Incredible India or Bharat ?

Incredible India !! This punch line fills us with lot of pride when we see the advertisement by Indian Tourism Department because they show different colours of India..which makes our beautiful country unique and special. Yes, India is special. But have we ever tried and seen beyond the blue mountains of Ladakh ? Have we ever seen beyond the beautiful Taj Mahal ? Have we ever seen beyond the magnificent forts of Rajasthan ?

With all these natural and man made colours we also have some dark sides of it when we talk of various debates like "India vs. Bharat" or "Tale of two Indias". Today we may talk of corruption and numerous other problems which may force us to rethink India's future as a prosperous and a great country. There are many writings on various stories, which may send negative vibes. But I feel what makes India special and a unique country is her great people and values.

We all know that today the world is going through a historical recession and it all started by credit crunch in the US and European countries. All great analysts of wall street attributed it to the credit defaults by huge number of people, who had bad credit history. In the US or any first world economies debt is never seen as important obligation as in India. To know the answer we just need to visit any village in India and ask the same question to our humble farmers. The biggest example is the number of suicide cases of farmers in our country. I am not justifying, if a farmer commits suicide if he is not able to pay his debt. My point is that the mere thought of debt is so very horrifying for a farmer that if he finds himself unable to repay he even thinks of committing suicide. Why doesn't he default and rest in peace like any American ? Simply because the great Indian values (rather say bhartiya values) define a very thick line across all the liabilities for a man and debt will bear the highest priority. The humble farmer may have various options like absconding, defaulting, stealing or getting into some crime to repay the debt, but he will not get into any wrong doings rather he will choose to end his life in shame that he couldn't carry his duties properly and repay on time. That too it was just not his fault that he couldn't repay on time rather it was because of poor rain or some drought. To put in straight words it was state's failure to make all the necessary arrangements for farming and irrigation. In the extreme condition also, the poor Indian farmer never complains and he chooses to accept everything, what comes his way. Farming being the largest occupation of India, there is no doubt that most of these people are so humble & great in their thinking & values that we can't even think of. So when we talk of "India vs. Bharat", we fail to note this difference of thinking and values between the people of India and Bharat. India might be getting away from these great values but Bharat is still sticking to it.

America and other first world countries can boast of producing the largest wall street banks, greatest technology companies, greatest CEOs, world famous univerties but it failed to inculcate the values which majority of Indians get by default. I feel these values and humble farmers make Bharat and not India, the greatest country on earth.

Incredible Bharat !!

Indian Journalism...A mere entertainer...!!

Journalism is said to be the fourth pillar of any democratic state. If I ask the same question with respect to India, I don't see it as a strength as it could be. Sometimes I feel that Indian news channels are mere entertainers as against the best in the industry like Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post etc. This is one of the reasons why not even a single Indian media house gets that respect on any international platform. Today so many Indian companies are seen as world leaders but why don't we see any Indian media houses up the podium ? This question needs a greater deal of introspection from all the media houses in our country.

I really feel sad for Indian media that they have still not developed into a responsible and mature journalism. What I feel that we are still nowhere near to investigative journalism. If media has the courage and enthusiasm to live telecast every second of events like 26/11 then they must have the courage to follow every story behind it as the media houses like Wall Street journal, NY Times etc. do. We can take various cases for example 2008 Delhi Blast, Samjhauta Express blast, Malegaon Blast etc. but none of the cases where deeply followed by any Indian media houses. They can very well investigate it and bring some real truths in the light. This will in turn pressurize the Police, Government, Politicians or Babus to expedite the investigation. That is why journalism is called the fourth pillar of democracy. But what we see in India is exactly the opposite. The media here is very happy to report some sensational issues in a flashy manner and forget the same as soon as the cases fail to fetch them higher TRPs. This is the reason why I feel that they too are a bunch of entertainers which guide themselves by TRPs and not by their duties.

We can take number of examples where we can easily see the bias by Indian journalists. Why a blast in Mumbai gets more attention than a blast in North East ? Ain't the people died in North East are our fellow Indian citizens ? Of course Mumbai is our financial capital but it doesn't mean that we forget any NE blast in two days time and even forget to report the aftermath. Why a mere traffic jam or heavy rain in Mumbai gets beamed live but we forget to show the sorrow of flood or drought in any rural part of India ? Why a small accident in Delhi gets more prime time on channels and cases of farmers suicide fails to get even a minute ? Like these, there are various questions which may again fall into the deaf ears of our so called elite social page 3 animals.

We always boast of our democracy but it needs a contribution from all walks of life and journalism needs to play a very important role in it. Though we can't fully criticize media as it has also played some key roles on various occasions. But they also need to decide upon their priorities and duties otherwise days are not far when the daily dose of news becomes another soap like "kahani ghar ghar ki" or "saas bhi kabhi bahu thi".

Raj Thackeray..A politician or a terrorist !!

Raj Thackeray....I wonder what does this guy really want? A nice political career or upliftment of Marathi manoos. But I am sorry to say that he will not achieve anything. This has been India's history and that is why we are a great democracy and praised all across the globe.

There were various political parties, which were formed on some emotional political agenda but disappeared with time. None the less even BJP, which raised the issue of Hindutva and Ram mandir, is battling for existence. One of the main reasons of BJP's failure is its stance on Hindutva. People are no more interested in these rather they are interested in development. You can fool people for some time but not long. Same is the fate of Shiv Sena, once upon a time it was considered to be a potent political force in Mahrashtra but now they too are struggling. The latest to add in the list is Mayawati, who rose herself as Dalit's messiah but her real face is now known to every kid in UP.

As we all know that Maha is also heading towards hung assembly and there are no strong opposition parties. So this state is like another Harayana in making as far as political scene is concerned. So, Raj Thackeray's only motive is to get some seats so that he can play a key role in government formation. But if he is really worried about the development of Marathi manoos then why he doesn't work for the poor farmers in Vidharbha, where one farmer commits suicide every 8 hours. Are they less Marathi. Perhaps yes...because here he will not get as much publicity as he will get by creating terror on Mumbai streets.

A country can never be great if it is not inclusive and tolerant. But the sorry state is that it was India, who taught the world the lesson of inclusiveness and tolerance and now a days these two words are most hated in some states in India itself. We talk of Mumbai being the financial capital of south Asia. But will we ever achieve this ? If we are talking of being financial capital then we must be ready for various expats coming to Mumbai for work. Forget about expats we are not even ready to welcome our fellow Indian citizens. This is also sending a wrong signal to the world. Mumbai was always seen as a modern face of poor India. But now it has turned into ugly face of real India.

So with all these north Indian migrants drama unfolding and Indians being emotional fools, people like Raj may get initial mileage in their political career but sooner or later Marathi manoos will also realize that this was no more than a political prank. That day will be the start of the fall for Mr. Raj. So Raj Thackeray is not a great politician but he succeeded in terrorizing migrants and sending a negative signal all across the globe.

Naxalism...India's Taliban

Today Naxalism poses greater challenges than ever thought of. I am from Jharkhand and my state and so many adjoining states like West Bengal, Chhatisgarh, Bihar, Orrisa face bandhs sponsored by Maoists almost 10-15 days a month. All these states are politically and economically very week, so the bandhs(strikes) are almost successful rather say so successful that the vehicles movement on highways are almost crippled. All the business activities, on highways and adjoining villages, come to a halt. This is a very dangerous sign for the economy of these states. Jharkhand particularly suffers a lot because all the major industries fall in naxal hit areas and they come to a complete halt. Some of the industrial projects are not kicking off because of this menace.

I am sorry to say but if the government doesn't pay heed to this problem at the earliest then this is going to be India's Taliban and we will have to fight this enemy within like Pakistan. The only difference is that Pakistan nurtured Taliban like her baby and we are nurturing this baby called Naxalism not directly but indirectly by sheer ignorance rather say that with some political patronage too.

Mr. Home Minister says that we need a proper planning to beat this enemy but we don't see any active or solid effort by the government in this direction. This was very horrifying to see a taliban style murder of a cop in Jharkhand by Maoists. This should be taken as a stern warning by Maosits and they are capable of doing anything and everything now. Our state machineries look so very helpless to fight this war alone. They just don't have quality manpower, strong police force, modern arms and ammunitions, intelligence etc. to fight this war. so it is almost impossible if we believe that they will do it alone.

We need a single specialized force which will be working all across the various states and then fight this war. Now, when all the affected state governments have given their consent to central government then the central government must take it seriously and start working on it.

So wake up Chidambram !!

Useful Java links

There are few good links for good java reading and learning:

http://lkamal.blogspot.com/2008/07/java-sorting-comparator-vs-comparable.html

http://www.javabeat.net/articles/108-java-interview-questions-1.html

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/javaqa/2000-03/02-qa-innerclass.html

http://www.go4expert.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5424

http://www.interviewhints.com/articles/2205/1/Write-the-algorithm-for-binary-search/Page1.html

http://www.xyzws.com/javafaq/can-static-methods-be-overridden/1

http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3ll/jatutor4.htm

http://www.laliluna.de/what-is-hibernate.html

http://edocs.bea.com/wls/docs81/ConsoleHelp/domain_jdbcconnectionpool_config_connections.html

http://www.javacoffeebreak.com/index.html

http://www.javacoffeebreak.com/articles/serialization/index.html

http://www.xyzws.com/javafaq/page/1

http://java-tips.org/

http://www.geocities.com/technofundo/tech/java/equalhash.html

http://www.javacoffeebreak.com/articles/designpatterns/index.html

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/index.html

http://www.allapplabs.com/interview_questions/java_interview_questions.htm

http://www.allinterview.com/Interview-Questions/Core-Java.html

http://www.javacamp.org/designPattern/