Any civilised society does whatever possible for any community which deserves it. As citizens of a free world with a 5000+ years of human histroy, we must have the courage to to stand for others. It's time to save the Tibetan struggle for autonomy so that they can save their culture and traditional of tolerance of love and humility. As individuals I invite your suggestion for possible ways.
Please follow the following link to post your suggestions:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/restorehope2tibetans/
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Saturday, June 6, 2009
IPL vs IPL
Subhash Chandra controlled Indian Cricket League (ICL) is being reported to be busy packing its fateful entry ‘for the game of cricket’.
The end of ICL is not a very bad development. But what is bad is the way it has been brought to end. The way BCCI has went above the board to stop it was entirely avoidable. Lalit Modi has done a good job as IPL commissioner but again not without a pinch of salt on the conceptual level. While Modi has shown a lot of enterprise, for which he must be given due credit, it should not be forgotten that this excessive commercialization will have its own side effects.
The men in blue become popular, rather icons, overnight in this country. The selection is subject to a lot of public scrutiny. Despite we came to hear about news of money exchanging hands for a place in the national teams a couple of years back. The way money has entered the game it is entirely possible that same things can happen and without much public scrutiny as these players do not have such identities. The ultimate result can be cricket again being another game where an Irfan Pathan, son of a poor father can't become a cricketer. The next challenge for Modi and BCCI would be to check any such development.
I am sure the existence of a private initiative like ICL would have been an effective check as players would at least have had an option. Here it is equally true that there would have been more probability of money making rounds in ICL than IPL. It was undoubtedly a business venture and not a 'For the welfare of cricket' initiative. But I do not think, it would have posed BCCI any threat. Even if it would have it would have been good for cricket and cricketers.
As of now we do not foresee any ICL kind of development. The real test of BCCI’s “good merits” and Modi’s managerial abilities would be now. With a powerful politician at the helm of affairs BCCI has everything to raise the bar. It would be interesting to see if Sharad Pawar does not try to keep his control intact after demitting office. Mr. Modi will continue to hit headlines but he must remember money is not everything.
BCCI and Modi better keep in mind, how popularity of cricket went for the toss when the news of match fixing were first broken.
The end of ICL is not a very bad development. But what is bad is the way it has been brought to end. The way BCCI has went above the board to stop it was entirely avoidable. Lalit Modi has done a good job as IPL commissioner but again not without a pinch of salt on the conceptual level. While Modi has shown a lot of enterprise, for which he must be given due credit, it should not be forgotten that this excessive commercialization will have its own side effects.
The men in blue become popular, rather icons, overnight in this country. The selection is subject to a lot of public scrutiny. Despite we came to hear about news of money exchanging hands for a place in the national teams a couple of years back. The way money has entered the game it is entirely possible that same things can happen and without much public scrutiny as these players do not have such identities. The ultimate result can be cricket again being another game where an Irfan Pathan, son of a poor father can't become a cricketer. The next challenge for Modi and BCCI would be to check any such development.
I am sure the existence of a private initiative like ICL would have been an effective check as players would at least have had an option. Here it is equally true that there would have been more probability of money making rounds in ICL than IPL. It was undoubtedly a business venture and not a 'For the welfare of cricket' initiative. But I do not think, it would have posed BCCI any threat. Even if it would have it would have been good for cricket and cricketers.
As of now we do not foresee any ICL kind of development. The real test of BCCI’s “good merits” and Modi’s managerial abilities would be now. With a powerful politician at the helm of affairs BCCI has everything to raise the bar. It would be interesting to see if Sharad Pawar does not try to keep his control intact after demitting office. Mr. Modi will continue to hit headlines but he must remember money is not everything.
BCCI and Modi better keep in mind, how popularity of cricket went for the toss when the news of match fixing were first broken.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
What the Youth Can Do (Part VII)
‘I remember my youth and the feeling that
will never come back any more-the
feeling that I could last for ever, outlast
the sea, the earth, and all men; the
deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to
perils, to love, to vain effort- to death; the
triumphant conviction of strength, the
heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow
in the heart that with every year grows
dim, grows cold, grows small, and
expires – and expires, too soon, too soon-
before life itself.
Joseph Conrad: Youth, 1902
Youth is generally speaking assigned to the age group 16 to 35 years. Now whoever comes within this age group is youth: the males and females, the students and the non-students, the educated and the uneducated, the city dwellers and the rustics and not only those here but hose who live abroad have to be taken into account while dealing with such a problem. Yes the focus has to be on the student as they constitute the bulk of the youth population.
In the context of India youth have always played a decisive role in almost every socio-politico-cultural development. This is a particular mission in which active youth power is required.
I am a youth but still I can say there is a problem with the youth of India, especially those in the metros like Delhi that they are too much self-centred, too much fascinated about everything western and cynical about most of what is Indian. So the solution mostly they look for has its root in the west. The problem is not west. Western model is not always wrong, but they definitely have a very different socio-cultural set up than ours. The solution has to be as per Indian requirements. For example, years ago the government was promoting eucalyptus plantation in India. There can be nothing wrong with a tree at the conceptual level but it was not something that India required. It had to be later withdrawn as it sucked huge amount of water and would fell even in weak storms. This was something an overpopulated country with so much pressure on land can’t afford.
What we need is to exploit culture and traditional beliefs, modern science, and current requirement. To quote Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, culture is tradition and tradition is memory. Only one deeply steeped in the past and robust imagination of the future can efficiently handle present.
The problem of making sustainable development a practice is far from being simple. It requires sustained effort for it asks shaking very fundamentals and ideals of today’s lifestyle.
T. S. Eliot wrote in ‘Murder in the Cathedral’, “Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind!
Is Delhi listening?
will never come back any more-the
feeling that I could last for ever, outlast
the sea, the earth, and all men; the
deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to
perils, to love, to vain effort- to death; the
triumphant conviction of strength, the
heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow
in the heart that with every year grows
dim, grows cold, grows small, and
expires – and expires, too soon, too soon-
before life itself.
Joseph Conrad: Youth, 1902
Youth is generally speaking assigned to the age group 16 to 35 years. Now whoever comes within this age group is youth: the males and females, the students and the non-students, the educated and the uneducated, the city dwellers and the rustics and not only those here but hose who live abroad have to be taken into account while dealing with such a problem. Yes the focus has to be on the student as they constitute the bulk of the youth population.
In the context of India youth have always played a decisive role in almost every socio-politico-cultural development. This is a particular mission in which active youth power is required.
I am a youth but still I can say there is a problem with the youth of India, especially those in the metros like Delhi that they are too much self-centred, too much fascinated about everything western and cynical about most of what is Indian. So the solution mostly they look for has its root in the west. The problem is not west. Western model is not always wrong, but they definitely have a very different socio-cultural set up than ours. The solution has to be as per Indian requirements. For example, years ago the government was promoting eucalyptus plantation in India. There can be nothing wrong with a tree at the conceptual level but it was not something that India required. It had to be later withdrawn as it sucked huge amount of water and would fell even in weak storms. This was something an overpopulated country with so much pressure on land can’t afford.
What we need is to exploit culture and traditional beliefs, modern science, and current requirement. To quote Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, culture is tradition and tradition is memory. Only one deeply steeped in the past and robust imagination of the future can efficiently handle present.
The problem of making sustainable development a practice is far from being simple. It requires sustained effort for it asks shaking very fundamentals and ideals of today’s lifestyle.
T. S. Eliot wrote in ‘Murder in the Cathedral’, “Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind!
Is Delhi listening?
The Change Makers (Part V)
The Human Touch contd...
Climate change is not something local or regional phenomenon. So the solution also has to be of the global nature. Given the enormity of the situation and the hold of the rich and the interest of the bourgeois it is necessary that it involve the youth and the old, the masses and the classes, the politicians and the voters, the rich and the poor. The responsibility has to be of everybody, the battle at every step. Everyone has to be the leader and the follower. No one state or institution can keep a watch on whether you are sincere or not.
Life has to be made simple and original in harmony with the laws of the nature. It has to be a moral responsibility, a duty, a mission, a passion. It has to be the fight between the right and the wrong, between the rights of the humanity and the elites. It has to be a fight for what Rothkopf says a uniform global culture. Sustainability not greed has to be the essential component of any economic order.
This war will have to be of every Delhi, every Durban, every London and every Washington. The world needs to listen to the cries of extinction and death, of rivers and mountains, trees and vegetations, birds and other animal species, soil and the air, life and death.
The world needs to understand climate change has caused migration, and cultural separation, population dislocation and the collapse of ancient cultures. We can’t allow this to happen this time.
The year 2009 would be critical for reaching international agreement on efforts to tackle climate change. We will have the opportunity to rewrite man’s destiny when signatories to the UN Climate Change Convention meet in Copenhagen.
The role of India would be equally significant. Though it’ not a developed economy it is the third biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world after China and the United States. India emits 638,000,000 tons of CO2 every year. The argument that we are a developing country and we a chance to pollute the atmosphere is hollow because it’s not that the poor of this country are polluting. It is being by the corporations and the Navratnas (the nine most profitable companies that the government owns) of the Government of India who has been raking billions of rupee as profit. National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) alone spews 186,000,000 tons which constitutes about 30% of the total gas release. 16 power plants, operated by NTPC, are in Centre for Global Development's (CGD) “Red Alert”. China has already surpassed the US as the world’s biggest emitter of CO2 from power generation. South Africa is among the world’s top-ten power sector emitter in absolute terms.
Given all these phenomenal contribution it is ridiculous if they continue to give such logic. The youth are playing and will have to play further significant role in making the government realise that the responsibility can’t be done away with.
Climate change is not something local or regional phenomenon. So the solution also has to be of the global nature. Given the enormity of the situation and the hold of the rich and the interest of the bourgeois it is necessary that it involve the youth and the old, the masses and the classes, the politicians and the voters, the rich and the poor. The responsibility has to be of everybody, the battle at every step. Everyone has to be the leader and the follower. No one state or institution can keep a watch on whether you are sincere or not.
Life has to be made simple and original in harmony with the laws of the nature. It has to be a moral responsibility, a duty, a mission, a passion. It has to be the fight between the right and the wrong, between the rights of the humanity and the elites. It has to be a fight for what Rothkopf says a uniform global culture. Sustainability not greed has to be the essential component of any economic order.
This war will have to be of every Delhi, every Durban, every London and every Washington. The world needs to listen to the cries of extinction and death, of rivers and mountains, trees and vegetations, birds and other animal species, soil and the air, life and death.
The world needs to understand climate change has caused migration, and cultural separation, population dislocation and the collapse of ancient cultures. We can’t allow this to happen this time.
The year 2009 would be critical for reaching international agreement on efforts to tackle climate change. We will have the opportunity to rewrite man’s destiny when signatories to the UN Climate Change Convention meet in Copenhagen.
The role of India would be equally significant. Though it’ not a developed economy it is the third biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world after China and the United States. India emits 638,000,000 tons of CO2 every year. The argument that we are a developing country and we a chance to pollute the atmosphere is hollow because it’s not that the poor of this country are polluting. It is being by the corporations and the Navratnas (the nine most profitable companies that the government owns) of the Government of India who has been raking billions of rupee as profit. National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) alone spews 186,000,000 tons which constitutes about 30% of the total gas release. 16 power plants, operated by NTPC, are in Centre for Global Development's (CGD) “Red Alert”. China has already surpassed the US as the world’s biggest emitter of CO2 from power generation. South Africa is among the world’s top-ten power sector emitter in absolute terms.
Given all these phenomenal contribution it is ridiculous if they continue to give such logic. The youth are playing and will have to play further significant role in making the government realise that the responsibility can’t be done away with.
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