Religion that is no more about SPIRITUALITY...

I am a tolerant person, well mostly! I believe that God and religion is a bunch of hoopla and hoax created to control the human free spirit. But, I am tolerant to those who find God or find peace in God. What I do find wholly bewildering are the people who hide behind religion when their individual purpose is solved. And I am not talking of politicians and self proclaimed tricksters, er, religious leaders! I am talking of every day idiots who hide behind religion to justify asinine behavior, incompetence and malicious intent. 

A Mark Twain quote comes to mind...

And I live in India. The Motherland of Religious Escapists. Everything impractical and sometimes everything that defies basic logic can be justified by religion. Whether it is fasting yourself to illness or making excuses for not working (the never ending inventory of religious festivals and functions) to shunning basic human dignity. All this can be justified by using religion as an argument.

And there is always a loophole to exploit. At the very least to ensure that all is forgiven! If you commit a sin, no matter, there is always some temple you can ring the bell at or a river you can bathe in to clean up! And then you can go right back to sinning, whatever your choice of sin may be. Every time I go to any relic of religious worship, the number of crooks praying can only be outdone by the number of people exploiting God and the crooks to make a quick buck. 

To say nothing of religious extremities! Some of them are just plain stupid and others are reflections of poor character that is preached in the garb of religion. An extreme example is that of the Aghori Sadhus. These are members of a Hindu sect who worship Shiva, whom they see as the supreme god. Because they believe that Shiva created everything – they consider nothing to be bad. For this reason they engage in a variety of sexual practices, they drink alcohol, take drugs, and eat meat. A perfect example of leveraging religion to eat, drink, fuck and make merry! 

In some parts of India it is believed that ghosts can inhabit certain people of the living world. Most notably, girls who are born with a baby tooth already erupted through the gum and girls who are very ugly or have some facial deformation are believed to be possessed by ghosts. The only way to exorcise the ghosts is for the girl to marry an animal, typically a goat or dog. Even though there is a lavish wedding ceremony complete with booze and dancing, the girl is not expected to copulate with the animal – which is good news!

And how can we talk of religion and it's bullshit (pardon my language but I cannot find a better word) and not talk of the Muslims and their matam and the Sati Pratha among Hindus. Thankfully the latter has not been outlawed. But I am sure if you search deep and wide enough, it is still practiced.  

By all means, pray and be spiritual. But you don't have to burn women, be violent and marry animals to achieve fulfillment. And if you truly find charity in your heart and good will to the world, practice it instead of using it as a facade to commit atrocities.

The Outcome Matters Not...

One rather solemn evening in the recent past, my grandfather said something that has stuck with me since. He is a career philosopher with years of research and teaching experience so most of what he says I absorb partially, me being someone grounded in the quagmire of practicality. He said, "you must do what you must do but misery and pain ensue when you fall in love and get attached to the outcome". Now it made sense to me somewhat at first sense as being a derivative of service without the hope and wishes of rewards from the Bhagvad Gita. But the more I thought the miseries and sorrows I encountered, self inflicted or of others, it made a lot more sense to me.

It takes the service without wish or hope of consequence or rewards to a whole new paradigm. Most often in life, we undertake the tasks or initiatives that we do with not just an anticipation of an outcome but with the expectation of a desirable outcome. And that kicks off multiple streams of events that guarantee an equal probability of either happiness or sorrow; both at the end of a path and, many times, along the road.

At the very bottom of the stacks of wisdom that makes up the meaning of life is the axiom that the future is not in our control. We can only control the present and align to the most rational course of action. The deepest flaw in our definition of the rational path is that it is built on the expectations of the rationality or gainful nature of the outcome. If we stop defining the present in terms of the future, it eliminates to a great deal the pressure and compulsions we feel to shape an outcome. And it also opens up a wide array of alternatives based on capacity, capability and level of dedication or passion that is felt.

In my experience of a corporate life I have often stumbled in decision making and execution inhibited by the fear and doubt of the outcome. Inherently therefore is the stress that is caused by the defense of the outcome against naysayers around. We feel so much love and attachment over what we have achieved that we are pained when criticism and, less often, feedback crosses our path and we drown ourselves in the joys and sorrows that accompany the rise and fall of the creation of our labors. Imagine a world in which you could just "do the right thing" that is optimum in terms of effort to execute and honest in terms of the intent. Continued stress and doubt of the future, when eliminated, opens up the space in our overcrowded mind and soul that is burdened by worry and anxiety. And inevitably helps us think and act with creativity and in the end be the best human beings we can.

Where is the agenda...?

As I sit through rebroadcasts of political campaign messages, it strikes me most odd that political and policy debate has descended to the bottoms of mud pelting & a spit fight between contenders with no vision or discussion on issues that affect the future economic and social state of the nation. And it is disappointing to say the least - we have degraded democracy to a washing machine of dirty linen. On their best days the lead contenders aim at cheap exploitation of the electorate sentiments or make shallow and ridiculous comments that have no bearing on almost anything that makes sense.

Some 'isms' from the political battleground... 

"The escape velocity for earth is 11.2 km/sec while that of Jupiter is 60 km/sec. In India, we have the concept of caste. There is an escape velocity here also. For a Dalit to achieve success, the escape velocity required is that of Jupiter. More effort is needed."

"There is a tendency to look at India as a country. If you go back 1,000 or 2,000 years, India is actually energy. "

"Gujarat is bigger than the United Kingdom, to give you an idea. In fact, India is bigger than Europe and the United States put together."

"Politics is everywhere. It's in your shirt, your pants. Politics is everywhere. That is the problem with youngsters these days. This is a fundamental problem and we are trying to solve this problem."

This is but a sample of the ludicrousness that is presented to us to choose the person who will lead us into an uncertain and complex future. Where is the discussion on economic reform, education, poverty or other blaring issues that have sunk India into an inertia that is proving difficult to drive out of? The nation can only ponder on as the media and neta led circus plays out on the big screens. 

Who to vote for…

If you are an average citizen of India, like me, most of you probably are faced with this dilemma every time that you approach the prospect to exercise your democratic rights. And some of you will probably not vote to elect your leaders because either you cannot make up your mind or because you think that there is no point in voting! Nothing’s ever going to change, from the the way see things.

And I am guilty as charged. Most often I do not vote because I cannot make up my mind on who is the better of multiple evils. I promise that I spend time looking through my options and listening through the campaign build up but when it comes to the moment, I get serious cold feet. Because I have a criteria that I use to filter out the candidates and then more often than not, I am left with pretty much a shameful void at the end of the process. Here is how I judge and, this is not really a definite rule book but I think it does two things. One, it will provide an estimate of how bad the prospective leadership has become in this country and two, you may just get lucky and be able to make a decision. And when you do, it is just your laziness that is to blame for the adverse election results.

Sometimes, you expect a set of results and even take the initiative to vote, but the actual outcomes are, well look at where we are today. Here is how I decide and I leave it in the open to critique, abuse and maybe I get a fan following. My conscience is clean either ways…

The first step is to be able to appeal to your self and also to the patriotic personae in you (this might be buried under the  and reflect on the following questions…

1. What really matters to you? – there is no point in pretending to be selfless and self sacrificing because truthfully, at every level of thought, we are serving self interests – there is very little that really classifies as truly selfless.
2. What do you think are are the 3 things your immediate surrounding need for the betterment of everyone around you? – Now based on where you are and your life’s experiences on a day to day basis, this list might be the most difficult to come up with – not because you live in utopia but the list can tend to be infinitely long but must be limited to 3 and must be realistic. We all hope for low fuel prices and free food but that’s not happening anytime soon!
3. What do you think are are the 3 things this country needs for the betterment of everyone around you? – Now based on where you are and your life’s experiences on a day to day basis, this list might be the most difficult to come up with – not because you live in utopia but the list can tend to be infinitely long but must be limited to 3 and must be realistic. We all hope for low fuel prices and free food but that’s not happening anytime soon!
4. What are the kind of people you would like to be surrounded by? – This is a slightly indirect but I will get to it! Again, as before, don’t go for the idealistic or be misled by social conditioning. We’d all like to be surrounded by a fusion of character traits that do not really exist in one person. If you want to be surrounded by honest, selfless, funny, good looking, spiritual and articulate people then you were born in the wrong place, time and probably as the wrong kind of living organism.

This will take some time to achieve but you will get there after a few iterations. Depending on your level of patience and dedication to achieve the outcome, it will take from a 30 – 50 iterations! Don’t worry, you get better at it over time.

Now make a list of the potentials – the potential candidates. This list, typically will be in 3 layers. The lowest rungs will be comprised of the DOGS – people who do not deserve to even be in the consideration set. Not considering them is a no-brainer.

There are then the other two layers. Layer 1 will be based on your own political  and social affiliations and Layer 2 will be based on people you think have potential, agnostic of political or social affiliations. And Layer 1 and 2 may have the same candidates. 

The problem is that most often these will not be the people you will directly vote for! We can all think that Narendra Modi may be the person you would like to vote for but you need to understand that a great leader with a bad ground level machinery is not really a good leader at all. That’s not a reflection on the top guy but just that our democratic system is so complicated that it is often the case that the tail end may not be as great as the top guy.

This, in itself, will take some time – more often because we vote for the symbol and not the person hiding behind it – we are driven by a lot of symbolism as a country.

Once you get to this point where you have your thoughts listed out and your potential options consolidated, it is time to open the news channels, news paper and now the Social Media to look for information. Listen to the campaigns and compile as much information as you can get.

Then, GO TO VOTE.... Chances are you will have narrowed down to 2 or 3 possibilities. If you have followed the steps and been true to yourself, you would not have more than a couple. Hit the button!

Politics, Greed or Just Plain Inefficiency...

  

A bunch of really innocent kids dies and for what? This is the saddest and, at the same time, most aggravating tragedy that that hit the country in the recent years. And the recent years have been tumultous with corruption, terrorism and foul politics affecting citizens across the length and breadth of the country. But the death or children because someone mistook pesticides for oil, is the worst stain of inefficiency on the machinery.

Was it just the usual political foul play, that is so common and frequent in this the World's largest democracy? Was is Laloo or some devil from the Congress that planned this outrageous attrocity to create an agenda to fuel the election debates - especially within a state, that by comparison, is currently one of the most efficient and economically growing in the country? When you take a look at the crazy political mileage that is being exploited by the various parties vying for a piece of the Bihar pie, it is almost a matter of certainty that this is quite possibly the most tragic political chess play in the sad and dirty history of recent Indian politics. Consider this...

- The Congress is grappling with extreme governance issues and corruption clouds. Chances are slim that they will come to power unless there is a complete breakdown of the BJP.

- Laloo, apparently backing congress, realizes that with the level of development in Bihar and his impending judgement day at court, he does not have a winning agenda.

- If Nitish comes together with the large section of the BJP, and its allies, who are not favoring the Rajnath Singh way, BJP will fail miserably in the elections.

Any two of the three driving factors has a winning play in the tragedy. And the tragedy has the plus side too of making Nitish Kumar look like an angel - the suspicions and accusations seem to be arising pretty quickly given the standards of the Indian police force.

The Mid Day Meal policy, much like any of the other socialist and populist policies in this country, is one that is designed to win votes more than do any real good. And the administration of the same is loose at best - with the absence of any meaningful and efficient governance that permeates to the roots where the policy actually gets implemented. And from the days of the rations to the looming food security bill, such policies have done nothing but generate red-tape employment for greedy mediocrity to make a short cut buck. I will not be very surprised if this was a plan to make the extra buck by not using the cooking oil provided for by the government and use the spare fertilizer/pesticide lying free. Someone decided to pocket the money. The plan was to probably mix up stuff (oil with pesticide) and went sideways with the wrong container got used. Greed and/or extreme inefficiency. 

Whatever led to this outcome, it was an unnecessary loss that could really have been done without. The kids will not vote for another 10 - 15 years and the parents will lament bothering to vote for the rest of their lives. Is this the path of our righteous democracy? Is that how cheap the cost of a life is. We can raise our voices in protest and carry candlelights to boost the wax industry but we must ask ourselves this fundamental question - are we voting for these people who, beyond the path to the seat, cannot value life of the voter?    

Customer Experience - Cultural Alignment Vs. Lip-Service

Most large organizations spend large sums of money on developing guiding principles of corporate culture – mission and vision statements, high cost training/grooming programs in addition to other Quality and HR spend and, last but not the least, the huge sums of money paid to external “experts” who are supposed to create magic. While most of this spend is well intentioned, the outcomes are mostly quite destructively disruptive and most of what remains after the battles have been fought and paid for is a wide lip-service campaign – banners, posters, videos and the whole nine yards; without any actual improvement in the level of customer experience.

In my previous blog on the subject on how customer experience is a fusion of Cultural Alignment and Proactive Design, I spoke about how great customer experience is not as objectively measurable as we would like to believe. It is really a function of every person in the organization the customer is interacting with, having a strong belief in the well-being and benefit of the customer in addition to a way of work that is personalized to the context of the customer as against by randomly sampled survey responses.

Most Customer Experience improvement programs in companies are designed around building a broadcast based multi-channel communication effort towards the organizational frontline, based on a limited perspective that a certain list of things, based on surveys and focus groups, that form the core of what customers are expecting. We discussed earlier how the expectation of customers is determined by the context of the interaction. Hence, any program designed on the assumption of a sample based feedback mechanism will have short terms impacts, at best. Most often however, it leaves a trail of confusion amongst the company frontline and things tend to go backward than making any meaningful move forward.

The most important aspect of developing a corporate culture is to realize that every team within any organization will impact, directly or indirectly, the experience of the customer. This therefore requires that every department is shaped, by the nature & flow of processes and the nature of people, keeping in mind that the end recipient is the customer. Whether you are tightening screws on hardware, typing in customer address and phone numbers or actually speaking to the customer. The accurate fulfillment of what each individual does will impact the customer in some degree. Hence, everyone must be aligned to the same principles. 

The second most important thing is to ensure that the bridge between agreement and alignment is eliminated. Most managers and their respective reportees agree that customer comes first. But when actual execution is at stake, more tactical and cost centric measures take priority, thus leaving the importance of meeting a customer’s expectations as an agreed good to have – seriously short of a must have that everyone aims to achieve FIRST.

The last, and possibly the most important realization is the toughest to swallow, especially at the senior management level where the dollars and percentages of the short term tend to drive decision making. Great Customer Experience does not walk in parallel with continued pressures on reducing cost. If you want cheap, cheap is what you will get, and most often, cheap is not great. The ability to understand every customer’s context and design solutions and products to be able to cater to it, will cost money in the short term. However, once institutionalized, the long term benefits in the dollar and percentage terms multiply. Manifold.

And therein lie the secrets to the development of successful corporate cultural.

1. EVERYONE must be aligned to the same principles.
2. Meeting a customer’s expectations is a must have that EVERYONE aims to achieve FIRST.  
3. Great Customer Experience does not walk in parallel with continued pressures on reducing cost.

One last thing – you know your organization best. So, while frameworks and other 3rd party models are a great way to take a fresh look at what you are good at and draw a path towards greatness, it is generally counter productive, much like customer experience in itself, without context. If your culture is working as is, it is the right place to be and let no one, no matter how well recommended, tell you otherwise. 

Great Customer Experience = Cultural Alignment + Proactive Design

Customer experience is not really a set of feedback forms and derived charts and measures. Being the worst abused performance metric compounded with being thoroughly misunderstood by most ‘experts’ and ‘leaders’ trying their own various means of measuring something as abstract, has taken a steep toll on the approach towards customer experience across the board. Only a handful actually get it right and even when they do, the structure is short lived and fall into bad habits of endless charts and measures post the tenure of the visionaries who are at the focus of getting it right.

 

The first step to getting customer experience right is to be able to come around to understanding that it cannot be numerically or objectively quantified accurately, no matter how sophisticated the technology or how complex the statistical methodologies. The key is to be able to cast yourself in the shoes of the customer and asking oneself, what would one want out of any particular interaction. And given that every customer, and their needs thereof, being unique in some respect, the quality of experience is a function of unique expectations crafted as a derivative of individual backgrounds, situations and contexts.

 

Say this to any expert and the first reaction will be one of statistical smugness. Yes, no matter how diverse people behavior, all of these can be cast into a scatter-plot and statistically defined based on demographics and nature of the interaction. One of my biggest realizations from life is this – my expectations (and I suspect this as true for most customers) when I am facing a computer issue an hour before a critical presentation and my expectations in the similar situation when watching the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy will be very different from whoever owns my experience at said time. I am demographically the same person in both the situations and the statistics of people from my past and present state will say with 95% confidence that I will be happy with a computer issue resolution that does not take more than 20 minutes of my time and failing a working computer, have someone come over to my house in 2 days to replace the motherboard on my computer. I am not questioning the statistical methods of arriving at this conclusion, but I do not agree with it. A score of 8 on 10 out of a preset questionnaire that asks me whether my computer issue was addressed does not make for a happy me! Because, in reality my problem is not a bad computer! My problem is a computer that failed to deliver its purpose when I needed it to most.

 

No hardware troubleshooter over the phone, online or any other medium, without a magic wand, will make me happy if I do not have a working computer before the critical presentation. The ability to back up the entire contents of my computer that I can access over my mobile device and project in the event of a bad computer is what will make me really happy – a 10/10. And that makes for good customer experience. A proactive design driven by a culture to ensure that the customer who has been sold a served a promise, be served that promise under extreme situations.

 

This brings us to discussing what makes for great customer experience – cultural alignment and proactive design.

 

Cultural alignment is not a script and posters with smiling faces reaffirming that the customer comes first. I have met employees of different companies who smile and sell the customer first countenance but in the safety of their homes, swear by the competitors promise. ‘Customer First’ as a philosophy has run out of shelf life sometime back and the era is of putting the customer at the very center. While, in fancy representations of a smiling customer at the center, the philosophy is easily expressed, the adoption of an organizational thought process that act starts, collaborates and circles back to the customer is one of the toughest things to do. And this is the weakest link in the chain to great customer experience. While most people will agree that great customer experience means empathizing with the customer, the hurdle is that very few are actually aligned to that fact. Alignment is very different from accepting the broad principles. The reason for this is that empathizing is often done wrong. The trick is to place yourself in the customers shoes and not becoming “I” in the shoes of another person.

 

Most of us are, literally, so full of ourselves that we, most often, make the customer fit into our shoes and go from there. Going back to my earlier example, a computer savvy computer hardware and software specialist would, 9 times out of 10, assume that that the next step is obvious – restart the computer. 60 minutes before a presentation that may make or break my career, the most obvious does not always strike a chord – irrespective of how sweetly it is said. And if I am as tech savvy as the person trying to solve my worries over a phone call, the obvious is not why I would have called in the first place. What might therefore work other than designing a pitch that holds true for a statistically significant sample?

 

The answer is the ability to be imaginative in applying Murphy while thinking about the customer. What can go wrong will go wrong and the only assumption that holds true that status quo is the only thing the customer will be happy with. Everything else is just the subject of hours of intellectual wrestling. So a bad computer ahead of a TV show and a bad computer ahead of a critical presentation are just two of a million combinations possible between me, my computer and my average day in life. Culturally, an organization aligned towards providing good customer experience, must be able to expect and plan for the worst, and treat the context and situation of the customer as their own self in that situation. And then think through and deliver the interaction as one would expect in for themselves. And the interaction may be at any stage of the value chain with or without any actual contact with the customer. A product designer must think as fondly of the customer as the person who calls the customer to collect on an outstanding payment.

 

Is this holistically always possible in a world of economic and other resource constraints? Yes and no! No, you cannot do everything that has to be done right. But then if I start with a list of practices (best practices as we have heard every so often) we are going back down the path of scripts, tools and statistics. And therefore, yes, it is possible to achieve the nirvana state of customer experience orientation with a bit of contextualization and, coming to the next critical item, with some proactive design.

 

I have been a customer of Progressive and Geico. And I had an accident each in their company. When I called into the Progressive helpline to report the accident, the first thing they asked me was if I was okay. Geico asked me if my car was in driving condition. This is the difference in culture. Progressive had a rental car and the towing vehicle reach my accident spot at the same time. Geico sent me a towing van and then I took a cab back to the nearest hotel. Progressive kept me updated on the status of repairs and my claims through the process, even at stages that I did not quite care about – somewhere in the process they informed me only once, almost apologetically, of the deductible. Geico’s first update was an estimate of repair expenses and deductible and asked me to go online and approve. The next time they sent me an update, proactively, only when my car was ready to pick up.

 

Who do you think gave me a better customer experience? The answer, and the solution therefore, are obvious - proactive design with the customer’s woes and expectations in mind. Organizationally, once a decision has been made to differentiate a service or a product (without that, what’s the point of being in business?), design is a continuous process that starts with the customer, continuously collaborates with the customer and ends with the customer.

 

Once upon a time a couple of guys independently thought of making bottled beverages. One of them decided that the best way to do this was to drop the drink to a receiving bay in free fall for about 23 feet. The other decided after taking an aerated drink from the free fall machine, to create a built in conveyor belt to carry the beverage from its slot to the customer. Every time a customer took the free fall route, a shirt was stained and the second guy created the conveyor belt to prevent the fizz caused by the jolt of the free fall. This hypothetical example shows how a customer woe was converted into proactive solution that improved customer experience eliminating the anguish of a stained shirt.

The combination of a cultural inclination of giving the best possible experience to the customer by creating a great consumption context and a process that focuses on proactively designing for the best possible outcome for the customer in normal and adverse situation forms the founding blocks of creating great customer experience. No product, in today’s environment, is consumed in isolation and that is the key. A car is not an engine, interiors on 4 wheels. A car also includes connectivity, great roadside service, innovative financing, great mileage and cheap & accessible maintenance. Because the owner of a car is no longer a guy who just needs to go from point A to point B quickly in a good seat and listening to a radio!

A Script of Indian Politics…

Day 0

MoI Correspondent, Minutes of India, Srinagar May 18 20xx

7 Killed and 12 Wounded in Militant Attack in North Rashmir
"7 people were killed, including 3 military personnel, in a suitcase bomb at Kshitij Plaza in North Rashmir…"


Day 1

Chief Minister of Rashmir– Senior Member of the Wrongress Party

“This is a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and we condemn this unreservedly. We will spare no pains to hunt down and bring the criminals to justice”

President of Rashtriya Righteous Parishad

“We believe that Chindistan Jihad have again gained the upper hand in challenging our national integrity as the ruling Wrongress Party leaders sit back and encourage such attacks by fundamentalist elements from Chindistan to act under the cover of meaningless peace talks”

Prime Minister of Hindistan – Wrongress Party

“This is a very savage act on our soil and we are mobilizing our strongest investigative partners to hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice”

Senior Member of Rashtriya Righteous Parishad

“This is a barbaric act. The Wrongress Party must deal a stronger arm instead of playing fiddle to west driven friendship and peace policies”

Party Spokesperson of Wrongress Party

“We have instructed the Chief Minister’s Office at Rashmir to work closely with the military police and civilian agencies to chase down the criminals behind this horrific act”

Chief Minister of Rashmir– Senior Member of the Wrongress Party

“We have had detailed discussion with the Prime Minister and have requested the resources of Hindistan Intelligence Agency (HIA) and Border Intelligence Agency (BIA) to investigate the incident”



Day 7

MoI Correspondent, Minutes of India, Srinagar May 25 20xx
Attack Intelligence was shared with Rashmir Home Ministry
"An anonymous source at the Border Intelligence Agency said that it had shared advance intelligence with the Rashmiri Home Minister that indicated possible terrorist activity in April… "

President of Rashtriya Righteous Parishad

“This Wrongress Government is inefficient and corrupt, and has not been able to deal effectively with any of the past Chindistan Militancy on our soil. We demand the immediate resignation of Central Home Ministry and Rashmir Chief Minister”

Senior Minister of Rashtriya Satyavaadi Party

“This government led by the Wrongress Party and the Opposition leaders of the Rashtriya Righteous Party are all equally inefficient and corrupt. Rashmir should be under military rule.”

Home Minister Rashmir

“I can assure you that no such intelligence was shared with us. This is just opposition tactics to taint the current government”



MoI Correspondent, Minutes of India, Srinagar May 25 20xx
Rashtriya Satyavaadi Party threatens to go on Indefinite Hunger Strike
“Rashtriya Satyavaadi Party President has threatened to organize a peaceful hunger strike and demonstration outside the residence of the Wrongress Headquarters from Saturday unless speedy justice was dispensed on the Rashmir Investigations.”

Party Spokesperson of Wrongress Party

“We have setup a Joint Parliamentary Investigation Commission to investigate the communication failure between the BIA and Rashmir Home Minister. The Prime Minister would like to assure the country that strict action will be taken based on the findings of the report.”

President of Rashtriya Satyavaadi Party

“BIA, HIA, Military Police and Home Minister are all in each other’s beds. We are starting our protest demonstration on Saturday. I shall go on indefinite hunger strike.”

Senior Minister of Wrongress Party on Twitter

“Another hunger strike! ROFL..!! RSP should understand that hunger strikes don’t solve real problems”

Day 12

MoI Correspondent, Minutes of India, Srinagar May 31 20xx
Rashtriya Satyavaadi Party President goes on Hunger Strike
“Rashtriya Satyavaadi Party President has commenced his hunger strike and demonstration outside the Wrongress Party Headquarters.”


Party Spokesperson of Wrongress Party

“The party leadership is not very worried about populist protests – like so many before the RSP will run out of steam when brought to a national debate, away from their fringe attack policy”

President of Rashtriya Righteous Parishad

“We will boycott parliament until a full report of Rashmir Home Ministry investigation report is not submitted”


MoI Correspondent, Minutes of India, Srinagar May 31 20xx
Parliament hung over uproar from opposition – no Food for Poor Bill this session
“The opposition parties led by Rashtriya Righteous Party gheraod the speaker demanding justice. No action marked the day in parliament and the speaker adjourned the house…”


Day 15

MoI Correspondent, Minutes of India, Srinagar June 3 20xx
RSP President continues his hunger strike. Physician says condition stable.

Party Spokesperson of Rashtriya Righteous Parishad

“We will boycott parliament until the prime minister resigns.”

President of the Wrongress Party

“The Prime Minister has our full support.”


Day 20

MoI Correspondent, Minutes of India, Srinagar June 8 20xx
Joint Parliamentary Report submitted. An ASS found guilty

Party Spokesperson of Rashtriya Righteous Parishad

“The Rashmiri Home Minister must resign immediately.”

President of the Wrongress Party

“We are going through the report submitted. Let me assure you that just action shall be taken.”

Party Spokesperson of Wrongress Party

“The prime minister has called for a meeting with the BIA and HIA chairmen to map out next steps.”


MoI Correspondent, Minutes of India, Srinagar June 8 20xx
President of RSP end fast
“The president of RSP has ended his indefinite fast. In a statement to MoI he said ‘we will observe the action taken by the Wrongress Government on the report before deciding on next steps’ “



Day 25

MoI Correspondent, Minutes of India, Srinagar June 13 20xx
Home Minister claims error by Assistant to Special Secretary of Rashmir Home Ministry – ASS of Home fired from job
“The Rashmir Home Ministry spokesperson claimed that the report was classified as insufficient evidence by the ASS and that the ASS has been fired on negligence...”

Party Spokesperson of Rashtriya Righteous Parishad

“The Rashmiri Home Minister must resign. The culture of the ministry is responsible for such misconduct and the Home Minster must take responsibility”

President of the Wrongress Party

“We have read and acted upon the report by firing the ASS in the office of the Home Ministry.”



Day 30
MoI Correspondent, Minutes of India, Srinagar June 18 20xx
Bomb Suspect Apprehended!!

Press Release by BIA Chairman: The BIA Special Action Force, in collaboration with the State Police, HIA forces and the army has apprehended the two key suspects involved in executing the Suitcase Bombing last month….

Press Release by HIA Chairman: The HIA Special Tracking Team, in collaboration with the State Police, BIA and the army has apprehended the two key suspects involved in executing the Suitcase Bombing last month…

Press Release by Rashmir Home Minister: The State Police Special Purpose Team, in collaboration with the HIA, BIA and the army has apprehended the two key suspects involved in executing the Suitcase Bombing last month…

President of the Wrongress Party

“I am proud of the relentless effort of all agencies involved in tracking down the perpetrators of a truly barbaric act.”

Party Spokesperson of Rashtriya Righteous Parishad

“The center must now focus on speedy justice. Anything short of the death penalty will send messages of leniency to Chindistan”

Chairman of a major Human Rights Group

“The prisoners must be given a fair judicial process. Killing them will not make us any different from them.”

…

…..

………

…………….

The change that happened, somewhat…!

My mother is a very bullish proponent of liberation of women from the shackles of domestic traditionalism. And on occasion I am fairly positive that the change that drives her hopes and dreams may have actually made the mainstream family re-think and redo the archaic way of life that plagued our society for the longest time; a way that basically treats the women as, very crudely put, ornamentations worthy of shrouding in the dark or be the center of a trophy display.

In her personal and professional life, my mother continues to fight this rather crude and dusty way of life on a day to day basis. Very often looking from the outside in, you would feel her optimism with the number of women who are stepping out of the shadows of domestic walls and making a mark with their contributions across the board. Very recently however, I had the opportunity to get an inside view into what is currently branded as the traditional family structure. And I was very saddened to know that, in spite of the great progresses we have made economically and socially, the expectations from a woman within the household has changed very little.

More often than not, this rigid, coarse and ritualistic structure is aligned with “Indian culture” and justified as the way things have been! If things were to be the way they have been then the barter system is holy and everything that is instrumental in making us civilized is a sinful addition to the quiver. And yet, we enjoy the fruits of modernization looking only from the outside in as long as the waves do not disturb the shores that lead into the inside of the home. Because sitting on the outside, for these grumpy (a better phrasing is against family reading values) men who drive the rules in the rural and semi-urban traditionalistic social structure, it is easy to criticize and get away with it since no one who matters in the real world is not around to challenge the perspectives that gave us the caste system, such mean practices as the Sati and countless other atrocities that have been meted out in the name of religion, tradition or just “the way it has been”. When it needs to be driven inside the boundaries of the house the journey to the modern perspective is one that needs the embracing of a certain set of inconveniences and essentially a spine that can stand straight and rebuke naysayers.

The most cited argument in favor of traditionalism as an enforced value, as against a free choice, is that of cultural roots. Culture can, and has been defined as, the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits, etc. One of the definitions I really like is one presented by Merriam-Webster and goes as “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations.” The dependency upon the “capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge…” is the key of this definition. What we seem to have missed is the capacity for learning which entails the ability to learn from the ambient world and adopt for prosperous survival. We have only stuck to the coat tails of transmitting knowledge, once created and disseminated as per the necessities of the time.

I have always believed that the traditional role of the woman, as it once was, was an outcome of the need to survive and propagate. Driven by the need of evolution in harsh conditions, without the support of modern facilities, medicines and a law & order scenario that ensures the safety and heightened chances of survival of the offspring, it was necessary to have defined gender roles based on physical capability. That was then. We learned and adopted and it seems to me that we have forgotten our capacity to adopt ever since.

There has been change on the outside and yet, here we are standing in the 21^st century, life for women in a traditional family structure continues to be a struggle, battling against the expectations from the traditional definitions that tend to want to push her into the confines of what, we men, so blatantly term as laaj and sharam. In truth, I have never been so ashamed to be a man standing in this theatrical folly that has adopted selectively and stuck on to the threads, based solely on affected conveniences. No wonder our society, and all alike ours, see such high statistics when it comes to violence against women! In this struggle between the ancient past and the beckoning future our sense of morality has warped to shapelessness. We still hang on to the narrow perspectives of ghungats and pardahs and also, to satisfy the need for prosperity, expect our women to earn and supplement incomes. Is this the price we pay, as a society, for a culture that we have only inherited and failed to add and demolish based on ambient times?

What have we done to our education system....?

It is almost depressing the state in which our education system is in these days. There are seeds that I recognize from the past, seeds of evil that have now become full frown creepers that have engulfed the point of education. We have gone from an endeavor to learn to an endeavor to some form of a pursuit that just seems to be one of creating meatballs from raw meat. You now begin to see the story Pink Floyd was telling in the famous video of The Wall. We have confused the meaning of education with the need to produce hundreds of thousands of identical templates that the industry demands. And none of the industries are performing any better for it.

I remember, back in the days, days that the educated these days redder top as those without the level of competition faced these days, there were actually those of us who knew how to put our"education" to use. I was an electrical engineer and I was actually able to design a motor or generator and maybe even build it with the right tools. I was on conversation with one of my very very junior colleagues and in the heat of the moment I have him parameters to show me the design of an induction motor. The man, took a piece of paper and scribbled a bunch of formula and after a long effort conceded that it had been a while since the exams and he was our of touch. Now that makes for a rather bad engineer.

And from his working, I surmised that the key problem was the excessive templatization of education. And then I spent a few more days talking to some of the new outcomes of an education system with the heritage of India. In my travels, even the people who still believe that the chief mode of transportation in the sub continent is over domesticated beasts, know that the Indian intellect far supersedes that of the average Westerner.

I see the plague of an ever expanding syllabus, compounded by an ever deteriorating quality of staff, which is successfully exploited by an ever growing network of private tuition providers. I always had difficulty sitting amidst a score of pupils being fed something but these days, from what I hear, the approach comes with guaranteed results. And case studies for public displays.

Here is a student or a parent's approach to education ad I see it evolving.

STEP 1: Send your kid to a good school. Funny how the correlation of a good school and an expensive school works out! These days are marked with an integration of expensive gadgets into the education framework too. Back in the day, a scientific calculator was all that we saw for a very long time. Anyways, a good school does not engage in good quality learning but only add a certain but of polish. You learn how to wear a tie, tie your shoes and a global language to complain and fret in.

STEP 2: Send the kids through a struggle of tuitions to help them pass exams. Write like this or draw like that to maximize the numerator. This is where the dependence on templates kicks on. And supported by the examination system, it becomes a necessary narcotic.

STEP 3: Once he or she passes school with not much knowledge, beg, borrow our steal to send the kid to an engineering or medical college. Supported by the ever increasing demand for "engineers", this is the key to success!

STEP 4: Go through another round of tuitions because, that is what the kid is used to. Without a pricey tuition regimen, the kid has not learnt of another way to learn.

STEP 5: If you still have the enthusiasm, go for a further degree or jump into the wagon of thousands of people to get a job that the kid is, ill equipped at best, to do good at. And there are tuitions for that too, getting a job. Thankfully there are no tuitions for the job to be done. Good old On-The-Job training has to suffice. So far.....

What we end up doing is creating a template instead of an intellectual sentient being. So how had all of this resulted in anything of value. For all the man hours and money spent, the output is rather wanting. Pardon me of I do sound like an old hag who thinks that his times were the golden ages but I still believe that depth of knowledge is more rewarding that a whole lot of unprocessed information. No wonder we are gradually becoming the country that washes Western laundry for a living. Innovation seems to need a kind of rigor and passion that is all but lost in the pursuit of qualifications and numerators.

What's the answer? I don't know. Maybe population control! All I know it's that this is not the right path. With what we have today, the right path of education should yield higher end goals than we see.