No one is watching

We all are told that someone is watching us all the time. I was told as a child that god is watching all the time, once that didn't work I was told that some ghost was watching, if that failed it changed to the police are watching, once the effect of this also waned, then some other scary thing was watching. I feel the intent behind making people believe that someone is always watching is to stop them from doing wrong things. Especially, if that someone has the power to control and punish you we are supposed to behave to get the approval of that entity by behaving as per that entity's will. This myth was busted at some point when I witnessed so many wrong things happening in front of my own eyes and that powerful entity who was supposed to watch and take note of things didn't do anything to stop these atrocities. I realized that no one was watching. No one can watch everyone at the same time and monitor what they are doing. We are on our own and there is no virtue in doing something good just because someone is watching us. One should be good irrespective of whether anyone is watching or not, otherwise, it is a forced act not spontaneous or based on our own conscience. 

Religion particularly uses the concept of an omnipresent god who is supposed to be present everywhere and watch everyone all the time. All who believe in religion accept this notion of this omnipresent entity, addressed by different names in different religions. However, after witnessing various atrocities committed in the name of religion one can see that this threat is clearly not working. Communal violence is a glaring problem even today and all religions are guilty of this. People who believe in a real sense of community welfare and peace will behave with compassion and love with or without religion. Any civilized person does not need any threat or lure to behave compassionately towards others. Hatemongers will perpetuate hate and violence by using whatever tool they get, religion, politics, or anything else. Hence, ask yourself how will you behave with others if no one is watching. This will give you an understanding of your moral compass. If you behave nice because of fear or some lure like heaven, try to be nice without fear or lure. If you hate someone because of their religion/race/gender/sexual orientation/nationality/caste, try to ask how will you feel if someone hates you just because of your identity associated with those tags. If you feel inclined to justify hate and violence against certain communities ask yourself what if someone does the same to your community. These questions may make you feel uncomfortable and may challenge your perceptions and beliefs that are the result of years of brainwashing, but they will also help you to see your own hypocrisy and encourage you to get rid of your double standards. These questions did make me feel uncomfortable when I asked them myself, but they helped me to improve and become a better person. I hope you don't harbor feelings of hate and violence against any religion, community, or person just because they are different than you. I hope you are nice to others even when no one is watching.     

Thank you for reading and please share your views on this topic. 

© Vinay Thakur, All rights reserved, Vinay can be reached at thevinay2022@gmail.com 

Sara's encounter with rural India

During my India visit this time, my daughter Sara visited my ancestral villages in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) for the first time. She was less than a year old when she visited my paternal village, but she didn't have any memories of that visit. There is a huge difference between the lifestyle of today's city kids and life in undeveloped rural places. Because of this, I was really curious about how she would react to this visit. The weather in August is not very kind in most of UP, it is extremely hot and humid, and occasional rain brings some relief but otherwise, it is somewhat extreme weather, especially for someone who is not used to living there. When we came out of Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport, it was like entering a hot oven, one could clearly feel the difference between the temperature and humidity of the air inside the airport and outside of it. 

Her first impression of the holy city of Varanasi was not that great, she really disliked excessive honking by drivers on the road. Initially, she tried to count how many times my cousin who was driving the car honked, but after 10-15 times within a short span of 2-3 minutes, she gave up that task. The presence of stray dogs and other animals on the road was also surprising for her. Actually, she has seen these things in movies, however, in Pune where we spend most of our time during India visits, this scene is not very common, but this is not the case in Varanasi or other parts of the UP. Also, her utter discomfort with Indian-style toilets and lack of toilet paper was clearly visible, she didn't complain about this, but I could see that she was trying as much as possible to avoid using such toilets. Then there were these mosquitoes, who bothered me also, I was at least familiar with these problems, but for Sara dealing with them was a nightmare. The presence of a cow shade in the close vicinity of the room where she slept didn't help the cause, but she managed to survive and still trying to figure out why the heck people keep cows in their home when cow dunk stinks so much? She also visited a few homes in Varanasi with air conditioners and really loved the cool and less humid environment, it was like an oasis for her. Thanks to one unwritten political rule in UP, which is if an MP or MLA representing your area is occupying some important post in government, that area gets a good supply of electricity and preferred treatment. The current prime minister Mr. Modi is an MP from Varanasi, therefore, it has a reasonably uninterrupted supply of electricity, so, Mr. Modi should get credit for this. I do criticize him or his government whenever I feel that they are not doing a good job, so, I must give him credit wherever it is due. One should appreciate Mr. Modi's effort to make his constituency a better place, I hope people cooperate with him. 

From Varanasi we went to my paternal and maternal villages, we just stayed there for a couple of days. The supply of electricity follows the same political rule in UP villages also, as our village representative is not from the ruling party, it didn't get any preferred treatment. Electricity went off at 8 PM on the day we reached and supply was not restored for the next 36 or 40 hours. We had to rent a power generator to survive that brutal heat and humidity, even sitting right in front of the cooler was not that comfortable, but it was better compared to not having anything. Among all these inconveniences and discomfort, Sara had a great time meeting some really wonderful people. Wherever she went people greeted her with a lot of enthusiasm and joy. They all went out of their way to make her feel comfortable, they tried to make sure that she didn't feel discomfort because of the harsh weather of lack of certain facilities. This was a really special part of her experience, she disliked the place but loved the people. She was amazed to see their tolerance level and ability to adjust to harsh conditions. I was also surprised to see her efforts to adjust to a totally alien environment. This was a surprise for me as it was coming from a girl who used to make a big deal about a slow internet connection. She also tried her best to communicate with those people and engage in conversation to learn about their lives and problems (especially with kids of her age). Wherever required she tried to break the ice and initiate discussions and also tried her best to make those kids feel comfortable. She commented on various gender discriminatory practices like ghunghat pratha, which is similar to the burqa where women are expected to cover their faces in front of elders or strangers. Most of the time, people ignored her comments, but even then she tried to tell them that these things were not right. We also traveled to the river Ganga near my village, I love to visit the Ganga River at this spot rather than on any ghats of Varanasi. At Varanasi, the ghat water is very dirty and the atmosphere is heavily commercialized, a lot of so-called holy men (pandas) try to mob you to do some useless rituals and extract money. But the same river near my village appears really calm, clean, and friendly. Its natural surroundings with birds like peacocks and many trees along with one small temple make it more beautiful. For me, this river is not any more special than many other rivers, but just because some of my childhood memories are associated with it, I love to visit this place whenever I can.

Sara's encounter with Indian railways was not that pleasant, two of our trains got canceled on very short notice, and the one that actually departed left almost 16 hours later than its scheduled departure time. I wrote about this experience in my one of previous blog posts. Actually, this experience had a really negative impact on her mind about the state of governance in India, she was shocked to see utter chaos at the train station with no one having any clue about at what time exactly the train would depart. I had to make a lot of effort to tell her that this was not a regular scenario, but she was not at all convinced. I don't think she will dare to travel by Indian railway again. But the good part is that her overall experience was positive, she really loved people and will always remember their loving and caring nature. I am sure love and affection for these people will bring her back again to this place. I wanted her to have a wholesome experience of India, I wanted her to know that India is not just a city like Pune or Mumbai where things are very comfortable (except for traffic and pollution). When we experience things personally we learn more compared to just hearing about it, watching it on screen, or reading in a book. I am glad that she chose to come with me on this journey to rural India. I also discovered a new person in her which I didn't know so far. It was a learning experience for both of us and I hope she takes all the positives from this experience and uses them to grow as a person.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]

Politics is a game of perception

I am a keen observer of politics, it amuses and surprises me and many unpredictable things associated with it keep me interested in it. Whether we take an active interest in politics or not, politics affects our lives directly or indirectly. I think there are very few among us who can claim to be immune from politics and the political environment around us. One can see the effect of this most during any major election, like the presidential election in the US or general elections in India. One noticeable difference in the style of election recent election campaigns is that nowadays they use a lot of data and statistics to push their agenda. They still use a lot of rhetoric during their election speeches, still, various leaders promise whatever they can think of without even bothering to check if they can fulfill them or not. I think during an election campaign the main focus is to win the election by making whatever promises and statements it takes to win it. Whoever is successful in making people believe in their agenda wins the votes and hence the elections. It becomes very important for candidates and their political parties to create a perception in voter's minds that they can deliver better than their opponents. They all claim that only they can deliver and their opponents are either with bad plans or won't deliver any of their good promises. In the end, any election is a game of perception.

One very good example of this was the recent general election of 2014 in India. BJP and its PM candidate Mr. Narendra Modi successfully managed to create a perception that the Gujarat model of development is an immensely successful model and can be easily replicated in the rest of India. They started really early and carried out a very aggressive PR campaign to spread this message with the use of selected data that suited their argument and people really believed in it. Other parties fighting elections against them including UPA which was in power tried to challenge this by using some data but it was too late by that time perception of the successful Gujarat model was already created in people's minds and it was difficult to break it. Many corruption cases which were discovered during the UPA-2 rule are still going on in court, so far no one has been charged or convicted in any of them, but there is a perception that UPA-2 was the most corrupt government India ever had and no one is interested in real data to confirm if this is true or not, people just believe that it was the most corrupt government based on media coverage and political rhetoric. This time the UPA is trying to use the issue of the land acquisition bill against the current NDA government and Mr. Modi. They want to paint the image of this government as "anti-farmer." I think they are somewhat successful in this attempt and their aggressive stand on this issue has put this government on a back foot. Now, whether Congress and its leaders are right in accusing this government as anti-farmer and whether they have any data to prove their claims or not, these things are not important. No one is even asking these questions, the government is trying hard to put some data to show that it is not their fault that farmers are committing suicide but it seems a perception has been already created that this government is pro-corporate and anti-farmer.

Actually, this game of perception is very good for political parties to win elections, but it is very bad for voters. While playing this game political parties try to take advantage of certain scandals or issues to build a positive image of themselves and a negative image of their opponents, there is no follow-up about various accusations and no one really gets convicted only voters are fooled. Once the game of perceptions is won, parties don't have to do much to win the elections, they don't even have to propose any concrete plan to resolve the issues, just hollow election promises and grand speeches by their star leaders are enough. In this whole game, voters are the ultimate losers as they only change the ruling parties without any substantial change in their own fortunes. I hope slowly voters understand this trick used by all political parties to fool and misguide them and educate themselves with real facts using various resources available to them. Once they start making choices based on fact-based information rather than perceptions, then I am sure these political leaders and parties will also be forced to change their campaign style. Then we might expect to have more meaningful political debates and discussions, but until then let's keep on fighting against this game of perceptions with the hope that we can minimize the effect of false perceptions during election campaigns.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]