Dont scream for the change,Be the change you seek in the world...

The reason for the post is beacuse of bad experience of looking at the society and guilty of being one of the inactive person in the society.

Thanks to rediff and my project manager ( Tx jay :-)) to add up more on this post.

It was sunday evening and was rushing for my friends wedding reception.My friend mailed me, called me, sms me, reminded me repeatedly to be there as i had missed her wedding.
Seems like am a gud friend and thats why such reminders :-)

almost reached the place and searched for the reception hall.
There it comes the problem which increase my temper and ignited my dormant volcano inside the mind...

Saw a roadside tent,there lived a a mom, dad and 2 kids sleeping on the street.No one should have to live this way !
The environment portrays the family condition is very poor. Mere a tent where you can see the stars thru the roof of the rent.

The boy wears a short unfit shirt with lot of stitches and holes,trowser was in very bad condition.

In searing heat, a man lies in a fetal position and withers away the last few hours or days of his life.

Further down the gutted street, a cow has succumbed to hunger, thirst and decease.

The carcass lay sprawled across a patch of dirt. The fetid odour of rotting flesh rises unbounded.

Raucous crows and a swarm of flies compete in frenzied feeding off the animal. Pedestrians rush by, preoccupied with their own pain and hardship.

There's no time for the dead or the dying in this city.

The horde of destitute people on the streets is unsettling.

On the other side lived a rich people who is becoming richer and richer and poor is becoming much poorer...

Why such contrasts and difference.

Not only on the living condition,

Look at the traffics, roads, infra structure of the country.

Eventhough the roads are well laid, that will soon be a home for mosquitoes to breed once the rainy season is on……

Dont blame the government alone for not laying the proper roads, but its all because of us who haven’t maintained it properly.

Where has the discipline gone????, where has the mutual help and kindness gone??.


To mention few,the drive from the chennai airport to the city laid bare the unimaginable horrors that India is unfortunately known for.

In utterly chaotic traffic, devoid of discipline, etiquette or courtesy, man, beast and vehicle jostle for space.

Strange smells, jarring noise and shocking sights greet your vehicle at every turn.

The appalling poverty rattles every outsider who visits the place.

The sight of people living, eating and defecating on the streets they call home was gut-wrenching.


There is another story and a different perspective of Chennai and the rest of India.

In recent times, India's numerous success stories have received wide media coverage.

In the last few years, India has become a powerhouse for information technology services.

Educated and skilled in the complexities of computer software technology,

Indian youth are fast becoming the preferred backbone of IT departments of many a Fortune 500 company.

Indian doctors have long had a stellar reputation in the United States. The high cost of healthcare in the US and other western countries has given Indian medical tourism forceful traction.

Indians are also making the news in the fields of science, politics, business and theatre, to name a few.

Indians are Nobel Prize and Booker prize winners, congressmen, business tycoons, astronauts and CEOs of blue chip American companies.

With much publicity and high profile manoeuvering,

Indian business trumpeted its arrival on the world stage by taking control of competing businesses. The fifth richest man in the world is an Indian. His wealth was not inherited nor did he find it in his backyard.

The list goes on.

Clearly India is breaking away the shackles of colonialism and failed economic policies and a renewed confidence is taking hold.

A "can do, will do" attitude pervades the country.

The exceptionally talented and excessively wealthy co-habit the same space as the illiterate, unskilled and the destitute.

How did such a contradiction come about?

Scarcity of jobs is advanced as one reason but, as in any complex issue, there are probably many more. Caste and sub-caste, religion and regional differences feature prominently and frequently as the bane of Indian society. Each segment fiercely protects its turf.

Skewed religious teachings and beliefs have often impeded peaceful co-existence. Karma, the belief that a person's current circumstance is a result of actions in a previous life, often gets in the way of reaching out to the needy with a helping hand.

Some of these beliefs and attitudes have a crippling effect.

Society is fractured along numerous fault lines.

When India does arrive as an economic and military power, what values will it have to offer? What strengths will India project that others
would wish to emulate?

India today displays an insatiable appetite for anything western. Whether it is music, clothing and fashion or malls, morals and values,

Indians have embraced them with an unabashed zeal. But what then of the Indian culture that stretches back a few millennia.

Is there anything of value to be salvaged?

But when you drift back to thoughts of the streets of Chennai.

"How is it that such smart people can allow this to happen?"

It is not clear to us how and when the street people of India will join the mainstream of society and be able to live in dignity.

Yet we do believe that in time to come, India will find its way.

It is timely that India's ascent is taking place in these troubled times.

Perhaps, the answer lies in the religious and spiritual traditions that India has gifted the world.

It is time for calm and circumspect leadership.

The time has come for India to take its place at the table.

Consider ourselves…
Being a software engineer and having a good family background, we live happily.With a big apartment in the Heart of the city,a guard for security,a well trained sniffer dog to add up the security,
a home theater, Television, fridge, computer pc etc ect ect.You wont even have kids at home, but buy a lot of play toys to decorate the showcase . Enjoying the weekends in resorts and pubs and lot more to add up…

But I Hav’nt seen a single chair in the family staying on the roadside
Spending the time in A/C cabins without knowing the outside world ( life is outside and not end within ur cubicle ). U wont get everything by googling guys.
we remember the credit card numbers but not even the Dad's mobile itself ( are you checking ur dad's number in the mobile’s contact list :-))

Eventhough you wont believe in the tradition of Rangoli,you still wont let anyone to walk on it, as it is the creation of your family girls.Why dont you think tis concept with ur fellow citizens.

The Solution :

Believe that while India has several Silicon Valleys within it,
the country also has three Nigerias within.
"The Indian private sector is doing extraordinary things and the country is bursting with energy, yet behind all these is the reality,

"alluding to the rampant poverty that coexists with affluence. That reality,is that there are still close

to 800 million people in India who live on less than $2 a day despite India being a democracy, which is its greatest pride.

In India, democracy has not allowed the rule of the majority.

"What you see issue after issue, state after state is that powerful minorities, farmers, minority interests and landed interests

have been able to capture the political system and extract government benefits for themselves [by way of] subsidies, etc,".

Noting that Indian democracy is wedded to these powerful minorities,this is not an unfamiliar concept in democracy --

in the US they are called special interests.

But in India it has proved deadly because people who do not get represented are the ones who are powerless.
Little wonder, that at the annual United Nations Human Development Index, India fares very badly.

"It is a great shame for Indian democracy. The large majority of people have somehow slipped though the cracks. So you see that India does

worse than Bangladesh, worse than Cuba, worse than Syria, on all these measures. It does worse than many other countries

that have lower per capita GDP [gross domestic product] than India has".

"It is one of the important things that will make it impossible for India to continue
this extraordinary growth and for this growth to trickle down to the masses,". There are all kinds of models of economic policy --

from Hong Kong which was totally laissez faire to South Korea which had lots of tariffs and regulations, to Taiwan which was somewhere in the middle,

to Singapore which was pro-market but had a huge government presence.
"But there were three factors that were in common in all these East Asian models. First was broad hospitality to markets and trade,

investment in education, particularly for the poorer half of the population, and third was the investment in health".

"Those are, so far, lacking in the Indian case" .
When one looks at India's great growth story, one has to ask oneself that if the country does not make significant

investments in education and healthcare -- which is essentially the investment in children that CRY is talking about --

will India be able to sustain the growth rate and sustain it in a way that it spreads to the entire country?
What we have to do in a sense is to take advantage

of the great political strengths that India has -- its openness, its democracy, its freedom and its participation at the civic society sector".

"In other words, if India's strength is the society, not the State, if India's strength is the micro growth,

not the macro growth, if India's strength is the small entrepreneur and not the technocrat, then we have to leverage that

and use that as best as we can".
"That is where you come in because it means that the only way this problem is going to be solved is if Indian society

and the friends of Indian society mobilize and petition the government and get civic society involved, get nonprofits involved...

That is the only way to get it solved -- a broad, multi-pronged, multi-tier strategy that tries to attack the problem".
India is not going to get some "great minister of health or minister of education or minister for children's affair"

who is going to suddenly make all these things happen and therefore there is no point sitting around for a good government.

The only way it could happen is by pressing the government as well as through a charitable solution.

"It has to be bottom up approach and not a top-down approach which means that you can't wait around and hope and wish. We have to reverse them".
"All this sounds very gloomy, but I think it is less gloomy and India growth story is not as fragile as it sounds because of the faith we have on the friends like you
and few organizations which really helps poor a lot. Ignite the Ray of Hope, which one day will glow like SUN.

There are all these problems but there are all these solutions and people, who are interested,
who are motivated and who want to do something and who are beginning to change the dynamic".

If not you, who else buddy. atleast let we do our part instead of waiting for the change to occur.
You love the nasha of doing good things and once u start admiring it, the journey of life never ends...

Henry miller's quotes well on the change...

" I saw the errors I had made and assumed full responsibility for everything.
You know, instead of being a man who would say, ‘Well, it’s a rotten system we live under,’ and griping about politics,
economics and the social condition, I said, ‘Despite all that, I could have acted differently, I could have come out,’ do you see?
And I saw that as being the fault of my own nature, character and temperament.
I accepted it, and once I did that, a great weight fell off me.
I was liberated.
I was able to really enjoy myself."

What you are going to give back to this nation when you are going to sleep on the cradle of graveyard...
We must be the change we wish to see.

Dont scream for the change,Be the change you seek in the world...