National Heroes

Well I tend to have radical thoughts on most things, so if you're the conformist type, please read no further..... For those ready to look past the obvious, well read on...

India has been a fool's nation for far too long a duration ... We've always worshipped men and worshipped them to an extent where it no longer remains reasonable....It becomes despicable. It has reached to a point where the most fundamental of all rights is limited to only the written constitution. Anything that goes against a "somebody" is opposed blindly by his/her followers.

Leaders are expected to follow the party lines, no matter what. This is the height of foolishness. What makes our people so docile and insipid ? And while that is so, we as a people are still arrogant enough to blindly declare ourselves as the "greatest democracy" . Well I don't see any reason to cheer our ability to grow our population.....how about trying to judge our ability to provide these people the very basic necessities of life (let me tell you, dignity has to be above food , shelter and clothing in my book when it comes to the basic necessities.

Coming back to our heroes.

We credit Mr. M.K.Gandhi as the bringer of the freedom. I see this as a nonsensical belief and the fact in my is that the British left India as a part of their new post-world war strategy of spreading their empire by other means (as the war had made them realize that physical occupation is not a sustainable method of long term control.) . Mr Gandhi only delayed the attainment of independence through his arbitrary decisions ( which appear to be tactical if you don't mind believing in the idea that Mr. Gandhi could have been a mole planted by the British themselves to dilute the armed uprising in India through the "ahinsak" propaganda.) At best , Mr Gandhi was an impractical idealist who could hardly look past his prejudices and did not care putting the greater good at risk for his "ideals". Why then would we praise him for taking us to freedom ?

The only reason that the powers that be want to promote "gandhi-ism" seems to be that they want the people to remain docile. They fear the prospect of an armed revolution. They know that the people will unite and fight back if pushed beyond an extent and the only way to prevent this is to attack their ideologies from a young age. Hence this teaching of "showing your other cheek when slapped on one" ...... This ensures that the general population remains subservient to them and never revolts.

This however is not enough. We were coming up with a potentially change inducing student revolution in the late 70s and the early 80's. The youth was apparently not prepared to lie down an accept whatever was fed to it. People were ready to fight for their rights,particularly the younger lot with their energy manifesting itself in protests. The rulers clearly saw this and apparently decided to come up with a policy of blurring the vision and thought processes of the young in India. This policy apparently included changing their value system to a point where material gains are all that they care about. It also appeared to include using the the media to incrementally lure the masses into a state where they become excessively obsessed about sex and sexuality. The young people across India (and across the world) have been fed with TV, Cinema and Commercials which place before them ideals that they are supposed to emulate. They are supposed to look "sexy" and "cool" before all else and this is too big a distraction...big enough to make the pertinent appear irrelevant and the farce appear obvious. Human mind functions in strange ways, what we se is what we choose to ...it depends on our perspective as much as anything else and that also determines our responses.

Now that the powers that be have the national population in a docile and subservient state, the only thing that can possibly awake them is a sense of shock. It could come from utter humiliation-- which is why they keep feeding us about this "Mera bharat mahaan" and "India Growth story" and the "India to be in top 3 by 2050" ......But they will not just be upbeat, they also keep challenging the collective national consciousness by posing threats...thus the fears are propagated by the media. The media plays to their tune automatically as the values of commercialism make them seek TRPs. Fear attracts people to the TV sets, this automatically turns the news channels and newspapers into "Fear spreading agencies" . The state of fear makes sure that:

1. The people feel a sense of togetherness and "collective paranoia" -- this cripples critical thinking.

2. People do not completely believe the positive propaganda either(mera bharat mahaan stuff) because after complete belief in a false idea, disillusionment is inevitable.

3. This is done only to an extent such that the people can neither completely agree nor disagree with the propaganda. Thus falling slaves to their fears -which are planted and exploited by the media.

Some common fears used to exploit people:

1.Terrorism.
2.Global Warming(CO2)
3.Diseases.
4.War (Hostile Nation)
5.Unknown (Mostly non-existent) fears.

each of the above are used to good effect...

e.g: The US invation to IRAQ:

Pretext: Presence of WMD's in IRAQ (Fear) --Potential terrorist attack on American soil (fear) .

This helped the US justify the invation of Iraq and helped companies like Haliburton.

Pretext: The possibiliy of a power crisis

Helped justify the India-US nuclear deal when about 75% of India's Hydro-electric potential is unttapped. (http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2007/01/13/stories/2007011303631000.htm)

Well It is late...I am drowsy (I must have made lots of typos and grammatical mistakes :P. ... ) and I might have to leave for home tomorrow, So I would end this here for now and shall complete it later (Probably on the 4th of next year) .


BTW: Happy New Year 2010. !! :D

Was Just about to sleep when I did a google search on Arun Shourie .... Came up with this article [Click here for the article] ...It is about how low has the level of politics in india stooped. It begins with the practices used by the "Goddess" Indira during the emergency and goes on to talk about the rot in the "party with a difference" ....yes you guessed it....the BJP. The indian political scenario is a travesty and I lay most (if not all) of the blame on the media's willingness to report without consideration.

The media is either itself sold out or is so busy targeting the TRPs that it hardly cares if the truth dies in the mad rush for money.

Link (again)

Food

Yesterday I was watching a documentary titled "Food Inc." it showed how major corporations like Monsanto are playing with the lives of billions and are gaining control of the world's entire food supply. These corporations are doing their best to get into India and the fate of our farmers is now squarely in the hands of the government-- which may have several "reasons" to allow entry to these "GM seed" manufacturers. The plight of farmers in the USA is sure to be repeated in india---the only difference being that the struggle for the Indian farmers would not be to maintain the status of their lives but would be to stay alive instead.

Anyone who does not know about the most disgusting organization in the world (read- Monsanto) must check out the documentary - "The world according to monsanto" . It is a chilling account of how the company is responsible for millions, yes MILLIONS of deaths.

CAT , The Corporatization of education, and the democracy:

CAT , The Corporatization of education, and the democracy:

Well I absolutely had no intention of writing this or anything like this till about two days ago. I knew that the IIMs had outsourced the CAT examination processes to Prometric, and I didn’t really think much of it. Things would begin to change soon though.

A few days before the test date (I was to take the test on day one- first shift), a message was displayed on the IIM website that forbade the test takers from disclosing any information regarding the test.

This is directly against the fundamental right to expression and the only possible reason for the same could be that Prometric does not want it’s “proprietary” information shared publicly. Yeah right, we pay , take a test and are now not even allowed to discuss it ….whatever happened to civil liberties.

The organizers may argue that it is to ensure a fair playing field for all applicants but it is lame and there are ways to make sure that that does not happen----one just has to be a little innovative with selection of the questions.

More shocks were to come- As we(3 friends) came to the test centre – we were totally Pissed Off to see the long queue where every Single student was being frisked as if we were terrorists or something. We were required to carry an official ID and were not allowed anything, anything, I repeat ANYTHING !!! Inside the testing room . Not even pens, pencils, erasers etc. Any explanations, IIMs? (Except that Prometric did not want any “sensitive” information to go public.)

To add to it, We were required to give Fingerprint scans before testing. This is OUTRAGEOUS and students can not be treated like this. Fingerprint IS a part of an individual’s privacy and the moment we stop respecting people’s right to privacy, the very foundations of democracy are threatened.

People’s rights took thousands of sacrifices before they were restored and it is sad that the present generation hardly thinks beyond being “cool” . The corporate media looks at them not as humans but as mere consumers and in the process uses

People hardly understand the significance of this – this could well be point of inflection in the process of corporatization of higher education in India. The government has some control over the IIMs but they are largely independent. They already have started charging exorbitant fees from students which make them prohibitively costly for anyone from the middle or lower middle class of the nation.

Considering the fact that most top corporate positions in the nation are held by people from the IIMs and other management institutions of similar repute who charge the same insane amounts of money (if not more) for their degrees, This makes it impossible for the middle class to have any representation in the Corporate world.

While it might not sound like much, It has Huge consequences for the following reason.

Ø The corporate decision makers increasingly have no understanding of the living conditions, culture, and realities of a vast majority (about 90%) of the nation’s population. They are from the rich class and are picked by the rich to serve the rich. It leads to decisions that further skew the balance in favor of the already rich---thus ensuring an alienation of the not-so-rich from the fate of the nation.

The above is important now because the decisions that really matter in an open and liberal economy are the ones from the corporate world (since they cause all the so called “growth”) and by restricting access to the top corporate positions, the system makes the term “democracy” meaningless .

Ø It is again imperative to realize that it is the corporates who ultimately call the shots even when it comes to several major decisions on matters of national interest. It is obvious that the political parties receive bulk funding from them and the corporates use it to good effect to have their interests taken care of .

I sincerely hope that the people will read the above with an open mind and understand the inherent risks of turning from a democracy into a corporatocracy. The USA is a prime example and we are already on the road to it. What we must grasp as a nation is the fact that growth is more than just numbers (read GDP growth). If 40% of the population is struggling for bread and the top 20% are more concerned about wardrobe malfunctions, fashion statements, movies and rock concerts, the regulators and planners are happy (and concerned only) with the GDP figures and the politicians are happy with their positions—all I can say that it is a civilization built by humans but there is hardly anything human about it.