Where to Look? Inside Us!
July 25, 2008
Mr Pravin Sheth, the eminent political analyst says, (Ahmedabad Mirror, 24 July 2008 ) nowadays people are much candid about their conduct and do not care about the behavioural ethics in public. Because of his deep insights in social issues, Mr Sheth relates two recent outrageous incidents, first is the violent consequences after protest against the death of two kids and the second is the display of currency bundles in the Lok Sabha. We know the roots and the extent of corruption and conspiracies are not easy to find. But the contemporary methods of ill-behaviour are ingenuous. So called ‘sadhaks’ of Asaram came out with weapons, got violent openly on roads and vandalized residents’ belongings. In Delhi, some MPs displayed bundles of currency notes in Lok Sabha during trust vote, not giving a single thought for dignity of the Parliament, dignity of the democracy! They colored India’s face black to the whole world and wrote a black day in Indian history. As I just previously mentioned, that I doubt if there’s any line to be crossed as I cannot even dream about worse things. But as the fact, we can see unimaginable things keep happening every other day.
More or less, we all behave analogously, be it in private or public. At times, we do not care the expressions we send across are very harmful and unfavorable to many. If we look at the example of the cyclist (Part 2: Roses – Immobilized Khaki) who did not hang back before insulting the traffic officer, did not think whether he’s in fault or not and rashly started abusing and threatening in public. Being candid would also involve that one wouldn’t even be bothered for his own decorum being grounded. Swearing, shouting, making filthy comments and gestures to women, offending others in public, bullying the weak – all these are everyday and everywhere. The vision has to be changed from eyes and to be reached to the mind. We must start looking inside ourselves. We have to start seeing others equally and understand the importance of their existence too. I am resisting the notion of ‘Kaliyug’ as I didn’t much believed in. We don’t have to act accordingly either to prove the commencement of ‘Kaliyug’. Let us preserve ourselves as humans (‘Manav’) and re-establish an undivided and complete ‘Manav Yug’.
Related Articles:
Guns & Roses - Part 1: Guns - Memo No. 1!
Guns & Roses - Part 2: Roses for Immobilized Khaki
Guns & Roses - Part 2
July 25, 2008
Roses – Immobilized Khaki
‘Thola’ or ‘Kaka’ – that’s what we call our traffic police officers. ‘White & Khaki’ has never been respected enough in our society. We lie, we bribe, we misuse political connections, we use names, we flee, we run away but we DO NOT obey! Exceeding traffic, increasing number of cars and also two wheelers and parking chaos are making each day tougher than the previous for the traffic department. How can we ignore the dug roads, blocked junctions, diversions and many other repair and construction work going on in city? It is becoming excruciating because these works have altered traffic patterns at many places in city since long and have not been restored to normal. It’s a nightmare! Managing these cattle on wheels is not at all an easy job anymore. There are noise, smoke, crowd and rushing vehicles from everywhere.
In such a situation, we are only obliged to cooperate with the self discipline as much as we can. We have to start from somewhere. The following incident is a usual one of many, which shows how stubborn and indiscipline we are! (“I insist on using ‘We’ as we all are a part of it, one way or the other. Using ‘You’ would have excluded me!”)
A cyclist is already standing 10 feet further from the stopping line in an evening rush hour. (“I doubt if there’s any line we, humans have left to cross be it morals, discipline, corruption, violence, conspiracies and so on.”) An irritated traffic officer, shouted at the cyclist to go back and not to move further. That obstinate cyclist shouted back and was not willing to go back by an inch. Another officer got angry seeing the rider being hostile! The officer acted furiously to send the cyclist back and tried to deflate cycle’s tyre. The rider then started abusing, took out his mobile phone and started threatening the officer that he would call someone to harm that officer in any way. They continued to shout at each other, but the rider neither moved back nor did he stop abusing. I had to move on, so I could not witness how the clash was ended. Although very little, it’s a very serious thing, that how the guardians of law on the roads are affronted and let down. They are vulnerable to verbal and physical assault too. Are they our enemies, aren’t they the part of our own society? Are they stopping us or fining us for any personal contention? It may be argued that they are corrupted and eat bribes! Only we are supplying our helping hand to encourage corruption. We do not want to pay the full amount of the penalty. Have we also thought of the reasons behind it? There must not be any reason to advocate any kind of corruption but the society is leading towards horrific inequalities and imbalance. Rich and poor are at the North Pole and the South Pole respectively. This is another burning and huge issue which cannot be accommodated within the current discussion.
Let’s be in our all senses, while driving or while behaving with cops or any other public entity. We are only isolating them more and more by not adhering to the norms and offering bribes to them. It was published few weeks before in a daily tabloid that traffic officers distributed roses to the drivers in Vadodara city for illustrating that ‘We all belong to the same society. Please cooperate.’ I would say who actually need to be retained and given ‘Roses’ are these traffic officers. Obeying rules and behaving in discipline will be more than roses to them!
Related Articles:
Guns & Roses - Part 1: Guns - Memo No. 1!
Guns & Roses - In Continuation: Where to Look? Inside Us!
Guns & Roses - Part 1
July 25, 2008
Guns – Memo No. 1
Wednesday, 16th July: A pleasant morning and I am on my way to work. I had a repellent experience with one of the traffic officials. I made out my way from behind the Income-Tax underpass and approached to the Stadium five roads to head to C G Road. Seeing that the signal just hit red, I opted to take left and then ‘U’ turn for C G Road. No wrong side driving, No prohibition sign for U turn, No lane breaking – I just continued to my destination in a bit unconventional fashion. At the next junction, I had someone honking vigorously at my back. “Who’s this daft spoiling this pleasant morning ride?” I thought.
Honking is the religious right of each driver in Ahmedabad. As soon as the traffic signal goes green, a car which is 4th in the queue will start honking as the drivers at the front are sleeping, as they enjoy not moving from the front. Again, it’s a matter of civilian discipline and this is not just lack, but absolute absence of patience. I believe we may not be able to adhere to the western protocol of not honking at all. In England, heads turn around if anyone listens to a little ‘pom pom’ from a driver. But we cannot stop using, because there are hundreds of sleep walkers on roads who need a wake up call even in a busiest traffic flow. But we can discipline our senses to resist our ringing thumbs. A good point triggered in between! But let me take you back to that honk at my back.
Suddenly, a white 180cc traffic horse appeared and nailed me to the corner. “License aapo, tame ‘U’ turn laine bhagya chho!” (Show me the license; you took ‘U’ turn to run away).
'U' turn
Taking you turn at the front-end of the divider is of course not allowed but going back to the rear end to take a ‘U’ turn could not be a punishable act. Under Motor Vehicle Act 119/177, changing the lane without indication or violation of yellow line is punishable. I don’t think I could be framed in any of these. Believing this, I argued a little, traffic cop started wasting minutes, took my license and went away to manage the traffic. He could understand I am on my way to work and getting late. Considering the responsibility to reach office on time, I forcibly accepted my act as sinful rather than just unconventional, which I still believe. I agreed to pay the fine and he started writing the memo. Here’s the memo, which I received from the cop.
Now, let’s see how he messed up with the memo!
Take a look at no. 1 in the memo. Initially when he made this memo and gave this to me, I found he did not mention the type of violation I made under the act 119,177. He just mentioned “under act 119,177” which is having 10 types of violations like breaking signal, stop line, one-way entry etc. This suggests, he did not want to mention the violation as he knew I could not be punished for a ‘U’ turn violation of traffic rules. I insisted on writing the type of the violation and he did write but it didn’t carbon copy in his book anyway.
No. 2, it was a bizarre feeling when I came to know what he mentioned as him name in the memo. I felt cheated seeing that he mentioned his name as “C. H. Sharma” in the memo and also signed as “C. H. Sharma”. His name plate clearly suggested his surname was Pandey. I cannot recall the initials but I perfectly remember the last name. So, there were more than one attempt to leave no evidence from which I can even appeal to prove that I did not break the law. Even now, I do not claim that I did not make any mistake but when I am having doubts I can even appeal for that as I cannot prove who actually made the memo.
As the matter of fact, we do not take such small things acutely. But the substance of integrity within many governing bodies is missing. One more encouraging reason for not arguing much to the cop was to consider him as one of the traffic men who have to face the hard sun for hours, who have to control menacing drivers, who are being abused verbally every now and then and who sometimes even get assaulted physically. All these reasons are good enough to have a little apathy towards them and an element of cooperation by abiding to the traffic rules reasonably if not completely. Let me also clear my prime intent for sharing this particular issue, that we should remain alert when we are cornered by traffic police. We should understand the act violation, confirm the amount of fine written at the back of the slip and we should always confirm the details being filled in such memos. ‘Guns’ is just a title and it only means that we keep our senses open while dealing with such individuals. “Jankari Janhit Me Jari!!!”
Related Articles:
Guns & Roses - Part 2: Roses for Immobilized Khaki
Guns & Roses - In Continuation: Where to Look? Inside Us!
My First Ever Words - Notating Thoughts
June 25, 2008
“It’s been a year from the day I penned down my first proper piece of writing, 23rd June 2007! I would like to share this note on Global Warming. Mr Al Gore, former president of United States of America, has spent year researching on Global Warming and there is a short movie called ‘An inconvinient truth’. I strongly recommend watching this movie, you would find a great importance of every single human to this earth’s survival from global warming consequences. A quote from that movie, which is one of the best I have ever heard in my life, and I would like to mention it before to start to my first ever article.”
(Pointing to a little dot in a picture of universe taken from a satellite Al Gore says,)
“That little yellow dot is our planet, planet Earth, our only HOME! We have nowhere else to go and live from our lovely little home. So please we all, let us take care of it!”
Could the destruction of southern states of USA be linked with collapsing ice rocks in Greenland? Could the millions of dead fishes in Amazon linked with deforestation in Australia? Are these disasters are also related in any way with Europe’s recent ever hottest summer, which left 27,000 people dead!!?
It is the most serious issue that the World has ever faced, GLOBAL WARMING. The World scientists are collaborating to study Global Warming and its effect in forth coming decades. The most unprecedented changes in the climate have been observed after mid 20th century. Rising temperatures have been measured by a number of space stations.
The Sun is the source of warmth and light to us, but the intensity of the heat is different to the different parts of the Earth. Over the years, the earth has kept changing its orbit and moving pattern around the sun, and because of this the World has seen the significant changes in the climate during the last few centuries.
Let’s have a look at this…
Ideally, the rise in temperature over the years would have not been so momentous, but if we consider the greenhouse effects and the Earth’s orbital movements we can accept some changes or rise in temperature. Although at present, the actual situation of climate change is far more terrible; and human beings are responsible for this. Me, you and all of us.
As we study the numbers, it is only 0.6 degree of rise in planet’s average temperature. But this has already created so much havoc with the climate of the planet. Arctic is warmed by 3 degrees in last few centuries and the ice is melting unbelievably faster. Although, dirty snow has also played the part in this increase. The existing wild life on these continents is under threat. We might think that what if those animals die there in Arctic that is not going to affect us!!! But the whole Food chain would be disturbed by extinction of these animals. Of course, it is the later issue in this case but it is. In addition, rapidly melting ice is the biggest threat for the whole world not just north and south poles. Katrina, Hurricanes, Tsunami – most of the people was not aware of these words before a few decades. The rise in sea temperatures is the reason behind these destructive winds and storms. The rise has caused the average sea temperature to reach up to 26 degrees. In August 2005, Katrina struck New Orleans, Mississippi and parts of Mexico and we have also observed many destructive winds in last decade. It was the worst season of climate disasters in 2005 and it was also the alarm for the World to wake up and take significant action against this Global Warming and Climate change. Researchers say, “They can be more destructive and frequent in next few years!”
Before 160,000 years ago, the World’s average temperature was just 3 degrees less than it is now. But we human beings will make it rise (!) by 2-3 degrees higher within next 30,000 years and many cities near coasts will be flooded.
The choice is yours!
Sneh Bhavsar
London, 23 June 2007
Crying Paragraph From A Novel Called ‘Services’
June 25, 2008
“Apne desh ka kuch nahi ho sakta!” (Nothing would happen to our country). The most popular, most common and proudly pronounced catch up line among almost every street corner debates. Whether they are fresh collegians, newly qualified graduates, highly skilled and established professionals or whitely attired politicians, dissatisfaction from the country comes out loud from every mouth. We certainly need to come over this lousy thought. We certainly need to look out of the window now. We need to know the facts by comparing.
I had this intense thought to address this issue while sitting in an underground train I just initiated at the same time. “I have lived in London for three years. Initially I was a foreigner for this country but now I am a lot into the things. I have earned experiences and learned the jobs. I have used from basic to leisure services in this country. I have enjoyed and I have endured. So this is what I need to address about. SERVICES! I have got mixed experiences with the service sector in United Kingdom.”
Starting with the first and essential basic service, Transport. Train service of London, London Underground as it is better known locally, is famous in all over the world. They have got these iconic red double deckers, splendid black cabs and trams as well running in all over the city. The fares of underground and buses have risen nearly 25% in only two years. But the service is getting worse every other day. Appearance is the only thing which differs from Ahmedabad’s AMTS or Mumbai’s well known BEST or Local trains. The commuters might look decent and clean in their cashmere overcoats and jackets in comparison of our ordinarily clad, smelly commuters. The allover external impression is that it is an organized transport system. Yes, we cannot deny the crystal infrastructure of the transport system. But trains remain in tunnels for minutes, buses get terminated anywhere on your way. Single cab journey can buy a second hand scooter in India which can live your purpose of commuting. Weekend refurbishments, planned engineering works, reduced services, severe delays, track replacement, signal failures, disruptions, faulty trains, unavailability of staff and replacement services are the common news at every single underground station chart. And still what you pay is 20% of your income to the dedicated underground. The rail boss stays an inch higher from the ground than everything else, “Don’t expect a seat while short journeys (30 minutes)”, he suggests. “Get off the train if you fill it is crowded”. These are the advisable answers from the responsible and authorized person of London Transport! Congestion charges soar like never before. The motorists have to pay daily congestion charge (£8 per day) if they enter in the designated area called congestion zone of the Central London. So you don’t drive and you pay for public transport and which is bone-breaking for a normal commuter. It is always frustrating for any routine commuter to be late at work or anywhere just on account of Trains and Buses. God bless Briton’s “Read anything! Read anywhere!” habit!
Let’s see what Mobile & Internet providers do. You will find the best offers, the best gadgets and many goodies when you start your services with mobile or internet. You would even get virtually free starter packs. Everything is contracted so once your contract terms are overshadowed by the wonderful offers and freebies, you would start to realize slowly that what you are into! You will surely end up paying more than you would have ever expected. The promises of relentless services would look blurred. A small or serious problem in service may make you suffer for life. To assist you with your problem, there are hundreds of outlets or so called customer service centers of the provider on streets and malls but in most cases you would get the answer, “you will have to talk with customer service advisor on phone”. A physical person cannot resolve anything in front of you, and security reasons are the explanations. More worse happens when you call to customer services. They now describe themselves as information providers only. They can empathize, they can understand your problems, they can listen to your shouting and swearing but at the end, they say, “There is nothing I really can do about it!” You would never be able to speak to the relevant person who can resolve something in real time. Everything works on automated systems, and you would be queuing up to get answered or responded. Problems do occur, technology has got flaws and it is human to accept the problems and to wait for them to get resolved. But you would be left in dark that what is going on, you will just have to wait. Most of the people get fooled with technical terms and they think there is something really serious happening, as serious as ‘launching a space shuttle’. Sales people do anything to sell a ‘bell’ to anyone and rest becomes an ordeal for the customer. We have to be extra careful to understand the services we are going hire.
However, I am back in Ahmedabad for good and I have had some interesting occurrences being a social entity, I will have my hands and mouthful for very long to keep bringing the issues in light.
Introducing Nation State of BJP
June 17, 2008
The rage is spilling over two groups because of the newly produced outrageous comments of our “honorable” (?) chief minister Mr. Narendra Modi. “I am inviting the Congress monarch to charge me with sedition charges and hang me if they have guts! They can’t hang Afzal, how can they hang me?” Although the amount of people, who are applying at least some thinking, is very less; and on the other hand, there are crowds stating Mr. Modi as next to almighty of Gujarat. It isn’t over here, with their skewed and narrowed vision they also see him as the future PM of India. India might have seen corrupted, inefficient or lazy Prime Ministers since the independence. But it will be the day of the biggest ‘SHAME’, if ever Mr. Narendra Modi will stick as a stain on the magnanimity of Indian Prime Ministership. Start getting over this falsely created political image right now if you have a little ‘Hindustani’ (being an Indian rather than a Hindu, or a Muslim or anything else) feeling and heart remained within you.
Hindustan does not belong to Hindus only but Hindustan is formed by Hindus where the Hindus are the citizens who live in India regardless of the religion they follow. India’s culture, religions and people have got enormous strength to get melted within each other and come out as a harmonic nation. Take a step ahead, I would suggest. We are humans and humans are ethical creatures on the earth. Animals sometimes eat their own infants to survive but we do not, as we have memory to remember and brain to think and decide what is right, what is ethical and what really we should do! We better start using it before we loose our state or nation to such self-created samrats. There is one more correction to the phrase ‘Hindu Hradaysamrat’, as there is a lot of doubt that these Modi supporters have hearts and human emotions at all! The person challenging the ruling party for charging him under sedition (Rajdroh) or calling the ruling government as a monarch (“sultanate” as he phrased in his speech), is not a political rhetoric but an incontrollable mouthful. Leading politics is much about diplomacy and leader’s exemplary behavior in public. Provoking emotional harmony and announcing extra personal importance are not the elements of democratic bureaucracy at all. It has been said by many noble personnel, “It is least important what you do, but more important is how you do it!” Major of our Gujaratis believe that Mr. Modi has established a peaceful state where there has been no communal confrontation has taken place since 2002. Let’s agree for a moment but the question is “How has it been done?” With assassinations, killing, threats and fear. We all know that. And now he is singing the same song, pushing for Afzal’s hanging. It is his prejudice for a particular community which is coming out of him loud. A leader should never be biased, and should never contain any prejudice whatsoever. Again, why someone’s should be that much concerned about killing? He keeps in touch with those business giants regularly and on the other hand he tries to win votes and applauses from the less literate villagers, who can never imagine the twists and turns a politician like Modi can apply. His connectivity with the middle-class seems to be intangible.
It has been more than six years that we had this inhuman act took place in our own Gujarat. We don’t know how much it would be haunting Mr. Modi in his dreams, but the people, who saw the blood bath, people whose injuries are healed but the hearts are not, people who are still humans – they all will always moan about this tragedy. Development cannot exist at the cost of humanity and ethics. Our Gujarat is getting missed somewhere, we are getting missed in these tall buildings and malls. We are disconnecting with each other and we are misrelating with humanity. We must think!
Sneh Bhavsar | Ahmedabad, 17 June 2008
Rude ‘Crude’
June 17, 2008
Bang! You must be burning with no visible flames because of the recent fuel price hike. Worse, if your ‘Roti’ is cooked on LPG gas stoves, then each one of them is becoming more expensive. Yes, we do have many reasons to criticize the outrageous price hike which has fumed the country all over. But we could also try at least to consider a few reasons for this move from the Government. I strongly recommend reading ‘Government’ as ‘The Government of India – Our Country’ not as the UPA or Congress government. Should we know the whole perception about this dark market of fuel and gases before we really conclude anything? How much is the Government is blamable for the price hike? Think, think and think.
Crude oil is the most ‘wanted’ commodity in the world today. Everyday 7.6 Crore barrel (approx 1200 crore litres) of oil is consumed by the whole world. Let’s see, who the top consumers are!
|
Country |
Oil Consumption |
|
United States of America |
200 lacs barrels per day (not surprised at all!) |
|
China |
56 lacs barrels per day |
|
Japan |
54 lacs barrel per day |
|
India |
22 lacs barrel per day |
India consumes a fair amount of oil everyday and ranks among top 10 largest consumers of oil in the world. India does not have enough oil produced from within the country itself and hence we import 70% of our consumption. Although, country’s capacity to refine the necessary oil stock is quite adequate.
India has to largely rely on the imports for oil sources as the consumption (approx 35 crore litres per day) is significantly greater than the ability of production (approx 12.7 crore litres).
Indian government officially dismantled the Administered Pricing Mechanism (APM) in 2002. APM used to regulate the flow and the prices of oil. Oil companies were told how much to sell and at what price. It means there was a less influence of international market on the fuel prices in India. But an insistence for free market pricing and foreign competition made the government to loose APM completely. But they kept an indirect eye on some key fuels to keep regulating their prices. As a result since last few years, crude price is having high correlation with the international market price.
India’s price regulation mechanism for crude oil came to an end and it is to encourage the foreign participation in oil exploration. Now the prices are highly correlated with the international market price.
Let us see the domestic price graph of petrol, diesel and international price of crude oil between the years 2003 and 2008.
The graph clearly represents the gradual increase in prices of petrol and diesel since 2003. Of course, it shows the prices getting increased on regular basis since 2003 and that is natural. The most interesting part resides between starting 2007 and mid 2008 (now). In this one and half year crude oil prices have risen from $55.80 per barrel to $138.14 per barrel (as on 7 June 2008). It comes to 150% of hike within just 18 months. As a fact, India is least capable to anything about these prices and hence we have to absorb this increase in price somehow.
Let us compare the petrol and diesel prices during these 18 months of time. Petrol has gone up from Rs. 42.85 (Jan 2007) to Rs. 56.52 (June 200 
and Diesel has crossed Rs. 38 (June 200 mark in compare to Rs. 30.25 (Jan 2007). There is a 33% and 26% of rise in petrol and diesel respectively. Doesn’t it seem that we have reasonably regulated fuel prices despite of the madness running over crude oil price?
The government is bearing a huge financial burden to provide uninterrupted supply of petrol, diesel and LPG to common men. Looking at the unprecedented price hike in international crude oil prices, we have got to bear a fraction of it for our own oil companies and hence for our country.
Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has released the figures and they suggest that the government and oil PSUs have been trying to moderate the impact on the common man. At current prices government will bear a financial burden of Rs. 245,000 crore in 2008-09. It would be out of scope to understand crude oil international price market at the moment. We need to be concerned with the solutions we can derive by our own efforts to deal with the increasing prices of fuels. There is not doubt that the increase of Rs. 5 per litre in petrol price is significant for a common man but for now considering this difficult situation and to act accordingly is the only choice left. It could have been worse if we look at the over all growth in crude prices internationally.
As one of the main reasons is that we have a greater reliance on imports for the oil and that is because we consume more. How can we contribute our bit? It is by trying to optimize our consumption of fuels, whether it’s petrol, diesel or natural gases. Broadly, any kind of energy should be saved to minimize unexpected consequences. And at last, Indian government has put some suggestions in a public advertisement, which may help us controlling our own consumptions and hence the oil situations and prices in future.
Conserver Energy for Brighter Future
- Drive at optimum speed of 45-55 kms/hr
- Maintain correct tyre pressure
- Switch off engines at traffic signals
- While driving do not drive the clutch
- Keep your vehicle engine tuned
- Light your stove only after you have all ingredients within your reach
- Pressure cooking saves fuel and time
- Use optimum quantity of water while cooking
- Use higher efficiency ‘ISI’ marked LPG stove
Sneh Bhavsar
Ahmedabad | 9 June 2008
Your Development Is Futile!
June 17, 2008
This take on recent polls, is my take on you and all the Gujaratis. Gujaratis are far far behind from the thought of nationalism where the nationalism is the principal and has to prevail in every member of the democracy. We are very much at the individual level; you ought to rip off that cover. Gujarat is still more of a shame to India than a proud of India in all over the world. Do not ask those money minded gujjus in London or New Jersey how they feel about the Gujarat and Modi, but asks the world. Even you can ask the other states of India. It is not the benchmark to believe that you are the best person if papa, mama and didi believe so, you should ask neighbors, friends, colleagues and even the society. Put the self on the surface - let it be commented it self. People want to look Modi, people
want to dance Modi. I am heart-ripped because of this selfish, stiff and soulless mindset of Gujjus. Modi is a good leader and knows the ways to win the elections. Getting the top rank in the school examination and being a scholar are completely diverse. Being an ideal leader and winning the election to become chief minister are also completely different.
The definition of the development is completely diverse for India in every manner. Centralization does not work for us; Distribution is the must for us. We don’t need to raise 5 malls in every area; we need to raise 5 farmers in every village. There are lots of things that I am and you are (not personally you) not enough sensible to say, but we can at least comprehend the things and not just follow the mass. Also the so called development and economic growth are coming down to Gujarat because of the individual business endeavors, outsourcing and over all India’s product dominance in the market.
India is having intelligence overflow (Giddens: International social science author) and that has resulted in an economic growth and we have gone through this process over more than 40 years not just last 10 years. And the ‘malai’ we professionals and executives are eating now, is the outcome of this stirring process of the Indian global injections. I will say hundred times – it does not coexist with development to filter the growth areas and the growing mass. If you don’t get it, I reiterate in simple words, “It is not possible to talk about hindutva & development together. Any development is futile without the intact harmony and rational environment.” It is not the development of Gujarat what you see. It will not be the Gujarat you may be wanting.
Sneh Bhavsar
Ahmedabad | 27 December 2007
Morality Declines!
June 17, 2008
Children are the real asset of the country. How much care we are taking of our national wealth? The beauty of childhood has lost over parents’ hyper-sensitive approach for their children’s success, be it in school examination or in a curriculum competition. Success at any cost! There was a time, mothers sang poems and fathers swung their children in parks. Sparing designated time to children’s study as a part of daily routine for parents. Utmost they could do is to provide extra tuitions and expecting more hard work from kids in order to reach the top results. But the appetite for success has gone beyond limits.
Students are at immense pressure and it is more than ever. They spend hours at school, go for tuitions, spend their evening at learning swimming, cricket, singing, dancing or playing piano and then piles of home work and practice. Parents do not want their child to fall second in anything. We made up our minds before some time believing that it is a competitive age with the growing population and flooding opportunities in our country. We understood the seriousness of the contest in every domain. But we are facing moral decline against achieving success. It has been observed over the years that human morality is touching grounds in some cases, where people are vulnerable to any inhuman
act. Money can buy anything and anything could be done to make money. This modern philosophy is seemingly eradicating moral values in this generation of people.
As we have seen in recent board examinations in Gujarat, how money and power tried to rule over the ethos of education system. Last few days were completely shocking which ruined the trust over education system and teachers. We are yet to come over the pain of Patan incident. Teachers are playing evils and parents train their kids how to get success at any cost. Most basic sources of learning in a human’s preliminary life are not performing pure. Provocative media, conspiracies in public life, nudity served in news papers, pushing boundaries of entertainment world, and hardcore technological life style – all these have made our children grown before time and have left them with no ethical and disciplinary education. ‘Innocence’ has been isolated from children. Being responsible entities of the society we all – parents, teachers and all of us are accountable for it. It is in our hands, what we want our kids to be. The society expects and we are to decide between raising a clean human or encouraging corrupted success.
Sneh
Ahmedabad | 19 March 2008
Sneh
