Negativity

Negativity is a very relative term. I have been trying to caste it away from my life. I feel there is some change in me in the last two years. I changed a lot in thinking pattern, behavior, perspectives... But there is a limit of desired level of perfection you can achieve. Given the same situation, same people, you tend to relive the negativity. I pray to God, to give the courage to stand through to the same worse situations, the same anecdotes that we felt always negative... After all Negativity is relative. Someone's misunderstanding is other's understanding.

Gandhi: A Leader of Lifetime

Mahatma Gandhi had a vision regarding the fundamental rights of each and every human being. He worked for the same rights when he was in South Africa and was thrown out of the first class of the train on the Johanesburg station as he was Indian. He worked for equality of the rights of the Indians in that country for number of years. He prepared followers, made them work for the cause, gave a path to work on the cause. Finally, he could bring in the change and created a better status for the Indians there.

During his life at South Africa, he changed his life to match with the cause. He established an aashram – Tolstoy Farm near phoenix. He prepared followers and inculcated the values in them. He wrote the Hind Swaraj – (of his dreams) during his time there in around 1910s. He took the vow of celibacy to be the actual worker of society. He left the country once the work in South Africa was over. He came to India. Here there were people waiting for him so that he could give some solutions to the movement for the freedom.
Once he was in India, he was again working for the Equality of everyone. The first mission of him was to serve the farmers of Panchmahal region. He used the slow process but gave the best results. He roamed the entire country in the third class of the trains to understand the demographics of the country. He wanted to understand the people and sentiments and also the situation of the country before dwelling into the work of freedom movement. One example of being firm on means (and not only Goals) was when he stopped the entire movement because of the Chaura Chauri incident of violence. This shows the perseverance towards the Goals and the Means to achieve them. This shows the long term strategic thinking and the ethical behavior of Gandhiji as a leader.

There is one sentence from Mahatma Gandhi which shows the openness to ideas as a leader. You can discuss my beliefs and challenge them but at the same time you have to convince me hard if you are challenging my fundamentals. He was open enough to accept the changes in his ideologies but he had reasons to believe in them. You have got to convince him if you want to change him. This is a trait a leader really needs. The other thought from him was: “I am not here to defend what I said previously. If you find discrepancy in two of my opinions, please follow the later one.” This shows the way he introspected and articulated his ideas. He did not have an ego to defend his own ideologies when he could understand something requires a change. This shows the quality of leader in which he is focused on the goals and means and not his inner beliefs. He is ethical in this but at the same time, open to criticism and change.

In 1942, Gandhiji started two missions: Hind Chhodo (Leave India), Swadesi Apnavo Andolan (major in this was Burning of Foreign Cloths). This showed the nature of courage and the practical understanding of the repercussion of the impacts of his decisions. He understood that people need some support to earn and at the same time the British corporate should be stopped from exploiting the Indians. This is the way they will have no reason to enjoy on the money of Indians when the Indians do not spend their money on British Products. He understood the DNA of problems and directly attacked them. He understood that as Indians we do not have technology and power to fight on physical strength at the same time, it is not ethical so he moved the country with Truth and Ahimsa. That was the unique concept altogether and needed a lot of visionary thinking to achieve that. He created an honor in the eyes of the British where they respected him even though he opposed them only. This is his message to tackle your problems.

A leader requires an inner circle (Soul mates to pass on his ideas). He had an inner circle and in them the closest were Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Both of them knew him well and could always behave more than spokespersons. They understood him so well that they could dynamically advertise Gandhiji’s Ideologies at the same time keeping their individuality.

We can understand any management theory by Gandhi’s life. We can also see the concern for people at the same time, the passion to achieve what he aimed for in his life. Gandhiji, said one thing very often. “Let my life be my message” and it truly is a message in itself.

India of My Dreams

India is the land of Golden Eras. There are international contributions which show Indian GDP in the past, even more than the highest of today’s super powers. The Indian culture is so strong, the spirits of people are high and the times seem right. Even the natural selection is in the favor of the Indian Dream, by the demographic dividend at the right time when there are multiple growth prospects for India. In such positive times, I see India as a future superpower but that requires a culture for excellence, desires to grow as a nation rather than growth of a group of people, and the self discipline to accept the duties by people so that the dignity of humans in the country sustains and improves.

In my dreams, I see India as a superpower and the economic and cultural power house of the world. But to achieve this, the common man has to work first. We throw a used wafer packet on the road while travelling; the same person would not do the same while travelling in the US. People complain that the government has not provided with the dust bins. But this does not end there. It is the people who need to develop a culture where the existing government has to think about managing the waste in a way that society can live cleanly and see the clean places. We have a culture of blaming others which needs a major change where in we take responsibilities for our action and we create an environment where it is considered ‘good to be responsible’. A person trying hard to explain a travel mate not to throw used water bottle on road while in a travel bus, is laughed at. This shows the poor attitude of the society. This is not just about the cleanliness. This approach spreads in many verticals of human society and so in human behavior. A person trying to establish religious harmony is appreciated by all. But the works that goes into accepting all religions as they are and as a part of our own life requires courage. Such rebellions are still not appreciated in the society. Even an IIT, IIM graduate looks at the caste of the person on the ultra forward wedding arrangement web sites before taking the interest in a candidate. This shows the rigidness in implementing the constitution (e.g. equality of religion) we follow. All these things are related, they show the dearth of self discipline and the dearth of the acceptance of the human as a human. We need to challenge this. The nation requires NGOs to work in this direction. Just imagine a situation where all the citizens become the citizens they are while gone to the US and follow the cleanliness standards. The whole areas are cleaner, they generate better energy, vibes, and the responsible people create a better economy with confidence in one self. This kind of a citizen is not blocked by another citizen by the social mask. This creates healthy opportunities without the religion bias. That creates the right use of the right resource and the focused individuals. The religion and the cleanliness are the most observable sides of this story otherwise there are multiple sides which can be targeted. Explaining the right use of resources (e.g. fuel, power, water, food, etc.), the right use of received opportunities, no-exploitation policies for people, etc are some of other examples. All these seem very petty and not so much achievable but when a kid is taught all these values, then there is a possibility of turning his life towards the positive sides and in the process the whole family may get enlightened.

In my dreams, I see India as a superpower and the economic and cultural power house of the world. But to achieve this, we need to find the basic evils and crush them. The discovery of biggest evil turned out to be ‘the poverty’ by our dear former president of India APJ Abdul Kalam while interacting with school kids in Aanand district of Gujarat. Taking this forward, how does poverty gets created? The pure reason according to me is the employment problems. We need to reduce this evil to reduce poverty which increases education and in turn the nation grows and achieves my dreams. What is the possible way to tackle the unemployment issue? The best way is to create businesses which employ people. In this process I do not push the idea of ‘subsiding the automation and give people the work’. In fact I completely support the idea of automation. This takes away the work that is not required to be done by humans. This creates an efficient process to complete the repetitive work and gives human chance to do things that they have to do. This requires the humans to get more skillful and in turn earn better returns. This approach improves the standard of living of people at the same time helps to support the idea of society development where people learn more to earn more. This takes up the society, education level, competitiveness, etc. The people know their rights better and system performs better. Now to increase the businesses we need more number of entrepreneurs in the country. This is the place which requires extensive work. We need places all over the country which has established networks to register ideas, spread ideas, and help in implementing those ideas. These are the knowledge management centers of the country. These centers do not only deal with the generated ideas but also help in generating the ideas by making the people aware about the idea generation process and benefits of the same. Such centers are required in all the small districts to all the big metro cities. They are needed to be in colleges, schools, primaries, etc. This culture of entrepreneurship throughout the country modularizes the process of creating an enterprise. There are ideas unused as they have not reached to the right person who really needs them in their area. At the same time the generator might not be that risk averse. But the modularizing of such enterprise creation, gives equitable earning opportunities to all the stack holders for all the little or large contributions. Moreover, as Prof. Anil Gupta of IIM A says, the person should earn from what he does best. He supports the honey bee network concept which promotes the idea of bringing the far talent into limelight so that the talented person gets a market to sell that talent on his/her own and earn the royalties on his/her own rather than an intermediary earning all the benefits. This creates a culture where more and more people tend to think and create better ideas. This innovation genome in the country can only take us to the dreams of being the most powerful. We can do this, as the most developed countries today use the many Indian brains to innovate. We have these resources but the capability to recognize and appreciate those brains requires efforts like mentioned above.

In my dreams, I see India as a superpower and the economic and cultural power house of the world. But to achieve this, we need a country with better governance and clean accounts of the people in the system called government. We have the best of constitution which is created positively. The positively created systems always leave loopholes which could be exploited. To stop this, we need better upper management which really want the systems to run and help common people rather than obstruct them to gain own benefits. Achieving this requires a very good leader and that requires the dependence on the elected personnel. This cannot always be true as the people taking positions in coming generations may not always have better standards. The best way to achieve this is by using technology. Log each transaction of government. Audit each transaction; make a rule that public service providers have to come out with their financials just like the public sector companies. If we can regulate the public sector companies, then why not regulate public servants? The whole system should transfer to computers and that too managed entirely on cloud. If a file is pending for more than the stipulated time, then the layman should be allowed to check the status without going to particular office. Make available the related logs. Create the systems which are accountable and reliable. Treat the layman as your customers and serving them the real goal and the customer satisfaction, the performance measurement. All these require the discipline, dedication, human dignity, and the ability of ‘self restrain for earning unsolicited money’ in the public servants. This requires cultural change and that can come only at the right age and through targeting multiple channels efficiently. That depend on the human rights framework we create and implement.

In my dreams, I see India as a superpower and the economic and cultural power house of the world. But to achieve this, we need to move over and stop fighting for a state dedicated to a community, or region. We need to stop fight for a river or the amount of power supply a state receive and work in unison keeping the goal of national progress rather a state or a district progress. Capitalizing on the strength of a community and creating support for the weaknesses of a community is the micro level key for the ultimate success.

In my dreams, I see India as a superpower and the economic and cultural power house of the world. But to achieve this, we need to capitalize the demographic dividend first phase that we are in right now and create policy which are beneficial in the second phase which can run as far as we can take it forward if we create the right policies. All of these are not only the duties of our government. It is a layman duty to change the culture. Each person needs to try in his home and the neighborhood to contribute whatever little is possible to make this a better and dignified place. This approach takes time but works for growth which is sustainable and full of the confidence in selves.

Jay Hind.

Ladakh Dream... Materializing...

I had a dream from a long time to go to Ladakh. That was in a corner in the mind because of some of the Environment Lovers working with me at Impetus. Moreover, when I left the place in August, 2009 one senior from Noida was planning to go biking in the region from Manali to Leh. This increased the fascination about the place in my mind. The thought was always tempting but the time required never was.

Finally, in the month of April, 2010 some of the friends decided to go to Jayalgarh for an adventure outing. But the decision took so long that the trip could not be materialized. Then the exams took over and the thing got forgotten. After exams, the internship started which was not so much fun but the internship got over in six weeks which gave a chance to explore again the travel plans. Dimpy and I got active about the same but the same Delay Thing took over. No one was moving and my long desire to go somewhere stung me as this time the plan was to go to Ladakh with the Anala Group operating from Ahmedabad offering vast options in adventure and Eco touring. I could not loose this chance as getting 15 days tour while you are working is next to impossible and I wanted to grab this chance even if no one joins me from the college. I tried convincing many people but no one was willing. Finally I grabbed it and without giving much thoughts to Loneliness or Internship Reports and Presentations, I just gave the cheque to Anala. I was on board... "yea.... Ladakh I am coming. I do not know weather there will be families or youngsters.... as this is an Eco Tour so there are all possibilities..." All the speculations in mind but I was coming to Himalayas.

Good news.... Dimpy is also coming (on the next day this came) and he is also bringing a cousin with him... Tapan. So now we are three people. "Yea.... way to go."

We were called by Anala for a meeting. The people looked satisfactory young and so hoped for having a great time ahead. They showed some videos and talked about the beauty of Ladakh... It all seemed so amazing and even more exciting than I had expected all that to be. But they told us that on the same route 1st batch came back from Manali, and the second batch came back from Kaylong. These were just the base points if you consider the Ladakh Journey on a Jip.

So... prayed all the time to God that... please make us reach the place.. keep Himalayas... clean!

I am coming to you Ladakh..... (Hopefully)...