Infinite thoughts

Quite contrary to my belief in Team Anna's campaign in India Against Corruption, I am of the opinion, Indian democracy is not yet matured/ready for implementing "Right to recall" the elected candidates. I understand Team Anna must have made due diligence while proposing it, but as an individual, I feel the time has yet to come. Let's see some influencing facts: Indian democracy, still, is largely made up of people who do not think much before voting for a candidate. It is driven more by the then-current-issues rather than a holistic view of the situation. Neither the people take enough effort to understand the candidate and his/her stand on various current issues nor they follow up or persuade them after the election for fulfilling the election manifesto. If it would have been otherwise, Congress couldn't have been putting up the same agenda of "Garibi Hatao" for last 50 odd years!! Additionally, the local politics usually revolves around personal ...

The most obvious reaction to this picture is that our education system is flawed and the above problem depicts THE problem - every individual is being given same set of criteria to prove himself/herself. The person behind the table is asking the candidates to perform same act irrespective of the capabilities of the individuals. However, is it really a problem? I don't think so. Real problem is different. Real problem is why does the elephant want to get evaluated for a criteria which he is not even meant for? Why is fish and dog standing in the same queue which calls for a skill related to climbing a tree? Shouldn't fish be finding a table that asks for swimming or diving skills? Shouldn't dog be standing in a queue that asks for hunting or protection skills? The person behind the table is looking for a specific skill - climbing a tree. Why should he be blamed for not judging the hunting or swimming skills? I believe the problem is not a single criteria of evaluat...

Happened to read this news item in yesterday's Times. One of the NGO's had filed an RTI query which revealed that LIC has invested some 3.5k crores in Tobacco companies. NGO is questioning is it right thing to do when government is spending 10,000 crores on treatment of tobacco related illnesses. On the first look, the question looks very good and I got into answering it negative. But is it really bad? Is it unethical? Is it something morally incorrect? Is it wrong from business perspective? Here are my thoughts.. LIC is out there to make money. The consumers would want LIC to succeed so that they get their payouts, so that LIC keeps on giving them the insurance cover. Actually the NGO should be pushing to ban the tobacco industry completely, instead of asking government owned companies not to invest in tobacco related companies.    Now-a-days, investment patterns are so complex, it would be very difficult to predict, if my invested money is actually invested in ...

First of the experiences!! I was supposed to travel to Goa for office related work on early Wednesday morning. The traveldesk @office helped with all the arrangements. It turned out that I needed to take a 5 AM flight to Goa from Mumbai and not from Pune. The only option was to travel to Mumbai via road and the traveldesk happily facilitated the same. The driver called me up at 8/8:30 in the evening and confirmed that he would be reaching to pick me up by 12:30 AM. Given 3-3.5 hours of travel, the timing looked good. Also, it was pouring heavily in Pune, so the 30 mins of additional time was my buffer. Setting up the alarm for 12 midnight, I quitely went into the dreamland. No, I didn't miss the alarm. I woke up quite on time, and was ready to hop on to my cab at 12:15. The time started ticking past 12:30. I called the driver up, he said he would be reaching in 10 mins. Okay, I can wait for another 10 mins, although I would have loved to sleep for another 10 mins in the bed....