Wednesday 18 January 2017

FROM FAMILY TOWARDS FRIENDS – THE PENDULUM IS SWINGING




When I was young I was convinced that family is the most important thing in life. No one will ever give me the love and care that my mother has given me. She has sent me off with a hug and kiss to school since I was a little boy. I have never got the same feeling when someone has told me they are proud of me other than when my father said it to me. I have always felt more loved and accepted by all but with my wife these words take a different meaning altogether. My siblings have fought with me for every bit of parental love and affection but still they remain most precious. But as I am graying with age this support system is slowly eroding. Both my parents are no more. I lost my little sister to cancer. True, in bargain we have two sons, both young men by now, launching into their own careers. Busy with our respective medical practices, though we do not have time to feel lonely today but what will we be doing tomorrow when we choose to slow down? I am sure I am not the only person who is bothering along these lines.


When we are young, we get our main support from our parents and siblings.  We rely on them for emotional support and for socialization.  But as we get older, we become more interested in what our peers think of us. There are at least two reasons for this.  First, we will need to form lasting relationships (including, presumably, romantic relationships) with people of our own age.  For this reason, the opinions of people our own age matter a great deal.  Secondly, family is a constant thing.  Our family has to love us no matter what.  People in our peer group are not like that.  We have to worry about how they will perceive us and we get more pleasure from their acceptance because it is not automatic; we earn it. These peers are usually our class mates in school and batch-mates in colleges and we call them ‘friends’.


Our family is our family by decree of birth. Our friends choose to be our friends, but our family doesn't choose us. By this same theory we cannot choose our relatives but we can and we do choose our friends. A family succeeds when it is friendly towards each other and there's nothing stopping you from considering a good friend your family! Your friends, they're the ones who accept you. If they don't, they're not your friends. Your family, if they don't accept you, you just have to live with them anyway. 


Class reunions and batch-meets usually help us by keeping us young. With the recent explosion in the world of communication, Facebook and Whats App have rekindled many a dormant ambers of friendship and camaraderie, and believe me, these are vital for survival! We have long branched out of the joint family structure to nuclear units to lonely couples to, worse still, lone survivors. All the comforts which science provides can in no way take away this loneliness and so friends are vital. When children are away in their own world, our world is populated by only our friends!


Strangely enough friends are not only vital for quality of survival but also quantity of remaining days. In a 10-year longevity study of people aged 70 and older, researchers at the Centre for Ageing Studies at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia concluded that a network of good friends is more likely than close family relationships to increase longevity in older people. The research report is based on the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ALSA).They  used a series of interviews with nearly 1,500 older people to assess how much contact they had with their different social networks, including children, relatives, friends, and other confidantes. The group was monitored annually for four years and then less often for a decade. The researchers also considered how economic, social, environmental and lifestyle factors affected the health and well-being of the seniors in the study. Based on results from the study, researchers learned:
·         Close relationships with children and relatives had little effect on longevity rates for older people during the 10-year study.
·         People with extensive networks of good friends and confidantes outlived those with the fewest friends by 22 percent.
·         The positive effects of friendships on longevity continued throughout the decade, regardless of other profound life changes such as the death of a spouse or other close family members.

While the study couldn’t say for certain why close friendships have such a dramatic effect on longevity, the authors of the report speculated that friends may encourage older people to take better care of themselves—by cutting down on smoking and drinking, for example, or seeking medical treatment earlier for symptoms that may indicate serious problems. Friends may also help seniors get through difficult times in their lives, by offering coping mechanisms and having a positive effect on mood and self-esteem.


Having your good friend’s phone number memorized or on speed-dial is the emotional version of having 911 pre-programmed. You know immediately where to turn when real trouble happens. Thank heaven I haven’t had to make one of those calls but I am fortunate that if I happen to land in trouble I have a support system of friends who care about me and will listen even if it is the dead of the night. Not only will they listen, they’ll listen without judging me. They’ll listen and offer comfort without ever saying, “I told you so” or “I knew this would happen.” In other words, they never sound like scolding parents.


In many ways, best friends say what you wish your parents might have said to you. After all, friends are part of the family you create instead of the family you’re born into—and they can understand many aspects of your life that your own family members cannot or will not accept. I expect a great deal from my truly good friends—don’t you? Don’t you expect your friends to see straight through you-to look beyond the window dressing, or even the blackout curtains, to see what’s really inside? Don’t you expect your best friends to know not only what you choose to portray for the world to see but also to know what you keep the “junk drawers” of your life?



That is the reason why I have a bunch of friends, smarter, funnier, braver, and more beautiful than me.  There’s nobody in the world with their particular talents and strengths.  Yet, like many extraordinary people, they shrug off their magic as if it’s nothing special. Through our best friends, we are rescued, repaired, and rejuvenated time and time again. May we always be able to rely on them and may we never take them for granted. My life is on a friendship pacemaker and I am sure it will last a lifetime!

Wednesday 11 January 2017

SECESSION OR FEDERALISM – WHAT IS THE ANSWER?



There are many citizens living in Kashmir in India, Quebec in Canada, Flanders in Belgium, Scotland in the United Kingdom and Catalonia in Spain do not consider themselves merely part of a region but an independent nation that has no state of its own. Delusion…..you may call it, but they hope to live and die for this elusive goal. Greater self-rule is the central objective of the so-called nationalist political movements. Whether they are organized political parties as characteristically found in European regions or disorganized gangs as seen in Kashmir their theme of secession is a common thread that links them all. The possibility of secession has been part of their politics for years. Yet while secession is mentioned as one option for the future, mainstream parties perceive it as a Utopian formula rather than a viable alternative. This results partly from a genuine allegiance to the existing states by many of these regions' residents, but also from the fear of the unknown and a surprising lack of information about the economic costs of remaining part of these states and the potential economic uncertainties of independence.

While Scotland as an independent country, taking into account all its resources, would be among the twenty wealthiest countries on earth - according to analysis by the Financial Times, ahead of countries such as Italy, France, the UK and Japan can you imagine a flood ravaged Kashmir without the Government of India helping it out?   With independence the secessionists feel they can make their wealth work much better for the people living here……..but where is that wealth. That wealth lies in the bond they share with the greater nation and not in isolation.

Crimea, another flashpoint, is an autonomous region of Ukraine located south of the Ukrainian mainland on the Crimean Peninsula, voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. The United States, the European Union (EU), the Ukraine government and representatives of Crimean Tatars condemned the referendum, saying it violated Ukraine's constitution and international law. A United Nations General Assembly resolution was subsequently passed that declared the Crimean referendum invalid and the incorporation of Crimea into Russia illegal. As was expected Ukraine declared Crimea a territory temporarily occupied by Russia.

Veneto is one of Italy's richest regions. Many of its residents however, believe the Italian government is inefficiently using its wealth on the poorer southern parts of the country, and that an independent Venice would be better off without having to carry the burden of much of the rest of Italy.

Another region close to a flashpoint is Belgium's Dutch-speaking part of Flanders. With a unique identity quite distinct from the southern French-speaking region of Wallonia, the Flemish nationalist movement has seen a surge in recent years. Linguistic division and the socio-economic imbalance between the two regions have only underscored their differences, especially cultural and economic, over the last few years.

Kurdistan comprises parts of northern Iraq, north-western Iran, eastern Turkey and eastern Syria. It is home to the Kurdish-speaking people, who have long agitated for a homeland of their own. Kurdistan has commonly been described as the "world's most populous stateless nation".

Closer to home we have problems in both China and Pakistan.  Apart from the decades-long unrest in Tibet, which has been under Chinese control since the 1950s, China is also facing persistent unrest in the restive province of Xinjiang, the traditional home of the Uyghurs, an ethnic Muslim minority. Separatists seeking the independence of Xinjiang from China want to govern themselves and call the region "East Turkestan".

Baloch nationalism is a movement that claims the Baloch people, an ethno-linguistic group mainly found in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan are a distinct nation. The movement propagates the view that Muslims are not a nation (the opposite of the concept behind the creation of Pakistan) and that ethnic loyalty must surpass religious loyalty, though this view has been challenged by both the 1971 independence of East Pakistan and the discrimination many Muhajir people have historically faced within Pakistan.

Current conventional wisdom in the European Union and the United States sees the issue of secession as something outdated or even dangerous. Mainstream politicians, diplomats and academics tend to present it as a senseless option at a moment in history where the focus is building a united Europe and a free-trade world. The thought of the wars in the former Yugoslavia and its ultimate Balkanization makes many fear such an option. However, I do not deny that the situation in Catalonia, Flanders or Scotland is not comparable - these stateless nations are well-established democratic societies that respect human rights and free-market economies within the European Union. Thus, Catalans, Flemish or Scots cannot ignore that full political independence remains a serious option for them. Their desire for secession needs to be objectively analyzed and the costs and benefits properly weighed. But when you compare their prosperity with the stark poverty of Kashmir, you realize how senseless and foolish their battle cry is.

While it is common to hear a Kashmiri refer to us as ‘you Indians’, as if he or she is from Mars, many Catalans too do not consider themselves Spanish but exclusively Catalan. Such feelings raise eyebrows in other parts of Spain, Europe and elsewhere, but are widely accepted as legitimate within Catalonia. The French speaking Quebecers find it extremely difficult to blend with the English speaking rest of Canada, but if language decided nationhood then we in India would have had a thousand nations within our boundaries. 

The key goal of Catalonia's main political party, Convergència i Unió (CiU), which has governed the region for more than twenty years, is to gain higher levels of self-government. It defines itself as Catalan nationalist (or Catalanist) and frequently refers to the Catalans' right to political self-determination. With this party's support, the Catalan Parliament declared some time ago that it would not renounce this right. Yet it does not seek full independence from Spain.  Scotland similarly now has 45% of its citizens voting for an independent Scotland so that they have more rights to use their resources to provide a better life to their people - control over their tax system to attract more employers to invest in Scotland, creating more and better local jobs. This means more opportunities for young people, closer to home, keeping families together. Better pensions, improved child care facilities, better schools and hospitals were all promised by the proponents of secession, but if things do not exist already can they not be achieved staying within the union? What is the actual answer to these problems – is it federalism or is it secession? 

There are broadly three main arguments for the independence of Catalonia. The first is that since the Catalan cultural and language is neither understood nor accepted in Spain (and so neither protected nor fostered), the second is that a well-defined political entity such as Catalonia should be mature enough to govern itself with its own voice in the European Union or the United Nations in order to address the problems specific to it. Finally, there is the belief that Catalonia would be better off economically by seceding. In particular, proponents of the last argument refer to the fact that Catalonia pays much more into Spain's central treasury than it gets back and thus there exists a fiscal imbalance.  Scots too feel that with their vast oil reserves they will be a far more prosperous nation if they break away. The nuclear arsenal stationed in Scotland makes them militarily impregnable.

The economic arguments are contested particularly in poor states like Kashmir. Without the Indian Army they will be nonexistent within hours of secession.  Moreover, economics is forcing countries to come together and not break up any further and globalization and the European Union have brought about the blurring of borders. But only a few seem willing to undertake a serious economic assessment of an eventual secession, as this has become a "politically incorrect" issue in British, Canadian, Indian and Spanish politics.
           
An independent Kashmir is neither morally legitimate nor historically justified, and with little hesitation I can say the same thing about Scotland, Catalonia and Quebec. As a part of the respective unions they can remain influential but alone they run the risk of becoming irrelevant. Once in 1947 we have lost the chance of becoming a great nation, because of some religious fundamentalists and some over ambitious politicians. We cannot afford to allow either to raise their ugly heads ever in future. So when we Indians say that Kashmir is an integral part of India, we are not over zealously beating our chest, we are stating the obvious. For the agents of terror and the stone pelting mob it is time to introspect – would they have lived to see this day had the gallant Indian Army not been there to save them from floods, incursions and terror?

Wednesday 4 January 2017

WELCOME TO THE NEW CHIEF JUSTICE OF INDIA!

      

Your Honour, we the citizens of this great Nation welcome you to the august post with a lot of expectations. Your worthy predecessors have left you with an unenviable task of managing quite a mess and I, a samanya nagarik (ordinary citizen), who is scared of entering the temple of justice because there are no exit doors, am honestly scared of the courts. Justice is delayed beyond all reasonable limits of time and generations have perished without justice being delivered and guilty being punished. Government remains the main litigant in your courts and for lesser mortals like us you hardly have any time left.

Your Honour, while I am scared of annoying you, may I most respectfully ask you is our judiciary accountable to anybody? I know there is God up there, but let’s not bother Him with our business. The judicial tardiness has emboldened the goons, the thugs, the cheats, the corrupt politicians, the inefficient babus and the unprofessional police force. Justice is running so far behind them that there is no way it will catch up with them in this lifetime. With 30 million pending cases, over four million in the High Court and 65,000 Supreme Court, the poor are worst affected while the rich can afford expensive lawyers and change the course of dispensation of the law in their favour! Under such circumstances how can I be optimistic with your assuming the high office Your Honour?

Corruption in judiciary is no more a hush hush affair. The various recent scams like the CWG scam, 2G scam, Adarsh Society scam, including rapes and other atrocities in the society etc. have emphasized both the conduct of politicians and public dignitaries, including the common man, and also on the drawbacks in the functioning of Indian judiciary. Pointing fingers towards the halo however is not possible on account of the fear of contempt. There is no provision for registering an FIR against a judge taking bribes without taking permission from your office, So, Your Honour, those who are meant to uphold the law are way above the law!

There is a total lack of transparency in the functioning of your haloed office Your Honour. For some reasons best known to your brothers in the bar the legal mammoth system which you preside upon is totally out of the ambit of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Thus, in the functioning of the judiciary, the substantial issues like the quality of justice and accountability are not known properly. The Indian judicial system still incorporates certain features inherited from the British judicial system during their centuries of colonial rule in India. We have to do a major overhaul of "de-Britishising" of the system. Is there a continuing education programme for our judges? Are they upgrading themselves with the changing times? Laws that criminalize homosexuality, should they be staying in your books? Why has computerization and digitization not acted as the steroid shot, which the system so badly needs? Why is all this hushed in a conspiracy of silence?

The plight of the undertrials, who are denied justice for ages, is worse than pitiable in our jails. Often the expenses and pain and agony of defending themselves in courts is worse than serving the actual sentence. Why is there no committee constituted by those in the stratosphere of the legal system to act against the stalling tactics of the lawyers? The rich and powerful people can bring the police and the law to their sides, and the police can harass or silence inconvenient and poor persons, during the long ordeals in the courts. And I am not even willing to mention the plight and public humiliation of victims of rape and domestic violence when they stand in front of your brother judges pleading for justice!

Another big concern which I have is that the judiciary and the common man never interact and so fail to sensitize each other. We do not have the jury system and so the common man is invariably a litigant. He is never a part of the judicial decision making and so never considers the judiciary to be his own.

When information and communication technologies are rapidly changing the life of our countrymen dramatically, the India legal system still looks like a domineering and pretentious Imperial vestige appearing to belong to an elite class and far away from the common people and our country. Don’t you feel Your Honour your system of justice is totally out of place and out of time and tune with democratic procedures and norms, that please only a certain section of the society with vested interests.

I wish the Honourable Supreme Court gets down to the more serious task of reinventing itself, making itself more relevant to the society it is expected to serve and clearing its own backlog. It is very easy to point fingers at every Tom Dick and Harry, be a fortune teller and predict riots and arson after demonetization one day and serve judicial populism the next day admonishing political parties not to ask for votes along the lines of caste, creed and religion, but introspection is the need of the hour. Why should the courts run only one session and that too with a long lunch break? Why can't we have evening courts? If other professionals can work round the clock, why can't the legal profession do the same? The hospitals do not close their shutters at 5 PM. The Airlines, the Railway, and even the Metro construction goes on round the clock. If judges are less than optimum in numbers so are the doctors, but they never complain. The shoulder the extra burden and they deliver. When will the legal fraternity stop complaining and start delivering?


Am I asking for too much Your Honour?