Thursday, August 25, 2016

Putting Wind in the Sail of our Foreign Policy Boat ( towards Western Neighbour)

In the olden days of sea travel when sail ships were the only medium and wind force was only driving force for those ships, there was a colloquial term that developed based on weather situation around Equator known as Doldrums. Wikipedia defines it as "a low-pressure area around the equator where the prevailing winds are calm. The doldrums are also noted for calm periods when the winds disappear altogether, trapping sail-powered boats for periods of days or weeks. The term appears to have arisen in the eighteenth century, when cross-equator sailing voyages became more common. Since this zone is the meeting place of two trade winds, it is also called intertropical convergence zone."

This word soon found its uses in regular english and it meant a situation where something was just hanging around. Neither moving forward nor moving backwards.When one gathered from whatever happened for long time about our nation's policy towards our neighbours to the west, it always appeared that despite the best intentions of our successive governments towards mending relations, demonstrated post all wars, after some progress, the relations were back to square one, largely due to acts of our westernly neighbour and mostly hinging around kashmir.

While all this happened with a periodic regularity from our side, our neighbour kept poking their nose in this matter talking about Kashmir and human rights there on one hand and doing mischief on the other hand with regular periodicity. It looked as if it was a well practised routine for them. This was despite the declaration, rightly, by our governments of various times that Whole J and K is an integral part of India. It simply meant that those people on the west were poking their nose in our internal matter without any restraint and with impunity.

People always wondered why it just goes simply uncontested and un-countered. Do Human Rights exist only in Kashmir and nowhere else in the neighbour's areas? Isn't our government trying to preserve HR in Kashmir despite delicate situations emerging there from time to time? They have been doing their best.

Is our neighbour a paragon of Human rights and has a brilliant track record in that respect in their own country? The answer to this question has been an empathetic no. But it seemed that we wanted to maintain our clean credentials in this respect.Did we forgot the great Kautaliya while doing that? Kautaliya espoused that "every nation acts to maximize power and self-interest, and therefore moral principles or obligations have little or no force in actions among nations." 

It seems that after many years some one dusted Kautaliya's Arthashastra and decided to use it. Is there any proof of that? Yes, there is. It is for the first time that this nation has shown concern for repeated and brutal HR violations in a western state of that neighbour. It is also a first time that we took up the oppression on our people in the J & K areas occupied by them.

In the management subject called System Analysis and Design it is said that "Today's problems are results of yesterday's solutions". It is evident that benefits or otherwise of this change will be evident only in long term. 

In the short term, however, the great guru Chanakya seems right and HR antics from our western neighbour have almost stopped. For a change they seems to be batting on the backfoot. It is for the first time after many years that the initiative seems to be in our hands.

Also in quick succession, our South eastern friend agreed with us and uncle Sam also has expressed concerns on HR violation in Gilgit  Baltistan. Brillient. 

Long Live Sage Kautaliya and His Arthashashtra. Please grace this nation with your wisdom very regularly.

Monday, August 15, 2016

BREAKING NEWS - World''s Most Responsible Person Found Right here in India

First of all my appologies for being away for over a month. I am aware I have been blessed with a small but dedicated band of readers who seem to be blessing my blog regularly. There were some minor issues that did not allow me to get in to mood to write.

And now that I am in the mood to write, I am trying my hand on Humour. I am known in my circles to be humourous and have written few times but this would be first time in my Blog.

Let me start with a joke, not original and a old one.

One candidate who was being interviewed for a new job was asked;-

Interviewer - All that you told us is fine, tell me what was your core speciality in the last Job?

Candidate - Sir, I was the most responsible person in my previous organisation.

Interviewer - And what makes you think such a preposterous image of yours

Candidate  Sir, it is a reality. Whatever went wrong in that organisation, any time and any where, I WAS HELD RESPONSIBLE for it.

Having given out this joke let me start. All over the world, in every nation, people either want a responsible person to lead them or at least want some one to take responsibility when things go wrong. In fact what is true for the nations is equally true for society, organisations, businesses, etc.

It can be safely concluded that the search for Responsible person in every walk of life in every nation all over the world continues. Sometimes it succeeds, some it it does not. Either that person is so responsible that he completes the task or sometimes the task fails and then some person has to be now held responsible. All the same, either having someone responsible to do the task or finding some one responsible for a failed task, both are vital.

Things, however, of late become very different due to fortunate or unfortunate event (and that depends on from which angle one looks at that event and things thereof) that happened sometime back in this very nation called India, Let me start little bit in to past.

Here in India, there was a boy who helped his father meet the ends by assisting him in selling the national beverage of India, which is sometimes called Chai. He was responsible for a tiny job of assisting his father. Then came a phase when he started working in a organisation which is held responsible by a set of people who have, in perpetuity, assumed years ago that whatever uncomfortable happens around them, they will never be responsible but this organisation is the one that is to be declared responsible for all such thing even if there basis or no basis to do so.
  
As long as this boy who had now become man and who worked  for that organisation and he was a nondescript individual (and dont forget, whenever something went wrong for this set of people they did not need this nondescript man because they had the whole organisation to hold it responsible) no one noticed him though he was a very responsible worker of his organisation.

While this was happening in India, the quest in every country to find someone responsible continued, As for India, when this man who was boy some years ago, all of a sudden, became a powerful (and also responsible) entity in a major state the job of that set of people who had, for many years, only one organisation to point fingers at and hold that organisation responsible, suddenly found one more person to be held responsible, at least in that state, For rest of the nation, the standard "to be blamed for every thing that went wrong" organisation was anyway there.

The world continued to find some people who were responsible or who could be held responsible in various places but the problem of finding universally responsible or to be held responsible man still defied solution.

While world was struggling to find such a person the boy who had become man and who stayed at the helm of affairs of his state and was re-elected by the people thrice over. That set of people continued, doggedly, to hold that man responsible, for any thing that went wrong in his state. For rest of India they had that organisation to be held responsible. That the organisation in question was in reality a very responsible organisation who hardly could be held responsible for any wrong.

And then something unbelievable happened, at least for that set of people, This man who was boy once was catapulted to head this nation as its "Pradhan Sevak" as he would like to call himself.That was the Eureka moment, not really for the whole world whose quest for finding such entity was on but for you know who? Obviously, that set of people.

They finally found that here was a man who could be held responsible for every thing that happened inside and outside India. So a student committed suicide in some state(dalit or not, a suicide is still  unnecessary loss of life), this man was responsible. If there was a rape in another state, he was still responsible. If there were some vigilantes acting against some other people he was responsible. It did not matter that Law and order is a state subject to be acted upon by state government. If there were demonstrations in a northern state, he was responsible and if pallet gun was used then also he was responsible. 

Soon this absurdity has achieved a new height. If he went abroad to revive the dormant foreign policy he was neglecting his duty in the nation and if he stayed that he was responsible for neglecting foreign relations. If he went to westernly neighbour he was appeasing but when he did not talk to separatist supported by westernly neighbour,he was responsible for not being sensitive,

Cutting long story short, for that set of people, the task of finding the most responsible person is over, Here is one person that they found who could be alleged to be responsible for every thing that happened or did not happen,in India or any where in the world.


While the world may be still looking for such a person but certain people have found one for the world. They have devised various ways to ensure that, even if the world may not find so, at least they can blame everything that happens in the world on this man. Don't the readers agree with me that world's most responsible person, at least from the point of view of some people, is found right here in this country. And who is that person? 

There is no prize for guessing. The whole world knows because the world knows that if not nothing else, he is at least responsible for making Indian dormant foreign policy alive after many many years. Happy Guessing.