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| Thursday,
May 10, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Sangat
darshan, Badal style Fractured parties,
split votes Fallout of Balco |
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Developing
missile defence systems
Panja’s
survival strategy
Women
Become Men at Work
From
farmwaste to fibreboard
Yielding
to the will of God
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Sangat darshan, Badal style THERE is a Maharaja touch in Mr Parkash Singh Badal's much-publicised sangat darshan programme in Punjab towns and villages meant to boost his public image. It is a well thought-out PR exercise, though somewhat misplaced. At Jalandhar the other day cheques worth more than Rs 2 crore were issued on the spot in response to public demand for development projects. It was an impressive show. Nothing can be more delightful than to see a development-oriented Chief Minister who, like an old-time royalty, bestows on those assembled on-the-spot favours! Mr Badal has denied that the programme is politically motivated. "It is meant to solve and hear the various problems of the people", he explains. The Chief Minister is surely a well-meaning person. However, not many will accept the claim that his sangat darshan is not a political show. Nothing moves in this country without political calculations. And Mr Badal knows that he is racing against time in view of the state's forthcoming election. Perhaps he has belatedly realised the people's growing ire against his government's non-performance and hence this sangat shortcut to regain credibility. Mr Badal is a shrewd politician. He knows the art of political management. Whosoever thought of the sangat darshan device has surely done him a good turn. Still, he remains a suspect in the eyes of his critics because of its pre-poll overtones. Had he undertaken this programme the day he took up the reins of power, he would have been unbeatable politically. Politics is, of course, a gamble. The Chief Minister knows that it is better to take a chance than sit back and look heavenward for an answer to Punjab's manifold problems. Mr Badal now claims that his government had inherited an empty khazana and that it has taken him almost four years to get the state out of the financial crisis. We wish it were true. The state continues to be in a financial mess mainly because of the poor management of the economy, especially in its agricultural life-line. Ironically, the sangat darshan cheques issued by the Chief Minister have been kept on hold at some places in district Patiala on the order of the Sub-Divisional Magistrate. The bankers have been told to release the payment only after getting detailed project reports against which the funds are to be withdrawn. The Deputy Commissioner of Patiala says supervisory committees for this purpose are yet to be set up and hence the stoppage of the encashment of cheques. This is as it should be. Disbursement of public money must not be a political exercise. Development funds are meant for development purposes. Instead of taking upon himself the BDO's role, Mr Badal would have earned the people's gratitude if he had asked his colleagues and officers to lend ears to public grievances for quick redressal. It is, of course, very tempting to take the cue from Maharaja Ranjit Singh in his bi-centenary year of celebrations. But then Mr Badal is not the Lion of Punjab — not yet! |
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Fractured parties, split votes IT is a depressing scene on the day four states and a union territory elect their new Assemblies. Every party has split, fronts have unravelled, rebels are making life miserable for official nominees and the campaign itself has seen much angry charges. The Congress fielded its president Mrs Sonia Gandhi as its chief vote-getter and the BJP responded by deploying Prime Minister Vajpayee. They promptly carried their Lok Sabha confrontation to election meetings and pushed their personal hostility to a new high. This was ridiculous. The Congress hopes to have its partymen as Chief Ministers — in Assam and Kerala — and with some luck in Pondicherry too. It also hopes to be part of the ruling combination in Tamil Nadu and retain its reduced base in West Bengal. In contrast, the BJP has no stake in the election. It is unrepresented in the Kerala Assembly, although it is concentrating all its energies on one constituency this time to break the vodoo. It is riding piggyback in Tamil Nadu and its fate is hopelessly tied to that of the DMK. It is contesting 22 seats and may be successful in about 10. Pondicherry is a no-no land. In West Bengal it has one MLA and totally friendless and caught in the crossfire of the Congress-Trinamool Congress combine and the Left Front, it can only play the role of a spoilsport. Assam is an example of misjudged alliance which has inflicted serious wounds on both the party and its ally, the AGP. The unnatural allies have split, witnessed violence by supporters and are marching to the election battle on crutches. There had been other controversies. The acceptance of the nomination papers of Mr
R. Balakrishna Pillai who has been convicted and sentenced for five years and the rejection of Ms Jayalalitha’s nomination, who got a sentence of only three years, the virtual banishment of Mr Vaiko’s MDMK by the parent body, the revolt by the family members of Chief Minister Karunanidhi over his determination to hand over power to his younger son, Mr Stalin, alliance partners of Tamil Nadu fighting each other in Pondicherry, the defection of Mr Ajit Panja from the Trinamool Congress and the prompt blessings of the Prime Minister and, finally, the pre-poll killings in Assam. Each state threw up many issues of interest to the common man but in their eagerness to mount personal attacks on the leaders of rival parties, these problems received scant regard. So the states are going to the polls with no ideas of their problems and fully geared to the incompatibility of the leaders. |
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Fallout of Balco ALTHOUGH
the 67-day-old strike by the Bharat Aluminium Company [Balco] has technically ended not all the issues which the sale of 51 per cent of the government equity in the profit-making plant to a private firm threw up have not been answered. Even the stand on the strike-created demand of payment of salaries for the duration of the forced closure of the factory is not clear. There is only a loose understanding that the interests of the workers would be protected. But the final shape of the settlement will depend on the ruling of the Supreme Court, currently hearing the issues born out of the Centre's interpretation and implementation of the disinvestment policy. However, the administration of the new state of Chhattisgarh has given a totally new twist to the controversy by invoking the principle of protecting the rights of the tribal. As a result Sterlite Industries, which purchased the shares in Balco, will now have Essar Steel and Daewoo Power take the stand along with it to answer the charge of being in illegal occupation of tribal land. Every inch of land in Chhattisgarh is technically "tribal" in nature. And the protection available to government projects on tribal land cannot be extended to private entrepreneurs. The Chhattisgarh administration has indeed drawn up an interesting legal distinction between the status of the land and the status of a "disinvested" public sector undertaking. The new line of argument appears to allow Sterlite to take control of the factory, but remove it from the land which belongs to the tribal population of Chhattisgarh! To escape the charge of discrimination in the matter of enforcing the policy of protecting tribal land the state government has decided to serve notices on Essar and Daewoo to explain why their land lease should not be cancelled. The Balco controversy may have been given an interesting legal twist by the administration, but if the state government really sends the private companies packing out of Chhattisgarh, it would lose out on an investment package of Rs 20,000. It could turn out to because of cutting the nose to spite the face. |
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Developing
missile defence systems FOUR
decades ago President John Kennedy made the momentous announcement that it was America’s goal to place a man on the moon within a decade. Skeptics were proved wrong when the USA actually succeeded in doing so. Kennedy’s vision set the path for the USA to emerge as the unquestioned world leader in technology development and military prowess. Speaking at National Defence University, President George W. Bush made an equally momentous announcement. He recalled that during the Cold War the principal adversaries depended on a nuclear and missile capability for Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). The USA would, however, now rely on both offensive and defensive forces. He asserted that unlike in the days of the Cold War, the USA no longer regarded Russia as an enemy but a “country in transition with an opportunity to emerge as a great nation”. What are the threats that President Bush now envisages to American national security? He has spelt out these threats as emerging from some countries now possessing technologies for the development of ballistic missiles and nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. He has accused such countries of spreading these technologies around the world and described them as including the “world’s least responsible states” that “seek weapons of mass destruction to intimidate their neighbours” and for whom “terror and blackmail are a way of life”. He has referred to such countries as hating democracy and freedom and caring very little for the lives of their own people. These are attributes that could very easily describe the body politic, policies and values of some in our neighbourhood. How does President Bush propose to safeguard American security in the post-Cold War world? He is clear that nuclear weapons will continue to play a vital role for American security. He is determined to develop missile defence shields and significantly and unilaterally reduce the size of America’s nuclear arsenal from the currently agreed START-II level of 3000 to 3500 warheads to around 1500 warheads. More importantly, ever since May 23, 2000, Mr Bush has spoken of the need for measures to de-alert nuclear weapons. We have consistently been urging that nuclear powers should de-alert their nuclear weapons and remove their warheads from missiles, in order to reduce the risk of nuclear conflict — accidental or otherwise. Though over 100 countries have supported the Resolutions that we have co-sponsored in the United Nations on this subject, the Clinton Administration and its non-proliferation surrogates opposed us. We now have an opportunity to work together with the USA on this issue of crucial importance to us, especially given the volatility of some of our neighbours. Recognising the inevitability of the USA adopting missile defences, President Vladimir Putin has very carefully nuanced Russia’s response to the emerging strategic scenario. While the Russian reaction to strategic missile defences was initially hostile, Mr Putin soon changed direction and announced Russia’s readiness to cooperate and work together with the USA in developing such defences, including the development of highly advanced and sophisticated missile systems to interdict incoming missiles at the boost stage. More importantly, Russia has now shown flexibility on the provisions of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, by indicating that it wants not just “preservation” but also “strengthening” of the provisions of this treaty. The Russians would obviously be at a strategic disadvantage if they did not arrive at a mutually agreed framework on the issue of missile defences with the USA. One hopes the Bush Administration will not only address Russian concerns on this score but also refrain from giving the Russians the feeling that measures like the expansion of NATO are aimed at containing Russia’s influence, especially in its immediate neighbourhood. China has come out strongly against the Bush missile defence plans. A missile defence shield over the west coast of the USA would neutralise China’s ICBMs. Further, American plans for developing theatre missile defence systems that could be transferred to Japan and Taiwan would seriously erode China’s defence posture in the entire Asia-Pacific region. Mr Bush envisages the use of existing technologies to develop anti-missile systems on land, air and at sea. It will, however, take a decade or more for the USA to develop and deploy strategic anti-missile systems that can intercept missiles before re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere, or even earlier at what is known as the “boost stage”. But if its space programme spurred technology development in the past, the missile defence plans will enable the USA to remain the world leader in technology development in the foreseeable future. The reaction of American allies in Europe has predictably been guarded. This is not surprising. The Europeans invariably wait for the Americans to take the lead and then join in. The Russians do have genuine concerns about the missile defence plans, but are keeping their options open and hoping to strike the best possible deal with the Americans. They know that it is going to take several years before the sophisticated anti-missile systems are developed and deployed. China alone feels that the American move will, in the long term, erode its power in the Asia-Pacific region. While we can take note of this fact, we should never forget that it is China that has caused the greatest damage to our long-term security interests, by its continuing assistance to Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programmes — assistance that has emboldened Pakistan to resort to nuclear blackmail, by constantly referring to the subcontinent as a “nuclear flashpoint”. Some of us also conveniently forget that whether it was the Bangladesh conflict of 1971, or the Clinton-Jiang Declaration in the aftermath of our nuclear tests, China has never hesitated to use its leverage with the Americans to undermine our security. While we certainly need to engage our northern neighbour in an effort to reconcile our security perspectives, it would be naive to assert that we should first be sensitive to Chinese concerns, real or imaginary, before reacting to initiatives taken by great powers like the Americans or the Russians. China would certainly not consult us before fashioning its response to such issues. New Delhi has rightly chosen to acknowledge that there are positive elements in the Bush anti-missile development plans. For over five decades the USA has looked at us in adversarial terms and sought to exclude us from consultations on issues of vital national security interest. Just a few years ago, President Clinton seemed hell bent to “cap, roll-back and eliminate” our nuclear capabilities, The Bush Administration today looks at us positively and seems ready to engage us on a wide range of security issues in a manner that recognises our power and potential across the Indian Ocean region. But diplomacy is as much about style as of substance. It is obvious that issues pertaining to missile defences have been discussed with the new US Administration over the past few months and especially during Mr Jaswant Singh’s “unscheduled” meeting with “Dubya” at the Oval Office. It is a pity that no effort was made by the government to keep parliamentary and public opinion informed of the positive elements in the Bush proposals. More importantly, we made a mockery of our references to Russia being a “strategic partner” by the hasty and ill-advised timing of our announcement welcoming the American move, just a day prior to the arrival of Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov in Delhi. We surely could have welcomed the positive elements of the Bush proposals after taking Mr Ivanov into confidence about our thinking. But in the ultimate analysis one cannot but welcome the fact that we are now fashioning our responses in a manner that recognises the realities of the post-Cold War world, instead of repeating mantras that were primarily relevant to a bygone era. The writer is a former High Commissioner of India to Pakistan. |
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Panja’s survival strategy WHEN Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee insulted her party colleague Ajit Kumar Panja, then Union Minister of State for External Affairs, forcing him to part company with her, it was generally believed that the second most important leader of the four-year-old regional political organisation would not survive the grievous blow he had received. But within a few days he has proved the sceptics wrong. He has acquired enough skill to sail to safety when his ship is under attack. Being an expert theatre artist, he dramatised how Ms Banerjee had ill-treated him in the presence of the Trinamool rank and file and succeeded in winning sympathies within the organisation from which he had been virtually thrown out. Soon party MP Nitish Sengupta came to his side. Mr Sengupta is a former bureaucrat. It is believed that another bureaucrat-turned-politician and Trinamool member of the Lok Sabha, Mr Bikram Sarkar, is anxiously waiting for the election results to jump over to Mr Panja’s bandwagon. That will mean a group of three MPs deserting the Trinamool Congress, having a strength of nine in the Lok Sabha. A clear split to save them from the anti-defection law. Mr Panja lost his ministerial position after Ms Banerjee withdrew her party’s support to the NDA government. But he has been maintaining that he is very much part of the BJP-led coalition at the Centre. His stand has earned him a place in the good books of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. During the election campaign in West Bengal he shared dais with Mr Vajpayee and worked for the success of NDA candidates, giving a tough time to Ms Banerjee. Despite his unceremonious removal from the Trinamool Congress, which he built brick by brick with Ms Banerjee, Mr Panja is in an upbeat mood. Gallop polls have indicated that the Trinamool-Congress alliance may fail to dislodge the Left Front from power in West Bengal despite Mr Jyoti Basu not being the incumbent Chief Minister. This may cause a chain reaction with many disgruntled party men saying goodbye to Mamata Didi. Obviously, Mr Panja will be the happiest person if such a scenario emerges. He may unhesitatingly join the BJP along with Mr Sengupta and Mr Bikram Sarkar. There is another possibility also. If the company of Mrs Sonia Gandhi does not help Ms Banerjee to capture the coveted seat in Writers’ Building, it is believed that she may find some excuse to come back to the NDA fold, leaving the Congress in the lurch. Mr Panja, a former advocate, will then have the choice of mending his fences with the lady with a mercurial temperament. In fact, now it will be the turn of Ms Banerjee to woo this experienced political organiser back to her party. Nothing is unthinkable in politics. After all, the 68-year-old leader, who fought his first Lok Sabha election in 1984 with the blessings of Rajiv Gandhi, has earned the reputation of being a party builder. Even today he loves the Trinamool as much as he did earlier. In his election speeches he consciously criticised only the Congress and its leadership. This was in accordance with a well thought-out strategy. Mr Panja is the man to watch in the coming days. Villain as hero Ronnie Biggs is a mere blip on the memory screen. He hit the newspaper headlines as a robber but was never a villain in public eye. As his name popped up occasionally later, he grew in stature, a shadowy figure but never a menacing one. A criminal you would not terribly object to as your neighbour. His claim to fame is his part in the great train robbery in 1963, his daring escape from a high security prison near London, his resort to plastic surgery to acquire a new identity, his hurried marriage with a Brazilian girl to beat back extradition attempts and now his dramatic return to get free medical treatment to salvage whatever remains of his strokes-ravaged body. Today all these acts will not earn him even a column inch of space. But the early sixties was a different time. Baddies were all in the USA — the Chicago gangsters and their protection and prostitution rackets, Teamsters and their violent ways, the mafia men and their frequent killing and an occasional outrage by the Ku Klux Klan. Britain was an island of peace, busy rebuilding the war-wrecked economy where there was no unemployment and wages were constantly going up. So was Europe. Then came the train robbery. And it shattered several myths. Great Britain was a highly policed country but after the meticulously planned and executed crime the mighty Scotland Yard looked all too human and fallible. The robbers collected about three million pound sterling and just vanished. The loot was mainly in the form of bank drafts, cheques and other papers. The sensational crime presented the staid Britons a set of interesting characters. The police got into the act and within weeks arrested the gang but the money had disappeared mysteriously. The investigation, the filing of the chargesheet and the trial itself were completed in a year, yes, in a year. Biggs and his fellow robbers were packed off to prison and by 1965 he had climbed the wall and freed himself. The term train robbery got a cult connotation. In Paris some attempted a great drain robbery by entering the network of underground drainage system and trying to drill a huge hole under the gold pile in the National Bank. The sophisticated alarm system did not cover this. There was also a great grain robbery, an exaggerated expression to describe the loss of wheat immediately after the European Union was formed. Watergate of 1973 pushed the robbery usage into oblivion. Cocaine invasion Is there a cocaine invasion in Bollywood? There is if you go by the police version. But then the police version is always shod with illogical surmises and impossible situations. Take the dramatic arrest of Fardeen Khan, a young actor, arrested for buying a few grams of the banned cocaine. The Narcotics Control Board has changed its case a few times from 9 grams to 7 grams and later to no grams at all. That is no cocaine was found in his possession. Enterprising reporters have revealed(?) that of late cocaine is becoming the in-thing at rave parties which are the bohemian version of a formal get-together. There everyone snorts the drug mostly to go easy on their inhibitions. Maybe Fardeen picked up the fetish at one such conclave after his previous film flopped. Cocaine is a miracle herbal drug, drug in the classical sense. It is a pain killer of great potency, particularly of the mucous membranes of the nose, throat and stomach. One just sniffs this crystalline alkaloid and within seconds gets relief. It is obtained from a shrub which grows wild in Peru and Bolivia and now in nearby countries. Originally, the aborigines there used to chew the leaves of the plant with burnt ashes of some select plants to get more energy. A hungry and thirsty man, having to walk miles to reach his destination will bite on a bunch of the coca leaves to ward off all physical discomfort. The miraculous effect of the plant was fully realised in 1884 when a German doctor prepared the medical form of cocaine. But like all good medicines, this too found its misuse. People started using it to get a quick kick, a sort of euphoria, a feeling without remorse or regret. But additional doses felled the user, making him an addict and robbing him of his hunger and physical stamina. It is highly addictive and there were initial rumours that the cola drinks contained an extract of the coca plant even if in trace quantity. |
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Women Become Men at Work WOMEN in the upper echelons of business are adopting male work patterns such as long working days and forsaking holidays in order to get ahead. A study by Manchester Metropolitan University which looked at women in banking, accountancy and retail businesses found that despite the government introducing family-friendly policies such as flexible work hours, many women put work first. “They feel they have to keep up with the hours men work, network alongside them and take as little leave as possible. There were some women who only took two weeks off after having a baby,” said Janet Smithson of Manchester University. Women are still under pressure to arrive at work early and leave late or they face sliding down the career ladder, she said.
WFS Weighty Matters The New York press has been having fun belittling Al Gore for the extra pounds he’s gained in his current state of post-political depression. “He hasn’t gained all that much, certainly not 30 or 40 pounds like they have been writing about,” counters a Gore friend in Washington. “They took pictures with him wearing sweater vests, and those things make you look bigger than you really are.” But Gore — or Tipper — must have been concerned nonetheless. Gore has hired a personal trainer to help him get into fighting trim, most likely to take on nemesis DNC chair Terry McAuliffe, who has had the DNC staff whispering about Gore’s weight and other flaws to the press in hopes of making him completely inconsequential to the party. “If Gore isn’t taken seriously in the eyes of the broader public, then we can basically ignore him. That’s the theory,” says a DNC
staffer. Call me Tomer Krissi of Ramat Gan, Israel, says he’s a recovering Internet addict. One step in his recovery: he changed his name. To .com. “The Internet opened my mind,” says .com, 25, who has made the name change legal and even received new identity papers with his new surname. .com says his name makes his website “my calling card for the whole world.” And just how might that help? “Say I meet a girl, and I don’t get her number. That could have been a missed opportunity, but now it won’t be because she’ll always know where to find me.”
Reuters Tortoises granted asylum Ten tortoises discovered in a suitcase at Heathrow Airport have been granted asylum. They were found by customs officials after being smuggled in luggage on a flight from the West Asia. The tortoises are between two and three years old. Measuring just two or three inches across, they had been crammed into a box and hidden in a suitcase. Now they have been given a new home at the Bournemouth Oceanarium. |
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From farmwaste to fibreboard Wood is a rare commodity in India. As in the case of many other neighbouring countries, large areas have been deforested and afforestation has taken place only to a limited extent. To conserve the remaining forests, the government issues a restricted number of licences to the wood manufacturing industry. As a result, there are very few companies producing wood furniture, making wood products a luxury item accessible only to a small upper class. However, there is a solution at hand that is as simple as it is brilliant. Ingenious production methods have made it possible to process agricultural waste into wood board. Fibrous palm waste can be used for this purpose as also rice husk, jute, sugarcane bagasse, cotton stalks, flax (linen), hemp or manila hemp: in short, all plants that yield cellulose fibres and which generate large quantities of waste that would otherwise be burnt. India, for instance, produces large quantities of rice husk. The rice kernel is surrounded by a husk, similar to wheat or rye, which is removed during threshing. Even bagasse — the waste that remains after the juice has been squeezed out of sugarcane — can be used. In palm trees the fruit grows in grape-like bunches (umbels) from which the fruit is removed. A lot of fibrous waste thus gets left behind, amounting to over one tonne per hectare in a year! The waste is washed, ground and mixed with resin particles. Thus this “useless” waste can be turned into fibreboard that is needed for manufacturing furniture. Its usages range from back panels for cupboards to kitchen cabinet doors to lamnate floorings. Board manufactured from plant waste is suitable for further machining. Unlike particle board it can be moulded and directly lacquered. Intensive research on the production of such medium density fibreboard has been carried out by the Wilhelm Klaudnitz Institute in Braunschweig. The institute was founded in1946 and is part of the Fraunbofer Institutes. It specialises in processing systems for wood and fibrous materials, surface technology and wood preservation. It is one of the most important institutes for wood research in Europe. Its research aims at improvements in the utilisation of wood and at improving products made out of regenerative raw materials. A noteworthy example of the realisation of these aims is the cooperation between the Wilhelm Klaudnitz and the Malaysia. Palm Board. The result: a pilot plant will produce board from fibrous palm waste for application in the construction and furniture industry. The plant is expected to begin operating this month. The Wilhelm Klaudnitz Institute will provide the knowhow for this new technology and will support the setting up and operation of the plant. The objective is to provide the Malaysian construction and furniture industry with an economical versatile and environmentally friendly raw material. As in India, the demand for fibreboard is very high in Malaysia. The positive impacts on the environment are even more significant. The use of alternative raw materials will help safeguard the last remaining rain forests by easing the pressure on logging. India currently produces about 470 million cubic metres of wood material, of which half is in the form of plywood. A plant for manufacturing board from the widely available rice husk would require an initial investment of about DM 7-8 million. Returns are generated quite early at a production volume of 50,000 cubic metres. In view of the numerous small enterprises operating in the field and the high prices for furniture, this type of venture would soon be highly profitable. In addition to biomass waste, the Wilhelm Klaudnitz Institute has developed processes for cultivating and utilising annual crops such as flax and hemp. Annual crops are often overlooked as resources for manufacturing board. Dip1. -Ing. Volker Thole, a researcher at the Wilhelm Klaudnitz Institute, has developed a mini plant for manufacturing board using gypsum as the binding agent with wood, bagasse and other inputs. The method is based on a simple process and can be learnt very quickly. The objective is to enable anyone building a house to manufacture the required materials themselves. This concept is likely to find many takers in India. IPA Helmut Luders is Science Counsellor in the German Embassy in India. |
Bombay Exchange Market
Bombay: Business in the Bombay Exchange Market is slack, says this week’s report of Messrs Merwanjee and Sons. No activity is expected till the demand for Indian cotton springs up. |
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Yielding
to the will of God THE order of the cosmos is benign and unique. Yet there are chances of evil entering it. Man develops his concept of the Almighty and sometimes this perception may be anti-God and demonic in nature. Even a thief or a dacoit has some rationale behind his actions. But does that work for the welfare of mankind or for the path of realising God? One must do thorough introspection before performing any act. It is not easy to do a good action, but committing bad deeds becomes a habit at times. It has been rightly pointed out that "....if we do not resist evil as if it is absolute, it will become as good as absolute." So we must find ways and means to shun evil. However, these ways and means differ from person to person and from situation to situation. The Bhagavad Gita has been recognised as one of the greatest classics. The exact meaning of Bhagavad Gita is "The Song of God". God does not grant us all that we pray for. Along with pleasures, painful moments are also given to us by the Almighty. We should learn to accept them. It is essential that we should yield to the will of the creator. Sensual pleasures lead us to the vicious circle of birth and death. Can't this suffering be stopped? It can be, but we must learn to accept the entity of God, realise His grace and develop a mechanism in us to further recognise His ways that are strange but never unjust. Do we have enough faith in God? This can be gauged from an anecdote in our everyday life. Suppose we are in a bus scheduled to go to Delhi. We have bought the tickets and occupied our seats. We never ask the driver of the bus to show his driving licence, nor whether he knows the way to Delhi. We maintain a sort of (blind) faith that he will take us safely to our destination. Here lies the crux of the problem. While on a journey, we repose faith in a semi-literate bus driver, whereas we lose faith in the power which controls the cosmos. There is need for earnest faith in His entity so as to win His kindness which comes to us in so many ways. God is omnipresent but do we have the faith to realise Him? Perhaps the answer will be in the negative. The Gita, time and again, states that our anxieties, despondencies and pains and unfavourable circumstances are due to our own ignorance. We are unaware of our priorities in life. We keep demanding things that are of no use to us or if at all they are of some use, they hold only a transitory value. While satisfying our essential needs, we should crave for the blessings of God by always remembering Him and beseeching divine and eternal favours. It is not to be forgotten that our Atma is an integral element of the Almighty. But on this earth, it is surrounded by earthly pleasures which overpower it. Everyone seems to be obsessed with 'me' and 'mine' which cause us anguish. We consider our body and its pleasures as our ultimate mission whereas the truth is quite to the contrary. When our Atma starts feeling secluded from our body, we are getting nearer to the Almighty. Unnecessary possessiveness of this body and its desires takes us away from God. We should develop a feel of unison with God — only then He will look after us properly but first we must hand over our reins to the Almighty. He will readily receive us with open arms with all affection, care and tenderness. But again the question is — are we prepared for such a unique journey? The author is Reader in the Faculty of Education, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra. |
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SPIRITUAL NUGGETS The difference between the richest man and the poorest is but a day of hunger and an hour of thirst. ***** Should nature heed what we say of contentment no river would seek the sea and no winter would turn to spring. Should she heed all we say of thrift, how many of us would be breathing this air. ***** Your most radiant garment is of the other person's weaving; Your most savoury meal is that which you eat at the other person's table: ***** Your most comfortable bed is in the other person's house; Now tell me, how can you separate yourself from the other person? ***** Your other self is always sorry for you. But your other self grows on sorrow; So all is well. ***** There is no struggle of soul and body save in the minds of those whose souls are asleep and whose bodies are out of tune. ***** I have never agreed with my other self wholly. The truth of the matter seems to lie between us. — Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam Whence does our true personality derive? It comes from God. ***** By concentrating within, you can directly feel the divine bliss of your soul within and also without. If you can stabilise yourself in that consciousness, your outer personality will develop and become attractive to all beings. ***** When I am conscious of my human personality I have limitations, but as soon as I change my consciousness to the soul sphere I see everything just as if it were a motion picture. ***** Your true personality begins to develop when you are able by deep intuition, to feel that you are not this solid body but are the divine current of Life and Consciousness within the body. — Excerpts from Paramhamsa Yogananda's discourse in Los Angeles California, October 28, 1938 |
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