WHO CARES ACTUALLY: A MESSAGE TO PM

As all of us prepare for a toodle-oo to the grand old 366 days that we spent, let us recount the things through which our nation underwent.

The nation was in a state of dynamic equilibrium till the government rolled out its grand scheme of demonetization. Prior to demonetization, the nation was going through the diurnal political process where the opposition and the government were busy playing the blame game. Wherever they faltered, they faltered, no opportunity was let go to pose themselves as mere scapegoats. But something happened in the penultimate month of the year that, in a kind, ransacked the nation completely.

The demonetization drive commenced by government shook the whole nation through its foundation. There could have been no person who wouldn't have felt the tremors of the "GREAT DEMONETIZATION GAMBLE."

It all started with a great intention, the intention to curb the black money (which remains unfazed by such poor actions), to eradicate terrorism ( after just two weeks, fake currencies came up for the new Rs.2000 tender) and to annihilate Naxalism (Naxalites subdued and exploited the benign tribals and villagers to get their money exchanged). The intentions were worth exaltation but the execution of the process on ground zero was pitiful.

The nation received the shocking news from none other than our own Prime Minister when even he didn't know what his words would do to the nation and the rest which followed is a miserable present. The very next day, denizens of the nation were stuck up in the bank line. People didn't go to their job and stood in the bank lines but banks were helpless too, the government had forgotten to deliver cash to the bank. But this was a small mistake, who cares if the daily wage workers, farmers, bourgeois of the nation had to stand in queues only to be returned back with no money in hand.

Some series of "minute" mistakes followed on.

Since now, the middle class had got its 85% of money scrapped (their Rs.500 and Rs. 1000 notes amount to nothing but "a piece of paper"), the great Indian consumption theory came to an in-toto halt. The middle class' consumption broken down. It doesn't require you to be an economist to understand that if the middle class recedes back in its spending, the lower classes are the ones who are affected most harshly. The same happened here. People working as labourers, carpenters, workers etc. had to bear the brunt, since now all their potential employers were busy getting their money exchanged from the banks. But does it matter if lakhs of people are left unemployed by just one decision? Who cares actually!

All the farmers were left with nothing except desperation. People didn't have any money in cash, so they resorted to buying things from big supermarkets leading to complete undoing of the small vendors of fruits and vegetables. Now, since a deluge of vendors were left with no money, they stopped buying from the farmers, and lakhs of farmers, in just one day, were left hapless.  But, farmers are worth nothing. They are innocent people who can be easily swayed at the time of elections. Who cares about them!

Auto drivers, shopkeepers, small scale business etc. were left with no employment. Now, since people were left with no money, they couldn't buy new clothes, accessories etc. which led to a nosedive in the sale of each and everything ranging from food to clothes and to all the basic need. People now couldn't hire auto leading to complete disaster of so many drivers who had no means of making both ends meet except running their vehicle. Their children and family could do nothing except succumbing to starvation. But who cares! These people are poor and insensible. No matter what you do to them, they will still vote for you, and hence they don't deserve anything.

The nation's condition was so much bad that people couldn't ever perform cremation rituals of their parents, relatives etc. I saw a woman, whose daughter died because she didn't have enough funds to get her operated. Due to demonetization, she was also made deprived of the money she had. So, she borrowed money from people in order to perform final rites of her daughter.  But since she had to pay back the money, she was standing in a long bank queue completely left distressed by the death of her daughter. But what could she do? The nation doesn't care for her. Imagine a situation, where a person
who meant life to you, died and you can't even weep for him or her because our Prime Minister says that we need to give him 50 days, because some cynical bastards say that if you don't stand in a line you are not a patriot, because some foolish teenagers say that if they can stand in lines to get movie tickets, why can't they stand in lines to collect money and above all because some insane so-called economics(who certainly have not studied anything about economics) say that this is for the betterment of the nation. But who cares!

The kind of tomfoolery that I observed in the last few days of 2016 will surely suffice for so many days but still WHO CARES!!

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2017

As the new year is going to knock your doors in a matter of few hours, today is a day to reckon our failures and our success that we accumulated last year. It's the time to mull over, where we lacked behind, where we made mistakes and where and why (most importantly) things botched up when we wanted them to be perfect.

Most of the people around the world will be busy today, meetings friends;  attending parties, hoping a good new year ahead but veridically, the person who is going to have a good new year ahead is not someone which is just wishing for a good new year; a serene and enriching new morning will await you only and only if you plan for it today. This is a period, to think about our bitter past; where we tried to strive hard but couldn't due to various other problems, where success just eluded us at the eleventh hour because of some goof up that we made, where faux friends and ersatz well-wishers were revealed and where we learnt the values of different things in life.  Today, have a dekko over the highlight of your past and sum it up to learn from it so that a stint of the new year, which is in itself a great chance for a new (psychological) beginning for a novel commencement of some great events, is not wasted upon is not squandered over learning from past (when you can do it today only). 


Remember, time waits for none. Don't let this year pass, because nobody knows how many new years we can celebrate. Every new year comes with a hope, come with the blossoming of new dreams and you must welcome it wholeheartedly.  Do feel lucky for all that you have and never stop aspiring for things you "can" have because,

"YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE, BUT YOU DON'T KNOW  WHAT YOU CAN BE."

 JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

From the year 2016

As the dawn of the New Year is approaching at a blistering speed, I thought of penning down a crucial lesson that life taught me this year.

All of us have been endowed with the exact same 86,400 seconds in a day. In these seconds of life, the winners and losers, the audacious and the cowards, the champions and the mediocre are made. The only thing that matters ultimately in life is how we spend those great moments every day. This whole time period is irreversible, even a single second that you let go off through procrastination or any other trifle can never be retrieved in future. If you can tell me how you use those seconds every day, I can impeccably foretell you about your future because these minute seconds determine the greater future.

The paramount division in a winner’s usage of his time as well as a loser’s usage of time is about “investment of time”. Keeping it as tractable as possible, winners invest on themselves, their forte, their craft and losers spend the tantamount period on “others”. The preponderance of what I learnt this year is that, in the end nothing counts, no mark sheet, no evaluation certificate etc. The two things that are ample in making a difference in only life are:  what skills have you acquired veraciously and how you perceive yourself.

In this world, no evaluation but the one which has been prepared by your inner heart can actually arbitrate your true character. When I was in school, I spent my whole school life fighting a race. The race to be the best in class, the race to outshine others in the study and various other things in which I believed I was better than others. But like most others students, I could never unsnarl the real reason as to why I wanted to indulge myself in the race. I wanted to get a 10 CGPA but never thought why.

From the very beginning, the society has told us to differentiate each and everybody on just one basis. It has taught us to discern the toppers of the class, coaching institute etc. as the shining stars of tomorrow and to think of others as being the “less-privileged” in terms of mental IQ and to consider them as gangue. Each and every student who goes through the ordinary school procedure experiences the same notion. When we grow up, we don’t learn how to come out of this entangled net, but we actually learn to hide it by putting on an ostentatious face marred with ostensible reasons. As we move to higher classes, we start pretending as ranks don’t matter to us but the truth is that all of us are running behind ranks, running to outperform each other. This race is very much vital in terms of the function of a normal social society but is, in the same amount, detrimental to the athletes running in the race. What happens actually is that while running behind something that we don’t have a passion for, we lose over the novelty of thinking. After slogging for the first twelve years of life, we start toiling hard to pass in our colleges, then to get employed and after all these things, we realise the fact that we have done nothing in this great life which was given to us out of 1.2 billion other probabilities. We were accommodated with such a great life, but what “we” did to our life? We wasted it, doing no good to the society and doing no good to ourselves. We didn’t live this life; we just somehow survived those years.

You tried your best to live up to other’s expectations but in the end, you will find out that the only person, on whose expectations you couldn’t excel, is none other than you.  You lived your life fighting to become the number one in things which you never liked. You just did that because you didn’t want to forsake the race. You continued to run like a herd of sheep and the lion inside your heart could never come out. You always thought of becoming the best in other’s perspective but you failed yourself in your own perception. That’s because you did justice neither to yourself and nor to the world. You could have allocated so much to this world through your forte or the things, only you were dexterous at, but in the end, you chose to run in the race, you opted out to go and on, never reckoning about your happiness, never caring about your inner peace.

And in the end, the horrendous fact was that the race ended with no winner. The best athletes of the race were forgotten in a day or two and a new race was commenced again for the fresh recruits. The trap which we proudly dub as “life” was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme that would go on and on.

While you were running in the race, there were some who chose not to go further through the same way. They thought of carving out their own way. They were the ones who chose the formidable path of action. Though their path was difficult but they still persisted, they continued to perfect their craft, they carried on to do what “they” wanted to do. First, you mocked them and did your best to belittle them. You deemed as them a pariah, but in actuality, they were not the outcast but you were, in every sense, an obsequious follower of the bandwagon. And till the time you got to the middle point of the race, they had already achieved a far greater sense of life which is inexplicably cardinal.

Steve Jobs took the matter correctly and said, “The thing that you call life was invented by people no smarter than you.” Do you believe that the people, who were no smarter than us, can invent a system to take us to the heights of greatness? Not at all! They can only guide thy to an inconclusive race.

So my friend, stop going ahead in this desultory race. Think about contributing to the world through your talent, through your greatness and never be marred by mediocrity. Greatness is not any esoteric thing. It resides in all of us, we just need to look it more closely and specifically.

Now it’s on your to decide whether you want to flow like a guarded and coward sheep or roar like a lone but warrior lion.

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

UNCOVERING THE TRUTH ABOUT THE INDIAN POLITICAL PARTIES.

The recent upheaval in the Indian economic system reminds of an old but still noteworthy Indian legend. No matter how much advanced we become, some old-school stories never become anachronistic and this is one of them.

A woman was very much vexed with her son who used to eat a lot of jaggeries. The conditions of his teeth had worsened and notwithstanding so much harangue he didn't abandon his habit. After becoming much fed up of the habit of her son, the mother took him to an eminent and sanguine priest of the village. She elucidated her whole problem to the priest and after taking a note of her problem the priest took a dekko over the toddler and asked the woman to come back after to him after one week. The woman was very much excited and assumed that after one week the priest would use some kind of magic wand and her son would stop eating jaggery. 

After one week, the woman gathered up all her excitement and went to the priest along with her son and reminded him of their meeting last week. The priest, on being reminded, prompted to ask the boy to come to him. He took hold of the small boy by the toddler's shoulder and said, "Don't eat many jaggeries, this might ruin your teeth and overall health." On listening to this the woman became much offended. She asked,"If you had to say the same thing that I have been telling him for years, why did you ask us to come to you after one week?" The priest laughed for a moment and replied, "How could I ask him to stop doing what I have doing, myself, for so many years?" He added, "You first have to inculcate in yourself what you want to see in others." 

The same teaching fits unequivocally in our present system and is the most quintessential advice to the government. How can the government hatch plans to sabotage the black money empire of corrupt citizens when its own representative party (along with all other political parties of the nation) are themselves safe havens for black money. 

In the year 2015, the present government said in the honourable Supreme Court of India that political parties can't come under the gamut of RTI (Right to Information Act) by saying that political parties can not be deemed as public authorities since this would disrupt their internal functioning. Such a colossal irony it is that the parties which talk about becoming public servants for five years shy away from considering themselves as public authorities. This issue was so much supported by all the political parties that this rose as one of the few issues in the history of the Indian parliament that the parties which are generally at loggerheads came exhibited exceptional unity in order to do the best they could in order to thwart any attempt to make their funding etc. come under the scope of RTI. Some even said the CIC ( Chief Information Commission) was not competent enough to look into the matters of political parties because they are not public authorities. 

If we are barred from assuming political parties to be public institutions, we must safely assume them to be "private institution". So here we have some private institutions which can't be arbitrated by anyone or accounted for anything. 

The basis of all donation to a private institution is some specious and ostensible benefit which the donor wants to incur from the parties. It's obvious that political parties are not going to open NGOs etc. in order to help needy directly, which ultimately means that the money is for the sole benefit of the party in the time of elections. And ultimately this money is used in order to win an election through wrongful methods.  In Lok Sabha elections a candidate is not supposed to spend more than Rs. 15,00,000 in one election. But who cares about the legit process? You might have yourself seen how much money was spent in the 2014 General Elections. The Chief Election Commission has written to every government in order to emend this lacuna in the system but in actually the spaces left deliberately are not replenished by those who left them and unfortunately the nation continues to believe in these parties not even knowing their actually image. The ones who promise to become public servants are actually fooling the public for so many years and the crux of the situation is that the benign people of the nation don't even know about it.


Now comes the main thing. Mr Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of the nation, talks about making the nation clean and honest at a time when his own party doesn't give any account of its donations etc. to anybody in the nation. Who can justify this action where on one hand, people around the nation are dying for getting petty amounts of money to be exchanged for the new notes and on the other hand there are political parties which can't be judged, challenged and questioned about anybody in the nation. How can Mr Modi ask the people of the nation to become "transparent" when his own party, as well as other political parties, are themselves not transparent and accountable to us all?  Let me give an advice to Mr Modi: People who live in glass house should not throw stones.

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

To my friend in pain.

This is for one of my best friends who lost his parents on Monday this week. The pain of losing one's parents at such a small age is an inexplicably appalling pain which leaves behind so many lacunae which can never be filled again. In his life also, this grievous incident has left so many voids, which can never be filled again, but he has to get back up because now he has an increased burden. Now he has to live not only for himself but for his deceased parents too. I know, no words can soothe his pain or allay his fears regarding the tough challenges, he is going to face ahead in life but he has to get back up again for himself, for his sister and for his parents because I know that his parents have not brought up a weak son.

I know, it’s hard,

But I also know,

That you are strong and resolute;

And your talent can’t be marred,

I know you have lost so much,

The origin of your life exists no more,

But today you face a tough choice,

Either you cry out and make noise,

Either you let them be forgotten,

Either you let them slip into oblivion,

Either you let the world efface them from its history,

Either you let them pass away as some forgotten mystery,

Either you let their dreams die,

Either you set on fire along with them, their vision for you,

OR you forget everything for them and pursue,

OR you work hard to immortalize their soul,

OR you become resolute enough to reach their desired goal,

OR you stop crying and start moving on this formidable path,

OR you make their name registered in the history of the greats,

OR you don’t let them die in vain,

This is your moment of test,

Life will only choose the ones, who stood as the best,

Till now, they saw their world in you,

But now it’s your time to live as their image,

To show that they taught you not to fail but to show courage,

To show that they begeted a son, powerful enough of carrying their legacy,

Now you have to complete up their dues,

By becoming a man of great character and hues,

Now two more lives are going to reside in the heart of your soul,

My friend, don’t disappoint them,

Because they just want their wonderful son to be determined, powerful and bold.

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI

  

Decoding the Demonetization.

With the midnight stroke of the 8^th November, the nation saw a huge upheaval. A sense of eerie confusion ran among the nation as the Prime Minister of the nation Mr. Narendra Modi took the major step of devaluing the old Indian currency tenders of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 which accounted for around 85% our net money. On the day of announcement of this surprise test for the nation, Mr. Modi described this approach as a colossal surgical strike on the black money, but whether this method has proved to be a successful ambush on the black money “indeed”, is still a billion-dollar question.

The first and foremost pleasure that the government took in its this decision was the element of surprise, element of ingenious hard-work and economic planning as well as the element of courage in the decision. I truly believe that the element of courage on the part of government is worth praise and government has also got its share by being rhapsodised day and night by all the media houses, businessmen, celebrities and other eminent people.

 But when I ponder over the other two things: the element of surprise and element of ingenious hard-work and economic planning; I believe the government need not be ascribed as much credit as it’s vehemently claiming.

Talking about the element of surprise, it was truly a startling thing for the nation to know about the black money, but it was not at all a surprising fact for the people who actually hold black money. Even the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) conceded to the claim that the new Rs. 2000 currency tender’s photo surfaced online even before two months of the official announcement of the nation. RBI, as well as the Union Finance Minister Mr Arun Jaitley, said that it “might” have happened because somebody in the currency chest and printing units “might” have taken any photograph of the notes and would have posted it online. The RBI and the Government of India (GoI) deems it as a petty issue and try to be evasive about the issue, but the big question here is whether the issue is that much small. It’s a very common fact that if you are having a lot of unaccounted money from any source, and you even get a whiff of any such announcement coming out online or on any other place, you would certainly make up arrangement in order to escape the coming danger and a lot of people have actually done that. Recent news shows that every week, one or two people are apprehended with millions of new currency notes. These people never stood up in ATM of bank lines but interesting they are having so much of currency notes just people they had already planned everything beforehand. The people who are having a huge amount of black money in the nation are also the most powerful and robust people of the nation having connection everywhere from government to banks. The loophole, which the RBI and the GoI considered as a minor and minuscule one, has actually led to 30%-40% failure of this approach.  

According to senior economists of Bank Of Italy around $152-182 billion Indian currency has been stashed away abroad and this constitutes for more than 97% of our nation’s total black money (the rest 3% percent is present in our nation). First of all the measure taken up by the government is not going to take back even a single penny from those $182 billion dollars and hence talking about bringing the black money from overseas still continue to elude us. Talking about the black money present, on as estimate, the black money present in India is Rs. 2 Lakh crore. But is that money worth taking back through such procedures?

India made huge leaps of progress in economic terms due to its middle class. It’s a simple economic theory and actually, middle classes run the whole nation. When the middle classes earn, they spend a lot and this leader to the upliftment of the lower or impoverished classes. Let’s say you belong to the bourgeois society and you just get an incremental bonus in your salary. With that bonus, you decide to get you house painted. Now to get your house painted you employ two-three painters. These people constitute the economically backward classes of society. When these people get employed it leads to the empowerment of their society.  After that, you would also go to buy paints etc. in order to get the work done. This would lead to upliftment of another member of your economic class i.e. the shopkeeper and also of big corporate houses who own the paint companies. So the middle-class forms a chain in every economic progress, but unfortunately this step broke the middle class and eventually the lower class is the one which is the most affected group today (from this decision). The whole middle class is today standing in ATM and bank lines. Neither the ATMs nor the banks have got the money. Some bank branches have even said that for their 4000-5000 customers they just get Rs. 15 lakhs for three days, which is truly nothing in front of such a large mob of people. The middle-class people, having no high connections in the government as well as banks, have to continuously stand in lines in order to get their Rs. 2,000 exchanged or to withdraw their money. This has led to complete ruptures of the market. The small scale industries have now vanished away. Big wholesale markets, small industries of clothing etc., the poor workers of these industries are now unemployed. There are so many people in India who work on daily wage basis as painters, carpenters, plumbers etc.. These people have got all their employment sources scrapped since today, people are finding it hard to even make both ends meet with the old currency then who would employ such people for works. Fruits and vegetable vendors have been crushed down completely because now since people are not having money in cash they are moving to big outlets and departmental stores in order to buy various commodities and those vendors who have no other source of remuneration are being forced to starve to death. According to estimates of The Indian Express, the nation has incurred a loss of Rs 1,28,000 crores till now. Do you still believe that we need to bring back those Rs. 2 lakh crores back by crushing our lower economic classes and battering our middle classes severely. The government says that it is not released money as per the calibrated releasing process but let me tell them, every day their calibrated release of money is leading to so many poor people sleeping without foods because these people didn’t have any bank accounts owing to their limited reach to banks etc. and every day they have to stand up in line in order to get a small amount of money exchanged and if, unfortunately, the bank gets drained out of money before the ending of the huge line, they have to go back empty-handed.

The government of India said that now they have upgraded features of the currency note and that terrorists sitting in Pakistan won’t be able to produce fake replicas of our notes for their wanton purposes. But these claims too drained down just after one week when fake Rs. 2000 currency notes were taken under siege which means the new currency notes are also equally vulnerable to counterfeiting. One more horrendous issue came up which portrayed some minor flaws in the printing of Rs. 500 notes where the dimensions of different parts of two Rs. 500 notes didn’t match up. RBI said it’s a small issue but former RBI Deputy Governor said that this issue is of zero tolerance. If you, yourself are making two different version of the same note, this would lead to confusion in public and through this fake Rs. 500 notes can be easily made to resurface in the whole economy and that too to a bigger extent.

The common people still believe that this is going to benefit us all, but the truth is that it has actually done more harm. We are losing out so much on our lower classes. More than 90 people died in the bank lines (which didn’t happen in Jio or film ticket lines), the great consumption theory in the nation has come to a grinding halt but still the government is blowing its trumpet of greatness after taking such a “surprising”, “ingenious”, “impetuous” and “desultory” step.

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARTI