Clashes, Regionalism & Being Indian

Assam burns. Yet again. Not owing to any ethnic clashes between "illegal migrants" and "son of the soil", but factional fights between two races ( the Nagas and the Assamese in this case). The same so called "brothers of the north east" , who waste no time for unified candle light marches in Jantar Manar whenever an incident of discrimination or injustice is meted out to any fellow brother of the region in Delhi - they are up in arms in their own territory.

Folks say - This is politics. Politicians are cropping this issue up to gain mileage. Rubbish, I say. Even if that had an iota of truth, politics,after all, is just a mirror image of the of the society at large. This whole issue is all about Chauvinism. About this new found attitude of new age India built upon intolerance. The Idea of "We are better than the rest" . In Delhi, we say "Uh we are from such a cosmopolitan culture. What would the north Indians know" Back in north east, "The Assamese thinks he is better than the nagas , and vice -versa" And subconsciously, a false sense of superiority creeps up - which gets manifested in different forms . N this is not limited to NE alone. While in Maharashtra you would hear "Maharastrians are a class apart ( n they willl rhyme out all names from, Tendulkar to Mangeshkar), Kolkata main "What bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow attitude". Everywhere, an ingrained attitude has crept up in the sub groups - "We are better than the rest" This chauvinism in all likelihood helps to satisfy a alter ego, probably helping in developing a false sense of superiority. And this chauvinism doesnot end in that subgroup. If some from Delhi has satisfied himself with "Punjabis are better than rest debate" , the next fight would be on "Amritsari Punjabis are better than the Chandigarh ones" . Only when we are abroad , do we think as Indians, but that too in the context of "Indians are better than the west in this and that" . Nobody thinks like "iNDIANS are good, but Brits are good too in their own way too" . Just like a Punjabi wont think " Our culture is good, but so is the culture of the Tamils" . Its just a mad race of one upmanship - and finding out faults with the others- which consciously gets exploited in Incidents like the one happening in Assam. I am not too sure if I am making any sense in the post - but false illusions of superiority ( n this is crept right from school - remember how our school was always better than "theirs", but while within school " our "house" was better than the other "houses") is just creating lot of animosity. Its festering chauvinism, and the whole bunch of terrorism based activities ( be it ULFA in Assam, or the Khalistan proponents of Punjab) is just a manifestation of this. Its high time we build the foundations of more pluralistic, contended society without any air of false illusions. Every race has good people and positive aspects, every race has bad people and negative aspects. Let not fight for one upmanship over here. Period.

Ho raha kya Bharat Nirman...?

How much money does one woman bring, before you call her a wife ?
How many times do you murder in a womb, before you give a daughter, life ?  
How many times do you use rape as a tool, in course of a civil strife ?

The answer, my friend, is nowhere in the wind
The answer is just not blowing in the wind   

How many years do one women exist, subjected to some beast's savagery ?
How many years do one girl exist , before she is allowed her liberty ?
How many times does a minister look up, and pretend he just doesn't see ?

The answer, my friend, is nowhere in the wind
The answer is just not blowing in the wind

How many ears do some people need, to hear many a girls cry ?
How many rapes do we need, till we know,that too many women have died ?
What more do the exploited wait for, before they get justice as a reply ?

The answer, my friend, is nowhere in the wind
The answer is just not blowing in the wind

(A note on Urban India's total apathy to the inhumanity that is happening all around - Inspired from , & loosely based on Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the wind")           

A Tale Of The First Crush

 I was aged 12, when I fell for my first major crush
Emotions don’t look at age, taking control through an unplanned rush
 I may have been a kid – but my mind didn’t care
The flame of love just couldn’t just be put out in a flush!

 Every Morning, I caught her glimpse in the school bus
The glimpse was so entrenched; I could hardly concentrate in my class
My Mom was a sweetheart, though ruing my total neglect of studies
Every time the results came, she started creating a fuss.

Like all boys back then, Sachin & cricket used to bring my life to a halt
With the arrival of this girl, was there any option but to put study into a safe vault?

Every time I said a “Hi”, and exchanged a handshake
My mind used to sway away, fantasies it used to rake
Was I just a friend, or were my feelings being reciprocated?
Or did she not think about it at all – with me indulging in a mindless mistake?

An outstanding student she was, maybe a little insane.
 Whenever a little offended, she was difficult to rein
For me,  I had something to look forward to while going to school
 To feign pretexts to strike a conversation, but mostly in vain.

But like all one sided puppy love, this too came to an end
Me getting immersed in life’s grind, swayed away by nature’s invisible hand.

In a distant land, a decade & half later, I was walking by a mall
I saw a married couple, the girl very pretty and tall
I could figure her out by her smile, as she yelled out to me with joy
A little shy, I walked across – just to engage in a solemn call

She said “So what if we have grown up, don’t indulge in this formal fuss
Treat me like that little girl you travelled with in the school bus”

As I bid her goodbye, I smile back reminiscing the good old days
As silly as they might seem, how wondrous is nature’s maze
That somebody can emerge out of a long lost labyrinth of the past
To make me muse over a school bus which never ceased to amaze.

 (P.S. - Not a true story. Could not help penning this after seeing few videos in youtube)

The State of a bewildered mind

(Note - This poem is very nostalgic for me- yet now it seems all amateurish. I wrote it way back in my college days, so may sound cheesy for obvious reasons :-D)


This days, when from college I return

My mind meanders, in solitude it burns

Enduringly dumbfounded , in life's twist and turns

Why do I think of you now , when its all bygone?



The views from my terrace, In the early hours of night

The flights ferrying people, flocking in great height

My thoughts drifting directionless, like an abandoned kite

I now realise ,I am missing you allright!



Glaring moments, just adding to my plight

The time that we fought, and you cried all night

The January morning dew, my arrival at your door with flowers bright

When you bid me adieu , with a hug long and tight.



Then I think of your gaze, with the fleeting zoom

My thoughts get frozen, to nature does it loom

The sun is in smiles, and the  flowers starts to bloom

A sudden thrill now takes over the gloom



Your mere touch, brings a fresh autumn spell

The radiance of your presence makes lightning fall pale

Even your name luminates a glow, a fire unquelled

A creation ,per se,unparallel.



When you told me today, we got to move on

Only than that I realised, I took you granted for long

The confusion did exist before- that I want you with me along

Now its overtly translucent - I want you in this journey lifelong



Compatibility is a evolution, and future a state of trance

If there is a scope, I plead to give another glance
I cant impose or squabble, whatever be your stance

All I pray for , is a second chance

The Laymen's perspective - Delhi University and the Indian skill story

1) For starters, we Indians place too much importance on education that is imparted on classrooms - so much so that any knowledge acquired outside the classroom is considered no knowledge at all. The Smriti Irani episode is a case in point - What if she was substantially articulate and well informed than a mass of the educated elite - that she didnot have a degree was considered fit enough to disqualify her from her political footing.
2) The duration of the course is hardly a point of debate - its the quality and the sync with its ultimate objective that matters. Harvard/MIT Sloan teaches management - comprising a multitude of business disciplines - to mostly engineers (without a base in management education) in 2 years straight - and many of them evolve to be eminent professionals in their own right
3) The education system in India suffers from a trait which I call the "absence of encirclement" - it doesn't encircle the end objectives even to the smallest degree. So we end up having professors who have no links to the industry , courses which has no exposure to the industry.....and the divergence between what the industry requires and what is taught produces ridiculously unemployable graduates.
4) There are two factors which the government has to work on at priority if we aspire to be a sustainable economy. Short term growth is of little consequence - we may do that tweaking around with FDI flows and relaxed tax regimes - but they are more like the medications for temporary relief than the actual cure of the core problem. FDI flows and tax regimes are just making us more vulnerable to policy dependence - which sooner or later will come to haunt us.
4.1 ) Firstly, we have to gradually change our mindset and make a paradigm shift from being a service intensive economy to manufacturing intensive economy.Currently Services sector contributes to around 55 % of India GDP and Manufacturing sector contributes to around 15 % . Service sector , in India particularly, is the resultant of the classic economical "Law of Comparative advantage". In ordinary language,comparative advantage refers to the ability of a country to produce a particular good or service at a lower marginal and opportunity cost over another. We had the blessings of more than a couple of competitive advantages - which blended perfectly - to deliver the boom in the services sector. We were a low wage country - so we cost a fraction of getting something done vis a vis a developed country, we had a huge English speaking crowd, we had destinations which were pretty cheap etc etc. But comparative advantage has a problem - it can never be permanent. What India needed a thrust during that growth stage - was focus on moving up the value chain - for eg, moving up from low level maintenance projects to high end product development in IT, develop our workforce  to be multi lingual, develop world class tourist destinations - which would have evolved this into SUSTAINABLE COMPETITIVE advantage. We didnot do that. Now China & Philippines is emphasizing hard on the english speaking crowd, Germany and Poland focusing on Tech expertise - and the developing Economy gradually removing our benefit of low cost of economy - hence the comparative advantage of service  will slowly wane. The advantage of the manufacturing sector is exactly the opposite - its huge prospect on falling back on India's huge population rather than being dependent on extrinsic global factors. When MNC's are reaching out to the absolute bottom of the pyramid that lies in Rural India, imagine the market if we were to harness our marketing potential. So many people, all at different income levels, with varied needs, all prospective customers of some product or the other.Manufacturing has another advantage  - 70% of India depends on Agriculture, and more than half of it is actually disguised unemployment  i.e.You dont need so many people in the field, but they work there as they have no other skills. This kind of leads to a state of diminishing returns. The advantage that manufacturing sector brings is the employ-ability of  the unskilled workers - unlike the services sectors which is is more tilted towards the educated class
4.2) Secondly, start teaching English from Primary level even in public school's - I say make it the medium of instruction. Let this be an objective to transform English into our competitive advantage...this will go even further to reduce the omnipresent class divide between the English and non English speaking masses. If everybody is on one page, the lack of self confidence of the under privileged masses will slowly disappear....and  this alone will bring an equitable development (rather than doling out vote bank incentives).