IinSociety

In 2010 almost 847(68.7%) million people in our country lived on less than $2 a day, of which an estimated 400(32.7%) million are BPL surviving on less than $1.25 a day. In 2011 Global Hunger Index report our country is only one of the three nations whose GHI has increased between 1996and 2011. India is placed at an abysmal 136 th rank in UN Human Development Index, 94 th out of 119 in the world hunger index. We house highest number of malnourished people in the world at 230 million and a whopping 43% of India’s children below 5 are malnourished (that’s 46% of world’s total)! A few more facts, the average annual income of India- US$ 619, China- US$ 439, South Korea- US$ 770. Can’t digest it, well its true, or was, in 1947. These are the incomes at the time of independence. We were ahead of China and comparable to South Korea. The same figures changed drastically by 1999, India –US$ 1,818, China-US$ 3,259 and South Korea-US$ 13,317. While these two nations changed from dev...

Bharat Ratna is the highest civilian award that can be bestowed upon by the Republic of India. It is awarded for performance of highest order in any field of endeavor. I would like to stress on the word ‘any’, as it is a recent addition so that a sportsperson can receive the award too. If you look at the past recipients of the award, it makes you wonder, where does Mr.Tendulkar fit on a list that features independent India’s first president, first education minister, chairman of the constitution drafting committee, four nobel laureates (including the likes of Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa), music pioneers like Lata Mangeshkar and Bismillah Khan, JRD Tata, APJ Abdul Kalam, etc. On a first glance, of course he doesn’t! One might argue that others didn’t contribute in their respective fields as much as SRT did for Indian cricket. But still, it’s just a game and he is just another sportsperson who scaled heights, that others didn’t think was possible. Hell, he achieved t...

The best job for anyone obviously would be the one they love, but here am going to talk about one of the most popular and, at some level, even the most sought after career option of our country—Politics. It is best in my opinion because of the power it wields and obviously the money return. A politician in our nation can get away doing anything, anything at all just by the imposing his ‘seat’s’ power on others. Their relatives too can do anything because, and I still don’t know how, they seem to have earned a share of the power themselves! Well, the power part, everyone knows about but the money in this line of profession is, and it would be modest to use this word, ridonkulous! On an average a re-elected electoral candidate has tripled his wealth between the last two elections (5 years). According to Association for Democratic Reforms (ADF), of the 1370 re-elected MLAs and 200 MPs, the average income and assets of the 100 richest legislators grew by a mind-boggling 745%, b...

I think I have run out of my creative juices, but I think it’s only temporary. It most probably is due to the T1 paper’s being shown these days...ufff the pressure of helping other people get better marks(by getting worse grades :p), it’s getting to my head. Anyways i decided to share a story i once read. It is an allegory about a two-faced government, ‘Of ducks and Crocodiles’ and as title suggests it’s about ducks and crocodiles.                                         Once upon a time , there was a beautiful village on a hill. The simple villagers   worked hard on their terrace farms. Everything was perfect, apart from one problem. There wasn't enough water through the year. The rainy season was fine, but at other times, the villagers relied on a lake on top of the hill...

The “god” discussed here isn’t a Jesus or a Buddha or a Vishnu or an Allah; it’s no one’s deity but just the concept of Him. Why is it that we need a “God” to be there, someone to look up to?    There’s one sentence that echoes across all the religions of the world, which reverberates in all the Holy texts—That God is all around us and if we need to find him, all we have to do is look inside. They might be true, literally. The said God isn’t a supernatural, omnipresent, all-knowing and all-seeing figure but our conscience, that is ‘inside’ all of us and it’s up to us whether or not to follow its in-built directives.    As children we were often told things like “Eat your food or the crow will” , “Do your HW or the lion will come and eat you while you sleep” and various other varieties of it , the most famous being the one from Sholay, “Beta so jao, nahi to Gabbar aa jayega!”. Anyways, these ‘threats’, apart from being harm-less, encouraged us to do things...