We Indians, Anna Hazare and his mission against corruption

One thing is for sure that, Anna Hazare has the support of Indians in his mission against corruption. People have faith in him and not in the leaders they have voted and sent to govern the country. But these people, when it comes to electing their MPs, MLAs are mostly ignorant. The criteria for electing somebody there is not the performance but varios other attributes.

One party, while acting against one of the senior leaders who was facing the corruption charges, was afraid that if they act against him they will loose the support from the cast community he belongs. Now if it is a true fear, then the question is why somebody supports a person who is facing corruption charges, just because he is from the same cast ?  As an individual, ones duty does not end with merely suporting a good mission by shouting slogans, posting messages on wall, one has to ensure that in his personal life he / she practices the non-corruption.

when it comes to individual responsibilities as a citizen everybody needs the revolution from within. Follow the traffic rules, pay the tax, dont stop the electricity meters (for somebody dont steal it), dont ask for undue favours because you are a officer, from local community, a rich person. I have seen people jumping the queus and when questioned they ask you do you know "who am I"? Unless people come out of "who am I" mentality and treat everybody with equility corruption will be there.

Corruption is not just scams done by politicians, it is asking for favours by any means. One goes to temple and seeks help from the priest who is his friend to jump the queue. A gang of 10-12 people jump the bus-ticket queue just because they have the united numbers and the other people can not fight against them or dont want to do that. Doing personal work in office hours is corruption, using office resources for personal use is corruption.

For one thing I want to agree with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is that, "Lokpal" is not a magic wand to remove the corruption at once, but yes that is the first step. The elected leaders have to lead by example and make "Lokpal" reality.

Looking forward for the "Lokpal" to become reality but more important is to remove corruption completely and it is duty of each person to be a non-corrupt Indian.

India - Where are we heading ?

This morning, I came across an incident. A military person was trying to stop vehicles so that the horses can cross the road. Everybody tried to go past him from all possible routes, sombody actually hit few horses. Then eventually more military people came and helped him.
This incident is an example of where we are heading as a country. The answer is to Chaos.

If a common citizen does not want to follow some basic rules and want to rush through by all possible means, what do we exepct from our so called leaders i.e. politicians ? They are also doing the same thing.

Sometimes, when I look around, I see that now days nobody is ashamed of corrupt practices. As long as you have money, influence, support of people you can do anything in this country. If somebody wants to do a govt. job, the only reason is to get the benefits, the income other than regular and legal income (under the table) sometimes without working.

Even in pvt. industries, given a choice people will not work unless supervisor / manager monitors them. Asking somebody to focus on work which is his / her duty is considered as an offence. Supervisors / managers in pvt companies specially IT industry are supposed to motivate people for doing there regular duty.

With this mindset, are we really going to be a superpower ? Do we have the maturity ? Do we care for the society , country ?

Being sensitive: Bhopal Tragedy

Now days, all news papers, TV channels have the news about Bhopal tragedy. What concerns me most is about people being insensitive towards the issue. Mr. Obama talks about kicking the butt of the person who is responsible for the oil leakage recently, but the americans do not expect India to have another inquiry on Bhopal gas tragedy and they all know that India is helpless. America has denied access to Anderson and India can not do anything about that. But if it would have been otherwise with the equal sevirity, we all know what happens.

Coming back to India, unless any tragedy, any incident affect somebody personaly, nobody seems to be interested in discussing what is right and wrong. Being sensitive towards social issues viz. gas tragedy, farmers sucide, corruption is labelled as emotional and not practical. I dont think being sensitive is a crime, if I get into tears by reading a tragedy of a farmers family I feel its something human and if somebody wants to do something for that cause its a great thing.

Things will not improve overinight or one person can not change it, but onc can atleast acknowledge that these things are not good. Accepting and living with it is not a sign of livelihood.

Commercial break: My Shimla - Manali Trip

The trend had started 2 years ago, I had to goto Banglore for some work and I made it a family holiday by extending my leave and visitied Mysore, Ooty etc. Then it was a short tour to Mahabaleswar last year. This year, we wanted to visit north, started planning for it, dropped it and finally made it just 4 days before school vacations gets over.


It was Delhi-Shimla-Manali-Chandigad-Delhi trip for 8 days by a Tata Indica. We opted for it over a tour by bus for convinient timings, but now prefer the bus :-) as you are at the mercy of driver. The driver we had was new to the route and the car was not licensed to "tour", so he always had a fear of getting caught by Police and avoided the normal routes.
Shimla is beautiful. We enjoyed the travel, nature, the valleys and the greenness. The roads are not good, but the places are crowdy. Visited the Kufri and Naldara (places around Shimla) and had a good evening walk on the mall road. The old constructions still carry the British memories with them and as usual I wondered about their sense of local needs and constraints. The buildings they had built made optimum use of natural resources and are suited to the local conditions.
Best part of Shimla was that all the houses, buildings are on hills. My hotel had 12 floors and 12th floor had an exit on one of the Shimla road :-) For some of the buildings, top floor is road approaching and instead of going up by lift, you may go down 4-5 floors.
After Shimla, it was a day long hectic travel to Manali. Though it was hectic travel, we experienced the scenic beauty along. Our most of the travel was through valleys, mountains, passes and at last along side of river bias (It is actually Vyas river named after Rishi Vyas who wrote Mahabharata). We could not control the temptation of experiencing the fresh river water flow and had a 45 minute break to experience the cold water of river. It was a pleasure to experience the water which is not polluted and was absolutely clean (we make a mess of river water after it starts becoming useful to human beings).
We had a 3 day stay in Manali. First we visited Manikaran and then did local site seeing. Manikaran journey was little hot as it was sunny day. The journey is as usual good as we had gone through the mountains, valleys, waterfalls.

Being father

When I speak to my daughters, when I deal with them for their demands (to say "No"), I try to remember the similar situation between me and father and mostly give up to their demands :-). Now days it has become my habit to observe the way my daughters speak to me, behave with me, want my time for them (which is very essential) and then their is obvious comparision with my young age. I try to think from their perspective and understand what all they need from father. Mostly it is "time". I had volunteered as a "story narrator" in my daughters school, I did it and received an appreciation token from the school and realized that, it made my daughter very proud of me. She immediately took it from me and showed it her friends in the school, told almost every girl of her age in the society :-). After that I felt there are very small things which makes them happy but needs those some "minutes" from you. My younger daughter waits for me in the evening and starts giving me updates as soon as I am walking towards my home (mostly complaints of mom, sister, did this and did that), but she needs me to listen to those and acknowledge and act on that.
So, that means they just want few minutes from me (which I am trying to work on)

An eye for eye, makes whole world blind

"An eye for eye, makes whole world blind", is one of the quotes used very smartly. This quote is a great thought, but should not be true in all cases. This is true for the people who realize their mistakes and repent and hence "an eye for eye" should not be used for them.

But this quote should not be used to parden the anti-social elements who are never going to repent. Sometimes we need to ensure that no body dares to commit the same "in-human" thing and an eye for eye is necessary at times.

Recently, there was a news about a criminal, who committed the same crime again. This guy was expelled from town, but then somehow got the expulsion cancelled. After some time, he committed the same crime again. Should we give him more time for improvment (and hence risk the entire society who suffers from his crime) or ensure that he does not dare to do it again?

Truth always Prevails

Truth always prevails, but before that it generally goes through horrible pain. Imagine a situation when somebody who wants to tell a truth and there are more people who want to counter that, well there is no need to imagine this situation as it happens everyday.
You stop at a signal as it is RED, and more people behind you wants you to jump it. There are hopes that, one day everybody will stop, but till then you need to listen to "honking".
You make sure that you are aways on time, but have to wait for others who are not on time and have an excuse that they had some "important" work and most of the time people will be late and eventually you have to "adjust" with this. It is not about delay, it is about the fact that nobody wants to accept the "truth" that its wrong to be late.