decide what they want to do about it. They should decide the terms and conditions with Tata directly.

I know that education will be an argument when we think about such framework. People are not educated, people dont understand their own good and hence we need policy makers etc. But we are talking about democracy here. If we dont trust peoples judgment they how can we run a democracy?

More to come in later posts.