Tough Questions....

Unusual choice of photo! But a view from my hotel apartment
where I would stand and stare out pondering over such questions.

A lot of times in the life we are confronted with tough questions which don't necessarily seem to have easy answers. We will try to explore some of these questions and see if we can get some answers:

Question 1: Why should I do the right thing when I see that everyone around me is doing wrong things and while still prospering?
Thoughts:
This is probably a very common situation that most of us run into every now and then. When I come across people who are dishonest, who lie, cheat at almost every opportunity they get and seem to have no ethics or moral values, and top of everything are prospering, I ask myself the question- Why should I be good? Why should I still be sticking to my principle and values though I am not getting any immediate benefit out of them? Should I do the right thing hoping that wrong doers will be punished and I will be rewarded in some form, be it at a later stage? Or should I too give up my values for immediate gain and no apparent harm? Of course the opporutunity is lucrative. Here it gets extremely challenging to hold on to things that you consider are right.
Now we all know that we should still do the right thing. But why??
Well, my opinion on this is that we are all human beings, we all live in a society. Anything and everything we do as individuals will have an impact on society, no matter how big or small. If we all do the wrong things, keep on doing the wrong things, never care about what is right or wrong, the society would eventually be inhabitable. The social order would simply collapse and no one will be able to live in such a society. Imagine living in a society where you feel that you are unsafe at home for fear of being burgled, unsafe on road for fear of being run over and unsafe while shopping for fear of being ripped off. Imagine being unsafe everywhere and all the times. Such will be the state of society if we as individuals don't stop doing the wrong thing.
Moreover as humans, we don't achieve our happiness merely by means of fulfilling our desires. We have a strong desire to maintain a certain balance and live our lives according to a belief system (not necessarily religious and it could radically differ from person to person). Ultimately we need our desires to be coherent with our belief system to be able to experience happiness in fulfilment of our desires.
So these I think are some of the reasons why should we do the right thing.

The next question immediately pops up. What difference it makes if just I do the right thing? It won't make any difference. Agreed. It won't probably make an immediate impact. But only at first. Gradually and eventually the goodness will get noticed. People who despised you or ignored you will soon start following you. All you need is the conviction to carry on.

  

Question 2: Now, what is the right thing? Something that is right for one person, might be wrong for the other person. If I am a soldier and fighting for my country, I am doing the right thing but still killing someone (be it the enemy) is not the right thing. So what is the right thing here?
Thoughts:
Now this is where the things will start to get tricky. Let's say in 90% of the cases its pretty evident so as what is the right thing. Its the remaining 10% bit which is usually tricky.
To understand what is The Right Thing, we will explore the concept of Dharma from Hindu mythology. According to Hinduism, there are four aims of human life. These are:

1. Kama
2. Artha
3. Dharma
4. Moksha

In broad terms, Kama refers to the desire in all of us, Artha to the material well-being, Dharma to the righteousness and Moksha to the salvation and liberation. Now the human life should strive to fulfill all these 4 aims in balanced proportions and imbalance occurs when one or two are pursued while ignoring others. I think most of us would have ample understanding about pursuing our pleasures (kama) and material goals (arth). I think we will spare Moksha for some other time as none of us probably ready to renounce our lives and pursue salvation. While we are still living a material life, Dharma, which is all about doing The Right Thing, gets most neglected of all these four tenets and hence causing a critical imbalance in the overall society.
Now coming back to our original question: What is The Right Thing. If Dharma is the one that educates us about righteousness, is Dharma documented somewhere? Is there an authoritative text on Dharma? Are there any practical guidelines that we can follow in our day to day lives?
Well as one would expect, we turn to our religions looking for an answer so as what is Dharma. But as it turns out, our world is already in a dismal state because of religious conflicts. Sacred texts from different religions and even within the same religion are often contradictory. Its really hard to find a single authoritative text that is compatible with our rational thinking. Moreover, I personally think that since the times during when the religious texts were written, things have moved on. A lot of things which were probably right according to those times would seem totally ridiculous in today's world.
So now if our mind is unable to decide and religion too is unable to offer a satisfactory answer, what do we do.
I think a viable solution is look into your conscience. Even in the most difficult of situations if we get in touch with our conscience and pick the option in which our conscience is not burdened, I think we will land in the right spot. Now be it picking up the lesser of two evil alternatives or looking at the net result of goodness that our actions will bear, the decision picked up by our conscience will ultimately help us achieve the satisfaction of the mind and hence not cause any ongoing unrest.
Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world and many a times we are faced with decisions that will bring about unhappiness to at least some people. As long as we are aware of our actions and take accountability for the results, our conscience will remain clear and that will be the right thing!!

India: The land of rising consumerism

Image by BBC

The huge population of India, which, till not so long ago was seen as one of the nation's biggest problems, is today seen as its one of the biggest assets. The up-rise of the middle class has opened up more business opportunities in India than any other part of the world. While the western economies struggling to come out of recession, there aren’t any apparent signs of one in India. Auto, Telecom, Banking, Pharmaceuticals are all rising sectors in India. All of this has lead companies to introduce products in India at a break neck speed. And the Indian consumer who just never had so many options for every little thing, is now almost baffled. People are coming out of the 'savings' mentality and are spending more money for maintaining a better lifestyle. All of this is good. Consumers have more options, companies have a great market. But there are a few things which could bring about bad consequences for consumers if not handled properly:

Consumer laws

Few months back I read about Maruti Suzuki's A-Star having some problems with its fuel tank which could cause fuel leakage, consequently a posing fire danger. I was absolutely shocked when I read a statement by a Maruti spokesperson indicating that there are no such laws in India under which they are mandated to recall the cars for safety fears. Another auto industry analyst also highlighted:

"In India, there is no law of highway safety or any regulatory authority of that nature which requires them to make such disclosures."

Although Maruti did recall the cars after a global widespread of the problem and also probably because of the incessant criticism, what this brings into light is a general state of consumer safety laws in the country. There is probably just very little that most of the companies have to go through before launching new products in the market (as compared to West) and worse of all, they can always get away with almost any wrong doing.

Is it Amnesia?

Secondly, I guess we have a short term memory as far as buying decisions are concerned. Even if a company is known for introducing bad products in the past, we, as consumers base our buying decisions largely on the spot deal rather than the long term reputation of the company.

I think as consumers, the onus lies with us that we make the right decisions for ourselves. Huge multi-nationals will flood the market with all sorts of products. They will almost force us into buying anything with their intelligent marketing. But end of the day, its our money, our family, our health and our life. We should all think through the long term effects of our buying decisions. A packet of potato chips was bad when it didn't have any saturated fat. It is still bad when it doesn't have any trans fat. It will still be bad when it won't have some new kind of fat!!

Racism in Australia

There has been quite a lot of talk about ‘Racism in Australia’ in the recent past. Being an Indian and having lived and worked in Australia for well over an year, I thought it might be worthwhile to pen down my views on the topic to give people an un-sensationalized picture. I will also write a few things about what we as Indians can do to avoid becoming victims of the same.

At the outset, I do admit that racism is prevalent in Australia to an extent. In my experience I have seen that the acceptance for Indians is on the lower side specially in elderly folks. Many of them still view India as a third world country. Thanks to movies like ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ which have successfully strengthened this feeling. So the very idea of living side-by-side with people from a place full of chronic poverty, hunger, disease and filth is just not comfortable. This feeling of disgust is further fortified when they see Indians competing with them in every sphere of life, especially the job market. Some people from Northern India might be able to relate this feeling of disgust; they might have experienced it when they see bhaiyas from Bihar coming to their state and flourish well. So, in my opinion its basically this feeling of disgust that comes out as attacks.

Now having said that racism is prevalent to an extent, I do not mean that it has marred every aspect of the society . I had some very good and rewarding experiences while working here. My boss at work is an Australian and he has always treated me and other Indians at par with the local Australians in the team. We have always been given a fair share of all the opportunities and rewards. He highly values our contribution and admires the fact that we all are living far away from our families to work on the project. He as well as our other Australian colleagues, have always tried that we never feel out of place. So the onus is on us Indians to reciprocate the same respect and love, and blend in the local culture. And admittedly we have failed to do so in more than occasions. I will give some examples of this:
1. Many of my Indian colleagues didn’t have a hair cut for well over 10 months. You might be laughing but its true. The simple reason being AUD 20 (average cost of a regular hair-cut) translates to ~ Rs. 800. And who in India will pay such kind of money for a haircut. One of our guys went a little over board and in an attempt to hide his over grown hair, he started oiling them with Amla oil. And trust me the smell of that was unbearable even though I have used the same oil many times.
2. We never think it to be our duty to clean up our table after having lunch. I am talking about doing so in office lunch room where we bring our own food from home. That’s because we always have cleaners in India who do their job promptly as soon as we finish our lunch. And now there are no cleaners, not just in Australia, nowhere in the west. And people here clean their own mess. But we as Indians just don’t get this idea.
3. We have this terrible habit of over-working, spending over-hours at work. While in some case this might be necessary and helpful, we end up building wrong expectations in the long run. People start expecting us to work long hours and on weekends.
4. We also have a habit of switching to our native language as soon as we start talking to someone from our region, ignoring anyone else’s presence who can’t understand it. I have noticed my fellow Indians doing so in lifts and many meetings. Sometimes it is also viewed as if you want to pass a secret message, which of course is not good. I am not against talking in ones native language. In fact, I love to talk in Punjabi (my native language), but not at the cost of disrespect to others.

As I said, I did have some experience of racism at my workplace. It was not right in the face but there was a certain air of dislike for Indians. Fortunately, I was able to handle it well. It took me a while to convince people that Indians can be sophisticated too, that we are a right mix of style and substance, that our presence here is for a mutual benefit and not a threat to their existence, and that India is not just the land of Taj Mahal, curries and cricket. There is more to India. It’s a whole new world, brimming with enthusiasm and energy. And we represent the same.