This New Year’s Eve-Stay at Home

 

Photo by Rakicevic Nenad: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-with-fireworks-769525/

It is that time of the year yet again. We all have plans to usher in the new year partying at a night spot, raucous outdoor event, the pristine (how I wish!) hills of Uttrakhand and Himachal, the packed beaches of Goa or the crowded desert destinations of Rajasthan. In order to do so, you have to brave traffic chaos, drunk revellers, inclement weather and the ill effects of overdrinking and overeating.

Why put yourself through all that? Why not usher in the new year in gentle contemplation of the year gone by in the company of your family in front of the telly or the fireplace (or convector/radiator)? Chat over pakoras and chai and come midnight pop a champagne or open a bottle of wine to share with your loved ones. Have a sumptuous meal, wish each other a heartfelt happy new year and wake up to a bright new one filled with sunshine and vigour.

Why do New Year's celebrations have to be a forced community event, with everybody jostling one another and shouting into each other's years? The mayhem witnessed on the highways leading to the hill stations of North India and other tourist destinations last Christmas weekend is all set to repeat this New Year's Eve weekend. Why opt for it?

If you are the kind who loves the hills and can't wait to be there, find a better time to enjoy their splendour and revel in some much-needed solitude. Not when everybody and their uncle and their neighbour is headed there vitiating the very pure air you pine (pun intended) for. In a country bursting at the seams with people, any special occasion becomes a reason for hordes to descend on the streets, highways, public parks, tourist resorts and every other place possible and rob them of any semblance of peace, order and serenity.

With travel vloggers being dime a dozen and with every conceivable place of interest for travellers being highlighted, analyzed, praised to the skies and heavily recommended, there is no mystique attached to any place anymore. There are highways and tunnels to the remotest of places and all that you need to get there is a set of wheels, which millions now possess, never mind the fact that air pollution levels in most of India are catastrophic.

This New Year's Eve can we all stay at home and observe the occasion in the company of those who truly love and care for us and forego all the noise? Instead, we can get to know what's going on in the lives of people who matter to us the most. We can usher in the new year in the warm glow of comfort that comes with being amongst one's own. Nothing better than starting the new year with your priorities sorted just right.

India Should Diversify Its Energy Sources

Photo by Pok Rie: https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-metal-current-posts-157827/

 

India is the third highest consumer of energy after China and the United States consuming 36.44 exajoules to 159.39 exajoules and 95.91 exajoules consumed by the latter respectively.[1] Securing the growing energy needs of this vast land is of prime importance if India is to reach its desired position amongst the top few nations of the world, as befits its size, history and aspirations. This is challenging in the best of times, but especially in the new global scenario which is seeing the rapid melting down of old certainties.

With the US retreating into itself and no longer desiring to be the global guarantor of the painstakingly created global world order and the emergence of a belligerent and expansionist China hell-bent on imposing its own version of a global world order dominated by them, India has its task cut out in charting an economic and foreign policy that best suits its interests. Diversifying its energy sources has to be at the top of its priorities.

India at present imports 85% of its oil, largely from the Middle East and Russia-regions that are fraught with geo-political tensions, including ongoing wars. That India is not immune from strife that afflicts other regions is clear from the West’s attempts to stop India from buying Russian oil and more recently the attack on a vessel off the coast of the Indian state of Gujarat carrying crude oil to India.

India needs to take a cue from the United States which is no longer an importer of oil and is totally energy independent, thanks in no small measure to the shale revolution witnessed by the country. As a matter of fact, the US is now a net oil exporter. While replicating that might seem like a tall order, nothing is impossible if one thinks through a plan that becomes a national priority. India was an importer of food grain in the 1960s and didn’t grow enough to meet the requirements of its people. All of that changed with the Green Revolution and today India is a food surplus nation that exports grain-a far cry from the days it had to receive grain in the shape of aid.

 

It is time that the nation made energy self-sufficiency a national priority. The first step in such a mission would be to diversify the sources of energy. The Indian government for its part has launched an ambitious energy security strategy which involves substantially increasing the use of petrol blended with ethanol, looking at alternative sources of energy, striving for a gas-based economy and promoting the use of green hydrogen.[2]

 

There is some potential of India exploiting its shale resources to obtain oil, but the activity should be carried out with due caution after taking into account ant environmental concerns that might arise on account of it. Solar energy on the other hand is as clean a source of energy as it possibly can get. Besides, India gets a lot of sun, unlike many other countries in the Northern Hemisphere that do not. According to the National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE), India boasts a solar energy potential of 748 GW, if one were to assume 3% of waste land could be utilized for installing Solar PV modules.[3] The other important source of clean renewable energy has a lot going for it too. India already ranks fourth after China, the United States and Germany in terms of installed wind capacity at 42.8 GW (on-shore) as of April of 2023. Furthermore, the National Institute of Wind Energy has estimated that India has a wind power potential of around 695.5 GW at 120 metres above ground level and 1164 GW metres above ground level.[4]

As for green hydrogen, it may not be a very viable source of energy at present owing to its high cost of production at $3.6 to $5.8 a kg, bringing it down to between $1 to $2 by the end of the decade will not only make it the most affordable source of energy in the world but also make it possible for India to export it.[5] Another source of natural perennial energy in the country is geothermal energy. According to the records of the Geological Survey of India, there are some 340 hot water springs in India. All in all, one can look at the potential of generating 10600 MW of energy using this source of energy.[6]

The future energy map of India should be a diverse and self-reliant one that provides that nation with the wherewithal to stand on its own and char its destiny unaffected by geopolitical tailwinds and headwinds. This is something that should be looked at in a holistic and long-term manner using the best minds and most cutting-edge technology to achieve. Once done, the nation will inexorably reach its destiny. Right there at the top, not as an expansionist hegemonic power, but as a self-reliant gentl

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[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263455/primary-energy-consumption-of-selected-countries/#:~:text=China%20is%20the%20largest%20consumer,such%20as%20oil%20and%20coal.

[2] https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1889967#:~:text=Petroleum%20%26%20Natural%20Gas-,India's%204%2Dplank%20energy%20security%20strategy%20is%20based%20on%20diversifying,by%202025%3A%20Hardeep%20Singh%20Puri.

[3] https://www.mondragon-assembly.com/?taxonomy=&term=noticias

[4] https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/india-wind-energy-potential#:~:text=Wind%20resource%20assessment%20by%20the,ground%20level%20across%20the%20nation.

[5] https://www.forbesindia.com/article/innovation/green-hydrogen-can-help-india-meet-its-netzero-ambitions-how-long-before-a-real-impact-is-seen/87937/1

[6] https://prepp.in/news/e-492-geothermal-energy-in-india---geography-notes

India should become an energy-independent nation

                                    Photo by Narcisa Aciko: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-wind-turbines-lot-1292464/

We live in a world that has become dangerously fraught with messy wars and conflicts in different parts of the world threatening to jeopardise a global order that had largely ensured peace in large parts of the globe in the decades since the end of the Second World War. In fact, the end of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union and its allies had raised the hopes of a permanent peace finally descending on most parts of our planet.

Alas, that was not to be as the events over the past two or three decades have shown us. It was the US that was the moving force behind the global order that ushered in peace, trade and unprecedented prosperity in more parts of the world than had ever been the case in the long history of mankind. The end of the Cold War led to the US losing interest in becoming the global guarantor of peace and security. Its involvement in the Middle East via the two Gulf Wars and Afghanistan was on account of the US needing to respond to the 9/11 terrorist attacks came to an end as soon as its strategic objectives were achieved.

The US today is more inward-looking than it was before its forced entry into the Second World War and focused mainly on securing the interests of its own people. The events in Ukraine and Israel may have forced it to engage more deeply with NATO and the Middle East for now, but it is not a long-term area of interest for it. The Americans are more deeply concerned with stymying the threat emerging from an increasingly aggressive and belligerent China that seeks to topple the US from its perch at the top-economically and militarily. For that, it has decided to ally with countries like India, Australia and Japan that lie in the Indo-Pacific region to contain the dragon and ensure that it does not flap its wings around the world the way it wants to.

This has more to do with ensuring that nothing threatens the US's preeminent position in the world and that it continues to be a hugely wealthy and powerful nation capable of exercising its writ around the world. That suits the Indo-Pacific nations as well as most of the world since it is a liberal democracy that offers a better way of doing things than the draconian and repressive way followed by totalitarian and despotic China.

The biggest advantage that the US has over most parts of the world is that it is totally self-sufficient when it comes to food and energy. That is something that the largest democracy in the world India could learn from the oldest continuous democracy in the world-the USA. It has already to its huge credit (considering it is the most populous country in the world) achieved self-sufficiency in the former. It is in becoming an energy-independent nation that India will find its true destiny.

The nation currently imports 84% of its crude oil requirements, leaving the economy susceptible to inflationary pressures on account of price and supply fluctuation in international energy markets.[1] The Economic Survey which was released some time back laid out an ambitious plan for making India energy-independent by 2047 and it hasn't come a day moment too soon in a nation of 140 billion people with gargantuan energy needs. As a matter of fact, a study released by the US Department of Energy's National Berkeley Lab came out with a report that India could achieve energy independence by 2047 with the help of clean technology.[2]

This may seem like a tall order but is eminently doable considering that most of the energy infrastructure required to meet its burgeoning energy needs is still to be built. There is an almost two-decade window of time to achieve this much-required and desired transition from fossil fuels to clean and environmentally friendly sources of energy. Doing so will enormously benefit India- economically, environmentally and strategically. It would be in a position of strength largely unrivalled in the world

 

 

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[1] https://groww.in/blog/where-does-india-get-its-oil-supply

[2] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/the-write-wing/indias-energy-independence-by-2047-a-certainty/

 

Time for Fortress India

Photo by Frans van Heerden: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-castle-under-clouds-1022698/

The world faces an epochal change in the way that the post Second World War global order, put in place by the United States and its allies is getting replaced by one in which nations are being increasingly guided by narrow self-interest and forging strictly transactional relations with other nations, in place of strategic alliances. The Americans who propped up the now fast disappearing global order that put a premium on international trade and stability are increasingly playing a diminishing role in ensuring that there is order and respect for rules and conventions in different parts of the globe. The troops pull-out in Afghanistan is, just a culmination of their lack of interest in what goes on in other parts of their world as long as the US and its people get by just fine.

Their sole long term now objective is to ensure that a rising belligerent China does not replace the hitherto American led global world order with a Chinese led one-not because of American hubris, but because a rising threat would prove to be detrimental to their long term national security threat. They may have been temporarily forced to play a prominent global role again thanks to the happenings in Ukraine and Israel, but their primary focus is China and the Indo-Pacific region.

That explains their burgeoning strategic relationship with India which they want to build up as a strategic bulwark against Chinese expansionism. This suits India as well, who have the misfortune of having to be sandwiched between two sworn enemies on its western and eastern flanks. While Pakistan with its collapsing and imploding economy can be dealt with by India quite easily, it is China with its much larger economy and expanding defense forces that shows every intention of using force to seize Indian territory that requires India to shore up its defense capabilities like never before .

It is, therefore, in India’s interest to join forces with the United States and its allies in trying to contain China.  The unreliability of a steady supply of weapons from a failing Russia has also necessitated that India buy more and more arms from the West, which it is doing. Its entering into the QUAD alliance which envisages close strategic relations with the US, Australia and Japan is also a step in the right direction. While India’s growing ties with the West in the economic, cultural and strategic spheres are indeed very welcome and in its national interest, one should never lose sight of the fact that the new found bonhomie is on account of strategic reasons and not on account of any special affinity the West has for India.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. India has a lot going for it. It has the world’s largest population, most of which is young and able to work unlike the rapidly declining and fast aging population of China. Its economy which is already the fifth largest in the world is going to hit $5 trillion by 2027 with India becoming the third largest market in the world, on account of it being the fastest growing large economy on Earth.

India is self-sufficient in food in an era where the very real specter of global food shortage is spooking half the world (including China). That counts for a lot in a world threatened by climate change, global pandemics and internecine warfare in different parts of the world. In the days ahead, the world will need India more than it needs the world. Look at the way the British are pursuing India to sign a trade deal with them. People of Indian origin are working and doing well for themselves in all parts of the world, thanks to their great work ethic and the drive to excel giving India an increasing say in world affairs. India as a nation is not averse to projecting power overseas when required. Look at the way it organized the rescue of Indians and indeed citizens of other countries in conflict zones like Ukraine and Israel.

While India should engage with the world, where its interests are involved, it should do so strictly on a transactional basis like the US does. Ever since the latter have acquired energy security, they have largely lost interest in the Middle East, withdrawing from Iraq at the first opportunity. Once they had Bin Laden, they lost interest in Afghanistan and withdrew. Today they are engaged in an epic mission of degrading China’s manufacturing capabilities and ridding the world of over reliance on the Chinese dominated global supply chains, by shifting manufacturing to other countries and increasingly back to the US or its neighbouring nations on the American continents like Mexico.

 

Long before they and their sworn allies lose interest in India strategically, India should like the US become a self-contained world in itself where it manufactures all or most of its defense equipment itself, and grows its economy by catering to its large domestic market, apart from its exports. That will ensure, it does not have to fear being left high and dry by any other nation it took to be its lifeline. India with its long experience in maintaining a neutral nonaligned position on world affairs from the days of the Nonaligned Movement is well positioned to do so.

Besides, the world is increasingly going to need India with its large market, its technological prowess, its military might capable of force projection beyond the borders if required, its ability to grow enough food to not just feed a billion and a half people but for export to other nations as well. Its fortuitous geographical position where all the major sea lanes pass below it gives it a vantage position to not just protect its maritime interests, but also ensure that nothing detrimental to its interests happens in the region.

Fortress India can not only secure the future of its citizens for perpetuity, but also become a force for global good, and a template of self-reliant progress that others can emulate.

 

Why is English news so bad on Indian TV channels?

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 Anyone with a half bad command of the English language would know that what passes on as English news on Indian TV channels is English only in the opinion of the people who mouth the gibberish that issues from their mouths. They might as well be speaking Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi or whatever their mother tongue is. Don’t get me wrong here. All of our Indian languages are amazingly beautiful and boast the most incredibly rich and diverse literature of any language in the world, but so does English and you have got to respect that or the flavour of the language does not come across. Don’t we make fun of foreigners when they speak our languages in a funny manner?

I object to the fact that the news readers and anchors who deliver the news on our TV channels don’t know how the language is to be used. Not a single one of them. Even the most exalted ones can’t pronounce Europe right and pronounce it the same way that one says rope. Israel is pronounced as Israeel and with so much conceited confidence as if they are the font of all wisdom in the world. Instead of speaking softly in a low-pitched and polite voice, they screech, harangue, hector and sermonize with messianic zeal. Like they are on to something, even though they come across as crass dolts.

There was a time when TV news in India in English sounded like English. News readers like Tejaswar Singh, Neethi Ravindran, Geetanjali Iyer, and Sunit Tandon read the news without fuss and without murdering the English language. News readers, news anchors or performers call them what you will have no business reading the English news if they don’t have a clue about the words they spout.

It is sad that many of the owners of such channels who are so erudite themselves, don’t seem to care about quality going down the drain, as long as they can line their pockets. It is a case of the blind leading the blind (no offence meant to the visually impaired-am using only an old English idiom) and nobody really being bothered about the impact it will have on the viewers, especially those of an impressionable age.

This encouragement of mediocrity, where everyone imagines that they are extraordinarily good, when they are plain incompetent and ignorant will not lead us to be the world leader that we aspire to be.

A good command of the English language has always been a quality that many Indians have possessed since a very long time ago indeed. They have brought great glory to the nation in that many Indian writers are counted amongst the best in the world. It is also a fact that most of our countrymen know the language only partially and could always look for some improvement. English is after all a foreign language, even though it has been around for a couple of centuries now.

My point is that you cannot have people speak and write an English language that they have themselves manufactured. Imagine, if you were taught the kind of pidgin English that many of us speak due to a lack of the right kind of exposure, in our schools and colleges. That would be disastrous, right? So, how can they be allowed to have such horrible English spoken on Indian TV channels, by people who are supposed to be anchors and news readers? Just look at the English language channels of non-English speaking countries like France and Germany and you will understand what I mean.

This malaise of mutilating a language to suit the pathetic language skills of low-quality English news readers and anchors is thankfully confined to the electronic media. Print media for now continues to provide us news in correct English. That’s the last bastion standing.

Is the cost of living crisis in the West indicative of something serious?

 

                                          Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/grey-metal-case-of-hundred-dollar-bills-164652/

The Western nations with their high standards of living have been both a cause of envy and a beacon of hope for people living in the countries of the third world. The incredible material progress achieved by leading Western nations like the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France and even Australia, (which is not in the Western hemisphere, but is very much a Western nation) exhibited a template of what an ideal life could be. Well-fed and well-educated people living in fabulous houses, earning extremely well and living life to the fullest in every sense of the word. From driving expensive cars to holidaying at exotic locations, everything pointed to a very happy existence indeed. Add to that the fact these countries were by and large safe, followed a rules-based order and provided top-rate healthcare added to the allure of living there.

Things seem to have changed dramatically in the last few years, especially since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. One began to hear of job layoffs, businesses going under and a rising cost of living crisis that threatened to forever change the paradigm of the "beautiful Western" lifestyle. From education becoming unaffordable with the accompanying student debt crisis and the inability of young people to buy homes and the rising food and energy crisis, the much-vaunted Western way of life seems to have become very shaky indeed. So what is going on? Is the cost of living crisis in the West indicative of something really serious?

Everybody is impacted

 

The fact of the matter is that the food and energy price rise has impacted everybody-rich and poor nations alike. In fact, tens of millions of people around the world run the risk of relapsing into poverty because of that.  The supply chain disruption caused by the pandemic has been further compounded by the war in Ukraine leading to intense inflationary pressures in nations across the world. The impact of this has been devastating in much of the underdeveloped world with people across Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (with the exception of India)suffering from immense economic deprivation. Very uncharacteristically many people in the developed nation (a quarter of the people by some estimates) are experiencing economic distress. Shockingly many people in the UK, a major G7 nation can’t afford food on a daily basis. With food and energy bills eating into most of their earnings, a large number of people are in real dire straits.

End of Four Centuries of Western Economic Dominance in Sight?

 

The West's economic dominance which started with the rise of European colonialism and reached its zenith under the United States in the present times. This led to unprecedented global growth, especially after the Second World War, raising the standards of living of not just their Western allies, but many other parts of the world. This unprecedented and unparalleled economic growth definitely seems to be now decelerating, if not stalling altogether. The steady decline in the living standards of the American middle class and that of other leading nations of the Western world has led these countries to gradually withdraw from an openly global trade regime to watch out for their individual national interest above everything else.

The economic rise of China and its striving to dislodge the United States from its preeminent position in global affairs has led to a realignment of geo-political strategies with the US according more importance to its Indo-Pacific allies like India and Japan than to its traditional ones in Europe (though the war in Ukraine has temporarily enhanced focus in that theatre.) China on its part is facing its own economic demons with a rapidly declining economy matched by its falling population and the rise in the mean age of its population.

The world is in a state of economic flux, with no clear sign of what the new economic order will look like in an era of the disintegration of a familiar way of doing things and the need to pivot to a green and environmentally friendly way of growing the world economy against the backdrop of a climate catastrophe. The cost of living crisis in the West or elsewhere may or may not be a foretaste of things to come, but there certainly is not a lot of clarity about what lies ahead.

Why does middle class young India want to go abroad no matter what?

   

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 In the not-so-very-distant past, only the academically brilliant or the children of the well-heeled would go abroad to study and possibly work there. Going abroad was very expensive, and most middle-class Indian youth who were good at studies ventured out of their hometowns to study at an engineering or medical college only after completing their schooling. The rest of them would go on to graduate from their local college.

 All of that is ancient history now. Young people from the most provincial of towns with barely any acquaintance with the English language, aspire to and actually go ahead and gain admission to colleges and universities around the world-the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Cyprus, Poland and until the war broke out there, even Ukraine. An overwhelming majority of them end up in second-rung and third-rung institutions and some even with non-recognized institutions as well. They have propped up an international higher education industry worth billions of dollars.

Most of these people hail from families of modest means who often sell agricultural land and ancestral property or take loans to send their children abroad for an education they feel will make them a fortune. Many of the students have started availing of student loans as well to fund their dreams.

 Why do they do it? Haven't they heard of the economic troubles abroad and the growing resentment in the "developed" nations across the world against outsiders taking their jobs? These countries don't mind the revenue they earn via the fees these colleges and universities collect from Indian overseas students, but are they assured of adequate employment in terms of the emoluments they will receive after they complete their education?

After all, they need to make up for the humongous amounts of money they and their families spent on their overseas adventure. With the flux that the major developed economies of the world are in and the high cost of living there, what kind of jobs and what standard of living are they looking at? Add to that the cultural and social alienation they would experience living amongst people who may resent their presence or worse still display racial intolerance towards them. Living so far away in a foreign land away from one's loved ones can have a terrible impact on their mental health as well.

Yet, there seems to be no stopping this outward flow of young talent. It has almost become a matter of prestige and a statement of having arrived for a family to send their child far away to a foreign "uni" that may be for all practical purposes running out of a barnyard. One fears for the future of all those hundreds of thousands of youngsters who are headed West (or East for that matter). Do they know what they are doing?

Happiness above everything else

                   Photo by Tatiana Syrikova: https://www.pexels.com/photo/baby-in-white-onesie-holding-wooden-blocks-3933250/

 

Life presents itself to us and we don't know what to make of it. A toddler may be the most sorted of all as he or she goes about finding happiness in everything that they do. If they don't find it, they cry and make a fuss till happiness is restored to them. Their life is a cycle of eating, playing, demanding, sleeping and repeating the cycle. They are for the most part happy.

As they grow and begin to understand the world around them, they get caught up in what their circumstances, society and personal predilections lead them to do. But all of that often denies them happiness. The trouble with humans is that they are highly evolved animals who have forgotten that they are fundamentally not very different from your average lemur or blue whale.

The Idea behind Life

The idea behind life is to live it and that only requires one to find food to eat, shelter to afford protection to oneself against the elements or enemies and find a mate to ensure that life carries on. It is when you add layers to what existence means to you that you invite unhappiness. Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating the life of a caveman or an ultra-minimalist, but a life of peace, tranquility and happiness, as opposed to a life of avarice, jealousy, conspicuous consumption and never taking time off to enjoy and savour what one has.

Your job, the money in your bank account, your aspirations for your family and yourself, the house you live in and the car you drive cannot be what you obsess with. You should not obsess about anything. All the “important" milestones of life will happen, or some of them will happen or will not happen at all. You can work towards those and everything may go according to plan. You may get lucky and things may go much better than planned or things may go totally contrary to your plans. You are never going to have total control over these things.

One Life to Live

But you have just one life to live and if you don't on an everyday basis find happiness and meaning in your existence, you are denying yourself of the very essence of life. Why should you not be as happy as the richest man in the world? Turning this logic on its head, why shouldn't the richest man in the world weighed down with the concerns of the world be as happy as a shepherd tending his goats in the high Himalayas?

So Many Reasons to Be Happy

Look around you and there are so many reasons to be happy-the mild winter sun warming your back as you read a book seated in a rocking chair on your porch or the smile on the face of your child. You could derive pleasure from driving your car (however small or modest or large) down a rain-swept boulevard next to the sea. Or you could attend a virtuoso performance by a classical violinist. You could hike up a mountain or volunteer with a charitable organization. There are a million things you could do to make you deeply happy. You ought to do them, as being happy is the purpose of life.

What the hell is an AI new anchor?

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India Today TV has unleashed a new monstrosity on the world- supposedly an “ AI news anchor” who is actually an animated representation of a weather girl dressed ridiculously like an extra from a Bond movie! Speaking in a dull monotone she insists on calling a weather report the weather forecast (as if weather report and forecast mean the same thing), which she then proceeds to read out like she has no clue what she is doing.

Why in the name of heaven, why? Is this supposed to showcase progress? What is the role of AI in this? Has AI helped in generating a more accurate weather report or is the fact that India Today TV has managed to make an animated character mouth words supposed to awe its audience? How ridiculous! The Motu-Patlu animation series for kids on TV is more engaging.

One hasn’t seen any of the foreign TV channels resort to such nonsense. In fact they have very serious looking and sensibly dressed men and women who explain facts about weather in a serious and matter of fact way. Do we have to show the world that we are so much more advanced than they in everything we do?

I dread the day when AI anchors will conduct serious debates about serious issues on prime time television and reduce them to an utter mockery (not that they aren’t already!) Would the guests be AI characters too? What happens to the poor audience who are merely human? Would they have to create AI representatives of themselves too who will watch the tripe being fed to them. Give us a break- we deserve much better!

Why can’t we keep our towns and cities clean?

Photo by The Snapper: https://www.pexels.com/photo/trash-bins-with-garbages-13617376/

We Indians are some of the cleanest people in the world when it comes to our bodies and our homes. We will bathe and wash ourselves more than the people of any other nation and keep our homes spotlessly clean. But the moment we step out of our homes we will litter, spit, dirty and spoil everything in sight. I mean not all of us, but a great many of us.

I wish I could tell everyone to not throw crumpled pieces of paper, used food cartons, cold drink bottles, plastic bags and whatever else they drop nonchalantly on the road, pavement, lawn or any piece of public property they encounter and use a dust bin or designated place for dumping garbage instead. Why do so many people spit loudly or shockingly relieve themselves standing next to a wall? Why are there stray cattle on the roads in all our major cities and towns? I mean what sense does that make?

Which country in the world is so casual about this? India has so much going for it-the fifth largest economy in the world, and some of the finest minds in the world who lead the world in business, politics, technology, arts and so much more. We are a space power and the world is increasingly looking at our country for leadership knowing that we have it in us to do that.

Our country is transforming before our eyes- in terms of cutting-edge modern, infrastructure, the ever-growing number of cars on the road, the long list of young world-class entrepreneurs and the millions who travel abroad every year. Yet, our towns and cities stink. It hurts to see that. Garbage collection and disposal seems to be a huge mess and it doesn't behove a nation which saw the dawn of civilization at a time when many people in Europe lived in forests to make such a mess of something as basic as keeping a place clean.

People need to understand that unless they display basic civic sense like queuing up and waiting for one’s turn when using public transport, driving their cars in the right lane and within the designated speed limit, and ensuring that any public place like a park, concert venue, monument, tourist site or entertainment centre is kept clean and litter free is the hallmark of a decent and civilized people. Otherwise, no matter how much we protest and beat our chest, the people of the world will not show us the respect we deserve.

How would they if everything we showcase, no matter how beautiful or spectacular stinks to high heavens? No doubt things are a lot better than they used to be, but that is not saying much. We should aspire to reach a stage where every part of a town or city we visit in whichever part of the country is clean enough to not make a human being uncomfortable.  India is without a shadow of a doubt the most beautiful country in the world and we should do everything to ensure that we and the whole world experience it like that. 

 

Why is the West loath to give India its due?

 

Photo by Studio Art Smile: https://www.pexels.com/photo/horizontally-striped-flag-3476860/

India with its 1.4 billion people and the fifth largest economy in the world is finally making its presence felt. It has one of the largest armed forces in the world capable of projecting force well outside its borders. Its geographical position gives it tremendous leverage over the major sea lanes that pass under the Indian peninsula, going from the Middle East region to the Far East. It is self-sufficient in food and in fact exports grain. Blessed with abundant natural resources like vast tracts of fertile land, rivers, plenty of rainfall, a plethora of minerals and a youthful population it has everything going for it.

The county is a force to reckon with in the technology sector, builds cars in the United Kingdom, owns steel plants around the world, is the biggest buyer of defence equipment in the world and buys hundreds of civilian aircraft from both Boeing and Airbus. It champions the cause of the developing nations of the world and extends relief to nations stricken by financial disorders or natural calamities far beyond its borders.

The Western block of nations is finally courting India because it sees it as a counterweight to China and as a huge market for its goods and services. Indian skilled manpower is in huge demand globally, especially when it comes to technology. Indian-origin CEOs head a very large number of the leading corporations of the world, and quite a few people of Indian descent have become heads of state in Western nations. It also has an enviable space programme and has been a nuclear power for decades.

Yet, India’s position of eminence has been long in coming and has come very grudgingly. There is no rational reason for it though. For years the West lionized Pakistan and demonized India oblivious to the fact that India was a secular democracy and Pakistan was a failed theological state run by unhinged military dictators. It took a 9/11 for them to get wise to the fact that that rogue nation was leading them up the garden path to disaster. Along the way, they engaged in bumbling fool-hardy Quixotic misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan while their arch-enemy was safely ensconced near a military garrison in supposed ally Pakistan.

The Chinese similarly pulled the wool over the eyes of the West ever since their so-called rapprochement engineered by their President Nixon who has the Watergate scandal to his credit, apart from threatening to wage war with India. India was a fellow democracy where millions knew English and followed a rule-based order derived from the West, but they chose to rub shoulders with tyrants and dictators instead.

Even today, when the West is courting India as a strategic partner who will check the relentless Chinese onslaught against their core national interests, there isn’t the kind of respect shown that India deserves. Russia and China, happen to be permanent members of the UN Security Council, when the former is really a minor nation with a very large land area and rapidly depleting power and the latter is an oppressive one-party state that cares two hoots about a rules-based world order. It is India more than these two countries or even that tiny island nation of Britain that deserves to be a permanent member of the so far ineffectual UN Security Council.

If you look at the amount of coverage devoted to India in Western media, it is laughable. They cover the Middle East, China and even Africa in way more detail. Whenever India is mentioned, it is done very grudgingly or in a very condescending manner. The tendency to preach to India is always lurking in the background. Why? What’s going on here? Look at the gall of the Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau accusing India of being involved in the killing of a Khalistani terrorist on Canadian soil without a shred of evidence! This is from a nation whose gross negligence in ignoring Indian intelligence inputs led to the bombing of the Air India Jumbo Jet Kanishka in 1985 leading to the deaths of more than 300 Indians who were Canadian nationals. That was under the watch of the then Prime Minister of Canada who was also a Trudeau-the father of the Trudeau of our times. He accused India of interfering in Canadian affairs when he was the one doing so when he spoke against the government of India during a farmer’s agitation going on in India. Under his watch Canada has given a free run to Khalistani goons who have been wantonly indulging in all manner of criminal as well as terrorist activity aimed at India on Canadian soil. That it will likely not augur well for their own national security is beyond the comprehension of the bumbling nitwit of a prime minister that Justin Trudeau is.

Canada, which, as a member of NATO participated in the fake Weapons of Mass Destruction war In Iraq leading to human death and suffering on a colossal scale has no moral standing to lecture India, the land of the Mahatma. And yet this nation of 40 million people founded by dispossessing the native peoples of Canada would come to a grinding stop if the Indian and other immigrant communities decided to vacate their frigid and bitterly cold towns and cities. Canada is but a tiny part (ironically given its very large area)of the West, but is symptomatic of the malaise that afflicts them all. The Americans, British, Europeans, Australians as well as the Japanese( a fellow Asian country with an imperialist track record of its own) need to wake up and smell the coffee. India is hugely important. It is perhaps the most important country after the United States, given that an ageing China is in terminal decay. It has been around for a very long time and boasted cities at a time when the people of North Western Europe were looked upon as savage barbarians.

This is a nation that will dominate the world in the emerging decades- economically, militarily, culturally, technologically and in every other manner. India dominating the world will be a good thing too as it has always been a force for good and peace. Come to terms with it and understand it. You will help make the world a much better place. India with its fine understanding of the values that the West stands for and its warm relations with the emerging nations of the world will help impart stability to the world.