India's 68th Independence Day & 68 things seriously wrong with our Country!

1. Corruption 2. Pedagogy 3. Infrastructure 4. Law & Order 5. Safety for Women 6. Caste System 7. Religious dissent 8. Poverty 9. Child Labour 10. HealthCare 11. Black Economy 12. Brain Drain 13. R & D 14. Employment 15. Manufacturing Units 16. Power Crisis 17. Lack of Employability Skills in the youth 18. Terrorism 19. Boarder Conflicts 20. Scams 21. FDIs 22. Currency de-growth 23. Inflation 24. Naxalite Maoist insurgency 25. Domestic Violence 26. Fight for Land; The legacy of partition- Evolution of Smaller States 27. Political System-Fight for Power-A Family Business 28. Westernization 29. Lack of proper Irrigational facilities causing Agricultural Production de-growth 30. Hoarding of Stocks causing Food Inflation 31. Oil & Gas & the unlimited need of the same amidst rocketing price war 32. Growing NRIs 33. Women Trafficking 34. Population 35. Improper Governance 36. Only 53% of the population franchising their Right to vote 37. Only 12.6 % of our population using Internet - Technology under utilized 38. sports 39. Aircraft Crashes resulting in the Death of our Defense Officers 40. Female feticides 41. Malnutrition 42. Vote Bank Politics 43. Communal Violence 44. Dowry System - Harassment & Death resulting out of it 45. Reservation 46. Godmans 47. Inadequate Financial aid to Entrepreneurs & Start ups companies 48. Disaster Management Systems 49. Traffic Violations & Road Accidents 50. Improper Sanitation & Sewage disposal Systems 51. The Judiciary System... 52. Work Life Balance 53. Govt Schemes and the gap from the intended end use 54. Environmental Policies 55. Professionalism in Education and Work 56. Bureaucracy 57. Dowry 58. Nehru's Dynasty .....how can I forget this one.... 59. Sensationalizing News & Media 60. Land Mafia 61. Saffron Terror 62. Depreciating Cultural, Traditional & Ethnic values 63. Junk food 64. Sex Ratio 65. Arm chair critics 66. Honour Killing 67. Growing external Debt 68. illegal immigrants into India

My Perspective - A Friendship Day's Special:

Friendship… A word which will always remain undefined forever; it takes forms in all material states; a solid strength, liquid emotional support and gaseous freedom to spread ourselves in all forms that we wish to take. Some of the best scholars failed to describe words like love & friendship. For some friendship is strong emotional bonding between two or more people, for some it’s about caring and sharing, for some it’s a form of relationship which seeks support in all facets of life through somebody who is there for you when you are in need of help. People might not have a mother or father or brother or sister but there would not be anybody who doesn’t have a friend; thus proving a point that one who doesn’t have a friend doesn’t exist.

I still remember the quote taught by my English teacher, “A friend in need is friend in deed” Which was the first encounter of representation of friendship for most of us. I am sure you all remember the story behind this quote; the ones of The Lion and the Mice where the latter helps the former in freeing from the netted trap because the Lion on an earlier date left the mice unharmed out of pity in spite of being disturbed from sleep.


Friendship is a very age old concept and dates back to ancient times. Of course there are some great stories on friendship from our epics like the ones of Lord Sri Krishna & Kuchela in Dwaparu Yuga; Or of the ones of Traetayuga which witnessed great friendship between Lord Sri Rama & Sugreeva. Over time and age its always considered sacred and valuable.


Friendship for everybody starts from a very early stage in life, when we were whining child; wanting to play with somebody with as much excitement and temperament sharing and seizing ones toys. This basic fact proves that friendship doesn’t require one to have a similar background or status. Let it be our parents or grandparents or uncles or Aunts everybody has friends and seeing them we realize it gets better and better as days progress.


Sighting the strong bondage that friends carry few entrepreneurs have made their way creating an enterprise which enabled people to make new friends, meet their existing ones and keep in touch with them for the rest of the life. Yes I am referring the online platforms like chat rooms and networking sites which have found their ways to make it big in the business world pocketing billions of dollars every year. Right from the yahoo chat rooms to the Google’s Orkut and The Gtalk to the ones of The Facebook everything seems to have friendship as the base theme behind the big move with optimization of the technology advancement. While interface like Skype took over Gtalk & Yahoo Messenger; Online platforms like the ones of Mark’s Facebook took over Orkut. Facebook was started in 2004 and was only confined to United States with definite people having access to it yet it revolutionized within a decade, all forms of relationships across the world, giving access to people in multilingual forms, connecting to each other through iconic ‘Add Friend’ phrase. With over 1.28 billion active facebook users which is little more than the population of India; Facebook applied for a US$5 billion initial public offering; one of the biggest in the history of technology and the biggest in Internet history. Facebook valued its stock at $38 a share which priced the company at $104 billion – the largest valuation to date for a new public company. The IPO raised $16 billion, making it the third largest in U.S. history. Today Mark’s wealth is estimated to be US $33.1 billion.


With the kind of life style that we live in and as everybody gets busier to make their way big in the corporate world; finding it hard to find time to the near and dear technology has changed the way we keep in touch with our family and friends. While enabling active interaction between people and exposing the walks of life as days progress; we get to know about everybody without meeting regularly irrespective of whether they stay in the same city or in a foreign country. However sometimes I personally feel the relationship is getting divulged as generations are getting progressed. Kids play with gadgets than with people of their age. They depend on Google for information rather than calling friends or referring to books. The dependency on fellow Human is meager and I am afraid that one fine day man will have developed technology at such a advanced and sophisticated levels that he would only have to operate switches and do nothing else and I would not be surprised to think further ahead where he invents robots to operate the switches on his behalf for everything that he intends to do. Such is the adversity of the dependency on the technology that we fail to wake up in time if the alarm doesn’t go up in the mobile; don’t take shower because the water heater doesn’t work and don’t study for exams because the computers can’t be operated or lights doesn't illuminate in absence of electric power. Yes we have technology which connects people yet we could not find a way to sense the feeling of the loved one in the foreign world; we failed and I am sure would never be able to have an advancement in technology which will enable us to give a shoulder to shed the tear or offer a hug to make them feel better.


Every relationship has a name, namely Mother, Father, Brother, Sister, Grand Father, Grand Mother, Uncle, Aunt, Cousin, Niece, Nephew, In Laws etc. Hence most of the blood relationship is very definitive in nature and people often name non-blood relationship as Friendship. In my perspective this isn’t appropriate. Irrespective of whether somebody is a blood relation or not, Friendship can exists. I recall the words of the great Scholar Chanakya who said, “Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends” Thus some of the best friendships can happen between Father/Mother & Son/Daughter, Brothers, Sisters, between brother & sister or cousins or with other blood relatives. Yet I am sure that we all will acknowledge the fact that the degree at which we can share certain things change with association on a day to day basis with our relatives. We are somewhat more willing to share few things with non-blood related friends than friends in other forms. Often people tend to name a relationship between them as friendship when they cannot fit in other forms of non-blood relationship. For instance when a guy proposes a girl and if she is not okay with the proposal she says “Why can’t we just be friends?” And same is the case with a Girl proposing a Guy. People often end up misusing the word friendship either because they want to avoid getting into dogma of bondage or they don’t really understand what it takes to be friend to be somebody.


The Big Question: Who is a friend? What does it take to be friends to somebody? And how long?

A friend is somebody who scolds like a Dad, Cares like a Mom, Plays with you like your brother and fights with you like your sister. Most of the times its only with friends with who we share our feeling which cannot be shared with the blood relatives. It’s quite miraculous that we tend to understand a feeling as a friend and not otherwise. Each one of us has very strong likes and dislike to accept in any form of relationship let it be with somebody within the family or somebody outside. And it is often proved that people who find comfort in each other company are the people whom can pair in any form of relationship. Most of the time only those relationships work where the other person is made to feel good, this becomes very important because everybody wants to be treated well. And this is more specific to the beginning of any relationship than in the later stage when the understanding takes a matured form. Friendship is relatively more in Altruistic form. Though Chanakya says, “There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.” There might be self-centered benefactor design for friendship but not in its fruits as long as it’s carried in the purest form. The root of all relationships lies in expectations; what is that you expect from a person? And this expectation can be of any form like love, care, affection, time, things, companionship, support either emotionally or mentally or sometimes both. Most of the time the expectation from friends are not to a great extent and maybe that’s one of the reason why friendship is considered as one of the best relationship in today’s world where brothers fight for shares in the ancestral properties, sisters fight for the parental ornaments and couple do for what so ever reasons.


I recently read, as per the psychology if a friendship lasts for 6 years it will last forever. Leaving this note for you to count the number of friends that you have above the period of 6 years!

To live we need to co-exists and as long as you have a friend you do!