Economic Independence

“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance..... We end today a period of ill fortune, and India discovers herself again.”

This is a part of the speech delivered by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru at the stroke of midnight on 15th August 1947 when India became an independent nation. And today we are an independent nation for over 60 years. But I still wonder if we can really call India independent! It is estimated that 20% of the population is below the poverty line and we call ourself independent. What are we independent of? Ignorance, poverty, superstitions, illiteracy, ethnic clashes, religious riots and the list goes on and on. Yes, we are independent of slavery, torture and injustice from the clutches of our imperialistic rulers. But does that mean we are completely independent. May be we should start celebrating August 15th as the day on which India became Politically Independent and that reminds us of the fact that we are yet to achieve Economic Independence. Gheorghe Elian, in his book "The Principle of Sovereignty Over Natural Resources", rightly says "One can hardly speak of a State's complete independence without its achieving economic independence, after freeing itself from political dependency." Political independence without economic independence can in no way free the teeming millions of the developing world from the poverty trap they are in.

Gandhiji is in a way lucky as he knew what or whom he should fight to achieve a politically independent country. But now we have many to fight against, and some are so trivial that we tend to neglect them even though they matter a lot. According to a recent report by UNESCO India has the highest rate of teacher absenteeism. As a consequence, we have failed to meet universal elementary education targets and we have the largest number of illiterates for any country. Need I say anything about corruption which is prevalent amongst every section of the society at every level. And we talk about independence in this nation where one third of its population earn less than Twenty Rupees a day. Being a part of independent nation, what do they have to celebrate?

We are independent in true sense only when we are economically free, only when no Indian goes to sleep hungry; only when every Indian can lead a life of dignity free from poverty, ignorance, and ill- health

Mumbai Blasts

This is in remembrance of all those 170 odd people who died in the serial train bomb blasts that rocked Mumbai exactly one year before on 11th July 2006. And nearly 900 people were injured in the incident, many severely. According to the Hindu newspaper dated 10th July 2007, many families are still to recover as the earning member of their family was dead or severely injured in the incident. And some victims are yet to recover from coma. Lets all pray that things will be fine for those affected families.

PS: Thanks to Dilip D'Souza for the compilation

The Matrix

Just like every other year campus recruitments happened and the freshers are almost done with the induction programme. And this year the freshers are all asked to send their academic details like courses, electives & projects done and the tools & technologies they are familiar with.
There is this one team in the company with only one requirement for the freshers in their team. And the project manager has given the HR a skill set requirement that should match for a fresher to be part of their team. The HR while analyzing the profiles of the freshers, come across a profile which matches to a very great extent. The HR personnel send the profile to the project manager, and they get an affirmative response but the final decision is left to the HR. The HR people then discuss among themselves.

CYPHER: We're not going to confirm him. Do you understand that?

TRINITY: Morpheus believes he is the One.

CYPHER: Do you?

TRINITY: I... it doesn't matter what I believe.

CYPHER: You don't, do you?

TRINITY: If you have something to say, I suggest you say it to Morpheus.

And the HR finally arranges a meeting between Morpheus, the Project Manager and the fresher.

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MORPHEUS: At last.

MORPHEUS: Let me tell you why you are here. You have come because you know something. What you know you can't explain but you feel it. It's there like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.Do you know what I'm talking about?

NEO: The Matrix? I have heard its an important project.

MORPHEUS: Do you want to know what it is?

Neo swallows hard and nods.

MORPHEUS: Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. I can give u, just a basic intro.

Its to do with the NDA agreement. Access to the project info will be given only after signing the NDA.

Morpheus opens his hands. In the right is a red candy. In the left, a blue one.

MORPHEUS: This is your last chance. After this, there is no going back. You take the blue candy and the story ends. You will have to look after someother team.

The candies in his open hands are reflected in the glasses Neo uses to help him with his Myopia.

MORPHEUS: You take the red candy and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how great cutting edge technologies we use.

Neo feels the smooth surface of the candies, the moisture growing in his palms. After a split second decision he takes the red one.

Morpheus starts explaining him what the Matrix is all about. Listening to the entire OHT stuff Neo couldnt resist sleeping.


And the half-conscious Neo falls onto the floor. Human hands and arms help him up as he finds himself looking straight at Morpheus.

He smiles.

MORPHEUS: Welcome to the corporate world, Neo.

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PS: Special mention goes to the site scifiscripts.com for the Matrix movie script.

Musings & Learnings for the day

Fantastic Four and its sequel Rise of the Silver Surfer, both the movies have taught me lessons. Yesterday night I was watching Fantastic Four, I have watched it before but thought of refreshing myself with this movie as I saw its sequel very recently, till 1.00 AM in the night and never realised when I slept. And today morning I found my glasses, spectacles I use to help me with my myopia, broken. So the lesson is obvious, if you are in a dilemma whether to buy a new pair of glasses or not watch movies till late in the night.

The sequel has taught me something very important. Those who have seen the movie will know how important Sue, The Invisible Woman, is among the Fantastic Four. The Silver Surfer, originally Norrin Radd from the planet Zenn La, who is supposed to destroy the Earth to save his planet from the hands of Galactus ends up helping the Fantanstic Four. The reason is, typical Indian movie sentiment, Sue reminds him of his back home (i mean back planet) love. This proves the importance and the advantage of having a team member of fairer sex. So all you managers and future managers out there, keep this point in mind.

Read the book Intelligent Design, atleast go through their website. It gives a completely different perspective of evolution, but the description of aliens match with my analysis to some extent.

If you happen to work on gcc and use gdb to debug the code, always use option -g for compiling the project. It will make your job easier while debugging.

Most of us aren't aware that Google's GTalk has come up with support for Conference, they call it Group Chat and have introduced only in the web version of their GTalk. Hope they support this feature in the regular version of GTalk very soon.

And this is something serious. Everyday on the way to office from home in the cab, I come across a traffic police who does his job very sincerely. But that perfection with which he signals and controls traffic make me laugh. And this is not the case with only me. May be its because we rarely come across people who do their job perfectly. But is that all we give in response for perfection?