"Any idiot can face a
crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out."
—Anton Chekhov (Russian,
1860-1904)
Word for the day
Esprit de corps (n)
A sense of unity and of
common interests and responsibilities, as developed among a group of persons
closely associated in a task, cause, enterprise, etc.
Malice towards none
How do we identify secular
firecrackers?
As per Chetan Bhagat the
firecrackers burnt on Diwali are Hindu and those burnt on Eid are Muslim!
First random thought this morning
If we truly believe in the legacy of Ram, Krushna, Bhoj,
Vikramditya, Chankya, et. al., we must accept that the King (head of government,
chief administrator or Pradhan Sevak, if you like) should be beyond any
suspicion. Innocent till proven guilty is applicable to the ordinary people not
Kings.
However, to punish the people who may chose to level false and
baseless allegations against the King, we may have laws so stringent that no
one would dare do that.
Demographic accountability
Millions of reams have been used
to write and publish about the demographic characteristics of India. Many
stories, themes and strategies have been built around the young demographic
profile of 1.25bn Indians. Almost all these stories and strategies recognize
the young Indian as a great opportunity - "Demographic dividend" for
the Indian economy. I have however not come across any presentation that
classifies this demographic profile as the solemn accountability and
responsibility of India to the world.
The global community has always
valued the resource rich nations and expected them to behave in a responsible
manner to preserve the global order. The capital rich western world has been
expected to help the poor and starved of the world. The world looked forward to
them to fund technological advancement, preservation of cultural heritage,
assisting global growth and development. Even after taking full cognizance of
the allegations of imperialism and suppression, I believe that financially rich
communities have worked for the betterment of human life by funding
technological innovation, life science research & development, productivity
enhancement, and development assistance to the economically lagging world.
Similarly, nations rich in natural
resources like minerals etc. have been expected to prospect and exploit these
resources in optimum manner to assist the sustenance and growth of the global
economy.
My point is that now since India
possesses the largest pool of prospective workers for the world, should it not
be responsibility of government to prospect, grow, and develop this resource
for benefit of global community!
This is even more pertinent in the
context of the current global financial crisis. In places like Europe and Japan
the root cause of the crisis could be traced to the aging demographic profile.
China is also like to join the club in a decade or so. Under the circumstances
it is the responsibility of India to provide educated, skilled and trained
workforce to the global economy.
A number of research papers and
surveys have shown that (a) Child and mother nutrition level in India is sub-standard
consequently child mortality rates are poor; (b) higher and professional
education standards are extremely poor consequently a large number of Indian
graduates are unemployable even in routine jobs; (c) There is acute shortage of
competent scientists to scale up research and development (R&T) activities
to make Indian businesses competitive at global stage.
"Skill India" and
"Make in India" are noble ideas for human resource development. But
we need to make sure that these do not end up prospecting and developing only
blue collar low skilled workers. In that case India will not only fail in its
responsibility to global community but also slither back into the lower orbit
of economic development like in 1950-80 ....to continue
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