Lokpal - The Silver bullet ?

Wow ...our democracy is still alive .The supremacy of the people prevails. It’s really heartening to see the efforts of Anna Hazare and his team bearing fruit in such a short time. Galvanizing the entire country is no easy task, the last time I remember a similar atmosphere in the nation, was the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. The number of people who came and supported this bill from all walks of life is really great to see.

To expect this bill to get rid all evils is asking for too much .For rooting out corruption all together, change must happen from the grass root level. It’s time we caste our vote sensibly, the government we select will ultimately be the supreme power which should root out corruption. The bill should not create another power center which can be misused. The proposed bill makes the Lok pall the investigator, the prosecution and the executioner. While this is what everyone wants, but I have my doubts. Power ultimately corrupts an individual as we have seen with politicians. I am not an expert in law but I hope all this is taken care while drafting the bill. This brings me to the drafting committee. I have no problem with the government representatives they are elected members, but the selection of Civil society members remains questionable .A father son duo in the same panel, we have enough of dynastic politics being played out.

At the end of the day nothing in life is perfect, there is no perfect bill .I hope this movement against corruption sustains and we some change in the future.

Doing what’s right.

There some instances in life where you look back and think that you should have taken a stand, defended the innocent and help someone in need. Well I was faced with such an instance last night and I let myself down, I regret that I didn't do anything.

    We were back from a trip to a nearby place, it was around one in the morning when the driver of the car honked at one guy on a motorcycle and over took him. The guy on the bike was drunk .He stopped the car in front of us and came out to the driver's side .He started saying all things like you were just about to kill me and live me for dead. The fact was that it was not the drivers fault at all! Without any provocation he slaps the driver and I am sitting beside him just watching. He starts dialling the number and saying that he will call the cops .He starts dialling a number and nobody picks up the phone. Finally it struck me that this guy just wants to just extract money from us, he starts demanding money from the driver, may be to have another bottle of alcohol. This continues for 5 minutes may be he struck the driver half a dozen times, the driver keeps pleading him to let go when he was never at fault. I think of stepping out of my vehicle and confronting him, I knew there were 6 guys back in the cab who would have taken my lead and confronted the bike driver. But I didn't and that's going to haunt me for a while, I told myself that this is not my fight, why should I be involved .Maybe I was selfish and a coward I can never forgive myself for that .I always believed that one has to stand up for the right, for the one who is innocent but I never did it. Finally one of us had the presence of mind to dial for the police hearing this drunken bike driver made a run for it. We registered a complaint with the cops and left.

I hope I won't disappoint myself again.

Elections- Pathetic turn out.

Election have just concluded in Bangalore and I exercised by fundamental right to vote .I heard turnout of 50% , 40% I feel dismayed, don’t we care where our country is heading ? I for one thought Mumbai would go one and vote in large number but alas they scored the least marks 40 % .If 26/11 couldn’t get them to vote, god only knows what will make them come out of their slumber. Not only Mumbai it’s the same story in most of the urban areas. The great Indian middle class is good at cribbing and criticizing, when the time arrives to voice their opinion they fail to turn up and vote. It’s well and good to say we live in the largest democracy in the world, what really counts is it really a functioning democracy.Dissapointing turn out.

Political compass

Take this test and check which side of political spectrum you fall in ,looks like I am a left-Libertarian
http://politicalcompass.org/test

Great Indian Divide

The recent incidents in Mangalore, young girls being thrashed by goons for not following "Indian culture" has opened up the divide deeply rooted in Indian society. The talk about morality is just a smoke screen for actual issue that is gender inequality. For years Pubs and Bars have been a male bastion, till then there was no protest about this being against our culture. When women started visiting pubs and bars often with men, conservative India has disapproved this, revealing the gender inequality that exists. Women in urban India try to break out of the four walls and try to assert themselves where as conservative India desperately wants their girls to live within the well-defined wall of social norms

    The other divide is the two India's we live in one which enjoys the fruit of economic liberalization, which has been a factor in allowing people to shed the conservatism. Now compare this to the people in the rural Indian who have been untouched by the economic growth and are clinging on to their conservatism. Politician are also cashing in on this divide. Instead of condemning these ghastly acts politicians are siding with the goons and talking about stopping the growth of "Pub Culture" and "Mall culture". Politicians are just trying to please their rural vote bank.

    Times are changing and India is also transforming both economically and socially. The clash between the reactionaries and liberals will continue.

Slumdog Millionaire

I watched the movie, which was nominated for 10 Oscars and I asked myself .Was this the greatest Indian movie made? Well the answer is no. I am no film critic but I surely know there are movies (Bollywood movies) that are better than SM in many aspects, but yet they are not nominated for Oscars. Anil Kapoor says that every Indian should be proud that this "Indian" movie has made it to the Oscars. I beg to differ. We look at the west for appreciation for our movies and winning an Oscar seems to be ultimate goal. But the fact is the movies made in India cater to the sensibilities of Indian audiences. Our culture is different from the west and our filmmakers should not be looking at the west for appreciation.

    I remember a scene in the movie Munnabahi . Circuit asks a foreign tourist why don't you go visit Taj Mahal or other tourist attraction he says "I want to see poor people, hungry people". The fascination of Indian poverty/slum in the west is immense and because the USP of this film is poverty, no wonder the film is doing so well. Without the subject of poverty the film would have no recognition in the west. I accept India is plagued by poverty and significant number of people are living below the poverty line .I am not trying to be an escapist but glorifying poverty to make financial gains is also not right. This film tries to reinforce the stereotype about India, poverty, child labour, beggary, and prostitution. This film is like a check list about the stereotypes mentioned. Yes there is the aspect of, a rag to riches story, of hope but these are overshadowed by other aspects.

    So should we never make films about poverty? No, movies have to be made. People have to be aware of the problems we face in our country but we don't have to make movies to please the western audience. Movies have to be made with certain sensibilities towards the poor. I don't think we need to glamorize poverty.

Mind Games

Have you encountered some of your friends telling about this amazing scheme or training which will help you make lot of money or give you eternal happiness I nearly fell for it. I am talking about two such instances

1. GoldQuest International
   
2. Landmark Education Forum
   

The two may not be connected totally but they share the same aggressive marketing and mind manipulation techniques in recruiting people into it.

Gold Quest international

Rhythm (Raise yourself to help mankind) this is the slogan of the company called Quest net. By now most of us in Bangalore  (people in the IT sector at least) would have heard of once ,through some you
know very well and some people whom you never knew well but became very friendly  only to lure you into this maze called Quest.
       It all starts with a simple phone call. It may be a very close friend of yours or an acquaintance you had met a long time ago. "Let's met up over a cup of coffee", surprised you are bound to ask the reason for this sudden urge to meet. An explanation is given to cover the real motive of the meeting. Usually your acceptance depends on your mood, the person who calls. If it is  your close friend you have no
options (even though you know what it is going to be), if it's someone you have hardly met probably you will say a no (if its person from the meeting is usually held in coffee shop ( mine was held in the office itself !!).If you give a negative response, they don't let go of you that easily. Your pestered relentlessly, in the end you get you give up and attend the presentation. Once you come to attend the meeting the Quest representative (QR) would have done half his job. Then the mind manipulation starts.

A qualified QR who has proven marketing credentials in Quest gives you a presentation . You are a sceptic at first analyzing each elements .Then slowly you get sucked in hypnotized .You think about this utopian world, where everyone becomes rich ,people spring in your mind of whom you can add into your network. So called proof is given about the credentials of the company, there wide range of  products .They persuade you to believe that a coin which is worth around ten thousand in the market is actually worth around thirty grand . A watch worth few thousand rupees will cost you around twenty times more than that. You are so overwhelmed by the future prospects that you don't think about the cost. If you are not able to afford the cost of product, no problem , take three credit card juggle around with your credit limit and use the time to make more people join. So you recover your money in three months, that's the funda in theory at least. In the end the QR says you need to take your decision as soon as possible and not to consult this with any of your contacts.  If you take the decision there itself probably it will be a positive one. If you consult do some research, then 90% of the time you would reject it. Once you join this system your personal life is totally screwed, your only motto becomes to recruit people, the relationships you share with your friends are thrown out of the window.

I searched in the internet and found this, the gold quest is modelled like a pyramid scheme (or something similar) . A pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model that involves the exchange of money primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, often without any product or service being delivered. Here there was a product worth <10,000 sold at 30,000.Pyramid schemes are illegal in many countries. Pyramid schemes exploit greed and gullibility. A successful pyramid scheme combines a fake yet seemingly credible business with a simple-to-understand yet sophisticated-sounding money-making formula. The essential idea is that the mark, Mr. X, makes only one payment. To start earning, Mr. X has to recruit others like him who will also make one payment each. Mr. X gets paid out of receipts from those new recruits. They then go on to recruit others. As each new recruit makes a payment, Mr. X gets a cut. He is thus promised exponential benefits as the ''business'' expands.

Such ''businesses'' seldom involve sales of real products or services to which a money value might be easily attached. However, sometimes the ''payment'' itself may be a non-cash valuable. To enhance credibility, most such scams are well equipped with fake referrals, testimonials, and information. Clearly, the flaw is that there is no end benefit. The money simply travels up the chain. Only the originator (sometimes called the "pharaoh") and a very few at the top levels of the pyramid make significant amounts of money. The amounts dwindle steeply down the pyramid slopes. Of course, the worst off are at the bottom of the pyramid: those who subscribed to the plan, but were not able to recruit any followers themselves. This was the case in India ,once the network started increasing people in the bottom of the pyramid never got the money, a staggering 35,000 complains were received and all the people in the top of the pyramid were arrested and put behind bars for cheating. There assets often ran into several crore's of Rupees from the commission they received .Sadly many of my friends have lost a lot of money .

 

Landmark Education Forum

Now let's come to Landmark ,Landmark education is a global "personal development" company it has seminars in more than 100 countries and is worth millions. There is serious concerns over its unsettling techniques. There is intense pressure in handing over 7000 rupees and taking you into a mental journey you may not be equipped to handle. I watched a controversial television-documentary "Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus", presented an investigation of the activities of Landmark Education. The documentary has resulted in various legal repercussions in France, the Netherlands, Australia and the United States. The video shows a very direct sort of attack fairly abusive ,participants have said that it is emotionally very distressing .A women is shown in tears broken down by a self development course, this is all part of a land mark education ,participants are kept in a windowless room throughout the day for about 14 hours, consisting of a meal break and minimal bath room visits.It involves people one after the other are called up on stage and systematically broken down and later put back together and built up again. Sounds harrowing but this is a big business,with 160000 participating every year. Internationally Landmark international turns up 91 million every year. Testimonials of people include ,people with inflated confidence and insisting people to pay up the money and experience it themselves. One of the parents of student who attended said that her daughter's character changed and she totally drifted away from her.

After students have attended the course they are encouraged to bring in the close and near ones to a recruitment process. Then the hard sell begins. People are given a three hour session and are told that they would be doing an injustice if they don't sign up and doing their family an injustice too .They go one to say the money is insignificant, you are told to get your priorities straight ,and your selfish if you don't join. Once you end up in the recruitment session ,it is a beginning of a quiet sophisticated psychological process to change the way you believe about yourself , your family and world around you. Psychologists have commented that landmark uses a certain hypnosis technique. It's an intensive process to stop you from critically evaluating about the things that is being said and just accept and change your belief. There is a big emphasis on recruiting new people; it's almost made condition during the course to recruit new people to join. One of the participant who was forced to attend because of his wife's involvement in landmark was asked how he felt about recruiting new people by landmark, he said he felt guilty about doing it .Consequently his relationship with his wife was also strained. Relationship counsellors have got cases where one person does it and other doesn't and the relationship becomes sometimes untenable. The people running these courses are not mental help professionals they don't have the expertise to deal with peoples emotional aspects. What is even more of concern is land mark holds courses for children as young as eight years old. During the recruitment process land mark urges parents to involve their children. In one case a child was taken into a room alone with a landmark volunteer a total stranger to the child.        

    The documentary shows confidential document from Land mark. The document is pretty shocking, obviously kept secret by Landmark Education, from a presentation of the Landmark Forum , because right from page 1, for example, it says that the introduction doesn't last more than two minutes.  On page 2 it says that you have to write key words on the board.  On page 16, it says you have to move the chair to the right.  On page 22 you have to move the chair to the left.  There are even possible answers from participants so the facilitator knows exactly what to say. 

The Cult Awareness and Information Centre has listed the Landmark Forum among psychotherapy cults, in a collection of "cults and isms".The contention that the Forum is "cult-like" has been aired in at least half a dozen newspaper articles over the last decade. Landmark vehemently rejects the cult label and "freely threatens or pursues lawsuits against those who call it one."

After this report has been aired, Landmark has been kicked out of France for violating certain laws.

 

PS: I have not attended any session from landmark; my views are based on research on the net: YouTube and Wikipedia.

On Gold quest my views are a firsthand account.

    

"If you think there is something to good to be true, there must be something fishy!"