Remembering The Ghosts Of Past

The transfer of rule of India, 1947

Quiet a long time has passed since that fateful stroke of midnight hour when India became independent. Many generations have come to be since that night and in this due course of time we have witnessed a great leap of hope for future in our country.  We are a generation that has not known bondage like others and this natural feel of independence has had its implications on our world view. Today we expect more from our nation and do so quiet rightly. We aspire to equal and surpass the west and thus often compare all our achievements with theirs. But when we view our failures in some fields and engage in criticism we quiet conveniently ignore the hardships and the history that has brought about this present for our nation.

Surrender of Pakistan, 1972

Ours was not an easy ride. When we started off in the fifties after the chaos of liberation we had found ourselves on shifting sands. We had an non-integrated nation riddled by wounds of partition and plagued by centuries of regionalism. The greatest worry of our government was the disintegration of the state not to mention the widespread poverty, illiteracy, famine etc. Socialist policies of Nehru Ji didn’t help much either but through the decade he managed to keep our young nation from falling apart.

Indira Gandhi in Pokhran following nuclear tests, 1974

After the war of 1962 was lost, as if to manifest the nation’s state, our then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri had severe heart attack. Through the decade our country struggled to manage food security until after much effort the green revolution was brought about.  In the following decade Smt. Indira Gandhi turned us to the Russians for support during the 1971 war. Following this we conducted the operation Smiling Buddha (Pokhran 1) and multitudes of sanctions were imposed on us and some of them were not revoked until 2002. Indira ji went on to force socialism on the country and we ended up in a political turmoil.

Seventies were also the decade when the secessionist movements rose to great heights in our country with problems in Punjab and the North East. The Naxal movement which persists even today is a child of those times. Then the assassination of Smt. Gandhi in 1984 saw the rise of riots. Mr. Rajiv Gandhi took over after her mother and in his reign we faced turmoil because of the Sri Lankan peace force episode.

The early nineties saw the economic fall out of the country as Soviet Union, on which we were greatly dependent, collapsed. While the rise of small regional parties brought in an era of coalition governments, riots based on religion were also a dominant theme in the decade and it was not until the beginning of this millennium that we saw some stability in the country.

India has progressed despite all the hardships and this is not an excuse. We have every right to be unsatisfied with the work not done and to point out that every nation that stands has had its fair share of troubles. My intention in this post was not to overwhelm you with history. My only intention behind this article is to point out that there is a long past behind what is, and being critical of today without knowing yesterday is the most unfair thing we can do to the memory of our predecessors.

I remember watching an old Bengali movie once when I was very young. The memory is in patches and this is as much as I recall. It featured the story of a village focusing on the family of a school master and his wife during our 1962 war with China. The movie showed how the teacher was unable to manage even a fistful of rice to feed his wife as there was a shortage of food all over. In hunger they had to try every way to manage food. His young wife eventually had to involve in a physical relationship with a resourceful person to feed her family. The movie captured the true desperation of the time and left a great impact on my young mind. I urge us to never be forgetful of those days.

Further Reading:
Wikipedia: Brief history of post independence India 

The Environmental Hypocrisy

The reactor plant under construction at Kudankulam

Do you know without whom the world would be better? My answer to this question would be environmental activists. These peculiar breed of humans do not believe in letting the system work. Though they often work for environmental causes but most of the time their work is not inspired by belief in cause rather is a search for importance in a world which can run perfectly well without them. Their plan of action consists of finding anything worth protesting on and then misleading the innocent to join their madness. I am frustrated by their acts of hypocrisy especially when it comes down to energy.

These activists are the people who fill in our books with environmental need for non exhaustible resources; they tell us how the potential of our Himalayan Rivers are yet to be tapped. Then the go and start the Tehri dam agitation, the Narmada bachao movement, and the Save Ganga campaigns. I do believe that they are justified in their fears about the environmental costs of the projects and the resettlement of people but is it something that should come at the cost of national development?

Yes wildlife was lost when Tehri dam was constructed but then read about Itaipu and find out how little is the loss when compared to the Brazilian project. Still not ready to bear the environmental cost? All right maybe we will switch to some other form of energy with less environmental impact. Well I think even the government would agree... but hey do the activists agree? News flash: no they don’t and we have a Kudankulam at hand. This time they protest over the risk of an accident, a Fukushima or Chernobyl!

Protesters outside the Kudankulam project site

Now I would like to ask them should we stop building sky scrapers just because they may fall in a massive theoretically possible earthquake. If that be the case let us build huts in the future. Now we can’t even do that can we? Otherwise they will call us slum dwellers and cite India as poor. They always tend to argue that there are  alternatives but when you go for the alternative you end up with them citing another problem. I think I’ll mention all the energy resources and the problems they associate with them.

Resources                   Problems

Hydro power            Loss of wildlife, displacement of mass population, safety of dams.

Thermal power         Air pollution, depletion of coal, health issues.

Nuclear power          Nuclear safety, waste disposal problems.

Wind energy            Now this one is interesting. Apparently looking at the shadow cast by the fan of a windmill for a long time can drive people crazy. The bird and bat death, and a mysterious health problems termed wind-turbine syndrome also occur due to windmills.

Solar energy            Solar panels consist of toxic materials, electronic waste disposal problems, not to mention the huge cost-efficiency deficit.

Geothermal energy    As of now not sufficient to run a country. Also the technology is still far away in a land not known to man.

Tidal energy             Anchors destroy ocean bed ecosystems, disrupt fish migration routes, also there are limited places to install such projects.

Bio-gas                   Methane is a very high grade green house gas. There are safety concerns and limited production issues and if you are seriously thinking of running industries on bio-gas then imagine the number of cattle required to generate so much of feces.

Conclusion: If environmentalists had their way we would be living in dark ages. I understand all your concerns but you need to understand mine. We have to get rid of our dependence on coal and we need hydro electricity and nuclear electricity to fill in the gap. Then we may phase in other forms of energy production once problems related with them are sorted out. Even the microphones that you use to shout slogans against the government require electricity (not to mention they cause noise pollution). So either live in a house without any electric appliances or stop misleading the people and cut the crap!

Please do not mind the informal use of language.

Further reading:

A Wikipedia page on Tehri dam agitation

A Wikipedia page on Narmada bachao movement

A NDTV article on Protests over dams on River Ganga

An article Itaipu dam construction

A Wikipedia page on the Fukushima disaster

A Zee TV article on the Kudankulam protests

A Wikipedia page on problems poised by Wind power

An article on problems poised by Solar energy

An article on problems poised by Tidal energy

An article on problems poised by Bio-gas

Pornography And Prostitution

Today while going through some news across on a The Times of India website I came across a rather interesting piece of an article. The story was titled "Porn star doesn't mean prostitute: Sunny Leone". Personally I don't have any problem with porn industry around the world and I agree to the statement made by Leone herself. But I do have a problem with the intent of what she writes. Here it is...

What Sunny states is in the article reflects that prostitutes are somehow low in what they are doing and that there is some sort of dignity in what "adult entertainment artists" do after all they are hardworking people who have to manage their sales. Here is how Sunny is quoted in the article: "I think India doesn't have an adult entertainment industry - that's why people have no idea what it is. I ran a company that took care of the deals I sealed with firms to sell and share my content online and to other media. Running a company was hard work. I'd work for about 60-70 hours a week. It wasn't a party. I have only one partner. So that way, I'm very restrained in the real world." 

 

So does she intend to imply that being a prostitute is an easy job? I would like to point out that the comparison of the jobs of a prostitute and a porn star was not on the practical resemblance of their jobs rather on the ideological resemblance in what they do. While a prostitute gets paid for providing pleasure to her client for money her job is discrete and often born out of genuine need. While what a porn star does is gets involved in sexual act for the pleasure of the people who watch them over the internet and television.

I also understand how she says that she has to run a company in order to sell legal rights to her sex videos. It brings me to wonder how many girls in her industry actually are so fortunate and get treated so well. At one point the article says that she never intended to be so much into the industry just that "the money was too good". There you go, greed! Now we have a real good base for perspective. Is it being greedy that makes her better than a prostitute? I am not sure.

Many girls who enter the porn industry get into it because of genuine need for employment and I do not intend to be disrespectful towards them. It must be real hard on them knowing that what they do cannot be undone in this lifetime. Anyways while all is said I would like to point out that I believe what Leone says to be true to the same extent that I believe that "a prostitute doesn't mean porn star". I would also like to defend Indian commoners take on porn workers by stating that in India where prostitution has the same legal status as porn (not punishable if not organized or public) Indians have a right to cite porn stars and prostitutes under the same category sex-workers.

Though unrelated to the topic another very interesting point comes out of this debate that is how easily Bollywood accepted her into itself. I would under normal circumstances feel happy for a person who has walked out to success in mainstream media irrespective of their background but in this case I would feel ashamed of our film industry if it has chosen her because of her background and not despite it. But that is for another time.

Read: The Times of India article

           Legal status of pornography in India

           An NY Times article on high class prostitutes in India

You may choose to read this:

While this is in some conflict with the rest of the article anybody reading this article should also make themselves aware of the pitiful state of India when it comes down to prostitution. While talking hypothetically the perspective above makes sense but I am saddened by to apathy of prostitutes in our country and do not intend to trivialize the issue. I believe that steps must be taken by the government to eradicate human trafficking and child prostitution. I also don't believe that criminalization of prostitution in general is an option. While this article above fails to address the problem I would feel privileged if you read from the following link: A BBC article on the rise of prostitution in India.

Religious education

It is 8:00 pm on 20th march. My microprocessor lab file is due to be submitted tomorrow and I haven’t even started my work on it. Besides it is a whole night’s job so it can’t take less than a night hence I can’t start just now. Honestly it is a lot of work and I am starting to feel the pressure. Tonight’s venture is bound to crash and it feels like an opportune moment to feed my new blog, thus the name crashFed!

I woke up at 2:30 pm today as I couldn’t sleep anymore. My head was reeling from the exhaustion of the sleep and hunger from the last 18 hours of empty stomach. Mess had closed and I went to canteen for my lunch. I found Rashid there sipping an untimely tea. An hour later we were sitting in my room chatting on anything worth chatting about. It is then that this thought came to me and we discussed this for a while.

Scientific education is important and so is religious education. Science feeds the rational need of our being while religion answers the calls of our spiritual self. Both for the latter half of the last millennium have taken different course in the realm of world. My question was addressed to this. Why, when both are so natural need of ours, can’t they be put together?

The ancient Indian institution of Gurukul focused on an education in all spheres of life. In this system all education was imparted by a guru. Today in India only Madrasas impart education in a religious environment. Though the institution is important in bringing faith in religion they have a reach limited to the Muslim populace and mostly limits itself to religion. 

Since it is impractical to have different religious boards and this may also bring about mistrust among people, why can’t we provide optional religious studies in our mainstream education? By doing this we promote tolerant religious views in our students and check the rise of conflicts. This may be done in after hours of school, maybe once or twice in a week. Also the religion can be taught by religious people rather than teachers.

We must recognize that faithlessness is a serious problem in today’s world and ironically so is religious extremism. By this we can check both. Is this an interesting view? Do comment. Anyways it was a nice experience writing this first blog post and was also a fine recluse. Now it is time for me to step back into the real world and prepare for the crash, so until the next time, goodbye.

Read further:

Briefly on gurukul from History of education form Wikipedia

Madrasah education in India from Wikipedia