Build Your Own World

DEVENDRA UPPAL





Sacred scriptures say , “Kritam lokam purushoabhijayte“ -Man himself builds his own world. Man has been called `kratumaya purusha' because he acts according to his resolves that are born out of his ideas, thoughts and desires. The consequence of his actions gives direction to his life and determines his future.Human life should be `yajnamaya', that is, full of non-violent actions like karmas done for welfare of society and also for one's divine progress. Sacrificial actions include noble deeds, rendering service to all selflessly and observing purity of action, speech and thought for achieving realisation.
Sublime thoughts are said to be the panacea of all ills present in the world. A scriptural verse says, “Sansar deergh rogasya, suvichar maha-aushdhi'.Virtuous company , quality and secular education, ideal guidance by parents and positive thoughts help one to cultivate a sacred character and inner grace. This is the very basis of a successful and purposeful life.
In spiritual parlance, the greed, attachment, sins, jealousy and crime -known as vikarmas -have been called `kudiar', or dirt, denoting tamoguna and auspicious actions have been defined as `sachiar', or truth, depicting satoguna and sukarmas. Actions under sachiar are those such as charity , welfare of others and personal progress as a seeker. The devotee prays, “Aum kudiar prasuva, sachiar aasuva“ -O God, I pray to thee, sins may go away from me and virtuous living may come my way!

Time To Reboot, But First Get Recharged

Nayaswami Devarshi





Nearly everyone has discovered the need to reboot their computer to get rid of problems that are causing the operating system to malfunction. Similarly , it can be very helpful to do the same with our spiritual, mental and physical operating system. A spiritual reboot especially can help us to restart our lives in the most positive way .What are the main problems we are trying to remove, and how do we remove them? The most persistent are bad habits that have crept into our lives.The beginning of the New Year is a significant transition point and an opportunity to install new good habits and qualities into life.
The power of habit can be people's worst enemy or their best friend. Bad habits tend to creep up on people, taking advantage of their busyness, and lack of conscious awareness, and life focus.
Swami Kriyananda wrote as follows: “Psychologically , what happens in any struggle between high aspirations in oneself and one's worldly tendencies is that habit sides with worldliness. Our need is to replace our bad habits with good ones. Good habits, however, yield to a higher power, which is what gives us our true strength. Good habits, to become strongly established, require the use of awareness, energy , and will power. The lack of dedication and focus is the reason that many people make well-meaning New Year's resolutions that often last only one or two days!“ He added that once they become strong, however, these good habits become as easy and natural as brushing one's teeth every day. This is where resolutions, done with focus and attention, can help us. Here are a few suggestions to help New Year's resolutions become wellestablished friends that can help us for the rest of our lives: Keep them simple and focus on positive habits, rather than “I won't do this, I won't do that ...“
Instead of trying to eliminate the habit of eating too much sugar, for example, replace it with the habit of eating healthier foods.
Choose just a few important habits to focus on, rather than a long list.
Focus on at least one spiri tual good habit. I've found that the daily habit of meditation and prayer is the most helpful of all, because it really does reboot the operating system of our brain. Scientific studies of the effect of meditation on the brain show that just 12 minutes of meditation every day , for eight weeks, makes measurable physical changes in the brain that affect one's overall feeling of well-being and happiness.
When the inevitable stumble comes, don't admit failure. Instead, simply tell yourself, “I haven't yet succeeded,“ pick yourself up, and go forward again with your resolution.
Paramhansa Yogananda would ask us to remember that no matter what our trials have been, or how discouraged we are, if we make a continued effort to be better and to succeed, we will find that, being made in the image of God, we are endowed with unlimited power, much stronger than our worst trials, no matter what they may be. So let us make up our minds that we will win, focussing all our concentration on the ceaseless efforts to succeed in the New Year, and we will surely be victorious.
Remember that our past difficulties did not come to crush us but to strengthen our determination to use our limitless divine powers to succeed. God wants us to overcome the difficult tests of life and come back to His home of wisdom.

The promise of Dalit capitalism

Political empowerment must be paired with fair economic representation

The representatives of Dalit capitalism believe that capital is the best way to
break caste

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made two significant observations in the course of his speech to the new generation of Dalit entrepreneurs last week. First, he cited B.R. Ambedkar to argue that a community that has little access to land should see rapid industrialization as its best bet for advancement. Second, he said it is more difficult to escape the shadow of social discrimination than it is to break the shackles of economic backwardness.

Successive census reports on enterprises outside agriculture show that Dalits own far fewer businesses than we should expect from their share of the total Indian population. The representatives of Dalit capitalism want to correct this imbalance because they believe that capital is the best way to break caste in the modern economy. Some of this style of thinking can be traced back to a conference of Dalit intellectuals held in Bhopal in 2002, which argued that the retreat of the state in the era of globalization means that dependence on reservations will bring diminishing returns.

A lot has by now been written on the success stories. This newspaper was one of the first to shed light on the emergence of Dalit capitalism, in a series of stories written in 2010, of how they overcame social discrimination to build enterprises. These examples of successful entrepreneurs from the Dalit community are welcome in themselves. They could also become role models for the next generation. But it is also true that Dalit entrepreneurs face immense hurdles to progress. Dealing with these hurdles will not be easy.

One of the main problems is the lack of access to existing business networks. India is one of the many countries where weak contract enforcement mean that entrepreneurs depend on trust-based community networks to transact business. There is no shortage of examples of specific businesses being dominated by members of one community. It is very difficult for a Dalit entrepreneur to break into these networks, a challenge that is perhaps even more difficult than getting bank loans.

In a 2011 paper on how caste matters in entrepreneurship, Lakshmi Iyer, Tarun Khanna and Ashutosh Varshney argued that the growth of enterprises depends strongly on network effects to find the right workers as well as to forge links with suppliers and customers. And World Bank chief economist Kaushik Basu has tried to show in a new paper that discrimination exists because it acts as a coordination device.

These are the hard facts that are often drowned out in the general din about the rise of Dalit capitalism. Network effects are persistent—be it in the digital world or in society. The big question is how to break them. One possibility is through voluntary action by large companies that have expansive supply chains. The Tata group has been at the forefront of such experiments. Large government departments have also tried to bring Dalit enterprises into their networks. How such initiatives can be expanded while maintaining commercial goals remains to be seen.

The past few decades have seen the political empowerment of Dalits. But all sorts of data show that the community has still not got its rightful place in the economic landscape. What a new generation of Dalits intellectuals has been arguing is that the market rather than the state is the best antidote to social inequality.

The road ahead is a long one. The black capitalism project in the US has led to many success stories but it is doubtful that it has dismantled the deeper structure of racial discrimination. South Africa has also made uneven progress in having an economic structure that is in tune with its political goal to become a rainbow nation.

These should be seen as reality checks in the welcome attempt to build Dalit capitalism.

Do you think Dalit entrepreneurs can break into business networks based on caste? Tell us at views@livemint.com

source: http://epaper.livemint.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

Is the Internet a public good?

As an enabler of development, its primary value is for providing access to other basic goods and services

The growth of the Internet in the 1990s led to the fear of a new kind of social inequity in the form of the digital divide. A contrary view was that the new technology had the potential to overcome previously existing divides, provided government support was available in order to overcome the challenges of ICT (information and communications technology) in under-served areas. A view not examined enough is the relevance of the Internet in the context of the need to balance the allocation of scarce public money among different urgent priorities.

The European Union Universal Service Directive of 2002 suggested that a necessary condition for a service to be included within the ambit of universal service is that, in the light of social, economic and technological developments, the ability to use the service has become critical for social inclusion—that is, it is a consumption norm.

Some governments have tried to operationalize the notion by setting a trigger mechanism in the form of a minimum number of users of a service that would need to be crossed before provision of subsidies for its universalization is considered. While the number of Internet users in India has multiplied, the number of active users is still too low for the Internet to be considered a “consumption norm” that a government is obligated to provide.

Government funds can also be deployed to correct market failures and realize positive externalities. Since the 1980s, sophisticated statistical techniques have been used to establish cause-effect relationships between the adoption of new technologies—the mobile phone, the Internet and broadband—and gross domestic product (GDP) growth. In India, for example, such studies show that a 10% increase in Internet penetration can increase the GDP by 1.6% in the presence of a minimum penetration level of 25%. These studies have become the basis for calls for the use of public money for Internet access and broadband expansion.

However, there are three major conceptual issues with such policy conclusions. First, these studies do not claim that the new technologies will yield positive spillovers prior to the threshold level of penetration being reached. Many under-served areas lie far below the threshold. Second, these studies do not establish that the bang per buck of the new technology is greater than that for other basic inputs such as education, roads or health. Third, these econometric studies are typically carried out with either a country or a province within a country as the unit of analysis. Given the immense size and heterogeneity of the unit, the claims do not automatically extend to the sub-unit level—for example, to rural areas within a province.

Indeed, there are reasons to believe that the externalities may not accrue in many rural areas at their present level of development. Unlike roads, the provision of digital connectivity is not sufficient to ensure empowerment or even equitable inclusion of the target population. The reaping of benefits requires the ability and willingness to use the new technology on the part of the intended beneficiaries, relevant content and applications, and affordability. Mere access without a host of complementary inputs is unlikely to lead to positive spillovers.

As per the “enabler of development” rationale, the Internet has value not in and of itself but rather as a medium that gives access to other basic goods and services. Indeed, ICT for development projects cover many domains including healthcare, education, online government services and the provision of commodity price information to small producers.

Two implications emerge from this. First, the level of provision of the basic goods and services facilitated via ICT should adhere to some consumption norm. In the case of the provision of health services, for example, the government needs to aim for a level that at the minimum achieves the targets of the Millennium Development Goals. Second, since the provision of basic services using ICT is dependent on the availability of other complementary inputs, the decision on the level of a particular ICT service that is to be provided cannot be made without reference to the presence of other complementary inputs. Continuing with the healthcare example, the ICT network should develop in rough alignment with the complementary institutions, processes and skills needed to provide remote medical services.

The provision of connectivity can to some extent substitute for the other inputs. However, the substitutability peters out beyond a point and then the provision of advanced connectivity amounts to wastage of social resources.

There is also the view that the provision of connectivity will trigger the provision of complementary inputs and the development of ability to use (“build it and they will come”). However, the experience of several government schemes in India shows that there are limits to this rationale for advance build-out of connectivity.

The conclusions from this exploration are that “universal access” to the Internet need not be interpreted as “uniform access” and the build-out of networks should be aligned to the absorptive capacity of a region. The deliberations on the national optic fibre network and “free basics” could benefit from such a nuanced approach.

Source: http://epaper.livemint.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

EDI - POST GRADUATE DIPLOMA IN MANAGEMENT – DEVELOPMENT STUDIES (PGDM-DS)

Admission Announcement 2016-18 Batch

Institute: Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI), Ahmedabad (Gujarat) INDIA.

The PGDM-DS Programme: Post Graduate Diploma in Management – Development Studies is designed as a broad and multi-disciplinary programme to equip students with knowledge, analytical and conceptual skills of social and economic development. It prepares students with ability to provide entrepreneurial solutions to social problems, livelihoods for rural and urban poor, corporate social responsibility initiatives and creating social enterprises. 

Dates & Deadlines: Entrepreneurial Aptitude Test (EAT) and Personal Interview (PI)

	March Cycle	May Cycle
Last Date for Submitting Application Form	20th March,2016	08th May,2016
Download Admit Card	24th March,2016	12th May,2016
EAT and PI	29th - 31st March,2016	18th - 20th May,2016

	Test Date	For more details Visit:-
MAT	7th Feb & 13th Feb 2016 May 2016 (date will be announced later)	www.aima.in
ATMA	14th Feb 2016 22nd May 2016 24th July 2016	www.atmaaims.com
CMAT	17th Jan 2016	www.aicte-cmat.in/College/Index_New.aspx

Source: Programme Brochure and EDI Website (05.01.2016)

Northeast must brace themselves and develop a disaster preparedness plan

Will the earthquake (6.7 on the Richter scale) that gave the Northeast and eastern India a strong jolt in the wee hours of Monday wake up the Centre and states and push them to focus more on following a sustainable and resilient pattern of development in the region? Unlikely. To understand why we are not too hopeful, visit the state capitals in the Northeast. Like most cities in ‘mainland’ India, each one of them — the honourable exception is probably Agartala — has pressed the self-destruct button, exemplified by the build-build-build syndrome. The bureaucratic and popular mindset has become so focused on the need to build big pieces of infrastructure (housing, dams, roads etc) that it has destroyed and overburdened these old, once-beautiful cities.

According to analysts from Manipur, the damaged concrete structures in Imphal were government offices and institutions and not private houses owned by government employees, exposing the difference in the execution of construction work by officials and the way they look after their private needs. Across India, infrastructure development is a money-making venture for the bureaucrat-contractor-politician lobby and the Northeast, away from the public glare, is no different. This is increasing the region’s vulnerability to earthquakes because tremors don’t kill people, buildings do. This is not to say developing infrastructure is not important. However, policymakers cannot ignore the natural risks and have to focus on sustainability and pursue resilient urban development. Take for example, Imphal’s famous monument, the Kangla Fort. It was unscathed after the quake, whereas the famous Mother’s Market, which was ‘rebuilt’ by the state government, suffered severe damage. The government needs to explore the reasons why this happened and learn from the traditional techniques that ensured the Fort’s survival.

The experts of the National Institute of Disaster Management , who have warning of a bigger catastrophe in the unstable Himalayan region, correctly says that the DNA of disaster management has to change, the states need to develop a sound building code and policymakers need to understand the threat of a “natural time bomb” and dovetail it into every plan because earthquakes can have huge effects on the local or regional economy. Politicians also need to be aware of the political ramifications of a disaster. Many leaders have lost their reputation and government to such natural phenomena. The time has come for the Northeast to develop a well-drawn up disaster preparedness plan and a mitigation policy.

Source: Hindustan Times, 7-01-2016

Why Life Is Beautiful

VAMAN MAHARAJ





Life is beautiful. Think of Lake Retba in Senegal which turns red, the spotted lake in Canada, rainbow eucalyptus, glowing waves and so on. And then we have sweet coconut water on the salty seashore, mightily heavy planets hanging in vacuum, hot water springs surrounded by snow-clad Himalayas at Sri Badrinath... the list of wonderful, amazing creations is infinite. We, humans, too are His wonderful creation.We are so powerful that we can create, destroy , and re-create.We can explore mountains, devise ways to swim in water, fly in the air, see and hear what is going on miles away .All humans are bestowed with a conscience that helps us discriminate between good and bad, eternal and noneternal. Although all living species are involved in sleeping, mating, defending and eating, only humans ­ as far as we know -can think and decide what is eternally beneficial to them. Based on this special quality a human can decide whether he wants to tread the path of eternal welfare or sensual enjoyment. There are two paths one can choose from: path of eternal welfare or path of sensuous enjoyment.
The ultimate consequence of following the path of eternal welfare will be ambrosia or nectar. On the other hand, the end result of following the path of enjoyment could be disastrous. When a conditioned soul becomes averse to Supreme Personality of Godhead Krishna, he comes in contact with the illusory energy and thinks all material enjoyments are his only requirement.