A thought came to my mind when reading Robin Sharma’s book; will there be any time when I can personally meet him, spend sometime with this ‘I-am-not-guru’ person and learn from him directly the life-changing lessons. I wondered! Then I thought that there will be a lot of people like me who want to meet people like Robin Sharma or Steven Covey or a Sangeeth Varghese. Many a times that never happens. So what is the solution? I asked myself. “Be an Eklavya”коли под наем, came the answer. Eklavya is my favourite character in the Holy text Mahabharata. Even though his role in the story is very minuscule, he is a great example of Personal Leadership.

Eklavya mastered the art of archery just by making an idol of the Guru whom he admired most since he couldn’t be the student of the Guru only because he was not a royal blood (from my understanding). He didn’t lose hope. He made the idol of the Guru and practiced with diligent the art of archery, thinking that he is learning directly from the Guru. The will was strong and there was discipline. If you can’t meet a leadership Guru I mentioned earlier, read their books, listen to the audio and watch their inspirational videos. Be an Eklavya!

There is another way; “Be the Guru”. Yes this takes more effort than being an Eklavya. May be being an Eklavya is the first step to being the Guru. By Guru, here I mean the expert in the field. If you are not able to meet the Gurus of your field, be one. Yes be a Guru.

There is learning from Eklavya’s story. Don’t wait for a Guru. Many a times many of us wait for the expert in the field to come to us and pour the wisdom into our mind. But that doesn’t happen always. Take personal leadership and be the master of your field. It is possible, isn’t it?

Mohammad Nibras P.K.
www.defussion.com

Last Saturday I went to a barber shop. This barber shop is where I usually go for cutting and head massage. This time it was a new chap there who did the cutting and etc. I doubted whether he could do a good job like his seniors there in the shop who usually serves me. Cutting, trimming and massaging went pretty well, to my surprise, a much better service than who used to serve me. I was wondering why this happened - because I thought ‘experienced’ people could only do a ‘better’ job. I wondered why I was not putting this much effort to the work I am doing at office. The learning from the barber made me to think about the client-service part of any job. “Anybody can do a better job with conscious decision” is what I learned. I was feeling very good about the lesson I learned from the barber, who told his name is Swamy.

Another learning from the Swamy experience, which I think is the most important, is the shift in my thinking that only ‘experienced’ people could do a ‘better’ job! I agree that the ‘experienced’ obviously has the edge. But at the same time whoever takes the conscious decision to put in more effort, keep learning and think differently, can also have the edge.

Mohammad Nibras P.K.
Defussion Knowledge Solutions

Be it in the ruling or the opposition party; be it the media savvy or
rustic, India Today lacks constructive leadership. All that our leaders
are busy is in saving their seats, scoring brownie points against each
and worrying about the next elections. Irrespective how much they
pretend, nobody has an iota of national interest in their hearts. If our
leaders were even 50% committed to the country, Bapuji’s dream of “Purana
Swaraj” would have long been achieved.

Let’s take petrol prices. Does the Government not know that the prices
are going up and this is the time to lower duties so that the impact of
increase is minimal? Are they unaware of the fact that India is one of
the countries where petrol is costly? Why does not the Government raise
petrol prices ahead of state elections? Are the opposition parties not
aware that organizing a bandh for petrol price rise is of no use and only
that the common suffers most? Don’t they know that a strike causes a lot
of economic damage to the country? Don’t they know that replacing a
public property damaged during a bandh means additional taxes for the
common man?

Let’s take price rise. Doesn’t the Government know that food prices are
being pushed up because of futures trading in commodities? South Korea is
using 2 billion dollars of its FE reserves to contain the impact on its
citizens of increasing food prices, why is our Government which has
overflowing foreign exchange reserves, waiting for the egg to hatch? Do
the opposition parties not know that food prices are going up globally
and an upward moving inflation cannot be stopped? Don’t they know that
for the last 3 years, we have been experiencing unseasonal rains and
consequently most of our crops have got damaged? Would they have done any
better in the present situation?

Let’s take the terrorism problem. Does the Government not know that
across the globe, there is a close link between gangsters and terrorist?
Why no action is taken to eliminate the gangsters, how is that some of
them find their way to political leaderships? Why does not the Government
treat all sections of people equally? Does the opposition not know that
creating divides amongst people on basis of religion, language and caste,
fosters terrorism? Why do certain opposition leaders target particular
section of people?

The list is endless. Votes are all that matter, by hook or crook, by
dividing or disintegrating the country, by appeasing or appalling the
people, the seat of power has to be captured. At the end of the day,
there are no innovative rulers or concerned opposition leaders. They are
all politicians and don’t mind swapping tags when elections compel them
to do so. The poor man has to suffer at the end of the day, whilst the
men in khadi are possibly saying to each other “Cheers”.

Balu AM

>???????? ????? ????????ich is a bird which is very close to the leaders of this country.
Leave it to them; they would make Ostrich the National Inspiration Bird.
Like Ostrich, they try to duck most problems and never take them head on.

We knew that given the population growth, we will be heading for a
food crisis but nothing was done on increasing food production and we are
in the midst of spiraling food prices.

We know that reservations of any sort cannot go on for eternity
but very little has been done to uproot castesim from the Indian
society. Still we hear of practice of untouchability, requests for
increased reservation, etc.

We know that economic imbalances would push gullible people
towards terrorism but we have not done anything neither to correct the
imbalances nor dealt sternly with the sources of terrorism.
Consequently, our cities have become frighteningly unsafe.

We know that mass transport systems are so essential for the country to
manage the fuel bill of this country but Bangalore’s Metro Rail is stuck
in a court case because of a few greedy traders. Neither our courts are
speedily disposing off the appeal nor the Government keen to coerce the
traders into withdrawing their case.

We know that frequent bandhs, strikes are crippling for a country which
wants to become a developed nation by 2020 but so far nobody has been
severely punished for the aftermath of a strike nor a stringent law
passed which will put the fear of god in the people who strive to block
cities, movement of rail, goods for weeks to highlight their cause.

We know black money is bigger than the national income but no action is
taken to flush it out. At best we resort to a stray income tax raid or
something apologetic as a VDIS. Why not map each property with its
respective owner and then ask them to prove source of income for
acquiring that property.

We know that rape is such a heinous crime on humanity but there is no law
in the “land of legislations” for time-bound disposal of a rape case. What
is the need to drag on a rape case for eternity? The only facts to be
proved are whether the crime took place or not and whether the accused
committed it or not?

We know that it is shameful for such a big country to do
pathetically bad in the international sports arena but 99% of our
sports bodies are managed by scheming politicians and there is no
transparency in our sports bodies or a vision on how to make India a
sporting nation.

We must be the only independent country which has decoupled itself
from solving burning problems and still continues to prosper and
be largely peaceful. How long and how far will this ostrich
attitude carry us remains to be seen? Tempted to say, Yeh hain
Ostrichstan meri jaan, yahan kuch bhi possible nahin hain.

Balu AM

Fuel price rise is becoming a global crisis. We can no longer piggy back on Left Ideology and play Ostrich with the impending economic disaster. Everybody has tomake some sacrifice to tide over the crisis.

The Government on its part could drastically reduce duties on petrol and diesel.Government every year has its target for collection of duties from each economic activity and let’s say for this year from the sale of petroleum products it is targeted at Rs.1000 crores. The rate at
which oil prices are increasing globally,this target will be met easily and possibly surpassed. The Government could do a bit of sacrifice (if they are serious about controlling price) and reduce the duties on petroleum products. Further, the Government should be bold enough and adopt differential pricing for domestic gas cylinders. It is ridiculous to note that a family living in a premium apartment (costing Rs.1 Crore) pays the same price for a domestic gas cylinder as a family which stays in a slum. It is very easy to implement this because every subscribers address is known. A similar method could be adopted for supply of diesel and petrol also. Differential rates should be adopted for public utility vehicles and private vehicles. Similar differentiation could be done in case of two wheelers and four wheelers. If the oil companies want to suffer losses by supplying at the same rate for all types of vehicles, so be it. That is part of their benevolence and nobody can help it. It is time that the Government made some serious investments for research in the field of Solar Cooking. In a country like India, even if 30-40% of the families switch to this method and use it for 7-9 months a year (given the
weather conditions), the differences that it could make to our fuel bill will be enormous.

The Opposition on their part especially the confused Left should understand that global prices of fuel are increasing and we have no means but to comply. Why don’t these people understand that just because we don’t charge market rates, OPEC Countries don’t supply fuel to us at subsidized rates?At the end of the day, we have to pay market rates and this money comes from nowhere but from within our Budget. Does the Left support a situation wherein a capitalist is getting subsidized fuel from the money which is meant to prevent a poor farmer from committing suicide?

We on our part could reduce the use of personal transport as much as possible but then for today’s urban middle class it is shame to land up at a friends place and say I have come by public transport. For our own economic good and to prevent global warming let us walk for distances less than 2 kilometers and also teach our children to do so. As far as possible
let us use public transport to commute, these days they are quite good and frequent also.

The situation is very grim. We have to change our old habits of using fuel or else face the fate of inhabitants of Jurassic Park. Politicians on their part should stop worrying about their votes. Those in the ruling party have to take strong calls and those in the opposition have to adopt
a policy of “Bolthi Bandh” and not call for bandhs over every fuel price rise. If we don’t learn to make little sacrifices as a country, we better get ready to kiss goodbye to the growth we have achieved in the past 5 to 6 years.This situation is going to hurt all of us but then we have no option but take the bull head on. If we bury our heads in the sand just like an ostrich does, sooner later, economic disaster will hunt us down.

Remember 1990, we had to pledge our Gold.

Balu AM