Funeral got easy : Reverse Mortgage

It was a Friday evening, the only few days in a week that average working class people get excuse to party hard. Night full of Booz and lots of opportunity to have one night stand for the single ones who are looking out for a crazy night. No one seems to miss this great opportunity of having a crazy night and lots of crazy crowd. Being tempted to look across the environment my eye caught a pinkish add written in a very stylish way "funeral got easy"! First I thought it must be some funny comment to attract public attention. However, when I read the complete billboard realized that the advertisement was very much talking real business and I guess only I was surprise to see such ad. others were just cool. So the company was selling funeral products! I know in eastern part of the world this may sound suprising, however, in western hemisphere this is pretty much reality and I guess booming business as very much the same way when child products were really in demand when baby boomers were born and now as they are getting old may be these kind of business will boom for sometime.
These funeral products ensures that after you are dead your funeral cost won't  be burden on your family members. Well that may sound very practical, however at the same time it shows either the family values have changed dramatically or may be I find it strange owing to my Indian background. Surprisingly this trend may not be too far for India too as recent national survey data shows that more than 60% of population live in nucleus family rather than joint family. This may come as a shocking news to most Indian parents but for some it may be an business opportunity. His trend may be so quick in all across India, but big cities such as Mumbai and Delhi may embrace it quite soon may be in next 15 years or so. One thin to notice what 800 years of Mughal rule and 200 years of British Raj could not do, only 20 years of capitalism could make it possible.
This kind of trend is society shows two things one fast and pragmatic as the financial uncertainity is looming and on otherhand  a dramatic shift in social values that how important do we consider the one who has less time to spend with us. Well we often give less importance to people with whom we know that we will spend less time weather it's a travel companion or some tenant. But the problem comes when we start applying the same rule to someone who is deeply attached to you. Such situations where you realize that you may end up being burden on your love ones every single day of remaining life does not remain easy.

Standard of Living and Ecological balance

Its summer again! and the mercury is rising beyond imagination. Obviously people are compelled to buy coolers and AC and perhaps other luxurious items those are quite symbol of well being and so called having a good 'Standard of living'. Now days people, specially middle class, are much curious about maintaining/showing their 'standard of living' without understanding meaning of it. However, a good standard of life needs to be redefined for every country and civilization. We can't use the western definition of good life for India, though, we can always borrow the phrase and some aspects.

Some people are advocating going back to ancient life style that will help to check the carbon foot print, however, that itself is not easy as our Indian society is transiting in between ancient and western. Moving either way seems very difficult. A few ecologically aware people are bit perplexed, where to go? and what to inculcate to their next generation, which itself is confused than ever.

The illusion of Indian Culture

Lets start with bugs in our own so called traditions before jumping on the westerners. For eg, celebrating any festival we consider a part of our tradition. However, putting loud speakers everywhere, burning megawatts of energy in playing music to dance and have booze party at night could not be justified on traditional ground. If these are taken into account, the way Ganpati and Durga-puja are celebrated they should not be considered a cultural event, perhaps sometimes they look like some political event. There is nothing wrong in celebrating or partying, however, partying on name of cultural event is merely abuse of those events. The funniest part of this is, the organizers of these co called cultural events are themselves hardly aware of meaning of the event. Most of the festive gags are party cadre. The conditional devotion for god himself has a collusion between the Bhaktas and the God. Bhakta says God I will give you a grand puja, please help me wining this election or passing the exam etc.

Secondly when it comes to oraganized Bhakti our so called Monks, Baba, and NGO play critical role. Thanks to most of the Babas and NGOs those are merely instrument of converting black money into white.

The illusion of supporting a cause

Few days back there were some big events called Mumbai Merathon, people participated to support some or other cause. But while participating the event I could only see a single cause ie 'Standard Charterter'. Everywhere banners of sponsors and organizers with loud music. I could see everything else then that so called 'cause'. Even most of the people who are running themselves do not know about the 'cause'. Similarly Mumbai cyclothon had similar arrangements. Our deputy chief minister came and gave some good words, however, he forgot to mention about his own carbon foot print. A convoy of vehicles always around him, freeing KGs of CO2 and many more luxury habits which are trademark of a politician. More cause more pollution and more advertizing. Sometimes I feel the capitalism has engulfed our country in a ugly way. The success story of western capitalism cant be applied to our case.

Probable solutions

Don't be copy cat. What had worked in west need not work in the east. The way its working in China is a completely different story. They are a unique communist-capital model. Where the captials is in tight control of gov. Whereas in India its mix economy and capital in flow is talking helping very few. Although, some metro cities have got better concrete jungle but 80% population still does not have toilet at home. So just pumping capital may not work alone unless there is a strong willingness from common people to spread the wealth.

Blaming polit-beauro may be futile unless we take something in our hand after they are part of us only. Spending atleast 1 week in a year to educate the vulnerable people in our society. They may be from your nearby slum or some rural place. Education and inculcating responsibilty among them because they are the decision maker in every poll. Making them aware of everything will weaken the selfish Netas.

Urbanization – A boon or curse

Malls Malls everywhere not a single greenery around. India has certainly became a mall maniac country. Attractive stores, polished staff and AC with music, everything is there for a wonderful shopping experience. However, the real price that we are paying for this pleasure is yet to be understood. Megawatts of power, noise and much more, but the scintillation of Mall over overshadow those all. I'm not against malls, however, the way we have copied it from the west is not attractive at all.
                   Why do we need to copy everything, perhaps we could have developed our own mall culture in an Indian way. At worse, notwithstanding the western concept, we can always modulate it with the very Indian style. The way we copied constitutions from across the world, though we finally messed up. The madness of booking quick profits by copying or buying ideas or technologies from others and implementing the concept without learning the long term impact will cost the countrymen but not the politicians. We could rather have worked innovating our own idea.

We are creating a satellite colony of west where for every new idea we are waiting from our masters, waiting to buy the very new idea and pay the patent money lifelong and of course if something goes wrong we can always blame them. Whether it's some polluting automobile or an atom energy.The way Rahul Bajaj blamed best for not sharing the green technologies when he was asked to find a remedy for over growing polution because of his 3 wheeler auto rikshaws ,same way generations later we will blame west if some catastrophy happens due to recent installations of Nuke energy plants. The resident cabinate has filled up their swiss account from this deal and they will never sattle in the nearby cities of the plants.

Now when it comes to learning, we are not learning from their mistakes. We are doing the same mistake what they have done centuries ago, creating environmental disaster in madness of capitalism. We can't afford jettison our responsibilities to the future generation on the ground of blame game. Perhaps, most industrialist do not even bother about their responsibilities for the future generations, the only thing matters quick profit and market capitalization. But they must remind themselves that the money they are harvesting for their sons won't save them from natural calamity.

More demand, more supply, more spending that does not work in a community based society like Asia with huge population. In fact capitalism is instrumental in pumping more wealth at top of the social pyramid and making the bottom class more dependent on the mercy of top notch, hence making it more vulnerable economic catastrophe.
                               An illusion created by the government that this madness will take India to next level. Perhaps, government is not keen to explain what is the next level? The next level could be transforming the whole Indian community into a great labor and consumer market, making everybody in the society economically vulnerable. Take an example of Reality boom and how it will turn out to be a curse for the villagers. Tempted by the reality boom the villagers are prone to sell off their lands for some lump sum amount of money which would hardly last a few springs, its like he killed the hen which was giving gold eggs and was a perennial source of income though less. Initially it will be really good in terms of statistics for the villager, builder,growth rate and of course the politicians and bureaucrats who were broking the deal. It will further boost the industrial growth rate figures when the builder will sale flats/shops/mall on that land at 400 times higher price and will transform the whole area. Having a test of urbanization the villagers will start spending on commodity products and once again will increase the key growth rates. Now, the service class will take loans from the bank to fund the real estates, hence again contributing growth to Banking sector, in term the whole GDP will raise. Congratulations! The government policy have brought prosperity to the whole Indian community, but at what price? Lets visualize it.
                           Soon the money will be gone, thanks to good spending habits, and now the villager community which has been quite independent on its own as far as food and other daily needs were concerned, now completely dependent on the market, hence adding new consumers to global food market. Once again, demands will be up , however, the food supply will remain the same or less indeed; the price will inflate. Its a kind of chain reaction. When a city expands the key growth figures goes up at the same time, many families, communities loose their economical independence and the world looses vital farm lands. Perhaps, in a similar fashions the urbanization is eating up all our jungles as well. The government let illegal encroachments materialized, thanks to businessman Politicians and bureaucrats, hence destroying the ecological flora and fauna forever.

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Women's bill : Another unfortunate chapter to Indian Constitution

Everywhere in media there seems to be a good feeling that finally after 14 years, the women's reservation bill got passed. The women activists are so happy that finally their efforts got a government stamp and they believe now for women's everything will change the way it has changed for SC/ST/OBC over more than 50 years of reservation, which I doubt. However nothing dramatically has changed for lower castes because of reservations, whatever has changed its due to various socioeconomic initiatives by various government, corporates and NGOs.

Lest look a bit closer to the Bill, the reason bill got approved on upper house has different meanings to general public and politicians! The bill will be abused like anything to strengthen nepotism, already prevalent in Indian politics, and make the political families more and more powerful as more and more family members , now of course womens, will join the feast. So, the joy and cheer should be amongst the elite political families who are already in lower/upper house rather than a common women in our or your houses. I am wondering how media is praising this bill without showing the ill effect of the bill? not to forgot, political families owns hug stakes in media companies so I guess their pens can't write anything against.

Being a clairvoyant Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru Ji had protested against any form of community quota in the constitution as it will harm the very fundamentals of constitution. The SC/ST/OBC quota has never been critically reviewed by experts, instead it has only been abused by the government as a poll tool. It was suppose to get reviewed periodically to assess its effect and to make appropriate amendments, the castes who have got a better deal with the quota should be removed from the schedule so that the other castes in the same schedule should get a chance, it should not happen that only few castes in the schedule are getting the benefit, which is quite prevalent in current scenario. It must be applied with statistical granularity of each and every caste rather than clubbing them anonymously in a single schedule to satisfy the poll marketing strategies.

Now if we see this women's quota will be instrumental in making the existing political families more and more influential and it will become more and more difficult for new comers to join politics. For example, if the principle constituency of the prominent party leader comes under women quota, then probably his wife/daughter/Mother will contest on his behalf and ,of course, he will contest from some other constituency hence end up eating another seat which could be of a new comer and increasing his stake in the party as well as in Indian politics.

Nevertheless, there is hardly anything we can do except writing these benign blogs, having some discussions and then forgetting everything and get busy with routine work to make our future secure by spending more time in office, getting salary hikes, paying more taxes without knowing the fact that the same money would be billed against expense incurred in foreign trip of our minister's family in ,of course, an official visit.

Jai Hind

The Indian skepticism

The Core values

India has become synonym for cultural values across the world. And its value system has always been the heart of Indian daily life style or so called religion. As the time passed and people migrated to India and got indianized, however, many of them never accepted it.
The basic core of this cultural value system has been preserved for thousands of years but at the expanse of much unwarranted modulation, mainly due to contemporary political situation.

India stopped growing

Foreign rule is not a strange thing in history of India. People came here as foreigner, ruled here, some became resident by Indianizing themselves (though unknowingly) and some left the land along with the booty. The frangible states of north-west frontier were not enough to check the waves of central Asians who were very much exited with their newly adopted value system of the drought prone Mediterranean gulf, which has actually united the fighting clan. However, the unity was not enough to reckon with China, so they concentrated to most fertile peninsula of the continent called Sind. They neither had time nor patience to learn the new civilization so they tried to transform it to their own way.
When a civilization is forced to follow new things it may react in two ways, one to resist or fight it second is to get contained inside only. The India followed the later way and since then stop developing its own way in fear that it will attract unwanted attention of the aliens hence creating more problems. So, the very first seed of pessimisms got implanted into the soil and it was just the beginning. India preferred to follow the best practices known rather than inventing new ones. In this way India stopped developing something of its own about 1500 years back! The innovation on new areas almost stopped. What best could be done was just to sustain the old system and if possible magnify it. Today we have all our systems from astronomy to medical science everything is millennium old.

More ironically, now the mammoth civilization was illiterate as per the newly civilized central Asian, the Turks and Mangoles, So a 3500 years old civilization started learning the basics of civilization from the aliens who were merely few centuries old.

The Hard leanings

A new learning drive started. Whatever the India knew was of no use under the new system. So either you learn or run a parallel system. India did both of them. Few get aligned with the new system (or in religion term got converted) other remained adamant to their roots and continue to preserve its old best known practices but at a cost, which never been anticipated. The best practices got modulated under the influence of the new system and over a period of centuries few of them remained as dead rituals and sometimes ill practices.

While all these demographic changes were going on all across the region, the whole Indian community as a whole was unknowingly inculcating skepticism deep inside its roots. In earlier phases it was not very visible or nobody bothered to notice it, however, down the time it started bursting out as the most evil practices in the world eg Sati, Child Marriage, and widow trafficking. Although contemporary reformers took step to check them and shown the way to get out of it, but failed to actually address the root cause of it. The greatest of them were Swami Vivekandan, Raja RamMohan Rai and Mahatma Gandhi etc.

Again back to school

A new civilization teacher was about to come. Earlier it was central Asians and now it was Westerners. Hence, for last eight hundred whatever India had learnt was now futile under the new system. So once again India compelled to start from zero. So what to do? Learn the new system or get back to the old system, though badly modulated, for rescue.
The whole India got confused and scattered. It has got three systems but which one to follow? One the oldest, though modulated second the central Asian though borrowed from Arabs or the third one the new western system.

Hence in middle of everything,India choose to amalgam all of them to start a new civilization. But whether that was chosen by India or forced to; is of little concern.

Starting a new life

Post colonial period started with full of challenges, but thanks for the leadership of that time, it didn't worsen. Although late, we survived.

politics and business

I was wondering going across all the new channels or site, that there was one thing common; the prime news is either a political or a business related news. Moreover, if we look across our society (irrespective of country we live) the most influential person around would be from either fields. However, I don't see most people go for it as there career?

Its getting difficult for me to understand why we opt to follow some path for ourselves which we know is not going to be very dynamic, rather it will be very limited to my own world itself. But the question is what is our world? Is our family, office friend circle and official meeting are our world? Perhaps if you are thinking that its your world you may be mistaken.

The world is much larger than what we see. Its those influential peoples across the world indirectly decide your world. There decisions today or tomorrow are going to change your so called small world forever. Lets take one by one example from each of the fields.

First if we take the political decision, which may not be restricted to one country rather has consequences far reaching across the boarder. The simplest example would be war. And taking the second one could be very familiar now days are the business related which is quite obvious from this downturn/recession, for which we all suffered was merely the (wrong) decisions by business world people across the globe.

So, why we serve whole of our life for others in this way. Just being a slave of predefined systems. Its time to create our own.