end of week 13

I have spent at least three months of my life sitting in a graduate class for development policy in south east asia. while it is very difficult to articulate what i learnt from the class or what i gained from it; i want to make some clarifications that come to mind after going through nearly 40 hours of discussion that have been nothing but inconclusive. since i am not an expert on development policy or on south east asia, none of my thoughts wander in those study areas.

i would like to present my understanding of my own country and my outlook towards its 'development'. i am not qualified to do an academic analysis of the situation in the country. the only authorization i have to talk about this outlook is that i have spent at least 22 years of my life in that country- though you should count only 5-6 effective years when i actively interacted with people or lets say opened my eyes to things other than myself.

I have not traveled extensively in India, but i can say I have seen the general facade of life as it goes in some urban and rural areas of the country with fair representation of developed cities, second tier towns, villages and mostly uninhabited deserts and mountains.

the most striking thing about India is that it is as diverse as a political entity could get. so first and foremost, any sweeping statement about the country is useless, misleading, deceptive, and groundless.

it is also a very dynamic entity where governments can topple within a matter of days and simple judgements can take years to pass.

you probably need to specify location and date (time of the day if you can) of the geography that you want to discuss and follow it up with the source of your perspective- not in the footnote/endnote style, but more like describing the situation you were in when you came to this conclusion.

(it is probably this desire for such clarifications that makes us so talkative and argumentative because many of us want to be understood in the right context; the rest of us just love to hear our own voices)

so whenever somebody says, 'for instance in India' or 'if you see the example of India' and does not provide specific information; has heard it from somebody who heard someone say that they had read it somewhere (most probably on someone's status message or tweet that was apparently a clip from one of the thousand news programs on TV and web sites). viral marketing at its best!

I hereby suggest that you pay no attention to such comments as they will never prove a point and are meant only to fill uncomfortable silences or self-sound checks.

having said that India is very diverse it is but natural that we have numerous arguments within ourselves for each activity/policy and so it takes a really long time to take decisions. it is impossible to please everyone with whatever any one decides to do.

every game effectively becomes a zero sum game.

I dont know how data is collected in other parts of the world, but I personally don't trust any statistics about India especially those that have been based on government sources.

In my opinion, all such statistics should have a much higher error margin and used only if necessary. sadly, nearly every policy in the country is based on this kind of quantitative data.

Averages are a good thing, but for India, weighted average are a necessity. unless you take into consideration the heterogeneity of the country, anything you do at any level is only going to cause more harm than good.

so the next time u look at GDP per capita figures, look for stats on percentile basis rather than the average- though i'm not sure where u can get authentic data for this.

I have written these thoughts at the end of my semester when i became indifferent to discussions. if i had made this attempt throughout the semester, i might have had more points to add.

the month that went by...

My my! hasnt it been long since i visited this page! time to dust off the ol blog coz its monsoon time! yaaaay :)
and keeping with tradition i am home to experience the wonderful monsoons in Rajasthan. well i know I should'nt hv stayed this long and i should've spent more time working and less time looking at the rain or at the TV or at novels (which btw i meant to read since ages. 5 books in a month...its a personal high! ;)
but i keep telling myself that it was just not possible to work at home, even though its not true.
so what have i done after 5th June when i left Singapore....
lets see...i spent a couple of days at Bangy and Coorg with friends...needed that....deserved that rather! after the BORING month at Singy :P
spent 10 days at home preparing for a trip...hectic! lots of work...made everyone think i was a very hard worker!!
spent the next 12 days in Bhutan...meetings lots of people...asking the same questions and writing stuff down furiously!!!! seriously lots of serious work!
the next 10 days....compiling a document which should've taken me 3 days at the most....this is where i started wearing out really.... :P
and frankly havent done any thing to talk about in the last two weeks :P :P :P
wow have i wasted time!
but really? have i wasted time?
i read 2 books in these weeks and am saving the other 2 so that i have something to read on the train.....saw numerous movies on TV...caught up on a sitcom i like these days....spent some time with the gramps....should've done more though....and i GYM-ed! YES I DID! :P
and that too with a regime! (take that!)
i slept (meh! not much of an achievement)
hmmmm...so what else should've i done?
oh yes! written the paper for the internship research and the big fat PAE!!! When am i going to do that?! :(
get started on the next field visit contacts! this....week.....or I'm dead! :( :(
compile the pics and data from the last week!! OOPS! should've done that long back! :( :( :(

but! its raining right now and I'm going to stop thinking about these silly things and listen to the pitter patter (more like 100 tap dancers :P)...and waste some more time!

sigh..!

On God, cows, dogs and goats in Bhutan

This is a story I heard from a co-passenger on my flight from Paro, Bhutan to New Delhi. I had met her the day before on my feeble attempt at the trek to Taktsang Monastry, which is amazing by the way. She heard the story from somebody else's guide in Bhutan and here I try to recreate the story as i remember it.

In Bhutan, you will come across many cows sitting on the roads, dogs walking along the roads-crossing them better than humans can and rarely will you see any goats around roads. God of course is omnipresent. This too like nearly everything else in Bhutan, has a story behind it.

Once upon a time, there was a bus going from some place to some place and there were three passengers on it- God, a cow and a dog. The goat did'nt have any money to get on the bus, so it was left at that some place.

The bus conductor asked all three passengers for money for their tickets. God said, "I will pay you when I get to the destination." The dog paid the exact fare, the cow paid more than the fare and was told to wait for change because God paid nothing and the dog paid the exact fare.

When the destination arrived, God simply vanished into thin air, the dog got off and the cow was still left without the due change. And so in Bhutan, God never pays His fare, dogs travel carefree as they pay the exact fare and cows are always waiting for their change.

lost my thinking cap...

...not that i ever had a good one, but i'm seriously uninspired.
i am so completely lost for ideas-- ideas to work on, think about, write about, talk about.
even to people i always had something to tell, something to share!
the fact that my life in general has become bland bordering on soporific has got a lot to do with this state of mind. and this is not good, considering i just had a holiday, which was meant to cleanse my mind of all its clutter. turns out i filled my brain with more useless debris.

can't think of anything right now (see!)
seriously need some food for thought, maybe gum! :P

learn it all

Sometimes i am amazed thinking there is so much to read, so much to chew upon, so much to ponder over and also so much to spit out, it nearly overwhelms me and then i gather myself and start at another point of the labyrinth. if u r selective in your taste, you are missing a whole world. how we limit our education thinking i know it all about this or that. and how much fun it would be to keep learning throughout your life, though i'd prefer never to be quizzed.