THE POWER OF ONE MAN!

BY SUNNY THOMAS

How amazing is the vision of one man, who turned his personal tragedy into a blessing! When Dr P.P. Job, a world-renowned evangelist, lost his younger son Michael Job, a Prince Charming and a melodious singer, his answer to the tragedy was Michael Job Centre (MJC) that shelters, educates and career-launches the female child, orphaned or cast away. 

But good works do not prevent tragedies from happening. His elder son John Job, a Logistic Manager and a man of many-faceted personality,too, met with the same tragic fate of his brother. Instead of retiring into a fit of depression, Dr Job decided to redouble his efforts. Alas, Dr Job himself passed away a few months ago at Budapest while on a speaking mission. Now the burden of the mission and the brunt of the tragedy fell on Dr Mary Job, the courageous lady who is determined to carry forward the dream of her husband.

  

Nestled beside the famous Sulur Lake on a 30-acre plot stands MJC that houses four educational complexes – one for a management school soon to be, another for a media study centre with a mini TV studio and FM Radio station, while the complex for the College of Education for M.Ed. and B.Ed. courses and an Arts and Science College, and a full-fledged school from Kinder Garten to Standard XII are already on stream.

    

 Guess who came for dinner? Boby Chemmanur , a gold and jewellery exporter and philanthropist, spell-bound the 500-and-odd school children on New Year,  with a half-an-hour talk on Success Through Love. Navin Chawla’s book on Mother Teresa helped Boby turn a new leaf in life from the many pleasures he was experimenting with.  He runs an orphanage and old age home to give dignity to the cast-away of society. 

 

Where can leaders of NRIs conclave after Pravasi Summit 2013 but to Rajagiri Centre for Business Studies, known for its intellectual elan.  The garden campus that Dr Joseph Injodey , himself a Botanist and Dean,  designed  has a Leonardo da Vinci effect. And the visiting NRIs were profoundly impressed by the vision of Fr Antony Kariyil, Director of Rajagiri institutions. 

How can NRIs fast-track India’s development, especially in eliminating rural poverty? This was the theme of the Ninth International Conference of India Development  Coalition of America. Dr Mohan Jain, Founder President of IDCA and Dr Abraham Thomas, Founder President of GOPIO (Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin), were the moving spirit of the two-day conference.

Dr J. Alexander, former Chief Secretary and former Karnataka Cabinet minister, was the Chief Guest. His sessions were replete with anecdotes, some of them as memorable as himself: A professor of Philosophy pulled up a student for being hyper emotional on the death of his mother. Don’t you know the essence of philosophy is wisdom, and that a student of Philosophy should never get excited or emotionally disturbed? The student begged for two days’ leave to regain his equanimity. After two days, he turned up to find his professor getting angry with every single event. `Sir, what happened?’ asked the curious student. `I have an unbearable tooth ache,’ explained the Professor. `Sir, only two days ago, you told me …,’ reminded the student. Pat came the reply. `That is your mother, but this is my tooth.’  In essence, hypocrisy rules the planet!     

The saga of Dr H. Sudarshan’s life is one of adventure and supreme sacrifice, which got him a belated Padmashri  but not without being arrested for fighting for the rights of tribals. Born in a cowshed, his father died in his lap when he was just 12 years old. He had to watch helplessly his father’s death, not knowing what to do. There was no medical help near the vicinity. So Sudarshan decided to become a doctor and served the under-privileged the rest of his life. He was able to work in the Naxal and ULFA-dominated areas without being harmed, but once he was asked by a top bureaucrat, `How much money (bribe) will you give?’ When he said none, he was shunted out of the state. Corruption, not poverty, is India’s No. 1 enemy; poverty ranks only second or third.  

The cerebral speaker of the conference was Dr Raju Narayanaswamy, often called the Second Vivekananda. With a perfect blend of erudition and eloquence, Dr Swamy stole everyone’s heart. Replete with quotations in Sanskrit and English, he reminded of India’s rich culture, while speaking on the nitty-gritties of poverty alleviation programmes. An IAS officer from the Kerala cadre, he is a B.Tech from IIT Chennai, he was always the topper in all the exams he taken.           

Dr Sailesh Rao, author of Carbon Dharma and Executive Director of Climate Healers (US), gave a stellar presentation on the damage we are causing Planet Earth. Dr Rao advocated vegetarianism to minimise future ecological damage.    

Prof Jane E. Schukoske from Boston, now CEO of S. M. Seghal Foundation, Shukla Bose, CEO of Parikarma Humanity Foundation, Mr K.B. jinan, well-known educationist, were among the galaxy of speakers who have done commendable work in the field.  The conference is the culmination of two months’ hard work by Prof  Alex Joseph RCBS. 

Imagine the power of one man to change the world! We are talking about you – not them. When you realize the Leader in you and the enormous potential lying hidden inside you, change will happen. Let’s not blame the politician, the bureaucrat, and the policeman. Be the change yourself, and bring about the change you desire to see. India will change the way you want it to change. When the silent majority break their silence, the powers that be tremble! Speak out, and a million others will join you. Together, we will create a New India . Jai Hind!  

Courtesy: globalmediaschool.com

(This writer was at MJC and RCBS to witness the trends of change sweeping the country) 

RAPE, LOOT & GOVERN!

BY SUNNY THOMAS

Arvind Kejriwal is on long leave. Anna Hazare has taken VRS. But if only Anna had fasted against rape and gang rape, he would still have remained an icon, and not a Charlie Chaplin.  

Mona Liza and Manmohan Singh have a mysterious face that puzzles the onlookers. One can never say from the Prime Minister’s face whether he is angry or is laughing. His face seldom betrays colours of emotions. And he would easily be voted as India’s most insensitive Prime Minister, judging from the trigger-happy way his government hikes fuel prices, bringing tear to every eye, which Jawaharlal Nehru famously said he wanted to wipe away as Prime Minister.

Even at the end of his second term, Manmohan Singh has no idea why he was elected Prime Minister. Looking for a rare species of Honest Man among Congressmen, Sonia Gandhi zeroed in on him. Under his impeccable image of integrity, all scamsters built a Taj Mahal in their backyard – be it mines or spectrum. 

The same insensitivity was in evidence when India’s Home Secretary lauded criminal policing in Delhi, which set the stage for the demonic rape in a moving bus  – it is certain the rapists were demons incarnate, not human beings. Again, the same insensitivity was in evidence when the police fired water cannons, and lobbed tear-gas shells and rained lathi-charge on the people who gathered to protest against the rape.  

The same insensitivity was in evidence when the rapists plunged the metal bar into the most sensitive part of the human body. And again, the same insensitivity drove the passersby – motorists, scooterists and  ‘auto-rists’ – becoming spectators and not Good Samaritan.

Dr Manmohan Singh is only the symbol (not the creator) of political insensitivity. There is judicial insensitivity, bureaucratic insensitivity, academic insensitivity, medical insensitivity, and people’s own insensitivity to account for. We live in a culture of insensitivity, where others are disposable commodities and us the centre of the universe. What happened in Delhi is the symptom.     

The raging debate of the 1960s was between morality and freedom – those who argued for censorship on violence and sex on the screen, and those avant-garde movie makers who wanted total freedom to create the Frankenstein’s monster they loved to produce for the box-office. It took pure common sense to foresee violence and sex on the screen would affect the psyche of the youth. Opion-makers sided with movie-makers and freedom won. What we see today is a lustful society fed ad nauseam on sex, violence and crime.

To make matters worse, came the Internet which is a boon for the true knowledge-seeker . And a curse for society for its diabolical misuse. Not only some MLAs of the Karnataka Assembly but even teenagers stealthily watch porn, hard and soft, in the comfort of their rooms at home and in hostels. If so much sex goes into the head, out will come rape and gang rape. Teenagers raping their cousins is common but less shocking than fathers raping their own childen!

Students raping their teachers for poor marks awarded and teachers raping their 

students for excellent performance are only waiting to happen. 

We live in a jungle of freedom, euphemistically called Democracy, which gives on a platter the freedom to destroy itself and all other freedoms. Even the freedom to destroy our civilisation and  Our Planet! The solution lies in unmaking and remaking the society, which is beyond the ken of any government. It calls for creative destruction and remaking on the bedrock of morality. Only a leader of intrinsic worth can accomplish it – not desperados seeking television publicity.     

 

   

INDIA RAPED!

BY SUNNY THOMAS

‘If they don’t have bread, let them eat cake?’ Who said this, India’s own Home Secretary! India is being raped everyday by bureaucrats who are contemptuous of hapless rape victims, and laud the Delhi police whose criminal lethargy caused the rape in a moving bus in the first place, and whose inept handling of the student crowd forms the worst case study in police mismanagement. Any demand for justice should begin with replacing the Home Secretary and the Police Commissioner to send the right message.  

Dr Manmohan Singh is the Prime Minister for Multinationals and Foreign Direct Investors, whose welfare and profitability he is duty-bound to protect. Rape is a purely domestic phenomenon, and a rape here and a rape there do not make economic sense, and are not even statistics. So don’t expect the Prime Minister to be unduly alarmed and, in all probability, this rape would have passed on as another rape. 

Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde who was projected as the  ‘Man of the Match’ by our television channels in the Ajmal Kasab hanging is preoccupied with brightening his Pakistani counterpart’s image in India, presumably for better neighbourly relationship. In the diplomatic world, nothing is more futile than holding a dialogue with Pakistan, as dialogue after dialogue proves it.  They provide no more than photo ops (opportunities) for television channels.  

The extreme cruelty with which the girl was raped and a metal rod inserted in her private parts damaging her intestine leaves no room for debate on capital punishment. The crime reminds one of a medieval mindset demanding barbaric punishment. The appointment of Justice J S Verma to head the Judicial Commission to look into the whole gamut of rape and the conduct of the police gives hope of a fair trial. 

Had  the student leaders sought an appointment with the President and presented him a charter of demands while the crowd peacefully demonstrated at India Gate, events would have moved more meaningfully. The attempt undeniably was to bypass the PM to approach the President, giving clearly the evidence of an ideological bent of mind. As street politics is becoming the popular brand of every agitator, care must be taken by the organisers not to let others hijack the agitation for their propaganda. If the first day’s demonstration was peaceful , the second day’s demonstration turned into an agitation with some publicity-hungry desperados bringing thousands of their followers for a battle.  History has shown again and again that all popular movements end up in the hands of the unscrupulous, turning a noble cause into a subaltern orgy.  

Some ideologues want to keep alive the climate of agitation till the next general election. The Anna Hazare movement fizzled out; Arvind Kejriwal is on a holiday; and they want the students to continue the agitation as long as the fire in the belly lasts. How long will it lasts is anybody’s guess. The television editors who called the Anna Hazare Movement a spontaneous one is now calling the student demonstration, too, a spontaneous movement  – nothing is farther from the truth. Racing constantly against time and other television channels, they court spontaneity and constantly err on the side of the truth. They interpret news in a labyrinth of assumptions and presumptions that do not represent the ground reality. You need to watch several channels to get a picture of the ground reality.  

The redeeming feature of the student demonstration is that it has shaken up the rapist – the scam-tainted politician, the contemptuous bureaucrat, the trigger-happy cop, the power-brokers and middlemen looting the nation. These are the true rapists who deserve capital punishment. Hang them along with the rapists of the girl in the moving bus so that democracy is made safe! 

            

SHOOT GUNMAN SHOOT!

BY SUNNY THOMAS

The real tragedy in the Connecticut shootout, in which 20 school children below 10 and eight others, including the Principal, died is that it could happen again next week. The tragedy has a script, written by an Invisible Hand, as it unfolds: after killing his mother, Adam Lanza, the assailant, went to his Alma Mater, Sandy Hook Elementary School, to finish his ignoble mission. 

Unless America addresses the root-cause that triggered this tragedy – the gun culture and the alienation of the individual from the mainstream – Connecticut will be re-enacted not only in the other states but the rest of the world which America leads by example.  

When President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 followed by two other assassinations in two years – that of his brother, Senator Robert Kennedy, and the civil rights leaders, Martin Luther King – the stage was set for abolishing guns in private hands. That did not happen because the Americans who mattered thought it their inalienable right, like the freedom of the Press, to own a gun as status symbol. It is not the poor and lowly middle class Americans who want the gun but the rich and the powerful. But democratic lobbying, which is the art of manipulating the media, makes it look as though every American is clamouring for his fundamental right to own and shoot at will – the ultimate in freedom! 

The intriguing thing about the gun is that if you don’t control the gun, the gun will control you. If America does not control the gun, the gun will control America. That Adam Lanza  came from a broken family is only part of the story. His mom, Nancy Lanza, had a true passion – a passion for guns – which is well known in the neighbourhood where she lived. She had acquired several types of guns and  proudly displayed them to her visitors. No one knew how she earned her living but she was affable to strangers and even generous.   

That’s not all. She took her children religiously to shooting ranges near Newtown, a suburb of New York city, where a community of gun enthusiasts lived. There she taught them the art of shooting (butchering)  – just in case – knowing little she herself would be her son’s first victim. She enjoyed visiting the bar and displaying her bravado, and that’s the kind of life she set before her children as example.  Her older son Ryan had left her and is living alone. 

After the gun culture comes the money culture, the cult that worships money. Crass materialism that destroys the very foundation of society can only lead to mass alienation as is happening in the affluent society. ‘Greed is God,’ said Gordon Gecko, the god of the Wall Street. 

‘I create nothing. But I own. We make rules. War, peace, famine, upheaval. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you are not knave enough to think that we are living in a democracy, are you buddy? It’s the free market. And you are a part of it. Stick around pal, I’ve got a lot to teach you.’ 

We live under the spell of Wall Street and Walmart – and we are willing to change ourselves to the plastic culture they impose on us! Plastic money, plastic heart, plastic desires! Life is a big shopping binge, and when we go burst, we booze, buy a gun and shoot! Soon our seared conscience will ask, Whose children are they, any way? 

  

(Courtesy: globalmediaschool.com)