YAARI YAARI BAILGADI

W hen Vincent Van Gogh (Dutchpost-Impressionist painter )cut off his ear, there were several interpretations offered for this morbid act of self destruction. Gauguin (French Post-Impressionist artist) was living with Van Gogh in his home at that time in the small town of Arles. Gauguin influenced Van Gogh to paint from thought instead of using live subjects placed right in his line of vision. Gauguin played a key role in moulding and shaping some of Van Gogh's style during his productive years at Arles.

History is rife with examples of such men and women of great talent who have been inspired by such friends. Sometimes such friendship has a catalytic influence to hasten progress in their chosen field of excellence.

The friendship of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison is a case in point. Thomas Edison had the chance of meeting Ford at a dinner banquet of Generic Electric where Ford was a young engineer. Thomas Edison was greatly impressed with Ford's car designs and his support and encouragement went a long way in the making of Ford's historic success in the auto industry.

Ford and Edison remained inseparable friends. After Ford became a wealthy industrialist, he convinced Edison to participate in a lot of technical and scientific projects. As friends, they also spent vacations and camping trips together. Ford even moved next door to Edison. Their estates were separated by a wooden fence but the gate always stood open and became known as the “friendship gate”. Edison, who was quite a bit older than Ford, became confined to a wheel chair later in life. Ford, who was active and in good health, purchased a wheel chair for himself and together they both would race around the grounds in their wheel chairs.

Ford celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the light bulb by establishing the Edison Institute. Later at the Banquet hall celebration, Edison played a tribute to Ford, saying, “I can only say that, in the fullest meaning of the term, he is my friend.”

Great business minds such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have come together, driven by mutual commitment to the common goal of philanthropy. Gates was persuaded by his mother to be present for a meeting in 1991 which Warren Buffet also attended. Gates, though initially reluctant, hit it off immediately with Buffet. At Buffett's behest, Gates read the World Development Report, published by the World Bank that analysed poverty levels around the world. This sparked his intense interest in philanthropy and together Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have spearheaded the effort of spreading the notion of Corporate Philanthropy across the world.

Some of the greatest mentors in eastern cultures have been teachers. The teacher-pupil relationship can be very special and significant enough to be life changing. Many a time great teachers are always on the lookout for a protégé as in the case of the famous Sufi poet Jalalludin Rumi. Rumi was born into wealth, power and high society. Shams was a powerful spiritual wanderer looking for a grand master student. Their association changed Rumi's life forever. Rumi went from a somewhat scholarly personality to an impassioned seeker of truth and divine love. Shams' sudden disappearance caused Rumi great grief and during the next couple of decades he became known as a great mystical poet. His message of universality resonates to this day.

Friendships between people takes on a different hue in Eastern cultures. The ease of familiarity with a best buddy translates to a different dynamic of speech and behaviour, one which may seem strange and unfamiliar to the Western world. Men can be seen on the streets of India walking about with their arms around each others' shoulders. There is more intimacy, both physical and verbal, between friends without sexuality being a factor. What is socially acceptable behaviour in the East is perplexing and maybe even suspicious to Western people. Even Bollywood flicks have time and again realized this fact and have come up with numerous blockbusters on the said theme.

Today Loneliness is a very common phenomenon and every other people are suffering from it. In this fast changing world nobody has the time for other people; and whatever friendship they are having is entirely virtual in the form of association over social networking sites. And what marvels me is the fact that though they do not have time for each other but they have time to fight over petty issues, over their egos which are nothing but vanity. I see around long time friends becoming foe just at the slightest of misunderstanding, creeping. All the world of goods is forgotten just because your friend chooses to behave in a different way. Without willing to know the reason we tend to speculate all wrong things. There is so much of distrust floating around. So gone are the days when friends use to inspire each other. It takes me to a painful situation when I try to visualize the future from here.

Friendship is a cart driven by the friends in the form of wheels. It cannot stand on a single wheel. Learn to give in it and you are bound to receive it soon. Learn to forgive because a guilty always a guilty conscience which is always more tormenting than your comments. You cannot forget the good times for one bad moment. Inspire each other, motivate each other, share each other interests and cherish the association. Tabhi toh hogi YAARI YAARI BAILGADI.

Kya yeh khoon maaf hai?

SCENE I

Susanna Anna Marie Johaness conspires to murder her husbands successively one after another as many as six times and finally ends up murdering the real murderer in herself, by embracing God. A typical Vishal Bhardwaj movie where he successfully portrays the dark side of a women’s facet and quest for love which comes with a caveat.

SCENE II

I see joyful faces coming out of the theatre expressing the artistic delight they have experienced in the past two and a half hours.

SCENE III

As I stroll along the street of Mukherjee Nagar (a place in New Delhi), I can see crowd gathered at some distance midway on the road. It gave me an inkling of some mishap, but only to find out that a serious accident has taken place, on reaching closer.

SCENE IV

As I stood there among the crowds, I see an old woman lying on the road bleeding profusely from her mouth. Her tattered shawl, barely a shield against the deadly winter of Delhi, lay spread next to her body. A look around and I found a packet lying at her feet which had chapattis wrapped inside it. In our society where Clothes make the man, naked people have little or no influence on society; I figured out easily from her scantily dressed body that she was that bloody “NOONE”. I came to know that she has just been run over by a speeding car.

SCENE V

A police van reached the spot and with the promise to the people, who managed to note down the vehicle number, that stern action will be taken against the guilty took away the woman to the hospital, who was almost breathing her last.

SCENE VI

Now there are certain set of questions that is disturbing the plate tectonics of mind and is causing tremors.

Q. Was the woman born to die this way, if she succumbs to the injury?

Q. What do I do for her? Do I pray that she gets saved and start leading a miserable life again or do I wish her death so that she gets rid of the type of life which must have been nothing less than a burden?

Q. How insensitive can a man could be to another person’s life? Was there no humanity left within the conscience of the man who hit her, to reach her a hospital, if at all it was an accident

Q. How can this situation be brought justice?

RBI and its worries

v The RBI Credit Policy has given conflicting signals about the stance of Monetary Policy. Faced with high inflationary expectations on one hand and tight liquidity in money markets on the other, it has left interest rates and CRR unchanged, while announcing Open Market Operation (OMO) to ease liquidity. Recently it has intervened in foreign exchange markets in amounts that could possibly impact the Rupee, and perhaps only help increase liquidity. The Indian Money market is plagued with a different type of disease where cut in policy rates does not transfers to market interest rates. A number of restrictions on the functioning of money, bond and credit markets render it unresponsive to the RBI’s policy rate changes. The operating framework of monetary policy, which works by keeping money market rates within the bracket of policy rates of repo and reverse repo rates, has broken down. This has rendered policy rates irrelevant. In the process of tightening monetary policy in response to inflation it employed many instruments (Policy interest rates, CRR, SLR, and OMO). The multiple objectives, multiple instrument framework only suggests that RBI reacts to the situation in the market on a day to day basis, where different instruments have been moving in different directions.

Mining and Environment

Mining companies give us the metals and minerals that humanity uses for shelter, survival, work and pleasure, as well as the expansion into space and interplanetary endeavors. At the same time, they want to conduct this business in an environmentally responsible manner. Yet mining by its very nature requires that land, air and water systems be disturbed. While the economic benefits of the industry are as important today as they ever were, the public has become increasingly concerned about the impact that mining is having on the natural environment.

The metals and industrial minerals that mining produces can find their way into the environment and become pollutants. The byproducts that occur with the metals, such as sulphur and arsenic, can be dangerous to the environment if they are released. The fuels and chemicals the industry uses to do its job are potential pollutants too. Mining creates and employs hazardous substances that must be handled with a lot of care.

Other pollutants produced by the mining industry are of more concern to the workers in the industry than to the public which are at large. Dusts, for example, which are most of the time hazardous hygienically, are produced by a lot of mining activities. Noise, too, is a form of pollution of concern for those in the environment of work. In uranium mines, the products of radioactive decay are a principal concern.

The challenge for industries is to find, extract and process mineral resources with the least possible environmental disruption. To be able to meet this challenge, they adopt an expanded range of protective measures, including: sensitive treatment of the land during exploration; environmental and aesthetic management of land under development; environmentally sustainable production procedures during the mining and metallurgical processes; and decommissioning and reclamation practices aimed at restoring the land.

Accountability and environmental performance are important issues for the mining companies, their share-holders and the public. Most companies now include a discussion of environmental topics in their yearly reports so as to keep shareholders and the public informed about the measures they are taking to protect the land, water and air quality at their operations.

Giving the children of prostitutes their due.

Critical comment is made concerning the plight of prostitutes children in India. Little attention has been paid to these children who are victims of their circumstances from birth, denied the opportunity to be free of their background, and deprived of an environment conducive to healthy physical and psychological development. The children suffer from nutritional deficiencies, minimal health care, nonavailability of basic needs, and social handicaps. Although government has initiated measures to improve conditions for these children, their status isolated them from the mainstream and places them on the lowest social rung. They are also likely to follow in their mothers footsteps, and eventually engage in procurement or pimping. Discrimination among the children is exhibited in education where boys are given priority, in denial of choice in joining a trade for self development, and/or in inheritance where prostitution earnings accrue to sons. The estimate 5,000,000 children of prostitutes in India deserve priority treatment. The mothers' backgrounds divide the children into several categories children of mothers dedicated as Devadasis or joins to fulfill parental religious belief, to combat poverty, or because of social pressures; children of those belonging to communities where prostitution is an accepted practice; those pursuing singing and dancing careers and who are attached to men as concubines for a longer period of time; and those who are hoodwinked into joining the trade. Prostitutes bear children out of a desire to enter into a tangible human relationship that is genuine, meaningful, and lasting. Sometimes children are economic and emotional necessities. There have been government efforts to provide benefits to Devadasi children. In addition, Chapter III of the Juvenile Justice Act attempts to protect neglected juveniles. Other approaches needed are Development Care Centers in every red-light district. Mothers need to realize the importance of keeping children away from the trade. They must also be informed of government programs and learn to value education. A cooperative effort must be undertaken by government and nongovernmental organizations and organizations of prostitutes to improve the future for these children.

Bhagat,You and I

On the eve of birth anniversary of Shaheed Bhagat Singh it is very predictable of such leaflets to start with commemorating the life, death and sacrifice of the martyr. But today breaking the norms we demand action on your part through this leaflet. Perplexed!

Before going into what sort of action are we demanding we would like to draw your attention to the situations around you. The society today is plagued with various social evils ranging from fighting over a bus seat to polluting the environment. Its progress has been chained down with evils like illiteracy, fundamentalism, regionalism, communal hatred, corruption, casteism, naxalism among others to be mentioned. It’s been sixty two years of independence and we are still talking in terms of safe drinking water, health missions, rural electrification and gender equality.

In the event of failure of such programs and surfacing of above mentioned evils it becomes easier for us to blame the government. We shrug it off calling it a collective responsibility of the Council of ministers to the legislature and so we think there is no Individual responsibility of citizens.

Yes my dear friend we have been evading our individual responsibility. It is this action we are talking about. There has to be some individual responsibility. And acceptance of such responsibility will be revolutionary in itself. (NOTE:à revolution is not necessarily an upheaval or a sanguinary strife rather a systematic reconstruction on new and better adapted basis)

At this juncture the ideas of Bhagat merit special mentions as its relevance is still intact in today’s knowledge society. Bhagat during his trial before the Lahore high court asserted that the sword of revolution is sharpened on the whetstone of thought. Now if you agree with me over the thought of individual responsibility then you have ascended the first step of MENTAL REVOLUTION. It is very necessary to revolutionize your mind for the acceptance of individual responsibility. The thought process does not confine itself here.

Bhagat once said that human lives are dear to his comrades and him. You and I, by becoming sensitive to the miseries of mankind can feel the same way. Humanism is a special virtue of a revolutionary. This character has to be imbibed for Mental Revolution. Our ears have turned deaf to the cries of sufferings and injustice around us. This muteness has to be removed with the sound of fraternity.

There is a wide range of gap between the State and the family at its unit level. Presence of social evils is further widening this gap. People like you and I constitute the intelligentsia who alone can bridge this gap. Educate yourself to the extent of coming to the rescue of downtrodden and underprivileged. Devoted action to educate the society will further add meaning to it.

The thinking horizon widens as people become literate and an educated society is like an empowered society which makes democracy more meaningful and better equipped to fight the social evils.

These are some areas among many other which we think comes under Individual responsibility which have been negated with impunity. So be the change you want see in the society and if I can change and you can change together we can make the difference.