An 'Oily' Blessing in Disguise

Oil they say is the greatest of wonders.
Discovering it I think was one of our biggest blunders.
Keep digging for more till no more you can find
While it sucks away the future, of the whole man kind


Not a day goes by without references in the media about the ill effects of the rising cost of oil on our lives but I would like to turn that conversation on its head and explain the glass half-full scenario.

With world leaders trying to bring down the price of oil, one thing seems to have been overlooked. The dramatic rise is probably the best thing that could have happened to the planet. It is surely the swiftest way of curtailing the profligate use of energy.

According to the CIA world fact book the current world oil demand is over 80 million barrels of oil a day!!! Soaring oil and petrol prices have triggered a sudden revolution in our travel behavior and a seismic upheaval in the automobile industry. People are now compelled to put fewer miles on the car, ditch the sport utility vehicles and cut down their consumption of oil helping the world to create a greener and healthier tomorrow. ~~renewable energy such as solar geothermal and wind power is gaining greater credence as a way to curb the regions appetite for oil.
Dear friends, nothing will happen without higher oil prices getting us in gear. If petrol were cheap there would be no incentive to change. No one would care about developing new technologies, no one would bother driving more efficient cars and no one would care about conservation.
Something as ingrained in our culture as petrol will cling to the "if -it-aint-broke-why -fix-it' mentality until something like higher prices breaks it!

For instance:
Back in the 1970s, Brazil relied on the rest of the world for 85% of its oil the result? Debt ballooned and rampant inflation became the norm for decades. But those high prices pushed the need to change and change is exactly what Brazil got. Flowers of innovation and commitment bloomed to overcome Brazil’s oil burden and financial crunch with the invention of sugar cane based ethanol.
Simple yet potent example of the adage that necessity is the mother of invention

If you need more convincing then let me tell you about Singapore where they have invested billions to create the worlds best public transportation system and raised the taxes on the purchase of cars to such exorbitant rates that a common man would rather prefer public transport than wasting hundreds of dead hours a year driving and hurting the environment.
People talk about …Pressure on economy…inflation……Are these short term material gains so important to us that we are willing to overlook the long term gains of sustainable energy? What economics, what fiscal policies would help a planet with no mankind? Its high time we start respecting our mother earth and stop drilling into it to find some black fluid that would clog our air with smoke and choke us to death.
When we promise our children a better future, is global warming and pollution our legacy? We have to save our planet for our children and their children and trust me it is not that difficult all you need is an alternative energy source.

The beauty of our society is that crisis breeds genius. When humankind is faced with a crisis the brightest minds come up with solutions that allow us to adapt.
In the end I would conclude by saying that expensive energy is a powerful medicine against our addiction for oil. It may hurt when taken but it brings long term cures for a host of ills!

Is India still a socialist country?

A liberalized economy, 8% growth and a flux of foreign investors - This is India in the 21st century! But the judiciary says we are socialists, are we?
I don't think so.
Ratan Tata, Aditya Birla, L.N Mittal, Ambani brothers, Nandan Nilekani – I am not taking these names to glorify their success but rather to glorify the sole cause of their success that is Pro- Capitalism. If India is still socialist, we should delete these five chapters and numerous others from the pages of history and then face where India stands.
June 2010 the Supreme Court took a decision against a petition filed to dismiss the word “socialist” from the preamble, explaining that no political party has opposed to it. This exposes a profound paradox as the preamble is also for the citizens and “socialism” no longer holds relevance after the economic reforms.
In 1976, the preamble to the Constitution was amended to make India a "sovereign, secular, socialist, democratic republic". Thirty five years later, a new generation of Indians, wants to undo that historic mistake. So what causes the hindrance? I would say India’s long enduring hypocrisy.
You turn any corner, and you will meet someone who wants to start some private business or the other: a photocopying shop, a STD booth, a local agency for Dabur, Godrej or Hindustan Unilever, automobile spare parts — the list is endless. But who cares, we are still socialists!
To open some blind folded eyes and awaken the ignorant youth of our country, let me start from the basics –
What is socialism? It is a political economic theory advocating state ownership and control of means of production, distribution and exchange. Sounds ironic when India tries to relate itself with such a clause, isn’t it?
According to Marxist theory, socialism is the stage following capitalism in the transition of society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of the collectivist principles.
Goldman Sachs predicted that by 2018 India will reach a double digit growth rate and we are proud of it! But if you believe this growth percent is achievable due to our robust and technologically advanced state owned enterprises, dear authorities I believe you are asleep, as going by the present scenario, this can happen only in dreams!
It is close to two decades since India veered away from ‘socialism’ to loosen the states grip over the economy and to create bigger play for market forces, but political parties must continue to declare allegiance to socialism to get recognition. How pretentious can the so called independent judiciary of India be? In this liberalization era, it is dichotomy to force political parties to commit to socialism, an ideology they hardly believe in.
Fact – Tertiary services account for 55% of the GDP, much of it in the private sector!
Fact – Industry accounts for 28 % of GDP. Some two –thirds of it purely private!
Fact – Three quarters of our GDP is tuned to capitalism!
Contrary to what the CPI, CPI(M) and some ‘don’t confuse me with facts’ professors tell you, India is awash with capitalism!
Socialism makes the rich poor and not the poor rich and hence pseudo-reduces the gap between the have and have-nots, which unfortunately also has been unsuccessful in India. It leads to super sloth growth, astounding inefficiency, corrupt bureaucracy and complete complacency. And India has witnessed it in the 1970s when industries were subjected to such onerous regulation that innovation came to a near standstill and growth stunted to a mere 2%.
Almost all the major countries of the world, which had incorporated "socialism" as the only political ideology of the state, had turned into one party, dictatorship. It has proved itself to be a disaster wherever and in whatever name practiced. Remember the USSR? East Germany? Bulgaria? Romania? Albania? Socialism has had its innings in the west as well as in the east, and failed! This could not be the goal of our country - the world’s largest and most vibrant multiparty democracy.
The Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said that “Socialism is an inherent part of Indian constitution” No Sir, I refuse to buy that. Dr. B.R Ambedkar was against the insertion if the word “socialist” in the preamble. It was added later in 42nd amendment act. It is against the original intent of the founding fathers.
Democracy gives the people the freedom to choose the nature of social organization of the state under which they want to live, and change that order if they deem necessary. So it is unconstitutional to tie the future generations to only one particular type of social organization - socialism.
A time comes for every generation when they have to face test of history. Sixty years after India gained its Independence from British colonial rule, We the People, have to decide, whether we want to be in the dustbin of history by continuing to align ourselves with a failed political ideology, or be shown to be hypocrite declaring a principle, and then rejecting it in practice. Or do we the People have the freedom to chart our own destiny in the democratic miracle that is India. Today, we need to judge our past, so that we can come out with our heads held high, when the future generations sit on judgment over us.

TURNING PLASTIC???

The WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY is approaching in a few months; the government has prohibited the use of polythene long back in Jaipur but the plastic levels in the city refuse to go down.

My personal hypothesis –

Perhaps the people of the city are turning plastic.

Hazardous as it may seem, the citizens of the pink city are probably not in the pink of their health. I guess the silicone of bitterness, contempt, betrayal, trying-to-be-someone is doing the trick.

As of lately, I observed, that people loathe being themselves. They detest their identities probably or maybe they don’t have any so the best way to mark their presence, as they feel, is to join a “cool” clique. But in this unreal approach of sticking into the reality, they forget that a clique is nothing more than a knot of burnt ropes - A knot of suffocation, which finally traces back to the gallows, where the personality and individuality of a person is hanged.

Friendship – A word which has long back been subjected to cosmetic surgery with the knives of treachery and the scissors of guile and then softly wiped with the tissue of sympathy. Be it a nose job of trust or a botox of “best friends forever”, it’s all been done. No matter how beautiful it looks at the outside, it is as hollow on the inside.

Sometimes I feel, am I the only one noticing this change? Are others blind or they refuse to see that the pancakes of fake identities they are slapping on their face will one day wash away and all they would be left with is a haggard body and a cursed soul? When will the blindfolds of this unreal desire of wanting to be someone fall off?

The answer is – the day we accept ourselves as who we are, what we think and what we do. The day we start strengthening our spine, our thoughts, our words, we won’t fear those cliques anymore and would chip off a bit of that silicone stuck on our face.
The process of turning plastic is like a malignant tumor – firstly difficult to detect and once there, spreads like a forest fire. The initial warmth comforts you, then it turns lively and wild turning all the attention to you that now you start loving it but eventually its burns you as a whole. Not only you but also the people close to you who were at some point, your friends. They too die watching you turn into a corpse with nothing to hide the ashen face, the crooked heart and the bleeding soul.

Worldly matters don’t really intrigue me but this is the matter of my environment, my surroundings where people, to a quite extent, have learnt to throw plastic litter in the dustbin but have not yet figured out that the dustbin is not them themselves!

The Armageddon is here – as the organic content in the humans abates exponentially, as the sensitivity takes a back seat, as the emoticons become the only way to transcend a smile, as the trust chokes in a silicone heart.

The players of this real world have turned unreal. The games, the rules and the relationships have changed and turned superficial. Today if someone moves a pawn ahead; it is only to make way for his knight to kill the King. But yet the quest, to win something that doesn’t even exist, is alive and raging.

It can be really tough to understand this abstruse piece of writing. Maybe it’s too abstract, maybe it’s too nebulous, but trust me, it’s just an attempt to indicate what catastrophe this way of living can cause to humanity.

And coming back to my old good friend plastic, no matter how much you ban it, it has seeped its way through. From the plastic body of the pen that I am writing with to the transparent strap of my bra, next is what?

India is all set to become a global power to reckon with but are we Indians ready to become good global citizens?

This burning topic directly connects with the youth of my nation, of which I am a part and a significant one. How I react to this changing scenario in my country would determine how well I can adjust in a foreign land, where I plan to study.

Communication, innovation, leadership and critical thinking – these are the mantras to compete in the global world. So, to withstand the worldly turmoil, a global citizen needs to think beyond the contours. This is not possible without out of the box thinking, an eclectic approach and practical education. Education cannot be exclusively defined as “training” for what comes next, but in an environment where “what comes next” is almost impossible to predict, what training would be better than training to think critically and creatively, to communicate well and to solve problems?

Today India stands on the edge on a new frontier. We can no more withstand being “Indians”. We have to become the contemporaries; we have to become GLOBAL CITIZENS. Globalization forces us to redefine our socio-cultural boundaries. The term globalization typically refers to an economic phenomenon, but there are ripple effects that make globalization much broader, socially and culturally. For example the emergence of the cult “Hello Kitty” was a minor yet significant effect of globalization.

Venturing new places, getting out of the comfort zone, understanding different lifestyles and cultures, tarnishing inhibitions are the basic pre-requisites that a global citizen needs to manifest. I won’t talk abstract anymore.

I am an INDIAN – a young adult who wants to foster change, someone who is seeking to become a global citizen. I observe that my peers are highly influenced by the west. Rather, to my disappointment, they are illusioned. They are unable to differentiate between aping the west and being a global citizen. They feel that wearing baggy jeans and holding a can of beer is what is all about being a global citizen. Sadly, globalization is misinterpreted for western modernity. They fail to realize that modernity lies in the mindset of people, their endeavors and tractability.

My country is economically competent to become the global power. We Indians, with a little bit of effort, won’t take long to churn out the excellent global citizens in us. Even if we start from scratch like learning to throw the litter in a dust bin and basic civil etiquettes, we can make it for sure. Now is the time to prove that we no more run on the “Indian Standard Time”. The president of China said, “Challenge and opportunity always come together. Under certain conditions, one could be transformed into the other.” Our ancient tradition of “use and reuse and reuse”, which is often caught prey to satire, has become the necessity to living i.e. recycling. It is time we respect our identities and stop portraying ourselves in poor light. We are just a step away, all we need to understand is that now the world is our country and we all are one big fat family.