Modern politics and Mom’s kitchen

“You may fool all the people some of the time; ... some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time.” -Abraham Lincoln

It was early 2000s when in my hometown, Ahmadabad, there opened a little restaurant chain called “Mom’s kitchen”. Well, there was nothing historic about this event but there was certainly something iconic about it. Mom’s Kitchen was just like any another restaurant serving spicy Indian food. The way food was served had nothing special but the way food was prepared was really different. It never happened before in history of Indian food restaurant industry, at least in my knowledge. The restaurant had an open kitchen where you can actually enter in the kitchen, where food is being prepared and you can talk to chef and talk about your preferences, ask them to prepare food in a particular manner, and see what is the quality of the food being. In simple words, you are seeing what you are going to eat tonight. For me, it was idea of real democracy.

India, being world’s largest democracy and US being world’s oldest democracy has something in common, curious people. Actually human is a curious animal. We would always like to know what is happening around and moreover, why is that happening. When the questions are not answered or people are told that there are certain things that they don’t need to know then that produce lack of trust. It is really most dangerous thing for democracy. The political age that we are living in right now is not actually exposing true colors of democracy; we can call it semi-democratic environment or may be pseudo- democratic environment. Where you can choose who will lead you but after that you do not have any control over whatever they do. These modern day politicians are exactly like regular traditional restaurants. You can choose what restaurant to go and what to eat. But you do not have control over what quality of ingredients they use and how they prepare food. They do everything behind the closed doors and you have no idea what is going inside. Just order the food and wait for it to be delivered. Restaurants are still better because, if you don’t like the food then you can decide right away not to come to this place again ever. In politics, you have to wait for 4 to 5 years to make a decision again.

There was a time in 50s and 60s when media was totally controlled by the Governments and what people saw was actually what politicians want them to see. Believe me; they are very good at that. Somebody said it so right “politics is show business of ugly people”. But with information flowing all around the internet, it will get tougher and tougher for people to control the information. Information will find its own way to be exploded; let it be Wikileaks, YouTube, Blogs or twitter.

Story of these online phenomena is also a very live example of new democracy. There used to be many websites, which used to host videos far before YouTube. There was nothing particularly wrong with these websites. The content was good enough and video quality wasn’t that bad either. The only reason YouTube surpassed everything on internet video sharing is power that people got with YouTube. YouTube was the very first website to offer video uploading to users. As it says in its tagline “Broadcast yourself”. Same hypothesis remains true for Twitter. When you can follow your favorite authors and stars and people, you admire and directly communicate with them, who need those media reports in between?

Anybody ever wondered why a website with a very primitive looks and traditional blue links with no sophistication in design can drive more traffic than web giants like eBay and Amazon together? Yes, I am talking about Craig’s list. The only reason behind Craig’s list is that you get to see what you are buying and you get to meet the seller. A true democratic model, nobody in between. No bank, no website authority, no USPS, no FedEx, no PayPal. That is how Governments should be run, totally transparent. No show business, no funny business.

When David Cameroon, Prime Minister of UK, spoke in TED conference last year, he was very right when he said accountability is what is lacking and can be achieved in today’s age of politics. He offered really radical ideas from information revolution to transparency. He said “If we combine right political thinking with the information revolution that is around us then we can create a historic model of transparency.” That is basic requirement of great governance.

As I said, Mom’s kitchen is not serving the best food in my town but the food served certainly brings a sense of trust and transparency and that, for me, is more important than taste. Politicians don’t need to be most lovable people with great oratory skills, but they need to be most transparent leaders. The day our policies would be as transparent as food coming from our Mom’s own kitchen, world would be a better place to live.

Few questions to Atheists

Atheist

It is irony of the place called earth that the creature who has been granted highest privileges by the almighty, denies existence if its creator. Atheist, a nonbeliever, who says that” All religions are same alike-founded upon fables and mythologies.”Those who reject the notion of God on name of hypothesis should appreciate their ability to distinguish between truth and hypothesis. Moreover, they should appreciate the giver of that ability, the God. But as I said, earth is such an ironical place and human is most ironical creature of this place that rejects idea of God.

Atheists always argue in shade of science. Some ignorant atheists also argue that science has proved that there is no God. Well, truth be told “science is not there to reject the notion of god”. Instead, science is a process to explore the God. How? Well, what do scientists do? They try to unravel mysteries of nature. They try to figure out the absolute truth behind all the happenings around us. They try to rationalize every incident and every act around us. I would say if there is anyone who can understand existence of nature then it is scientists. Science has a theory for everything from origination of universe to instigation of Big Bang. Do we indulge in so much cynicism that we consider Big Bang mere a coincident? If it is really a coincident then that coincident has culminated in our lives on this planet after billions of the years. We really should be thankful to that beautiful coincident. Is there anybody whom we really can say “thank you” for our beautiful lives? Yes, there is somebody and we can always be thankful to him but some people are so selfish that instead of being thankful they decided to be atheist. May be it was a fair choice for them and that suits their nature.

Taking this term “Coincidence”, further I want to ask some questions to all the believers in this coincidence (Atheists). I was just curious that how this flora and fauna would have been possible on this planet, if there was no Ozone layer in the atmosphere? What possibly could have happened if gravitational force of earth was like Venus or like Moon or may be anything but not like recent gravitational force? What could had happened if proportion of oxygen and Carbon dioxide would had been inter exchanged? What If there wouldn’t had been any trees or water on this planet? There are billions of comets and asteroids in this universe, what if one large enough comet hits earth and destroys it? Why none of these coincidences happened even once? If existence of this planet is still called “coincidence” then I would address this “coincidence” as God.

Sometimes some intelligent atheists ask rational questions like “ If there is God then why children are born with deformities? Why was happens? Or why there is poverty? Well, there can be many answers to these questions, We could even delve in the reasoning of these child deformities and could had presented statistical chart of natural and chemical instigated deformities, we could even question human moralities behind poverty and wars. But blaming humans for their inflictions does not prove there is god. But why don’t we look at the other side of these happenings? What would we call enhanced ability of blind people to recognize places, smell and people just by a glance? What would we call generation of baby boomers who were result of population explosion after world wars? And the bonus? 62 percent of the children born during these times were baby boys. Was it to supplement the soldiers died in world war? May be it was a coincidence happened just once on human history. The point here is whenever something is taken away from humanity, doesn’t matter who takes it away, another human, another animal or just an accident; it is substituted by something else. I don’t need more examples to bolster my beliefs now.

Atheists advertise their view by saying “The bad news is that God does not exist; the good news is that you don’t need him.” But basically fact is that “The good news is that you need God every moment; the better news is that he is there for you every moment.

My Testimonies: Testimony of a literate Counting the wrong things...

My Testimonies: Testimony of a literate Counting the wrong things...: "Testimony of a literate Counting the wrong things Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts...."

Testimony of a literate

Counting the wrong things

Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.

-Albert Einstein

To be somebody, who has decent education and has that education being paid off, is a wonderful feeling in itself. But education has been a term in our society, which has lost its depth. Does education mean acquiring mere a degree and go find a job? Or is it something really else?

How do we measure success? Or How do we measure how much more educated one is, in compare to another? Are grades and mark sheets the only measure that we can rely on? Or there is something more to it, yet to be explored, yet to be considered?

It is a very simple understanding that education is a process of nurturing people and illuminating them with world of knowledge, making sure that the knowledge that they acquired during the process is helping them live their life and fulfill their dreams. It is really a simple idea and it sounds very plausible to measure the quality and quantity of the knowledge that a person acquired with units like Degree and grades. That is really a very well justified argument. Without this kind of measure, there is no way of differentiating a good student from a bad one and a competent professional from an incompetent one.

I have nothing against the grading system. What I disapprove of is the way grades are measured and achieved. Isn’t it rather impertinent and unjust to student when they are expected to know everything and then they are paid for only certain portions of their knowledge? This is actually very important question, which has never been raised. As a student, everybody is expected to know everything from languages they are never going to speak to arts (like drawing); they are never going to develop.

We have to understand that not everybody can be an engineer, or a doctor, or a painter, or sports personnel. What we need to be is just one of these things and if we are interested enough and fortunate enough. If I am a good professional then it does not matter what I do. What matters most is how I do it, whatever I do. A great painter can earn far more respect and money than an incompetent doctor. It is a fact and the earliest we understand this fact, earlier we can start our journeys to excellence and inevitable joy of life.

Just imagine how many hours a student who is dreaming of being an engineer, spends learning the subjects that he/she is never going to use in their professional life. It is always good to know something about everything but it is not a good idea to teach everything about everything. That is just time disinvested. Isn’t it unjust to reflect student’s linguistic abilities in the aggregate when all he is going to use is mathematical skill when he comes out as an engineer? Or isn’t it unjust to student to measure his mental abilities on Math when he is extremely good at painting and deserves to be known as a great painter. Does it really matter if he does not know how to prove a theorem? No it does not and it should not.

A comprehensive aggregated grading system just does not bring out best from the student but actually suppresses the best inside him/her.

It is correctly said that not everything that we count these days can or should be counted and more precisely we are not counting everything that actually counts.