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.

The Gods Must be Lazy !!

or perhaps Hazy !?? The shining statues made out of pure gold, studded with diamonds and emeralds. Piles of cash, which keeps pouring in and sometimes keep disappearing as well.

Sabarimalai temple generated revenue of Rs.128 Crore (apprx. $25million) in a recently concluded pilgrimage season! The official notification can be read here According to some estimates the temple might be owing assets (in cash, kind, jewellery etc) anywhere to the tune of Rs.1 to 5 lakh Crore ( whopping $25 -$100 billion). But Unfortunately the fact remains a stampede in the temple killed 100 people earlier this year, which goes on to prove how much of time and resources are invested by the temple committee/trust to improve infrastructure and ensure safety of the visitors/pilgrims etc.

As can be read here earlier this year 100s of kg of Gold and Silver and crore of cash was found in the room of Satya Sai Baba ! What all this money and gold was doing in his room? A possible case of gold lust ?

It took me quiet some time to comprehend this figures, yes ladies and gentlemen, hold your breath tight...the Sri Sai Baba trust in Shirdi manages a corpus of Rs 47,82,31,835.64-crore (over $10 Trillion) as can be read here The total income during the year 2009-10 was Rs 1,64,88,01,030 by way of rent, interest on savings bank accounts, investments and donations.

Similar is the fate of Balaji temple, Siddhivinayak temple, Srinathji temple, Ajmer Sharif Dargah, Puri temple etc. These are some of the prominent temples of national and international fame. The sum total of LIQUID assets of these top 10 temples in India will definitely run into TRILLIONS of Dollars, i.e Crore of Crores of Rs/INR.

As per my estimate within every 5 Kms diameter in India, there's a temple/shrine/mazar/place of worship and within every 100 Kms diameter (per district apprx.) there exists a similar place which is popular in the region and is visited by 1000s of people everyday and perhaps more than a million per year! So assuming an average of Rs.100 ($2) per person, these temples must be receiving donations worth Rs.9-10 crore ($2 million) per year. Almost all of these temples et.al celebrate an annual event/mela gathering at some point in time, which is associated with a mythological or should we say hypothetical story. Again based on my estimate, during this period, these temples receive donations worth equal to or greater than what they might be receiving during the rest of the year. So to summarize, these comparatively small temples of regional significance must be making money in excess of Rs.10,000 crore ( 640 districts x 1 temple per district x $4 million per temple == $2.5 billion).

Fortunately the Indian gods are lazy enough and are not able to spend all this money, which has been safely deposited/donated by the god fearing, religious people of India !! Interestingly the amount of money/assets swindled/dwindled/donated/deposited with the temples et.al might compete (can exceed as well) with the amount of money off shored to Swiss/Caymans etc in past 60 year post independence. I strongly feel that a huge % of this money would have been deposited because it can be parked in the banks( Income tax fears), all of it cant be kept in the house(theft fears) and perhaps it would not have been possible due to logistics constraints to park this money in Swiss/Cayman/Bahrain etc type of places, so temples do offer a safe place, which is out purview of even the government. Considering the fact that everything is possible in India, it is also possible that the trust, the pundits whoever is safeguarding these donations must have been charging fee/commission for safeguarding and even returning the money/funds/donations as and when required, right under the nose of the ultimate savour.

So the lazy gods accepts bribes in almost all forms, but what do they do with it ? It is safe to assume that almost all the money in off-shored is black/illegal. On similar lines, I think it is safe to assume that almost all (i.e more than 90%) of businessman, entrepreneurs in India ( be the one running grocery shops, showrooms, to small manufacturing units to multi-business, multi-billion dollar business empire) evade taxes and these are the people who bribe our lazy gods beyond reason against some demand/wish/request/ plea/ threat etc.

So what kind of favours do our gods return, what kind of services do they provide? We Indians the way we are, its safe to assume that the gods must be performing well, because the donations, the money, the gifts et.al is keeps on increasing YoY basis ! So are gods really lazy ? What about the genuine intentions, the belief, faith, trust in religion, of we the people of India ? Can we simply write-off all that is genuine and true and innocent ! What happens to the middle class and the poor people? Does god listen to them ? I dont think so........we frequently keep hearing rags to riches stories every now and then...most of these inspiring stories are about the self made men (or rarely women, sorry but true factually), so which means that god wants you/us to achieve certain level by ourself (or is that part of the divine plan too ?) in order to be eligible to speak/interact with him (or her) more frequently and produce results. It is like corporate style or perhaps corporates have adapted the god's style !

So, a fraction of we, somewhat genuine a bit selfish though religious, people of India have amassed trillions and trillions of dollars (in India and abroad) of wealth, by the grace of gods in past 60 years and the lazy gods dont seems to be caring about the rest of us any time soon, so its time to wake up, get up from that desk and kick some ass, so as to be eligible to speak with the gods...

Chaos - The Only Order ?

Growing up is never easy, especially when everything else in the world is growing with you in quantity, quality and in almost every possible dimension. Lets take look at some statistics -

Estimated Number of registered websites in the world-
1998- 2.4 million
2000- 7 million
2010-180 million

Question - did anyone in the year 1998/99/2000 imagined that the number of registered websites will increase 25 times over next decade ?
Question 2-any guesses for the number of registered websites by 2020? 500 million or 5 billion?

Estimated World Population-
1000- 0.25 billion
1500 - 0.50 billion
1810- 1 billion
1910 - 1.8 billion
1965-3.6 billion
2000 - 6.1 billion
2010-6.9 billion
2020 - projected - 8 billion

Question - did anyone in the year 1000 AD imagined that the world population will shoot up 25 times in next 1000 years ?
Question 2 - any guesses for the population in 3010-150 billion? OR back to 0.25 billion?

Estimated Mobile users in the world -
2000- 0.5 billion
2005- 2.1 billion
2010 - 5 billion

Question- did anyone in the year 2000 forecast a 10 fold increase in next 10 years?
Question 2 - projections for 2020? definitely not 40 or even 20 billion right !!

Year 1910 - did Britishers ever imagined that 100 years fast forward and Indian and Chinese economies will be ruling the world, despite of them looting the world for 300 years !!

Will United Nations/US/UK government will ever succeed in reducing the Chaos/Entropy of this World, i.e reducing the poverty, wars, coup, terrorism etc?

These might be sample and apparently random statistics over a completely diverse time frame and on similar lines we can analyze the number of TV sets from 1900 to 1930 to 1950 to 2000 and many more interesting statistics. But the question remains - is it possible to predict any trend over a 'long time frame' in future for almost anything/event/behaviour!

Perhaps not! Why? Simply because the human mind does not have the ability to comprehend the outcomes of billions and billions of macro and micro events taking place everyday, everywhere, everytime ! No matter how smart we become in foreseeable future, we wont be able to run aMonte Carlo simulation for the whole world in our head to predict the outcomes of random events.

With world becoming more complex then ever, with the advent of internet and social media, the possibilities of interactions and so the total volume of interactions has grown out of proportion in the past decade. So, the definition of 'long time frame' itself has reduced and most analysts are caught on the wrong side, in their attempt to predict the stock price over next 6-12 months!!

So, is Chaos the only order? With increasing population and more rapidly increasing 'things' (mobile, internet!!) around human beings, the number of interactions between man-man, man-thing, thing-thing are bound to increase in leaps and bounces which will further increase even more random events in almost any field - science, technology, politics over next 10 years !! So perhaps the next decade be most eventful decade in past 20000 years? I think so, provided some comet/s (force majeure as they call in business :)) etc does not happen to our dear planet!

What about Religion? Almost 80% of the world population firmly believes in some religion or the other, still the number of people attaining salvation/ moksha, which tend to reduce the Chaos/ Entropy of the world have not succeeded either? But what if no religion ever came into existence, perhaps we would still be in jungles! So religions have definitely succeeded in temporarily reducing the randomness, aberrations in the society at large.

We can find the most interesting application of Chaos Theory in - Politics!! Politicians know that its impossible to predict the behaviour of voters after 4/5 years, i.e during next elections. So, they start their hidden and public campaign to woo voters just few months/ weeks before the elections!! Perhaps we need to establish a new branch of studies - Thermodynamics of Politics and Religion!!

But the next question is to all "Thermodynamicists" (please don't mind the extension of Science- Scientists association, if you prefer Mathematics - Mathematician kind of usage then I can rewrite "it" as Thermodynamicians but it does sound weired, right!), so coming back to question outside the brackets of terminology, Can the Entropy and so Chaos of our System will keep on increasing forever from here on or will the end be same as the beginning- A Big Blast?

Chaos - The only order, from ever since, forever !

Heros Requiredd.....!!!

Present debacle of Indian Cricket team..and the Hype and discussions going on since last 1 week or so..shows the urgent necessity of Heros required by and for India !!

Every society,civilisation requires Heors to look upon to !! Those who can do great work, achieve impossibles, gerat artits or thinkers or philosophers with mass appeal !! These Heros can be in various fields, walks of life which are popular at those times - be it science or technology or sports or fashion or music etc etc !!

What is the necessity of Heros ? Why do we need them ?? What if there are none ??

Monotonousity ( i dont know if thts a word or not !!) is mediocrisity !! Both are not exciting things !! Hence in order to come out of this boredom man looks upto somebody whos famous and doing something different, who has OR can achieve more than himself !! He tries to align his actions and aspirations as per Heros instructionss !! These instructions are indirect and subtle but sometimes are very strong !!

Our nation is in the middle of a change - huge change which might be studied by historians of future, business gurus of future as case study !! But in order to move this tide in right direction, we require Leaders - who can guide masses in correct direction ! These leaders need not be from Politics alone ( as unfortunately todays working youth is no more interested in the same ) but Achievers from ALL Walks of life - sports, music, cinema, arts etc. etc !! Our country is desperately seeking for such leaders whom to look upon and mimic !! Following whom people (especially children & youngsters like me :D) can come out of their shelves and try to do something really exciting or constructive or different in life !! Dearth of such leaders has been one of the reasons of recent muslinging on Indian Cricket Team as there are not much options avaiulable ! Nobody cares about the national game anymore !! So this scaricty will lead to over hype of minor sucesses like Ms.Mirza or Yuvraj Singh and likes will create uncecessary pressure on them, which in turn might hamper their performance and their view might be skewed from long term carrer to short term money minting !! thts it !!

Arts and science are still underrated in India ! With arrival of business news channels - fortunately business leaders are getting the attnetion what they always deserved ! Narayan Murthy and Anand Mahindra are becoming household names ! Acquisition by Indian co.s make us, you me everybody feels proud !! Gives us something to talk about, boast about and feel good about !!

Considering our population and its diversity I still feel that there's requirement of hell lotta leaders on various levels from various walks of life so that the nation progresses sustainably and as a whole - together as single entity !!