आज की राजनीति

आज राजनीति में महात्मा की ज़रुरत हैं, या कुटिल चाणाक्य की ?
रावण अनेक हों तो, राम की आवश्यकता हैं, या परशुराम की ?

Kabeer Vacanaavali

Some dohas (couplets) of Kabeer that I learnt in school:

तिनका कबहुँ ना निंदये, जो पाँव तले होय ।
कबहुँ उड़ आँखो पड़े, पीर घानेरी होय ॥

बडा हुआ तो क्या हुआ जैसे पेड़ खजूर।
पंथी को छाया नही फल लागे अति दूर ॥

कबीरा गर्व न कीजिये काल गहे कर केस
ना जाने कित मारे हैं क्या घर क्या परदेस

जाति न पूछो साधु की, पूछ लीजिये ज्ञान।
मोल करो तलवार का, पड़ा रहने दो म्यान।।

Rangeele

A beautiful composition by Naresh, Paresh and Kailash! I always wonder how they manage to capture myriad emotions like joy, sorrow, anxiety, agony, aspirations, desires, love, anger of ordinary people. There are many musicians who have mastered all ragas and genres, yet, unlike Kailasa, very few can manage to stir your soul, perhaps because their life is devoid of experiences of struggle, hardships and failures.

Indian knowledge based economy

The reality of Indian knowledge based society is: entrepreneurs = money hungry and power thirsty manipulators, managers = contractors and engineers = job-security seeking laborers. Knowledge based society and IT superpower is absolute ignorance. Open your eyes to reality, India is only a servile labor exporter. Is it wrong to be a laborer ? No. What is incorrect is being exploited as a laborer. What have we achieved with the service based model employed in the last 30 years ? Few lakh people could get food and homes, and the wealth of few business dynastic families have swelled by billions of times but India is a nation of 100 crore people. Without any intellectual capital, we will not be able to prosper in the long run. Firstly, cheaper and more efficient economies are on the rise and they have the potential to displace our IT workforce, and in this situation the dynastic business houses will quickly shift their money to a more profitable ventures leaving the employees to the same plight as that of the cotton-mill workers in Mumbai. Secondly, despite having a workforce of the order of 1.5 lakhs, these IT giants can not come up with innovative products and inventions whereas small companies of 100 people in smaller countries are coming up with game-changer products. As a direct consequence of this everyone in Indian IT industry is looked upon as a servile laborer, to whom you can outsource laborious bug-fixing, testing or support work. But more important than this perception is the fact that these companies are not producing any solutions to the problems that our country faces -- every technology is imported which increases the cost and hence the overall burden on the economy.  The mark of a good society is one which one practices the values that it preaches -- and we as a nation have a long way to go to achieve that !