Terrorism and India's Reaction

Mumbai 26/11 terrorist attacks have again brought out our inability to deal with an enemy that is obviously working hard on his strengths.  We all know for sure that terrorists have nothing to lose.  When someone is ready to die, no law can be a deterrent.  Laws come into picture only when you catch these terrorists alive, which happens only once in a blue moon.  What is most required is our defense establishments to increase surveillance and plugging the gaps in our porous borders.

What happened on 26/11 was nothing less than a grim reminder of what we lack with respect to our defense shield. How can 10 men cross over into our country from Mumbai, and that too through the Gateway of India.  How can three levels of security be breached by terrorists, especially when our forces had intelligence reports of a possible attack.

Corruption is rampant in every part of our life, and our security forces have also been a victim of the same.  It is an open secret now that the bullet-proof vests that were worn by the top cops of Mumbai on that fateful day was of substandard quality.  The fact that the bullets fired by the terrorists could penetrate the so-called bullet-proof vests shows how much we compromise on things.  Of course, there is nothing new about how much we compromise on our national security.  During the Chinese aggression in 1962, our brave soldiers at the Chinese border realized the substandard quality of the guns that were handed to them to guard the national borders.  Most of the guns did not work in extreme weather conditions.  This is how much we care about our soldier who is guarding our borders.  Of course, we are definitely much better of today with respect to the guns at the border.

On the one hand the terrorists and gangsters have upgraded themselves to AK series and M series of automatic machine guns, and on the other hand, our government expects our policemen to counter them with 303 rifles, a technology which the west discarded after World War II.  Remember this was the same rifle the British used during World War I.  Our politicians want "Z Level Security" for themselves.  Of course, for 75% of them it is more of a status symbol than a security need.  However, the security they provide to the general public is policemen with .303 rifles.  During 26/11, at the CST, the CCTV video clearly showed the constable trying to fire at the terrorist, but the gun did not work.  He had no other choice but to throw the gun away and run for cover.

Even after all this has happened, some of our politicians still shamelessly demand high security for no rhyme or reason.

For almost a decade our defense forces have been screaming at the top of their lungs that they need to upgrade their weapons system.  Our fighter jets are dying (and killing our precious pilots along the way), our submarines and ships are dying, yet our politicians do not feel it is high priority.  One might say that some of our ships still have a decade of life more in them; however, what we need to remember is that defense deal is not like buying a TV and getting a home delivery the next day. It takes almost a decade for delivery of the consignment after the order is placed.  If we order today, we will get the delivery after 10 years.

I am proud to be an Indian and I love my country a lot. It pains me a lot that our politicians are so selfish in their motives.  For them their party and power is paramount and everything else comes later.

In hopes of a safe future, I pray to God that in the New Year, they all wake up to the fact that there would be no power without a safe country and happy citizens.

WISH YOU ALL A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009.

Positive Thinking

It all started after the day we saw a video named The Secret, a video talking primarily about thinking about the right things.  When I say the right things, I do not mean morally right, but what I mean is thinking only of things that we want to happen and those that give us pleasure, and not think of the opposite.  If we analyze, we would realize that most of our thoughts are not what we want but they are what we do not want to happen.  In the morning, most of us are thinking "I do not want to be late", "My boss will kill me if I .....", and so on.  If you look at these closely, these are not things which we want, but what we do not want.  What really happens is somehow you end up late to office or you somehow end up making your boss angry at you. I am not saying that this is bound to happen but it happens most of the time.  I am sure you will agree with me.  There are days where you wake up and are feeling great about everything and somehow end up having a good day.

I don't know how many of you are aware of Murphy's Law.  The Murphy's law, in a nutshell, states that "If something can go wrong, it will."  Also "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way".

All along, I have been a great believer of the Murphy's Law, and believe me it worked perfectly for me.  After watching The Secret, I realized that I was focusing on the negative rather than the positive.  Could be one of the reasons why I have not enjoyed my life in the last few years, in spite of career and financial growth.  After watching The Secret, I started forcing myself to think positive no matter what and now (after two weeks) I somehow look at things in the positive sense.  Just to give an example, when we were discussing about some business strategies, one of my colleagues quoted someone as, "Differentiate yourself or die".  It somehow just came on to my lips and I said "Differentiate yourself and thrive".  This might look like boasting but believe me it was spontaneous and I stated this just a couple of seconds after my colleague stated his statement .

In keeping with the essence of The Secret, I have decided to only think of what I want to happen. Everybody wants only positives to happen in their life, so just focus on those.  The fact is Negative thoughts come easy and Positive thoughts need to be forced until they become a habit.  Eight Olympic Gold Medals did not come easy to Michael Phelps, right? It would have been so easy for him to give up swimming when all his friends were having fun at the pool table with their girlfriends on their side and a beer in their hands.

I believe in The Secret, and you also will after you watch the video.  TRUST ME.

Reservation - Will it really work?

India sees one more politically-motivated circus related to reservation, this time for Other Backward Castes (OBC).  When India got liberated from the British, little did we realize that the British are leaving behind their crooked ideology in the minds of "Indian" politicians. The ideology was "Divide and Rule."  The British had been doing it for 300 years before they left India.  They divided us in the name of Religion, Caste, Kingdoms, Regions, among others. Whey they left, they left behind this bug in the minds of the "Indian" politicians.

When India got liberated, there was a huge divide among the masses in terms of economic and social growth status.  To bridge this gap, it was felt that the socially and economically downtrodden needed a shot in the arm so they can also be uplifted and brought on par with the others.  The vision was that if all Indians were equally educated and had equal opportunities, India would grow faster in the generations to come.  The original plan was to have reservation for 10 or 15 years, and then to get rid of it. While the idea looks fantastic on paper, it is not so easy to implement as the biggest thing we as a country lacked was the will to implement.

The question is will reservation work at all.  The answer is that it will if implemented properly, that is if the real people who need this get the benefit and also to what extent you want to stretch this so-called benefit. Do you want to extend reservation till school, till college, or till job, or till they die?

In today's scenario it is more of a vote bank politics.  Lets consider one thing, if Reservation was the only solution to the problem, then why are we having to increase the percentage even after 60 years of having it? This shows that Reservation is not the right solution.

At the primary school level, if every child, in both urban and rural regions, gets good English Medium education, then you can expect them to be competitive at the higher education level.  Human mind is very adaptable, but laziness also creeps around the corner.  When someone is used to driving around in an air-conditioned car, he/she will not like to drive around in a bicycle, because it involves hard work.  The same way, if a child has been drugged with reservation the entire childhood, they become addicted to it and want reservation in everything even whey they grow up and are very well capable of achieving it with hard work.

The only reason why some group of students excel more in studies or otherwise is because they are programmed that way right from childhood.  Their parents have been telling them "if you do not get higher marks, you will not get a seat in college".  This way the mind is programmed from childhood to struggle and study hard and be competitive.  Most pro-reservation activists misinterpret this as "General category people do not think Reserved category people are intelligent." This is not the fact, and actually it is the other way round.  If two people have the same intelligence, then why be partial to one. Nature does not differentiate between a Reserved category student and a General category student, but we have programmed our minds that way.  We have programmed our minds to look for the easy way out.

If at all politicians really want change, then they need to stress on quality education at Elementary and Primary school levels.  Today, we have thousands of government run schools in rural areas and even towns without proper facilities or faculties to teach the economically poor students who cannot afford the fees in private schools.  Without good education at this level, these students face a Herculean task of competing with students from cities at higher levels of education.  We are planning to build a multi-storey building on weak foundation.

It is often seen that whenever we talk of good quality education, politicians come up with statistics showing what they have done to increase the literacy rate in their respective constituencies and states.  I feel that someone needs to show them the dictionary and make them understand the difference between LITERACY and EDUCATION.  Literacy is only the start line for a never-ending race called Education.  The problem lies in our politicians treating Literacy rate on par with Higher Education rate.  We have always had "Rashtriya Saksharata Mission", but we should have had "Rashtriya Vidya Mission."

One more reason for lack of education in some communities is the number of children in the family when the income earned is only enough to one or two children.  A family with one or two children can afford to give good education to them and can secure their future.  But with too many children (I actually know families with 11 and 12 children), how can you provide higher education to all the children.  So most of these children end up looking for jobs as soon as they finish high school because there is "financial problem" in the family (no wonder).