On 2nd October 2013, we celebrate Mahatma Gandhi's 144th birthday.
After a 38 year-long working life in international techno - marketing, after some excellent college years in IIT and IIM, after working for over 34 years with global technology leaders and multinationals, I am now firmly grounded as a Gandhi admirer. It is also true that I subscribe to his religious beliefs in the Gita and prayer.
Now I am able to see- if you know what I mean- what we have done, and what we have seen as a result of this great progress, and it shows beyond doubt that Gandhi was right on so many points. Let me list only a few.
1. When I see Fiji mineral water in convenience stores in Chicago, I realise we don't understand how we can manage to purify and drink water locally, and we ship bottles of water in non-recyclable plastic round the world.
2. The way we live, we burn LOTS of fossil fuel. Just so we go, sit in front of computers, and make phone calls around the world to fix a telephone bill error or a credit card payment statement. One little example of globalisation.
3. We make deadly arms. We give them through illicit trade to dubious leaders, who in turn poison and kill their own people. And then we take bombers and flatten the cities of these bad people, of course killing lots more people. All in the name of peace.
4. We tell our children it is more important to come first in class tests and not important to look around with wonder at what we call our world. That it is more important to prepare keenly and destroy our competitors (=enemy) than to find a way to live life better as fellow citizens. That it is more important to dream and realise your own future than to think of others and how you can make them happy.
5. We want cheaper and cheaper goods. Like pencils from China and polyester sarees from Taiwan. Really sorry our neighbourhood small-time industrialists and weavers committed suicide.
6. We want to live on the 24th floor, in a futuristic urban township. It is our own flat bought at a crore rupees (25 year loan at 12%). Oh, our small home in our old town, we sold and it was pulled down for scrap. They cut down all the coconut and mango trees for development.
7. We are truly religious. We worship Devi during Navaratri, and Skype-call our dear ones doing garbha dance in Shiva temple, Toronto. They migrated there long back as it offered much better life than this backward country called India. They are global citizens.
8. I just read that young Indian metro professionals of both sexes have alarmingly high cardiac, hormonal, and orthopaedic disorders because of their changed life-style. They are all our nation's pride- IT and techie professionals. They went to engineering and other advanced courses paying hefty fees, to get good jobs in big name companies. Our country is proud to have such high quality professionals. About their health and social problems, we will surely do something. Chains of corporate hospitals with FDI are coming up at a location nearby.
2. The way we live, we burn LOTS of fossil fuel. Just so we go, sit in front of computers, and make phone calls around the world to fix a telephone bill error or a credit card payment statement. One little example of globalisation.
3. We make deadly arms. We give them through illicit trade to dubious leaders, who in turn poison and kill their own people. And then we take bombers and flatten the cities of these bad people, of course killing lots more people. All in the name of peace.
4. We tell our children it is more important to come first in class tests and not important to look around with wonder at what we call our world. That it is more important to prepare keenly and destroy our competitors (=enemy) than to find a way to live life better as fellow citizens. That it is more important to dream and realise your own future than to think of others and how you can make them happy.
5. We want cheaper and cheaper goods. Like pencils from China and polyester sarees from Taiwan. Really sorry our neighbourhood small-time industrialists and weavers committed suicide.
6. We want to live on the 24th floor, in a futuristic urban township. It is our own flat bought at a crore rupees (25 year loan at 12%). Oh, our small home in our old town, we sold and it was pulled down for scrap. They cut down all the coconut and mango trees for development.
7. We are truly religious. We worship Devi during Navaratri, and Skype-call our dear ones doing garbha dance in Shiva temple, Toronto. They migrated there long back as it offered much better life than this backward country called India. They are global citizens.
8. I just read that young Indian metro professionals of both sexes have alarmingly high cardiac, hormonal, and orthopaedic disorders because of their changed life-style. They are all our nation's pride- IT and techie professionals. They went to engineering and other advanced courses paying hefty fees, to get good jobs in big name companies. Our country is proud to have such high quality professionals. About their health and social problems, we will surely do something. Chains of corporate hospitals with FDI are coming up at a location nearby.
