Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Resurgent Team India


So finally Indian cricket team has done a Chak De act .

The Indian cricket team's victory at the inaugral Twenty 20 world cup is going to be a major milestone in Indian Cricket and for the ubiquitous Cricket crazy people in this country .

Dhoni's very young and inexperienced men in blue have demonstrated that with a fighting positive spirit and a belief in itself a team can achieve mind boggling results .

Under the captaincy of this new jharkhand lad MS Dhoni , the young Team India proved that if an individual/team has faith in its abilities and play with positive and focussed frame of mind then it can achieve great results , which can even surprise the individual/team itself .

Every time the team entered the field in this twenty 20 world cup it demonstrated , a positive energy , a willingness to win and a confident look . Even in front of formidable opponents like Australia , South Africa and England (the teams with maximum Experience of 20-20 cricket) the team was oozing with confidence and no fear attitude .No wonder they were able to beat these teams comprehensively .
Rightly so the the character of the captain rubs on to its team , MS Dhoni's aggressive fighting spirit was clearly evident in this young cricket team .

Each player in the team contributed to all the departments of the game .


There have been a a lot of positive takeaways from this 20-20 world cup victory , the most major being that this young team has been able to achieve this great milestone without the biggies like Sachin , Saurav and Dravid , this must have given confidence to the BCCI and the cricket lovers about the bench strength and the future of the Indian Cricket . Other than this some of the positives include Dhoni's captaincy , surely the BCCI's job of finding the new captain after Dravid's exit has been made easir , they now have a readymade and successful captain in Dhoni . Other than this the Twenty -20 has bring to fore some of the talented individuals for whom it would have been otherise very difficult to make an impression , they include likes of Rohit sharma , RP singh , Younis Phatan , Joginder Sharma etc .

My best wishes to this new resurgent Indian team .
Keep It up .
You all have made us proud .

Friday, September 22, 2006

Of Gandhi Ji, Satyagraha and Its Relevance

Munna Bhai and his potent weapon of Gandhigiri has forced moviegoers, particularly the youth of the nation to sit up and take a note of the "Gandhian Philosophy".
It has triggered discussions on the efficacy and potency of Gandhian Philosophy, to which an entire generation had earlier lost out on.
It was in this very month 100 years back i.e. on 11th September , 1906 , that , faced with racial discrimination in South Africa, Gandhi ji launched "Satyagraha" against the British colonial rule and gave the sermon of 'truth and non-violence" .
And it was the same weapon of Satyagraha that he subsequently used successfully to liberate India from the clutches of the same very British rule.

One of the most famous instance in which Gandhi ji used Satyagraha to achieve his righteous cause, was his march to Dandi, a costal area in Gujarat Province of India.
With this march he along with his followers managed , not only to lodge his protest against the unjust Salt Tax Levied By British Raj but also managed to mobilize the common man to rise up against the unjust practices of the empire , thus becoming the turning point in India’s freedom struggle .

At that time Gandhi Ji must have thought ,that once the Britishers would be sent packing their bags and a government-which was of the people , by the people and for the people had been established , along with the installation of necessary infrastructure required to run a democratic polity , then the Satyagraha will become increasingly irrelevant and redundant--as then-- the government would be obviously expected to be “people oriented” and sensitized towards the welfare of the teeming millions of the people who would have voted it to power .

Sadly , Gandhi Ji was wrong , little he would have realized at that time that even after 60 years of independence, the citizens of this country would have to resort to his old weapon of Satyagraha even for getting done most mundane of the tasks by the government machinery .

He would have never even dreamt that the citizens would have to fight hard, even for most fundamental of their rights.
It would have been very anguishing for him, when he would have seen from up there that injustice, inequality and corruption have become a norm rather than an exception in this country.
His soul must have felt hurt when it would have seen the student goons in Ujjain openly threatening their professors in broad daylight and eventually beating one of them to death, right in front of top police officials of the state. Worst still, that it took more than 5 hours and only after a lot of media hue and cry and public protest, that the police lodged an FIR for this broad daylight Murder.

It would have hurt him – Not because people had to use Satyagraha, but instead, on seeing that the people of this country have to fight tooth and nail to get justice -- Justice - from the Government whom they have themselves voted to power, to work for them.

This is just a tip of an iceberg, every day we hear stories of people protesting against the investigating agencies and the justice dispensing system for their lackadaisical and callous attitude, because of which the criminals are at large and conviction rate is the abysmally low.

The Priyadarshini Mattu, Nitish Katara and Jessica Lal murder cases are the case in point; here the investigating authorities had done everything to ensure that the culprits (the big shots) are able to come out scot-free. It was only after peaceful protests and the pressure built up by the people that the authorities were forced to act tough later on.

It is only after Satyagraha that the government wakes up to the miseries of the people who have been displaced (without offering them a meaningful compensation package) from their lands (in the name of infrastructure development).

It is only after Satyagraha by the people that an honest Engineer of the Maharashtra State electricity board is reinstated after he was unlawfully suspended. His crime being that he disconnected the Electricity connection of the house of Chief Minister of Maharashtra for non payment of pending electricity bills running into lacs of rupees.

These are just some of the few issues that have hit the headlines in the recent months, nobody knows how many similar cases go unnoticed, in this vast country.

However, an obvious positive, out of all these issues, is that - after all the bad beginnings the government was eventually forced to perform its duties. And this was all achieved by the methods of "peaceful protest" taught to us by Gandhi Ji.


Amidst all this, some very difficult questions are begging answers -- for how long will people need to Light Candles at India Gate?? Or, how many more online petitions will one need to sign?? Or how many "Get well Soon" cards would the people will need to send, in order to get accomplish even the most trivial of the things, the things which are obviously expected from the government of the people.

These questions are difficult to answer, but one thing is very clear, and that is, that, the onus is now on the youth who now form the 60 percent of the nation's population to strike back – to not be mere spectators to all this - to take a vow that they'd stand up against any injustice being done by the cartelization of Politicians, Bureaucrats and Contractors.

It might take time to achieve their objectives but surely a time will come when through this tried and tested weapon of Satyagraha the people will get a government which is accountable and answerable to them - and thus will be able to fight back their Second Freedom - The freedom from Corruption, inactivity, and inefficiency of the Empire.
Long Live Gandhigiri.



Thursday, July 13, 2006

Wow - Feels great to be a part of Blogospehere.





Hey , Its really exciting stuff and so easy at that !!

Internet has provided such a vast and amazing platform to express oneself and share the
views and opinions of all the the netizens out there who always wanted a vent to express themselves .

Thanks ,Internet and all the people who have made it possible .
Its is actually an Embodiment of Free Speech.

Will be proud to share this post with all my friends in ST Microelectronics .