Indian Nationhood

Indian Subcontinent was never a single state in the entire history. Some big empires were there but still they did not cover entire India.
British empire was spread across the subcontinent, but 1/3rd of the area of princely states was not ruled by British. So there was not a single state rule over subcontinent. When India became free, again it was with the partition based on two-nation theory. But majority chunk of subcontinent is ruled by Indian State.
The question is whether it is a nation-state?
What is nation-state at the first place?
For that we need to understand the difference between nation and state. Nation and states are two separate entities. Nation formation takes place when various people and societies realize commonality amongst themselves on the basis of eternal and perennial bonding they have. So it is just a feeling of coexisting together based on certain bonding. This bonding can be provided by language or culture.
When such nation demands a state, no-one can decline such demand. Indian freedom struggle was nothing but a formation of nation. But unfortunately in its last phase, the scope of this nationhood was restricted on the basis of religion. The two nation theory was proposed which stated that hindus and muslims are two different nations.
The so called scholars like Jinnah, Savarkar, Ambedkar accepted this concept of two nations.
Savarkar and Ambedkar, though accepted two nations, wanted a single state to administer it, while Jinnah wanted two states for two nations.
Congress never accepted the two-nation theory. Due to communal violence Gandhi agreed upon the two states. So India was partitioned. But the India remained as not a hindu nation. Its nationhood was described by Nehru as 'Unity in Diversity'. It is essentially a cultural nationalism on which Indian nation stands today.
RSS names it as 'Hindutva' (this is very different from Savarkar's hindutva which was based upon religio-geographical hindu identity).
The issue of Kashmir is therefore more important to India. Kashmir is proof that Indian nationalism is not just a hindu nationalism. The presence of so many Muslims in India also proves the same. The two-nation theory was proved wrong when Bangladesh was formed.
India today is a nation-state and all Indians are proud of that.

Communism Vs Socialism

There is basic difference between Socialism and Communism, though they both believe in the social/national ownership over all the resources.

Socialism aims distribution of resources as per the efforts and kind of efforts one makes. Since the doctors and Engineers are lesser in the society, demand for them is higher and supply is shorter, they will earn higher in socialist economy. If someone does not work he won't get anything in socialist economy. Socialist government does planning for the society as a whole, the planning of economy is done accordingly.

Communism aims the distribution of the resources as per the need of the individuals in the society. So in communism, the needs of the individuals are predefined and government tries distribute the resources through the means of very strict planning. Hence it becomes oppressive for the highly skilled and enterprising people in the economy where monetory incentive for efforts taken are meagre.


Some people does not agree with socialism to start with. To transform from feudal economy where the resources are concentrated with select few to a modern economy, if we start with socialism it gives undue advantage for the richer class and middle class who has already aquired knowledge and monetory resources.

Prices of Petroleum products

With the rising prices of petroleum products, inflation has increased a lot worldover. In India, governement provides subsidies to stabilize petroleum prices. The subsidies are around 1.5 lakh crore per year. Double the amount spent in waiving farmers' loan.
Our middle and rich class also get this part of subsidies which is not correct. They can pay. Why should they get subsidized petrol, diesel and Gas cylinder? Per gas cylinder government pays subsidy of rs.210. Is this justifiable?
Every time we read editors of leading newspapers talk about the farm subsidies. Why don't they talk about petroleum subsidies?

The ideal solution to this problem is to have rationing of these products. But the problem with India is that we can not implement any system correctly. So rationing will be another fodder for the corrupts in PDS.

To me its really a dilemma. If government abolish the subsidies entirely it will increase the prices of all the products and which in turn will raise inflation to a historic high. And if they don't abololish subsidies, they will increase taxes which will again affect all the people.

We should immediately start the usage of public transport. Especially based on electricity. But the scarcity of electricity itself is a major cause of concern.

What i can see is that india is certainly heading towards a major economic and energy crisis.

Sharad Pawar on Indian Agriculture

It is a real shame that the union finance ministry is not ready to bring reforms in agriculture sector. Though the agriculture is a state subject, the central government must allocate enough funds to this sector going out of its way. Just having a high profile minister like Sharad Pawar does not help. There must be some financial powers invested to his ministry. The agriculture and irrigation should become the central subject, without that it looks difficult to bring reforms in this sector. The following is what the helpless agriculture minister said regarding Indian Agriculture.

Budgetory Provisions
The farming community has been ignored in this country and especially so over the last eight to 10 years. The total investment in the agriculture sector is going down. Public and private investment in the sector over the last few years, at least the last two Plans, has been in a very serious situation. You will be surprised—in the budgetary provision, not more than 2% has been allocated for agriculture, where more than 65% of the population works.
Again, the most important thing for agriculture is irrigation. In the last few years, the average budgetary provision from the Indian government for irrigation is less than 0.35%—not even half a per cent money has been provided for water. In the country as a whole, only 40% of the area is under irrigation—there is no problem there. But for the 60% that depends totally on the erratic monsoon, it is pathetic.

Harvesting Losses
The total harvesting losses in this country are somewhere near 30%. Thirty per cent means around Rs 55,000 to 65,000 crore a year is wasted because there is no infrastructure. That’s almost the same as India’s defence budget. We are wasting 30% of the gross income of the farming community and of the country.

Gandhiji on God and Soul

This is an original audio of speech delivered by M.Gandhi in England. Here he talks about the existence of god and soul. The roots of his preachings can be traced from this speech.

Success stories...Steve Jobs

An eye opener for ordinary Indian who tread traditional path of University education to achieve success and thereafter just runs after the illusion of success......just the formal education does not help. One must love what he/she is doing and should have vision, courage, faith in his/her ideas.

Western Democracy

Indian Media

Globalizing Inequality

Religion, Society and Polity: Indian Context

India is multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious and multilingual nation. There are some historical-geographical-economical-environmental reasons for that.
Right from the ancient times, many people came to India and settled over it. If one goes by the racial features, Indians are show features of all the races except that of Red Indians.
Indians developed a peculiar kind of society, lifestyle and outlook towards the life. Some good and some bad traditions got established in our society. The caste system developed with the lack of formal education system in the vocational subjects. The vocational knowledge transferred within the family from parents to their children and the hence next generation continued the same business which their predecessors did. This established the caste system all accross the India.
The institution of religion did not start formally anytime in India. There were many scholars who debated, deliberated and proposed their ideas and their philosophy on spiritual concepts and the code of conduct for an individual in his personal life. Each of these scholors got many followers and hence we find numerous sects in India. Most of these sects derived their philosophy from Vedas. Each one had its own interpretation.
But there were certain sects which did not accepted the supremacy of Vedas. The most prominent amongst them were jainism and buddhism. These sects became popular due to the simple philosophy and lifestyle they proposed. Especially the buddhism spread across the world because it did not impose any restrictions on day to day activities and food habits of people.
As the concept of religion became popular and religious identity became necessary the rest of the Indian sects (i.e. non-buddhists and non-jains) were called as Hindus, a regional term. So the hinduism started as a conglomeration of different sects and with it started the process of unification of all those sects. Hence hinduism became more liberal in terms of philosophies and accepted all the new thoughts and changed drastically with time. Even buddhism came under its fold in India and hence buddhism lost its identity as religion in India, though it is a main religion in China, Japan and other East asian countires.
There were many scholars like Manu who commented on the social conduct and structure and provided reference of the religious literatures to provide basis to their societal philosophy. Especially the Manusmirti became very popular and was accepted all over India and it became sort of constitution for Indian society.
With Indian lifestyle the societal life became so important that the personal lifestyle and personal code of conduct got assimilated with the societal code of conduct. This societal structure and code being similar throughout the India and accross all the sects, it became peculiar characteristics of hindus and slowly and slowly became the part of hinduism.
The societal code of conduct was also applicable for the ruling class. The caste system played an important role in Indian polity with certain people got the rights to rule heredetorily. This turned India into a feudal polity with many small chieftains ruling over small geographic area. With this it became easier for foreigners to Invade India. Though there were empires, the nature of the polities of these empire-states was not central. These empire-states were dependent on the loyalty of the small feuds to hold their geographic sway over the India. These feuds constantly fought with each other and this made even the empire-states vulnerable to foreign invasions. And because of such polity, the sense of nationalism never grew in the people of India.
The first such attempt to create a Hindavi Swaraj (nation of hindustanis) was made by Shivaji. He abolished the feaudal intervention in the state polity and structured his kingdom and its policies for the welfare of the people. He was successful, but his nation-state remain small due to his limited military power. But the power of this nation was seen when Mughals attacked his kindgom in full sway after his death. Th people fought for his kingdom and big mughal empire even after 30 years of continuous war couldn't defeat the small kingdom founded by Shivaji. The emperor Aurangjeb personally led this war, but was unsuccessful. But the Shivaji's legacy was not continued by his successors, they extended the sway of his kingdom all over the India, but were unsuccessful in developing the feeling of nationhood in its people.
The second such attempt was made by Mahatma Gandhi. His political movement against british empire really transformed India into a nation. But for that again he used the symbolism of hindu religion alienating the other people of other religions. Hence his appeal was limited to mainly to the hindus, but was sufficient to start the process of nation building as hindus were more than 80% in India.
After the Independence India adopted a decomcratic-republican, socialist, secular amd quasi-federal polity. People are free to practice their religion on the personal level. Even in the societal level the religion can be practised, but only within the limits of the constitution. The importance of religion is declining since then, as people are moving away from spiritualism with the physical advances and socially the laws and constitution are more important. With this the barricades of castes are started breaking, but still this process is going to take lot of time. This is because the political leadership is still coming from the castes. This leadership wants castes to become stronger so that they can secure their votebanks. The caste system has lost its relevance in the modern economy, though its survival is now just not dependent on the economic facotrs. There are religious and political context to it. So caste system will stay in india atleast for some decades.
With the new form of polity and society getting established in this land, the religion of the land should also accomodate this change. Let's see whether hinduism can show the same amount of flexibilty which it shown historically to adopt new ideas. Same is the case for other religions.
It will take time for everyone to adjust with the new polity and new social structure and till that India will have to face many riots based on religion and castes.

Are We Free?

We, the Indians, got freedom on 15th August 1947. We the Indians wrote our own constitution and adopted it on 26th January 1950. We became sovereign, democratic, republic nation based on the principles of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. Our constitution talks about fundamental rights, directive principles, fundamental duties, the quasi-federal structure of our union of states, the executive, the judiciary, the parliament etc. It provided basis for all the governmental, political and judicial institutions which exists in India today. So the framework was laid, the goals were set, the principles were decided way back in 1950. Then what went wrong? After 58 years of adopting our constitution, how much progress we made? Is that progress sufficient? Are we still on the right path to achieve our constitutional goals?
In the 19th century when British started ruling India, India was already in a social mess. Strongly compartmentalized society with absolute lack of unity would have never transformed into a single nation and would have never raised any challenge to British Empire. But still India was a huge region; it was not easy to rule India. Britishers needed feudal lords to oppress the mass-political rebellion and a strong steel-frame bureaucracy to implement their agenda of economic drain. In 1857 they survived the feudal revolt and after that they came in good terms with them. They needed a bureaucracy and for that they started an unique education system. This system produced some pseudo intellectual people and through them they started a process of denting Indian psyche. These newly-educated people were talented, but fell prey to the British policies. British government apparently tried to make laws against practices like Sati. They started technical education, postal/telegraph services, railways etc. The newly educated Indian intelligentsia was impressed with that. This class then started criticizing everything that was Indian. From this class came the leadership of Indian National Congress. This class though wanted a political independence, was not ready end the feudalism as the feudal lords were the main source of finance to these politicians. These leaders were all foreign educated and have impressive academic record. Their narration/writing skills were excellent and they always able to influence the educated class people which in turn influenced the common masses.
But they did not understand what price India paid for British education and economic policies. With British education Indian minds were enslaved and with the economic policies the Indian Economy was strangled. The Indian small industries were taxed heavily. The raw material export was promoted and finished goods import was made tax-free. This broke down the Indian industries and all those people who got unemployed took shelter of agriculture. The situation worsen to such a level that 90% population of India became dependent on agriculture.
So the Indian scene was like this: 90% uneducated unskilled poor people who could not think much about their situation and 10% of middle and rich class people who vehemently supported the British policies and were psychologically slave of western world.
But there was one leader who talked very basic and raw things. His thoughts and actions came directly from the ancient Indian culture and traditions. His organizational skills were explempary. When he came up to Indian Politics, his appeal was huge to Indian masses and soon he became the biggest leader of Congress and India. He was none other than Mahatma Gandhi. He proposed and implemented his own unique theory of protest called Satyagraha. His principles of truth and non-violence took the political struggle of Indian masses to new moral heights. The whole India united under his Congress Organization. The spirit of oneness started flowing across the sub-continent of India and a process of nation building started.
What Gandhi had was native intelligence and he proposed some unique ways to tackle socio-economic issues. He strongly protested the bookish British education system and advocated the education in vernacular language. He strongly opposed the communist model of economic development and proposed the model of trusteeship and cottage industries. He was not against technology, but was in favor of technology which suits the economic needs.
But unfortunately he was just used by the Congressmen. Once congress came to the power, he was sidelined. All the foreign educated intellectuals became part of the government and the new Indian saga started. India adopted then popular socialistic pattern of development. It was obvious. 70% of the ministers in Cabinet were students of London school of economics. They were trying to implement the economic model which suits to industrialized and low man-powered countries. But the big industries were non-existent in India. The sign of then developed countries viz. Top grade technological institutes, Top grade research institutes, Big hydroelectric projects, Big Dams/reservoirs, heavy industries were all absent in India. The government started developing these "signs". The leadership forgot the fact that majority of India is dependent on agriculture. Many of them are landless laborers and small farmers. They can not be employed in big industries as they don't have any technical skills. The process should have started with providing vocational education to these people in their own language, but instead of that British education system prevailed. To get the vocational education, the pre-requisite was to go through 10 years of education and after successful completion of that the vocational education would be provided but that will be mostly in English. This policy decision was fatal and India still faces scarcity of skilled industrial workers and this has became a major reason why industries did not develop to its full potential in India (or why they developed only in certain pockets in India). The lack of growth in Industrial sector could not helped Indian economic development as still many of the people still remained in agriculture.
With the current educational system India has produced around 2 crore graduates of which 23 percentage are unemployed and 50% work in the field which is not a subject of their specialization. Most of these graduates are employed in the service sector. Those who earn well are completely under the influence of western culture and lack the belief in their own system. This section of people, who should have taken up the burden of carrying India over their shoulder and guiding rest of the Indians, are busy in somehow attaining their own individualistic goals. Also they do not have the confidence to lead the Indian masses.
The one who lead India in political sector come mostly from the feudal class. They generally are busy in retaining their sway in their constituencies by hook or crook. They transfer their political power to their children and the chain goes on. Thus we can find such leaders very autocratic and are always surrounded by the bunch of sycophants. Right from the top Indian leadership to small village level leadership this tradition is followed.
With the nexus with bureaucracy and few industrialists these leaders virtually are looting the Indian people. The principles of truth and non-violence which led the political movement in the pre-independence era are replaced by corruption and violence in the independent era.
The law enforcement agencies like Police and Judiciary still work in the mode which was devised in the British rule to subjugate Indians. There are around 1 million Indians who are in jail without any FIR filed against them. To get the justice from the current judiciary one has to be rich and influential. The common man does not even dare to approach police and runs away with the name of court cases.
The common Indian masses are far away from the field of technology and sciences. The Indian literature could never develop in terms of scientific literature simply because the language in which science and technology is taught is non-Indian. India has become a biggest importer of technology. Indians have excelled only in using technology and not inventing any. This has resulted in adoption of foreign technologies in India ignoring its other domestic implications.
The traditional knowledge is in the process of extinction. Once rich in chemistry, biology, mathematics, astronomy, medical sciences, architecture, literature and textiles, India has adopted a complete new form of educational system which did not even try leveraging the existing traditional knowledge but on the contrary created a mindset of scoffing at it.
It has created a mindset which accepted the western supremacy. The attitude of thinking freely without any preconceived notions is conspicuously absent in the Indian intelligentsia.
India is treading a path which other countries devised for themselves. If Indian leadership does not take corrective measures, India will never ever achieve its constitutional goals.

India vs भारत

Today India has reached to such a highest stage of socio-economic dualism, that we should seriously think about our polity and economy.
As per the recent survey conducted by planning commission of India, 1% of Indians hold 31%of nation product while 60% भारतवासी earn less than 20 rupees per day, thus 66 crore people of India living are below the poverty line. These income disparities are not just regional, even within Mumbai 70% of the population lives in slum area under the unhuman living conditions.
This situation is only going to worsen as our economy is strongly based on the exploitation. There is a lot of competition in labour class and hence the labour is extremely cheap in India. And with the law of competition, where there is so tremendous supply for a long run the prices will remain the same. So there is no chance that 66 crore figure will go down in near future.
The policy makers in our country are in dilemma..though they rule this country, there is hardly anything they can about improving our economy, simply because the existing socio-economic set-up is beneficial to this ruling class. They have an easy access of black-money with which they can indulge themselves in selfish politics and earn lot of money.
Today India has a parallel black economy which is 150% more big than the existing "white economy". India is still feudal. Big farmers rule the rural area. 82%of farmers hold less than 2 acres of land, out of which 90% land is not irrigated and depends on mansoon. These small farmers do not get any loan from the financial institutions and are dependent upon the big lanlords/feuds for their yearly finance. This common farmer today is in debt trap. He is in dilemma..he has no skill to undertake non-agricultural job..no finance to carry out agriculture a business and no social support to fight with this situation.
People think that Population is the problem. In my opinion, "unskilled surplus population" ss a actual problem. With more than 60 years to our Independece, india still is not able to produce a workforce which can sustain the domestic industrial growth. Condition of Indian Industrial sector is bad. It contributes only 18% to our GDP. The 95% labour in this sector work in small scale industries and only 5% work in the organised industries. Though these 5% labours are in pretty good shape, the rest 95% are undergoing the worst form of exploitation where they work in less than 30 rupees a day. This will continue because this labour is in abundant supply and again this is an unskilled labour who can not be self-employed.
The service sector is doing well, contributing to 53% of indian GDP. There is a duality within this sector also. It consists of small unorganised services like barbers, porters, drivers, small shopkeepers etc which employ many and cause exploitation of these people, while the other part of this sector is for polished english-speaking indians who get very high salaries and are busy emulating Americans in their lifestyle and spend extravagantly (In economics it is called as conspicuous consumption which can not be utilized for development of economy).
In such grave situation, where majority of the population is poor, there exists no social infrastructure services like good schooling, hostpitals to these poors. People die because of curable diseases lik malaria, jaundice, TB etc due to unavailability of medicalo services (while the psuedo-intellectual rich/middle class people are more worried about uncurable aids).
The unscientific aprroach of having higher education in English has contributed severley to india's poor show. The one who does his schooling from vernacular language find himself in troubled water while doing the higher studies and this is the main factor which caused the abundance of unskilled labourer in India. The indian vernacular literaure remain out of touch from the science and technology. The majority of great indian languages with a glorius history are facing existence issue. Even hindi, the 2nd largest widely understood language in the world can not have a book published with a lot of 5000 copies.
All these factors broke the psyche of indians, they do not believe in their language, culture and can not aquaire any skills. They feel helplessness. The indian middle class is not takiing up its responsibility. This is a newly formed class which came up mainly from the lower class. Everywhere in the world, whenever the country made progress it was this class who contributed. In indian scenario, this class is busy emulating the western civilization and look down upon the poors of the India and its 5000 year old socio-cultural fabric. Instead of participating in nation building, it is busy in fulfilling his own aspirations and imaginations.

With all these issues, the high growth rate of India is going to help in improving the disparities between the classes and if our policy makers continue with this policy, soon we can find people of India turn to Nakshalism.