Uncertainties cloud the Future in 2023

 

The Future is not so much hindsight as foresight: Uncertainties still Cloud Us

Rugged roads need all-weather four-wheel driven vehicles and not the luxury Sedans. We are in uncertain times still. End of the year has not been that good although economy-wise, India is far better than many developed countries. We have to re-discover India as it is the second largest nation in the world next to China, in terms of population. We have 17% of world’s population and 4% of world’s water resources. We see more out-migration than in-migration. Loyalty to the nation and even to the village one is borne, is suspect. This article explores the future not like a soothsayer but like a typical economist and philosopher.

we see more habitable villages than at the time of independence. We see less land producing more grain – distancing absolute poverty and hunger. The nimble hands of women farmers, in particular, were responsible to fight the pandemic with confidence. There were very few starvation deaths even in the midst of our intense fight with the pandemic. The nation proved that when a crisis arises, the nation would rise to the occasion and would not allow it to devour us. Thanks to the social development schemes of some of the states like Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, and Nagaland, we also witness higher literacy and health levels during the last decade. Numbers are available in any news daily that I would not like to strain the reader with.

We have built good roads, good communication systems, and on the threshold of reaching the status of a developed nation. In the comity of nations, last eight years have won us a seat in the UN Security Council, chair of G-20 and a respect that history of India should be proud of. We see less land producing more grain – distancing absolute poverty and hunger.

A time has come when we should rethink and re-envision the freedom as we see not just economic and financial risks but risks to the very existence of humanity. We have laws on Rights – child rights to the right to information and right to education. Yet, digital education distanced the teacher from the taught and so is the respect for the teacher. It is ghastly to see the atrocities of teachers on their wards whom they should love as their children. Not many movies on celluloid or the small screen can be watched with the entire family. They are full of violence and sex and all passed by the Censors.

There is no state, nay  a district, that does not report one type of crime or other. There are areas where people are living in perpetual fear. Billions of rupees are wiped out with  a wink of an eye. Cybercrime is at its heights. A citizen has to fight for enforcing his rights. We see the strengthening of the vigilance arms: Enforcement Directorate, Central Bureau of Investigation, Intelligence agencies etc.

For 75 years, we still think of good governance and good institutional framework devoid of corruption. We are a witness to collapse of some of the newly built bridges killing lives. On the other side, we see that villages became more habitable. We see less land producing more grain – distancing absolute poverty and hunger.

I pleasantly recall that during my young days, we had in the school syllabus, civics, history, and geography as subjects under the broad heading of social sciences. We had at least two sessions for drawing, craft and play in the ground a game of our choice – not just cricket. The National Education Policy claiming a progressive higher education intervention that ensures opportunities for those who have the economic muscle to pursue – a four year degree course, a double degree simultaneously, has not rebuilt the foundation for a student to blossom under ethics, respect to colleagues, and respect to elders and an awareness that the student has an ocean to swim the tides of learning.

Therefore, next twenty five years of this growing nation are really challenging. The challenge lies in building a generation that loves peace, that embraces ethics in living, that sees security in building a good society, that witnesses any young women walking in midnight without fear of assault and in absolute comfort, that every young lady would like to be a good mother and a good wife nurturing a good family even within small means. Cooperative federalism should see the end of riparian water disputes so that we have universal safe drinking water and not sanitary paper. This should be the new year 2023 pledge for all of us.

Future is going to be more uncertain than the present. There may not be pestilence but there could be wars over weapons and women. India, known for cohesive families, should not be a victim of cultural incursions from the west. It cannot afford to blame the present for what their fathers and forefathers had done to them and their families.

It is a great recall from Pundit Nehru’s Discovery of India (p.61), where he described the Culture of the Masses. “ ..I saw the moving drama of the Indian people  in the present and could often trace the threads which bound their lives to the past, even while their eyes were turned towards the future. Everywhere I found a cultural background which had exerted a powerful influence on their lives. ..The old epics of India, Mahabharat, Ramayana, and other books, in popular translations and paraphrases, were widely known among the masses, and every incident and story and moral in them was engraved on the popular mind and gave richness and content to it.” There is need for great resurgence in this direction. ‘Let not thy winged days be spent in vain, where gone, no gold can try them back again.’

*The views are personal.  

 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/fincop/the-future-is-not-so-much-hindsight-as-foresight-uncertainties-still-cloud-us/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recalli ng the child in you

 

Recalling the child in you today?

B. Yerram Raju

November 14 is remembered as Children’s day. I recall my younger days when standing among the crowd on the roadside of the Main Road of Visakhapatnam, I was standing with a rose in one hand and the national flag in another to greet Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister, who came for launching Jala Usha. When Nehru picked up the rose from my hand as from a few of my neighbouring children standing like me, I truly thought, I made the day. There were no mobile phones to catch it on a camera to show to posterity my joy.

Nehru had love for children is very well known. He believed today’s child is a responsible citizen tomorrow. The right of a child to grow and blossom has permanence. He believed in nurturing the ambitions of a child.

The smile on an innocent child face unfolds to us the grandeur of nature. His/her ambition is the future of the world. His innocence is infectious. Traveling in a train, that too driven by a coal engine creating a smoke screen on the face, the question that the child puts to the parents is why are the trees moving backwards when the train is moving forward? Why would the birds travel along with us? Whenever the train stopped in the night why would I see the same moon and stars and why they do not move backward?

Similarly, when I stood on the shores of Vizag beach, why do the colours of the sea keep changing? Why would my feet soaked in water sink in sand?

I hear the small-size carts selling ice creams, fried groundnuts, a tasty dal mixture made just ready for you but packed in a news paper cone. They are mouth-watering and irresistible. I make a pressing demand and when not responded readily cried so loud that the world would be lost without having them. The parents concede. There was no fear of pollution, contamination, or threat of food poisoning!!

As a child, perhaps I never thought that my neighbour belonged to a different caste. I happily shared whatever I had with him. I sat by his side in the government school, for there were no private schools. I played with him and soiled my clothes in the process only to have a beating and a bath on my return. The days were merry and 14^th November etched in my memory. How many children from a poor or lower middle class still enjoy the same way? May not be many as the schools are no longer the same.

Teachers in the primary and secondary schools were a great inspiration not withstanding their unsparing rod to teach a lesson. The parents never questioned the teacher. But they used to question the teachers if their children got poor marks in a subject! Those days were different but certainly worth a ton of lovely remembrance.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/fincop/recalling-the-child-in-you-today/?val=3728

Mahalaya Amavasya - the Day Leads Many into myriad of lights.

 

This Dark Day Leads Many Into Myriad of Lights

B. Yerram Raju

‘Mahalaya Amavasya’ is a day we recall our ancestors and pay homage to them. There lies the culture, compassion, a colossus of learning that shaped lives for those who recall them. At least for me, scripting my autobiography at the dawn of eighty years – ‘Roots to Fruits: The Journey of a Development Banker’, is a partial justice to the ancestors as it covered only the upbringing by my beloved parents and shaping my career and life as a banker and beyond.

My grandfather, bearing the same name as mine, for, all the eldest sons in the family are so named if the first child was a male, was a courtier under a zamindar in Madugula in Visakhapatnam district. This is just a village now. He never gave the feeling of something wanting in his life.

Families were large in those days. If Varaha Venkata Giri, our former President had fourteen children in his family, my father gave birth to twelve. They believed that children well brought up would be true assets to the family and nation. At least my parents proved right in this thinking. Six sons and six daughters – family balance sheet is balanced.

Parents taught through the way they lived and the way they shared their beliefs. They taught us calling them ‘nanna’ (father) and ‘amma’ (mother) and not dad and mom. The four letters in Telugu – nanna and amma – are a symphony of nature, a bondage for life. The only earning member, nanna, was a poor cashier in a leading bank of those British days. Work discipline led him also to disciplining the family. My mother, daughter of a police sub-inspector was the third of the fourteen siblings of her family. Amma lost her father young while my father lost her Amma young similarly. Amma studied up to fifth standard. That did not deter her from reading Ramayana, Mahabharat, Bhagavadgita, Devi Bhagavatham etc., to teach her children all they should learn to lead a life of honesty and simplicity.

Austerity was the watchword for my dad although ostentation was the watch word for my grandfather since he was with a zamindar. The reason: he had no mother to teach and was borne under the munificence of his elder brother who used him as a servant in the house though educated him up to intermediate of the British days. Nanna taught us the austerity and some may say in hindsight, it was borne of necessity. This austerity among the twelve of us was reinforced by the economics taught by my Amma.

Atithi Devo Bhava – was scrupulously followed. When Nanna was posted to Tirupati as Head Cashier of SBI, he felt jubilant. Both Amma and Nanna felt that they would have the opportunity to visit temples everyday and visit Lord Venkateswara closely and play host to several friends and relatives who come to Tirupati on pilgrimage, irrespective of their capacity to entertain them at home. My father used to walk up Tirumala Hills as buses were few and far between the day those days, not once but sometimes twice, just to accompany the guests and help them have good Darshan.

Amma just asked for a cow and buffalo at home to take care of the nutritious requirements of her children and feed the guests. Her dairy economy gave us the freedom from want. My second brother, self-made, became a professor in Yoga at Chennai, post retirement. My teachers’ kindness and charity helped the brilliance of my third brother to pursue medical career. Nanna did not hesitate to borrow a few thousands to send him to write the qualifying examination that was being held in those days only in Singapore – ECFMG (Entrance Course for Medical Graduates). He is a gold medallist in Medicine. He settled as a leading gastroenterologist in Texas, US. The Eleventh among us, settled as a chartered professional accountant in Austin.

Integrity, honesty, austerity, simplicity, philanthropy  and courteousness, the cultural moorings of this great country are all there in this big family to which I have the honour to belong. Ancestors have much to teach and this darkest night of Amavasya has many lights twinkling in the minds of one hundred eight siblings of my parents. Life may be hard-earned but fully worth every penny and my ancestors are watching with joy and pride.  

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/fincop/this-dark-day-leads-many-into-myriad-of-lights/ - a couple of corrections carried out.