Blogs

Why are we scared of drinking water? Everytime, when we travel, why are we afraid to drink water from railway station filters? Why do we so often come across shouts of “Don’t drink that water!” ringing in our ears? And we take the advice seriously- we pledge our loyalty to bottled water, we distrust the ability of water filters to tame the toughest bacteria, and the money we spend on water during an average day of travel, is more than the daily wages of half of our countrymen!

Why do Hindus put all their sins, filths, ashes and even the carcasses of his pets in the water of Ganga for getting easy salvation? Why was river Ganga given the divine power absolve sins of all humans? Well, the Gods must be crazy. Didn't the Gods know, that man's sin will increase exponentially and one day will come that Ganga will not be able to take it any more?

The ride to success of an illiterate youth from Bihar, who launched a radio station and promoted social messages on polio, AIDS and other issues but was arrested for illegally running it, has found place in school textbooks! The story of Raghav and his 'Raghav Radio' has been published by the NCERT in its book 'Bharat Mein Samajik Parivartan Evam Vikas' (Social change and development in India) for Class 12!

Ms Veenadhari from Mangalore was one of the first HIV victims to openly admit her disease. From a teacher, she turned into a well-known social worker and an ardent activist for the rights of HIV infected. She followed and advocated ayurveda and naturopathy approach to living with the disease .

The Right to Information (RTI) Act, that empowers Indians to obtain any information about government functioning, is slowly shaping up to be 'reactive' in nature. People looking for information have to ask questions, and wait for answers. This model has failed several times (wiki answers, yahoo answers). Making information 'proactively' available (like wikipedia) to people is the only way I can see this idea get implemented.

Canadian Nobel Prize winner and economist William Vickery suggests that a tender should be signed with the second highest bidder, and not the highest one. It takes nothing more than common sense to acknowledge that the highest bidder will compromise with quality to keep the cost minimum. Recently my teacher astonished me with a similar theory. He advocated a new plan for the voting mechanism in India.

The Indian constitution is one of the best documents written in the history of time. What sets it different is the people who wrote it, and the motive behind it. While American Constitution was written by white anglo-saxon farmers, French Constitution was given to it by an oppressed proletariat after a bloody revolution, and the judges of Britain are still figuring out how exactly to make a Constitution, India has a detailed and the finest constitution in place!

I am a traveler - I must go on. My karma is to go on. My dharma is to go on. It is beyong my rights to question and challenge - to measure and estimate - to evaluate and access the things around me. The only discourse for me is to go on.

After the clumsy decision over Bhopal Gas Tragedy, in the past few days, newspapers and news channels have asked a question- "has the system failed us?" After writing yesterday's article, I woke up in the middle of the night, and a question disturbed me- 'who' is this 'system'? To find answers to it, I peeped into this chronology of events.

Dec 2, 1984, the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal leaked poisonous methyl isocyanate gas and killed 15,274 helpless men, women and children. Lakhs more were permanently maimed. Bhopal was, and remains, the world’s worst chemical industry disaster ever witnessed by mankind.

I AM THANKFUL
FOR THE WIFE
WHO SAYS IT'S HOT DOGS TONIGHT,
BECAUSE SHE IS HOME WITH ME,
AND NOT OUT WITH SOMEONE ELSE.

FOR THE HUSBAND
WHO IS ON THE SOFA
BEING A COUCH POTATO,
BECAUSE HE IS HOME WITH ME
AND NOT OUT AT THE BARS.

FOR THE TEENAGER
WHO IS COMPLAINING ABOUT DOING DISHES
BECAUSE IT MEANS SHE IS AT HOME,
NOT ON THE STREETS.

FOR THE TAXES I PAY
BECAUSE IT MEANS
I AM EMPLOYED.

FOR THE MESS TO CLEAN AFTER A PARTY
BECAUSE IT MEANS I HAVE
BEEN SURROUNDED BY FRIENDS.

A casual dictionary lookup can sometimes lead to a blog post. Here it is sympathy vs empathy. There is a distinct culture that we try to nurture in our organization, a place where individuals work with people suffering from pain and facing problems in life. This has been there always, right from the beginning of the organization. Today I got two beautiful words to explicitly explain an essential part of the behavioral skill we want our volunteers to be synonymous with.