Indian Identity

Here goes a song by my favorite legendary singer BoB Marley:

Until the philosophy which hold one race
Superior and another inferior
Is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned
Everywhere is war, me say war

 

Just finished reading Sudhir Kakar's insight on Indian Identity. Especially  the paper "The colours of Violence" is a very noble service to mankind. I wish someday maybe common people get to read his work as well because most of the time they are the one who get instigated.

Religious violence has a very dynamic nature with no one reason which can be pinned down. But ignorance of course is a reason. What makes me wonder after reading "Indian Identity" is that seldom is religion the cause for so called religious violence and most of the time the reason are socio-politico-economic. Religion is just used to fuel the fire. 

Hindus are living with their Muslim counterparts since long enough to be dated, but they never really mingled, their colonies were different from each other and though we may have history of Hindu-Muslim living together, they relationship was never homogeneous in nature. It is almost like animal Kingdom, they all live in jungle but in there own territory and with there own herd, pride, flight, group or whatever.

Hindu and Muslims are living separately together. As a Hindu I Know Id and Ramzan but that is it. I don’t know the significance, story, belief, epic and legend behind it so though I want to respect them; I am not real able to. And its not only about Muslims, Hindus have some kind of reverence for Buddha, Mahavira and Sikh Gurus. The reason as pointed in the book may be one that these are religion of Indian Origin. The other reason may be that we know the legend behind the Buddha and the Mahavira.

I personally like Bible and its stories a lot. The more i read it the more I love it and the more I love my own religion, may be because I see a connection (people are fond of find differences rather then similarities). Coming back, because I read Bible and know the legends I have a lot of respect of Jesus, the Christ and never ever I can think of vandalising a church. I will be scared of Jesus just like any other God of my religion of birth.

Though Hindu-Muslims-Christians live together, we are ignorant when it comes to respect each others belief. Every thing which doesn't go with our belief system is illogical to us. We explain even our occults with lot of logic but are not patient enough to mingle study and lend our heart and ears to the belief system of others.  

Until we are able to do it "India will always remain the melting pot of cultures, with lots of heterogeneous mixture and fire beneath the pot", and this heterogeneous mixture will never become Indian but will always be seen as Hindus, Muslim...etc..etc.    

 As Bob Marley used to say: 

That until the basic human rights are equally
Guaranteed to all, without regard to race
Dis a war

The morning thinker: Why do fools around me INVEST?

It was a Wednesday morning. I was commuting to work; it was a normal day with an anomalous business paper in my hands. The dark news of crumbling of the biggies of US financial jungle was out in Black & White. Dailies were filled with analysis, scrutiny, sarcasm and depressive words. It felt like there was no tomorrow. I have not yet invested a single buck in the stocks, yet I was feeling the pinch. Why?

Well the answer lies in the fact that all Indian ministers and chieftains of Indian banking behemoths were lying when they say that India is protected from the current financial turmoil. I don’t believe a word they say. This morning I was pondering sitting in a BEST bus (Mumbai’s public transport). I was pondering why the hell do these guys invest in stocks? What are their incentives and motivations? And why do they have such long faces every time the markets crash?

To find the answers I imagined a scenario. Analyst in me was put to work…

Let’s assume I am a guy who just got a job in a BPO. 10 months later I have a good corpus from my savings as I have very less expenses, say Rs.1, 00,000. I want to marry after 4 months and want to take housing loan, to buy a flat in Mumbai! To get superlative returns I invest in stocks. Which stocks do I buy? A friend told to buy some banking stocks. I thought he is right after all banks are doing great. My broker told me investments would appreciate by 20%. I was very happy. I had looked out for my flat as well. I had talked to the estate agent and inquire about the papers I would require to apply for a housing loan. Two months later my stocks crash.

I ask, why did I loose? Why the hell did I loose my hard earned money? All those night shifts, pacifying those angry American customers, why me? For the fist time in my life I buy an ET and read that some sub prime lending lead to the fall. After 4 week of reading the business dailies I understand that because some lazy American bum didn’t pay his mortgage, I lost my housing loan! I say this is unfair. On my last holiday in Goa, I saw how these American bankesr work one year and holiday for another. Our driver told us that these Americans work for a year and put all their money in FDs and come here and holiday! Just because his currency is worth 40 times mine I loose my dream home! I feel like going back to Goa and kicking that white man and screaming in his ear drums, “ run home you fools and pay your motgage!! You will loose your home and I will lose mine!”

What a beautiful story I thought! But I wish it was perfect. I had a gut feel that something was wrong. The systems thinker in me told that this ought to be a balanced loop not a negative reinforcing loop.

How come everybody is loosing, somebody must have gained. There must be some positive forces in this loop. Why was everybody happy earlier? What happened before this? Two things happened.

I the Indian got the job. The American went on a holiday. Na….
The American went on a holiday… Job got outsourced… Indian got the Job.

Now the cycle is complete.

So the loss is on both sides,

Short term:
American lost his job, Indian lost his house.

Long term:
American looses his house, Indian looses his job.

Vola !

One Angry AIRTEL Customer

Though Vodafone tops the list for highest number for unattended complaints, if you ask me it would be AIRTEL. I feel CRM is a term which doesn’t exist in the books of AIRTEL. This post is a result of shear frustration of dealing with customer care executives of AIRTEL. Finally I lodged a complaint with CORE (Consumer Online Resource and Empowerment System). This is a site supported by Ministry of Consumer Affairs. I found it to be a very useful site. It’s the JAGO GRAHAK JAGO Campaign initiative. So next time you have a to went your anger and agony you know where to go. BTW I have changed my service provider.
I also found a blog where there was an endless list of consumer grievances related to AIRTEL and other companies.

Highlights of CORE:

• Over 1.4 Crores hits received from 50 countries across the globe on www.core.nic.in till date
• Over 6.8 Lakhs Visits
• July 2008 witnessed 2,98,564 hits, 8,639 visits, 98,765 Page views respectively..
• 16940 Subscribers of CORE Centre E-Newsletter
• More than 1.15 lakhs of web pages of contents of different consumer related issues e.g. Caselaws, Acts, regulations, Gist of Judgments, Test Reports, Consumer Studies, Articles etc. are uploaded on CORE website. Every month’s new pages of contents are being added into CORE website.
• More than 47 Thousand Complaints received from March 2005 to July 2008 from all parts of India and also from abroad
• Total 1372 complaints (25.7% of all complaints handled) were resolved by CORE Centre from April 2008 to July 2008.
• In the month of July 2008 CORE has received 1241 Complaints, in which 440Complaints were resolved.
• Hindi version of CORE Centre website has been launched with selected links. More than 25 thousands hits are being registered per month in the Hindi section of CORE website.
• Arrangements made for more regional languages such as Telgu, Malayalam & Gujarati being added.
  
  My Complaint
  Complaint Id : 5605
  
  1. I was wrongly billed by the service provider on my prepaid card for using VAS downloads 2008. On contacting the customer care executive I came to know that it was for the accessing Internet services. But I had never activated GPRS services on my SIM. I was billed an exorbitant amount of Rs. 555. When I told this to the executive he registered my complaint and told that action will be taken immediately (within 24 hrs). After 2 days I called him again and then he told that he cannot do anything and I will have to go to Airtel Customer Relation Center and reach an executive on the hotline. My complaints were not properly entertained. First executive didn't hear my problem properly. Second one told that I will get my balance in 24 hrs. Till date I have not received a single penny!
  
  2. I had taken a VAS called tuney talk charging Rs. 20 monthly. After a while i wanted to discontinue and deactivated the service. But I am still being charged even after deactivation.
  
  
  My losses:
  - Monetory loss of Rs. 555 + RS. 20 * 4(months)
  
  - Bad response from custoner care executives.
  
  - Was not having any mobile service for 3 days for having no balace in the mobile. Which led to other opportunity costs( I was not able to recieve imp phone calls from my office.).
  
  I have now switched to another service provider. HURRAY!!!