Wheat export, at last

Those who read the report about wheat export in this newspaper on Wednesday must have rubbed their eyes when they came to the price aspect. The grain is being sold at Rs 4300 a tonne or Rs 430 a quintal. Over and above this the government will bear the freight charge from Rajpura to Jamnagar port in Gujarat and pay a commission to the global dealer, Cargill. Compare this with the minimum support price of Rs 580 last year since the wheat is from the old stock. This is the price the grower gets but the FCI itself pays more by way of commission, market charges, levies and cess, increasing the real cost by another Rs 70 a quintal. What is the economic logic behind buying something at more than about Rs 650 a quintal, pay bank interest for one whole year and then sell it at less than Rs 420 a quintal? Simple. It is a distress sale and the idea is to get rid of the huge buffer stock of more than 25 million tonnes of wheat. In a clearance sale of this volume the buyer sets the price or, in this case, maybe the middleman. Also, the government does not want the lower price to benefit the rural and urban poor. Or, the drought-hit people in three states. It is not merely insensitivity but the fear that a concession today will become a customary right tomorrow. This, the government feels, is best avoided in these days when subsidy cutting is the universal mantra.

There is a problem though. Underpricing exports violates the WTO commitments. Already the USA and Canada have filed a case against this country for selling abroad wheat at a price far lower than in the domestic market. The government hopes to counter this by a convoluted argument. It will say that Rs 430 a quintal is really the local market price and freight subsidy is WTO-compatible. How? The government will direct WTO inspectors to the fair price shops and to that counter where the below poverty line (BPL) card-holders draw their foodgrain needs. There the price is half of what is called the economic cost, which is the procurement price, other market related levies, FCI administrative expenses, interest on bank credit and storage charges. Last year it worked out to Rs 860 and the BPL rate came to Rs 430 a quintal. In fact, some brilliant bureaucrat in the Food Ministry came out with this proposal when another wanted the rotting grain stocks to be diverted to the drought-hit areas or for food for work programme. That would have the government a kinder, gentler one and now it has decided to export the BPL concept.

USA shows the way

On March 30 members of the Himachal Pradesh Assembly, cutting across party lines, urged the government to take appropriate measures for curbing the role of money and muscle power in election campaigns. They wanted the government to introduce some kind of a mechanism for protecting at least the panchayat elections from the curse of muscle and money. There was an element of deja vu in the concern of the Himachal MLAs about the corrupting influence of money on elections. Even at the national level there is virtually no agreement among major political parties on the need to make elections transparent and less expensive. However, when it comes to taking concrete legislative measures most of them develop cold feet. The Tehelka tapes were not only about pliable politicians willing to compromise the country's security. They were also about accepting money for the "party" without asking any questions. Of course, India is not the only democracy which is having to cope with the baneful effect of dirty money and tactics on elections. Most elections in the USA are probably as dirty as they are in India. Remember Watergate? However, after a rather prolonged debate on how to make campaigns less expensive and more fair to all the candidates the US lawmakers have at last come up with a piece of legislation which should be of interest to Indian lawmakers. The US initiative is being hailed as a first major victory for advocates of campaign finance reforms. The legislation is expected to restore to the average citizen the right to free speech by putting the megaphones beyond the reach of the wealthy people.

The US lawmakers deserve praise for at least making a serious attempt to curb the role of big money in politics. Both Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Leader of the Opposition Sonia Gandhi should call for copies of the US campaign reform bill. There are important lessons in the US initiative for the entire political class in India. The sweeping campaign reform measure was jointly moved by Republican Senator John McCain and his Democratic colleague Russ Feingold and was passed by a 59-41 majority. The fact that only 12 Republicans along with 47 of the "opposition" Democrats voted for the measure would, in the India situation, have been seen as the "defeat" of the government. However, in the USA it is being celebrated as the triumph of democracy.

On a collision course

There has been a sudden downturn in the Sino-US relations. Till January, they were strategic partners. Confrontation is building up today, particularly after Sunday's collision between a US spy plane and a Chinese jet. The EP-3 Aries II Navy plane was obviously on a surveillance mission. That is hardly big news, even for China. Such electronic and cryptological eavesdropping, which enables an aircraft to track radio, fax, phone and other electronic messages on the ground, is quite commonplace. The detaining of the 24 crew members is also not an insurmountable sticking point. And as far as the violation of Chinese airspace is concerned, that is still a debatable issue. In any case, the surveillance can be done even without intruding into the territory of a particular country. What China is really angry about is the likelihood of the sale of such information to the neighbouring Taiwan. China claims sovereignty over the island and the assistance extended to the latter by Washington is considered a serious provocative act. It is reported that the USA is to provide weapons, including sophisticated ship-borne radar system Aegis, to Taiwan later this month. The situation has been complicated by some other related incidents. On the one hand, a US House resolution has opposed Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympics on the ground of its poor human rights record. On the other, there are reports of China's detention of two US-based scholars.

However, while some sparks are bound to fly, the incident is unlikely to snowball into a crisis. What is noteworthy is that both governments have been making a subtle attempt to move back as far as possible from the brink. Beijing has accused Washington of being "reckless" and "deliberate" and "shameless" but has not officially orchestrated any anti-US demonstrations, as were witnessed following the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by US planes on a NATO mission in 1999. Both governments appear to be tailoring their response keeping in view the reaction of their own citizens. Taiwan's fear is that China will manipulate the card to ensure that the annual round of military supplies that it gets from the USA is reduced or scrapped altogether. From the military point of view, the USA is keen that the Chinese experts do not lay their hands on the sophisticated equipment. But that attempt has failed following the entry of Chinese armymen into the grounded plane. 

An avalanche of shameful scams
Are we becoming a nation of crooks?
Inder Malhotra

What kind of a people, society, nation or state are we Indians becoming? Whatever else may or may not be said about the Tehelka tapes, they have shown how porous, corrupt and easily accessible to despicable sleazeballs the entire system of defence procurement is. More chillingly, they have also nailed leaders of the BJP and the Samata Party for happily accepting or expressing their willingness to accept “donations” in black money from fake arms dealers anxious to promote a fictitious defence deal.

Lest other parties should try to feel superior, pretend to be holier than thou and ride a high horse, let me add that a former Prime Minister is already convicted for corruption though his appeal against this verdict is pending. A family friend of another former Prime Minister is busy in a foreign land, trying desperately to escape extradition to India. In all fairness, one must add that three famous industrialist brothers, similarly striving to escape the clutches of the law, have been in very high favour with every single government in this country at least since the seventies.

Quick on the heels of the Tehelka upheaval followed the shocking stock exchange scandal, a frightening re-run of the megascam in 1992 in some respects and an even more brazen act of villainy in others. This time around there has been blatant inside trading and market manipulation, besides bank frauds. Both SEBI and the Reserve Bank have failed to do their duty, to put it no more strongly than that. In the words of the Congress spokesman, Mr Jaipal Reddy, SEBI was supposed to be a “watchdog” but it has not acted as even a “scarecrow”. Mr Ketan Parekh, the “Big Bull” in the current loot, and his cousin may be under investigation and in jail. But another Mr Parikh, whose cooperative bank issued the Rs 137-crore pay order that bounced, has done the vanishing trick. Nobody seems to have made any attempt to even question the Bank of India about its role in the disgraceful affair that has enriched a few but ruined millions of small investors and driven several of them to suicide.

The most searing part of this tragedy is that those in authority do not appear to be horrified by what has been going on. Moreover, there is absolutely no guarantee that what happened in 1992 and again now will not be repeated in the next few years. Sadly, in his replies to questions by the media on the disaster at the stock exchange, the Finance Minister, Mr Yashwant Sinha, displayed an attitude that was a mixture of complacence and nonchalance.

Add to this the bombshell about the orgy of slush and sleaze at the highest levels of the customs and excise administration that has burst to turn the spotlight on how rotten is the state of affairs in India that is Bharat. The still incomplete details of the alleged depredations of Mr B.P. Verma, just removed from the powerful post of Chairman of the Central Board of Customs and Excise, will jolt even those who are totally inured to the stranglehold of graft and corruption on India’s public life. Indeed, there are several aspects of this case that are literally chilling.

In a TV interview, the Chief Vigilance Commissioner, Mr N. Vittal, has confirmed what has been known for long — that there was a serious allegation against Mr Verma and he was on the CVC’s “watch list” when he was appointed to the top job in the customs and excise department. Why and how?

The answer is simple. As was proclaimed from the housetops at that time, the new incumbent at the Customs and Excise Board had the “backing” of a “smuggling syndicate” and some “high-ups in the pyramid of political power structure”. This is where the root cause of the rot that has vitiated the entire Indian system really lies. A former Deputy Director of the Enforcement Directorate, now being proceeded against rather belatedly, was at one time a lot more powerful than even the head of his department because of “patronage from above”. Another sordid episode also needs to be cited to underscore the comprehensive degeneration.

During Mr H.D. Deve Gowda’s short tenure as Prime Minister, the Enforcement Director had prevented an industrialist and press baron from leaving the country because he was accused of grave violations of the law on foreign exchange. Very powerful and influential politicians and lobbyists descended on the Prime Minister’s House and persuaded him to let the gentleman go. Later, some people asked Mr Gowda: “Sir, who all had come to plead with you the industrialist’s cause?” His reported reply: “Please ask who did not come; it would be a shorter list”.

Fish, according to an old saying, always begins to rot from the head downwards. The former head of the customs and excise set-up proves this to the hilt. Along with him, as many as 47 senior customs officers are also being investigated. For, all of them have what can only be called the “Olga connection”.

Ms Olga Kozireva, an evidently enterprising Uzbek young lady, travelled to India at least 68 times in the course of a year and every time brought in huge quantities of goods, such as 81,000 yards of Chinese silk, by paying no or nominal duty all the time. A huge network of customs functionaries was only too happy to collude with her. Since August last, the lady has been the President’s guest in Delhi’s Tihar Jail. Despite full expose of the case in at least two newspapers, nothing happened to her obliging collaborators in the customs so far. For the obvious reason that they were being “protected” by their top boss. Meanwhile, an excise commissioner posted to Vizag and wanted by the CBI has managed to abscond from under the same protective wing.

It would be a dangerous delusion that the problem is one of bribery and corruption only. National security is also being constantly compromised by not only the corrupt in the defence structure but also the worthies working for customs and excise. For the benefit of those who might say that this apprehension is like crying wolf, let me remind them what had happened just before the serial bombings in Mumbai in 1993 in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The RDX, weighing one and a half tons and put to deadly use, was smuggled to the Maharashtra coast by the outlaw and Mafia don Dawood Ibrahim with the full and willing cooperation of customs authorities.

Mercifully, the culprits were nabbed and punished. The most revealing part of the story, however, was the tearful confession of the most senior customs official in the net. He sobbed and said that he had helped Dawood in the “honest belief” that the “usual contraband of gold or electronics” was being brought in. If Uzbek beauties can bring in Chinese silk, French perfume, German cameras or whatever, cannot they or someone else smuggle in, say, a miniaturised nuke? Similarly, if disreputable arms dealers, genuine or fake, can walk into the then Defence Minister’s room for a palaver with a minister’s companion and party chief, can’t the ISI operatives do so, too?

Ten years after the Mumbai bomb blasts, Dawood Ibrahim, the don at war with India, controls the financing of the lucrative Bollywood film industry and is able to extort the amounts, as the case of Mr Bharat Shah shows so painfully. It is the outlaw’s writ that is running in the western metropolis, overriding that of the Indian State.

This is cause not for mere concern but for alarm and shame. Not only politicians, whether in power or in opposition, not only bureaucrats (who prefer working in customs and excise departments these days to jobs in the IAS and the IFS) but the entire political class must seriously introspect. Are we determined to become a nation of crooks hell-bent on self-destruction rather like the Roman empire that had collapsed under the weight of its venality and debauchery?

Keeper of the house that Tito built

Some leaders refuse to fade away from history or memory, mostly for wrong reasons. Former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic is one such eminent man. In the late seventies he rode to power and stayed there for 13 years by whipping up Serbian nationalism. He lost out last year and was swept away by a mighty wave of popular revulsion against his brutal and undemocratic rule. Late last week he was arrested by the police when a huge crowd laid siege to his palace. It is a delightful irony but politics is full of this stuff.

Milosevic is guilty and hunted because he lost the war. A loser loses the support of history also. As someone warned his class enemy, “History will condemn you, for we shall write history.”

Verma’s green channel

The arrest of the sacked CBEC chairman B P Verma has created a stir in the excise and customs department, though just about everyone has a meaningful and mirthful grin that something explosive like this was just waiting to happen. Insiders maintain things had gone too far even for Mr Verma to apply the brakes. They disclosed that there were at least half a dozen “gorgeous looking women” breezing in and out of his office without any let or hindrance. A recent incident is a case in point.

A conduit woman, who has also been arrested by the CBI, just barged into Mr Verma’s office undeterred by those already present there and reeled off choice expletives against him. The brazeness of this woman sent shivers down the spine of those present, including a woman visitor. Rather crude in her demeanour, this woman was clearly in a rage that Mr Verma was allegedly having a dalliance with another fixer of the fair sex. And shockingly the axed chairman of CBEC just remained transfixed in his chair without as much as lifting a little finger.

Clearly, those seeking favours were exploiting Mr Verma’s penchant for the good things in life especially after sun down which was common knowledge. A CBEC insider summed up the situation that “Mata Haris are again in the news. Only this time they are not gleaning secrets for their country but filling their pockets the easy way along with those in authority willing to go all the way.”

The original spy plane row

The EP3 confrontation between China and the USA will flood the memories of the oldies with the sensational U 2 spy plane case. Today it is a unipolar world, with the Third World mostly behind the USA. So also are newspaper commentators and liberal politicians. That is why China’s angry protests and its demand for an immediate cessation of spying activities sound somewhat synthetic.

But the 1960 event was different. Then the world was divided into the Soviet and American blocs. Many Third World countries were solidly behind the Socialist bloc, wary of the whimsical ways of the USA and its open support to dictators, particularly the military power usurpers

It was in this background that the U 2 spy plane’s shooting down took place. The USA had sent a high-flying but slow speed plane over the Soviet air space to photograph locations of military and industrial establishments and radio and radar stations. The plane piloted by one Francis Gary Powers, was flying at an altitude of over 65,000 feet and the craft was equipped with a very sophisticated camera and an audio system to record radio signals of radar stations.

The U 2 was shot down on May 1, 1960, nearly 40 years ago. Five days later, the then top Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev told the country’s Parliament that a US plane had been shot down. Cunningly, he did not give any details. And the Americans walked into a trap.

They explained that a plane engaged in high altitude weather research had gone missing after the pilot reported that oxygen supply was malfunctioning. The pilot was described as an employee of Lockheed Corporation, the manufacturer of the U 2 plane.

After a few days Khrushchev came out with a second statement causing several red faces in Washington. He revealed that the pilot was alive, having parachuted to safety. The plane flying at a very high altitude was brought down by a rocket, a sensational achievement in those days. The pilot was alive and had confessed to his real mission. The US establishment was caught with its pants down, and had trying hours to get out of the mess. It did not.

A summit meeting between the Soviet and US leaders fixed for the middle of May, 1960, ended in a fiasco when the flamboyant and balding Khrushchev thumped the table with his shoes and forced the US leadership to withdraw in a pell-mell fashion. He had his 15 minutes of fame and US President Eisenhower his 15 minutes of infamy. Incidentally, Powers was freed after 10 years in Soviet prison and like all disgraced soldiers, he lives as a recluse.

Indian loses “battle for life” in Australia
Paritosh Parasher

The life support system of an Indian in Australia who was diagnosed as brain dead has been turned off after his wife, who had pinned her hopes on holistic healing from India, finally gave her consent.

Vikram Wadhawan (33) was admitted in the intensive care unit of Melbourne’s Box Hill Hospital on March 18 after he had suffered cardiac arrest following a severe asthmatic attack in his Camberwell home. Doctors at the hospital had declared him brain dead after a series of tests on March 26 and sought his wife Kanika’s permission to turn the life support system off.

She had refused permission and told hospital authorities that she was seeking “pranic” healing from a holistic healing centre in New Delhi. Kanika had also sought a stay from Victorian Supreme Court against any move by the hospital to switch off the life support. Judge Allan McDonald had provided her relief on Friday and fixed Monday as the day for hearing her case.

But Kanika asked the hospital to turn off the system before the scheduled hearing. “I had to give up my husband’s life just because I am in Australia and not in India,” Kanika told Melbourne newspaper The Herald Sun.

Kanika said she felt “totally trapped under Victorian law” into agreeing to turning off the machine keeping her husband alive. “The court wouldn’t have given me time, the pranic healers time, to see if they could bring my Vikram back to life,” she said.

“The doctor (who confirmed the diagnosis of brain death) told ‘pranic’ healers in India that they were giving me false hope, but that’s not true. They were positive about their chances, but they needed time,” she told reporters outside the court.

The Wadhawan case has aroused a lot of debate in medical and legal circles because of the ethical issues involved. The Box Hill Hospital doctors wanted to turn off the system at the earliest as Wadhawan was diagnosed brain dead and there has been no case in Australia’s medical history where such a person has been revived back to life. They were also concerned that he was occupying one of the six intensive care unit beds in the hospital.

The court was also told by doctors that it is considered unethical to treat a “dead” person but were stopped from turning off the life support as Kanika’s lawyer had argued that “pranic” healers were in the process of channeling energy to Wadhawan from different centres in India. He had produced a letter from one such centre in New Delhi requesting the court for some time to complete the process.

Kanika had also made desperate appeals to various airlines to allow her to take Wadhawan to India but her efforts failed to solicit a positive response. She had also sought independent medical opinion about Wadhawan and it was this second opinion that forced her to give her consent.

“In an hour nature took its course,” Wadhawan’s barrister Dan Flynn has been quoted as saying by the paper.

In spite of her traumatic experience after one month of migrating to Australia, the young widow has expressed her keenness to stay here with her eight-year-old son. She would be going to India to immerse the ashes of her husband in the “very sacred river Ganga.”

The director of the Ashish Institute of Inner Studies, Victoria’s leading “pranic” healing centre, Hazel Wardha, had also expressed skepticism regarding reviving a brain dead person with pranic healing. IANS 

Valentine-related health risk

Few would suspect celebrating Valentine’s Day may be dangerous to your health, but a US study has warned cooking up a romantic dinner for two often poses real risks.

New research from the American Dietetic Association has found that setting the table for an intimate meal is more likely to be on the gastrically hazardous side if the man of the house is handling the food.

A survey by the ADA and ConAgra found most men admit to improper food handling.

“Men are more likely than women to use the same plate and utensils when handling raw and cooked meats without cleaning them between uses,” it said. “Mixing raw meat juices with ready-to-eat food is one of the leading causes of food-related illnesses at home.”

It suggested Valentine Chefs “sing the chorus of your favourite love song for 20 second while you wash your hands”, cooking meats to the proper high temperature, and keeping raw and cooked meats on separate “festively colour plates.”

But the trappings-of-romance news was not all discouraging.

A separate study out of North Carolina said women who suffer from migraines can heave a sigh of relief and eat holiday chocolate gifts from their Valentine.

There is not enough evidence to uphold the commonly held belief that chocolate is, for some, a trigger for migraines, it found. Instead researchers believe craving sweet things may be a sign a headache is already on the way, the study said. AFP

Weapons still entering US schools

Three out of five US schoolboys say they have easy access to guns and one in five say they have taken a weapon to school in the past year, according to a survey which suggests that security measures introduced in the light of school shootings have not had much impact.

The Josephson Institute for Ethics, in California, also found that alcohol and guns were linked in a ``toxic cocktail’’. More than 70 per cent of secondary school students who said they had been drunk at school in the past year had access to a gun. Overall, 47 per cent of the 15,877 students questioned agreed or strongly agreed with the proposition: “If I wanted to, I could get a gun.’’

Twentyone per cent of secondary school boys said they had taken a weapon to school in the past year, but the institute said it was not clear how many of them were guns.

A survey in 1999 found that 9 per cent had carried a gun in the preceding 30 days.

Michael Josephson, the institute’s president, said the most worrying aspect was that the results represented no improvement since Columbine high school shooting in Colorado two years ago, in which two students killed 13 people and wounded 23 others.

He said there were no signs that “the new sensitivity and new precautions’’ were having any impact. Guardian

Sports are an also-ran

The general attitude of most schools towards sports and games is one of indifference. This is more true when it comes to senior classes where students are expected to only study and are exempt from taking part in any sports activities. Besides this, games are not taught in a systematic way and little is done to promote sports as an everyday activity.

Track and field events are given an airing only when the annual Sports Day rolls around. Training is minimal and preparation sketchy. WFS

75 YEARS AGO

Charge against a Magistrate

We have received a copy of petition submitted by a woman in a neighbouring district to the Chief Secretary, Government, Punjab, making serious allegations against a Magistrate. The petitioner alleges that she was implicated in a criminal case in the court of the Magistrate, who made that an excuse not only for making an immoral proposal to the daughter of the petitioner but actually sought to obtain her assent to it under the threat of awarding a heavy sentence in the pending case if his wishes were not complied with. The allegations for which the petitioner has made herself responsible are too categorical to be lightly brushed aside and we hope that the government will institute an immediate inquiry into the matter.

Material progress & spiritual growth
Asghar Ali Engineer

Faith is thought to be irrational and superstitious by rationalists and reason is considered to be unacceptable by the faithful. The rationalist rejects faith as superstitious and the faithful rejects reason as critical of faith. But the real question is: Are faith and reason polar opposites? It is a much debated issue and for many it is difficult to resolve.

However, it is not proper to treat them as polar opposites. In fact both are needed for a balanced life. It is not difficult to see that reason alone is not enough for a satisfactory life and so faith without reason will also make successful life difficult.

In the modern world successful life is more important than meaningful life and hence reason is considered absolutely necessary for a successful life. The faithful, on the other hand, emphasise meaningful life more than successful life. In fact neither mere successful life nor only meaningful life can lead to meaningful progress.

Attempt should be made to work out a creative synthesis between successful life and meaningful life. While successful life is highly necessary for material progress, meaningful life is needed to give proper direction to material progress. It is important to note that all religions stress certain fundamental values like compassion, justice, equality, wisdom, benevolence and sensitivity to others suffering. These are very important values for meaningful life. Mere material progress leads to a rat race and consumerism for the sake of consuming.

Sensual pleasure becomes the end of life. This is what is happening in most of the materially advanced countries and the developing ones are following suit. There is no balance in life. The whole emphasis is on successful life. Consumption is ever going up as if to consume is the goal of life.

In such a culture of consumerism there is a strong tendency of getting desensitised towards others' sufferings. There is so much poverty in the countries of Asia and Africa and there are not enough resources even to meet the basic necessities of life. Similarly in these countries the rich are equally insensitive to the sufferings of the weaker sections of society in their own countries. On the one hand there is so much to consume, so much to waste — one American sociologist describes the consumer society of America as a society of waste makers — and on the other, thousands of people die of hunger and for want of medicines.

Can such life, however successful, be a meaningful life — a life sublime? Certainly not. Whole life — and life is such a precious gift of nature — is spent in hot pursuit of illusory success. There is no deeper satisfaction in this pursuit. More 'success' leads to more consumption and more dissatisfaction. Life in this chase is always full of anxiety, insecurtiy and tension.

On the other hand there are those who want to survive with the help of blind faith and superstition. Such superstitions are widespread not only among the illiterates and the poor but also often among the rich and the powerful. Many of our politicians consult astrologers and even go for superstitious rituals to achieve success in elections. Many high officials of the corporate sector also resort to such superstitious acts. The poor and the illiterate develop blind faith for lack of any opportunity for education and for the perpetual insecurity they have to face in life.

It is wrong to think that faith is always blind or superstitious. It is the human being and his conditions that make it blind. It is basically his insecurity which tends to make faith blind or superstitious.

Faith by itself is not blind. Faith, on the other hand, could be most productive if used by a balanced personality who does not suffer from a sense of insecurity. It is the sense of insecurity, which tends to make faith blind.

Faith is a necessary part of a meaningful life. Even a scientist is essentially a person of faith. He or she has faith in his or her work or research or hypothesis developed on the basis of empirical observations. Without faith inner growth of one's personality is not possible. Creative synthesis of reason and faith makes human personality most productive and meaningful. Lack of either of the two will lead to instability. Extreme reliance on reason without faith makes one sceptic and extreme reliance on faith without reason makes one superstitious.

Thus it will not be a contradiction in terms to coin a term 'rational faith' and rational faith ensures a creative blend of successful and meaningful life. And when we say faith we refer to faith in higher values and when we say reason we mean deeper philosophical reason, not mere material explanations.

Lack of faith may lead to cynicism and insensitivity rather than unstinted growth and material progress. Similarly lack of reason may lead not only to stagnation and lack of growth but also to elementary understanding of nature and genesis of our own life.

While reason enables us to understand the nature and genesis of life, faith enables us to relate it to the universe in a meaningful way. And it is in relating life to the universe that metaphysical questions arise. Metaphysical questions are basically philosophical questions and their answers depend on philosophical reason.

Some people have the tendency to dismiss metaphysical questions as mere superstition. It is not correct. They are rather meta-rational rather than irrational. There are certain aspects of life which are beyond reason as they are beyond the domain of reason.

As scientists deal with physical aspects of life, prophets, seers and rishis deal with metaphysical ones. As scientists deal with material growth, they deal with inner spiritual growth. And without deep inner faith one cannot derive spiritual contentment.

Thus one has to achieve a proper balance between faith and reason for a balanced and contented growth. Mere pursuit of pleasure would lead not to happiness but to more insecurity and discontentment whereas real happiness results from a creative balance between material progress and inner spiritual satisfaction.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

I merge into the Supreme Being

This is the ocean of bliss

I merge into the Supreme Being

This is the ocean of peace.

An unlimited Ocean, receiving and complete.

I am merged in the experience of the highest Soul.

Diving into the depths of bliss

So deep, so silent is the Ocean.

*****

Treasures of peace, treasures of love,

Of light, of bliss.

Waves of golden-red light break around me

I bathe, clean, purify until I feel free and light.

Refreshed by the Ocean

Surrendered to its waves and depth

I float gently

Downwards

softly

slowly

I return

I am peaceful, alive.

— Creative Raja Yoga Study Book

*****

Nanak, make the true Guru thy friend;

Then in the court of the Lord

thou shalt be happy.

—Guru Nanak Dev, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Sri Rag, page 21.

*****

Those who encounter the Guru

Achieve an indestructible love of God.

The Guru bestows Divine Knowledge

And unveils the mysteries of the three worlds.

That man whose feet are set On the path of virtue

Never abandoneth the pure Name.

—Guru Nanak Dev, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Sri Rag, Page 59.

*****

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

—The Education of Henry Adams, 20.

*****

The severity of the Master is more useful than the indulgence of the father.

—Sheikh Saadi, Gulistan

*****

Were a thousand moons to arise,

Were a thousand suns to be shining.

All that external brightness

Would leave the world within, in darkness,

Unless it had the benign Guru’s light.

—Guru Angad Dev, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Var Asa, page 463