So the verdict is out loud and clear. The mantra of “Ma Mati and Manush” had its final sway in the Red bastion of Bengal. The LaalBhais (as once Bala Saheb Thackerayjee derisively addressed them) have been routed out lock, stock and barrel, with many Left stalwarts even losing their deposits. Mamata Banerjee described the victory as, “ a second freedom” for Bengal!
Such is the world of politics that once invincible, arrogant and stubborn Left is left with very few takers, after the drubbing they got in Bengal and Kerala(although performed better in Kerala). From being a major opposition party in the 50’s they have almost been reduced to a state or two. Some have put it with wit “Left has nothing left in them now”. So can we put the RIP tomb stone on the Red grave? Is this the end of the once powerful Indian Left movement? Is this the “end of history” moment for India?
Left movement started with, in the early 30’s with heavy intellectual like M.N.Roy as its janak. Dilly dallying many times whether to join the then Indian National Movement under congress leadership, the Left always were an intriguing and strange party since the beginning. As Shree Manmohan Singhji many times said “Our Friends from Left have always been on the wrong side of History”. 1942 they decided not participate in the Quit India Movement, since Russia got involved in the war! No sooner did India achieve freedom, than the Left declared that Indian war of independence is not over, now the Indian masses need to be relieved from the Indian yoke too! And with this idea in, they clandestinely began fighting against the legitimate Indian government. May be this was the second sin of the Indian Communists.
There on, from the covert support for the Naxalbari movement, to the overt support to China during the China war, to the stubborn opposition to computers -all this certainly points to the fact what Mr.PM was stressing on. Meanwhile in late 70’s the young lawyer Mr.Jyoti Basu seized the opportunity with promise for land reforms movement and came to power -a successful political manoeuvring which Mamtajee bettered later in the Singur-Nandigram days to come.
Till date Kerala and West Bengal (thanks to the then Basu Government) remain the only states which did the land reforms exceptionally well. Unlike in Mahrashtra and other states, in these two states it would be difficult to find 400 acres of land under one person or families control! Yes that was a big turning point in the history of Bengal, which the Left successfully milked till now. But in the present election this cash-cow (or vote-cow?) has gone dry!
All said and done, it won’t augur well for the country if the Left is left to die a silent death. All this while, the only meaningful debate and opposition has come from the Left alone on major policies of the Govt may it be nuclear deal or privatization policies, with little or no voice coming in from the other major opposition parties! It is also a fact that our comrades have shown much higher integrity and simplicity in public life (if we leave one or two exceptions like Pinnarai Vijayan) compared to others in the echelons of power.
What would be needed from the Left as of now would be a total Indianization of the Left movement. Dump away the old clothes of Stalin, Lenin and Mao. They stink in this age. Change the ideology to suit the Indian masses. And be practical – opposing computers, investments, and branding the non-communists as CIA agents won’t take you far. Think in the interest of the country and not the interest of the DIY-communist-kit -- the "Red Book". Reform and revitalize the left movement for the betterment of this country!
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
The Jan LokPal – a panacea for all ills?
Take a look at some important diary of events till now
• A series of government scams all running into multi billion dollars, and some of them might even be the GDP of small countries like Bhutan!
• Months long public protests by citizens of some WANA (West Asia North Africa) region countries against despotic regimes there.
• A scintillating world cup victory for India after a generational gap of 28 years, which left the urban middle class public mood very ecstatic and, patriotic too, with shouts of Vande mataram and Bharat mata ki jai!
And enter Shri Anna Hazare with his coterie of activists, with their demand for Jan Lokpal! A brilliant timing! What more can the media and urban middle class ask for? After four days of fast, the weak central government blinked to the pressure tactics applied by the so called “non governmental organization”. Within no time the gang of activists became the darling of the media.
Shri Anna Hazare jee exhorted people “Jail Bharo!” as if we were living under British Raj! And youth also got a feeling of having-done-their-bit for the country by tweeting, sending sms, taking online polls. When was the last time when the youth of the present generation came in numbers for protest? Yes it was by again some “non governmental organization” named Youth for equality who protested on streets against the OBC reservation introduced in the central educational institutes. Did they come on streets when Dalits were deprived off their self-respect? Did they come forward for the womans reservation which is also lying like the lokpal bill in sarkari files? They only come forward when it affects them! They would ring up the fire brigade only when their house is burning. And this act they call as patriotism!
It is no one's case that there should not be strong anti -corruption laws in the country. But the ways and means taken up by the activists were really very coercive and undemocratic in nature. Can the various governmental problems be solved in such ways? Would the government blink tomorrow, when some XYZ NGO comes up and fasts until death unless the Kashmir issue is sorted out in 72 hours? Can such ultimatums be given to the democratically elected governments?
And needless to say all those youth who were gungho, to come on to the media and pledge their support, might not even have taken a look at the proposals made by “jan” Lokpal Bill. The bill straight away jettisons the tried and tested method of “checks and balances” incorporated in the various arms of the democratic set up, by the Indian constitution. It tries to create a draconian authority who can summon any one; suo mottu initiate actions investigate and even play the role of courts! A kind of super cop, super judiciary and a parallel government of sorts!
Moreover the laws of any democratic country are usually made by the legislators who are the “true” representatives of people, how-much-ever corrupt they be! It is a fact. This should be the first time in India where a non-elected body will be part of drafting a law, which is a DANGEROUS precedent. How do one filter out a civil society organization? Whom do they represent? Can they speak for whole of India?
Then the question comes what should be done for stopping the rampant corruption? Should we just sit and watch? Yes there cannot be an instant-ready-to-work solution like so many other lacunae present in democratic set up. A beginning to all this should be to get down to the roots.
Roots being the electoral reforms like
• make the intra party elections mandatory so that dynasty politics is done away with
• Stop the entry of goons in the main stream politics
• Curb the flow of ill-gotten money during elections; Make it mandatory to publish the income expenditure records for all the people who contest elections.
All this needs to be done so that entering main stream politics does not remain a privilege of few wealthy people with good “connections”. And when such a thing happens then no one needs to fast till death to bring about legislations needed.
Of course all these are from a layman’s perspective. There would be technical difficulties in this too.
Also one should not forget that it was Gandhiji who said, after attaining independence, fasts should not be used against the government, as there would be ample democratic means and ways to seek redressal to public grievances. Same were the views of Dr.BabaSaheb Ambedkar the architect of Indian constitution.
• A series of government scams all running into multi billion dollars, and some of them might even be the GDP of small countries like Bhutan!
• Months long public protests by citizens of some WANA (West Asia North Africa) region countries against despotic regimes there.
• A scintillating world cup victory for India after a generational gap of 28 years, which left the urban middle class public mood very ecstatic and, patriotic too, with shouts of Vande mataram and Bharat mata ki jai!
And enter Shri Anna Hazare with his coterie of activists, with their demand for Jan Lokpal! A brilliant timing! What more can the media and urban middle class ask for? After four days of fast, the weak central government blinked to the pressure tactics applied by the so called “non governmental organization”. Within no time the gang of activists became the darling of the media.
Shri Anna Hazare jee exhorted people “Jail Bharo!” as if we were living under British Raj! And youth also got a feeling of having-done-their-bit for the country by tweeting, sending sms, taking online polls. When was the last time when the youth of the present generation came in numbers for protest? Yes it was by again some “non governmental organization” named Youth for equality who protested on streets against the OBC reservation introduced in the central educational institutes. Did they come on streets when Dalits were deprived off their self-respect? Did they come forward for the womans reservation which is also lying like the lokpal bill in sarkari files? They only come forward when it affects them! They would ring up the fire brigade only when their house is burning. And this act they call as patriotism!
It is no one's case that there should not be strong anti -corruption laws in the country. But the ways and means taken up by the activists were really very coercive and undemocratic in nature. Can the various governmental problems be solved in such ways? Would the government blink tomorrow, when some XYZ NGO comes up and fasts until death unless the Kashmir issue is sorted out in 72 hours? Can such ultimatums be given to the democratically elected governments?
And needless to say all those youth who were gungho, to come on to the media and pledge their support, might not even have taken a look at the proposals made by “jan” Lokpal Bill. The bill straight away jettisons the tried and tested method of “checks and balances” incorporated in the various arms of the democratic set up, by the Indian constitution. It tries to create a draconian authority who can summon any one; suo mottu initiate actions investigate and even play the role of courts! A kind of super cop, super judiciary and a parallel government of sorts!
Moreover the laws of any democratic country are usually made by the legislators who are the “true” representatives of people, how-much-ever corrupt they be! It is a fact. This should be the first time in India where a non-elected body will be part of drafting a law, which is a DANGEROUS precedent. How do one filter out a civil society organization? Whom do they represent? Can they speak for whole of India?
Then the question comes what should be done for stopping the rampant corruption? Should we just sit and watch? Yes there cannot be an instant-ready-to-work solution like so many other lacunae present in democratic set up. A beginning to all this should be to get down to the roots.
Roots being the electoral reforms like
• make the intra party elections mandatory so that dynasty politics is done away with
• Stop the entry of goons in the main stream politics
• Curb the flow of ill-gotten money during elections; Make it mandatory to publish the income expenditure records for all the people who contest elections.
All this needs to be done so that entering main stream politics does not remain a privilege of few wealthy people with good “connections”. And when such a thing happens then no one needs to fast till death to bring about legislations needed.
Of course all these are from a layman’s perspective. There would be technical difficulties in this too.
Also one should not forget that it was Gandhiji who said, after attaining independence, fasts should not be used against the government, as there would be ample democratic means and ways to seek redressal to public grievances. Same were the views of Dr.BabaSaheb Ambedkar the architect of Indian constitution.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Birthday suits and world cup
Cup mania! Nudity and the world cup: All the nudity that we have seen in world cups is of Dada appearing top less ( should we term it as nudity?). Now in news was a girl who was ready to strip if India lifts the world cup. And guess what? To add spice to the already “hot” cup some local parties have protested, saying govt should take action against her! And the icing on the cake comes from PETA, which says “Strip for animals, not for cricketers!”. Wonder called India! Someone wants to shed her clothes and we have political parties crying that government should leave all its work and go after that silly girl. I was wondering, what if government obliges? Well if the government obliges, then in typical sarkari style it will have to first set up a committee something like Naagdu committee ( pun intended to rhyme with Shunglu committee), which will have nominated members like Rakhi Sawant, Mallika Sherawat, Madhu Sapre heading it! N.B: In such news TOI does a commendable job. Those days wont be far away when TOI will be aquired by Gossip and Glamour magazines of west, Or is it already done clandestinely?)
Monday, February 14, 2011
Living with Liza
One evening after a hard day in office, as I slouched on my couch, I heard some hissing, wrangling sound among the pile of books on the slab. I rushed there in an instant. And I saw her.
She was trying to hide from me. Trying to run away from me. Hesitating to look into my eyes. A kind of shyness I guess. And once in a while giving me coquettish glances. I tried to shoo her away. In the process she made a blitzkrieg movement and scared the shit out of me! In one big somersault, I reached my bedroom, and closed the door firmly with a bang , like you see in Hindi movies where the female protagonist bangs the door, to avoid the goon attempting to outrage her modesty. Then I switched off the light and pretended like an ostrich that there is nothing to worry about.
But there was more in store. Now her sight became quite familiar to me. Hiding at impossible places, like the small one inch space between the cupboard and the wall, the gaps between the tubelight holder and the wall, the tiny creeks and crevices in the walls and doors, and at times only her tail being visible, dangling as if she be dancing to some tune'sheela sheela kee jawaani'. In the process I realized that the walls and doors have more crevices than the plane surface!
May be it was for her that Ghalib wrote
Woh aayay hamaray ghar par khuda kee kudrat hain
Kabhi ham unko aur kabhi deewar ko dayktay hain
Initial few days I resisted and despised her presence. Armed with a broom, I tried to physically threaten her. The broom in hand was no match for the Jackie Chan like sharp movements of her. I searched through Google, for all the ways and means to drive her and her tribe away. I tried making use of empty egg shells. I tried different herbs and medicines, but in vain. Dawaa bhi kaam na aayay dua bhi na lagay!Then I took recourse to solution-for-all-problems- channel Asian sky shop/ TeleBrand show. There were myriads of goods for sale, from Tummy reducer to Wealth creating Rudraksha and Dhanalaxmi yantras, but there was nothing for Liza and her tribe.
Finally, left with Hobson’s choice I signed a bilateral peace treaty with her. As per the treaty she was not to cross her territory (maryaada?) and me not to disturb her. And we are still living peacefully.
Please follow the link(link to be updated later) to catch a glimpse of her, in her meditative aasan, which she can incredibly hold for hours together.
P.S Don’t ask me why Liza? How do I know if she is a female?
I am not a zoologist and neither did I lift her yuck tail!!!!
She was trying to hide from me. Trying to run away from me. Hesitating to look into my eyes. A kind of shyness I guess. And once in a while giving me coquettish glances. I tried to shoo her away. In the process she made a blitzkrieg movement and scared the shit out of me! In one big somersault, I reached my bedroom, and closed the door firmly with a bang , like you see in Hindi movies where the female protagonist bangs the door, to avoid the goon attempting to outrage her modesty. Then I switched off the light and pretended like an ostrich that there is nothing to worry about.
But there was more in store. Now her sight became quite familiar to me. Hiding at impossible places, like the small one inch space between the cupboard and the wall, the gaps between the tubelight holder and the wall, the tiny creeks and crevices in the walls and doors, and at times only her tail being visible, dangling as if she be dancing to some tune'sheela sheela kee jawaani'. In the process I realized that the walls and doors have more crevices than the plane surface!
May be it was for her that Ghalib wrote
Woh aayay hamaray ghar par khuda kee kudrat hain
Kabhi ham unko aur kabhi deewar ko dayktay hain
Initial few days I resisted and despised her presence. Armed with a broom, I tried to physically threaten her. The broom in hand was no match for the Jackie Chan like sharp movements of her. I searched through Google, for all the ways and means to drive her and her tribe away. I tried making use of empty egg shells. I tried different herbs and medicines, but in vain. Dawaa bhi kaam na aayay dua bhi na lagay!Then I took recourse to solution-for-all-problems- channel Asian sky shop/ TeleBrand show. There were myriads of goods for sale, from Tummy reducer to Wealth creating Rudraksha and Dhanalaxmi yantras, but there was nothing for Liza and her tribe.
Finally, left with Hobson’s choice I signed a bilateral peace treaty with her. As per the treaty she was not to cross her territory (maryaada?) and me not to disturb her. And we are still living peacefully.
Please follow the link(link to be updated later) to catch a glimpse of her, in her meditative aasan, which she can incredibly hold for hours together.
P.S Don’t ask me why Liza? How do I know if she is a female?
I am not a zoologist and neither did I lift her yuck tail!!!!
Monday, July 26, 2010
How to milk a chicken?
Following are ten different ways of milking a chicken (AMUL and Chitale brothers are you listening?)
1.Hire a team of smart professionals from McKinsey and Goldman Sachs. Pay them xxxBillion $. Get some fancy diagrams, presentations, feel-good-sentences (where there is a will there is a glass of milk!) and long sessions in training room for the chickens.
2.Take updates from the chickens everyday. Ask them three questions : How much i tried to produce milk yesterday? Any problems? and how will i improve milk production tomorrow?
3.Announce "internal salary adjustments" for all the chickens. May be 1 and 2 % hikes will propel them to produce milk!
4.For national level chickens, appoint committees like Arjun Sen Gupta committe or Sri Krishna committe. Give committee chairmen a paid holiday of 10 years on producing a 3000 page long report on "how to milk a chicken" ( I am not part of this committee !). And later on discuss this report in Parliament for next 5 years with Empowered Group of Ministers meeting in Maurya Sheraton every now and then.
5.Or better, chickens which do not produce milk might have migrated from Bihar or UP! So drive them away as they are a stigma in the name of chicken!
6.Take the chicken in a closed meeting room. Ask the chicken "what are the proactive measures? What are the preventive actions?Do you need any help, support or guidance?" And any other management jargons u like.And keep on questioning the chicken till the time milk trickles down or it dies!
7.Or work on motivating chicken. Send the chicken to onsite
8.Or start an anonymous chicken satisfaction survey, where in all the chickens would put their problems which hinder them from producing milk. And later on form a panel of 10 people to discuss-dine-wine the results for next 10 months or so, till the next time of chicken satisfaction survey comes.
9. Hire a phoren returned highly-riduclously- paid manager and ask him to repeat every now and then " you can, you will and no excuses!" to the chickens. May be that would help!
10.Rope in Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar for all the above injustice done to chickens and start Chicken Bachoo Andolan
May be by this time chickens would have got arms from Nepal and China and waged a war against India Inc and Indian govt :)
Any resemblance to any real character or place is just a coincidence
1.Hire a team of smart professionals from McKinsey and Goldman Sachs. Pay them xxxBillion $. Get some fancy diagrams, presentations, feel-good-sentences (where there is a will there is a glass of milk!) and long sessions in training room for the chickens.
2.Take updates from the chickens everyday. Ask them three questions : How much i tried to produce milk yesterday? Any problems? and how will i improve milk production tomorrow?
3.Announce "internal salary adjustments" for all the chickens. May be 1 and 2 % hikes will propel them to produce milk!
4.For national level chickens, appoint committees like Arjun Sen Gupta committe or Sri Krishna committe. Give committee chairmen a paid holiday of 10 years on producing a 3000 page long report on "how to milk a chicken" ( I am not part of this committee !). And later on discuss this report in Parliament for next 5 years with Empowered Group of Ministers meeting in Maurya Sheraton every now and then.
5.Or better, chickens which do not produce milk might have migrated from Bihar or UP! So drive them away as they are a stigma in the name of chicken!
6.Take the chicken in a closed meeting room. Ask the chicken "what are the proactive measures? What are the preventive actions?Do you need any help, support or guidance?" And any other management jargons u like.And keep on questioning the chicken till the time milk trickles down or it dies!
7.Or work on motivating chicken. Send the chicken to onsite
8.Or start an anonymous chicken satisfaction survey, where in all the chickens would put their problems which hinder them from producing milk. And later on form a panel of 10 people to discuss-dine-wine the results for next 10 months or so, till the next time of chicken satisfaction survey comes.
9. Hire a phoren returned highly-riduclously- paid manager and ask him to repeat every now and then " you can, you will and no excuses!" to the chickens. May be that would help!
10.Rope in Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar for all the above injustice done to chickens and start Chicken Bachoo Andolan
May be by this time chickens would have got arms from Nepal and China and waged a war against India Inc and Indian govt :)
Any resemblance to any real character or place is just a coincidence
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Once upon a time there was a manager...
Working with TT systems was always a fun for me. Everyday you get to see so many variety of people, so many things to observe and laugh at.
One such incident confronted me last week. She was a manager in TT systems. A typical north indian, whom you could see hopping around from one meeting room to another, with a laptop hugged to her bossom. A very frail, lean figure but with an air of arrogance( of course, did n't i say she is a manager?). One could always hear her shouting at one or the another team mate, hurling insults for not being competent enough!
So it happened we left for the day in our company bus, on our arduous jounrey to Sanghvi/Aundh. There was a drunkard, on the road, driving a bike. He was swaying from one side to another, in a typical Rakhi Sawant Jhatka type. Our bus driver being a skilled professional for quite some time, saved his life. So was he saved by the car coming from back, second time.
But our dear manager did not save him for the third time! She had an head on collision with this drunkard's bike with her car. He was lying on the road badly hurt, with a pool of blood around. People as usual, crowded around. Gheroed the manager, who by now was very tense and shit scared, with cheek and nose almost turning pinkish-red. I could see the whole drama being enacted, from the bus window. Our bus stopped.
Two of our over enthusiastic colleagues, Mr.X and Mr.Y alighted from the bus to help our manager. By now the crowd multiplied in numbers. There were talks of calling the police, ambulance, settlement... Mr. X and Mr Y entered the scene, bringing in lot of passion, for helping our dear little manager. Since settling indian-road-accident-disputes is not a quick fix thing, the bus memebers decided to leave, leaving Mr.X and Mr.Y at the accident site.
Settling the things took hell lot of time. It took almost an hour or two for the duo to help the manager out of this mess gracefully. And the issue was settled for some meager amount. Thanks to the duo, otherwise the manger would had to pay through her nose! So every thing said and done! Now it was time to part ways.
And here comes the hilarious part. The manager quipped, " I stay near by only. I have almost reached. See you tomorrow!"
The duo, stared at each other with a puzzled, helpless look. And then they enquired rikshawaala to drop them till Sanghvi, but the little bastard opened his mouth little too much. He said it would at least cost them 300 bucks with half return that amounts to 450 odd bucks. geeeeee.
So they boarded a PMT bus, and some how reached near by place. Ringed me and i dropped them to their homes.
So moral of the story: Beware of managers, and more so of female managers!
One such incident confronted me last week. She was a manager in TT systems. A typical north indian, whom you could see hopping around from one meeting room to another, with a laptop hugged to her bossom. A very frail, lean figure but with an air of arrogance( of course, did n't i say she is a manager?). One could always hear her shouting at one or the another team mate, hurling insults for not being competent enough!
So it happened we left for the day in our company bus, on our arduous jounrey to Sanghvi/Aundh. There was a drunkard, on the road, driving a bike. He was swaying from one side to another, in a typical Rakhi Sawant Jhatka type. Our bus driver being a skilled professional for quite some time, saved his life. So was he saved by the car coming from back, second time.
But our dear manager did not save him for the third time! She had an head on collision with this drunkard's bike with her car. He was lying on the road badly hurt, with a pool of blood around. People as usual, crowded around. Gheroed the manager, who by now was very tense and shit scared, with cheek and nose almost turning pinkish-red. I could see the whole drama being enacted, from the bus window. Our bus stopped.
Two of our over enthusiastic colleagues, Mr.X and Mr.Y alighted from the bus to help our manager. By now the crowd multiplied in numbers. There were talks of calling the police, ambulance, settlement... Mr. X and Mr Y entered the scene, bringing in lot of passion, for helping our dear little manager. Since settling indian-road-accident-disputes is not a quick fix thing, the bus memebers decided to leave, leaving Mr.X and Mr.Y at the accident site.
Settling the things took hell lot of time. It took almost an hour or two for the duo to help the manager out of this mess gracefully. And the issue was settled for some meager amount. Thanks to the duo, otherwise the manger would had to pay through her nose! So every thing said and done! Now it was time to part ways.
And here comes the hilarious part. The manager quipped, " I stay near by only. I have almost reached. See you tomorrow!"
The duo, stared at each other with a puzzled, helpless look. And then they enquired rikshawaala to drop them till Sanghvi, but the little bastard opened his mouth little too much. He said it would at least cost them 300 bucks with half return that amounts to 450 odd bucks. geeeeee.
So they boarded a PMT bus, and some how reached near by place. Ringed me and i dropped them to their homes.
So moral of the story: Beware of managers, and more so of female managers!
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
We the humans...
Marriage as a social institution has always been a puzzle for me. Why do people marry? And if at all they do why do they end up in such mess, out of self initiative? All this lead me to do some soul searching on marriage.
Primarily from the Darwinian theory we know that there are only two primary instincts in man, like any other animal:
To survive
To reproduce
At the physical dimension, these are the only two prime moving factors for humans, like any other animal. The strive for survival is interesting in humans. It revolves around roti,kapda and makaan.I call this strive to be interesting because no other species of animal die out of hunger in the jungle, except for man in this non-jungle civilized world! Isn't it an amazing fact? No tree dies out of hunger thirst? Even it gets nourishment at its own place without doing any movement of limb(?). But man, "the most important, intelligent" creation dies out of hunger? Is it not a shame for the aadam zaat that 25 000 people are dying of hunger and poverty every day?
Well that is topic for another time. Lets move onto the second point of reproduction. Every specie has this inborn instinct to keep itself alive through future generations, a process called reproduction. And in most species of animals and insects it is the male which is very aggressive and takes the lead in the sexual activity. All the male of most species are polygamous by nature i.e they copulate with multiple mates.
This should have been the case with humans too. In the distant past in the early versions(? IT man) of human race, men should have copulated with multiple females. Then came the rules and customs for this. Rules like people within the same tribe, family should not copulate as by experience they came to know that this leads to weaker new generation. See . But it was also evident the stronger male, say like the leader of the tribe, had higher chances of taking away all the mates and leaving none for the others. This might have forced the society to bring up the idea of Monogamy and hence the insititution of marriage.
So marriage in this civilized world is an euphemism for the second basic instinct. Then over the years with strong religious and cultural programming many things came to be associated with marriage. Then marriages started to be made in heaven!
So by now we conclude that man is internally at the core an animal.
But there are also other dimensions for humans. In spite of being an animal it has somethings which are very unique and very different than other animals. No am not talking about physical differences like ability of grip and bigger brain. But the ability to think, ability to emote!
Yes it certainly sets human apart from the animals. With his thought process, his emotions he has sharpened his survival instincts. It is not for no reasons that man can be found in any and every part of the earth where there is no other species, like in Antarctica there are scientists who have spent 20 odd years!
But another question is do we really think? Or is it that only few think and others follow the herd? Some set the trend others follow the beaten path? Some venture ahead with the torch in hand and others grope in dark?
Primarily from the Darwinian theory we know that there are only two primary instincts in man, like any other animal:
To survive
To reproduce
At the physical dimension, these are the only two prime moving factors for humans, like any other animal. The strive for survival is interesting in humans. It revolves around roti,kapda and makaan.I call this strive to be interesting because no other species of animal die out of hunger in the jungle, except for man in this non-jungle civilized world! Isn't it an amazing fact? No tree dies out of hunger thirst? Even it gets nourishment at its own place without doing any movement of limb(?). But man, "the most important, intelligent" creation dies out of hunger? Is it not a shame for the aadam zaat that 25 000 people are dying of hunger and poverty every day?
Well that is topic for another time. Lets move onto the second point of reproduction. Every specie has this inborn instinct to keep itself alive through future generations, a process called reproduction. And in most species of animals and insects it is the male which is very aggressive and takes the lead in the sexual activity. All the male of most species are polygamous by nature i.e they copulate with multiple mates.
This should have been the case with humans too. In the distant past in the early versions(? IT man) of human race, men should have copulated with multiple females. Then came the rules and customs for this. Rules like people within the same tribe, family should not copulate as by experience they came to know that this leads to weaker new generation. See . But it was also evident the stronger male, say like the leader of the tribe, had higher chances of taking away all the mates and leaving none for the others. This might have forced the society to bring up the idea of Monogamy and hence the insititution of marriage.
So marriage in this civilized world is an euphemism for the second basic instinct. Then over the years with strong religious and cultural programming many things came to be associated with marriage. Then marriages started to be made in heaven!
So by now we conclude that man is internally at the core an animal.
But there are also other dimensions for humans. In spite of being an animal it has somethings which are very unique and very different than other animals. No am not talking about physical differences like ability of grip and bigger brain. But the ability to think, ability to emote!
Yes it certainly sets human apart from the animals. With his thought process, his emotions he has sharpened his survival instincts. It is not for no reasons that man can be found in any and every part of the earth where there is no other species, like in Antarctica there are scientists who have spent 20 odd years!
But another question is do we really think? Or is it that only few think and others follow the herd? Some set the trend others follow the beaten path? Some venture ahead with the torch in hand and others grope in dark?
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