ROOTS

There is a time and place for everything. I believe that much more today. My recent visit to the place where my father was born was a visit that I had thought of many a times over the last 40 years but never really made it happen. Even though I was so close, just an hour flight from Mumbai to Cochin and then 3 hours by road to Pallakad district in Kerala.

Last month, that is November of 2017, I did the journey. Why? What made me finally undertake that trip. Over the last couple of months I heard a few friends and my own aunts talk about visiting their family temple. That made me wonder how come we have never visited our temple or even know of it. I don’t really believe in the rules set down by religion. I don’t scoff them but neither do I follow them strictly. In our Hindu culture it is said that one must make a visit to the family temple at least once in a year. I never paid attention to that ruling. Many a times a forced act to comply with norms does not work for me. One must do it with a sense of understanding and reverence. That had not come for me.

This time something inside me kept telling me to go and visit my family temple, so far as waking me up in the middle of the night and asking why I have not done it. So I set out to find my family temple. Since there was no male sibling we knew of from my father’s side, nobody knew which one was our family temple. Women follow their husband’s family temple. Since they married young, my father’s sisters’ family did not remember which temple they might have visited when they were young. The reason for not knowing also is that the family moved from Manjapara district to Trichur in Pallakad when the children were very young. So I don’t even know if my Dad visited his family temple though he believed in a lot of rituals, so I presume he must have.

Luckily my cousin brother went asking and then found out. And again luckily he was making a trip to Kerala and said he would take me to our family temple.

Visiting the temple was my first priority but that includes understanding my roots. When I look back I always wonder why in 40 years  I never did it. And why now. But there are no answers. The calling must come.

I visited the temples around where my father and his parents lived and saw the house where perhaps my father was born. It is so calming to go to a village which makes you feel like your past home. You realise the reason behind certain rituals that your parents followed because they were inculcated in them from a young age.

One major one was going to the temple and following a lot of rituals at home which my father did follow at our home in Mumbai and so did my mother’s family.

Communities are formed with the Temple as a focal point. In Kerala, and I realise now in many communities, whether it is the Church or Mosque, it becomes a place for people to meet, to take part in festivals, to do good things for the temple or Church or Mosque and the surrounding area, to spend a large part of their lives and for many nowadays, their retired lives in service of the holy institution.

I heard so many stories when I was there of people who are living in Mumbai and have their roots in villages in Kerala (some still have their parents living there), doing so much for their village temple and their family temple  (both are different). Many retired people have gone back from cities to their villages and devoting their time to temple activities.

Today city bred people who have no connections to their roots are very far away from all this mindset. Hence for them, many a times, all this is a waste of time. That can be a major reason why village temples may go neglected in the future as perhaps has happened to churches worldwide.

Talking of churches, few months back I read Mitch Albom’s true story ‘Have a little faith’. It talks about a 83 year old rabbi and how his life revolves around the church and how young Albom who left his faith far behind, comes back to understanding what faith is all about. I felt a similar feeling when I visited the villages in Kerala.

Mitch in his story observes how these very different men employ faith similarly in fighting for survival .The story talks about what a daily ritual of going to the church means to the Rabbi and to many others. A similar ritual that perhaps every religion follows.

I seem to have gone far away in my notes in merely saying that I went searching for my family temple. But what I do feel now is the roots of every religion is the same. Just like the roots of all the trees are similar, only different in texture and thickness. Similar roots give birth to different trees and flowers. The same is for religion. The roots are similar, only the faiths are different. So whatever religion we come from, there is a underlying faith in a spiritual power that binds people and communities together.

If we leave that far behind and believe that any form of faith is stupid, we grow without our roots and it is quite evident then that there is a life break down faster than expected.  

Twisty Tale of Pollution

Mrs R: Can’t live on this earth anymore, it is getting more polluted by the day. I am happy that a lot of research is being done to understand life on Mars.

Mr M: So you want to go and pollute Mars too? Astronauts’ finding say that Mars may have been a lively planet at one time but something caused its death. Could be pollution you never know.

Mrs R: Why do you say that?

Mr M: As the red planet has some water, so maybe it had streams and lakes findings say. Now it is full of carbon dioxide. Like the Earth which will soon have more of carbon dioxide than oxygen.

Mrs R: Well it is good that NASA is studying life on Mars so that we can understand our Earth better.

Mr M: Why go to Mars to understand what pollutes our Earth. NASA has taken pictures of how the state of Punjab burns rice straw and pollutes the city of Delhi.

Mrs R: NASA?

Mr M: Yes because it is difficult to find that out from earth, it has to be done from space.

Mr M: Now research says world over it is burning of rice straw that adds to pollution on earth.

Mrs R: So what is being done?

Mr M: Nothing is being done, only research findings, TV debates and political bickering.

Mr M: We invent spaceships to go to Mars but we cannot understand how better to burn rice straws on this earth. Last winter the city of Delhi blamed burning of paddy straw in Punjab for its toxic pollution levels and this year again it blames Punjab and next year again it will blame Punjab.

Mrs R: So better to find life on Mars then?

Mr M: Yes, as by the time they find life on Mars, Earth will be dead.

GETTING BACK TO BASICS

The other day some of our friends were having a debate. One side said that we are surely degenerating as human beings - be it health, be it culture, be it social life. Simply put life in general. The other side agreed but said not everything is dark. They said look at the brighter side where there has been development in science, information technology and engineering. One person stressed on how we are more connected and information is at our finger tips. 

Maybe so but strangely the development is not seeming to take us to the brighter side of life but more to the darker side of life.

1) A mobile phone with all its social connect makes us more isolated.

2) Despite great advancement in science and medicines we seem only to become more unhealthy. A kind of chicken and egg situation. Which comes first the medicine or the disease? Is consuming more drugs making us sick in the long term?

3) I correlate point 2 with a similar case that seemed to have happened in agriculture. Did crops fail which forced farmers to begin using pesticides and fertilisers or did in time the usage of more and more pesticides and fertilisers make the land more infertile and so crops failed. This point for me is most important and an article published yesterday confirmed my reasoning of getting back to basics – FIELDS OF HOPE - Marathwada women's organic farms sow new futures http://bit.ly/2gMTOd

Marathwada is a region in the state of Maharashtra, which is popular for the number of farmer suicides that take place every year. Farmers spent huge money on fertilisers, pesticides, hybrid seeds and at the end they never made profits. So if one looks at it from the point of view of development, it cost not only them dearly but all of us. We humans filled ourselves with pesticide filled food. No wonder every second person has cancer.

What the article says is women in Marathwada region are sowing organic crops without the use of pesticides and are reaping profits as opposed to those men who in the hope of better harvest spent money on more pesticides and then got caught in a debt trap and resultant suicides.

What does this tell us?

It is for all of us to sit back and do a re-think on what we define as development and whether getting back to basics in many spheres of our lives makes better sense.

TWISTY TALE OF FOOD

Foreigner: These days I hear Holy Cow, Holy Cow a lot in India

Indian: Yes, yes the cow is our holy animal

Foreigner: Oh…

Indian: But what is less heard or maybe more heard these days is about its milk. Nowadays they say that the milk of Indian cows is the most nutritious and best for us Indians.

Foreigner: What does that mean?

Indian: I was buying milk from my local vendor but then they said my calcium and vitamin D is very low because I drink unbranded milk which is not pure milk. So they suggested I buy branded Anand Milk which is the pure milk as Anand has its own farms and the cow gives milk which is rich in vitamin D. But then I was told that Anand milk is milking the foreign hybrid cows and not the Indian cows. Those cows that have a hump, yes those are Indian cows and we should only drink milk of these cows.

Foreigner: Who are the they, they you keep mentioning? Any specific research or scientific journals?

Indian – They.... er..... they, yes many journals, friends, google, youtube, whatsapp, facebook. But more importantly the yogis in India are coming forward to enlighten us on what is desi.

Foreigner: So where do the milk companies find the humped cow?

Indian: Ha, ha don’t you see all of them walking on the Indian roads without any vigilance. They are not even scared of our Indian traffic.

Foreigner: No I mean how do you know that the company from where you buy milk is giving you Daisy milk which is from these humped cows.

Indian: Firstly it is not Daisy but desi which means locally made. And now to answer your question, well ‘they’ will ensure it is desi.

Foreigner: Ok fine, whatever. Oh you have got me South Indian papads, wow I love them, so tasty. And it is not even oily, which oil do you use?

Indian: We were using refined groundnut oil. We changed to refined rice bran oil recently as they say that it is more good for health. My grandmother always used coconut oil but those days they said that coconut oil is not good for the heart and builds cholesterol. But nowadays they say that coconut oil is the best. So for cooking food we now use refined coconut oil.

But they say that refined oil is bad. In refined oil they put a lot of chemicals to make it refined. Now they say that unrefined oil is the best and very healthy.

So the tasty papads you are eating are fried in unhealthy refined oil. I must change to unrefined oil, even though it is more sticky and smelly but that is what is good for health they say.

Indian: Taste this, dosas with tasty south Indian coconut chutney.

Foreigner: This chutney is very tasty, hope the coconut is organic?

Indian: Organic and coconuts! come on coconuts just grow everywhere in our state kerala and in India too. You mean to say that they put a lot of pesticides to grow coconut trees too?

Foreigner: Yes, yes better to be safe and spend that Rs 20 more and buy organic.

Indian: Well our government does not include organic food prices in the inflation index. So my employer gives me increment as per normal food inflation which I hear these days is coming down, so maybe my increments will be coming down too.

Foreigner: Well I buy organic everywhere I go. I need to buy some tomatoes.

Indian: Organic?

Foreigner: Yes

Indian: God bless you

CAN INDIA INTRODUCE ECO-CONSCRIPTION?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/17/utopian-thinking-students-working-land-university-eco-conscription?CMP=twt_gu

Reading this article by Hugh Warwick made me think how an eco-conscription would help India and its farming and agriculture sector. India has never adopted conscription of any kind. Many countries have a military conscription, India never needed it largely because of its huge population. Some say we must adopt it, if only to impart discipline amongst the youth. But many would not want a forced military training. Perhaps rightly so. We compensated for the lack of it when schools and colleges adopted the National Cadet Corps training which does an excellent work in imparting basic military and physical education to students.

But the idea of an eco-conscription is indeed exciting. Imagine 18-21 years old living in the rural areas, helping farmers, understanding their hard work and their hardships, understanding the financial problems they face, why increasing number of farmers commit suicide (in fact sending them to such regions), the irrigation and rain and water problems, what can be grown where, why the increasing use of pesticides, land fertility, fragmentation of land and so on. Imagine the ideas that can be generated from these youth with diverse education backgrounds to tackle the many issues that Indian agriculture faces today. This collective spirit will ensure that the farmer is not alone in his path to provide us all food.

Besides living amongst nature has many advantages. The youth will be more creative and aware of the ecological disasters making them environment conscious. It also takes them away from their laptops and mobiles and computer games. Staying in rural homes can teach them the Indian values and culture. Like in my travels, whenever I visited a rural home, they would not let me go without a good meal, however poor they are. For them even today guest is God. Such aspects of living can imbibe many positives of our culture in the youth,

We are a young country with intelligent engineers, doctors, IT, finance professionals and scientists. Imagine all these students begin their professional careers, with the farmer and agriculture in mind, developing ideas to create an agriculture revolution like never before.

While many appreciated Hughes Warwick article, it received a lot of flak too and many ridiculed it. So will many Indians to this idea. For any government it takes guts to implement any kind of conscription at a national level. But perhaps, if not a conscription for now, we can start with a NCC like model in agriculture training, which schools and colleges can adopt.

Let us change the way we educate our youth and in turn lets help farmers and the society as a whole.

WILL INDIA’S MAHARAJA BECOME A FOREIGN PRINCE?

Over the last week two personal events set me thinking of a country’s ecosystem in terms of Private Services vs Public/Government services. One event was a visit to a government-run hospital for women in Mumbai and seeing the fantastic service given by the hospital and its doctors to so many women. More importantly at nominal charges. Besides free medicines are distributed to all patients. The other event was watching the movie ‘Hindi Medium’ that delves on the roaring ‘Business’ of education.

Amidst these events came the news that our beloved and not so beloved airline Air-India is up for sale.

While aviation cannot be strictly considered as an essential service, there now arises the important question of what happens when important essential services like education, healthcare and here I am including aviation becomes more dominated by the private sector and less by the government.

What is the main aim of private players – to see that business is profitable.

What is the main aim of government owned companies - to provide a particular service to the citizens of India at nominal costs.

We have seen the impact of the flood of private players into sectors like education and healthcare where the government has taken a backseat. That has caused these sectors to become a business and that too a roaring one. In the 60s and the 70s schools were largely run by the government, trusts and convents where the larger aim always was to provide good education to children and not to make money. I studied in a convent school where the fees were Rs 6 for a whole year for the 6th grade, Rs 7 for the 7th grade and so on with absolutely no compromises on the education we received.

Ditto in healthcare. Government hospitals are providing very good medical facilities at affordable rates but they are unable to handle the huge flood of patients. On the other hand we have seen the malpractices that are happening in private hospitals and the exorbitant bills a the end of a medical treatment. Eg. A reason why the government stepped in to put a ceiling on the prices of stent.

So the moot questions are –

1) does it work to have the private sector dominate essential services?

2) does it work to ask the private sector to make compensations for those who cannot afford their services?

Whether it is Air India or the State Electric Boards, they went into losses because of corruption and not because of operational reasons.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi says that he wants people wearing hawai chappals to travel by flights but in PRIVATE airlines. The government launched the UDAN scheme to provide air tickets at cheaper prices in PRIVATE airlines.

In education and healthcare, 25% or so must be reserved for those who cannot afford these services. But we know the poor never get access to them as depicted in the movie Hindi Medium.

So in essence the government is asking the private sector to take the responsibility of looking after its people. And is the private sector going to do it when they are here to make profits and not provide service to all and sundry.

The reason why the customer never remains a king as far as private essential services goes is because demand becomes greater than supply and then the private player becomes the king of profits.

Take aviation for instance, I remember the days when airlines pampered its flyers with such royal treatment, a welcome drink, fragrant face tissues, chocolates and the great meals. Today every airline, be it the regular or low-cost try to cut corners everywhere. Low cost airlines name themselves low cost so that they need not serve you even a bottle of water but there is no ceiling on the fares they charge. Besides charging extra for every other small service. The paid food served in low cost flights is pathetic. I dish out Rs 200 plus for a sandwich which most of the times is so bad, so cold and at times stale too. The joke sometimes is when they say ‘Madam samosas are available but they will be served cold’. We flyers are forced to accept anything and everything (besides getting food when you are almost about to land because airlines short staff!!!). Ironically the last Indian flight where I felt royal and got lip-smacking food was on Kingfisher Airlines and that too in its low-cost airline! No wonder Vijay Mallya is in trouble. He adopted his flamboyant nature to his airline without a check on the profits!

And I wonder what the hawai chappal Indian will do when he feels thirsty. I recently had one cup chai at Delhi airport for Rs 150! and it was so bad. I don’t mean to say that all food at airports is bad but there is a tendency to fleece as necessity is the mother of high costs. Their reasoning is that airport tariffs and rents are high.

Surely Air India needs a saviour. Can that saviour not be the government itself?

I end here in light humor and no conclusion or serious connection to this article. The below is an incident that actually took place in a leading private airline.

Lady Flyer: Can I have an after-food mint packet?

Air-Hostess: Yes I will get it

The air-hostess passes by

Lady Flyer : I asked you for a mint packet

Air-Hostess: Yes Ma'am will get it

Again the air-hostess passes by

Lady Flyer: I asked you 3 times to get me a mint packet

Air-Hostess (stern and angry) – Ma'am you asked me only 2 times and not 3.

The lady and me gasped at the air-hostess completely speechless.

So if the airplane is in trouble, you better ask for the parachute 3 times.

Someone once told me he prefers the mother like air-hostess at Air-India as he feels more safe under their care!!!

Have a nice flight.

What Is The Hue And Cry About Aadhaar?

The government has now, albeit late, recognized the power of the Aadhaar to curb leakages of schemes meant for the poor that continued for years and years together, besides creating one National Identity. To me it is surprising that after demonetisation, people are now up and about protesting the adoption of Aadhaar, a move I can only see as good.

One number that will connect you to everything – your bank account, your income tax filing to even your shopping. India would be the first country where people go to shops, give their Aadhaar number, do their biometric authentication and the money is credited or debited as the case may be. Imagine you will perhaps carry no physical wallet in the future – no credit card, no debit card and no cash!! Just your Aadhaar number.

In fact what prompted me to go out and get a Reliance Jiofi is just this. I go to the Reliance store, give my Aadhaar number, do my biometric and the wifi instrument is in my hand in flat 10 minutes. No exaggeration here. No paperwork, no asking for copies of this and that, filling forms, giving your signatures. Surprisingly we Indians who keep complaining about how tedious everything is, don’t welcome a transition that can only ease our lives.

We have news headlines like this-

Aadhaar marks a fundamental shift in citizen-state relations: From ‘We the People’ to ‘We the Government’. The article states

Since every instance of use of Aadhaar for authentication or for financial transactions leaves behind logs in the Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI) databases, the government can potentially have very detailed information about everything from your medical purchases to your use of video-chatting software. The space for digital identities as divorced from legal identities gets removed. Clearly, Aadhaar has immense potential for profiling and surveillance.

Besides the article talks of how a person’s fingerprint too can be copied and is not secure as a password.

In this age of digitization and hacking, all our information is anywhere out there in the open. Anything can be insecure. But here we are talking of a government scheme and so I guess it should be more secure. And can we underestimate the tech professional and the man who conceived Aadhaar, that is Nandan Nilekani and his team, to not think through all of this?

People talk of the government having every detail about us. But I compare that to CCTV. One will say how can CCTVs be installed on the roads, in malls, in the housing complex. It is like saying the government will know who I am dating!!!. The government is not going to monitor 1 billion plus people on whether they are buying pizzas or admitting themselves in a private hospital. The data, and I trust the government on this, will be used when they have to monitor financial transactions that don’t seem proper. This hopefully will include corrupt politicians, who open benami bank accounts under which they carry out any amount of financial jugglery, as they know no court can link the accounts to them.

When my friend many years back told me that he sold his beautiful ancestral land in Maharashtra because some politician’s goons were threatening him, as obviously they wanted to usurp all the land, nobody felt scared or that they were living in scary times. But now when things are moving to greater transparency, people are more scared. Is that not absurd? It is today very difficult for citizens to buy land and keep it as real estate investment or then do real farming as you never know when papers change hands and your land is quietly robbed from you.

Then there were the protests about fingerprints and a recent headline to me seemed comic but to most it was scary.

Citizens don't have absolute right over their bodies: Government

The article states-

The Centre told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that citizens could not claim "absolute" right over their body parts and refuse to give digital samples of their fingerprints and iris for Aadhaar enrolment.

When for years the landlord asked the poor to give his angutha chaap or thumb impression on land and loan papers, was that okay? How was that secure? Did not the poor have absolute right over their bodies? I mean what are we making so much fuss about fingerprints becoming mandatory? So when it is mandatory to do a biometric authentication to get visa to go abroad, we don't refuse because we don’t want to miss that lovely holiday in the Bahamas.

Surely there will be security issues about transactions being done only with biometric and with no other password or other details. But being a tech intelligent country, I am sure we will work our way in solving that.

Imagine if we solve most of the security issues, we will be the only country with truly a national identity number that is equally powerful for both the rich and the poor.

Lets hope for the best instead of hoping for the worst.

How Can CEO/COOs Rubbish Compassionate Capitalism?

I admire Mr Narayana Murthy of Infosys for raising an open question, as in open to the world and not restricted within the four walls of the Infosys boardroom. He could well have discussed this with the management within closed doors but he chose to make it public. The question he raised was why should Infosys COO Pravin Rao get a 60% pay hike while compensation for most other employees was increased by just 6 to 8%.

What he emphasised is – “I have always felt that every senior management person of an Indian corporation has to show self restraint in his or her compensation and perquisites. He or she has to fight for maintaining a reasonable ratio between the lowest salary and the highest salary in a corporation in a poor country like India. The board has to create a climate of opinion for such a fairness by their actions. This is necessary if we have to make compassionate capitalism acceptable to a majority of Indians who are poor. Without compassionate capitalism, this country cannot create jobs and solve the problem of poverty.”

Why did Mr Murthy make this question so open? Because he wants those very questions that he raises to be asked, not only at Infosys, but in many other companies.

He is so right when he talks of compassionate capitalism. What does that mean? That people at the top are there at the top, not just to earn their crores and live their selfish lives but to see that prosperity spreads to people who need it most, that is the employees. You are the CEO of the company because you are more intelligent, more capable, more educated, more hardworking but you are also the CEO because you can with your capabilities help others in the organisation to grow and to prosper. That is the core duty of a CEO. What does success mean? Success not only for you but for the organisation.

The COO gets a 60% hike and other employees get 6% hike. HR executives argue that this is needed in a competitive world where CEO/COOs have to work in a more dynamic, complex environment and thus salaries will rise above the average median. This is not greed they say. But here a question that needs to be raised - if the CEO gets a 60% hike and managers get 6%, it shows that all the other employees of the company are not adding value and are not performing. Only the CEO is. So in that very complex environment, only the CEO works and all the others work their normal 8 hours and do their mediocre work. So in essence is the CEO not actually incompetent as his managers are not working and deserve only a small hike?

There is no complexity in the question that Mr Murthy raised and is very simple. The initial years of our career is largely all about money, status, positions, living in bigger and better homes, big cars. But surely after we have made a name, earned money, bought those plush houses, given the best education to our children, it should be about giving back. COOs/ CEOs definitely don’t need to do charity but they do not need to be greedy.

And yes this is definitely greed my dear HR executives!!!