I often receive emails with suggestions or notes. Most of them would make a good article by themselves. Even some of the comments on this site are as good as separate posts in their own right. Here is one that I received from Chhavi Methi (@GuruMaata). Her note was titled "What I want". Surely, not the usual stuff you will see on MediaCrooks. Our govt has long buried the family planning and population control programmes from public attention. Chhavi talks about those and a few more things. I felt it was a good and different read and may not be different from what most of us want. Her note is reproduced here without any change. So read on...
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Well, what I want is same as what all of us want! A better life for
all!
I want an end to the corruption that is preventing a quality life to
us. But I want to move beyond corruption... Move to a much higher level and
ensure the protection of our mother earth! Only way we can ensure protection of
earth is by doing all that is possible to protect our environment and to
conserve our resources.
In fact, it is all related in a chain: ..earth-->environment-->society---->population---->infrastructure-->
scarcity --> corruption
To break this vicious chain, we have to start with education. There is
so much people that our mother earth can take care of. We are a way too many
people already. Increasing population is one of the most important factors that
cause damage to society, its values and environment. Less people mean less demand of resources and
therefore, less conflict among people and less damage to environment.
We have seen that population control has a direct relation with
education. One of the main curses of our society is the illiteracy of our
people. But when I say education, I want to go beyond simple literacy and
include value education. Education must include awareness on moral values and
social responsibilities. Only education would make our people understand the
need to adopt population control for their own sake, their children’s sake and
the society’s sake!
As I said reduced population will not only reduce the demand for more
infrastructure and natural resources but also will increase the quality of our
people. It will also make us aware about
the need to protect our environment.
To clean up our environment all the men in society must realise the
need and work towards it. We all have a
responsibility to ensure least cutting of trees, not polluting the air &
water etc! It is saddening to see that
even our so called educated people not caring about the environment. The poor
and illiterate are ignorant but even the rich are uneducated and unaware in
social matters! Thinking of environment maybe never plays on in their minds!
Take the case of Singapore. No
one dares not throw anything on the road or misuse environment
indiscriminately. Is it only because you get fined there? Or is it because there is social awareness
among people? Why is that same people
when they come back to India do not give any care in maintaining the surroundings
or to living as per similar standards?
Can we make it a compulsion that each of us does a spiritual course?
Who is going to impose these motivational practices or should we be self-
motivated? But knowing Indians, I think
it is not there in our blood! I keep
reading so many comments that we must change the society to remove corruption
and other evils. But is that easy?
While we must work towards increasing education and awareness, and
thereby bring changes in the society, can we wait? Any change in a society
takes a long time to happen. How do we ensure faster action on these
fronts? I think we need to have stricter
laws to ensure people live as per acceptable standards. Guilty must be punished strictly and fast. We
must make people respect and fear laws!
Together with strict laws, we must also ensure better infrastructure.
Poverty and lack of facilities affects our environment badly. Our country and
our governments do not lack money. Why can’t we ensure the best of roads,
schools and hospitals for our people?
This brings me to my last point.
Any such changes require quality leaders. Among the foolish wise men are born
......these wise men are leaders! They have the calibre to make the change! Of
course, I’m hinting to our politicians, who are supposedly the chosen leaders! The
onus, yes, lies on the leaders to provide direction to our country... Leaders
must be educated and must have the power to make changes! Leaders need to think
for the country and as voters, we must ensure that only such capable people end
up as our leaders!
To conclude, I want our people and our leaders to keep the interests of
all in their minds while taking decisions.
That would ensure fulfilment of my dream of a quality life for our
people!
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I think you missed Mr Cho Ramaswamy in list of "Vote for 'India's Best Journalists"
ReplyDeleteSwami Vivekananda once remarked that for the India psyche, a spiritual leader is a must for any movement to succeed. Probably because (1) we want the guidance of one who is beyond conventional society and (2) we want the whole picture.
ReplyDeleteprobably swami ji knew the ground reality :)
DeleteThe whole article is biased against our rulers whose survival and reelection is based on freebies and to get quid pro quo by way of votes more people should remain poor and long for any pittance thrown by them during election. Moreover, we need substandard administrative bureaucrats to declare elected a defeated candidate which again we need people from mediocre society. Hence, the present strategy of the government without tactics is need of the hour why-fore, we can live with sectarianism (division of society) bequeathed by British for rogue elements to survive. Moreover, people from mediocre society if educated they will become crooks which will become difficult for the police zero in them whereby they, to survive, will become crooks thus the entire society will become crooks and the politicians will heartbeat that they uplifted the downtrodden by eliminating the upper caste echelons.To them uplift of downtrodden is one among a lac who will be under their feet to help them loot, try to educate the common it is because of their action, the common are enjoying the facility at cheaper rate screening that the beneficiaries had sold to others at exorbitant margin but for, the same it would be still cheaper who upon landing in an airport there would be 5000 morons to receive them whereas only 200 to receive great athlete when alighted in the same airport. India is shining!
ReplyDeleteCho Ramaswamy is not a chamcha and cannot be even compared to the morons (BD, RS , VS ....) here
ReplyDeleteRavi i would like to say u something on the Best and Worst journalist poll. Two names are shuffled in my opinion. According to me Ashutosh (IBN7)is not crooked bcoz he once openly criticised Karan thapar for being crooked. Second one is Ashok Malik. He is highly biased towards congress. I read his column in HT once, he was supporting the delhi govt and sheilaD instead of critising them.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRaviji,
ReplyDeletea suggestion, please add S GURUMURTHY ,he has done as much as ARUN SHOURIJI in fact they were comrade in arms at the indian express and i liked your choices too...please consider my suggestions
regards,
roshan ramakrishnan
Great idea to have a best journalists poll. It deserves a separate section by itself. Also as TV gets lot more visibility than written, it would be great to highlight some journos who write fewer but powerful, courageous, well researched articles.
ReplyDeleteSince your self-proclaimed role is to expose the crooks and liars in the media, who are often 'in the face' and have the popularity and a false positive image, it follows that a lot of the journalists you have listed are not well known especially in some sections (some could be regional, such as Cho, though he speaks in English often too). It would be awesome if you can do a small write-up on each or even welcome snippets/links from your readers and you could authenticate to the best of your judgment. That way voting will also be well informed.
As an example, think of P Sainath. I did a snap poll in my office and of the 10, only 2 even heard of him and those 2 were extremely positive about him. Therein lies the challenge here in such polls for finding good journalists. Good journalists often may not be marketable and may not be known beyond a narrow segment who adore them.
But since the audience to your site, for the most part, are well engaged knowledge seekers, with just some snippets about their (the nominees) work, you could be helping spread their work too.
Of course, lets add a caveat that we have often seen 'good' turn 'bad' and we should desist from blindly listening to anyone simply because though they may be great in one subject they may not be as well informed in other closely overlapping subjects. Even smart, well-meaning writers make the mistake of mapping a correct paradigm into the wrong situation. For example, perfunctorily applying Hindu-muslim conflict in India to Israel-palestine as both involve muslims - a common mistake.
Few more I would consider are MD Nalapat (see his piece http://goo.gl/NNlLq, Surya Prakash of Pioneer (who broke the 2G), and S. Gurumurthy.