I want to be a politician

My friend Jaiprakash Singh, runs the 'Sujata School' in Hyderabad and Moinabad. 

During my visit to the school he requested me to speak to and motivate the young students in class 10, who were shortly due to leave school for college. The easiest thing to do in the world is, to lecture others especially the young and dole out unsolicited advice. Rather than lecture I prefer to have a dialogue with the young, for they never fail to surprise me with amazing new perspectives and their boundless enthusiasm and energy.


We spoke about several things and then a quick poll of the students revealed a great surprise. Several boys and girls said their career choice was to become politicians.

Wow! I never saw that coming.
I later realised that, we often ask what, but rarely why?
I have no definitive answers but yes a theory. 

Most people dream of being powerful, rich or famous. In India all these three things are possible in one profession represented by the Indian politicians of today. Politicians are a force that is not dependent on any other group in society. They are just one step below God in social standing.
All they need is a fig leaf of concern and service. 

Politics is the only profession in which no pre-qualification, formal training, skill acquisition or training is mandated or required. Politics is open for admission to all, and it seems to require no study or hard work.

Traditional Indian society had four classes. 
1. The warrior class who held the muscle power. 
2. The priestly class who were custodians of society's knowledge and wisdom. 
3. The traders who had most of  the money and controlled commerce. 
4. The working class, who had the skills to provide products and services and also those who tilled the land, the farmers.  

This arrangement ensured that no one group controlled more than one lever of power. This provided balance in society because each group was interdependent on the others. The is why India was an economic success and social stability, and there was no social unrest or revolution for over 5000 years.

Now in post independent India there has been a convergence. The people with muscle power now also have financial and administrative power. They are the politicians. Sadly they have made irrelevant religion and education by subjugating and corrupting them.

Though there are exceptions, it is generally believed that politicians exist only to serve themselves. 

During their team as elected officials, they are magically transformed into business and property tycoons. Their wealth grows by leaps and bounds sometimes a thousand fold in 5 years.They usually live in palatial homes and estates, and are surrounded by incredible luxury.  If you smell an incredible amount of money, you can be pretty sure a politician is nearby. 


Politicians are extraconstitutional authorities. Yes I know about that humbug, that everyone is equal under the law and as per the constitution. Politicians are not under the law, they are above it. The entire government administrative machinery is at their disposal. Their power comes by controlling criminal elements, the law and order machinery, the keys to the vault etc. Politicians withhold funds from opponents and those who do not pay, while granting favours and projects usually to cronies, themselves, their kith and kin through front men or to others for a fee. They usually misdirect tax and regulatory authorities to harass and destroy any voice that speaks or even contemplates speaking against them. They are powerful and they have no qualms about demonstrating it, and flexing their muscles often.

Famous, they are. Other than film stars and cricketeers media reports primarily on politicians. They cover almost every action, and expression. They hang on to every word politicians utter, as if it were holy gospel. This encourages more useless and often harmful verbal diarrhea. The media uses this 'info-tainment' to often fake concern for the people and affairs of the nation to make money while irresponsibility abounds

Kids are impressionable and they learn quickly, particularly fast the things that are not good. Is it any any wonder that politics is the preferred profession for many youngsters?

Isn't it wonderful that India is the worlds's largest democracy?

The Education Prison

Image by Ben Heine

In a country with a population of over 1,200 million people it is astounding to hear from almost all employers, "We can't get the people we need".  

India has one of the youngest populations in the world, and this represents a fantastic asset, if the people are productive. However a majority of these young and middle aged people are currently unemployable. If this situation is not corrected soon then India is indeed sitting on a gigantic human resources time bomb. 

Compared to earlier generations the opportunity to acquire knowledge was a great boon for the preceding two generations, with literacy rates and job skills being greatly enhanced. 

To meet the growing demand education institutions have mushroomed mainly owned and managed by politicians. With a focus only on maximization of short term profit  most of these institutions are providing education which is often hopelessly out of sync with current requirements of employers and society in general.

Learning which should be an exciting phenomenon has become a dreary and boring affair for students. So bad is the situation that the students are forced to attend classes which they would prefer not sit in. The system has come to represent a prison of sorts.

Indian educational institutes from school to universities have mandated that every student must attend a minimum of 80% of all classes to be eligible to be examined or tested at the end of each term.

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Why was the rule created and why is it sustained?

•   Parents do not have the time, energy or inclination to police or engage their children, they expect the educational institute to do that.  The system keeps children somewhat occupied with each other if not with their teachers and their subjects.

•   When education becomes a drudgery, because of overflowing classrooms, poor quality of content, falling teaching standards, and indifferent or overworked teachers, the children will rebel.  The education institutions see it as an opportunity to earn more fees by imposing penalties, repetitive collections of fees from detained students, etc.

This makes everyone happy except the student, because they have to endure, long boring sessions with drudgery. No prisoner is happy, even if the attempts of teaching are claimed to be for the student's benefit.

 "You can take the horse to the water but you cannot make it drink", goes a well known saying. It is possible to force the student to sit in a class but it is impossible to force them to learn.  You don't have to be a genius to know that any kind of forced action always has unpleasant or problematic results.

Instead of treating the student as a lamp to be lit, our system now considers them to be vessels to be filled.

The situation is indeed alarming but can still be rectified. We need to restructure the way we ourselves and our children learn and acquire skills more suited to meet the challenges of the 22nd century. 

Readers are invited to respond with their thoughts and suggestions.

Not a devil's workshop

DEVIL'S WORKSHOP?

http://rainysingh.blogspot.com/2011/12/not-devils-workshop.html

My office overlooks a school. This location provides me ample opportunity to observe children in an environment, which to me appears to need much change.  Children are happy, no matter what we adults impose on them. Their energy, mischief and zest, is infectious and never fails to perk me up.

Feelings of despair envelope me on the other hand when I observe how we invest in our future. The kid’s backs are stooped as they carry their overweight school bags. There are no sports or play area to speak off and the children try to run about in the small courtyard and on the semi covered rooftop for a brief while before they dragged inside to memorize something more. 

I sometimes chat with some of the kids as they wait for their ride.  I learn that most of them are not going back home but to some tuitions / classes and even more study. Children naturally want to play, but sadly their wants or needs are not a consideration for most educationists, parents, or the government.

Most kids get home a little too late in the evening and then they spend time in front of a television set or some video games before they are marched off to sleep much later in the night than they should.

Our current schooling system was born from the needs of industrialization a few hundred years ago.  Further pushed by priests and governments to keep their flock timid and busy at all times children were managed by the motto  'An empty mind is a devil's workshop'. Nothing could be more sad or further from the truth.

Industrialization as undertaken so far is mostly based on maximum exploitation of resources. This approach demands that the majority of people and employees should have facts and not thoughts. They must possess a compliant spirit to take orders and not independence and of course having fun at work or during learning is deemed dangerous. This approach deadens the mind rather than enlightening it. 

As a result many children do not get a moment free, and this suits parents and teachers just fine. Many parents and teachers are anyway absorbed in their own genuine or imaginary issues and struggles.    

I spent almost my entire childhood in a boarding school, and my youth living in college hostels.  The institutions were set in quiet places and free of many of today's distractions.  I had encountered my share of fantastic teachers and petty tyrants. The curriculum was not killing because we did not have so much drivel. Sports were encouraged along with extra curricular activities that helped build character and develop the personality.

One thing many of my friends now look back with incredibility is the amount of time we had on our hands, to do, really nothing.  These were times for fantasizing, and to spend in wonder. The space, and time afforded us the luxury to daydream, to study ourselves and the world around us as we experienced it and the world we wanted to create.

What differentiates humans from lower species is our overdeveloped mind. Our current social and education system clutters the mind, stifling our thoughts and not allowing the mind to breathe. When the mind is overfilled with facts and figures even temporarily, it knocks off large chunks of creativity. 

The end result of this education-lifestyle combination is the output of generations of a well informed, non creative, mentally and physically weak people.

When you live for more than half a century it can be advantageous  to be able to look back and study cause and effects of various actions and inactions. I classify my associates and classmates into four categories;

1.       First the sloggers, they always worked hard and they still slog at their careers and in  their lives.  Un-lived they are often overworked and overstressed. They believe they are avoiding the devil's workshop.

2.      Bums, these folks never did anything then and decades later still pretty much do nothing very useful even today.

3.      Negative achievers who day dreamt and fantasized about the future. Driven by negative influences at home and from their choice of friends and associates they went on to notoriety and often burnt out. 

4.      Positive achievers who continue to achieve success. These folks are often not only generating wealth but also do interesting things. They lead useful and generally more fulfilling lives. Contributing to society many of these people daydreamed away but were guided by a good value system and worked hard applying both mind and spirit. Most of them participated in sport and extra curricular activities

Let's give our kids space and a good value system and just watch them create an interesting, healthy, happy, caring and successful world. 

Pablo Picasso the famous artist said;   "Every child is born an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up" 

A wise man once said; "If you do not build castles in the air, you build them nowhere". 

Interesting thoughts on this subject can also be found at the following two blogs;

·      http://sureshg.wordpress.com/2006/08/18/what-is-meditation/

·      http://odyssey2self-sumiran.blogspot.com/2009/06/empty-mind-is-it-devils-workshop.html

Are we adulterated?

Adulterated

As I grow older something’s seem to get easier and some more difficult.
One of the things that got more difficult was making friends.

From the time I was in Kindergarten till I left school, friendships were spontaneous, effortless and uninhibited. Friendship was joyful and genuine.
It mattered not whether they were rich or poor, or what religious beliefs their parents held.

My play partners, companions and friends mostly enjoyed my company and I theirs. Disagreements took place all the time, but were quickly forgiven and more readily forgotten. Fights may have left scars on the body but not in the heart. I wanted for nothing, and we shared what we had willingly.

I remember that in the ninth grade I left boarding school to become a day scholar in the same Bishop School.
A great pleasure for me was, at each weekend cycling from home to school carrying a large quantity of tasty Parathas prepared by my Aunt for my famished boarding school friends.
I had even forgotten about this until my friend Abbas reminded me recently.


In college it was still easy making friends. Friendships were still born out of the voice of the heart but I also started using a bit of my brain.
Exposure to new and wicked pleasures normally numbed the mind.
Once the novelty wore off, I made a new set of friends. These were people I had developed a healthy respect for. These were folks who challenged me to make me a better person. Many still remain good friends

Being a Punjabi and a Sikh, we are used to being jovial, big hearted, and a little crazy. I like to believe I have a good sense of humour, a large encyclopaedia of jokes. These are all the ingredients to be popular and to make friends.
I realised soon enough that humour is a great thing, particularly if you can laugh at yourself.


Once I was working professionally befriending people was easy, after all I had become practised at it. However the friendships were often less than genuine. Hidden agendas with manipulation and exploitation often overshadowed genuine likings. At this stage befriending people with a view to exploiting them is understood and accepted. Maybe it’s a social thing.
During the most dynamic period of my career genuine friendships mostly eluded me. Many ‘friends’ were customers and professional associates.
The period when I work hard I liked to party hard. Party animals, and partners in vice were the preferred ‘friends’.

Here is a question;
What is the difference between men and boys?
‘The cost of their toys”.

When you party too hard or are having too much fun it begins to bother your parents. My parents wanted to get me married at the earliest.
Dad kept saying that youth in the heart and body, time on hand and money in the pocket was a recepie for trouble
I kept refusing to get married until I met Mohini, then I was hooked.

They say ‘A man is incomplete until he gets married, then he is finished.’

After marriage, making friends got extremely complex, marital couples have to be normally friendly in pairs. Rules of friendship at this stage are formal and are confusing.
I soon learnt that the visas for my bachelor friends to my home were cancelled. This was inevitable because they had distractive and inappropriate tendencies like getting inebriated, and running wild and speaking the truth.

Hey! Boys will be boys, doesn’t cut it here at this stage.

As our children grew up all the pair friends were the parents of our children’s classmates. This is a passing phase and has no real impact in most cases. However, some become so dear that they are still considered as part of our family.

Once I had achieved some degree of professional success, I began to think no end of myself. I could not enjoy genuine friendships.

Isn’t that a shame that material success often makes people so pompous and often insecure?


I thought a lot about these things and decided to put down my thoughts to paper (computer really).

• Why do we change?
• Why do we stop trusting, loving or befriending?

I like many others bandy about terms without really pausing to think what they really mean. What did I understand by the term friendship?

Putting on an act of being someone else is pretty exhausting. Deception is often short lived and corrodes the soul gradually and certainly.

In my dictionary, ‘A friend’ is someone with whom you can be yourself.

I found an interesting correlation between age that is becoming an adult and getting adulterated. I believed I was getting less pure with age.
I looked up the dictionary and found the meaning of the words ‘adult’ and ‘adulterated’.
Adult comes from the Latin word ‘adultus’ meaning grown up.
Adulterated from the Latin word ‘adulterare’ meaning to corrupt.

The more I aged the more adulterated I became.

What caused this corruption (or adulteration)?
I wonder if any of you have thoughts on this.