My Life ... My Journey

Freedom of Expression has also gone into the list of words abused a lot as people use it in unrelated context and unsparingly. What constitutes Freedom of Expression (FoE)? The general understanding is that each individual has the freedom to express (display) his/her opinion without fear. Is FoE constrained or is the freedom unlimited. As an individual, you are free to do what you wish. No one can't curtail the choice you make but of course, you have to be ready to bear consequences. In the law of jungle, you may do chest-thumping or incite a predator but you should be ready to face consequences for your foolhardiness.  We don't live in a jungle. We live in a society and the membership of an individual to the society is based on social contract . Put simply, individual puts curb on his/her freedom, rights and choices in return for law, order, and mutual benefit. In modern state like India, these rules of society are codified in form of constitution. Indian constitutio...

I recently watched the film by Anand Gandhi. the movie was awarded the Best Feature Film at the National Film Awards. The starting frames allude to the eponymous thought experiment that whether  a ship which was restored by replacing each and every one of its wooden parts remained the same ship . The movie is composed of three smaller stories. The first story is of a blind photographer who tries to visualize things through her camera. She listens to sounds and uses a camera aid to click snaps. She gets the photos etched, analyzes it with finger-touch and takes feedback from her friend/lover to confirm if the photos reflect the scene she perceived. When asked why she took up photography, she says first to document and archive, and secondly to explore, understand and see. But it's more than that for it gives her a purpose in life. She comes across as an unfazed indomitable spirit who refuses to keep any accidental good clicks for it represents something which she hadn...

India is the 3 rd largest economy in the world in terms of GDP (PPP). It has grown at a rate of 7-8% p.a. for most part of the last decade. However, to grow further and bring the remaining 1/3 of our population out of poverty, India would need to grow at these rates. After 1991, there haven’t been significant reforms and India needs another round of substantial reforms. A majority of these reforms need to tackle the supply side bottlenecks as there is a strong demand. One of the major concerns is the ease of doing business and the support structure for enterprises. The country languishes in infrastructure. There aren’t adequate roads, railways is suffering from under-capacity, waterways and aviation require lot of capacity creation. Energy is also a big issue as more than 70% of crude oil demand is met by imports. There is no reliable power supply available to industries as the power plants can’t meet the demand due to shortage of coal. Getting skilled labour, environmental clea...

This discussion ensues from the recent report on demand of separate time zone for North-east. A time zone is a region of the earth that has uniform standard time, usually referred to as the local time. By convention, time zones compute their local time as an offset from UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). Local time is UTC plus the current time zone offset for the considered location. India currently has a single time zone compared with Russia's eleven time zones, the US and Canada's six zones, Brazil's four zones and Australia and Kazakhstan's three zones. China, however, is a notable exception with a single time zone. India's east-west span of more than 2,000 km covers over 28 degrees of longitude, resulting in a two hour difference in the sun rise and set across the eastern border and the Rann of Kutch in the far west. Thus, is the demand for separate time zones in some circles. Academicians, youth, teachers, students and women organizations gathered recently to at...

This article which appeared in Economic Times on 29 October 2009 tells that at least half a dozen of top 25 in the world's largest software maker shows significant Indian contribution. Its not only Microsoft, but Indians have proved their mettle in almost every successful business and technology start-ups. Silicon Valley hosts one of the largest Indian tech-force. Its not technology and business alone, Indians have shone in almost every field, ranging from spelling bee contests to music. The diaspora has carved a space for itself. It brings back the old debate of brain-drain. In this globalized world, its impractical to control flow of talent. Whether NRIs have done us more harm than good is a controversy in which I don't want to indulge. But it is true that we must identify the potential of our citizens and give them ample opportunities to hone it and benefit the society, nation and humanity at large. From ' Vishwaguru ' to an urge to become a knowledge economy, all de...

The general elections 2009 brought its own expectations, enchantments, disillusions, and uncertainty. The citizens of the largest democracy had many issues in mind while they decide what best suits there future. Some were responsible enough to utilise the opportunity of making decisions for themselves and the entire nation while others preferred to be 'Pappu' enjoying the spicy political news presented in form of raw entertainment (a feat only our media can achieve) from a distance. With Election Commission banning exit polls during elections, the analysts and political parties gauged aam aadmi's mind by media reports about daily changing political formations, out of blue statements of netas, verbal duels, and the various permutation and combinations of factors(caste, religion, charismatic leaders and plethora of other local issues) leading to victory or defeat. This all seemed to be even more fascinating at moments as compared to India's first love Cricket(IPL). In a...

This is a moment for all Indians to feel proud of Abhinav Bindra. The son of the soil has won a gold medal in 10 m air rifle in Olympics. This is by far the first individual gold for India in Olympics. With low hopes from our sports contingent, this comes as a nice surprise. While the other ace shooters disappointed us from day 1, this gold shows that we do have the potential of competing against best in the world. But the ecstacy of gold should not make us forget that our sports performance still remains lacklustre with tiny nations like Kenya, Iran and Ireland winning more medals than us. In sports, the two great civilizations are at extremes. On one hand, the host nation is tipped to be at no. 1 slot and on the other, a great democracy is happy and satisfied with a few medals. The 1.3 billion strong nation places sports on a low priority. It is this developing nation where a few good performances bring so much money to the players that they forget all about sports. Not to sound pess...