Vayu
Quote I over heard
Good judgement comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgement.
Christian missionaries banned from Tirumala Temple
I would consider this move as a positive one. Two reasons.
1. If one would consider distributing of hindu pamplets near major churches to christians going to worship would be considered okay and in the spirit of fundamental rights enshrined in our constitution, then and only then, could this move be considered bad. Else better shut up.
2. Preaching and converting from one religion to another, from my point of view is utter nonsense and idiotic. To say that one will not be covered by the love of God if one follows a particular religion and only if god is worshiped in a particular way one can reach heaven is total bull. My point is that any religion which preaches this is evil and any God preached by such religions are Devil incarnate. So in my point of view, all such preaching people are Devil worshippers. A bit caustic, but that is how I will maintain my point of view.
The clash of Castes
How much of reservation in education/jobs is needed to bring the backward classes up in the society? How long this should be done? Who are the backward classes? How are we going to objectively create criteria to define the extent of backwardness in each community? Should the creamy layer be exempted from the benefits of reservation? Or is there something called creamy layer? Does economic status dictate ones status in society or is it the more complex than that? In the end, if we are to set a goal in real numbers, how much the reservation policy should be delivering to the society?
In all the information sources that I have – media, newspapers, blogs, internet articles, books, people etc , I am yet to get answers for these questions. Equally disturbing questions further arise. Why is the government so interested ONLY in the reservation of tertiary education – i.e college degree? How did we assume that a student from poor, rural backward caste would be able to complete 14 years of schooling (the conditions of schools is another big black mark), manage to even know that he can apply for IIT, IIM, medicine etc, write the respective entrance examinations and then finally avail the benefits of the government’s positive discriminatory policies. The logic of this baffles me. Is there any one out there who has some answers to these questions – I m waiting.
The Indian Economy Blog
To say that I am addicted to this site would be an understatement. I cannot wait for a new update on this blogsite. Reason - Reason. I have never seen or met or come across anything this revealing but so easy to understand about the state of things in my country. Why we have developed in certain areas and not so in others? Unlike most of the people I have met, this blog is not interested in merely finding fault, but more so in objectively analyzing each situation, defining the cause for the scenario and provides a meaningful explanation and solution for the problem. Now, all the solutions they talk about may or may not be meaningful or practical - but atleast there is an honest approach towards discussion. In short this blog and its contributors have changed the way I look at lot of things, like - economy, education, multi-nationals, Governments, bureaucrats, laws, justice, poverty etc. In a very high level, I implicitly understand that what ever we are now (a.k.a India) is a result of many factors interacting with each other in a very complex manner. For instance to blame poverty on the politicians is quite fashionable. But very few people have thought about the underlying the reasons for poverty in this country, the extent of influence of politicians over poor people, the historical and geographical reasons and above all possible solutions. From what I have read from this blog, the solutions need to be made at the system level and not to just one of its manifestations - say, politicians or bureaucracy. If the inherent need of a system to be inefficient is removed, rest of the factors connected to the main inhibiters of efficiency tend to realign themselves so that system still lives but functions in quite a different manner.
My next topic would be poverty. I will have to heavily borrow from this blogsite and I will ofcourse give references and credits. Eventually in future I want to do my MBA. To this effect I believe merely understanding the organization's architecture is not enough but also the environment we function. To be a productive human being, and especially for a MBA - where most of the things are in macro-level, acute and profound interest in the society is absolutely essential.
