Tagged: politics

Yuva


It happens with me everytime I watch a movie like Yuva. It happened with The Legend of Bhagat Singh, it happened with Sarfarosh and so on.

Basically, whenever I see such movies, I have an intense desire to do something crazy (but right) like the protagonists in these movies. Put everything behind the nation kind of stuff. But then I’m also a really selfish guy. Everytime I have such thoughts, I end up thinking about my family, and how they need me, and how I need them.

But thats not the whole story obviously. I’m also slightly cowardish in the sense that I really don’t want to get involve in anything dirty or corrupt, or that which involves beating/bashing up or things more sinister than that. Sometimes I feel India should have a rule like “everyone couple should devote a child to the nation”. Now I know thats a really extremist view, and I myself would be shocked as hell should something remotely like this happen in practice.

But I still think about it. I mean, just consider what would happen — we would have an army of young men and women completely dedicated to the country with nothing to distract them whatsoever. No family, no better halves, no fear, no shame. Just one goal, just one focus — the prosperity of our motherland.

So, here I am, with my dillemma. I love India, I really do. And I really want to do something for my country. Something that people can remember me by. Something great. On the other hand, I don’t want to get into politics, or deal with gangsters and mafia and gudas and other forms of corruption. At the same time, I want to be there for my family and spend enough time with them as well.

Its not really clear to me how all of this can possibly be managed all at once. A good solution, I guess, lies in teaching. Strike at the roots, build the nation bottom up approach. And you can do research as well, maybe with the DORD or something. That would be nice. But then somehow I’ve always been avoiding teaching, I feel its not really my forte. Then there’s also the economic stigma attached with teaching.

Confusion, confusion! Well, I hope one day I can find a good solution to this problem. Even an approximate solution would do I guess :)

Sunday blues


Why are they called sunday blues? Why not monday blues or tuesday blues? What is it about sundays? I guess for most part, its the sinking feeling that monday is almost there already!

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet was announced today. Mostly expected, with a few surprises and a few expected disasters. Laloo Prasad Yadav got railways, god help us! Shivraj Patil got Home, even though he lost his Lok Sabha seat.

Again, I wasted most of the day chatting and sleeping. But I did make significant progress for the bio project, and am trying to read DS paper and also work on DS project. But it just sounds like I did a lot, I haven’t though.

Right now, off to Chipotle, batter Potle! :-D

Simply talking


Wednesdays are always long, nice, and talkitive. Morning usually go away in talks and syslunch. I have a meeting with Amin right after syslunch. Then afternoons are just catching up with the day, hallway chats and lab discussions. Then I have to stick around on campus till 7 for the computational biology class. That ends at 8:20, by when I’m already half asleep. Then its also my cooking turn on wednesdays :( And to top it all off, usually I’ve to read up a paper for Alex’s class on thursday after that. Beat that!

In other news, vote counting is underway for this year’s general elections in India. The might US of A couldn’t pull of electronic voting in more than a few states, and the massive India, world’s largest democracy easily smoothed into electronic voting/counting without raising a brow. No hue and cry. No nasty hacks. Zilch! I was amazed to say the least. I don’t know how they pulled it off. As Mac said, probably its becoz the results are going to be rigged either way, so it doesn’t matter all that much :-D

But even more surprising is the fact that Congress has a clear lead this time!! So the future is really uncertain. One can’t but wonder that if the Congress + allies does come into power, will they be able to carry on the momentum of IT and outsourcing that the NDA goverment had been able to build up over the last few years. The economic ramifications of this election could be massive. Investors might become sceptic, policies may change. Time will tell. Wait and watch.

General elections


Well the preliminary results are out, and the verdict is pretty clear. Despite all the controversy, the Indian masses have decided to bring in the Congress led alliance into power. And this comes at a time when things were actually going in BJP’s favor — the economy was turning around, there were more and more jobs, all that outsourcing stuff, the peace process with Pakistan was steadily in the news. Naturally, BJP was quite taken aback. Mr. Vajpayee has declared his resignation, admitting a graceful defeat and bracing up for opposition. I have to finish reading a paper for the DS class right now, will rant about politics later sometime.