Have you ever been confronted by the specter of death? Not the painless, comforting blackness that drapes itself upon a person content in the happiness of a life well spent, but the sudden, vicious snatching away of an entity that has barely begun to assert itself. When something perishes before its time, it leaves behind a void that cannot be filled. It is a painful thing to behold.
I once had the misfortune of having to see a life getting extinguished violently before my very own eyes. Believe me when I say that nothing in my life has ever been the same since.
It was a rainy day in May about four years back. There still being two weeks left for my school to reopen, I had decided to visit my native place in Thiruvalla, Kerala. I had always been fascinated by the sort of laidback charm and commonsense approach to life the people there exhibited. It was always an idyllic Neverland as far as I was concerned, where one could get away from the suffocating confines of the city and breathe freely. But, all that warped sense of security and freedom was rudely snatched away from me on a single afternoon, and the tingling sense of shock and adrenaline that resulted, linger in my mind to this day.
It had been raining all day, and the downpour had only let up in the afternoon. The sun had come out; bringing with it the heady smell that arises from the earth soon after a rain. I was determined to make the most of the afternoon, and when my grandmother remarked that she needed groceries, I volunteered immediately. Soon, I set off to the grocery store, known as a “palacharakkukada”, with a shopping list and not a care in the world.
This particular grocery store was located smack in the middle of the market, in a position of great strategic importance business-wise. The owner was a jovial middle aged former police man, who had set up the store using his rather meager pension and his not so meager contacts. Personally I was fond of the fellow, and used to chat with him whenever the opportunity arose. That day, he had just begun to tell me about what he thought of the educational system nowadays, which seemed to be churning out a lot of youngsters with no inclination to work, when I noticed the girl for the first time.
She looked about ten years old, but it was hard to be sure. She could have been anywhere between eight and fifteen. Her face looked aged and weary, and her gait was a curious mix of waddling and scurrying, which made it look as if she was being dragged about intermittently by an invisible line. She moved from one mound of garbage to another, poking her waif like hands into the filth without any emotion whatsoever on her face. Her clothes seemed older than her, and were patched up in several places. Over her shoulder was slung a surprisingly new looking jute bag, which was half full of empty bottles and plastic. In fact, the bag seemed to be the only thing fresh about her.
“…… and look at that poor illiterate devil, works like an ant from dawn to dusk and what does she get in return? One meal a day, if she’s lucky. That Selvam takes away all she earns in return for keeping her in his group. Now that is the sort of child that should be given an education. She knows the value of hard work…..” I was surprised to realize that the shopkeeper was talking about the very girl I was looking at. I knew this man Selvam. He was the manager of a small scale smuggling operation across the border of Tamil Nadu and Kerala who specialized in human resources. Simply put, he loaded a lorry each day at dawn with about fifty rag pickers and beggars from Tamil Nadu, ferried them across the border into Kerala, and dispersed them throughout the Pathanamthitta district by noon. By night, he collected them from the various corners of the district, took a major share of their earnings and dropped them back in Tamil Nadu. His operation was planned and executed meticulously, with beggars operating in rotation and keeping in touch with each other by mobile phones. In short, a gifted entrepreneur.
“….. in my days with the force, I had booked him several times, but what to do? Never once could I get enough evidence…” the ex-policeman continued, but a sudden screeching noise jerked my attention away. The girl, attracted towards a discarded packet lying in the middle of the road had ventured out without enough caution, and the driver of a black Scorpio who had seen her too late, was trying to avoid the inevitable. I have read in books that such incidents always appear to occur in slow motion, but here everything was over in a second. There was a sickening thud, the girl was jerked off her feet and thrown into a heap a few meters away, and the Scorpio, after a few moments of indecision, lurched back onto the road and sped away. It all happened with surgical precision.
Of course, the first person to respond was the ex-policeman, his years of training kicking into action. He hurried out of the shop, cursing the errant driver. I followed him, too numb to realize that I had just witnessed manslaughter. As I was crossing the road, I stumbled upon the packet, which had been the object of the girl’s curiosity. Without thinking, I picked it up. It seemed very light. Not surprising, considering that it was filled with old receipts. Someone’s discarded backlog of bills had become instrumental in taking a human life.
The girl was lying where she had fallen, a broken neck having put her out of her misery. A tiny trickle of blood dripped out of her mouth, and her neck was bent at an unnatural angle. These two were the only indications of death. The shopkeeper had called for an ambulance, and the crowd was muttering sympathetically, alternately blaming the driver of the Scorpio and the vagaries of destiny, which had forced the girl onto the streets in the first place. I thought about Selvam, who might miss the girl when he came around in the evening to collect her. He had lost an investment that day. I wondered if such incidents happened often. If so, he might have calculated those losses into miscellaneous expenses.
For after all, that was all that had happened. I doubt that the girl had anyone who cared enough about her to feel pained at her gruesome end. Had she continued to live, all her existence would probably have been spent in begging for Selvam or else in prostitution. The options for a girl like her are painfully limited. In that sense, it was perhaps to her advantage that she died. Or is such a logic too cold blooded and ruthless? I don’t know. All I know is that life, in its entirety, has not meant the same to me after that incident. I have now learnt to appreciate the little joys of life, the same things that I often ignored, having taken them for granted. I understand now that life is not lived in the distant future, but in the present. Life, with all its glory, with all its pains, ecstasy, trials and tribulations exists here, now, in this very second.
Planning for the future and saving up for it are all well and good, but it should not be overdone. For who amongst us knows when our own black Scorpio may come looking for us?
I have not visited my native place since that vacation.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Horse sense
The verb manage comes from the Italian maneggiare (to handle — especially a horse), which in turn derives from the Latin manus (hand). The French word mesnagement (later ménagement) influenced the development in meaning of the English word management in the 17th and 18th centuries.
I lifted this etymology of the word management from Wikipedia. It interests me in more ways than one, not the least because I myself am going to attend a B school. The roots of the word management is strongly related to handling, especially the word manus(hand). It refers to hands on experience, the sort of "get your hands dirty" experience that comes only through the willingness to work.This quality was important in the 17th and 18th centuries, when formal training in management was unheard of. People started working at the grass root level and moved up the ranks through experience or dexterity. Compare this trait to the modern practice of seeing a business school degree as an extension of your UG education. Final year students seek to enter B schools directly from their colleges without having any real life work experience. Of course, in our modern world characterized by instant dissemination of information and knowledge, most intelligent students might be able to overcome this lacunae by building upon the experience of others. But the lack of personal experience will always remain a stumbling block for many management trainees.
It is also worth noting that the Italian word maneggiare was used to denote handling of horses. In the 17th and 18th centuries, in the absence of faster forms of transportation, horses formed the backbone of human traffic and logistics. The very fact that the word management derives from a word used to denote handling of horses shows the importance that people attached to management.
On a lighter note, the word sophomore, commonly used to denote a second year student in a university, is said to be derived from the Greek words "sopho" meaning "wise" and "moros", meaning "foolish". The assumption is that a second year student is wiser than a fresher, but not wise enough that he or she may be considered fit to graduate.Put simply,they are regarded as self-assured and opinionated but crude and immature. Now, most prestigious B school courses last only two years, meaning that the students graduate in their sophomore years (at least, what can be called a sophomore year from the perspective of the university). Think about it.....
I lifted this etymology of the word management from Wikipedia. It interests me in more ways than one, not the least because I myself am going to attend a B school. The roots of the word management is strongly related to handling, especially the word manus(hand). It refers to hands on experience, the sort of "get your hands dirty" experience that comes only through the willingness to work.This quality was important in the 17th and 18th centuries, when formal training in management was unheard of. People started working at the grass root level and moved up the ranks through experience or dexterity. Compare this trait to the modern practice of seeing a business school degree as an extension of your UG education. Final year students seek to enter B schools directly from their colleges without having any real life work experience. Of course, in our modern world characterized by instant dissemination of information and knowledge, most intelligent students might be able to overcome this lacunae by building upon the experience of others. But the lack of personal experience will always remain a stumbling block for many management trainees.
It is also worth noting that the Italian word maneggiare was used to denote handling of horses. In the 17th and 18th centuries, in the absence of faster forms of transportation, horses formed the backbone of human traffic and logistics. The very fact that the word management derives from a word used to denote handling of horses shows the importance that people attached to management.
On a lighter note, the word sophomore, commonly used to denote a second year student in a university, is said to be derived from the Greek words "sopho" meaning "wise" and "moros", meaning "foolish". The assumption is that a second year student is wiser than a fresher, but not wise enough that he or she may be considered fit to graduate.Put simply,they are regarded as self-assured and opinionated but crude and immature. Now, most prestigious B school courses last only two years, meaning that the students graduate in their sophomore years (at least, what can be called a sophomore year from the perspective of the university). Think about it.....
Last Leaf
This being my final year, I was under immense pressure from my sense of tradition to render the normal final year fare, an article encompassing my journey through the college, filled with nostalgic memories of my stay in the hostel, the first day of class, the first ragging session and everything else worth remembering. But then I thought that most of the readers must be terribly bored of wading through these final year memories each year….. C’mon, who in the world will be interested in reading about the first time I was ragged..? (For those sadists out there, it was not a pretty incident, and I am not going to tell you about it, so there!!)
Each year, true to tradition, half of the final years will write their mini autobiographies to be published in the college magazines, recounting their adventures and those of their friends, a few invented, a few embellished. But I think I will spare you people the adventures I have had; most of them cannot be published in good conscience anyway. Instead, I will tell you two stories. I do not lay claim to their originality, both are stories that I have heard from other sources.
Here’s the first one: In Austria, after the War, there lived a chemist who operated out of a small single storey building at the far end of a dead end street. His shop had no distinguishing features except for an old oak board that proclaimed to the world, in a timid fashion, that this here was a chemist. Nothing more, nothing less. He had a telephone, but the number was not listed. He did not advertise in the papers. The majority of his customers consisted of small children, offsprings of the poor and the poorest of the poor who inhabited that alley. They came into the shop occasionally to buy an everlasting toffee or some gum, depending on how much money they could lay their hands on. Rarely, some women also came, enquiring after the latest in face powder or peroxide. It is interesting how people care for their appearance even in poverty, because when you have nothing else, dignity is to be found in the smallest of luxuries.
However, the chemist did a thriving business, albeit in a slightly different line. Occasionally, upper class gentlemen and ladies could be seen hurrying out of his shop, furtively eyeing their surroundings. It was plain that they had not gone in to buy cosmetics or even everlasting toffee. The chemist was known in their circles as the man to go to whenever there was a problem to be solved, permanently. That day, the deputy mayor himself had come, seeking the chemist’s help over his wife, who was having some difficulty maintaining loyalty to her husband. He had requested for a box of chocolates to be delivered to his address, ostensibly from his wife’s lover, when he would be away from his house, conveniently nursing an alibi. The chocolates were to be flavoured with any obscure poison, leaving the husband free to order inquiries against the lover for murder. To be fair to the man, he was devoted to his wife and hadn’t even thought of taking a lover, even after he came to know about his wife’s adultery. His only vice was a glass of port wine which he sipped religiously before retiring each night.
The chemist duly noted down his complaint, received from him the box of chocolates, and, after he had left, spiked them with his own brand of deadly preservatives, and send them on their way. He then entered the deputy mayor’s number in his register, just below that of his wife. For, the good lady had dropped by in the morning, with a bottle of port wine to be specially aged and supplied to her husband for what would amount to be his last nightcap.
The second story is more famous, written by an embezzler and ex-con who also happens to be one of the world’s most famous story tellers, O. Henry. The story, named The Last Leaf, tells us of two young hard-up artists, Joanna and Sue, who share a flat in Greenwich Village. When Joanna catches pneumonia, Sue tries her best to nurse her back to health, but Joanna’s fatalistic attitude frustrates her efforts. Joanna believes, for better or for worse, that her last remaining hours on this planet are tied to the fate of an old creeper that grows on the brick wall of the building adjacent to their’s. The creeper had seen better days, and what with the autumn cold and the constant drizzles and heavy winds, was rapidly shedding its leaves. Joanna predicts that as the last leaf falls, she will die too.
But an old washed up painter, an irascible German, who lived on the flat beneath them, had other ideas. He was fond of the young girls, and often posed for them. He was always talking of painting his ultimate masterpiece, which would magically help solve all their problems. Hearing of Joanna’s fixation, he goes out in the night, and disregarding a heavy thunderstorm, paints a single leaf on the vine that was bereft of any.
The next day, Joanna sees the apparent resilience of the remaining leaf, and decides to fight back to life. The old painter, meanwhile, contracts pneumonia from his night out in the freezing rain, and passes away. O. Henry, in his indomitable style, thus tells a heart rending story with apparent indifference and flippancy.
If you have been with me till now, you might be slightly confused as to what exactly I am trying to convey. It is simple. The two stories, as far as I am concerned, show the multifaceted nature of the real world. The world into which we all are going to be thrown into in a short time. My final year brethren will understand me more readily. We have grown accustomed to the order and apparent discipline in our lives. One fine day, all this, as we know it, will change, and our lives will be shaken up, only to settle down somewhere else, in some other form. There will be very little that we can do to prepare for this change for there will be very little that we will be able to relate to. Where once we worried about having enough money to buy the next recharge coupon, we will be worrying about filing tax returns and stock options. Where once we were concerned about which movies to go to, we will now be concerned about fighting deadlines.
In this apparent chaos, one of our most important weapons will also be one of the most fragile. The one, whose two extreme features have been captured most sublimely in the two stories I mentioned above; the last thing to remain in Pandora’s jar, HOPE. The first story shows the result of a society living without hope, where any means to secure a better future is grasped desperately, while the second one shows the ultimate power of hope, to give life where it is all but lost.
I consider hope to be the most important tool that all young graduates take out of the college with them. The hope that he or she can change this world, the hope that no situation is beyond repair.... For decades, graduates have passed out from colleges all over the world, nurturing this fragile weapon in their minds. But the world they pass out into has been, and will be, exceptionally hard. To paraphrase Morpheus, the world is indeed a desert, bereft of most soft emotions. The young generation is rarely taught how to survive in this desert, centuries of pedagogic evolution choosing instead to let them learn on their own. They stumble often, some perish, some are left as wrecks of their former selves, but most survive, and a few even succeed and conquer life. But the casualty that often results is that of the hope that they can change the world. Instead, the world changes them, as they learn to adapt and blend in to survive.
I am not against adapting to changes, nor am I a die hard revolutionary bent on anarchy. I only hope that the quality of innocence, that of optimism, does not die out in our fresh batch of graduates. I believe there exists a buffer zone between the time a graduate passes out of college and the time his or her mindset becomes more or less fixed. The experience that they acquire, the situations that they face, and the hardships that they endure will play a major role in the formation of their character. If they are able to survive this buffer zone without losing their grip on optimism, then hope survives. But if all they can see in the world during the buffer zone is the sort of life our chemist and his friends lead, then cynicism sets in. This does not mean that hope doesn’t have a chance in the real world. If we are willing to consciously keep it alive in our hearts, it can draft the most miraculous success stories ever heard.
The current state of our educational system is partly responsible for the handicap that the students acquire even before they step out into the real world. As I mentioned before, very little real world skills are imparted to the students, the educational system instead choosing to rely on equipping each student with the same basic framework of knowledge before letting them loose into the world. But, each student approaches the world in a different way, and is in turn dealt with by the world in a unique manner. Ideally, we should have a customized teaching approach that focuses on each student separately, teaching him or her the unique set of tools that he or she will need to win. Most important of all, the system should ensure that the students are sufficiently trained to overcome cynicism and a negative attitude. They should be trained enough to recognize setbacks and failures (which everybody will face at some point or the other) as temporary, and prevent them from affecting their character. In short, the schools and colleges need to teach the students to hope.
My friends, as my batch passes out from VNIT, my only request to you all, including my batch mates, is this: Don’t ever lose hope. Retain that innocence, that optimism in your lives. We can change the world as much as it changes us. Don’t let the last leaf fall.
Each year, true to tradition, half of the final years will write their mini autobiographies to be published in the college magazines, recounting their adventures and those of their friends, a few invented, a few embellished. But I think I will spare you people the adventures I have had; most of them cannot be published in good conscience anyway. Instead, I will tell you two stories. I do not lay claim to their originality, both are stories that I have heard from other sources.
Here’s the first one: In Austria, after the War, there lived a chemist who operated out of a small single storey building at the far end of a dead end street. His shop had no distinguishing features except for an old oak board that proclaimed to the world, in a timid fashion, that this here was a chemist. Nothing more, nothing less. He had a telephone, but the number was not listed. He did not advertise in the papers. The majority of his customers consisted of small children, offsprings of the poor and the poorest of the poor who inhabited that alley. They came into the shop occasionally to buy an everlasting toffee or some gum, depending on how much money they could lay their hands on. Rarely, some women also came, enquiring after the latest in face powder or peroxide. It is interesting how people care for their appearance even in poverty, because when you have nothing else, dignity is to be found in the smallest of luxuries.
However, the chemist did a thriving business, albeit in a slightly different line. Occasionally, upper class gentlemen and ladies could be seen hurrying out of his shop, furtively eyeing their surroundings. It was plain that they had not gone in to buy cosmetics or even everlasting toffee. The chemist was known in their circles as the man to go to whenever there was a problem to be solved, permanently. That day, the deputy mayor himself had come, seeking the chemist’s help over his wife, who was having some difficulty maintaining loyalty to her husband. He had requested for a box of chocolates to be delivered to his address, ostensibly from his wife’s lover, when he would be away from his house, conveniently nursing an alibi. The chocolates were to be flavoured with any obscure poison, leaving the husband free to order inquiries against the lover for murder. To be fair to the man, he was devoted to his wife and hadn’t even thought of taking a lover, even after he came to know about his wife’s adultery. His only vice was a glass of port wine which he sipped religiously before retiring each night.
The chemist duly noted down his complaint, received from him the box of chocolates, and, after he had left, spiked them with his own brand of deadly preservatives, and send them on their way. He then entered the deputy mayor’s number in his register, just below that of his wife. For, the good lady had dropped by in the morning, with a bottle of port wine to be specially aged and supplied to her husband for what would amount to be his last nightcap.
The second story is more famous, written by an embezzler and ex-con who also happens to be one of the world’s most famous story tellers, O. Henry. The story, named The Last Leaf, tells us of two young hard-up artists, Joanna and Sue, who share a flat in Greenwich Village. When Joanna catches pneumonia, Sue tries her best to nurse her back to health, but Joanna’s fatalistic attitude frustrates her efforts. Joanna believes, for better or for worse, that her last remaining hours on this planet are tied to the fate of an old creeper that grows on the brick wall of the building adjacent to their’s. The creeper had seen better days, and what with the autumn cold and the constant drizzles and heavy winds, was rapidly shedding its leaves. Joanna predicts that as the last leaf falls, she will die too.
But an old washed up painter, an irascible German, who lived on the flat beneath them, had other ideas. He was fond of the young girls, and often posed for them. He was always talking of painting his ultimate masterpiece, which would magically help solve all their problems. Hearing of Joanna’s fixation, he goes out in the night, and disregarding a heavy thunderstorm, paints a single leaf on the vine that was bereft of any.
The next day, Joanna sees the apparent resilience of the remaining leaf, and decides to fight back to life. The old painter, meanwhile, contracts pneumonia from his night out in the freezing rain, and passes away. O. Henry, in his indomitable style, thus tells a heart rending story with apparent indifference and flippancy.
If you have been with me till now, you might be slightly confused as to what exactly I am trying to convey. It is simple. The two stories, as far as I am concerned, show the multifaceted nature of the real world. The world into which we all are going to be thrown into in a short time. My final year brethren will understand me more readily. We have grown accustomed to the order and apparent discipline in our lives. One fine day, all this, as we know it, will change, and our lives will be shaken up, only to settle down somewhere else, in some other form. There will be very little that we can do to prepare for this change for there will be very little that we will be able to relate to. Where once we worried about having enough money to buy the next recharge coupon, we will be worrying about filing tax returns and stock options. Where once we were concerned about which movies to go to, we will now be concerned about fighting deadlines.
In this apparent chaos, one of our most important weapons will also be one of the most fragile. The one, whose two extreme features have been captured most sublimely in the two stories I mentioned above; the last thing to remain in Pandora’s jar, HOPE. The first story shows the result of a society living without hope, where any means to secure a better future is grasped desperately, while the second one shows the ultimate power of hope, to give life where it is all but lost.
I consider hope to be the most important tool that all young graduates take out of the college with them. The hope that he or she can change this world, the hope that no situation is beyond repair.... For decades, graduates have passed out from colleges all over the world, nurturing this fragile weapon in their minds. But the world they pass out into has been, and will be, exceptionally hard. To paraphrase Morpheus, the world is indeed a desert, bereft of most soft emotions. The young generation is rarely taught how to survive in this desert, centuries of pedagogic evolution choosing instead to let them learn on their own. They stumble often, some perish, some are left as wrecks of their former selves, but most survive, and a few even succeed and conquer life. But the casualty that often results is that of the hope that they can change the world. Instead, the world changes them, as they learn to adapt and blend in to survive.
I am not against adapting to changes, nor am I a die hard revolutionary bent on anarchy. I only hope that the quality of innocence, that of optimism, does not die out in our fresh batch of graduates. I believe there exists a buffer zone between the time a graduate passes out of college and the time his or her mindset becomes more or less fixed. The experience that they acquire, the situations that they face, and the hardships that they endure will play a major role in the formation of their character. If they are able to survive this buffer zone without losing their grip on optimism, then hope survives. But if all they can see in the world during the buffer zone is the sort of life our chemist and his friends lead, then cynicism sets in. This does not mean that hope doesn’t have a chance in the real world. If we are willing to consciously keep it alive in our hearts, it can draft the most miraculous success stories ever heard.
The current state of our educational system is partly responsible for the handicap that the students acquire even before they step out into the real world. As I mentioned before, very little real world skills are imparted to the students, the educational system instead choosing to rely on equipping each student with the same basic framework of knowledge before letting them loose into the world. But, each student approaches the world in a different way, and is in turn dealt with by the world in a unique manner. Ideally, we should have a customized teaching approach that focuses on each student separately, teaching him or her the unique set of tools that he or she will need to win. Most important of all, the system should ensure that the students are sufficiently trained to overcome cynicism and a negative attitude. They should be trained enough to recognize setbacks and failures (which everybody will face at some point or the other) as temporary, and prevent them from affecting their character. In short, the schools and colleges need to teach the students to hope.
My friends, as my batch passes out from VNIT, my only request to you all, including my batch mates, is this: Don’t ever lose hope. Retain that innocence, that optimism in your lives. We can change the world as much as it changes us. Don’t let the last leaf fall.
Expiry Date of Leaders
Quite recently, news agencies were falling over themselves to broadcast the impending return of the patriarch of Kerala politics, K. Karunakaran, to active public life. It is rumoured that he shall be offered the post of Governor, possibly of Tamil Nadu. I watched a news feed in which Karunakaran was being interviewed by several reporters en route to a chair inside a posh building, presumably a party headquarters. It took the venerable old man nearly 5 minutes and the support of two people to walk the 10 feet from the entrance of the building to the chair that had been kept aside for him.He was panting the whole distance, and the two attendants were literally carrying him almost all the way. He was finding it hard to hear the reporters' questions, and had to rely on his retinue of supporters to repeat the questions loudly to him so that he could hear it properly. Of course, none of his old age seems to have affected his mind, which is still as sharp as ever. In fact, it sometimes seemed as if his difficulty in hearing the questions properly was nothing but a ploy just so he could get more time to reflect upon the answers before enunciating them.
All this got me thinking. The first and foremost thought of course was that politics in India seems to have degenerated into "Geria"tics. Ours has been a culture that has always laid emphasis on the importance of elders in making decisions that affect the entire family. When, after independence, we moved in to the Parliamentary system of democracy, we carried forward that mindset along with us. So now we have political leaders pushing 70 and 80 in our Parliament, who regularly doze off in the back benches, the unforgiving demands of governing a nation proving too much for them. We have a prime ministerial candidate, L.K.Advani, who is all of 84. There could only be two reasons for these individuals to put themselves to such trials at an age when they should have, by all rights, retired from active life.One, they might be labouring under the assumption that the nation could benefit from their experience and wisdom. Two, they might have got so used to the concept of power that they find it difficult, if not impossible, to renounce it. I personally suspect its the latter.
How else can one explain the fact that a 90 year old man is willing to make a public spectacle of himself in front of the media? How is it that the very leaders who promote the entry of youth into the governing bodies shoot down a tentative proposal put up by Rahul Gandhi of a 30% representation for young leaders in the Parliament? Why is that in a nation with more than a billion citizens, campus politics and youth leadership programmes are only seen as a tool to gain political mileage? Indeed, campus politics is nowadays a cheap excuse to furnish free muscle power for the older leaders to exploit during dharnas and hartals. I have been a card holding member, albeit an inactive one, of one of the more popular campus parties in Kerala. I have seen personally how students are exploited in the name of state politics. Campus politics should be focused towards improving the lot of students and bringing together faculty and students for the betterment of education. It should also be aimed at increasing the interaction of students with the outside world, so far as it facilitates them to contribute to the society in a constructive manner.
Let's have more youth participation in politics and social services. India is a young, vibrant and dynamic nation. If we are not to lose the momentum we have gained over the past decade, we need younger people at the helm of affairs. I don't know if you have seen the Mani Ratnam movie YUVA. If you haven't, go see it. It explains a lot of things.
PS. I am a firm supporter of retirement age in politics. There should be a fixed age beyond which it should be illegal for any public servant to pursue active politics, with or without monetary benefits. They can stay on in the role of consultants and advisers.
All this got me thinking. The first and foremost thought of course was that politics in India seems to have degenerated into "Geria"tics. Ours has been a culture that has always laid emphasis on the importance of elders in making decisions that affect the entire family. When, after independence, we moved in to the Parliamentary system of democracy, we carried forward that mindset along with us. So now we have political leaders pushing 70 and 80 in our Parliament, who regularly doze off in the back benches, the unforgiving demands of governing a nation proving too much for them. We have a prime ministerial candidate, L.K.Advani, who is all of 84. There could only be two reasons for these individuals to put themselves to such trials at an age when they should have, by all rights, retired from active life.One, they might be labouring under the assumption that the nation could benefit from their experience and wisdom. Two, they might have got so used to the concept of power that they find it difficult, if not impossible, to renounce it. I personally suspect its the latter.
How else can one explain the fact that a 90 year old man is willing to make a public spectacle of himself in front of the media? How is it that the very leaders who promote the entry of youth into the governing bodies shoot down a tentative proposal put up by Rahul Gandhi of a 30% representation for young leaders in the Parliament? Why is that in a nation with more than a billion citizens, campus politics and youth leadership programmes are only seen as a tool to gain political mileage? Indeed, campus politics is nowadays a cheap excuse to furnish free muscle power for the older leaders to exploit during dharnas and hartals. I have been a card holding member, albeit an inactive one, of one of the more popular campus parties in Kerala. I have seen personally how students are exploited in the name of state politics. Campus politics should be focused towards improving the lot of students and bringing together faculty and students for the betterment of education. It should also be aimed at increasing the interaction of students with the outside world, so far as it facilitates them to contribute to the society in a constructive manner.
Let's have more youth participation in politics and social services. India is a young, vibrant and dynamic nation. If we are not to lose the momentum we have gained over the past decade, we need younger people at the helm of affairs. I don't know if you have seen the Mani Ratnam movie YUVA. If you haven't, go see it. It explains a lot of things.
PS. I am a firm supporter of retirement age in politics. There should be a fixed age beyond which it should be illegal for any public servant to pursue active politics, with or without monetary benefits. They can stay on in the role of consultants and advisers.
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