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How has India changed in your lifetime? BY Jagdish Bhagwati

Jagdish Bhagwati (Professor of Economics, Columbia University): I was born in Bombay, now known as Mumbai, in 1934. And I was deeply influenced by the fact that the people from the state of _________ . . . because the whole state bifurcated into _______ and _________ once we got independence and the people states reorganized along the linguistic lines. It used to be common that Bombay presidency. Now it’s split into two. And I was part of the ________ faction.

Actually are traditionally very much oriented towards business. They are the ones who went all over into Africa and all over the world. They’re the biggest community of Indians abroad. One thing which ________ have on top of that is a very powerful tradition of social work. And Gandhi, the great Gandhi, was himself a _______. He built on that tradition. He didn’t invent it. What he did was to essentially harness this for social good in a very big way.

So every family virtually is involved. And I came from legal family. But my father, you know, fought for independence. My eldest brother became the Chief Justice of India and set up the entire legal aid program, and also public interest litigation. So there would be bridges built up for him, and villages named after him because he was a great, radical force. This ran in the family.

So the reason why I got interested in economics was because when I started studying economics, I realized, unlike law, which my parents wanted me to get into. At that time law was not seen the way it is today, as something where you can do public interest litigation. You can do pro bono work. You were just supposed to be, you know, X versus Y; Regina v. Brown. Just case law and nothing really interesting. But I could see my teachers at Cambridge, England, where I first started doing economics seriously at the age of 19. They were all oriented towards social work.

So I could see economics not just as a bunch of chess problems or mathematical problems as sometimes people do. But as simply an instrument for bringing about an uplift of people. And coming from India, and with this background, I was just a patsy for it. It became my vocation.

Well I think there’s one common thread, diversity, which is simply that my father came from a very poor family. And his own father was a primary school teacher. So my father went through on charity and then scholarships entirely all the way. So it’s a high degree of social mobility.

But they were all, that generation, my parents; I’m 73 now almost, and I’m talking of something like 110 years ago in India. And they were all very puritanical. The kind of upbringing I had. For all the seven sons that my father had, plus three cousins that were still growing up with us, so he was bringing up ten children in the family. And there was no luxury, no comfort, nothing. We didn’t get any money. There was no way of raising any money in those days like American kids do. The only money that you got was from your parents. And we didn’t get any. We weren’t allowed to go to restaurants. There was no money for restaurants; money for about two movies a year. And weren't allowed to wear long pants. It was always short pants until I left for Cambridge, England at the age of 19. We always used the buses. No taxis, no cars and so on.

But at the local bookstore, there was an open account. Each of us read skillions [sic] of books. Education was number one priority. And that really, whenever I get an honorary degree, I always tell the kids, “You gotta thank your parents, because without that you wouldn’t be here now. Because they gave you the values. And in many cases they also gave you the money to be able to do your education.”

So one brother became the Chief Justice of India; another, you know, President of the International Pediatric Neurological Society; my younger brother became President of the World Foundry Association because he’s a Ph.D. in metallurgy and so on.

And I’m no slouch in economics. So that’s four out of seven, and that’s a pretty high ratio.

But it was entirely due to these values which we had. And I think it’s also stood us all in good stead, because like my neurosurgeon brother was one of India’s leading neurosurgeons, he could have settled down in Chicago where he did his basic work, but he went home. And today he does neurosurgery on ppoor people, no cost, no charge. And he charges, of course, the rich people.

That’s sort of built into our system. So even when I do something like free trade, and people say, “Oh gosh, you gotta be a devil with horns if you believe in free trade.” I said, “Look, just hold back, because I like free trade not because I’m into corporate interests and so on. Corporate interests are into what I believe. It’s the other way around.”

I want to do it because I think it’s going to lead to growing prosperity. And it’s going to draw people into more prosperity. But it’s not to say that it’s the only way to do it. Frequently you will have to supplement it with other policies. But it is a principle instrument for at least the developing countries.
Recorded On: Aug 14, 2007

There are really at least two India’s by Cyril Shroff

Question: How does the caste system affect Indian society?
Cyril Shroff: You know, I always love saying this, there are really at least two India’s, there is an India or a shining India the one which the west seas usually through urbanize and there is an India outside some of the big metro policies and in even the tier two cities and in rural India which is completely different. It goes by the name of Bahar which is a traditional name for India.
And it’s there that this sort of these differences of a shop that India has not moved into the 21^st century as about India has, but both coexist.  In that part of India factors which are based on regional considerations, caste being one of them is very significant and whether it’s who do you like to partner within business, who will you employ, who will you get your daughter married to, who will you vote for: a lot of that gets driven by caste factors.  And this is there since time in memorial. India is a civilization which goes back more than 2000 years and some of these have just passed on from generation to generation because there’s the complex cultural history of this country.
Question: Will the caste system fade as India modernizes?
Cyril Shroff: I think firstly in urban India, these factors are somewhat more muted. I won’t say that they completely absent but they are far more subdued. Education and exposure to the West have mitigated a lot of these differences.
So people like myself or my colleagues, we don’t even think about this. My own law firm for instance is extraordinarily diverse. We have probably someone from every caste and community in India. Our firm is diverse in terms of gender as where we got nearly 50 percent women. So firms like ours, our organizations and we are different in as much as these factors don’t make any difference to us.
However, even within city like Mumbai or Delhi, there could be a tier of organizations where these factors do matter. They could be organizations which are for instance known as a Gujarati firms or Marwari firms or south Indian firms, so these factors do make a difference. And a lot of it is driven by economic differences, not just the caste system.      
Question: How is the gap between rich and poor hurting the country?
Cyril Shroff: The fact that our democracy, our ownership, our belief in private ownership and lack of adequate social security nets has only helped in widening the differences between the super, super rich and the poorest of poor.

Gandhi's Invisible Hands

Behind the rise of Mahatma Gandhi was a little-recognized team of followers he carefully recruited including his secretary, Mahadev Desai, pictured at his desk in 1940.

On September 4, 1915, in the sticky heat of late summer, Mahadev Desai and Narahari Parikh walked without speaking along the Sabarmati River, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, a city in northwestern India. Desai and Parikh were best friends who shared everything, so the silence between them was uncharacteristic. Their day, however, had been highly unusual, and they were both lost in reflection on what had transpired. When they reached the Ellis Bridge, which spanned the surging waters of the Sabarmati and supported a steady flow of carriage, mule, foot, and, occasionally, car traffic from the bustling city, they stopped and faced each other. They were both thinking about a meeting they had had a few hours earlier with a 46-year-old lawyer who had recently returned to India after living for two decades in South Africa.
Desai finally broke their prolonged silence: “Narahari, I have half a mind to go and sit at the feet of this man.” This statement, in which Desai contemplated abandoning his nascent legal career in order to devote himself to the service of someone he had met for the first time that day, changed the course of his life. It also helped change the course of history for a colonized nation seeking freedom and its entrenched imperial rulers. With these words, the 23-year-old Desai began a journey that would produce one of the most important partnerships the modern world has known. The lawyer they had met had extraordinary ambitions that were growing by the day, and he had started to assemble a team of gifted individuals to help him achieve his visions. That lawyer’s name was Mohandas Gandhi, and in Mahadev Desai the future Mahatma had found a crucial partner for his historic cause.
read it at wilsonquarterly

winston-churchill-monster in a leaders garb...

Winston Churchill was considered a great politician. he was also a great orator. Though he is now dead, his "legacy" lives on in the many  quotes he left behind. Churchill is known for his witty quotes, so the fact that he was a hateful bigoted alcoholic gets swept over. No way should this man be glorified. Do some research. He was an admirer of Mussolini. He advocated the idea of euthanizing and sterilizing the disabled. Sure, he was a successful politician, but if you have read Machiavelli's 'The Prince' then you already know the tools required for that job.


1.We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. 2. There is no such thing as a good tax.
3. Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.
4. The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
5. We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.


6. An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last.
7. The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult.
8. From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put.
9. A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
10. Nancy Astor: “Sir, if you were my husband, I would give you poison.”
Churchill: “If I were your husband I would take it.”


11. A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
12. Once in a while you will stumble upon the truth but most of us manage to pick ourselves up and hurry along as if nothing had happened.

13. If you are going to go through hell, keep going.
14. It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
15. You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.


16. If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.
17. You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.
18. History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
19. The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.
20. I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.


21. The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.
22. A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
23. To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
24. Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.
25. Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.


READ MORE:

A.Nancy Astor: "Winston, if I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee."
   Winston Churchill: "Nancy, if I were your husband I would drink it."
  
B."I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play, bring a friend... if you have one."
-- George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one."
-- Winston Churchill, in response

C.I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas.

I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.

--Winston S. Churchill: departmental minute (Churchill papers: 16/16) 12 May 1919 War Office
If the British left, "India will fall back quite rapidly through the centuries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages".  

D.An entry of September 1942 in the Amery diaries reads: "During my talk with Winston he burst out with: `I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion'." A year later, when the question of grain being sent to the victims of the Bengal famine came up in a Cabinet meeting, Churchill intervened with a "flourish on Indians breeding like rabbits and being paid a million a day by us for doing nothing by us about the war."  

E.Don't worry about avoiding temptation as you grow older, it will avoid you.
-- Winston Churchill

F.Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us now. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'
dt:18th June 1940

G."We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow worm".

H.I have yet to see anyone mention the six to seven MILLION Indians who were intentionally caused to starve to death, thanks to the witty Churchill. He had knowledge of the Pearl Harbor bombings, but chose not to share it the U.S. The list goes on. The image we get of Churchill is a glorified one.

I."I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."- Churchill.

watch and learn

  "Every Sunday in villages across India, groups of people—an assortment of turbaned men, sari-clad women, and gap-toothed children—gather around old television sets to watch their favorite Bollywood film stars sing and dance in song videos culled from movies. These song shows, a popular component of mainstream television programming, are often the only way rural populations can see the stars or access the latest films. Nine years ago, India’s national television network decided to introduce karaoke-style subtitles to these programs—not in a foreign language, but in Hindi, the language the stars were singing in." read it at boston globe.

Aghori Practices

An aghori lives in the cremation ground and is able to support himself there – his clothing comes from the dead, his firewood comes from the funeral pyres, and food from the river. When a person is cremated, an aghori will coat himself in the ashes of the body and meditate on the dead. Aghoris survive by begging with a bowl made from a human skull. The most shocking aspect of the Aghori life is their cannibalism. Dead bodies that are found floating in the river are gathered up and meditated on. The limbs are then removed by the Aghori and eaten raw.
The corpses, which may be either pulled from a river (including the Ganges) or obtained from cremation grounds, are consumed both raw and cooked on open flame, as the Aghoris believe that what others consider a “dead man” is, in fact, nothing but a natural matter devoid of the life force it once contained. Therefore while for ordinary folks cannibalism may be seen as primitive, barbaric as well as unclean, for aghori’s it’s being both resourceful and subverting the common stereotypes placed on such taboos into a spiritual ascertainment that indeed nothing is profane nor separate from God, who is hailed to be all and in all. In fact, the Aghoris see it as a scientific approach in trying to discover how matter converts from one form to another.
There are many aghoris walking the streets of northern India with their skull cups. These aghoris eat anything, including rotten food, food from the dumps, animal feces, animal urine, etc. They regularly perform rituals to attain the highest level in enlightenment. Many aghoris walk around completely naked.

watch video(WARNING:contains video footage of cannibalism)