Will remain Hungry & Foolish !

The world will always remain a bit hungrier for your ideas and foolish because it wont get all those wonderful things anymore, which only you could have created.

Steve Jobs is unarguably most loved and passionate technological evangelist, artist, anthropologist, inventor, investor and businessman of our times. Neither he was an astute geek nor an impractical artist. He was a firm believer of the human ability. Though I have never worked for Apple or bought any Apple product for several reasons at different points in time of my life but like many others Apple/Jobs fan, I read and heard him. His passion was and will remain always infectious, no matter what you do, no matter where you are. Whenever I read or hear him speak, I for few moments am transcended into another world, I start believing myself a bit more. Change is possible and change is the only constant thing as they say and change is what he always believed in. Most of his successful products created a new market for Apple and quiet surprisingly for his competitors as well. Sometimes I think he never believed in Playing Game by the rules or Changing the Rules of the Game. He created his own new games every time and his own set of rules. And that's what sets him apart. In addition to the phenomenal OS that he and his team created, he used simple concepts in User Interface, Design and Aesthetics and created a parallel world of his own. In his world he was competing with nobody but himself. 


He took consumerism to an all new level. I have seen people passionately waiting for the new iPhone release or buying the latest pads, tunes and whatever possible from Apple. I think I was very close to buying an Apple product twice but somehow circumstances never allowed me to do so. But I am fortunate enough to be surrounded by Apple buffs. One of my friend even bought the rarest and perhaps widely unknown Apple product - Apple TV. He took the Jobs advice to Think Differently, seriously and never purchased the other popular Apple gadgets. 


Sometimes I wonder whether he intentionally created products for classes, but then  I tend to believe that he was not like some high profile, fashion designers who sell a kerchief for fortune. He did what he liked and he liked what he did. In his own words “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.” 


The most pragmatic advice I have ever come across, something very simple, something which tells you that you dont have to jump an airplane to be kool or travel to Himalayas to understand the ultimate goal of your life - “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” 


We all try to search for salvation. Every country and every religion has identified, preached and propagated their own ways of attaining the ultimate. The Road to Salvation I think ultimately depends on individual. A 21st century spiritual techie, this one from Steve Jobs is something very similar to what Gandhi ji said half a century ago in totally different context though -“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Thank You Steve Jobs. Rest in Peace !

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Image source- Google (various)

Remembering Bapu

Time and again, I try to revisit Gandhi ji, His thoughts, his actions, his beliefs and message. I always find something new, something which is so much more relevant as time passes by. Gandhi ji was a great scholar and   whatever he said or whatever he did was always backed by so much of thinking, reading and analysis. His life was an open book, without any internet based Social media those days. He relied on the real world, human interactions and real life based social media, wherein anybody can walk to him anytime, support or oppose, understand him or make judgment without understanding at free will.

Let’s revisit some of words of wisdom and try to understand in our own context, the relevance of these words-

“The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles”

A very complex statement, each and every part needs to read and re-read so as to get to the gist of the underlying rational. 

We seldom wonder, who we are, where we come from, how are we different from others, other life forms etc. A simple thought, a restatement which was said by numerous religious and political leaders in the past, 

A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, Nothing else. Mahatma Gandhi

While some of modern philosophers and thinkers have written off religion on accounts of scientific grounds, but just because religion cant contest and win with Science on some of the grounds, does not mean that Science is the supreme, ultimate truth. Both Science and Religion are tools to discover and comprehend the chaos in nature (which includes human body, mind, thoughts, earth, extra-terrestrial, inter galactic matters etc). No Religion which is narrow and which cannot satisfy the test of reason will survive the coming reconstruction of society in which the values will have and character and not possession of wealth, title or birth will be the test of merit. He foresaw the changing times and the changing fabric of the society. He realized that Religions are not sacrosanct and should evolve to address the changing times, should be able to stand the test of Logic. A firm believer in Meritocracy, his above statement was ahead of his times, when the Indian society was deeply marred and divided on social, cultural, religious grounds.       The statement below is quiet an interesting statement. He does not support the whole idea of living life based on blind ideologies. While we are the way we are and we believe in whatever we believe, but Gandhi ji argues that the Ideologies and Beliefs should not be followed just to feel good about ourselves, to appear consistent to ourselves and to the rest of the world.

Constant development is the law of the life and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself to a false position.

In quest for truth and knowledge, one can or sometimes can’t keep harping the age old (may be a year old, a decade old, a millennium old) philosophies because some wise men said so.

Gandhi ji’s Life was his message. 

He said what he believed, he constantly questioned what he believed, and he did what he said and said.

Shayad Daag Achhey Hain !!

This time, we dont need to rely on Saridon or Disprin to address the hangover of this recently concluded India Against Corruption movement or should we say recently halted movement.

Without getting into argument about whether Anna is today's Gandhi or his follower, or trying to analyze who contributed more to this nation Arundhati Roy or Arvind Kejriwal or whether Nandan Nilekani was right in outright rejection of this movement, terming it as inane, whether end justifies means, whether Om Puri was right in calling more than 50% of politicians useless, whether laws can be made on street, whether Civil society movements can substitute Parliamentary democracy or whether existence of Parliamentary democracy implies civil society should restrict its participation to voting and sending request letters to their elected representatives only, whether or not 90% of people who participated in the rallies knew anything about the movement or whether 1000s of volunteers who are paid for participating in pre-election rallies know anything about the election agenda of the respective parties, whether Irom Sharmila thought through before calling Anna movement artificial or whether media should be blamed for not giving her sufficient coverage or whether team IAC rightly harnessed the power of media, without trying to find what was the main reason behind reasonable success of this movement, whether it was simplicity of the man or the accumulated frustration about the worsening situation, about the inability to do anything meaningful, about the inability to get things done without getting harassed, let us look at some good, positive key takeaways for all of us.

Confrontations

Perhaps we were getting too cozy and comfortable with all this system of giving and taking. Slowly what started as uncomfortable reality became a habit, a indispensable part of our life and culture to some extent. It's almost very easy to miss the forest for the tree. We have been so used to maximizing the short term benefits ( by saving few minutes, few 100 Rs. etc.), that we forgot to review, assess and understand the disease which each and all of us were nurturing. The first step towards solving any problem is to acknowledge its existence. We cant bury our heads in the sand for rest of our lives and behave as if nothing happened. This movement raised a loud shout, in the heads of we the public and we and them the polity. Now, we are confronted and now we should not try to escape. This realization, this first step towards catharsis will have far reaching impact beyond any of us ever imagined.

Heros

Availability of information has changed the dynamics of game overnight in the favour of we the people. The way team IAC and several other social activists, several other real life heros came forward and got the appreciation they always deserved by masses. I am not in favour of blindly following these new found heros but somehow I hope and I believe that these old stalwarts will not let us down. Most importantly these new youth icons will encourage several others like you, me and us to take the road less traveled by.

Positive Outlook

We grew up in a society in which everybody believed that nothing will happen. We saw, we resisted a bit and soon we became party to it. Nobody ever imagined that things can change, perhaps because many of us lot of individual efforts to bring change, went invain to a large extent. At the expense of over simplifying the matter, I strongly believe that IAC movement has bolstered the confidence and developed a bit of positive outlook in all/most of us that, if we try properly, things can change.

I am sure this movement will inspire a lot of us to bring in the positive change in our locality, vicinity, in ourselves, our families AT LEAST in the short term. We have started believing in an age old adage - if we believe we can !

Front foot

This movement bought we the people, perhaps middle class people a bit more to the front foot. I think it is safe to assume that a huge chunk of middle class interact with state much less as compared to someone living in village near or below poverty line. This can be attributed to poor/mediocre services provided by government agencies (barring very few) and ability or should I say desire of middle class to move up the value chain. The participation has increased and though they may like it or not, but the factors based on which we the people will vote, will undergo a sea change in years ahead. So, stop taking us for granted and start working for what you are paid.

Back foot

Though most of politicians are writing things off stating that few lakhs of people were on street and its not a big deal. Manishankar Aiyyar and several other eminent politicians went on camera stating that we go out and meet several millions of people during election campaign ! I think they realized that they can no longer afford to neglect the middle class just because they do not vote frequently and religiously. In the back of their mind, the politicians in both ruling and opposition parties know that this movement resonated with millions and millions of people who might have not come on street this time but CAN come out when called properly.

Proactive Participation

I am sure, many more of us will take the proactive approach now or in near future in whatever ways possible to bring in the change we always wanted, we always observed during our overseas trips. If 1000s of us start taking baby steps in the right direction, soon we can have the giant leap which we always dreamed of for our family, our neighborhood, our cities and our country.

Shayad Daag Achhey Hain !!

Because we like to consume chocolates and intend to take bath and wash our clothes frequently, Indian and Multinational companies put up advertisements on TV channels and the rate of these ads is determined by the popularity of a particular program, which is mathematically conveyed as TRP. But this time the matter was beyond TRP ratings indeed. Right from day one when the movement started to even now, when the movement is temporarily on hold, government has tried its best to malign the team IAC in one way or another.The more they tried to throw mud on IAC team, the more news media houses got, more and more we the people got angry, more we came to know about the inability of you the elected representatives to do something constructive, in addition to sleeping in or bunking Parliament sessions altogether !

I am not sure if they are aware of this or not, but let me make this clear dear Parliamentarians we have been reading newspapers, watching channels for decades now, recently we have started blogging and now we are on the streets.

The credit goes to the political class and their relentless efforts to blemish the image of team IAC, magar Daag lagane se kuch achha hota hai to, shayad...

Popcorn Happiness

I know the 'Chotu' at tea stall,

Saw him from a distance,

Selling tricolor, in the rally.

I know about his slums,

Behind Mall.

I no longer live in the town,

I was born.

But I know they face,

four hours of power cut, everyday.

So, I wear a pair of rugged jeans,

Brand new, but torn.

I was ambitious, so I left.

Lack of resources, so I left.

What I left, never left me.

But after the the right I took, I think,

Nothing was left.

From Letters to emails to sms and tweets.

I religiously acquired all the apps.

Partying this weekend, so pardon me this time.

But I know the names of all the scams.

On my way to make it big.

Someday!

Yes, I do enjoy.

My Popcorn Happiness,

So, what's wrong?

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Nitin

No More Linear

Back in 90s, I used to hear from my parents that all the charities were fraud.Though I was not part of any, but saw such things in movies and some television shows. I dont believe in linear progress because thats now how society works. To elaborate, if we agree that in past 60 years of Indian independence 1% of people are working genuinely in nonprofits, linear extrapolation of 600 years to reach 10% level will not hold good. It will be much less, perhaps 100 cant say. So I am hopeful that this non linear or should we say exponential progress has the potential to surprise everybody and this time it will be for good.

Though I am not a big fan of bucket lists, but I feel that its important to keep recalling so many good things which are happening around us, the list of good activities, earnest movements, inspiring lives of silent warriors which keep working despite much mumbo jumbo, publicity and other such things which are all worldly.

Sharing some of the some innovative, relevant, sustainable and powerful concepts which have potential to create long term, non linear and perhaps unpredictable impact on the civic societies in the coming years -

An interesting model to tackle corruption -
I Paid Bribe

An innovative way to combat poverty -
United Prosperity

From darkness to light -

Electrifying rural India -
Husk Power

A model which can be replicated in every town to counter the traffic police corruption -
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Alert-netizens-shame-errant-cops-on-Facebook/articleshow/6423949.cms

Solar Power rockss -
Surya Bijlee



Innovative world for differently able -
Ability Unlimited


An umbrella organization with the simple motto - Be the Change you want to See -
Janagraaha

United Prosperity

United Prosperity a micor finance mission started by Bhalchander Viswanath. This initiative has the potential to solve some of the India's critical problems of poverty, unemployment, rapid urbanization, education, health and general standard of living in rural India. Supporting rural entreprenurs...with small needs can create big difference as it will make them self reliant...boost their confidence level....increase personal income level...create long term employment opportunity for them and their family memebers...all this in turn will decrease migration to urban areas...increase the standard of living of rural India, which in turn will encourage them to send their children to schools and take proper education without any urgency to earn money for the family. Heres an excerpt from Bhalchander about this new mission -
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Combat poverty and multiply the impact of your money

United Prosperity (http://www.unitedprosperity.org/) is the world’s first person to person loan guaranteeing website. Small entrepreneurs all over the world need funds to start and grow their businesses. Banks however don’t lend to them without collateral. Small entrepreneurs cannot provide collateral since they are often very poor. Microfinance institutions (MFIs) lend to the poor without collateral but they in turn (especially the smaller MFIs) need guarantees to borrow from banks. The general public can help the entrepreneur earn a better livelihood by providing cash collateral – a guarantee – on our website. The guarantee allows the entrepreneurs to access a microloan through one of our partner Microfinance Institutions (MFIs). On loan repayment the money is returned.

United Prosperity is unique in several ways:
a. Maximum impact: Due to United Prosperity’s innovative guarantee model which involves additional capital contributions by the bank and MFI, $1 in guarantee could lead to $2 to $5 in loan to the entrepreneur – thus maximizing the impact.
b. Local linkages: United Prosperity creates relationships between domestic banks, MFIs and poor entrepreneurs rather than encouraging dependence on foreign assistance.
No foreign exchange risk: Since the loans from the Bank to the MFI, and from the MFI to the entrepreneur are in local currency, there is no foreign exchange risk involved. Only in the relatively rare event of default, when the guarantee is called will a cross-border foreign exchange transaction take place.

Operations began in India in May 2009 and over time will expand to other countries.

Key supporters include Cognizant, O’Melveney and Myers, Hanson Bridgett, Berkeley Law at UC Berkeley, Tempus Law, NetSuite, and Books2taxes.com.

You can support United Prosperity in several ways:
a. Spread the word: Write about United Prosperity in your blog or website and tell your friends.
b. Become a social guarantor: Visit United Prosperity’s website and support poor entrepreneurs by making guarantees. There is no minimum amount and you can make payments with PayPal or a credit card.
c. Join the community :
Facebook http://bit.ly/1bFgtg
Twitter http://twitter.com/unitedprosper
d. Share your expertise: Volunteer your expertise to help build and market our website.
e. Support our mission: Provide grants or loans to help scale up United Prosperity’s operations in the US and India to help us reach more poor entrepreneurs and further our mission.
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