Friday 30 December 2011

something is missing....I don't know why?

I wrote this poem when I was in 10th std.

In the midst of July,
when there is brightness in the sky
the trees are swinging, the flowers are laughing...
and leaves are talking to every passerby.....


something is missing....I don't know why?


The vehicles are moving, faces are grooming
when hawkers are singing, pakodas are ready to fry....


something is missing....I don't know why?



sometimes I thought.........

I wrote this poem when I was in std. 8th.


Oh! God,
Sometimes I thought, what I've got is enough or not,
and sometimes I thought, that what I've got is just a part...... of a filled pot
and have the desire to get a lot,
but as a matter of fact, what I got is enough.... and a bit more from the rest part, and a lesson is learnt.....
to be greedy not.


God is great.., He has given some or the other thing in everybody's plate
it's you have to decide, how to Take and make its Best...


Thursday 29 September 2011

ROADIES' AUDITION AND THE YOUTH OF TODAY-Learn to be YOURSELF

MTV Roadies is the most popular show among the India youth today. Though I have not followed all the episodes of any season but I never miss the auditions as I find so many astonishing facts about the youth of today. The way Raghu and friendz make them zero in on what they actually are is worth noticing. This is more of a concern rather than entertainment. It is pathetic to learn that the future of India lacks a vision, a goal to attain and are running blindly to have name and fame. For them 'easy money' is all that they want, when they are being asked 'what is the quality that you have to become the winner?' they stammer, say anything, boast of their physique and beauty, want to prove themselves but don't know  their own 'self', what is that they want to prove is again a blind reply, something that they failed to prove in some part of life, may be a compartment in some subject at High school or a fail in Secondary results, a feeling of not having enough power to hit back a classmate or senior or last but not the least to prove the parents that 'I am worth something'........... an endless list.The shows of this sort fascinate them the most as you become a rock star overnight, you are being watched at TV no matter what you do whether you bring shame to your family by using the abusive language at its extreme or being proved a cheater or a good for nothing fellow, and you have ample opportunities to make money....easy money in a short time(with no offense to the tasks that are really tough and some of the  very creative ones)

Exactly the same situation is faced by them when they face an interviewer, they write something in the resume and speak out a different thing.They write they 'want to work in an organization where I get maximum chance to learn' but at the back of mind goes 'where I get maximum chance to earn'. The same goes in my counseling sessions when I ask 'why do you want to do MBA?, the answer comes, 'I want a good job?' , 'what kind of job is good for you?' no answer, 'what is the profile that you are looking for?' 'don't know', where do you see yourself after 5 years?', 'not sure', 'I want to do MBA to become a good businessman', what business do you have in your  mind?', 'any'.......

This gap of 'what you want' and 'what you say you want' is an alarming situation for a country which has a phenomenal population of youth.The skill gap, employability everything else revolves around this. Though such shows are a source of entertainment but  some useful lessons that you can draw form these auditions are:

  • Know Yourself
  • Be clear about your thoughts
  • Be yourself
  • Be focused
  • Have your goals set and put a deadline on them.
  • Don't ever try to pose yourself as what you want to be but accept what you are.
  • Acknowledge your weaknesses.
  • Don't assume, prove by doing not by saying.

The feedback and comments are welcomed at suphia.q@gmail.com

Friday 16 September 2011

Why not use the money of the uncountable scams to subsidize petrol??? Will Lokpal do something about it??

The increasing rate of inflation, price hike and poor infrastructural facilities and a phenomenal number of scams are causing consistent disappointment and distrust among the citizens.Though Anna Hazare's Campaign against corruption and the Lokpal Bill sounds promising I am not very much convinced with it, there should be an ultimate solution to all these problems which could be possible only by some of the radical changes and out of the box tactics.

One such type could be rather than keeping corrupt politicians to jail, their looted money and their personal property as well should be utilized for a common cause. Take for instance Suresh Kalmadi, A Raja, Amar Singh etc. sell all the personal wealth of these people (of course with due consideration to their families, but they too have to suffer the misdeeds of their dear ones as the property gets registered in their names only) and subsidize petrol which is blowing the middle class off.  And if this becomes law that anyone who is involved in corruption he will be deprived of his personal property and the amount itself will be confiscated, I am sure they will dare not cheat the millions of people whose hard earned money is being poured into the system in terms of hell lot of taxes as when it comes to your own loss or you know that if I do such act my family is ultimately going to suffer then only you will realize the importance of all that money which goes into all such scams. If you look at Harshad Mehta's case, the tremendous amount of money he made will be sufficient for generations to generations of his irrespective of the punishment he got and though the accounts were seized but in the mean time he had enjoyed all the luxuries of life whereas people might be starving to death at the same time somewhere.

It should be made mandatory for the govt. to disclose the amount seized in various scams and cases and to give an account of how that money is used publicly. All the govt. schemes and grants are aimed at BPL people and needless to mention how fruitful they are, no scheme has ever been formulated for the middle class strata who actually bears the burden of tax as poor are exempted, rich are evaders, the salaries employees which form the chunk of middle class have to pay the tax honestly and with the same honesty have to bear the burden of price hike as they need to adjust their budget, their salaries will not get adjusted.

When I heard that petrol prices are going to increase because the govt. could not subsidize it anymore, the first question that came to my mind was why not use the money of the uncountable scams to subsidize petrol???

Wednesday 14 September 2011

Hindi For Foreigners, English for Indians-Be proud of your mother tongue.

'Hindi For Foreigners, English for Indians'.

This is the proposed title of a book I am working on, the draft is almost completed. It consist of mostly the lessons I prepared to teach foreigners. While teaching these lessons to the foreigners (mostly from UK and some from Arab) I learnt so many fascinating facts about the language which I had never thought and was unaware of  and believe me they made me feel proud of knowing the language. My first mentee to learn Hindi was Phillip, a man from London who knew a bit of Bengali.He was in his 50s when he approached me to learn Hindi. For me it was the first experience to teach my mother tongue to a foreigner. I took it lightly and started preparing lessons for him, but  to my surprise it was tough.. very tough....right form alphabets to phonetics to sounds, required a thorough preparation as Hindi is a phonetic language with aspirated and nasalized sounds whereas English is different in all these aspects. I searched, researched and learnt about it and the first lesson is done. As it was my first experience and probably one of its kind in Bhopal as there are no institutions that provides Hindi learnig classes, it was difficult for me to decide how much should I be charging for the classes and as always I discussed it with my family but not that happy with the response, my family underestimated the worth of their own language, their mother tongue and asked me to charge very low saying 'you are not teaching English, you are teaching Hindi', I was taken aback and told them the importance of Hindi in terms of its richness. I explained them that Hindi language is so very rich if you look at the script, the phonetics and the sounds and a special mention of the culmination of various other languages like Persian, Arabic etc.
And above all the feeling of pride that one must associate with the mother tongue. South Indians are a good example of that, they feel proud to speak the regional language of their region may it be Telugu or Tamil, they place it above the National Language. Don't want to indulge into that debate of imposing Hindi language over them but one thing that must be appreciated is the way they have developed themselves in terms of education and technology. There, the regional language has never been an obstacle in their growth unlike many under developed states of the country e.g M.P. where you find a huge gap of talent just because they cannot speak good English. From the elementary level, regional language is taugh in South and there is an absolute freedom to innovate and produce research papers in the local language whereas here I have seen it for myself , a lot of deserving candidates lag behind just because they are poor in English Communication.People here write 'poor communication in English' as their weakness and which is of course is the very accepted concept.

'Poor in Communication' is our weakness not 'Poor in English Communication'. We must be proud to speak Hindi and have a clear stream of thought in order to innovate, invent and evolve.

What matters the most is the sense of pride.


Saturday 10 September 2011

WHAT IS YOUR HUMAN QUOTIENT??...............MP TOPS THE LIST OF RAPE CASES

Just going through the headline in HT today, figures for 2009 released by NCRB(National Crime Record Bureau) for ' Rape cases', MP being the highest among 28 major states, West Bengal second and UP third.

I feel disgusted frustrated and what not when I hear any rape case, it took one week for me to come back to the normal life when learnt about the entire story of Aruna Shaunbag , but don't have words to describe the state of mind when I heard a case of 'Incest' for the first time, it is painful.... so very painful to even think of such a term. Don't have the details of the case I watched on TV where a father raped his daughter and she became pregnant, then the mother lodged a complaint, my hands are shiverig to write and shattered to think of the life of that girl and the one to whom she might have given birth.........?

No women empowerment, no law, no police, no policies can do anything about these cases. You can never empower the 'weaker sex' unless you are over with the very concept of 'weaker sex', the wiring of 'weaker'is to be dismantled and that can only be done by wiring of another concept called 'Humanity'. Unfortunately 'being human' is not taught to us in a formal manner, 'life skills' which play a very important role in shaping up one's character find no place in the curriculum. At the adolescent stage-between primary and middle classes when the youth needs a lot of attention and inculcation of good habits, there must be formal training of their minds.Whether MP with majority of population is uneducated rural or metros where the majority of the population is educated urban, the 'animal instinct' remains the same.

But again though this is not diverting from the topic but yes going to a different area, my point here is that in the society as a whole this inhuman act of rape must be wired as something which is not human, the punishment of this offense should be exile from the human race. The concept of 'biradari se bahar karna' must be applied here and needless to mention that the 'biradari' must be the entire race of human being.
 




Saturday 3 September 2011

DISCOVER THE HAPPY HORMONES IN YOU

Many a times we come across incidences like someone bumped our car and we at our extreme anger look at the person and are about to say something and a sweet smile on his face suddenly reduces the intensity of anger and a little later the anger goes off. Also if you see someone fall on the ground or slipped on a muddy road makes you laugh. The response to such things could be different if you have a different approach, you might become more angry if you see a smile on the person's face who had bumped your car or you might not react at all if someone slips.
The only way to be happy is to discover the 'Happy Hormones' in you. No, I am not taking about the Serotonin or the Endorphin rush, it is not about the chemical composition of the body or mind but about your thought process, your way of reacting toward things.Children remain happy most if the time just because they react to things in a different manner without any logic n reasoning.I still get scolded on laughing in front of someone on any trivial thing but there are instances in everyone's life when you can't resist yourself laughing but you shouldn't as it will go against the norms of behavior.(one instance came to my mind right now is in a strategy building meeting my boss encircled with all of us  started writing the future plan and the first thing on the blank page was his saliva, imagine......)
Well, how can you discover the happy hormones in you? It is as simple as anything the more you look at the things on a lighter mode the more easy they become.Laugh as much as you can and of course a true laughter is different from making fun of someone. Whenever I am depressed I give myself a big smile and laugh at petty things and sometime at nothing and believe me it works, someone is getting angry at you and you divert his mind on something that makes him laugh really works.(unless the issue is not grave otherwise it will backfire at you).The company of kids is a wonderful source of being happy, you laugh to make them laugh, you run, jump, do all sorts of nonsense acts just to see them happy and then gradually you also seems to laugh on such non sense things and make a habit of enjoying little things.

Remember every thing that makes sense may not make you happy.



Friday 26 August 2011

what is your Human Quotient?

This is in continuation of my previous blog 'What is your Human Quotient/' where I mentioned about a lady being crushed by vehicles the whole day and the flesh scattered on the road(Guna).
Another incident of the same magnitude of being 'INHUMAN':

Chattarpur-22/08/11

Narpat Singh, an elderly man of village Gau died in a TB hospital. and his dead body had to struggle for the cremation for two days.The only survivor of the man was his 68 yrs. old wife The bewildered widow did not know how to go about the cremation ceremony of her husband as she didn't have enough money to arrange for it, when she approached the neighbors for help, they pooled up some money and the cremation wood was bought but was too less for the process, on someone's suggestion the woods at the roof top of the hut of the man were taken and the dead body was put on the fire but was not to much help, some worn out tyres were used but look at the irony, the body was still unburnt. The following day, some people with a low human quotient(at least they have it) finally burn the dead body and the soul with a tremendous struggle met 'parmatma'.

The events that took place in the mean time included:

-finding out the rules of Municipal Corporation-as per section 123 of Nagar Palika Adhiniyam 1961, only construnction of cremation grounds comes nder its purview not the cremation ceremony
-As per Chief Minister's 'Mazdoor Surakhsha Yojna'(Labor Security Scheme)  an immediate compensation of Rs. 2000 is given to the family of the deceased.(though 'immediate' can be more than a week)
-When the SDM was approached the reply was " the case doesn't come under my territory"
-Collector Chhatrpur,"There's a clause for the cremation process if the deceased were registered under 'karmkar mandal; the nagar palika must have taken the initiative, right now I am out of station, will put up an inquiry once I return".

And of course this is not the end of this heart rending incident if I don't mention the 'Post death rather Post cremation events:

-A local leader came with a compensation and promised to continue it for...(an idefinite period)
- A congress leader came with a cash of Rs. 2100
-An MLA 'gifted' Rs. 1000 and promised an extended amount of Rs.5000
- Rs.10000 on account of 'Nagar Palika president's Family welfare Scheme' and a cash of 5000 by a leader of 'Yuva Morcha"

So Rs.23100 and all set. At the outset of Anna Hazare's fighting against corruption and bringing back the Black money from Swiss Bank' the poor Common man's fate is still the same.

WHAT IS THE HUMAN QUOTIENT OF ALL THESE PEOPLE??????
IT WAS THE CREMATION OF HUMANITY.....



Monday 6 June 2011

Farmer Vs ENTREPREUNER, Partnership firm Vs PARTNERSHIP FARM-There must be Corporate practices for Indian Agriculture.


Indian farmers have never been assigned the status of an Entrepreneur nor have they themselves ever aspired for that. They face an Identity Crisis. Looking at the extraordinary increase in the number of suicides in M.P. and the surrounding areas one can easily notice the identity crisis being faced by he Indian farmers since time immemorial... Though there is technological advancement, IT boom et al the pathetic condition of agricultural practices India is the same for decades. Why do the Indian farmers have all of a sudden start committing suicides? The simple reason is the identity crisis that is being faced by them. They do not see themselves as entrepreneur rather they see themselves as hapless traders who grow a commodity and sell it in the market. If you look at the farmers in the developed nations, they undertake farming as a business and generate revenues as any other venture. Farmers in India on the other hand are still at the mercy of Govt. and the God (of rain).
3 Gs for farmers:
Govt.
God (the God of rain)
Grants
 Grants and reforms have curbed the entrepreneur zeal of the farmers. Why do they have to beg for relief from the Govt. And today somehow when they have started taking an initiative for themselves is causing more damage than ever, damage to their own life, to their own family, committing suicides is not the way out.
Fact File:
*Rural households’ share in total households in India is 74%                                                            
*Agriculture households form 59% of rural households.                                                                    
*Agriculture’s direct contribution to India’s GDP stood below 17% in 2006-07. It was 2.9% over the period 2000-01 to 2007-08 as a whole; but it stood at 5.9, 3.8, and 4.5% respectively over the three years ending 2007-08. (NSSO)
*40% of the farming community In India wants to quit agriculture, given the other opportunities. (The Hindu Business Line, Mar 21, 2008)
*Six in every ten households in rural India belong to farmers. Such a farmer even if he/she were to be in irrigated area, does not get employed for all the 365 days. (NSSO)
*Though the marginal and small landholdings (up to four hectares) account for 90% of total holdings in India, the area operated by them is just 51%.                                                          (Ministry of Agriculture, Agricultural statistics at a glance, 2003)
*The large population which depends on agriculture for their livelihood cannot survive the financial crisis. 
*Poverty, Hunger, and Malnutrition.
Causes for the plight of Indian agriculture
*Farmers are at the mercy of nature. Indian agriculture is still a gamble on the monsoon.
*Climate variability and change
*The declining rate of agricultural productivity
*Periodical policies of the Government
*Farmers are not assigned a prime place; no position as competitors in the market.
*Instability, lack of sustainable farm practices.
*No freedom to sell the products in the market.
*Changes in the agricultural policy of industrialized nations
Initiatives taken by the government
*Agriculture as a key issue in the five year plans.
*White revolution in 1970s
*Green revolution
*Periodical subsidies and loan waivers.
*The National policy for farmers-2007
*Top priority in the Eleventh plan, for the revival of the agricultural sector.
*Rashtriya Krish Vikas Yojna (RKVY), a Rs. 25000 Crore scheme, to encourage state governments to support agriculture.
*National Food Security Mission- an enhanced outlay of Rs.4882.5 Crore was committed during the period 2008-09 to 2011-12 for expanding irrigation, research and food security.
What can be done?
*As depicted in the picture below, the farming practices should be totally technology driven.
* An Agricultural practices regulatory body to be set to ensure farm practices on the commercial grounds.
* Listing of Agricultural farms in the stock exchange. Larger farms can be combined(as any other management practice) at Blocks and Tehsil level, every Block being a company run by a CEO and the farmers as employees, every farm must have a Manager, HR manager to look after his farm land.
*Partnership between the agricultural colleges and Department of Agriculture to provide for cooperative agricultural extension work.
* Developing practical applications of research knowledge.
*Farm management for individual farmers. Extension agents should be appointed to teach farmers about marketing and helped farm groups organize both buying and selling cooperatives.
*At the same time, extension home economists should teach farm women-who traditionally maintained the household-good nutrition, canning surplus foods, house gardening, home poultry production, home nursing, furniture refinishing, and sewing-skills that helped many farm families survive the years of economic depression and drought.
* Farmers’ Clubs, Societies and Syndicates not only for promoting business but also the activities for overall personality development.
* Cost benefit analysis like any other commodity business the farm produce must be measured in terms of one farmer supporting the food need of 12 persons.
* Agriculture —research and educational programs help individuals learn new ways to produce income through alternative enterprises, improved marketing strategies, and management skills and help farmers and ranchers improve productivity through resource management, controlling crop pests, soil testing, livestock production practices, and marketing.
* Leadership Development —trains extension professionals and volunteers to deliver programs in gardening, health and safety, family and consumer issues, and 4-H youth development and serve in leadership roles in the community.
* Community and Economic Development through local governments to investigate and create viable options for economic and community development, such as improved job creation and retention, small and medium-sized business development, effective and coordinated emergency response, solid waste disposal, tourism development, workforce education, and land use planning.
* For farm workers tending to animals LIVESTOCK WORKSHOPS should be organized to teach them scientific methods of calculating Livestock Numbers by Weather and Climate.
*Farm Journals, Magazines and bulletins where farmers are encouraged to report on their achievements and their methods of solving problems
*There should be emphasis on converting rural population into future customers and employees.
*A strict measure to locate the beneficiaries of the schemes like NREGS (National rural employment guarantee scheme)
*There should be treatment at par with cities rather than subsidies, employment guarantee or amnesty from govt.
*A paradigm shift from a commodity centered to human centered approach in agriculture sector.
*Opportunities for the farming community to deal with the ultimate customers directly.
*Farming operations are to be dovetailed in such a way that each farmer is fully employed throughout the year.
*Multiple crops and Crop rotation to be promoted.
*Technology to make a powerful agro-sector, e.g. drip irrigation as in case of Israel.
*The mindset of the farmers needs to be changed regarding the small land holdings that they can do better than the large farmer using technology.
*Farmers should be directed and guided on conservation, saving and effective use of water thereby promoting scientific water-shed development and water management.
*Farmer field school in the nodal centers of villages to train, direct and offer solution for many of the agriculture related problems in day to day operations.
*Market driven enterprises have to be created in every village like Sericulture, Horticulture, Poultry, Cattle- breeding, Agro-processing etc.
*Organized system of marketing in the sector.
 *An efficient system of agricultural marketing.
*Streamlined agricultural production base from agrarian to commercial interest.
*A National level security movement could be a potential step.
*Agro-retail trading by the corporate giants should be used for the improvement of the sector rather than aiming for super normal profits.
*Ad-hoc agricultural policies that meet the political convenience of the day need to be avoided.