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Fatal debts Reforms anyone? |
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Limits
of politeness
Peace process at critical stage
A question of quotients
Human Rights Diary First vote in decades tests Congo’s truce Bill opens the
gate of social responsibility
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Fatal debts The demand for a special package for Punjab farmers groaning under the weight of unpaid loans has been raised yet again by Chief Minister Amarinder Singh. This time the quantum of relief he has sought from the Centre is Rs 2060 crore. Whether it is Delhi that comes to their rescue or Punjab utilises its own resources, the farmers indeed need a helping hand. Their sorry state, which has led to many suicides, is a blot on the prosperous image of Punjab. Ironically, it is the farmers who acted as the engines of this march towards progress. But they have been done in by the uncertainties of farming. Worst off are small and marginal farmers. Every year they hope for a rich harvest in the next season, take loans on the basis of this wishful projection but when the crops fail, they collapse into a hopeless state and think that the only way out for them is death. Unfortunately, that instead of mitigating the woes of their families rather magnifies them. In most of the cases, it is the pressure put in by loan sharks which forces them to take this extreme step. Nobody goes to such lenders willingly, considering that they charge prohibitively high interest rates. Farmers are forced to patronise them only because they cannot depend fully on government banks and cooperative societies. First of all, the latter do not have a sufficiently wide network. Even where the facility is available, red tape rules. Farming operations need money urgently, whereas loans by the government agencies are sanctioned leisurely. Corruption also is rampant. Only if road blocks are removed can the farmers free themselves from the clutches of unscrupulous money-lenders. At the same time, it is also necessary to ensure that the farmers do not misuse the loans. In Punjab, it is not uncommon for them to take loans for buying a tractor or some other such implement and spend it all on ostentatious weddings and dowry etc. In fact, tractors are even purchased to complete formalities and then immediately sold off at a huge discount, so that the money thus received can go towards day-to-day household expenses. This social evil of living beyond one’s means must be tackled to break the vicious circle.
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Reforms anyone? The government has made a fresh foray into divestment, with the Cabinet clearing the sale of 10 per cent equity in the National Aluminium Company (NALCO) and the Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC). The CPM has already asked the government to “reconsider”, but hopefully the Left will refrain from raucous opposition. The 10 per cent sale to the public will see the government’s stake come down to 77 per cent from the current 87.15 per cent. There will be, thus, no loss of government control — a favourite apprehension of the Left in opposing PSU divestment. And though profitable, NALCO and NLC are not amongst the navaratnas — untouchable for reforms. A political consensus on these lines was essentially arrived at, at a Left-UPA coordination committee meeting last year. The government’s idea to split the shares of NALCO before putting them on the market, in order to make them more affordable, is a good one as well. This would serve to spread the wealth around, and enable a larger group of the public to participate in a national endeavour. While the NALCO sale will fetch around Rs 1400 crore on current share prices, the NLC sale will bring in Rs 1,100 crore into the government’s eager coffers. Mr Chidambaram has made it clear that the money will go into the “National Investment Fund”, set up to allay Left fears of misuse of divestment money. The fund is expected to finance social sector and infrastructure schemes. It is thus a pity that the Left is opposed to the disinvestment policy, which is in order even in the case of the navaratnas. The stalled 10 per cent equity sale in Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), for example, would today be worth around Rs 3000 crore, while a similar sale in the top PSU, ONGC, would fetch a figure in excess of Rs 10,000 crore. The companies would remain under government control even after such a sale. Continued reforms and prudent divestment would be needed if India is to avoid fiscal pressures and ensure high growth rates. |
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Limits of
politeness Mumbai
being voted as the city that scores lowest on the politeness scale,
doubtless, comes as a rude shock. Definitions of politeness differ,
from people to people and place to place. One man’s politeness could
make for another’s pique. So, it is hard to be definitive about
behaviour being polite or rude. Nevertheless, the Reader’s Digest survey covering cities in 35 countries is an interesting bag of surprises, pleasant and unpleasant. Mumbai being tagged the rudest city may raise some hackles, but many may not swallow the finding that New York is the world’s most polite city. The rough ways of New Yorkers, especially its cabbies and servers in eateries, have made the city a byword for rudeness. In fact, some even celebrate rudeness as being New York’s mark of distinction. It is said that the ruder the waiter, the better the quality of the food served. Maybe, just maybe, 9/11 changed all that. Even if it hasn’t, obviously perceptions of New York have changed. The yardstick of courtesy applied to rank the cities was whether people opened doors for others, said “Thank you” and picked up papers that another person had dropped on the street. It is by this measure that Mumbai scored 32 per cent against New York’s 80 per cent. Life is such a rush in Mumbai, crawling in bumper-to-bumper traffic and being sardinised in the suburban trains, that most denizens would be short of time to pick up the threads of their own lives, leave alone a sheaf of papers dropped by someone else. Perhaps, when Mumbai gets to where New York is, and continuing fights between bulls and bears in Dalal Street match that of Wall Street, the Mumbaikar would have arrived to be polite enough. From the national viewpoint, Delhiites may now take heart that they are not the rudest or most boorish, as generally perceived. The competition between Delhi and Mumbai has long been on in many spheres. In terms of money, power, glitz and population, among others, Delhi prides itself on having raced ahead of Mumbai. But the Maximum City can take heart that rude it may be, but it is surely safer than the Delhi, which gets top ratings for many things much worse than just being rude. |
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Talk not of wasted affection; affection never was waste.
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Peace process at critical stage
JUST when India and Pakistan are most in need of a leadership that can find a way out of the cul-de-sac in which the peace process appears to have entered, the heads of government in both countries seem to have been greatly weakened by their domestic troubles and agendas and have neither the political courage or the political capital needed to break the impasse on the substantive issues being discussed under the composite dialogue framework. Worse, both sides are losing faith in the ability or capacity of the other side in either delivering on their previous commitments or in living up to any fresh commitments that can lead to the much-needed breakthrough. The trust deficit coupled with self-doubt over taking new and bold initiatives has caused a palpable loss of momentum in the peace process, which if not corrected could cause the process to stall. Ever since the current peace process started, the real story has been the various confidence building measures (CBMs) that have been initiated by the two sides. Other than the CBMs, which in themselves are quite significant, there has really been no breakthrough on any of the substantive (or sovereign) issues that form the basket of issues being discussed between the two countries. The CBMs have been helpful to the extent that they helped create a sense of progress and lowered the level of open hostility between India and Pakistan. They also created some space for civil society on both sides to interact and enabled greater people-to-people contacts. But the CBMs have more or less run their course. Any new CBM will only have an incremental value and will no longer be seen as a major step forward. One example of this has been the rather low-key response to the opening up of new crossing points on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir as compared to the euphoria generated by the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service. For that matter, despite its symbolic value, the Amritsar-Lahore or Amritsar-Nankana Sahib bus service remains something of a non-starter. The Munabao-Khokrapar train too is hardly causing any excitement. Part of the problem can, of course, be traced to the restrictive visa regimes that inhibit travel across the border. But the visa regimes are a function of the state of relations between the two countries, which are a still a long way away from being normalised. With CBMs showing diminishing returns and substantive issues nowhere near a solution, meetings between officials of the two countries are increasingly being seen as a case of “they met, they discussed, they disagreed and they dispersed”. Occasionally there is some good news. For instance, Pakistan is opening its markets to Indian sugar, agricultural produce, livestock and lately cement; or, India is considering import of wheat from Pakistan; or a couple of Indian films have been screened in Pakistani cinemas after nearly 40 years. There has, however, been absolutely no forward movement on any of the issues related to questions of sovereignty. This failure to address the substantive issues need not necessarily be a bad thing, provided the two sides stay on track and continue to try and normalise relations in areas where there are no major differences. But this is easier said than done, especially since Pakistan has been chary of making progress in issues like trade, travel and people-to-people contacts without any political progress on the issue of Kashmir. If anything, Pakistan seems to be losing patience with what it sees as lack of progress in finding a final solution to the “core issue”. One manifestation of Pakistan’s growing frustration is the sudden rise in terrorist violence in Jammu and Kashmir. The fact that the acts of terror have been carefully calibrated and targeted is a sign that Pakistan has still not given up on the peace process. But it still clearly feels the need to send a strong signal to India that the tap of jihadi terror can be turned on unless there is some progress on issues of critical interest to Pakistan, namely Kashmir. The problem with this tactic of Pakistan is that it is raising questions and doubts in the minds of the Indian policy establishment over not only the intentions of the Pakistani military-bureaucratic establishment, but more crucially, over the ability of the Pakistani leadership to live up to its commitments on the issue of terrorism. The benign interpretation in Indian policy-making circles is that General Pervez Musharraf is so beleaguered by domestic political problems that he no longer has the political ability to deliver on the commitments he had made on the issue of terrorism. The hardline opinion is less charitable and believes that General Musharraf remains an unreconstructed and unreformed jihadi, who mouths slogans of “enlightened moderation” and in the same breath unleashes his jihadi auxiliaries to achieve foreign policy objectives. In case of either interpretation of General Musharraf’s actions, the end result is the same: the Indian establishment seems to have reached the conclusion that any deal with Musharraf will not be worth the paper on which it is signed once he is no longer in power. Even worse, the Indian side believes that no purpose will any longer be served by entering into any deal with Musharraf since he isn’t in any position to deliver on any of his promises. Compounding the problems for the peace process is the inability of the Indian prime minister to take any “out of the box” initiative. Dr Manmohan Singh appeared all set to settle the Siachen issue, but had to back off in the face of stiff resistance from the bureaucracy and charges of sellout by the opposition. His political standing has become only weaker after the controversy over the new reservation policy being introduced by his government. His growing political problems have reduced his space for negotiating any deal with Pakistan. And the Pakistanis know this. The result is that they too have lost confidence in Manmohan Singh as a man who can enter into a bold deal with Pakistan. With Pakistan getting into an election mode somewhat prematurely, and General Musharraf hell-bent on perpetuating his rule by hook or by crook, the last thing he can do is live up to his commitments to India, especially on stopping Jihadi terrorists. With his troubles mounting in the Pashtun tribal belt and in Balochistan, he cannot afford to open himself to any charge of a sellout to India on Kashmir. What is more, his dependence on the ISI for delivering on his political game-plan will reduce his ability to make it fall in line on the issue of jihadi terrorism in India, which in turn will find it difficult to stay the course on the dialogue process in the face of continuing jihadi terrorism. Clearly then, the peace process has reached a critical stage and any miscalculation by either side can easily end the process and push the two countries back to square one. While there are no easy answers on how to get out of this very messy logjam, the only thing one can hope for is that despite their domestic compulsions, the leaderships of both sides are sagacious enough to not push things to a point where the process comes to a crashing
halt.
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A question of quotients
The other day, a friend who is a vintage B.Tech from an IIT, and nine-pointer to boot complained about his low IQ. I thought he was joking. Only when he explained did I realise how genuine his grievance was. My poor friend was only referring to his low Influence Quotient - a serious handicap these days. I quickly dug out a wornout copy of Dale Carnegie’s classic, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and it to handed him. I have a good FQ, i.e., Friendship quotient you see! A quotient, which is simply a ratio multiplied by 100 to give you a value about anything, is being increasingly applied as a measuring tape for mapping the hidden side of a person. Now, in addition to your BP, blood-sugar count and the lipid profile, you should also know your score on an array of quotients to know your overall health. Problem is these quotients are mutating at such fast pace that you cannot take them on their face value. For example, you had better think twice before referring someone with low SQ to a revered guru to bolster his/her spirituality, for the advice may sound outrageous. Why, because SQ also means sex-quotient - a precise measure of your awareness and competence in the field. That at least one guru found common ground between the two apparently contrasting attributes and established a synergic relationship is another matter. Girls of marriageable age are advised to check GQ, i.e., Gender Quotient of their prospective husbands before taking the plunge because a low score on this count means the guy is an MCP and is fit to be given the boot, oops, sandal, darn my low GQ. Happiness Quotient sounded simple to me until it I discovered my low score on this count. The sheer anxiety of elevating it has robbed me off whatever joy I had in life. One of the things, my wife has asked me to do is to laugh 375 times a day. Not a joke! Even EQ, the current buzzword, is not as common as it sounds because it also means Evangelical Quotient. And as you go down the alphabet you have Job-satisfaction quotient, Kindness quotient, Love Quotient, Marriage Quotient, Nerd Quotient, Openness Quotient, Political Quotient and okay I’ll leave some so you can catch your breath. But one last I must mention. It is WQ. Sounds weird? Then, your score is low on it, for it is nothing but Weird Quotient, which measures how different you are from others. It is time one improved one’s QQ, i.e., the Quotient of Quotients, for in the journey to psychological prowess you have to reckon with many Qs.
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Human Rights Diary
A FACT-FINDING team from Maharashtra has questioned the authenticity of the terrorist attack on the RSS headquarters at Nagpur earlier in the month. The team believes that the killing of three assailants was a put-up show by the police to get a pat on the back for fighting against terrorists. The police never cooperated with the team. Even when it wanted to read the First Information Report (FIR), it was refused. The police behaviour does create doubts. But it is becoming a familiar pattern. We know from our experience how the police have staged false encounters to eliminate people, especially those against whom they have no evidence to pursue in a court of law. The attack on the RSS headquarters may well be a thought out plan to kill the three. There is no reason to disbelieve the fact-finding team’s version because the members comprising it are known social workers and human rights activists. The fact that the police did not extend them any help for the probe is all the more reason to believe that they had something to hide. The letter which the police have written to the team before entertaining its request for assistance is a questionnaire which is primarily directed against the team and its composition. I am not surprised to find that the attack story is doubted. A few years ago, two persons were killed at Ansal Plaza basement in New Delhi. The police version was that they had been killed in an encounter. A doctor, who was an eye-witness, said that the police brought “the terrorists” in their van and bumped them off. I filed a petition with the National Human Rights Commission questioning the police version. The NHRC merely forwarded the complaint to Delhi Police which naturally confirmed its men’s version. What is the purpose of such probes? The commission should have appointed some independent authority. Understandably, the RSS has not said anything. It fits into their propaganda that the terrorists are roaming all over India since the exit of Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government. Therefore, the announcement by Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi to give Rs 10 lakh to the policemen who killed the three assailants was not a surprise. Modi’s announcement was followed by another by the BJP chief minister from Madhya Pradesh. Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s reward is also for a similar amount. I began to suspect the whole thing when I read the statements by the two chief ministers. How are they justified in announcing rewards for protecting the RSS headquarters which is in another state, Maharashtra? True, both Modi and Chauhan were once RSS pracharaks (preachers), an important position. They may have wanted to placate the RSS leadership or to make it publicly clear that the building at Nagpur is the BJP’s Vatican. But what the two have done amounts to interference in the affairs of Maharashtra. Law and order is a state subject and, according to the Constitution, even the Centre has no say in it. Trying to interfere in the affairs of another state is a serious matter and Parliament should take notice of it. Today it is a cash reward; tomorrow it can take another shape. The BJP chief ministers may take upon themselves the responsibility of protecting the RSS headquarters and sending policemen from their states as guards. They can argue that their Vatican is ‘exposed’ to the dangers in non-BJP ruled state. Look at this matter from another angle. If Modi and Chauhan are justified in announcing the rewards, the Maharashtra chief minister can say that his state will honour the odd policemen who protected the Muslims during the pogrom in Gujarat. Things can go still farther. One state may begin to commend or condemn the law and order situation in another state. The two BJP chief ministers are treading on thin ice. Modi’s reaction to the killing of some Gujarati tourists in Kashmir was equally outlandish. None can keep one’s eyes shut over what is being done against tourists and the labour. Attacks on them are more reprehensible than the attack on the RSS headquarters. But Modi’s statement was highly irresponsible. He said that Kashmiri goods should be boycotted. It is a verdict worse than that of a Kangaroo court. Some terrorists purposely want to disturb the tourist season in Kashmir. Modi is playing into their hands. They do not want any Kashmiri to do anything with the rest of India. How is an average Kashmiri responsible for the misdeeds of terrorists who are probably not even Kashmiris? Modi’s remedy to punish the innocent Kashmiri for the murder by the terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir is pernicious. This kind of reprisal was heard of only during the Nazi regime in Germany under Hitler. What the BJP general secretary Vinay Katiyar said and rationalised afterwards beats all. He announced a prize of Rs 1 lakh for any civilian who kills a militant. The pressure by the BJP leaders forced him to make his observation equivocal. But there is no doubt that he said so. This is what is on record: “We all want to fight terrorism. It is because of this that we made an announcement today that anyone who kills a terrorist — civilians, we are not talking of security forces — will get Rs 1 lakh.” Left to Katiyar, he would convert Jammu and Kashmir into a theatre of civil war. His observation only underlines the fascist tendencies that some leaders in the BJP have. All this is a sad reflection on New Delhi. When Modi says and does anything illegal and gets away with it, where is the centre’s responsibility to uphold the Constitution? It means that the Manmohan Singh government has come to adopt convenience as its policy, not compliance with what the rule of law demands. It is a pathetic state of affairs. I have come across a poignant passage in an interview by actor Nasseruddin Shah: “It never entered my head until the riots in Mumbai. A so-called well-wisher rang me and said it might be time for me to start looking for an alternative. ‘Get out of here, find another job, find another life.’ None of us had ever felt that being Muslim stood in the way of us doing what we wanted.” |
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First vote in decades tests Congo’s truce KINSHASA, Congo — In a hot haze of exhaust and smoke from burning garbage, a one-legged man hopped along a street clogged with overloaded minibuses while a woman sold tiny monkeys tied to a tree. Tadjoudine Ali-Diabacte walked past the clatter into a sagging building guarded by men with AK-47 assault rifles and climbed two flights of stairs to his office. From there, on the banks of the chocolate-brown Congo River, Ali-Diabacte is directing the most expensive and logistically daunting national elections in African history. “This is the biggest and the most important election the U.N. has ever supported,” said Ali-Diabacte, the U.N. official in charge of organizing elections scheduled for next month, the first free balloting since Congo’s independence in 1960. At stake is the stability and prosperity of a country as large as Western Europe with a population of about 60 million people at the troubled heart of central Africa. Impoverished by Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator who fleeced the country’s vast diamond and mineral wealth for 32 years until he was overthrown in 1997, Congo is slowly emerging from a ferocious war that followed Mobutu’s ouster and resulted in the deaths of four million people. “The Congo represents in many ways the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis since World War II,” said David Pottie of the Carter Center, run by former president Jimmy Carter, which is a main international observer of the July 30 vote. “When numbers get that big, people’s eyes glaze over a little bit. What does 4 million (40 lakh) people look like?” Nine years after Mobutu’s departure, Congo — which Mobutu renamed Zaire —is still run by an unelected leader: President Joseph Kabila, who was installed following the 2001 assassination of his father, Laurent Kabila, the rebel leader who overthrew Mobutu. The country’s political turmoil was accompanied by a war that began when Hutu extremists responsible for the 1994 Rwanda genocide took refuge over the border in eastern Congo. The complex guerrilla war raged until 2002 and dragged at least seven countries into the fighting. Tensions still simmer and sometimes boil over into violence in Congo’s remote eastern provinces near Rwanda and Uganda, where 17,000 U.N. troops, the largest U.N. peacekeeping force in the world, maintain a fragile truce. In February 2005, nine U.N. soldiers from Bangladesh were ambushed and killed by rebels in Ituri province. Seven U.N. soldiers from Nepal have been held hostage by rebels in Ituri since May 28, when they were ambushed and one Nepali soldier was killed. U.N. officials said this week that they were also investigating a report that U.N. peacekeepers fired mortar rounds at civilians and stood by as Congolese army troops set an Ituri village on fire in to wipe out rebels before the elections. A peace accord signed in 2002 established a transitional government, headed by Kabila and four vice presidents — two of whom are former rebel leaders. As part of that deal, Congolese voters overwhelmingly approved a new constitution in December last year. Analysts here said a democratically elected government would be a critical first step toward building reliable government, economic and social institutions that have never existed in this former Belgian colony. “This is all new territory,” U.S. Ambassador Roger A. Meece said in an interview. “This is an election the Congolese people have been waiting for a long time. And it is of enormous importance to the overall stability of the continent.” On the hot and dusty streets of Kinshasa, where missing limbs and severe physical deformities attest to years of war and misery, many Congolese interviewed said the election was something they never thought they would experience. “I know this election will not solve everything, but we need it,” said Alain Muke, 34. “In my life, I have never elected one of my leaders.’’ Ali-Diabacte said it would take nearly $500 million to cover the enormous difficulties of staging an election in a nation with virtually no infrastructure. He said it cost $120 million for an eight-month effort last year to register more than 25 million voters and provide them each with a state-of-the-art biometric identification card. It cost another $50 million to have 66 million ballots (33 million for president and 33 million for the National Assembly) printed in South Africa and delivered to Congo. Ali-Diabacte, who has worked on 10 postwar elections in countries from Haiti to Chad, said Congo’s massive size and nearly total lack of roads outside of the capital posed massive logistical problems. He ticked off the formidable election statistics: 33 presidential candidates, 9,707 National Assembly candidates for 500 seats, 187 political parties represented. By arrangement with LA Times — Washington Post |
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Bill opens
the gate of social responsibility When
the richest man says he is stepping aside, the world takes notice, as it did
when Bill Gates announced recently that he has left the day-to-day running of
Microsoft to his executives and is going to devote himself wholeheartedly to
his philanthropic work. Now, at 50, Gates is a bit too young to retire; but then, it is never too soon to concentrate on improving the lot of the needy in society. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the biggest charitable organisation on the planet, with an estimated corpus of $ 30 billion. It has committed $1 billion to fund scholarships for minority students. The foundation focuses on education and health, with special emphasis on diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. India has been a significant beneficiary; nearly $ 300 million has been committed for projects in this nation. Microsoft too has a sizable presence in India, and Indians are also prominent in the company’s headquarters in the US. What a great example Bill Gates has set for billionaires, millionaires and other plain Joes. There have been great philanthropists before him, but Gates has raised the bar. The Ford Foundation, which is the second largest such body, is way below in endowments and corpus. If we go by what is given in the ancient Indian scriptures say, when an individual has attainted his material goals, he is expected to enter the Vanaprastha ashram — withdraw from the material world and focus on his social responsibilities. Gates has done precisely that. Since his wealth comes from Microsoft, it is obvious that there has been concern about the company and the direction it would take. It would now have two chief technical officers — Craig and Ray Ozzie. Mundie, a veteran, will now handle the company’s research units and will serve as Microsoft’s spokesperson on technology. Though new to Microsoft, Ozzie is the chief architect. He is the legend behind Lotus Notes. While reaffirming his faith in the team he has built at the top in Microsoft, Gates is also following a recent trend in which the founders — Larry Ellison at Oracle, Michael Dell at Dell, Scott McNealy at Sun and our very own N.R. Narayanamurthy — are ceding the running of their organisations to professionals. Gates’ move, however, comes at a time when Microsoft is facing unprecedented challenges from rivals like Google and Yahoo, and the very real possibility of a paradigm shift from PC-centric computing to Internet-driven services in which the company’s main products would no longer hold the near-monopoly position that they have in the PC world today. It must be kept in mind that 90 per cent of the PCs in the world today run on some version of Microsoft Windows. The most popular word processing software is Microsoft Word, and its Outlook and Hotmail combine for a formidable hold in the e-mail business. However, while Microsoft has shown that it can evolve, it has not displayed the nimbleness needed to negotiate the blazing pace of evolution in computing today. Microsoft has significantly expanded its presence on the Net. Internet Explorer, which has been challenged of late by the open source Firefox browser, has also made many improvements and is gearing up to face the new challenger which has captured 10 per cent of the market. Google has launched a slew of products which are being seen as cutting into the traditional Microsoft strongholds, but they are yet to make a significant impact. The new team has many challenges ahead, while the founder takes a back seat and focuses on his philanthropic endeavours. |
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From the pages of To Indira Gandhi
The Congress is clearly divided over the substance of the Communist threat and the steps needed to meet the challenge of Communism. Nowhere is the division more marked than between the Congress President and her father, the Prime Minister. The difference of opinion is reflected right down to the Mandal units. Doubts persist about the wisdom and propriety of the Central intervention in Kerala. Uncertainty continues simultaneously over future policy with regard to the extent to which the Communist party is to be allowed to function under the protection of the Constitution. The time has come for the Congress President to lay her cards on the table and to say candidly where she differs from her father and what steps, if any, she wants the Congress as a political organisation to take to present to its large membership an unambiguous picture of future policy. It is time the Congress as a political party rid itself of ethical platitudes, vague generalities and political wooliness. |
One realises the word only when one is rid of duality and knows that the one lord is both within and without. Thinking about sensual objects creates in us a great desire to possess them. Any thwarting of these desires kindles the fire of anger in us.
God is engaged in three kinds of activity: creation, preservation and destruction.
What is faith if it is not translated into action? Lose your duality or be led astray; otherwise it will rob you of your life’s purpose, brother! Take refuge, instead, with the true guru, and praise forever the name of God. Happiness brings serenity. Are you looking me? I am in the next seat. Your shoulder is against mine.
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