Saturday, October 17, 2009

Fair & Politics

Fair & Politics

Fair & lovely has been popular for so many years, now they have Fair & handsome for men. I do not know how far it works to whiten the faces of countless people who have been using since years. We have many products claiming to whiten faces and they challenge you also. If only it had worked we would have had millions of our dark and wheatish Indians competing with the white people by now and claim we are white.

Why are we so mad about being fair? Every kid which is born is assessed by the mother and the whole clan about the colour. If the baby is little less fair or wheatish, it is branded as dark. If it is dark, again whole clan will be talking about it, many of them will be very happy with their hidden jealousy of parents. Others will be happy saying the parents deserved, again jealous of parents.

We discriminate darker people, specially women. The moment you meet a person, colour is taken as the criteria to judge before having spoken and judged. Is there some amount of caste involved in this? I believe so. If you take your friend who is dark, the way he will be treated by your family members can speak a lot about it. It happens with the person who is dark himself. Is white a better colour for people? Dark people are considered inferior. The native Africans considered darker people more beautiful, jet black was the best. I came across this in Roots novel by Alex Haley.
 
Which is the better colour for people, black or white? Why is white popular? If you were born as black and if no white people had invaded your continent and would you have wished to be white? If only the colour was interchanged among the black and white rest remaining same, what would have been the trend? The Europeans being black and invaded the rest of the world and things were like now. Only the colour being changed and rest being constant, I bet the trend would’ve been that black would be the in thing. Rest of the fairer people would be running for tan. Tanning companies would’ve made a kill. Fair would have been discriminated. Jet black would’ve been handsome and beautiful.
Let me tell why white people are famous. White people did it first. They conquered the world, got more civilized first; became the developed world first, got inventions first and they went ahead in life and could rule the world. They may have taken from others but they did it first. Many may argue that India was more civilized before the west centuries before. What can we do, we were beaten back to Stone Age by millions of invaders, and still we have not recovered. The way things are going we may or may not be driven again.

FTV a fashion TV we all have seen. Lot of African descent girls are seen walking the ramp and you all know Naomi Campbell. Why have we not seen dark skinned girls on Indian fashion ramp or in movies? I remember when this was asked to an Indian photographer, he replied that they were not photogenic. This is what colour bias is. Colour bias or discrimination is more with girls than boys. Have you seen south movies? Most of the heroes are dark and heroines are very fair. There is discrimination from the other side also. If you happen to be in a territory of darker people they discriminate the fair. In spite of them being dark, they want the women to be fair. Southern movies will tell all.
In Hollywood Indians love Halle Berry or Thandie Newton, they would love to marry them. If you ask them to marry the same complexion Indian girl they would not do it. But nobody in India of that complexion can come in to bollywood or southwoods. Though south is where darker people live. Halle and Thandie are beautiful for their achievement and the class which is desirable to men. If they were just college girls in India then they would have had to cough up a lot to get married. So the beauty is not in colour.

Now you got some idea about this. You would’ve seen a lot of African descent students in India. How do you find them? Do you discriminate them as much as you do with the Indians? May be, may be not. Most of the African descent students we see come from underdeveloped countries like Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia and others. When you look at them you really wonder whether their country is really underdeveloped. The attitude, the dressing style and how they carry themselves make you wonder. They look beautiful irrespective of facial features and colour. Many still argue they are from higher society in their country. I agree, then compare with ours. Many Indian men dream of these women. But if it is an Indian of the same colour they are least interested. Those women are darker than Indian women and they are from underdeveloped country but they are very desirable for Indian men. Same darker Indian girls are not.

Moment the girl is born, most of the parents are depressed. On top of it, if she is dark, it is like a curse by the God. There is a flash among the parents, Oh, my god how to get her married ?. Same day they start saving money for the final ritual of getting rid of her by marriage as she is a burden. That is why we see even the educated parents marring their girls before eighteen years.
Right from childhood, girl is cursed for being dark. She is not let to be herself. Parents dictate how to lead a life which is their parents view. Dressing, attitude, views cannot be individualistic. She is constantly reminded of her darkness and the amount of money they have to spend for her wedding and dowry. She can’t go with friends; she is part of the suspicion. So she overeats and becomes fat. She dresses shabbily and doesn’t look pretty. All these factors give her a bad attitude. And she tried to use jewels to compensate.
Her self confidence and self esteem is broken. She is made to believe that only thing for her is her marriage and going away.
What about the ones who are treated well and who study and do well. This issue is almost same with little difference, so lets generally go about it.

Finally, we need a solution. I think it is very simple. First accept the colour complexion. Work on other things. Beauty is not in colour, but it is in the attitude of a person. Let me give an example. There is a very fair and gorgeous girl in college. If a guy goes out with her for dinner and finds her that, she does not smell good, has bad mouth odour and talks non sense continuously. Then you have a darker girl, who is dressed well, with a nice hair, smells good, smiles well, carries with a style, you enjoy her company. Who do you think will be sought after? I think the latter.

What we need to learn is accept the dark colour. It is just the skin colour. It is not her attitude, behavior or life which is black. Give her same love as others, treasure her, give freedom and confidence. Self respect and self pride is important. Dressing well, hygiene, manners make a person beautiful. The higher way of life needs an attitude of accepting global standards of living, leaving the repeated lecture of culture which is medieval some times. Superstitions, stupidity, hearsay are the ones keeping people in views of bygone era.
Finally I would say you can be what you want irrespective of what colour you are. All it needs is what view or perspective you have on life and how you want to go about it. Your behavior, dressing, how you carry yourself, your care for personal hygiene, how physically fit and your language and your style can build you and give enough respect irrespective of your colour.

PS: The pictures are copied from the Google search and used for illustrations only.
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Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Corporate Casteism




“Be Indian Buy Indian” popular slogan of yesteryear was contradictory. We always fancied imported objects. Even now in spite of products from around the world, we are suspicious of multinational's products made in India. We feel some of them sell lower quality product than their original, in some cases it is. Indian companies are yet to catch up in terms of their quality.

When a Volvo chief was interviewed by an auto magazine years back, about the service centers for their new trucks, as Indian trucks could be serviced every five kilometers. He told them, that Volvo did not need service centers every five kilometers. A case of how obsessed we are of service centers more than the product. We expect them to break down before we have bought them. We have poor management and manpower producing cheap products.

In Indian setup employers assume the employees are of lower standard, not productive enough and useless. Employees think the employer is amassing wealth by their efforts without any benefit,  so do not have any loyalty and are inefficient. Employers have not done enough to alleviate their lifestyle for which they are not proud to be part of the establishment and have least interest in work.


In daily life we come across many people arrogant and nasty. They neither care for you and nor respect you. We find millions like this. We dread to interact with our own Indian, a shopkeeper, an auto driver, a clerk in any place; a nurse in an hospital and list goes on. Everybody is irritated and arrogant. 

The basic problem for inefficiency and bad attitude boils down to how they feel about themselves. Most of them are not happy with themselves; either because of the job or the way they lead their lives. A person with a positive attitude in his life will have better attitude in his work and quality is better. The standard of living, his views and priorities in life also have an impact on the quality of work.

The management has never invested in improving the standard of living of employees or their attitude. They expect higher quality with training related to the work and without improving the personal status of the individual. Monotonous work, mood swings, family conditions, individual confidence which affect the work are not at all taken in to consideration. Bonus is nothing but an extra pocket money used to enjoy while it lasts. Other than that is there no improvement in the personality or the standard of living.

Taxi drivers abroad as I have seen in TV 'just for laughs gags', are dressed so well and behave so well in spite of the fun being on them. They are so helpful and take the humour without getting angry. How about our humour, people just attack if the fun is on them. Our taxi drivers live a different life. There are so many things why our people are like this.  One thing I will point out is that they are dressed in khaki. Most hideous dress descended from colonial times. We have dress code for everything, invariably it is khaki, in the name of discipline. Lower their status, most lowly their dress including the colour. Everything considered lowly are provided khaki. Drivers, cleaners, housekeeping and many more. Some times they may be brown, dirty gray and ugly. Because it is considered as a dirty job.

Indian corporate management have their brains from their grandparents which is from 1800s. So they insist on the customs and dress code like their good old great culture, which they do not even know. 


The employees are not given anything worthwhile in their work place, no proper seating, toilets, and eating-place. Whatever is provided is of a lower quality. Whenever they do give something, the same people (employees) may bring them to a lower standard by their attitude and actions. Simply put they are treated like lower class and are expected to have an attitude and behavior of higher class.

Most come from lower strata of the society and do not have an access to newer lifestyles  Ignorant about life and confused view of life with many kids in the family, they are least interested in improving their lifestyle  as it needs an effort and cost. You cannot expect them to have balanced moods and dedication to  work. They want to finish work without any trouble for the paycheck at month end. They care less whether their quality is good or not. Their worries, view and attitude are not at all taken into consideration. That is restricted for the educated. So that is what you get from them in the form of shoddy work and careless attitude.

Casteism is not about the caste per se. It is the hierarchy.
Advantaged taking advantage of the disadvantaged to make sure they do not take advantage to get to the advantaged.
This newer trend can be called Corporate Casteism.

Finally the solution for better quality of work of the employees lies in not just training them the work they do but aggressively bringing their standard up in the society. They should be treated better and should be made to feel better in life to get a decent job done. Monetary benefits may only give an opportunity to get into irrational way of life. If only the way to life and better living is taught to them, they will have better view of life and their attitude will change for good. 

If you want quality work from a person, first and foremost he should have his own quality. When a person is least interested in himself, his environment and family, what can he give in terms of quality work? People in our country have different attitudes, different culture, millions of superstitions and some weird unbelievable beliefs. They have to change these perceptions before they get in this new world order. How do you achieve this? We need to educate them. I would always prefer to start from toilet training, which I have talked in my previous write up. Next is to concentrate on personal grooming. There should be clean toilets with shower. Where the employees wash in the campus itself. You should provide hairstylists, the dress code should be liberal and quality of the dress should be good. Lower class should be encouraged  You can think of providing Gym, get together with family and film shows with meaningful values. The list goes on.

Next you have to address the family. The family has to be involved for upbringing the standard. These are the few things I can mention. If only we understood these issues, then only we can appreciate the value of them. They can change their attitude; there will not be hierarchy and better work atmosphere and better quality of life and better work.
Many of the Indian corporates have not contributed anything to the society  They think paying the employees and tax fulfills their obligation to the society  But I feel these are the people who should be working to change the society  and it does not cost much. It may be less than 20% of their annual advertising costs.

PS: All the pictures are copied from Google search for illustration purposes only.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Road to prosperity lies in toilet training part 2.

Read my first part this blog here.

http://pradski.blogspot.in/2009/07/road-to-prosperity-lies-in-toilet.html

Road to prosperity lies in toilet training. Part 2, is a follow up write up to my previous blog. 

How can we help Indians attain a better standard of living. Higher qualification or economic prosperity, which can bring them higher standard. Do we have a criteria which can help in improving their  standard living. Do we take this index as a measure for the development of people? So far that is how it has been thought. Wealthy does not mean they have attained a better standard of living. You can see lot of wealthy with thick gold chains, lacking basic common sense or civic sense. Higher level of living is not luxurious and rich. Simple it is basic common and civic sense. Respect for others and everything around them. Higher level of living is an enhanced individual with good behaviour in all the acts. 



I feel, Toilet trained India can go global. And I view it will bring down corruption by some percentage finally. ( You literally have to join lot of lines to get to this.)

Let me give you an example. In Hollywood movie Pretty Woman,   Julia Roberts is a call girl. After staying with Richard Gere, a businessman for couple of weeks, she has evolves into a lady equivalent to a lady of higher strata of society. When she walks with Richard in her red dress with right body language and style, it shows her confidence and pride. Just that morning she was a call 








girl and by evening she has a different attitude and a glow in her face. She could not afford a drink in the same hotel she was in yet she felt higher. By the time she goes back to her room, she has changed in her dressing, body language and has a new life. Alone with a new attitude towards life and a conflict with her present and previous life she decides to study further.  

She had acquired the right attitude and was confident. She had transformed into a wonderful woman with a class and never felt she was a call girl.  May be a Cinderella story yet you learn a lot.

    A person can change his or her life by just acquiring simple acts of better way of living. All they have to do is to learn those and implement their life. At present in the world, Indians are  discriminated for their lowest standards, lower than tiny poor nations. And it is time Indians acquired some standards in this stage of human life, that is toilet training. 

When you build people from toilet training as the basic feature for better standard of living, you will see their living standard as well as the standard of the community improving. Toilet trained will give importance to a toilet and will accept that the natural process can be good and clean than the present Indian thinking of being dirty. Toilets are neglected in many families and are assumed to be dirty areas. A spotless house can have a stinking toilet. Many communities in our country do not build toilets inside their house. They consider them as dirty, as their God does not approve. I still wonder who this God is, who does not visit them for the natural process which he has created. 

Toilet trained automatically, will enhance their life in habits, cleanliness and acquire a better standard of life. They feel proud of themselves and move a for better attainment. They will dress better,  get the best of their behaviour. They will not feel the need to acquire lot of wealth for a better way of life which they have acquired free.
The personal behavior will improve and interests will change. They will be willing to enhance their lifestyle.When they know the better way living does not need obnoxious amount of money. They greed is reduced and there will be reduction in the number of people who want to go an extra mile of conning people. They do not have to loot public to acquire wealth, thinking wealth brings happiness. There are so many millions of families who live with small income still lead a better lifestyle by their simple and beautiful thinking.



Small percentage of people will not change, like a small percentage of people around you who should have been in jail walking around. You can't put them in jail. Small percentage will not listen and not function as expected. We are looking at the rest.


We like to dress well for others many times yet many times we dress for ourselves. Our pride, feeling and personal satisfaction. We wear branded  and spend a lot of time enhancing our image in front of others. Well dressed day will have a better body language and energy. It is the way we feel about yourself. We buy expensive underwear when nobody can see and appreciate. Most of the time there no chance of impressing with this. This explains that, more you feel better about yourself the better it is for you in being confident, better energy and a better life.



Just imagine all the toilet trained Indians in the world stage. We are known for our academic record and business(many famous business communities). If only they acquired the standards of the international community. For a moment dream how they will be the next day.


That toilet trained is half way ahead in personal development. This again is not a successful mantra in life. It is my view, personality development is an important aspect to build a better society. Our society is built upon differences so many that we still can’t count. We have to respect others first to develop. That can happen with building a community from grass root level. This is where we should start and along with rest of the things like education,moral values, national pride, honesty and this will go a long way in achieving our long-term goal of being a developed nation.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Road to prosperity lies in toilet training.






Open air defecation is the worst problem India suffers from. 
Most of the people in India cannot afford to have toilets at home. As most of them are uneducated and live in villages or slums. Government is encouraging to build toilets at home and is refunding money for construction of toilets at their residence.


What are people doing with this policy?
They are taking photos of somebody else’s toilet and getting the refund.

Why are our people like this? Why do they not want to improve their status? They do not think, what they are doing is bad after all. They are happy, open-air toilet is better for them. There are many reasons why they do this.
First is that they have been doing this for years, there is nothing wrong in continuing, since nobody is forcing them, not to do it.
Second many of the toilets what they have seen, if ever they have seen, are ill ventilated and smell is different for the one who is used to open air defecation, where there is fresh air.
Other thing is, everybody is doing it and there is no feeling of guilt or shame. It is common and natural.
So we have millions of them defecating openly all over the country and soiling every water source. This is a serious issue we have to address immediately.

In my view any development we do, we have to start from the grass root level. We have to invest in our villages. We have to teach them, we have to be strict and implement the projects and at the same time we have to take action against ones who do not follow.

This has to be taken as a national priority and should be tackled at the national level with a blanket rule.
All the institutions of the nation have to be roped in, private and public, which include schools, colleges, industries and volunteers. There should be a time frame of six months to one year, just to teach and train. Teaching them to use toilet saying that they have to use toilets because it does not look good to others is not the way to do it.

The toilet by itself has to be explained, in terms of hygiene, how it functions, how to flush properly, how not to waste water, how to keep it clean. You have to get to basics including how to seat themselves on western toilet either for urinating or defecating. There is little bit of science involved here.

Many women do not use western toilets for urinating for some silly reason. The reason is, they do not know how to seat themselves. For example: they have to seat little front for urinating and little back for defecating. And men should lift toilet seats for urinating in western style or still better to seat themselves to urinate.

Then only can you expect them to get used that.
Government is already financing building of toilets. But this has to be taken very seriously and private sector has to be roped in. I would say this has to be done aggressively like pulse polio program.

Just because many have toilets at home does not mean they know how to use them. There are many who are highly educated, having no idea how to use them. This you can see in any five star hotel when conferences are conducted.

Another thing we have to do is build toilets across the nation. This can be given to private sector in public lands (mostly in towns and cities). They can charge for services.
We should have an authority something like ISO for toilets. All these toilets should adhere to the guidelines of that authority how to keep it clean and charge.
Until we learn this toilet business, we cannot go very far in this world. I personally feel, this is the first thing any human should know before he can call himself developed.


Toilet trained is half way ahead. A person's attitude can change when he is toilet trained. Just imagine the hygiene standard of the country after this with no open air defecation. 

PS: All the pictures are copied from Google search for illustration purposes only.

Friday, July 17, 2009

If I am the prime minister of India







I always dreamt of a beautiful India, an advanced India like a developed world. Beauty in attitude and the people.
And I always dreamt, dreamt and dreamt only to loose sleep over years that even now I cannot sleep.


What does this country need?


All of us are proud of this country and its culture. But, how much?


What is our culture anyway?



Is it, we kill our girls or we still cannot use toilets?
Maybe the corruption is not a shame at all. Or everybody other than us is inferior in caste or religion.
Spitting in public, public nuisance, indiscipline, noisy on and off the road, inconsiderate to others, lack of traffic sense, lack of civic sense and lack every sense we can think of.
We hold ourselves as very high sitting down here in India, when world considers us as a third world country, dirty and uncivilized.



Whatever the reasons for being like this, we can go on that we have a history of 5000 odd years. But who cares.
Do we care for ourselves in the first place? I don’t think so.


We are corrupt. Many think they are a minority; I think they are a majority.
Everybody blames the corrupt but no body wants to be uncorrupt.

Culture is not, what it was couple of thousand years back. Culture is always in the making. Culture is what you do today, is the one which is going to be tomorrow.
Just because we did some nonsense, without any agreeable reason, cannot be a culture tomorrow, it is the other way. It is what we do today with sense and reason which is useful for the mankind or the community which is the culture of tomorrow. What your great grandfather and grandfather did, you follow but your kids may not. So we have to let go of lot culture for that matter in a way, which do not come in reasonable sense.
We are living in a world which is fast changing. Can you believe earth has been there for millions of years? There has been history of humans living in societies at least for more than 5000 years, which is a long time.


The advancements are less than 300 years old. Just twenty years back you never dreamt something like internet, cell phone will be there. Just imagine how the humans are advancing. But our thinking is stuck in middle ages. This age is faster than our forefathers could ever dream of.
We need to take decisions, fast and very fast or else we will end up fighting like what we did couple of thousand years back by the invaders. But this time it will not be from invaders, but from within ourselves. The issues we need to be addressing are more and they are ever increasing.


So I thought I put forward some of my weird ideas. Like, if I was a Prime minister.


First thing I will do is to acquire an acre of land in all the villages. The size of the land is minimum one acre; it can go up depending on the size of the village and population.
I will put in same percentage of money spent on defence. And I will build a small theme park, an apartment, utility apartment which will house a post office, a clinic, store and IT room.
Then one covered, open air auditorium.
All this are built according to the size of the village and the population. There will be criteria to select villages as the tiny villages with too little population have to be catered in a different way.
This is like a township. The apartments will be furnished and will have cable or dish TV and wireless (or wired) broadband internet connectivity, which are connected to district headquarters and capitals. These will have telemedicine and videoconferencing facility.


These will be given to a Doctor, a teacher and a post master.
Head of the township will be either one of them depending on the situation. All these people can use the apartments free but have to bear the maintenance and utility bills themselves.


The clinic will be setup to the extent the village needs.


Doctor will also be the in charge of the village from the administrative side. He will take care of audiovisuals, where he will project small movies, documentaries, health tips and educating the villagers about everything he has been taught and knows.


Post master will be in charge of the tele network. He will be in charge of collecting the data of the village with newborns to deaths. He will take pictures and finger prints on to the computer and store them and transmit them to the main server at the district and capital headquarters. He will also issue temporary ID cards till the central agency gives.


Teacher will be in charge of the school, which may not in the same campus or it can house if it is a tiny village.
He will be in charge of the dispensing area or store where all the government supplies like public distribution service is housed. They can have assistants, who have to be minimally qualified with 10 class or grade.


Theme park will have place for kids to play and adults to watch their kids play and auditorium along with it.


Before all these people occupy these places, all of them are taken for training for a week or so with accommodation and food in the district headquarters, by the trainers who have been trained themselves from corporate or the learned.They will be trained in using toilets (Indian and western), civic sense, traffic sense and every basic thing an Indian lacks in this country. Then they are posted to the villages.


I would like to call this INDS or Indian national development school. This will be basic model for a village; rest of the things can be implemented in to this system.


Along with this, next big thing will be to build roads. Every village has to have a road. All the roads should be tarred. And there will be a ban on road digging and putting fire on the roads.


This whole idea has to nationalize and state only will come in to picture in providing land within a specified time and taking over this when all are in place.


This is my first dream for the country. This may not work out in an economic sense. But it is possible if you can dream. There is lot of money in this country, you just have to use enough brains to get it out of places where it can be taken out.


PS: All the pictures are copied from Google search for illustration purposes only.

Watch what you Eat

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