In 2008, stampedes have killed 360, blasts 156 - Who is to blame?

The news report investigates the causes of this kind of incidences.

Unfortunately the pendulum of responsibility shifts most of the times towards the administration of the temple or towards the Government. Both of which in my opinion is wrong.

In my opinion it is the people who are responsible for the kind of situation that emerged. Though it is sad, it should not be let off by passing the buck at the administration.

The sole reason is that people in India do not have patience and are always wanting to get ahead in the line. They always want to be one up the other. Even though they are Gods house there worry is how to get in fast and how to get out fast.

I can state this from the example at Shirdi. Shirdi is a place where everyday lakhs of devotees converge. The number is very high on holidays or special days. Once I read there were 5 lakh people in Shirdi on a given day.

The Shirdi Sansthan has made excellent arrangements for people. The total area where lines for darshan are formed are covered with adequate lighting and ventilation. There is arrangement of toilets and drinking water. The separators are quite wide for two people to stand side by side. Seating is provided. In my opinion there cannot be better arrangement than this. All these arrangements are made with a view that devotees should be able to sit, relax and wait for their turn when they come for darshan.

Now let us see what happens in actual. In spite of these wonderful arrangements the people are cramped for space. Even though seating is provided, there is no way one can sit because in the divider space there are often two people standing so seating is impossible. If you sit, others will go ahead of you with scant disregard to you. You cannot use the toilet or go to drink water as getting back after wards is challenging.

In the game of one up man ship even in the house of God, people ensure that the facilities created for them are not used. The so called devotees act like demons when they are in the line for a darshan, not only at Shirdi but anywhere else as well. They forget that the crowd also include young children, old men and women, etc.

This scene as stated above is a everyday, every time occurrence. Who will teach these devotees that it is not a bus or train that will miss? Who will tell them to take advantage of the facility and not to cramp up spaces?

The point is that even if facilities are made available are we worthy of using these facilities? Do we really deserve the facilities that are created for us. These are the questions that need answers and not what the administration of the temple or Government can do in this situation. Of course they have a role to play, a very important role, but it is finally the people who are going to make or break the things designed for the,

In summary it is the crowds, the people, and the devotees who are responsible.

Finally it is also true that people remember God only on special days, so there is crowd.

Observation

It is said that the young generation likes variety, they like newness, they are bored of following the routine, they revolt against impositions. I wonder if it is true.

Listening to FM Radio is an indicator enough. They play the same songs day in and day out. The vocabulary of the Radio Jockeys is the same. The Radio channel will not play it if people do not like it. Even during Ganpati, or Janmashtami or Navratri the same songs are played again and again. The mandals will not play it if it is not demanded by the people. In fact one of the methods of popularizing a song / music now a days is to relay it numerous time, so automatically people start liking it.

If young people are what they say, they feel, they show they are, they should be seeking for different songs all the time. They should feel bored with the same songs in a short time.

Marathi Manus

Recently a friend of mine sent me a presentation titled “Marathi Manus Jaga ho”. This presentation is an extremely nice presentation about how Marathi people are un represented in the bureaucracy and even in our own state we have a bureaucracy which is from other states. Though no views, comments were not expected, I sent him the following answer.

I agree with your proposition and the proposition made in the presentation. However we cannot calculate the success of Marathi Manus by just seeing the number of positions in Public Service. Let us remember that Maharashtra has been at the forefront of industrial revolution since decades. Other states just started to catch up. As a result the jobs were available aplenty in Maharashtra which people took up. They never looked towards sarkari naukri as being their only option. Reserve is true for people from other states. For them as there are no jobs in the private sector, the only option for them is to try for Sarkari Naukri and hence they apply for UPSC exams. Purely by law of population and them applying for it, they are there more in numbers. This is one of the explanations. There are several more reasons. Marathi manus has succeeded in areas which the people from other states cannot even dream off.

Marathi manus has also been more of an intellectual. Most of the social movements, freedom movements had marathi manus as their originator. It is in Maharashtra that the semblance of culture is alive, be it Classical music, classical dances, literature, etc. There are writers, creators, and so is the audiences and readers. Let us not forget our intellectual, cultural heritage is the most important thing. Let us not compare ourselves with people from other states because I think we Maharashtrians are much better off than them in more ways than one of our representation in civil services.

He wrote back with new concerns. His concerns were
“However, if our rulers are not from our state, we loose to great extent. But the population of Industry owners in Maharashtra are no Marathi, a fact should not be forgotten”. I again wrote to him as follows:

I do not mean that we should not progress. Wherever we as Marathi people have short falls, weaknesses, the answer lies within us. It is up to all of us to teach our children to read Marathi Sahitya, to listen to Marathi music (not Ashwini ye na only, but the rich natya sangeet that we have), to see Marathi films (good ones from today and yester years). We should not see a paradox of sending children to learn in English schools and insisting on Marathi. We should rather do both. Send our children to the best schools and also conduct sanskar on them of our Marathi heritage. I am one example of that. I studied in Uttar Pradesh all my life. To be precise at Jhansi where my father was posted. Yet it is due to him that I still retained my taste in everything of our grand heritage. Same is true about entrepreneurship and civil service occupations. We need to educate our children on these options and provide them the framework for the same.

Let us understand that the negativity can bring together some people together for some time, but not all the people, forever. We need to build a positive message for all people to come on board and for it to have an ever lasting effect.

My comments on your point on Industry owners in Maharashtra being non Marathi is as follows:

# In the entire country, the majority of businesses starting with Kolkata (Calcutta) to now Maharashtra are owned by a Marwari community. The other community which has been business savvy has been Gujarati’s, Punjabis and Sindhis. Except these three communities in the entire country, you will find that representation of businessmen is very less, miniscule. One you can credit the genes of these community members and second you can attribute this to their tradition. The son follows the father and so on and so forth. Hence we cannot say that only we as Maharashtrians lack in owning businesses.

# If you trace the genesis of at least the Marwari community you will realize that they originally belong to a region which is very tough. Nothing grows, no water, no industry, nothing. Everyday survival is an issue. They came out of that region in search of other sources of livelihood and scattered in different parts of the country. As they had no qualifications / education to get into a job they started businesses, in a small way. The conserved in a way which we cannot imagine. The built their wealth. The reinvested it. And here they are. There are other explanations for other communities.

# Compare this to our situation. Thanks to the social reformers Maharashtra has seen, most of us had decent education. Except for some regions of Maharashtra the land is cultivatable. Mumbai was there always with its Mills. So for us the going was not as tough. The easy options were available. As it is in human nature, we all tend to take an easy approach, provided it is available.

# We need to learn from these communities and try and sow seeds of the same DNA in our future generations. We need to learn from a Marwari family running a Kirana store. They stay in the shop. They invest the money they have in the shop and not for the house. They start business, flourish. We should try and see the hardship they go through and learn from them that things are easy if we are to build our businesses.

As regards your point of us being ruled by people who are not from our state and because of that we loose, I disagree. I think in the quest of our regional identity we should not overlook nationality. All these people are after all Indians. Hence the notion of we being ruled by outsiders is not agreeable. Regionalism is good enough for preserving heritage and identity. It is like the region being our mother from whom we learn everything and the country being our father through whom we get our surname, the umbrella of security and being a part of something. We cannot ignore anyone. We cannot displease anyone. We cannot disobey anyone. Both are equally sacrosanct and sacred.

In a democracy the true rulers are the people we elect. Again choosing our rulers is in our hands. If we choose an outsider through an electoral process, the person to blame is not the one got elected. The blame is on the people who elected him / her.

Let us also not forget Maharashtra is the only land which fought the maximum against aggression. It is not only because we are courageous but because we are intelligent. We could understand the difference between freedom and slavery and hence came out the need to fight against it. So we fought. We not only, fought, we fought to win. Shivaji Maharaj fought and won against Mughals. Peshwe fought and won against Mughals and British. Lately people like Tilak, Savarkar fought against British. We have this history. So why can we not fight against an aggression, the new aggression. Fight to win. Only the tools of warfare will have to be different.

Is Pune’s Culture under threat?

Before we start discussion, it is imperative to understanding what exactly culture is. Then and only then, would it possible for us to comprehend the arguments that we make regarding a specific culture.

Culture has always been interpreted in many ways. More commonly it is considered to be a about music, dance, drama, the way we dress, the way we eat, etc. Edward Taylor defines it in his book Primitive Culture (1871) as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."

Two other definitions of culture seem appropriate to quote here. "Culture...consists in those patterns relative to behavior and the products of human action which may be inherited, that is, passed on from generation to generation independently of the biological genes" (Parson, T. 1949, “Essays in Sociological Theory”. Glencoe, IL.p. 8). "Culture has been defined in a number of ways, but most simply, as the learned and shared behaviour of a community of interacting human beings" (Useem, J., & Useem, R. 1963 ‘Human Organizations”, p. 169).

There are three layers of culture viz. cultural traditions, sub cultures and universal cultures. The cultural traditions distinguish a specific society. They share language, traditions and beliefs. Sub-cultures happen in a diverse society where the traditions and beliefs are inter mixed giving rise to a new identifiable segment. Here people retain there original cultural traditions, yet become a part of new segment. The universal culture is about those common traits which are pervasive and are not differentiated. These are universal traits.

In our Monday morning meetings, Ashish asked all of us to predict the future. It was a waking up exercise on Monday morning, just before we start work. Some of the people expressed their concern for the culture of Pune. They were saying that with the growth happening in Pune, the city culture will die. One very interesting point came up from a colleague. He comes from a rural background. He said in villages, the number of smart people is 2 to 10. Hence whenever there is a problem, people go to these people and resolve the problem. in contrast in cities, he says the number of smart people is 9.45 of 10. As a result people never come listen to each other as everyone is smart (at least considers themselves to be smart).

I personally do not feel that the culture of Pune city is dying. I would say it is evolving. A number of sub cultures are emerging within the city because of cosmopolitization of the city. However the universal culture of the city is intact and will remain so. In fact it is the universal culture of the city that is drawing more people to the city.

Universal culture is an infectious phenomenon and everyone that comes in contact with it is positively affected by it. It will be worthwhile to understand the traits of this universal culture, which I will try doing some time.

In this globalized world, people are feeling more and more alienated. On one hand you are connected to millions of people and other hand you are completely alone, as if in a no man’s land. It is in this scenario that people start belonging to some culture or other. They look forward to an identity which will differentiate them from others. This can cause tension as well as cohesion. The challenge will always be to reduce the tension and improve cohesion.

Is Capitalism failing?

Socialism or communism say that everyone is equal. When everyone is born different how can they be equal or how can they be treated equally.

There are numerous examples of nations failing because of following socialist / communist framework. These frameworks after a period of time were rejected by people. It is a different matter that people's voice was kept suppressed. The duration of suppression was the life cycle of these systems.

A fall of an organization cannot be considered in any way as failing of capitalism. Afterall you need to generate capital to distribute it. If there is no capital what will you distribute.

Accumulation is in human nature. Wealth is one many things that we all try to accumulate. So it will be going against our natural behaviour not to allow accumulation or to tax it heavily.

The very fact that we are communicating through this blog in India points that we have come a long way. This way was paved for us by disassociating ourselves with socialism. Shall we even now think of something which have failed us for years. Shall we revisit it as if it brings fond memories. My answer is no. Capitalism is the only way.

While around the world organizations fail, it is time for Indian organizations to lead. This is our time. Let us not have any other thoughts, other than leading the scenario.

Ideal Leadership

The question was what kind of leader would you think are able to take good care of the financial system, the education system, health system and more importantly the poltical system that will keep everyone sane and not start any kind of war,especially those that could trigger a possible world war.

In India in the good old days of Kingdoms, there was a saying “Yatha Raja Tatha Praja”. It means the people of kingdom are alike the King. In today’s democratic world the saying now has become “Yatha Praja Tatha Raja”. This means our rulers will be the people like us. It is also said in democracy people get the leadership they deserve. This is because we vote and bring ask them to lead us. So if there has to be any ideal kind of leadership the change has to come from all of us. It is not too difficult as it may sound, if we start one at a time.

Now coming to answering your question, the first quality, I feel in an ideal leader will be not to consider the citizens as fools who need the guardianship of their leader. This is the mistake maximum number of leaders commit. All of us who are in the voting age are sane and have a mind of our own.

Second quality I feel is people centred thinking. By this I do not mean the usual rhetoric on the part of the leaders. It really means that the leader understands, at least tries to understand the motivations, aspiration of people. It also means that people are involved in as many stages of policy crafting as possible. It is a tall order considering the mammoth systems we have at the country level, but with technology and pervasive digital platforms does not seem to be an impossible proposition.

Third quality in a leader is empathy. Empathy towards fellow human beings. This is by far the most the important quality, I look forward to.

To look at the other side of the spectrum, we as people should not look towards our leaders for every small problem we have and then blame them for it always. We as people should also consider our leader to be a fellow human being and not a super man who is above everything. We should allow them lee ways and should pardon their human failings. In this kind of an atmosphere of mutual trust, the leaders will not be compelled to hide things and their energies will be invested more productively.