Book Review: Swaraj by Arvind Kejriwal

Swaraj

- Arvind Kejriwal

Came across this book, while checking one of those million facebook updates from friends, mostly gunning for Arvind Kejriwal's blood. He is called more left than leftists, said to be trying failed socialism and some even say that he doesn't have a clue about what to do, and is just drifting aimlessly.

But, if one has patience to read this book (just 74 pages), one can easily say he is anything but the above said things. He had traveled length and breadth of the country, analyzed problems at grass-root level, compared the existing systems with several other successful systems aorund the world and proposed solutions.

The theme is Swaraj, self governance, a participatory democracy. He argues how the current system is not democracy at all. In the current system, a village can't decide what it needs, but, state and central governments decide a set of schemes sitting in the capitals, and uniformly apply them on thousands of villages. When thousands of such schemes fail to do the magic, there is not even a feedback loop. Same goes with the cities as well. A tax-payer has no direct say on how that money should be spent. All one does and can do is elect a representative and pray.

He doesn't propose a completely different alternative. What he proposes is a decentralized and participatory democracy, which can be achieved even without any constitutional amendment. He discusses the problems with corruption at different levels, accountability in governance, land acquisition by corporates, random mine allocation,  usage of water resources  etc., which are some of the burning and fundamental issues. He proposes Swaraj (self governance), which needs citizen participation at every level as the solution for all. He cites examples from USA, Brazil and Switzerland where it worked. Swiss constitution seems to have a provision where a proposal signed by 100,000 citizens automatically becomes a bill for discussion in parliament. Brazil seems to have tried having preliminary budget discussion on roads. And, they work.

His ideas are consistent with 'Grama Swaraj', attributed to Gandhi.

He doesn't talk high of right people getting into assemblies and parliament solving things. Probably, he had written this before the formation of AAP :-)

The book is available online for free and in pdf form in Hindi and English

My 555 FB freinds classified into 10 classes

I noticed today that I have 555 friends on Facebook. During dinner at a function yesterday, I finally had that dreaded encounter. One of those 555 had asked me what my name was. A bit of consoling thing is, she could recall my last-name, when I said my first-name and also said that we were Facebook friends. No offense, though :-)

Just for fun, I attempted to classify my 555 friends into 10 classes. This is not to criticize any of them, as it is their own wall, and they have every right to post anything they want. It's for me to choose whether to read those or even allow them in my feed.

1. Push agenda at all costs

We have a clear agenda. Most of the stuff that we share, comment and like would be to push that. More often than not, you find us annoying, as we are hardly unbiased. 

2. What we read is what we believe

Most naive set. We behave, as if we believe every word that's ever written on the Internet, and totally miss out on using the same Internet to verify stuff. 

3. Just can't make things simpler

We are the intellectual breed or at least trying hard to be one. We just don't like anything simple. Compulsive theorists. Would love to identify patterns and weave things. Fun reads, as long as we don't belong to Class-1 also :-)
 

4. We just love this world

We are the God sent for those loners and 'like' seekers. You post it. We like it. As simple as that.

 
5. We live on Facebook

Sun just can't set without seeing a couple of our posts of the day. We put painstaking efforts to ensure that, and we don't even worry about being dumb, at times.

 
6. In pursuit of replacing wikiquote.org, one day

We are a bunch of wannabe Socrates. Our wall looks almost like a page on wikiquote.org. One can see, a passionate lover with a heartburn to a philosopher working his way to change this world, in each one of us.

 
 7. Foul is the word

No post of ours can go without a tinge of filth. Our larger intentions are still good. But, we just can't help with the words. We are hot-blooded, you know.

 
8. Me, my spouse and my children

That's all I have. My children wake up, they dress up, they eat, they play and they go to bed. We go places and yes, we do come back. And, you would know that all!

 
9. The world is all about that sport

What else is there to talk or share? Players, their records, statistics, our expert predictions, abuses, disappointments.

 
10. No traces whatsoever

We follow each and everything that's happening on Facebook. But, we take extreme caution to make our presence *not* felt. No shares, no likes, no comments. We inherited this habit from paperback book readers, who keep their books clean.

Some of my friends, of course, fall in hybrid classes that are a combination of these.

Book Review: Why I Failed

Why I Failed
- Shweta Punj

4 years back, I wrote a blog about my partner search and observed in the beginning, why one should listen to losers (like me) and how it helps. I got a chance now to read about some very high profile losers (not in the end, but at some point of time) and what did they do when they were lost.

Why I failed is a compilation of stories of 16 prominent Indians (mostly business persons, some from sports, cinema and fashion industries). Unlike Rashmi Bansal's Connecting the Dots and Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish, this one talks only about loosing and fighting back aspects of their careers. 

Some were ahead of their times with their ideas, some couldn't get others buy their vision, some were so obsessed with their ideas and utopian in their outlook that they never thought plan-B would ever be required, and some aspired for wrong things. What makes it a fascinating read is, how they handled their failure and bounced back.

The persons being high profile, so were their failures. So, I felt, at times, I couldn't connect much. That's partially due to the 30000 ft view presented by the author and her pace. But, for those who enjoy powerful quotes and philosophical verses, it's a feast. They are aplenty.

Book Review: My Brief History

My Brief History
-- Stephen Hawking

As I could understand some parts of The Theory of Everything (Attributed to Stephen Hawking, though he denounced it as unauthorized publication), I picked this one up. Unlike other popular books by him (Brief History of Time and Briefer History of Time), this one is not much about science, but about Hawking, as the title suggests.

He talks about his childhood, his introduction to Mathematics and Physics, the disease that paralyzed most of his body in his twenties etc., Readers would be able to appreciate the way he chose theoretical physics over experimental, as he wouldn't have survived in fields that needed more than his brain, due to his disease; the way he lived constantly with uncertainty about his survival, yet contributed so much to physics, and regarded today as the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein; the way he handled personal crises such as his wife living with another guy in his own house, assuming that he wouldn't be around too long etc.,

Besides such memorial stuff, he discusses briefly his original ideas about big bang, black holes and time travel. But, readers interested in these should be better off reading his The Theory of Everything or Briefer History of Time.

Unless one is a die-hard fan of Stephen Hawking, one can give it a pass.

Love humbles monsters!

I was having a conversation with a friend, who is a self-confessed atheist and rationalist, the other day.

The central point of the conversation was, when love humbles an atheist/rationalist and makes one feel powerless and helpless, would he/she act any different from the people who believe in super-natural powers? Of late, he has been going through it personally, it seems. Here goes the summary...

Of course, yes. "The practice or principle of basing opinions and actions on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response" - That's what 'Google define' has to say about rationalism. 

Now, my friend is in a fix. He thinks a bit too much about her, and gets emotional, involuntarily. The relation is nowhere close to a stage where he can talk to her much, let alone sharing his feelings with her. Being rational, he can't do anything foolish, despite his dreams every night. He rationalizes himself about dreams that they are just manifestation of his feelings and thoughts, and there are no more strings attached. Whereas, his believer friends in that situation take it as a positive vibe and refer to Freud's Interpretation of Dreams and celebrate.

When he comes across something like, 'if one truly loves, ones love will never fail' - he, apparently, becomes sadder as he doesn't believe in anything super-natural. As per his school of thought, love being 'true' can have no effect whatsoever 'on its own', unless it leads to some action. Whereas, believers find such things very powerful and helpful in keeping their spirits up.

Few more areas where my friend looses against believers are blessings of elders, wishes of his close friends, taking oaths and praying for divine intervention etc., None of them can console him, as all those fall under super-natural category.

Then, suddenly, we jumped out of the context and tried to replace Love with Mangalyaan (India's Mars Orbiter Mission). If we, as rationalists, are convinced that believers have all those above advantages, won't believer scientists of ISRO have the similar advantages, when ISRO chairman seeks divine help (and goes to Tiruapati with a model of satellite), as a rule, before every launch?

But, we felt, though they both look innocuously similar, they actually are not. More on those, a little later.

Book Review: Guns, Germs and Steel

Guns, Germs and Steel
-- Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond was a professor of physiology and developed interest in ornithology and ecology. While working in the latter areas, he had developed interest in geography and then became a professor of geography in the same university where he taught physiology earlier.

When a person of such caliber was confronted with a very elementary, yet, a very profound and tough question like "Why does it look like some races dominated other races, through out the human history", it led to the natural outcome. A thorough research to unearth the events happened over thousands of years and connect the disparate to understand and present the big picture. That's what is Guns, Germs and Steel. He could do that only 25 years after being confronted with that question, though.

The title is due to the part that Guns, Germs and Steel played in the human history. Author sites several decisive events in history where, how whoever had access to these first dominated others.

There were several interesting discussions around animal and plant domestication, spread of lethal germs from wild animals to humans, evolution of writing and languages, evolution and adaption of technology, food producers vs hunter gatherers, egalitarianism vs kleptocracy etc.,

I started reading the book looking for precise answers. But, they are not to be found, for obvious reasons. Most part of the book talks about certain events happened anywhere in between the last hundred years to a few thousand years BC, and authors attempt to connect them with rational arguments and explanations.

So, a fun read for the patient and inquisitive. Not recommended for the people who call even a second example a rhetoric.

My Overseas Marathon Odyssey - Part-9 - Mt.Fuji, Japan

San Francisco-2010 (US) -> Athens-2010 (Greece) -> Berlin-2011 (Germany) -> Niagara Falls-2011 (US/Canada) -> Singapore-2011 -> Kuala Lumpur-2012 (Malaysia) -> Venice-2012 (Italy) -> Phuket-2013 (Thailand) -> Mt.Fuji-2013 (Japan)

The odyssey that I planned to kickoff at Athens, coinciding with the 2500 years of marathon legend, reached Japan this year. I landed in Tokyo on a Friday, late evening. Narita airport (the main international airport that serves Tokyo) is quite far from the city. I planned to spend the night close to the airport and go directly to Mt.Fuji area, where the Marathon is going to be held on Sunday. Within no time, I could experience all that I heard and read about Japan and Japanese. A nation obsessed with hygiene, ultra courteous people that are routinely punctual and procedural.

After a couple of hops, I reached the Marathon expo on Saturday to collect the runners kit. They had arranged the kit right in front of a railway station (Lake Kawaguchiko), for the convenience of overseas runners (300 out of 16000 runners), and that was quite unceremonious. I went all the way to spend time and run in a different environment and culture. So, this special treatment was a bit unwanted. I collected the kit and went to the actual Marathon expo, meant for the locals. And, I could realize the rationale behind that special treatment. There were a lot of activities and festivities going on, but, everything was in Japanese and no one understands or speaks a word other than Japanese.

Marathon was scheduled to start at 9 AM. I reached the venue quite early at 7:30, as I read that it was chaotic at the start, the previous year, due to huge crowd. But, apparently, they learnt. It was quite meticulous this year. Temperature was around 6 °C. And, all I could do till 9 AM was, just freeze wearing shorts and porous shoe in open air. Thanks to my runner friends pestering, I at least carried a thermal top, which kept half of my body warm, through out the run. I found out during the run that I was one among 20-30 runners out of 16000, who were wearing shorts. Rest were running with full body thermals. It was tough to run in that weather, particularly because, there was no time to acclimatize. But, I generally don't worry much about finish times and just enjoy the run and the surroundings. That way, it turned out to be one of the most scenic runs, as the course circumambulates two beautiful lakes overlooking majestic Mt. Fuji.

Spent the next couple of days walking length and breadth of Tokyo and visiting interesting places that I came across. Oedo Onsen was one such. Onsen, a public bath at hot springs, seems to be a part of Japanese culture. This particular Onsen was quite fashionable with several modern facilities. Got rid of Marathon fatigue here instantly, and walked another 10 KM from central Tokyo, all the way to the hostel that I stayed, checking out several things en route.

I made it a point not to eat anything other than Japanese food during those 5 days. Ventured into the places full with locals and only locals. It's interesting. Typically, noodles or rice with seafood, chicken or pork. Pork and chicken cutlets with rice seemed to be very popular, besides noodles, of course. I could as well have spoken in Telugu or Hindi at all those places, as it wouldn't have mattered to them anyway, as long as it's not Japanese. I could still manage to order something, and insist on replacing chopsticks with spoon and fork :-)

Overall, a very pleasant experience. Felt, it's an interesting, safe and friendly place to visit. And, yes, a lot of yummy food to try.