YOUR STORY

Let me tell you a short story with YOU as the protagonist:

You live a society with some people rich and others poor. Your family has inherited not only wealth but also rich culture since your great ancestors preserved the family culture. But since your family is a big one – per person earnings, net wealth etc becomes very low. 

The head of your family today is someone who lives beyond the means. He is prodigal and spends extravagantly to keep his image high in the society. He has not been able to create a culture of work amidst his family members by denying them quality education and adequate food. There is no unity among family members and the head takes advantage of this situation to steal the family inheritance for his selfish ends.

Unlike most families whose head is a patriarch, your family has an elected head. While every family member individually feels that this set up gives them the power to change the head, anytime they want – it virtually never works out that way. This is simply because the other family members do not trust each other to be the future head and the present head uses the stolen wealth to buy gifts for uneducated family members, who again nominate him to power. This has been going on for ages.

The head has taken on debt from neighbors, whose liability falls on all the members of your family. When the interest of debt falls due, the head goes and arranges for new debt to pay for interest because the family earns just enough to take care of the large family. The society runs a chit fund, to help families in need. Of course this is not free and requires stringent conditions to get the fund – once due to strained resources your family had to borrow from his chit fund – compromising with the family traditions. Now a similar situation seems lurking.

Religion plays a big role in your family and most members offer their reverence to God in the form of time and wealth. The head is secular and he allows all members of the family to practice any religion of their choice. Most family members have chosen to retain their ancestral religion – a lot of the newer members of the family are trying out other religions as practiced by the other families in society. The head of the family is secular but he has been partial to the neo-religion family members. Wealth is spared by all the working members of your family but the head manages only the donations given by the followers of ancestral religion. As expected those charitable donations have not been used as intended. Recently it is heard that your family might have to sell family’s inherited gold and silver utensils to repay the loans and stop the family reputation from coming down.

The home is well fortified from all directions by large walls on one side and water bodies on the other. Though the family should feel secure with such a set up – it is very common to find that things get stolen and locks are broken. It is suspected that neighbors are behind these thefts because neighbors hear of the thefts within your family by the head himself.

Question 1: What should you do to help your family? Please answer this question before you go to the next question.

Question 2: Who are you, in the story? Can you identify others? (Answer Hint given below)

Now combine your answer 1 and 2

HINT FOR ANSWER 2: You are Bharat; Society is World; Head of your family is Congress; Chit Fund is WTO

POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA – ARE YOU HARNESSING IT OR WASTING TIME?

Twitter is a great tool at our disposal. But sometimes it just seems like it’s a canvass given to angry Indians and all of them are scribbling their rants on it, with absolutely no coherence. Once every couple of days, the likes of Sanjay Jha and Dijvijay Singh (with a host of paid media people or left so-called intellectuals) tweet something which sets a new #trend as the angry Indians scourge to post witty tweets.

Just step back for a minute and re-read the earlier paragraph. This chaotic way of tweeting for one-up man-ship is not leading us anywhere when we really need to preserve our anger and trend things that matter.  Niti Central and Media Crooks to name a few do not generally get outraged by the “tunchmaal”. They stay calm and keep their focus on exposing national issues. We must stay focused too. When the provocation will stop provoking us, the strategy of the goons will stop working.

Why Twitter contributed to Arab Spring, was because people there were not bothered about proving themselves. When they “followed” someone they really emulated, they did as was directed. Coordination of activism and viral spread of injustices is what needs to be undertaken as priority. 

Example of few strategies:

·        1. Divide and Rule: Adopt tweets to divide those who have been dividing us from the last 65 years. Make it a trend. It will catch their eye and they will start internal bickering. E.g. This tweet to Digvijaya:

·         2. Promote Activism on ground: Whenever, wherever any event, activity is happening which aims to unite the people, even if not directly for a political issue, should be promoted by retweets. It spreads the word and gives chance to communicate issues at such gatherings. E.g. #JadibootiSaptah initiative of Baba Ramdev:

Thought of sharing what I am still learning