Developmental Issues of India: Should We Do the Root Cause Analysis or Should We Pray for Getting Back Our Senses?

Let us pray for getting back our senses!

Here are some interesting news that are online today which tells about the Indian economic projections:

1. In a global survey 62 % Indian CEOs are reportedly optimistic about the future of their companies for the next 12 months. ( Don't ask why only 12 months!) 

2. India poised to become the fastest growing economy in the world in the next two years- says IMF, the Economic Times report.

Yes, the above reports are very optimistic, but apparently look like vision statements of people who operate from air-conditioned coziness rather than knowing the grass root realities.

The problem is that we hardly understand the dynamics of money and physical work. 

For example, how do we compare the worth of two companies doing business? 

Company-A  has a turn-over of 2000 million rupees and is consistently showing profit for the past few years. Undoubtedly, its stocks are in high demand and are traded many times above the issue price.

Company-B on the other hand has a turn-over 5000 million rupees and is barely showing any profit or at times reporting losses in the balance sheet. Its stocks are not much favored and has a low value.

By simple common sense of present day economic macro analysis, company-A would be the preferred one. 

Now, let us examine these two companies a bit more closely. 

Company-A , though has a good looking and posh air conditioned office with modern office gadgets and decor, the office space is on lease. The company's 200 odd employees do jobs connected with some financial services online. The economic activity the company does arises out of some policy guidelines and special economic situation. There is no guarantee of the situation remaining the same for ever. But if the company goes without work, they have not much to lose.

Company-B on the other hand is a manufacturer of physical goods. It has more than 2000 employees having various skills belonging to various professional disciplines. The raw materials to the company are produced by several ancillary industries. The products of the company also go for industrial consumption. The company has its own land, factory, machinery and such infrastructure. Thus this company can be considered as a core industry and an economic activity booster.

Often, company-B would be seen to move towards more and more unfavorable conditions including getting an incompetent management team that would eventually make it to close down its operations. That causes painful miseries to the 2000 families directly and a dent in the country's economy indirectly.

In olden days, governmental authorities used to be more sensitive to such issues and would have intervened at the right time to prevent such economic mishaps. Of late, in the so-called liberalized economy, governmental authorities are seen as shying away from executing their responsibilities lest they may be accused as partisan.

As I have written in this forum many times, government has a right and a responsibility to intervene in the affairs of any corporate business entity when it is faced with situations where employment and governmental income by way of taxes are affected or likely to be affected.

The ultimate aim for any government is to ensure welfare of its people and employment should be one of the first priorities under citizens' welfare. If the citizens do not have income, no country could progress. So, income of citizens should be the first priority of any progressive nation and its leadership.

Leader of a massive BPL population is nothing of a big achievement! Power and prosperity of the nation vest with the people. If the people are poor and pathetic, the nation as a whole too would be of that type. Strikingly rich individuals of such nations should not be in a position to raise their heads in pride if they have any consciousness left within them!

India is a nation of predominantly income-less people, with only about 3 % of the people officially paying direct income tax as per government reports. Even in this nearly 90% are in the income range of  $ 3000-8000 per year. A little over 42000 people in the whole of India are officially reported with an income exceeding $ 160,000/- in a year. But people having wealth in millions may be much more considering the high levels of black money, corruption and under reporting of wealth.

But yet it is a shameful condition. There is nothing that common Indians could take pride of in such a situation. The unemployment and under employment situations are alarmingly growing with no one having any solutions. Even those employed are hardly with any decent income that could cause any boost in the Indian market to generate more employment.

In India no one seems to be bothered about the situation. All seem to be pretty well satisfied with all the problems. They move as if in good sedation that they feel no pains ever!

A young man sent this famous Napoleon quote to me that reflected the anguish and anxiety that only a negligible number of people in India realize:

" The world suffers a lot not because of the violence of the bad people, but because of the silence of the good people!"

Is India listening? I doubt. 

Should we worry about the walking dead bodies of India any more? I do not know. I too am becoming one of that!

So how to do the root cause analysis of India when the majority feel no pains?

I could have done it to some extent. But there is no one to see and act on my analysis.

All around me appear as senseless. 

Soon, my own ability would vanish.

I too would become a walking dead body, sedated , senseless and feeling no pains!

Perhaps in the bliss of ignorance!

See how infectious this sedation is!

I started with something and ended with this sedated philosophy!

But it's okay because no one is going to read this and react.

If possible, let us pray to God for giving back our senses!

The Campa Cola Apartment Eviction Case: Who Are Responsible? Who Are to be Punished?

The Campa Cola Apartment Case is becoming a test case in India regarding the rule of law. It is proving that justice in India goes by the written laws impartially and blindly at whatever be the outcome.

But the Campa Cola case is a test case in the administration of justice because, in this case it has become difficult to ascertain who is or who are the culprits. On the one side, there is the mighty democratic system of governance represented by the local administration of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) ably patronized by the state government of Maharashtra and on the other side there are about 250 odd owners of the apartments built on the Campa Cola premises in Worli, South Mumbai. 

The background of the case is some thing like this. Some decades ago the governments at the central, state and local levels in India were having much land in their possession. They also had enough statutory powers and the officers of the government had enough guts to acquire land using the prevailing laws.

To promote growth and development of factories, educational institutions, hospitals, roads, etc, it was an acceptable practice by the governments to lease out large peaces of land to both private and public organizations for such purposes.

Leasing out of landed property is quite different from outright sale. The custodian of the property in the former case is called a lease holder while in the latter case the custodian who has purchased the land is the owner holding the free hold title to the property. The lease holder enjoys some rights on the property for a long period as per the lease agreement which could go as long as 99 years in some cases. After the original lease period, the lease holder has to return the land back to its original owner or his legal heirs. If the lease holder had constructed buildings etc on the land, those have to be demolished if the agreement so stipulates.

Normally, as per the standard lease agreements in vogue in India, the lease holder has no right to lease out the property in full or in part to others without the concurrence of the original owner. 

Now coming back to the Campa Cola case. A private company, M/s Pure Drinks Ltd- the makers of the popular Indian soft drink, Campa Cola- got the land for constructing its soft drink bottling plant on lease from the local government, the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) who were the owners of the land. The BMC authorities naturally would not have done so, without the approval of the state government authorities of that time. Initially, the lease was for the purpose of building the factory. But later, the company approached BMC to amend the lease terms in such a way that they could build some apartments for their employees on the same land. It seems that the BMC agreed to this.

But the company with the help of some private builders thought of making a big profit from this. Instead of the initial five floored buildings to function as the official quarters of their employees, they began to construct additional floors  for the use of those not connected with the work of the company. They built about 250 additional apartments and wanted to sell them to the public there by taking full advantage of the high premium for residential apartments in the highly populated city of Mumbai. Naturally, as per the lease agreement, the company was not authorized to sell property to others or even lease it out to others. But under the guise of building apartments for their own employees, they built the additional apartments for sale or lease to the public. 

It was the duty of the BMC authorities and the government to prevent the additional construction and its sale to the public. But there was no such enthusiasm from the representatives of the governmental authorities (the owners of the land) during that time. Perhaps there was some attempts from some authorities to be watered down by some others. There was some tacit understanding between the owner representatives and the lease holder company representatives!

The public fell in to their trap and 'purchased' those apartments by paying heavy amounts. In reality many of them did not understand whether they are really purchasing those properties or not as per the law. Perhaps they knew it, but cared little because they cared less for the law and its ramifications later. But ignorance of the law is no excuse!

But the long hands of the law acts slowly in many instances. It has taken long 25 years. Those of the public who had paid huge sums to acquire these 'prime properties of Mumbai' later realized their folly, but refused to accept it. The question they have been asking is all these time has been this: Why the authorities allowed the illegal construction and its sale? Why only targeting us, the hapless buyers of the apartments? How come the other authorities provided us water and electricity and other such facilities if we were illegal occupants? 

Yes, all these are valid questions. But that does not mean that the public who had paid for these flats are totally innocent. It is the duty of the purchasers of properties to ensure the legal aspects before they shell out their monies!

Obviously, in this case there are errors and violations made by all the three parties. The BMC authorities of that time, the company authorities of that time and the public who paid to occupy these illegally made apartments. 

But it is for the court of justice to decide those things critically and give out the final verdicts. That is what the SC has done. 

This is not an isolated case in India. Due to misunderstanding of the provisions of lease agreements, laws , the over enthusiasm of officials of public authorities and the casual approach of the citizens, so many such instances had happened in India in the last few decades. 

I know a case wherein many people ignoring the warnings of a state government of central India and proceeding to acquire properties that a Public Sector Undertaking was trying to lease out to its employees! Not only they ignored the warnings but went ahead to acquire the properties and further made the things more complicated by constructing palatial buildings later by personally 'managing' and circumventing the lease stipulations!

For the time being, nothing has happened to most of them. But there is no guarantee that some thing of this sort would not happen in the future. Because, when laws and agreements are violated, things could really go bad, not necessarily immediately.

So those who think of manipulating the laws by their own influences should remember that they could not do that always. 

And that is the lesson that people should learn from the Campa Cola case!

The New HRD Minister of India and Her Declarations about Educational Qualifications: Should it be a Big Issue?

As a very ordinary citizen of India, but with some wishful thoughts on the governance and administration of the country biased with some vested interests of seeing my nation progress in all fields for the benefits of  its people like me, I had come to the conclusion that Mr Narendra Modi would be a better choice for India as its new Prime Minister . I considered this after due comparison of all other options carefully. And like any other commoner, I too became happy when my wish became fulfilled eventually a few days ago.

But Indian media keep picking up sensational news pieces to be brought in to the notice of the opinion makers among the Indian society about the new Indian PM , his ministerial colleagues and their portfolios.

The PM himself has been in the news limelight prominently for what he is or is doing or would be doing. Some news researchers have brought the educational backgrounds of the new ministers in to public attention. 

The Modi government, they informed the people, has a 5th class pass minister and a few other ministers whose educational achievements have not gone beyond the school level.

More importantly, the new HRD minister and the youngest of the cabinet, is an attractive lady with good command in the essential languages but doesn't have any formal university degrees. The Human Resources Development minister of India herself is not much educationally developed! What can you possibly expect from such a government? The media brought out the feelings of the people!

Soon this news spread and has become a hot topic of debate in India. An online news portal brought out the ' strange case' about the ministers false declarations to the Election Commission of India. The issue was raked up apparently by a leader from the outgoing UPA government resulting in a fury of hot debate both against and in favor of the new HRD minister.  

I feel the current controversy is unnecessary. So long as the Indian electoral laws do not specify any minimum educational qualification for the candidates seeking to file their nominations for getting elected as the member of the parliament (MP) or becoming a minister of the Indian Union, it is not appropriate to question the wisdom of the new PM to nominate his ministers, even if they may not be eligible for getting any employment with any governmental organizations. 

Moreover, it should be remembered that we had many such ministers even in the past and no previous governments felt it necessary to change the Representation of the Peoples' Act 1951  amending the relevant clauses accordingly.

Of course, knowledge, leadership qualities and such other skills may be of great advantage for any minister who is supposed to hold immense responsibilities on behalf of the people and for doing good to the people. But it is an erroneous idea to think that such desired skills and knowledge are possessed only by those people who have formal degree certificates. If that were so, the best political leaders would have emerged only from the bureaucrats or the technocrats. But we know that is not true at least in the present time. 

So let us not pre-judge any ministers of the government based on their formal educational qualifications. They are leaders any way and all of them have some qualities different from the common people like me.

The new government and its actions would reflect on the nation positively or negatively after some time. The new government is only a couple of days old. It has already fixed its 100-day priorities agenda.

Let us watch and hope for the best instead of making a big issue out of some minister's educational qualifications or declarations!

There are Many Desirable Things for Us to Learn from Others!

Let me share with you three incidences which show how people progress in their attitudes. We know that some nations are much more developed than many others. Nations show overall progress when more and more of their individual citizens progress in mind and body. 

My own country, India has a rich tradition, culture and civilization. However, for various reasons, this richness is not evenly distributed among the people. India remains as a developing nation, rather than a developed nation. Unless the majority of its individual citizens from its massive population reach to some desirable levels of mind capacity, it can never hope to become a nation devoid of corruption, ugliness and chaos. And that is a great challenge to every Indian. It cannot happen miraculously overnight. It would take a few generations. But even for that future possibility, each and every citizen of India need to have desire to get rid of our negative qualities. We need to learn many things from others.

Unlike the past, many new generation Indians are getting much opportunities to go abroad for studies, jobs, etc now-a-days. More and more number of Indians are seeing the world beyond their own villages, towns and cities of India. 

While they get such opportunities, many of the Indians are getting opportunities for bench-marking themselves with the so-called westerners, the Americans and the Europeans of the present times. While many get jealous of the progress of the Westerners, quite a number of them also get an opportunity for introspecting. 

With the advent of the internet and the social media, some of the Indians have courageously taken up the task of sharing their own mistakes or errors in the hope that it gives some opportunity for more people to introspect for possible corrections of attitudes and outlooks.

Now coming to the episodes which I wanted to share. The first one is one told to me by one of my colleagues a few years ago.

His son became an outstanding IIT engineer and got employed by one large Silicon-valley company in the USA. Soon, the boy also got married to a girl of similar standing working in the same place. The young couple invited my colleague to visit USA. So he went to visit his son and daughter-in-law in the USA.

On a holiday, the young couple took their visiting dad to a nearby park. They sat their enjoying their ice-creams and chocolates. Unlike the Indian parks, this US park was spotlessly clean. There were dust bins placed at few locations for the visitors to put their wastes.

Indians as a matter of habit or culture are reluctant to observe civic discipline, in general. Throwing litter any where out side their own homes is practiced even by the so-called educated Indians without any shame or sense. For many, it gives a kind of pleasure to violate the rules. If the authorities take harsh steps they resent it. If they are liberal they violate it. 

It was nothing different for my colleague as well. He knew about the American culture and civic discipline in the park where he and his children visited. Yet, he did not bother to use the dust-bins to throw the chocolate wrappers. He slowly rolled them to a ball and quietly dropped the ball to the grass. He thought no one noticed and felt relieved. 

A few minutes passed. Then our Indian group in the American park observed an old white lady approaching them from quite a distance. The lady came straight to the place they were sitting. Quietly without telling anything she took the rolled chocolate wrapper, gave a momentary stare on the Indians, proceeded to place it in a dust bin and disappeared. 

While narrating this incident to me, my colleague- a senior technocrat in a renowned Indian organization-told me that he felt ashamed and naked before the old American lady. 

The other incident was told to me by an young businessman from Mumbai. It was the time when electronic products like laptops and cameras were too desired items in India. The Indian customs authorities used to charge heavy customs duties on these products brought to India by returning Indians from abroad. 

My young businessman friend went to the US for some purpose and was about to return. He went to a US shopping mall to purchase a laptop. He selected an expensive brand and quietly made a personal request to the American salesman. He requested him to prepare a bill showing a less expensive model with a lower price. The American could not understand why such a peculiar request from this Indian customer. So he asked him the reason for this odd request. My Indian friend has to explain a bit about the tax laws of India and the advantage he would get back in India by way of reduced customs duties if he had such a bill showing a lower price.

The American retorted spontaneously: " So, dude! You want to cheat your country?"

My rich Indian felt as if naked before this ordinary American sales boy! That is what he told me.

Way back in 1988, I was member of an Indian project team entrusted with the task of designing and executing a large manufacturing facility for my employer jointly with engineers from a large East German company. As per the memorandum of understandings (MoU) the Germans were to work in our Indian office for many months while some of us would  be in their German office if need so arose for some days.

The Germans worked with us  in our office away from their families for months together. We traveled to various vendors in India together for various purposes. My German counterpart was one Mr.Sommer, a mild spoken German engineer who toiled hard to communicate in English as they had only one interpreter for the whole group. 

Though we had occasional official parties, we Indian seldom invited our German friends to our homes during the off days. Perhaps I was one exception, because I took Mr Sommer to my home for dinner once. Towards the completion of the project during the end of 1989, the Berlin wall fell. I still remember the extreme happiness our East German friends had that day. We all had our last official dinner that night as our German friends were returning back to their homes in Unified Germany next day.

In the next month or so, a few of our Indian team members ( me excluded) were to visit their office in Germany for the some final formalities. The work was almost completed at that time and the Indian team had more leisure time than work time at Germany. The Germans showed their extra ordinary hospitality to the visiting Indian team not by hosting any official dinner, but by personally inviting each one of them the respective homes of those engineers who were now in Germany but had been in India with us for several months earlier.

The Indian team members felt very bad now, even while they enjoyed the personal care and hospitality of their German counterparts. They felt ashamed because they never thought of taking care of those German friends while they were in India. And now there was hardly any opportunity for the Indians to reciprocate and repay their obligations! 

My friends after returning to India, told me how the Germans humbled them. We felt too humbled by this act and perhaps we learnt a new lesson.

While you took time to read these, I hope you could realize what I wanted to convey.

Please share your experiences of this kind with others using the comment facility below.

The Roots of Mixed Indian Civilization: Some Facets of the Lost History Retold !

Yesterday I wrote about the first and lost civilization of earth, the Dalamatian Civilization which was established some 500,000 years ago and progressed uninterrupted for another 300,000 years only to be lost almost entirely some 200,000 years ago. It was the longest civilization that mankind ever had. [You may read the blog article to know more about this original Mesopotamian civilization if you so desire]

It is important to note that all these developments took place in the geographic locations which are part of Central Asia with the origin of the first human beings and later the colored Sangik races in the previous 500,000 years happening in the north western highlands of the India. So the land of India has a special relevance in our world history that our present day historians unfortunately have lost track due to various reasons.  

In this blog I would provide some important narrations from my book of life guidance  where in the super mortal authors of the book remind us some of the pertinent world history that human historians could not gather especially with regard to the importance of the land of India.

It should be kept in mind that these may not be fully agreeable to the present day historians and archaeologists not because the information that I quote is wrong but because they have not yet fully discovered all the lost  evidences by their continuing archaeological investigations . However, the revealed information of the book I mentioned given through super human sources would undoubtedly provide valuable insights and directions to our scientists and researchers  and facilitate their research studies in the near future. In fact, such a thing is happening ever since the book was made available to modern day human beings.

Indians like me are proud of the immense treasure of knowledge that have been available in this country from ancient times. The so called Vedic religions of the Vedic period of India, while giving immense material to historians and oriental spiritualists for varying levels of intellectual and theological debates also provide material for disputes and speculations among the orientalists and the occidentalists.

This clearly indicates that there are much missing links of information in this field even while we have a wealth of pre-historic texts, epics and religious texts laced with imaginative mythologies. This only confirms the existence of a wide variety of cultural sources and cultural intermixing in the Indian soil. These inter racial and inter cultural mixing has made India a land of wide contrasts.

There are advantages and disadvantages for India and Indians from this kind of a situation. It depends how these cultural heritage is leveraged for advancement and progress.

Now let me quote some of the observations of the super human authors ( yes, I literally meant superhuman because they are not humans!) of the book about India:

Asia is the homeland of the human race. It was on a southern peninsula of this continent that Andon and Fonta were born; in the highlands of what is now Afghanistan, their descendant Badonan founded a primitive center of culture that persisted for over one-half million years. 

Here at this eastern focus of the human race the Sangik peoples differentiated from the Andonic stock, and Asia was their first home, their first hunting ground, their first battlefield. 

Southwestern Asia witnessed the successive civilizations of Dalamatians, Nodites [descendants of the rebel staff of the celestial earth ruler Caligastia], Adamites [mortal children of Adam and Eve and their descendants], and Andites [Children of Adam and his Nodite wives and their descendants], and from these regions the potentials of modern civilization spread to the world. 

For over twenty-five thousand years, on down to nearly 2000 B.C., the heart of Eurasia was predominantly, though decreasingly , Andite. [Since Adam and Eve were non-evolutionary, their blood streams contained the Rh Negative factor. Hence, the Adamites and the majority of Andites most likely had Rh Negative blood.] 

In the lowlands of Turkestan the Andites made the westward turning around the inland lakes into Europe, while from the highlands of this region they infiltrated eastward. Eastern Turkestan Sinkiang and, to a lesser extent, Tibet were the ancient gateways through which these peoples of Mesopotamia penetrated the mountains to the northern lands of the yellow men. 

The Andite infiltration of India proceeded from the Turkestan highlands into the Punjab and from the Iranian grazing lands through Baluchistan. These earlier migrations were in no sense conquests; they were, rather, the continual drifting of the Andite tribes into western India and China.

For almost fifteen thousand years centers of mixed Andite culture persisted in the basin of the Tarim River in Sinkiang and to the south in the highland regions of Tibet, where the Andites and Andonites had extensively mingled. The Tarim valley was the easternmost outpost of the true Andite culture. Here they built their settlements and entered into trade relations with the progressive Chinese to the east and with the Andonites to the north. In those days the Tarim region was a fertile land; the rainfall was plentiful. To the east the Gobi was an open grassland where the herders were gradually turning to agriculture. This civilization perished when the rain winds shifted to the southeast, but in its day it rivaled Mesopotamia itself.

By 8000 B.C. the slowly increasing aridity of the highland regions of central Asia began to drive the Andites to the river bottoms and the seashores. This increasing drought not only drove them to the valleys of the Nile,Euphrates,Indus, and Yellow rivers, but it produced a new development in Andite civilization. A new class of men, the traders, began to appear in large numbers.

When climatic conditions made hunting unprofitable for the migrating Andites, they did not follow the evolutionary course of the older races by becoming herders. Commerce and urban life made their appearance. From Egypt through Mesopotamia and Turkestan to the rivers of China and India, the more highly civilized tribes began to assemble in cities devoted to manufacture and trade. Adonia became the central Asian commercial metropolis, being located near the present city of Ashkhabad. Commerce in stone, metal, wood, and pottery was accelerated on both land and water.

But ever-increasing drought gradually brought about the great Andite exodus from the lands south and east of the Caspian Sea. The tide of migration began to veer from northward to southward, and the Babylonian cavalrymen began to push into Mesopotamia.

Increasing aridity in central Asia further operated to reduce population and to render these people less warlike; and when the diminishing rainfall to the north forced the nomadic Andonites southward, there was a tremendous exodus of Andites from Turkestan. This is the terminal movement of the so-called Aryans into the Levant and India. It culminated that long dispersal of the mixed descendants of Adam during which every Asiatic and most of the island peoples of the Pacific were to some extent improved by these superior races.

Thus, while they dispersed over the Eastern Hemisphere, the Andites were dispossessed of their homelands in Mesopotamia and Turkestan, for it was this extensive southward movement of Andonites that diluted the Andites in central Asia nearly to the vanishing point.

But even in the twentieth century after Christ there are traces of Andite blood among the Turanian and Tibetan peoples, as is witnessed by the blond types occasionally found in these regions. The early Chinese annals record the presence of the red-haired nomads to the north of the peaceful settlements of the Yellow River, and there still remain paintings which faithfully record the presence of both the blond-Andite and the brunet-Mongolian types in the Tarim basin of long ago.

The last great manifestation of the submerged military genius of the central Asiatic Andites was in A.D. 1200, when the Mongols under Genghis Khan began the conquest of the greater portion of the Asiatic continent. And like the Andites of old, these warriors proclaimed the existence of "one God in heaven." The early breakup of their empire long delayed cultural intercourse between Occident and Orient and greatly handicapped the growth of the monotheistic concept in Asia.

India is the only locality where all the earth races were blended, the Andite invasion adding the last stock. In the highlands northwest of India the Sangik races [the Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Indigo and Blue races of humans originating from the Sangik family of North West highlands of India]  came into existence, and without exception members of each penetrated the subcontinent of India in their early days, leaving behind them the most heterogeneous race mixture ever to exist on earth. Ancient India acted as a catch basin for the migrating races. The base of the peninsula was formerly somewhat narrower than now, much of the deltas of the Ganges and Indus being the work of the last fifty thousand years.

The earliest race mixtures in India were a blending of the migrating red and yellow races with the aboriginal Andonites. This group was later weakened by absorbing the greater portion of the extinct eastern green peoples as well as large numbers of the orange race, was slightly improved through limited admixture with the blue man, but suffered exceedingly through assimilation of large numbers of the indigo race. But the so-called aborigines of India are hardly representative of these early people; they are rather the most inferior southern and eastern fringe, which was never fully absorbed by either the early Andites or their later appearing Aryan cousins.

By 20,000 B.C. the population of western India had already become tinged with the Adamic blood, and never in the history of earth did any one people combine so many different races. But it was unfortunate that the secondary Sangik strains predominated, and it was a real calamity that both the blue and the red man were so largely missing from this racial melting pot of long ago; more of the primary Sangik strains would have contributed very much toward the enhancement of what might have been an even greater civilization. As it developed, the red man was destroying himself in the Americas, the blue man was disporting himself in Europe, and the early descendants of Adam (and most of the later ones- the violet people) exhibited little desire to admix with the darker colored peoples, whether in India,Africa, or elsewhere.

About 15,000 B.C. increasing population pressure throughout Turkestan and Iran occasioned the first really extensive Andite movement toward India. For over fifteen centuries these superior peoples poured in through the highlands of Baluchistan, spreading out over the valleys of the Indus and Ganges and slowly moving southward into the Deccan. This Andite pressure from the northwest drove many of the southern and eastern inferiors into Burma and southern China but not sufficiently to save the invaders from racial obliteration.

The failure of India to achieve the hegemony of Eurasia was largely a matter of topography; population pressure from the north only crowded the majority of the people southward into the decreasing territory of the Deccan, surrounded on all sides by the sea. Had there been adjacent lands for emigration, then would the inferiors have been crowded out in all directions, and the superior stocks would have achieved a higher civilization.

As it was, these earlier Andite conquerors made a desperate attempt to preserve their identity and stem the tide of racial engulfment by the establishment of rigid restrictions regarding intermarriage. Nonetheless, the Andites had become submerged by 10,000 B.C., but the whole mass of the people had been markedly improved by this absorption.

Race mixture is always advantageous in that it favors versatility of culture and makes for a progressive civilization, but if the inferior elements of racial stocks predominate, such achievements will be short-lived. A polyglot culture can be preserved only if the superior stocks reproduce themselves in a safe margin over the inferior. Unrestrained multiplication of inferiors, with decreasing reproduction of superiors, is unfailingly suicidal of cultural civilization.

Had the Andite conquerors been in numbers three times what they were, or had they driven out or destroyed the least desirable third of the mixed orange-green-indigo inhabitants, then would India have become one of the world's leading centers of cultural civilization and undoubtedly would have attracted more of the later waves of Mesopotamians that flowed into Turkestan and thence northward to Europe.

The blending of the Andite conquerors of India with the native stock eventually resulted in that mixed people which has been called Dravidian. The earlier and purer Dravidians possessed a great capacity for cultural achievement, which was continuously weakened as their Andite inheritance became progressively attenuated. And this is what doomed the budding civilization of India almost twelve thousand years ago. But the infusion of even this small amount of the blood of Adam produced a marked acceleration in social development. This composite stock immediately produced the most versatile civilization then on earth.

Not long after conquering India, the Dravidian Andites lost their racial and cultural contact with Mesopotamia, but the later opening up of the sea lanes and the caravan routes re-established these connections; and at no time within the last ten thousand years has India ever been entirely out of touch with Mesopotamia on the west and China to the east, although the mountain barriers greatly favored western intermixing.

The superior culture and religious leanings of the peoples of India date from the early times of Dravidian domination and are due, in part, to the fact that so many of the Sethite priesthood entered India, both in the earlier Andite and in the later Aryan invasions. The thread of monotheism running through the religious history of India thus stems from the teachings of the Adamites in the second garden (of Eden they established in the Euphrates valley after they had to run away from the first Eden garden now submerged in the Mediterranean sea.) 

As early as 16,000 B.C. a company of one hundred Sethite priests entered India and very nearly achieved the religious conquest of the western half of that polyglot people. But their religion did not persist. Within five thousand years their doctrines of the Trinity concept of Diety (the concept of the original trimurti or triune existence of Paramatma ) had degenerated into the triune symbol of the fire god (the trishula).

But for more than seven thousand years, down to the end of the Andite migrations, the religious status of the inhabitants of India was far above that of the world at large. During these times India bid fair to produce the leading cultural, religious, philosophic, and commercial civilization of the world. And but for the complete submergence of the Andites by the peoples of the south, this destiny would probably have been realized.

The Dravidian centers of culture were located in the river valleys, principally of the Indus and Ganges, and in the Deccan along the three great rivers flowing through the Eastern Ghats to the sea. The settlements along the seacoast of the Western Ghats owed their prominence to maritime relationships with Sumeria.

The Dravidians were among the earliest peoples to build cities and to engage in an extensive export and import business, both by land and sea. By 7000 B.C. Camel trains were making regular trips to distant Mesopotamia; Dravidian shipping was pushing coast wise across the Arabian Sea to the Sumerian cities of the Persian Gulf and was venturing on the waters of the Bay of Bengal as far as the East Indies. An alphabet, together with the art of writing, was imported from Sumeria by these seafarers and merchants.

These commercial relationships greatly contributed to the further diversification of a cosmopolitan culture, resulting in the early appearance of many of the refinements and even luxuries of urban life. When the later appearing Aryans entered India, they did not recognize in the Dravidians their Andite cousins submerged in the Sangik races, but they did find a well-advanced civilization. Despite biologic limitations, the Dravidians founded a superior civilization. It was well diffused throughout all India and has survived on down to modern times in the Deccan.

The second Andite penetration of India was the Aryan invasion during a period of almost five hundred years in the middle of the third millennium before Christ. This migration marked the terminal exodus of the Andites from their homelands in Turkestan.

The early Aryan centers were scattered over the northern half of India, notably in the northwest. These invaders never completed the conquest of the country and subsequently met their undoing in this neglect since their lesser numbers made them vulnerable to absorption by the Dravidians of the south, who subsequently overran the entire peninsula except the Himalayan provinces.

The Aryans made very little racial impression on India except in the northern provinces. In the Deccan their influence was cultural and religious more than racial. The greater persistence of the so-called Aryan blood in northern India is not only due to their presence in these regions in greater numbers but also because they were reinforced by later conquerors, traders, and missionaries. Right on down to the first century before Christ there was a continuous infiltration of Aryan blood into the Punjab, the last influx being attendant upon the campaigns of the Hellenistic peoples.

On the Gangetic plain Aryan and Dravidian eventually mingled to produce a high culture, and this center was later reinforced by contributions from the northeast, coming from China.

In India many types of social organizations flourished from time to time, from the semi-democratic systems of the Aryans to despotic and monarchial forms of government. But the most characteristic feature of society was the persistence of the great social castes that were instituted by the Aryans in an effort to perpetuate racial identity. This elaborate caste system has been preserved on down to the present time.

Of the four great castes, all but the first were established in the futile effort to prevent racial amalgamation of the Aryan conquerors with their inferior subjects. But the premier caste, the teacher-priests, stems from the Sethites; the Brahmans of the twentieth century after Christ are the lineal cultural descendants of the priests of the second garden (of Eden), however their teachings differ greatly from those of their illustrious predecessors.

When the Aryans entered India, they brought with them their concepts of Deity as they had been preserved in the lingering traditions of the religion of the second garden. But the Brahman priests were never able to withstand the pagan momentum built up by the sudden contact with the inferior religions of the Deccan after the racial obliteration of the Aryans. Thus the vast majority of the population fell into the bondage of the enslaving superstitions of inferior religions; and so it was that India failed to produce the high civilization which had been foreshadowed in earlier times.

The spiritual awakening of the sixth century before Christ did not persist in India, having died out even before the Mohammedan invasion. But some day a greater Gautama may arise to lead all India in the search for the living God, and then the world will observe the fruition of the cultural potentialities of a versatile people so long comatose under the benumbing influence of an un-progressing spiritual vision.

My dear reader, the history of India is much more ancient and complex than our present day historians have imagined. Our history began a million years ago and so many big and small civilizations flourished and vanished over the Indian soil with every civilization making some big and small contributions to the succeeding generations of people. These contributions have been both biological and cultural.

We have been facing ups and downs in our culture and civilization for many many thousands of years and we will face such ups and downs for many many in the future too.

But every individual in every civilization has a goal. And that goal is to ensure living a life in spiritual harmony with the universal spiritual energy circuits while contributing to the material advancement of this world. And that is what Parampita Paramatma (the Universal Father Spirit - God) desires from the human beings of all lands including the land of India.

Learning to live in spiritual harmony means attainment of higher civilization and culture indicating maturity. Our struggles of life will continue till the majority of us attains maturity of mind.

[Information in italics taken from the Urantia-Book]

The Price You Pay for Ignorance and Incompetence!

A few years ago, a person who was well known to me contacted me for a professional advice. He had just recently  taken up a top management job in a well known private company at that time. He too was a professional engineer like me and much senior to me. But he knew me well professionally and did not hesitate to show his high regards and respect that he had towards me for the professional expertise that I had in some areas, especially in the field of water and waste water engineering and technologies.

His company had almost taken some decisions to spent some substantial money for improvements in their production processes taking help from an engineering consultancy group. And a substantial portion of this proposed expenditure was towards modifications in their water and waste water systems. He too being an engineer having decades of industrial experience could sense some thing not so okay with the proposal made by their consultants, but was not able to make out any valid points to question the wisdom of the consultants due to his own limited knowledge in this field. So he wanted me to have a look and give my advice.

Over a cup of coffee, I glanced through the consultants' project feasibility report and could immediately find many things superfluous. Either the consultants are not so knowledgeable in this field or they are adopting an unethical practice of enhancing the project cost with unnecessary complexities in the design. Since the consultants' fees are directly linked to the project cost, this kind of an unethical practice is often resorted by some professionals here and there! 

With my experience and expertise in that field, I could immediately assess that there was a scope for reduction of the cost by a few million rupees. I told him the areas where the cost reduction could be effected and he being an experience engineer could immediately catch my points. Later he informed me that he could take up those points with his company's engineering consultants resulting in substantial savings in the proposed investments and also thanked me for my guidance.

In the professional field, especially in the engineering field, substantial sums could go to the drains with no one gaining any benefits commensurate with the expenditure due to the ignorance of those concerned with the investment planning and decision making. Sometimes it could be vested interests, but even vested interests would be able to effect their detrimental acts and proceed the way they want only when there is an atmosphere of general  ignorance and incompetency all around!

This kind of a situation is not rare, but very common in the underdeveloped and developing economies. It is not limited to engineering, but to almost every field of activity. In reality, the reason why the economy is underdeveloped or lagging behind in development as compared to some others can solely be attributed to the general deficiency in the distribution of knowledge and competence among its peoples.

While knowledge and competence can be acquired by education and training to some extent, there is an inherent limit for every individual to the extent to which such knowledge and competence could be acquired. In other words, you cannot forcibly enhance any one's knowledge and competence beyond certain limits! Hence, it is essential that we recognize this fundamental reality first and device suitable systems in such a way that right persons are entrusted with the right kind of jobs and responsibilities. An organization can fail in its mission and objectives even when it has people with desired levels of competence, character, courage and compassion but are all occupying positions haphazardly and not according to their capacities!

Engineering is that profession that has the biggest contribution towards economic development. Therefore, ignorance and incompetence in the engineering field could cause tremendous adverse impact on any economy. Economies where the decision making processes are vested mostly with people having inadequate knowledge in the nitty-gritties of engineering are bound to lag behind in economic development. They are also bound to incur higher expenditure for keeping pace with development elsewhere and to maintain their forward progress.

Engineering is both and art and a science and real engineers who develop knowledge and competency to perform their roles with confidence and perfection emerge only when those freshly trained engineering students get opportunities to practice their knowledge and gain higher experiences.Engineering is also a vast and complex field of knowledge and hence, it would not be possible for any one to know every thing. Engineering has divided itself to various disciplines at the learning stage,because of this. But in reality, every engineer who actually work in the real field of application of their skills gains vast knowledge and practical experience that cannot be taught in formal classrooms! This causes another work related problem. Often, it is difficult for even fellow engineers to fathom the knowledge and skill levels of their own colleagues unless they are very keen to know about it. For managers and the so-called technocrats to function effectively, it is highly essential that they know the expertise, knowledge and potential of the those engineers in their team or teams. Knowing the potentials of others is highly essential for team leaders or top managers to make success.

In all professions, especially in the engineering profession, mentoring is a desirable trait and culture that needs to be understood and practiced for long term success of the organization. Mentoring is the honest practice of helping and projecting peers, juniors and perhaps even seniors. It is culture or practice of making the knowledge and competence of others known in such a way that such knowledge and experience do not go unnoticed. People with deep knowledge and competency often shy away from projecting their capabilities while people having limited knowledge and experience keep working overtime to project themselves always! In such a situation, there is always a likelihood that inferior people in an organization are entrusted with superior tasks and responsibilities for which they are not very suitable. Obviously, the organization has to pay a big price when it happens this way! 

In the small example that I cited in the beginning, it was only due to the fact my senior professional friend knew about my expertise and was willing to tap that source, his company could avoid some wasteful expenditures! I have seen many good technocrats making huge blunders for their organizations just because they had pretty no idea regarding the knowledge and competence levels of their team members creating situations that prevented their teams to deliver their best.

Suppose that you want to make a house of your own. If you are a bit technically knowledgeable in the basics of house construction, construction materials and the markets and if you are prepared to use your knowledge for your advantage there is all possibility that you could make substantial savings in the overall costs for getting your house made and also on the overall quality of your house so made. 

Many engineering infrastructure projects are similar, but much more complex, voluminous and pose various alternatives over which best decisions are to be taken. You could possibly do the best collective decisions and implement the project cost effectively and successfully only when every one involved in the project right from top to bottom have the desired levels of competence. If the team leaders and the key members of the team are those with desirable levels of competency, character, courage and compassion (the 4 Cs) there is perhaps no reason that the projects they undertake not getting successfully implemented. 

Let me cite another example. Electricity and water are burning issues in every modern economy and India is no exception.

Let us consider the set up of a thermal power plant of say 500 Mega Watt production capacity. What could be the cost of setting up production facility of this kind? Depending upon the various factors  the cost of such a facility could vary any thing between Rs 40 Million to 80 Million per MW of installed capacity. That means the overall project cost could be any thing in the range of Rs. 20000 to 40000 Million. This is just an approximate assessment based on costs of power projects completed earlier. The actual costs depends on various factors, the main being the manner in which the basic engineering and the detailed engineering (ie the design and technical specifications) of the power utility, is formulated. If the plant design engineers are knowledgeable and competent and if the decision makers are able to make full use of their knowledge, there is a potential of substantial savings in capital expenditure for achieving the same end result!

Now the cost of power produced by the power utility depends on the costs towards fuel ( coal, oil, gas etc), operation and maintenance (O&M) and the costs towards recovery of the capital with interest and also on other charges such as taxes, depreciation allocations, etc. Imagine the advantage of the power utility that had spend much lower with regard to capital expenses! 

Normally, the cost of the plant is reflected through the Project Feasibility Report as prepared by the project consulting engineers. The project consulting engineers hold the key for reduction of capital costs of a project. If they are ignorant or incompetent, the project completion costs could never be any thing near the costs as was predicted in the feasibility reports. In India, project completion costs often exceed much more than the estimated costs. Project completion time also exceed much more than what was originally envisaged.

Time and cost overruns in projects are routine than an exception in India. This kind of a situation creates problems for fixing tariffs and rates for common utilities such as electricity, gas and water. Often the authorities are forced to pass on the costs of ignorance and incompetence to the common customers or the public at large.

The fundamental reason for this kind of a situation is because of the inability of decision makers to understand the working of professionals as a team. Engineering profession accomplishes results as a result of team effort of scores of specialists with differing experiences and expertise. It is difficult for engineers themselves to understand other engineers working in other areas of specialization. This often results in internal conflicts within engineering consultancy groups, many times affecting the quality of their professional services in formulating projects properly. Often, the constraints of individual engineers are overlooked adding to the problems and multiplying the effect of ignorance, incompetence and vested interests.

Consulting engineers are now required to quote for their services. Their services are also decided based on open market bidding and based on lowest cost considerations! But how could you evaluate the quality of their advise? Again they are required to produce project reports of large scale projects involving billions of rupees within a few days or months. Not enough time to even print the copies of their reports! Did they study the situation and assessed every aspects? Did they get the time to do the essential surveys and studies? Did they get the time to think? No one is bothered. What is required is the project feasibility report and the tendering specifications as quickly as possible. Without these documents, no one can proceed to the authorities for approvals and approvals take years! No one can speed up the time required for approvals. What can be done is only to squeeze the time to study the project details and making those documents. Consulting engineers are forced to produce their reports 'as quickly as possible'. This kind of a situation has downgraded engineering profession to its lowest esteem in recent years in India. Expertise and experience have least importance and value in this kind of a situation and professional ethics is also not talked or discussed any where. In the present environment, it seems that pliable consultants who are too willing to comply with the desires of their clients are the only preferred ones. Others have ceased to exist as engineering consultants for all practical purposes. 

If consulting engineers are forced to produce their reports in the manner described above by those who are positioned to do so is again due to the ignorance of the latter about the working of consulting engineers to a great extent. Again this ignorance causes money to go to drain!

When we moved towards market oriented economy, competition began to play a bigger role in our decision making processes. Time has become a major factor. It is a do-or-die situation. In this process we lost our ability to think wisely. We also lost our ability to honor and respect those who thought wisely and who would perhaps had given us the best advise to save us from utter failures in the long run. A highly competitive environment in a society full of unequal peoples, such as the situation in India, is bound to widen the gaps between the haves and the have-nots. If policy makers are ignorant of this fact then there is no chance for the society getting proper policies to make things in order so that the society progresses properly for everyone. 

The damage due to ignorance and incompetence is happening in all professional fields and engineering field has suffered the most without any one really realising the consequences.

Imagine the situation when an ENT surgeon is posted as the Cardiac surgeon! This is too obvious a situation and perhaps no patient would ever be willing to accept such a thing. Nevertheless, Indian authorities do this kind of misadventures when no one is objecting! One can imagine the consequences!

So what is the solution?

I would only say this much. There is a need to honor and respect knowledge and competence. There is a need to honor professional ethics. Not by simply saying. But doing it honestly.

Unfortunately, engineering academicians in countries like India do not really understand the practical aspects of engineering profession to make any real guidance to their students in the practice of engineering. If I remember correctly, decades ago, the government of India had enacted a law that made it mandatory for all industries to provide apprenticeship training to fresh engineers for at least one year. This law is totally forgotten now and the whole thrust of engineering education has been shifted towards getting people of some employable skills rather than getting a workforce who are competent to undertake challenges of progress and development on a whole some basis and not in isolated pockets of economic activities.

When you do not know how to do some thing properly, you have to take help from others who would then do it for you. But when your skills and knowledge are at lower levels, those who come to help you would demand a high price for the services they render. Or you would not know to whom you would turn for help and advice!

Think of this. Why are the Indian manufacturing units in many areas are shifting their bases to other countries? Why do we have to depend on foreign technology suppliers always? What could have been the cost advantage to us had we knew things better?

How could we address these issues? 

Are we in a position to judge the manner in which our democratic governments address these issues with the help of the so-called bureaucracy at present?

Though there are many kinds of professionals, the ones whose incompetence and ignorance could create some problem to others are the technical professionals such as engineers, doctors, pilots, etc. Obviously, the top administrators, policy makers, law enforcers etc do not come in this category though they play some roles in making the professionals work as non professionals! 

The current practice of ensuring better service from the professionals is by the use of fear and threat of the law. When an error in the working of a professional causes some damage of life or property the law zeros in to some one and tries to punish the individual or individuals with punishments of various kinds including imprisonments.

Thus professionals like engineers, doctors and the like who are have to use their intelligence, knowledge and skills to the highest order for doing some complex jobs which others cannot perform are kept under the threat of the law. They work in an environment of what is called 'work-risk'. 

How could any one enhance a person's competence and skills of doing some work under threat? A person working under fear is more likely to fail than to excel. Fear also makes people to avoid even routine works that they are capable of doing and if possible they would try to escape from such jobs.

I have seen this happening. I know many cases where young engineers are trying their best to escape from such jobs that they feel as complex, non rewarding and having work-risks associated.

Any wonder why the best trained engineers from premier institutions discard engineering and migrate to non-engineering fields of works? This causes those having lesser brain capacities to get assigned to perform jobs that require higher brain capacities!

This does not mean that those who do willful acts of omission and commission are allowed to do their nefarious activities. But even the system of enforcement of rules and the system of vigilance management are also affected by ignorance and incompetence and could create more damage than good in such an environment!  

I know that I cannot do a job which requires an intelligence level higher than what I have. I cannot perform a job for which a higher knowledge and competency is required and my inherent brain capacity would not allow me to acquire that. If I am forced to do such works, I am bound to make mistakes and gross errors. If it happens, am I at fault or the ones that forced me to do it at fault?

This is a complicated issue. It gets further complicated as more and more ignorance and incompetence creep in at all levels.

And imagine the price the society would pay for such a proliferation of ignorance and incompetence!

And what is the probable solution to check the proliferation of this situation from rotting the whole system?

In my opinion our human resource management systems need to be overhauled drastically. The systems of recruiting people and promoting people everywhere needs to change. The method of assigning works and responsibilities need to change. The right man for the right job approach need to be practiced honestly.

So, where to start first? If you have incompetent and characterless HR managers and CEOs it is easier to get the whole systems getting corrupted too quickly. If you extrapolate this logic, it is very easy to to see that a leader with the 4-Cs as the leader of the country, I mean the PM, could do a quick change in the systems if he or she so desires.

Perhaps, the Aam Admi Party (AAP) in India, is advocating for such a thing! And if the majority of citizens of India are not ignorant of this then there is a possibility that India might escape from paying a big price for ignorance and incompetence in the near future!