Patriotism Vs Strong Nationalism

Are patriotism and strong nationalism the two sides of the same coin? Some would say yes. But I would say no. Love for one's nation gives rise to Patriotism and obsession, on the other hand, gives rise to strong nationalism. In this world of globalization, where technology has made the world "flat", this distinction must be well understood. So we may get a person who is staying outside his/her motherland but still loves his/her nation and hence can be called patriotic. On the other hand we may get someone who is staying in his/her own country but still has a strong national feeling and sometimes may be xenophobic.

The reason why I am writing this blog is my concern about some of our fellow countrymen, who are so obsessed about their culture and roots. With a bare minimal provocation, they think their cultural history is at threat. Hence all these vandalisms in the name of cultural distortion. Very recently we have found such incidents in India which happened because these bigot people thought that a film can distort their history. Whose history is this anyway?

In this regards I would like to quote from a famous poem which I had read in my childhood. It goes like this-

"
Dwar bondho kori diya bhromotare rukhi..
Satya bole ami tobe kotha diye dhuki...
"

What it essentially means that if we close our hearts for bad things, then even good things cannot enter.

We must open our hearts to accept new things - be it good, be it bad. Our sanity should be strong enough to differentiate between these two. There is no wrong in becoming a global citizen as long as you love your country. However, its not acceptable to be obsessed about one's own country and culture.

"India Shining"

Today as I was going through a newspaper article named "Rebuilding India" in which the progress of India is being glorified, I started thinking differently. Does development mean building infrastructure only? What about character building? I think the most important developmental index of a nation is measured by the character of her people. The first picture an Indian draws about another Indian is of disbelief. People in Indian cities are highly insensitive about other people. Fellow-feeling is just absent in cities.

The first taste of the insensitivity of the government officials that I had tasted was when I was selected as a Trainee Executive Engineer in a so-called premier PSU of India. Being an Electronics & TeleComm engineer, till today I cannot understand why I was rejected in the medical test of that organization on the basis of the fact that I have partial color-blindness. Even today I wonder, was there really any work done in that organization that I could not do because of this genetic disorder? And this happened in the year 1994 when a good job was really scarce.

Today our country is sitting on a time bomb which will blast anyday. We have created many divisions and hiearchy in our society. Besides digital division between the haves and have-nots, we have created quota division, SC-ST-OBC-General division, Hindu-Muslim-Christian division, APL-BPL division, english-speaking/non-english speaking division.

These days if someone switches on a TV news channel, he/she can hardly become excited about the progress of the nation. There will invariably be news of rape,murder, molestation, kidnapping or some political bluff.

All these make me wonder is India really "shining"?

Life from a technical point of view

Sometimes I wonder how I have managed to work in the hi-tech field for such a long time. Its not that I am not capable of understanding the nitty-gritties of these software technologies. But basically I was a person who was a bit averse of technologies. You may say its because of the socio-economic background that I had in the childhood or the academic atmosphere I had gone through during childhood. Although I was pretty good in science and mathematics (maths being my favorite subject), but when it comes to the applied science I was very ordinary at it.

Therefore, when I entered the engineering college I was a bit amazed, rather open-mouthed. It was not easy to understand the Electronics & TeleComm subjects from practical point of view. I picked up Engineering Maths (be it Laplace transformation, or Fourier transformation or FFT or convolution theorem or matrix algebra or vector algebra or complex algebra) very nicely but it was difficult for me to handle all those bread-boards and CROs in the lab.

These days when I understand WiFi security protocol or when I go through the RFCs of some advanced Telecomm technologies, I wonder how I managed the engineering degree even without knowing the difference between a GSM phone and a chordless phone. These days I wonder about what I thought when I first came to know about the term “computer virus” during a discussion with one of my fellow classmates. You won’t believe that in our college we had a computer lab having air conditioned atmosphere and soft carpets and I used to think that all these are there to protect the computers from viruses.

And I used to crack a joke on my telecommunication engineering degree

That I have become a telecommunication engineer without even making a single phone call.

You won't believe when telecommunication revolution didn't happen in Bharat, I used to become very nervous of thinking how to hold the dabba phone after picking up from the cradle - which side is for the speech and which one for the ears.

You guys can laugh me out, but I am sure many people of Bharat might have faced the same dillema.

Now I really wonder how I had managed without Google. Probably this is Life. It goes on like this…

The dilemma that we face in Software Industry

In continuation to my earlier blog about colonization of the educational system, let me tell you about another dilemma that we face in the software industry.
From the childhood, it is being taught to us about the philosophy of "Do it yourself". The more advanced we go in studies, the more severe becomes the problem. In lower classes the teacher may ask the students not even to make a phone call to complete the home task. This way we enter the professional fields. And then suddenly we are asked to co-operate and collaborate. I don't know about other industries, but in software development this is very essential, because software development is a complete collaborative game. But it is very difficult to get rid of which has been injected into us from the childhood, namely "Do it yourself". Hence "my code, your code", "my bug, your bug" kinds of syndromes are very prominent in the software industry.
Is it possible to eradicate this disease without changing our educational system?
Probably then only we can give somebody a pure enjoyable software career......

Time

Who is the most powerful one in this universe? Is it God, is it Nature, is it inner-self or is it something else? I think the most powerful one in this universe is "Time". With time, a prince may become a pauper and a pauper may become a prince. We cannot stop the flow of time. It reminds me one conversation from the film "Waqt". Let me give a background of the scene. It was about a self-made man who became proud of his achievements. Then an wise man reminded him that although there is a very short distance between a cup filled with tea and the lips, but it may take years to drink that tea. And that became true for that man when he lost all his fortunes. Thats why I say "In whichever color Time has painted me, I am in that color".....

Colonization of our educational system

We all know about the colonization of our educational system during British Raj. We have produced more clerks and very few scientists. But it has created a more severe problem these days. Instead of getting a co-operative and collaborative educational system, we have got a competitive educational system. The tolerance level of the students and the society as a whole has gone abysmally low. I get shocked when I see the news that a student of class V has killed his fellow classmate in a brawl. We badly need value based education system to eradicate these kinds of problem. Then only we can say "Mera Bharat Mahan".......