Category: politics & society

Two scoundrels of the same gang

The Dilemmas of Leadership – Pt 3

In my last post, I was deliberating about the need for a leader to be mindful about one’s own thoughts and feelings. The practice of mindfulness helps increase one’s self-awareness, and the more one is self-aware, the easier it becomes to be mindful. So mindfulness meditation technique is definitely a key methodology or tool to …

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The Dilemmas of Leadership: Pt-1

Who is a leader? Since time immemorial, the trait of leadership as an important quality of a successful human being has been studied repeatedly. As times have changed, the qualities that represent who a good leader is have also changed. Some qualities of a great leader have persisted, some have been dropped or sidelined and …

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Fleecing the Farmers – 2

Kasargod, Erezha in Kerala, Plachimada, and ironically enough good old Varthur in Bangalore are just a couple of examples of areas where chemical effluents have wreaked havoc in the life of people.  Several villages in Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Chattisgarh, Bihar have been rendered uninhabitable, forcing people to vacate their lands, houses and become destitute …

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Fleecing the Farmers – 1

On 11th of March, amidst the growing debate on the Land Acquisition Bill, there appeared an editorial in Times of India. The title of this editorial was “India’s Farmer Fetish”.  The contents of the editorial aside, the very title stands testimony to the bias and the prejudiced mind set that the farmers in the country are …

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Our Leaders and Us

It took me a long time to appreciate the subtle philosophy embedded in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.  It is not without reason then, that today I am reminded of this beautiful discussion between Alice and the Cheshire Cat. “I don’t want to go among mad people”, remarked Alice. “Oh! you can’t help that”, …

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The Great Indian Nautanki – Part 2

The verdict is finally out for Karnataka.  On the positive side, there is a clear mandate given for a single party which means there won’t be any scope for the multiparty fiasco as well as poaching and horse-trading.  The winners as well as the losers now need to do a lot of soul searching and …

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