Who the hell are these people? What do they think of themselves? What is it that they want to achieve? Why is it that it is so important for them to achieve that they gave up their high paying government jobs and took this path? What is it that drives these people and what is it that gives them hope that they will be successful? Or are they at least thinking about the probability of success and how long it would take for them to see the results of their efforts?
These are the questions that stormed my mind when I entered Takshashila Shala on 6th Nov, 2011 at IIT Madras, Research Park. To give a brief introduction, Takshashila shala is a group of think tank people, who organize seminars and round table conferences around the country, invite distinguished people in their own fields to speak and educate the people in public policy making. They believe that change can come through better policy making and those policy makers have to be educated.
This is the day’s schedule. There will be talks going on in three rooms and you can chose whichever talk you want to attend. Each talk is of 40 min (20min talk + 20 min Q&A). Five minutes break to move to other room. Talk begins at the gong of the bell and ends with another gong of the bell, no matter what.
The first speaker whose talk I attended was Mr. Raj cherubal. He is a social activist from Chennai. He contested in recent counselor elections in Chennai and lost. His talk mainly contested of his experiences during the elections. There was not even a speck of disappointment for losing the election. But his joy lies in realizing that there are people out there who want better governance. As governance doesn’t affect the old people much, they were demanding money, while the youth who knew about him, took the whole responsibility of campaigning. His campaign team consists of a lawyer, an IT professional, a marketing strategist, etc.. He did a door to door campaign which the contestants from major parties cant even dream of doing for the fear of facing rejections. Also I met two more people who contested for MLA representing Loksatta party (called as Makkal Sakthi). They were very young. They truly represent the idea of youth into politics. One of them is 28 yrs old while the other is even young and recently married. While they both lost in elections, they reasoned saying they took a very late decision to contest in elections and didn’t have enough time to interact with people. Both of them were part of anti-corruption movement in Chennai.
Mr. Raj Cherubal’s lecture began with a very thought provoking question. If you want to join politics, where do you start from? What is the starting point? Also he says that there is a very high market for young intellectual people in parties who realized that only these youth can win elections for them in the future. So, if you want to join politics join a party is what he said.
Next, I attended a lecture titled “righting copyrights” by Mr. Pranesh from Bangalore who works on copyright policies for a software company. He stated some astonishing facts about copyrights. However bad u sing a song, even in a bathroom you are still violating copyrights law. A mere click on “share” button on facebook, a mere re-tweet is a violation of copyright laws. I put my point saying that our civilization would not have reached so far, our tradition and culture would not have carried down for a long time if we bothered about copyrights. Whatever knowledge my father, grandfather, etc impart me is not their own, so they are violating copyright law, it at all there was a law. He agrees and moves further into the topic. Even if we are publishing something giving due credit to author either in an article, a book or merely sharing some one’s status message on facebook you are still breaking the law. Bell rang and the lecture has to be stopped.
I met him at the end of the day and had a small discussion. He concluded saying, “Stop thinking to live a life without violating copyrights law. You just cant. Its better that copyright law be restriced to some areas only.”
Next is a lecture on India’s problems with Sri Lanka. As the speaker Mr. Suryanarayan worked for the fisheris department he restricted his talk to fishery problem between India and Sri Lanka. He mentioned some facts which no one in Tamilnadu, including fishermen and politician would agree. Talk began with narrating a recent prosecution of a tamil Fishermen in a court somewhere near Cochin. Then he explained the historical perspective of the issue and came to the present problem. The problem is this. There is a border line in the sea between Sri Lanka and India. No fishermen are allowed to cross the border. Crossing the line is treated as civil offence and they will be prosecuted by the court. For some reasons, fishing is banned in Sri Lanka. While in India trolls are used which destroyed the entire ecology of ocean and there are no more fish. Despite many requests and warnings by Indian authorities, Indian fishermen began to venture into Sri Lankan sea. They even went so deep into the Sri Lankan territory that coastline of Sri Lanka is visible to their naked eye from their ship. Then Sri Lanka resumed fishery. Now Tamilian fishermen began to cut the fish nets of Sri Lankan fishermen. They didn’t protest. The problem actually began now. Sri Lankan army mistook the Tamilian fishermen for LTTE, began to shoot them and dump their fish into sea. They are not ready to take the risk of arresting these people and enquiring whether they are fishermen or LTTE. This angered the Indian government. But the Sri Lankan government presented the satellite pictures of Indian fishermen crossing the border and entering Sri Lankan territory.
A thought provoking question was raised during the trial of a fisherman. When asked which country he belongs to, he replied that he belongs to sea. He has relatives in Tamilnadu, Sri Lanka, Andaman and Maldives. So which country does he actually belong to? He has no idea about the concept of passport. The reason for treating him as Sri Lankan fisherman is that the ship which carried him was registered under Sri Lankan government.
Next talk was by Mr. Kanchan Gupta, a journalist from Allahabad. He talked on why laws alone cannot work to remove corruption. He began with Gandhi’s violation of salt law with Dandi march. Discussion went on and an idea of second republic discussed. I am entirely new to this idea and have to know more about it. It kind of seemed like substituting a new system in place of present system of governance. Kind of a second republic. Most of the people, including the speaker is in favour of this idea, but he strongly believes that it can never happen, even if there is a provision in constitution for this.
Next was lunch . 65 bucks for south Indian meal, which cant even fit in any corner of your stomach. I remembered Andhra mess.
First talk I attended in afternoon was my Mr. Gautam John. He works for a NGO. He has done lot of research and experiments on how to improve quality of primary education in government schools. He came to a conclusion that contract teachers and incentives for teachers are the only way to improve the quality of primary education.
Then was a talk by Mr. Vijayanand from loksatta(makkal sakthi) party on his experiences in political engagement. He was a businessman in USA. He gave up the business, came to India and joined Makkal Sakthi party. He spoke about his activies in the party and the response of people from different parts of Tanilnadu. He introduced to the two youngsters who contested in elections in Chennai and lost about whom I mentioned earlier. After the talk , I met these people and enquired about the fate of Anna Library. They said that they have filed a case in court and the court has issued stay order in converting Anna library to hospital. Then has a small discussion about RTI issues, as they had a lot of experience in sector.
Talk by Mr. Sameer Wagle was on private equity and entrepreneurship. He gave some suggestions regarding decision making in choosing a company to invest, when to withdraw, when to put up the company for public listing etc..
Final talk of the day I attended was by Mr. B. Raman. I entered the talk 2 mins late so I wasn’t sure of his qualifications. He should have been retired from a very high position in the security division of India. His talk was different. He did not encourage Q&A session. He said it would waste time in answering silly questions. So he spent the entire 40 mins on the talk. He came up with an disappointing fact. Every security failure in the country is because of Intelligence failure but not because of smartness of terrorists. He says we don’t have advanced technology, don’t have enough resources, no necessary finance, and more importantly the recruitment process is not providing the best people. He urged for a change in recruitment process, but it was never achieved. He spoke about the glory of intelligence in their ability to look 30 years ahead and make strategies. The success of formation of Bangladesh was given to Intelligence who saw cultural, geographical, economic differences between East Pakistan and West Pakistan. This helped in formulating in an idea to separate to nations. Also he gave the credit to Indian intelligence which along with Russia helped Americans to win in Afganistan.
All talks were ended by 5:40pm. I had some interaction with Mr. Pranesh regarding copyrights and also with Nitin Pai, the brain behind this entire concept of Takshashila. He said, at present they are concentrating on conducting these talks to educate people, to bring cutting edge discussions among people on strategic affairs and policy making. They are offering a 12 week course on public policy making, starting from January first week. Its an online course. First batch begins in January 2012. In the long run, they are planning to establish a university which educates people on the policy making.
Party at Bike & Barrel. After a brain storming day, I expected to relax there. But to my disappointment, I didn’t find even one person from fairer sex on a Sunday night at a pub. I came back to campus with my friend Revendra, . He said something that I couldn’t argue anymore. He said,
“Don’t hate people who try to discriminate on the basis of caste, religion, creed, location. They are just ignorant fools who can’t understand that these things are of no value. Be human. Show some sympathy”
At the end of the day I felt it is a very long run, but someone has to run. And these people have begun the run. Takshashila shala deserves the name.
P.S: I have put my flowing memories and thoughts on the paper. So there might be chances of typo errors or wrongly framed sentences. Please ignore them.
What is an ATTITUDE? I have been trying to answer this question since three years. After lots of research, analysis and a small help from Psychology class, here I have the answer.
Before proceeding to answer this question, it is very much necessary to let ourselves think and realize the already existing answer we have for this question. We cannot overlap two answers. You should either not have an answer or have some answer. If you have an answer you should be able to completely understand it, irrespective of it being a right or wrong answer. If you found a new answer to the same question, you cannot just accept it just the way it is. First, you need to make room for the new answer. As the space is already occupied by an existing answer, you have to wipe out the old one. But you can’t reject an old answer just because you got a better answer. You have to start questioning the previous answer, unearth the flaws and mis-concepts in it which you failed to realize earlier. In other words, you cannot embrace the new answer unless you logically conclude the mistaken identity of the old answer. Unless you do this, you will be merely accepting the new answer, afraid to question your own stand, afraid of not having an answer, afraid of having a wrong answer. This can only make your thinking unreliable and unstable.
What is not an attitude? Behaviour of a person is not attitude. Most people call it bad attitude when they don’t like the behaviour or others. Their behaviour might be arrogant, discouraging or of any other negative trait. Instead of stating that the person is arrogant we say that the person has a bad attitude. Try asking yourself what is a bad attitude. You will end up explaining the bad behaviour of the person. Behaviour and attitude are not the same.
Confidence is not attitude. Confidence is the way you behave. Lack of confidence doesn’t make a person possessing wrong attitude. Confidence, outgoing, extrovert, etc.. may mean good attitude to many but still it is not called attitude. All these are the person’s characteristic qualities he developed over his life span or has undergone a crash course to attain the particular behaviour kind. All the soft skill trainings you come across doesn’t teach you attitude. They teach you how to behave, how to react, how to respond.
The big problem lies here. It is an observable fact that people have an affinity towards the usage of words like “attitude”. They start using it whenever and wherever an opportunity knocks, irrespective of content and meaning. This widespread usage has given “attitude” a wrong representation and discovery of its true meaning has become a great achievement for layman.
Then what is an attitude? Attitude is neither good nor bad, neither right nor wrong. Attitude is a skill which your experience and thinking teaches you. It is your guardian angel that guides you at every instant of life. It is not a quality which can be judged as good or bad. It is an essential possession of every man. Whatever quality you exhibit, whatever decision you take, whatever way you behave, all have a common source, a genesis for the entire process. It is attitude. Attitude is not static. It is ever changing. Its change is based on your new experiences and thoughts. Do not make a mistake here. Old attitude is not substituted with new attitude. Attitude is a self-evolving skill.
In a crude way, attitude sometimes is called as opinion on some issues. As long as you think in the right direction and add experience to it, your opinion can never be wrong however contrasting it may be with others. Others opinion is based on their thoughts and experiences. The main reason why opinions may not coincide is the difference in experiences experienced by people. For different people, different experiences teach different things. So you cannot say a particular person’s opinion is right or wrong. You can only say so when you notice a flaw in their thinking process.
How can you understand a person’s attitude? There are two possible ways. One is behaviour. A person’s behaviour towards something-person, idea, issue- tells about his attitude. As said earlier, attitude is the genesis of all the processes that run in your mind. So your behaviour is based on your attitude. Your behaviour is a combined result of your attitude, your mental condition and circumstances. These three aspects need not necessarily complement each other. The dominant feature dominates the behaviour pattern. So sometimes you end up behaving completely against your attitude. So behaviour can tell about a person’s attitude, but it need not always speak the truth. Hence, behaviour is not a reliable source in knowing a person’s attitude.
Other is direct interaction with the person. There are many ways to know a person’s attitude in this method. You can have a friendly chat and know his/her attitude. You can give a formal questionnaire and ask for answers. There is only a minor problem with this process. What kind of questions do you phrase? Do your questions cause any ambiguity to the reader? Is it possible to misinterpret the questions? Taking care of these issues will help you in forming a reliable set of questions in knowing a person’s attitude.Your part is almost done. Now all you have to do is to wait for the answers and interpret them. Ideally he/she would give the answers. But there is always the probability of circumstances affecting the credibility of his/her answers. Especially, the mood of the person and the relationship with the person posing the questions will affect the answers. So this method is not flawless.
To conclude, as long as a person decides not to reveal his attitude, there is no way you can judge his attitude. And he can even mislead you. You cannot prepare a person to judge his attitude. Let the man be free and then his attitude shows up.
Some people have helped me in my research on this topic, especially Krishna Chaitanya. And I have used some people as my subjects for my research without their consent. A sincere “sorry” and a whole hearted “thankyou” for their cooperation.
P.S: Even though many people know the true meaning of “attitude”, they are still prone to committing the mistake of misusing the word.
“Habits don’t die easily. They have to be brutally murdered”
With regard to man's preferences and priorities in life, many philosophers, altruists and philanthropists state the following:
Man's priority should always be society, He should live for society. Well being of society should be his highest ideal. Society should always be his preference in conflict between him and society. Man should inculcate the dignity to accept the universal fact that, anything good for society is obviously good for him. People judge man's character on the basis of his contribution to society. Man is considered moral only when he thinks about the good of society and is selfish, if he thinks about himself. Man is a social animal and his greatness is measured on the basis of how much of his life has he dedicated to society. Man should be kind enough to donate his earnings to society and thereby contribute in building a prosperous society. man should continuously and anxiously think of new ideas that would benefit the society. He should not commit the sin of giving preference to his own desires, when desires of his fellow human beings are left unfulfilled. YOUR HAPPINESS LIES IN THE HAPPINESS OF YOUR NEIGHBOUR. After all, it is in society man grew up. It is the society that is responsible for what he is now.
But are you really born to live for society? If you are continuously and anxiously thinking for the betterment of society, what about yourself? Above stated personalities say that preference should be given to others' needs than your own desires. Then, who takes care of your NEEDS and DESIRES? More importantly, the question is, who decides what your needs are and what your desires are? By what right, does this person or a group of people claim that they have an authority to take a decision regarding your personal emotions?
How do you define the statement " YOUR HAPPINESS LIES IN THE HAPPINESS OF YOUR NEIGHBOUR". If you think that this statement is a profound truth about life which takes lifetime for many people to understand, then are you ready to work extrahours so that you earn livelihood for your neighbour too.If your neighbour's happiness is the pre-requisite in PURSUIT OF YOUR HAPPINESS, then start serving your neighbours the way slaves in ancient Greece did. I don't say you both are same. I am not insulting the slaves. I respect them. I know what it takes to be a slave. You both are entirely different. They are forced to act against their will, where as, you are doing it willingly because of your unquenchable need ( or is it desire? who should judge?) for your happiness. For them, no other option is left. For you, no other desire is left, other than your happiness, which you are searching in others ' happiness. But, will society try to keep u happy, in its own pursuit of happiness?
If society makes man, then I say
" If society gave birth to great men, then the same society gave birth to criminals and psychopaths"
This is a contradiction. So I rule out the statement that whatever I am today, is because of society.
So, In whatever direction you travel, whatever path you choose, you end up coming across the same question:
If I live for society, who lives for me?
Society can't live for me. If I am jobless, society doesn't feed me. If I love listening to music, society doesn't buy me a music player. So, who takes the responsibility of my happiness, my needs and my desires while I am busy with the needs of society? Knowing answer might be sufficient to answer the question. But not sufficient to question the reason for question. So, most of the time, realising the answer is more important than knowing the answer, which the present situation demands. Answer to the question is " I " .
Only I can live for myself and I can only live for myself. Whatever I do, wherever I go, in the end only " I " matters to me. What type of contradiction is this, when you can't live for yourself, but you live for others and others, who can't live for themselves, live for you? Who can live my life better than myself? Who can be the right person to judge my thoughts, my needs, my desires and my actions?
I may cheat many people saying " i love to help others", but can't cheat myself from the fact that, by helping others, I am just satisfying my emotions. It doesn't make me ALTRUIST, it makes me SELFISH. At the end, I am not an altruist. I am selfish and I am proud of what I am. Only my satisfaction matters and only " I " matter to me.
I am living in a society. It just means that I have the responsibility to make sure that my actions do not disturb its peace. It doesn't mean that I should live for society. If satisfying my desires is a SIN, then I am committing a bigger sin by helping people satisfy their desires.
Whatever I earn is the result of my hard work and my hard work is my private property. It preserves the integrity of my character. I cannot DISRESPECT myself by giving away my private property to those people who doesn't know its value. Whatever I give, people may know its value, but they do not how valuable it is to me. They even fail to realise this fact. Because, according to them, society should always be my priority, but not my private possessions.
But, in the end, how I treat myself matters, not how others treat me. How well I respect my " I " shows my DIGNITY.
Whatever I am today, is the result of hard work of my only two possessions. My MIND and my BODY. Whatever I do, I do to satisfy these two. I have the responsibility of taking care of these two, as they are the only possessions I have, or as a matter of fact anyone has. Everything else is the outcome of the usage of these two. So, I decide what I want, what I need. I decide my priorities. As a responsible citizen, as long as my possessions are not ill treated, I will not interfere with the society. I cannot INSULT myself by stating that I am an ALTRUIST and that my life is dedicated to society. I dedicate my life entirely for myself. For me only "I" matters. I do not want others to live for me and I do not live for others.
