GDP growth and the caste conflict in India Two things have caught my attention recently.
One is the fact that India is growing ever more faster on GDP and market terms. We achieved 9.4% GDP growth, reached $1trillion in GDP and $1 trillion in combined stock exchange market caps! Phenomenal achievement. (Also read that Amartya Sen and team of others are going to put together an index of Happiness as opposed to GDP as a measure of stage of development a country is in. I am eagerly awaiting to read more on that front.)
The second portrays the other side of the reality in India. This occured when I opened up the Wall Street Journal at the Frankfurt Airport (was on my way back from San Jose after exhibiting for my company iksula at the IRCE 2007). The Top editorial was on the Gujjar violence in India. As I read it, it dawned on me that, interestingly, rarely has any community in India fought about not having enough schools or colleges nearby, leading to their children not getting the right institutions that could better their social status. Instead 60 years after Independence, we now have communities fighting to be included in a list that gives them the results of having better schools etc, straight away as a shortcut. I feel that this skewed incentive to communities needs to be corrected in some way, so that they fight for the fundamentals and not for the outcomes that come for free!!!
Meanwhile loads of things happening on the personal front and in my company iksula too. However I do not like opening up too much of my personal life through a blog and so as usual I continue to write about things in the domain of my non-personal thought.. :-) Sunday, June 10, 2007
Comments:
In the Name of Brutus, of New Delhi
Dames and Gents, Namaste! I am The American who sojourned all the way to Darjeeling, to take a bus and a rickshaw to the sleepy mountain kingdom of Sikkim, Gangtok that is, to The University, to meet the Lama and discuss becoming a monk…during the Persian Gulf War. I am told the monks still talk about me. And I remember seeing Kanjanjunga, every morning when I woke up, silhouetted perfectly in the window, changing every moment as the sun shifted in the sky, sometimes snow billowing from the summit from the wind. In my country presently, we are experiencing excruciating birth pangs, pained to be delivered. I wish to share with you some of my experiences, as you, India, have shared yours with me, in the hopes that we may preserve that which truly makes us Civilized. In times unprecedented and tinged with despair, it is appropriate to reflect on the founding of my great nation. It was not with George Washington, but with Brutus, and not the one who killed Caeser. There was another who rebelled against the tyrant monarchy of Rome, The Tarquins. He wrote the Roman Constitution that would stand for 500 years. His sons sided with the monarchy. The monarchy lost. So to punish his sons and found a perfect union, he immolated his own sons. Machiavelli speaks fluently and voluminoulsy and voiciferously on this subject, in ‘The Discourses’, and yet is proved wrong on several counts by the miracle of America. He says that a nation founded in servitude, as America was a colony, will never win its freedom. He also says that a nation founded on fertile soil that is easily defended, will in time loose all of its freedoms because it will become, eventually, inevitably, sloth and sated, and will forget to protect them. As regards 'The DC Madam', I am personally involved. You can view my involvement at http://www.maytheygetwhattheydeserve.com/KAT.html Sometimes a mouse will lead you to a kat, and a kat can lead you to a rat and a rat, ironically, can lead you to the truth. And the truth, as they say, and as it is written, will set you free.
May all those who sincerely and patiently wait for freedom be free and may all those who desire to steal those freedoms find instead the dire consequences that accompany contempt for a great man like Brutus.
As regards Machiavelli, eram sapiens tamen nefas And again, vox vocis publicus est vox vocis deus
May The Republic stand forever and bring the Glory of The World, with Dignity, into Its Treasury.
