Rajan C Mathew's Blogs

[The narration given below is taken from my favorite book of life guidance, the Urantia Book. The book reveals to us for the first time, the details of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, that are not covered in the Bible.

When Jesus was about 28 years of age, he undertook a year long journey in the company of a wealthy Indian merchant, named Gonod and his son, Ganid, who was of nearly the same age as Jesus himself. These three journeyed together in the areas of Palestine, Egypt, Greece and other parts of the ancient Roman Empire during AD 22-23 period. Jesus worked for Gonod as a language intrepreter, especially Greek in which the Indian merchant lacked proficiency and traveled with the Indian father and son sharing many life experiences and thoughts. The Indians had visited these foreign lands in connection with their trading business.

Yesterday I brought out another incident in which Jesus answering Ganid's direct question about the Indian Caste System (you may read it by going back to the previous blog using the previous button at the bottom of this page.

The following incident too happened during the course of their journey. In this incident Jesus is trying to teach his Indian friend the difference between mercy and justice. Now read the following:]

A very interesting incident occurred one afternoon by the roadside as they (The Indian merchant, Gonod, his son Ganid and their interpreter, Jesus) neared Tarentum (the ancient Roman city).

They observed a rough and bullying youth brutally attacking a smaller lad. Jesus hastened to the assistance of the assaulted youth, and when he had rescued him, he tightly held on to the offender until the smaller lad had made his escape.

The moment Jesus released the little bully, Ganid pounced upon the boy and began soundly to thrash him, and to Ganid’s astonishment Jesus promptly interfered. After he had restrained Ganid and permitted the frightened boy to escape, the young man, as soon as he got his breath, excitedly exclaimed:

“I cannot understand you, Teacher. If mercy requires that you rescue the smaller lad, does not justice demand the punishment of the larger and offending youth?”

In answering, Jesus said:

“Ganid, it is true, you do not understand. Mercy ministry is always the work of the individual, but justice punishment is the function of the social, governmental, or universe administrative groups. As an individual I am beholden to show mercy; I must go to the rescue of the assaulted lad, and in all consistency I may employ sufficient force to restrain the aggressor. And that is just what I did. I achieved the deliverance of the assaulted lad; that was the end of mercy ministry.

Then I forcibly detained the aggressor a sufficient length of time to enable the weaker party to the dispute to make his escape, after which I withdrew from the affair.

I did not proceed to sit in judgment on the aggressor, thus to pass upon his motive—to adjudicate all that entered into his attack upon his fellow—and then undertake to execute the punishment which my mind might dictate as just recompense for his wrongdoing.

Ganid, mercy may be lavish, but justice is precise.

Cannot you discern that no two persons are likely to agree as to the punishment which would satisfy the demands of justice? One would impose forty lashes, another twenty, while still another would advise solitary confinement as a just punishment.

Can you not see that on this world such responsibilities had better rest upon the group or be administered by chosen representatives of the group?

In the universe, judgment is vested in those who fully know the antecedents of all wrongdoing as well as its motivation.

In civilized society and in an organized universe the administration of justice presupposes the passing of just sentence consequent upon fair judgment, and such prerogatives are vested in the juridical groups of the worlds and in the all-knowing administrators of the higher universes of all creation.”

For days they talked about this problem of manifesting mercy and administering justice. And Ganid, at least to some extent, understood why Jesus would not engage in personal combat.

But Ganid asked one last question, to which he never received a fully satisfactory answer; and that question was:

“But, Teacher, if a stronger and ill-tempered creature should attack you and threaten to destroy you, what would you do? Would you make no effort to defend yourself?”

Although Jesus could not fully and satisfactorily answer the lad’s question, inasmuch as he was not willing to disclose to him that he (Jesus) was living on earth as the exemplification of the Paradise Father’s (God, the First Source and Center of everything) love to an onlooking universe, he did say this much:

“Ganid, I can well understand how some of these problems perplex you, and I will endeavor to answer your question. First, in all attacks which might be made upon my person, I would determine whether or not the aggressor was a son of God—my brother in the flesh—and if I thought such a creature did not possess moral judgment and spiritual reason, I would unhesitatingly defend myself to the full capacity of my powers of resistance, regardless of consequences to the attacker.

But I would not thus assault a fellow man of sonship status, even in self-defense. That is, I would not punish him in advance and without judgment for his assault upon me. I would by every possible artifice seek to prevent and dissuade him from making such an attack and to mitigate it in case of my failure to abort it.

Ganid, I have absolute confidence in my heavenly Father’s overcare; I am consecrated to doing the will of my Father in heaven.

I do not believe that real harm can befall me; I do not believe that my lifework can really be jeopardized by anything my enemies might wish to visit upon me, and surely we have no violence to fear from our friends.

I am absolutely assured that the entire universe is friendly to me—this all-powerful truth I insist on believing with a wholehearted trust in spite of all appearances to the contrary.”

But Ganid was not fully satisfied.

Many times they talked over these matters, and Jesus told him some of his boyhood experiences and also about Jacob the stone mason’s son.

On learning how Jacob appointed himself to defend Jesus, Ganid said:

“Oh, I begin to see! In the first place very seldom would any normal human being want to attack such a kindly person as you, and even if anyone should be so unthinking as to do such a thing, there is pretty sure to be near at hand some other mortal who will fly to your assistance, even as you always go to the rescue of any person you observe to be in distress.

In my heart, Teacher, I agree with you, but in my head I still think that if I had been Jacob, I would have enjoyed punishing those rude fellows who presumed to attack you just because they thought you would not defend yourself. I presume you are fairly safe in your journey through life since you spend much of your time helping others and ministering to your fellows in distress—well, most likely there'll always be someone on hand to defend you.”

And Jesus replied:

“That test has not yet come, Ganid, and when it does, we will have to abide by the Father’s will.”

And that was about all the lad could get his teacher to say on this difficult subject of self-defense and nonresistance.

On another occasion he did draw from Jesus the opinion that organized society had every right to employ force in the execution of its just mandates.

[As told by the Midwayer Commission , authors of Paper-133 of the Urantia Book]

[The narration given below is taken from my favorite book of life guidance, the Urantia Book. The book reveals to us for the first time, the details of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, that are not covered in the Bible. When Jesus was about 28 years of age, he undertook a year long journey in the company of a wealthy Indian merchant, named Gonod and his son, Ganid, who was of nearly the same age as Jesus himself. These three journeyed together in the areas of Palestine, Egypt, Greece and other parts of the ancient Roman Empire during AD 22-23 period. Jesus worked for Gonod as a language intrepreter, especially Greek in which the Indian merchant lacked proficiency and traveled with the Indian father and son sharing many life experiences and thoughts. One day during the course of their year-long travel Ganid and Jesus spent some time in the mountain side of Cyprus. During this time, Ganid fell ill for about three weeks. Now read on:]

During Ganid’s convalescence of three weeks Jesus told him many interesting things about nature and her various moods. And what fun they had as they wandered over the mountains, the boy asking questions, Jesus answering them, and the father marveling at the whole performance.

The last week of their sojourn in the mountains Jesus and Ganid had a long talk on the functions of the human mind.

After several hours of discussion the lad asked this question (to Jesus):

“But, Teacher, what do you mean when you say that man experiences a higher form of self-consciousness than do the higher animals?”

And (as restated in modern phraseology), Jesus answered:

" My son, I have already told you much about the mind of man and the divine spirit that lives therein, but now let me emphasize that self-consciousness is a reality.

When any animal becomes self-conscious, it becomes a primitive man.

Such an attainment results from a co-ordination of function between impersonal energy and spirit-conceiving mind, and it is this phenomenon which warrants the bestowal of an absolute focal point for the human personality, the spirit of the Father in heaven (God).

Ideas are not simply a record of sensations; ideas are sensations plus the reflective interpretations of the personal self; and the self is more than the sum of one’s sensations. There begins to be something of an approach to unity in an evolving selfhood, and that unity is derived from the indwelling presence of a part of absolute unity (God) which spiritually activates such a self-conscious animal-origin mind.

No mere animal could possess a time self-consciousness. Animals possess a physiological co-ordination of associated sensation-recognition and memory thereof, but none experience a meaningful recognition of sensation or exhibit a purposeful association of these combined physical experiences such as is manifested in the conclusions of intelligent and reflective human interpretations. And this fact of self-conscious existence, associated with the reality of his subsequent spiritual experience, constitutes man a potential son of the universe and foreshadows his eventual attainment of the Supreme Unity of the universe (God).

Neither is the human self merely the sum of the successive states of consciousness.

Without the effective functioning of a consciousness sorter and associator there would not exist sufficient unity to warrant the designation of a selfhood. Such an ununified mind could hardly attain conscious levels of human status.

If the associations of consciousness were just an accident, the minds of all men would then exhibit the uncontrolled and random associations of certain phases of mental madness.

A human mind, built up solely out of the consciousness of physical sensations, could never attain spiritual levels; this kind of material mind would be utterly lacking in a sense of moral values and would be without a guiding sense of spiritual dominance which is so essential to achieving harmonious personality unity in time, and which is inseparable from personality survival in eternity.

The human mind early begins to manifest qualities which are super-material; the truly reflective human intellect is not altogether bound by the limits of time. That individuals so differ in their life performances indicates, not only the varying endowments of heredity and the different influences of the environment, but also the degree of unification with the indwelling spirit of the Father which has been achieved by the self, the measure of the identification of the one with the other.

The human mind does not well stand the conflict of double allegiance.

It is a severe strain on the soul to undergo the experience of an effort to serve both good and evil.

The supremely happy and efficiently unified mind is the one wholly dedicated to the doing of the will of the Father in heaven.

Unresolved conflicts destroy unity and may terminate in mind disruption.

But the survival character of a soul is not fostered by attempting to secure peace of mind at any price, by the surrender of noble aspirations, and by the compromise of spiritual ideals; rather is such peace attained by the stalwart assertion of the triumph of that which is true, and this victory is achieved in the overcoming of evil with the potent force of good."

[As told by the Midwayer Commission , authors of Paper-133 of the Urantia Book]

By being in the interiors of my great nation where human civilization originated for the first time, I often think about the factors that make humans being different from animals. More appropriately I do think of human civilization and the progress of it in the last many millenniums.How do we make the differentiation among us as being more civilized or less civilized?

Civilization is perhaps the ability of humans to co-exist peacefully and work jointly for bettering their own conditions of life. The more civilized you are, the more you shed those traits that are found in animals, such as greed, selfishness, fear of the unknown, fighting for self existence and self gratification, disrespecting the weak, committing suicidal errors, etc. In other words, civilization is the evolutionary progress of humans from animal nature to real human nature, the latter being nearer to divinity.

The ability of humans to evolve a democratic form of government in itself is a sign of advancement of civilization. It shows that the majority of the population has been able to remove much of their inherent animal tendencies to some considerable degree that they could voluntarily empower some others as their leaders without any fear contributing to such decisions.

It is indeed a good thing that the modern world has two large nations have progressed in collective civilization that they are democratic nations. One is my own country- India, the home land of a variety of mixed race peoples existing from pre-historic times. The other one is again a nation of mixed race peoples who took the pains of establishing and recreating a land of opportunities by adventure and hard work in a great unexplored continental mass in the recent few centuries of human existence. And it is called the United States of America.

While both have attained certain levels of civilization to the threshold of sustaining democracy in their respective geographic areas, both seem to keep some collective prejudices and envy against each other, though for different reasons.

The Americans through their short survival struggles of a few centuries have learnt the techniques of better human resources management that they now hold the trump card of modern intellectual superiority that has made their country a super power in wealth creation, technology and warfare.Obviously, the average individuals in this nation are too proud of being the citizens of a super power and they obviously aspire for reaping benefits of that status. They have rather evolved as a super race of modern times by some better human resource management techniques which essentially give respect to human intellectual abilities and utilizing the individual and collective human intelligence for collective strength of the nation.

On the other hand, the Indians collectively adopted the policy of discrediting their intellectuals that they seldom allowed the superior brains of their lot not to get involved in nation building programs. Many of such Indian intellectuals finding no opportunity to utilize their intellectual creativeness soon thought it wise to cross the seven seas to reach the land of opportunities, the USA. The Americans, knowing fully well the worth of human brains have been too glad to accept intelligent brains from any place in the world. But for that they only asked one thing-the allegiance to their new found nation! After all they are all immigrants and being an immigrant was not a taboo for them as was the case with those ancient settlements of human races elsewhere in the globe.

The GDP of India may not match the USA now and the average Indian might be much poorer in international monetary measurements, but Indians know the strength of their nation and the value of their culture. They don't need to work hard like the Americans for a living. Their land is much more fertile and yielding than the lands of the new continent. So, Indians in general can afford to be lazy and easy going than the average Americans. Of course, they do not mind those modern technologies developed by the intelligent brains being sold to them for enhancing some of their comforts for exchange of some of those exclusive things their ancient land so abundantly produce for them. Indians know well about the value of the customer and they are customers always. And they know that customers are kings in modern times of international trade.

And even if these modern gadgets do not come to them they are not so worried. They can also live without them. It is only the seller who is going to loss. Not the buyer!

And Indians also know very well about their potentials. If they manage their nation a bit more carefully, they know that it can surpass any nation in the world. But for now, there is no compulsion for such management techniques! When the time is appropriate, it would be done!

Indians, like me, have much aristocracy in our blood streams as a result of thousands of years of existence. We have castes and creeds of all sorts. But all are benefited from all sorts of blood streams and all sorts of genes that we can adapt to any sort of roles at any time. We can be king or slave, both at the same time, depending upon the situation.

We can appear as very civilized or very beastly both at the same time, depending upon the situation and the circumstances. Indians also know very well the ancient tactics of Chanakya inherently and there is not need that they learn about such tactics in schools and colleges.

So, if any one think that Indians could be taken for a ride, they are totally mistaken. It might be difficult for people with straight forward genetics to understand the genetic make up of Indians with so many genetic features and characteristics.

So, some of those american law enforcers totally made a wrong judgement when they thought it as an adventure to arrest and disgrace the honor of an young Indian lady who have been holding a high diplomatic position representing India in the USA.

I have been listening to the news and reading about this incident of booking this elite Indian diplomat posted in the Indian consulate in New York for violation of some US law. Any Indian back home would naturally feel insulted and agitated by this American hegemony and they feel naturally offended and insulted. Back at home, no law enforcer would ever dare to handcuff a lady officer from the elite administrative services without due sanctions from the higher authorities. The Americans have exceeded all limits and even did such things that are only done to people of the lowest orders or those who do not have any support from any sources of power or influence back in India! Both in India and in the US, laws and rules apply differently to different people. And those handling laws in both countries realize that too well. No wonder then that an ex-bureaucrat of India has openly told that fact in one of his articles that he published in the newspapers the other day. In short what he meant was that the laws are never implemented in letter and spirit by any one any where. Perhaps only fools would do such a thing! Incidentally, the man who took the pains to book the Indian lady officer of the diplomatic services using the american law has an Indian origin.

Perhaps, the common citizens of both these great nations would now be wondering and fuming for various reasons. Individually, many have not yet reached the state of maturity to analyze these things to a common conclusion.

They are yet to learn many things to realize the fundamentals of the games that the (ruling class) people play globally. So long as you do not know such tricks of the games, you just belong to the class of the commons.

So you could get elated or annoyed when India retaliates. You would not know what to say when some of the elite ruling class from either sides sit together the next day and exchange pleasantries heartily smiling before the media cameras. And that is part of diplomacy and governance.

Unfortunately, our civilizations have not so progressed that we are able to express our views honestly! In fact, diplomacy means the art of hiding honest views! And we have not yet learnt the benefits of being true to our selves both personally and collectively!

So as we stand today, we really do not mean any thing when we say, we respect each other. For the same reason, we do not mean any thing when we say just the opposite.

And to reach to that level we need to go much further towards civilization. We need to reach to our full potentials of divinity to be real humans!

The internet space has lot of information on foodstuffs of various kinds. Many sites are dedicated to cooking and healthy eating habits. Recipes of various kinds could be obtained by searching the net. But, yet I find there is some need for a comprehensive coverage of these raw food items at one place especially to aid those in India who use Hindi, Malayalam or English for their day to day communications.

For survival human beings need energy. Energy is obtained from foods that contain carbohydrates, such as starch, sugars, glucose and the like. Energy value of a food item is measured in terms of calories. Additionally they need some other foods that provide some other essential ingredients for various purposes and processes of their living bodies. Ideally the food taken by human beings should contain the following:

1. Carbohydrates (starch, sugar, glucose) and fats (oils, meat) for energy.

2. Proteins for body growth, cell repair and upkeep.

3. Roughage consisting mainly of dietary fibers which are not absorbed by the body, but are essential for smooth movement of food through the 8 m long alimentary canal aiding digestion and waste elimination.
4. Minerals which are compounds of metals and non-metals found in various foods which are required in low quantities for the body to synthesize various complex compounds for innumerable body functions.
5. Vitamins, which are complex compounds
6.Water, the main constituent of body cells and blood and the medium for expulsion of unwanted soluble wastes materials.
7. Ingredients that enhances taste, smell and color of food.

People have many common features and at the same time are different in many other features. So, eating habits, likes and dislikes and the manner in which food is digested, absorbed and utilized by the body all differ from person to person.

While statistical results published by various kinds of researchers may be useful for enriching our general knowledge in food and food related benefits and problems, it is foolishness to blindly believe such data as universal truths.

Enjoying a good or tasty food is not a sin. But living only for food indulgence is nothing less than a sin.

How much one should eat? And how often? It is foolishness to follow some rules always. If you follow rules for every thing, you degrade yourself as a robot. You degrade your human existence to that of a humanoid.

It is better that you make wise decisions based on your own judgments. After all why do you have that huge brain with all those intelligence if you are not to use it ?

At the same time, it is not a good idea to waste your time always thinking about food to take those wise decisions. There are much more important things in this life than food.

Human life is a mixture of many things. It involves survival, material existence, creativity, friendship and fellowship, discharge of duties and responsibilities and a desire to find the real force behind life whom we sometimes call as God. The latter desire when nurtured properly progresses towards an understanding towards the purpose of life. A man or woman who is realizing the purpose of life has progressed towards what is known as spirituality.

How to progress from material well being to spiritual well being? Is it essential?

Again, your own assessment is the best guide. You have all the inherent faculties and abilities for that judgement.

Is it possible for life to sustain without taking food?

Logically speaking, it should be possible. Food is required as an energy source for us because our body hardware is presently designed in that manner. Those who have designed it that way, logically should have known the methods of designing it in some other way as well.

For example, look at the plants. They are living. They take energy from sunlight and even convert the excess light energy as food for those living beings of the animal kingdom.

The divine designers of plants and animals have the knowledge to do it.

Then, why did they not give us that ability?

I think it is foolishness to question the higher intellectual wisdom of the divine designers of life.

Perhaps, they might disclose those secrets to us some appropriate time.

I am fortunate to learn some thing of the divine wisdom and I am truly amazed!

The following are some supernal statements of wisdom about political sovereignty, law and liberty that I read in my favorite book of life guidance-the Urantia Book. Some of those statements, I reproduce below for the thoughtful meditation of those who are capable of assimilating such knowledge:

Sovereignty is power and it grows by organization. This growth of the organization of political power is good and proper, for it tends to encompass ever-widening segments of the total of mankind. But this same growth of political organizations creates a problem at every intervening stage between the initial and natural organization of political power— the family—and the final consummation of political growth—the government of all mankind, by all mankind, and for all mankind.

As sovereignty passes from smaller groups to larger groups, wars are lessened. That is, minor wars between smaller nations are lessened, but the potential for greater wars is increased as the nations wielding sovereignty become larger and larger. Presently, when all the world has been explored and occupied, when nations are few, strong, and powerful, when these great and supposedly sovereign nations come to touch borders, when only oceans separate them, then will the stage be set for major wars, world-wide conflicts. So-called sovereign nations cannot rub elbows without generating conflicts and eventuating wars.

Political sovereignty is created out of the surrender of self-determinism, first by the individual within the family and then by the families and clans in relation to the tribe and larger groupings. This progressive transfer of self-determination from the smaller to ever larger political organizations has generally proceeded unabated in the East since the establishment of the Ming and the Mogul dynasties . In the West it obtained for more than a thousand years right on down to the end of the World War, when an unfortunate retrograde movement temporarily reversed this normal trend by re-establishing the submerged political sovereignty of numerous small groups in Europe.

Your world will not enjoy lasting peace until the so-called sovereign nations intelligently and fully surrender their sovereign powers into the hands of the brotherhood of men—mankind government. Internationalism—(viz., Leagues of Nations, the UN)—can never bring permanent peace to mankind. World-wide confederations of nations will effectively prevent minor wars and acceptably control the smaller nations, but they will not prevent world wars nor control the three, four, or five most powerful governments. In the face of real conflicts, one of these world powers will withdraw from such Leagues and declare war. You cannot prevent nations going to war as long as they remain infected with the delusional virus of national sovereignty. Internationalism is a step in the right direction. An international police force will prevent many minor wars, but it will not be effective in preventing major wars, conflicts between the great military governments of earth.

As the number of truly sovereign nations (great powers) decreases, so do both opportunity and need for mankind government increase. When there are only a few really sovereign (great) powers, either they must embark on the life and death struggle for national (imperial) supremacy, or else, by voluntary surrender of certain prerogatives of sovereignty, they must create the essential nucleus of super national power which will serve as the beginning of the real sovereignty of all mankind.

Peace will not come to your world until every so-called sovereign nation surrenders its power to make war into the hands of a representative government of all mankind. Political sovereignty is innate with the peoples of the world. When all the peoples of earth create a world government, they have the right and the power to make such a government SOVEREIGN; and when such a representative or democratic world power controls the world’s land, air, and naval forces, peace on earth and good will among men can prevail—but not until then.

Citizens are not born for the benefit of governments; governments are organizations created and devised for the benefit of men. There can be no end to the evolution of political sovereignty short of the appearance of the government of the sovereignty of all men. All other sovereignties are relative in value, intermediate in meaning, and subordinate in status.

With scientific progress, wars are going to become more and more devastating until they become almost racially suicidal. How many world wars must be fought and how many leagues of nations must fail before men will be willing to establish the government of mankind and begin to enjoy the blessings of permanent peace and thrive on the tranquillity of good will—world-wide good will—among men?

If one man craves freedom—liberty—he must remember that all other men long for the same freedom. Groups of such liberty-loving mortals cannot live together in peace without becoming subservient to such laws, rules, and regulations as will grant each person the same degree of freedom while at the same time safeguarding an equal degree of freedom for all of his fellow mortals. If one man is to be absolutely free, then another must become an absolute slave. And the relative nature of freedom is true socially, economically, and politically. Freedom is the gift of civilization made possible by the enforcement of LAW.

There shall be wars and rumors of wars—nation will rise against nation—just as long as the world’s political sovereignty is divided up and unjustly held by a group of nation-states.

Another world war will teach the so-called sovereign nations to form some sort of federation, thus creating the machinery for preventing small wars, wars between the lesser nations. But global wars will go on until the government of mankind is created. Global sovereignty will prevent global wars—nothing else can.

It is not a question of armaments or disarmament. Neither does the question of conscription or voluntary military service enter into these problems of maintaining world-wide peace. If you take every form of modern mechanical armaments and all types of explosives away from strong nations, they will fight with fists, stones, and clubs as long as they cling to their delusions of the divine right of national sovereignty.

War is not man’s great and terrible disease; war is a symptom, a result. The real disease is the virus of national sovereignty.

World peace cannot be maintained by treaties, diplomacy, foreign policies, alliances, balances of power, or any other type of makeshift juggling with the sovereignties of nationalism. World law must come into being and must be enforced by world government —the sovereignty of all mankind.

The individual will enjoy far more liberty under world government. Today, the citizens of the great powers are taxed, regulated, and controlled almost oppressively, and much of this present interference with individual liberties will vanish when the national governments are willing to trustee their sovereignty as regards international affairs into the hands of global government.

Under global government the national groups will be afforded a real opportunity to realize and enjoy the personal liberties of genuine democracy. The fallacy of self-determination will be ended. With global regulation of money and trade will come the new era of world-wide peace. Soon may a global language evolve, and there will be at least some hope of sometime having a global religion—or religions with a global viewpoint.

Collective security will never afford peace until the collectivity includes all mankind.

The political sovereignty of representative mankind government will bring lasting peace on earth, and the spiritual brotherhood of man will forever insure good will among all men. And there is no other way whereby peace on earth and good will among men can be realized.

[Reproduced in part from Paper-134 of the Urantia Book. Paper authored by theMidwayerCommission]

Some time ago, some one in a large organization asked me the essential traits that are required for any leader to lead an organization and ensure long term success. I explained the relevance of Competency, Character, Courage and Compassion the way I understood it, to answer his question. My friend was not so convinced. I know, a good majority of my fellow country men in India would not take my views.

But whether they accept it or not, it is a universal truth. Leaders who do not have these traits might seem to be successful for a while but the irony is that they would not be able to sustain their success for long.

The organization could be any thing. Political, business, governmental, administrative, religious, social, educational, military, law enforcement, judicial, etc, etc. It could be large or small. It could be autonomous or dependent. It could be a organizational conglomerate with multiple objectives or a simple one with a single objective. Whatever it is, leaders lacking the 4 Cs above could ruin it after some time.

Human civilization has seen many powerful political and national organizations such as many great empires of the past rising and thriving for some time, only to be disintegrated wholly after a while.

Even in the recent times we have been observing such phenomena.

While an individual human being with a life span of say 70-80 years on an average is considered generally as a very good one with regard to age an organization sustaining it activities for a few generations is viewed with some admiration. We have very few organizations of that kind. Even political or national organizations that have survived a few generations are also rare, yet they do exist.

What makes an organization to sustain a life exceeding the average life of a human being? If you study such organizations, you would realize that the leaders of such organizations had the above said 4 C quality much more than their contemporaries.

I think this phenomena is due to the existence of an invisible divine over control over human organizations.

When the majority of people desire their leaders to be some one with the above 4 C's there is a potential divine blessing over such peoples to have such leaders elevated as their leaders. When the majority of people do not give any importance to this aspect, the reverse happens and they are bound to suffer collectively.

Now let us examine what is meant by these four words.

Competency is the ability to perform a desirable task well. It comprises of knowledge, intelligence, wisdom and a desire to learn and update. It involves skills for language, communication and such other soft skills as well. Common sense is very important. Competency is a mixture of inherent qualities enhanced by proper education and training. A leader should be competent enough to know his organization, understand the work, differentiate between good and bad and should have the ability for reasoning and decision making. Different works might require different kinds of competency.

Competency of a person is polished by his or her character. Character is that innate quality of a person to select and opt good from bad. It involves such traits such as honesty, values, ethics and the like. A highly competent person can have a good character or may be ever characterless. A characterless leader with high competency is highly dangerous for the organization and the people. If we study history, we can see hundreds of examples of this kind.

Courage is the trait that makes a leader different. If a leader lacks courage to lead and take appropriate decisions at appropriate moments, such leader could bring failures and disasters for the organization that he leads even while he has enough competency and is a person of character. At the same time courage should not be such that it causes misadventure. In other words, courage should be reflected through wise decisions.

A leader must be compassionate to fellow human beings. His or her decisions should always be based on compassion to other humans. But compassion should not blind him or her from taking corrective actions. A compassionate leader is bound to be 'mild and soft as a dove, but clever and assertive as a serpent'. Love and mercy to all humans be his guiding force. But his competency should come to his aid in weeding out those inherently bad elements who do not deserve love and mercy. Perhaps this is one of the greatest problems many leaders face in their lives. They often commit great errors of judgement in realizing the real motives or natures of others. Often this causes, leaders to like and promote those around them who are good in the art of sycophancy. The fundamental principle to understand here is that people with competency and character are less likely to indulge in pampering others with good words and deeds with some hidden agenda of receiving favors. They are also not likely to fall preys to flattery.

If a nation has survived a few generations successfully, it is an indication that it has strong internal organizations led by people with the 4 C's at various levels. The moment, the national organizations get people who do not have these 4 Cs, the organizations begin to disintegrate. So, it is highly essential that organizations resort to proper leadership changes when leaders of any level is found to lack in the 4 Cs to some recognizable degree.

Though all the four Cs are important, my personal priority of arranging these four in the order of decreasing importance (higher to lower) is like this: Character-Competency-Compassion-Courage!

Often people have this doubt. Would it be possible for a person of character to withstand many others who are characterless in other organizations around?

I would say, yes. And my belief is that in the years to come, characterless people are bound to fail more often than in the past. When I say this, I have some strong intuitive reason for such a belief. That does not mean that we would not be seeing characterless people making successes. Characterless people are going to make short term successes in the future too, just as in the past. But their fall would be quicker.

So, no nation or business would sustain longer when they are infected with people lacking the 4 Cs that I mentioned. Organizations that give honest importance for these 4 Cs for their people are bound to succeed and win over those who do not, in the long run.

Our world is not going to face any global apocalypse or Armageddon . Such scenarios in minor levels could keep happening in the future, because of nations and organizations infected with people lacking the 4 Cs. But total destruction of this world is never going to happen, as feared by many, because of the over control exercised by divine powers. It is absurd to believe that God has created humanity for facing ultimate destruction because of the foolish deeds of some inferior humans or even some inferior angels as believed and taught by some religious leaders of the past or the present.

While the misdeeds of some inferior humans who lack competency, character, courage and compassion in them might bring some disasters now and then, here and there, with some of us facing the consequences, such things should not dishearten us or cause our minds to such levels as praising and admiring evil. In that case we are aligning to the evil that gets happening due to evil men and women who lack the 4 Cs. Instead, it would be better idea to look for instances and people who bring lasting success and the importance of the 4 Cs in those cases. That would help in us aligning towards good rather than evil.

Just think about these and make your own judgments.

If I say the world is full of copycats, please do not get angry on me. It is a reality. I am not against any one copying or imitating some thing good. Copying of ideas and content would no doubt could reduce work load in many areas to a good extent. So, copying per se, cannot be considered as some thing bad.

For many years, I have been working as an engineering project consultant. One of the jobs that I was supposed to do involves drafting of project feasibility reports, contract or tender specifications, etc. In the process of doing this kind of work, it is quite natural that I have to take clues from my predecessors and copy many things that they had thoughtfully drafted for situations of similar nature. Naturally, this would reduce my time in thinking of the proper clauses and statements that compose my document.

I had the opportunity of finding documents containing statements originally drafted by me with some fore thoughts. But if such things happen without any one giving any attention to the purpose and the meanings, things could create problems at some time.

A couple of decades ago, such copying could not have been done by simple 'copy-paste' operations that the present day word processing software allows in the digital word processing environment. In those days, even if some one wanted to copy some thing, the texts had to be re-typed and edited where some human thoughts also went in simultaneously. That way, a document generated with some copying could not be considered as full word by word copies. Instead they used to be modified versions of documents made with some original thoughts.

Unfortunately, the word processing power the computers have provided had caused certain other undesirable side effects. Now-a-days, full documents could be made by some one without ever giving any proper application of mind. Even many documents could be made mechanically by the machines without any human thoughts ever doing some fine tuning!

Laws, rules, procedures and the whole gamut of interpretation of laws comprising legislation and the judicial system perhaps uses the maximum use of text processing called legal documentation. The present day legal procedure is so complex that it is extremely difficult for any normal human being to read and understand the whole documents that get created in the judicial processes involving judgments.

Once I had the opportunity to read the findings and the recommendations made by an Inquiry officer of a company who conducted an inquiry in to certain allegations leveled against an employee as per the Conduct and Disciplinary procedures laid out by the said company. He had made a long inquiry report which quoted the statements of the witnesses and many documents of proofs (called exhibits). As I read on, I found that the findings were in favor of the accused. But to my surprise, the last para of his report the inquiry officer had given his recommendations to the disciplinary authority which were just the contrary to what were explained earlier. The disciplinary authority being a high ranking official with not much time to read everything, went as recommended and awarded the punishment to the accused!

In the present day system what we have, the judgments as read out by our honorable judges are in hundreds and thousands of pages. Would it provide opportunities for 'reading between the lines'? Could there be some alternative that is better? It is something that modern society has to start thinking.

I am not a legal expert, but a common layman. But, my common sense tells me that there is a need to improve our system of legislation and legal procedures. We need to come out from the compulsions of sticking to what is known as legacy. Legal documentation and legal languages need to get simplified, approachable and understandable by the majority of people. It cannot happen overnight or even in the present generation. But some day it has to happen. That would be the time when the leaders of human beings become more comfortable with what is now being acknowledged as 'transparency'.

Another thing that comes in to my mind is the need to have many different types of punishments which could help positive changes in those getting punished rather than the present day system of negative punishments. Many of our laws only recognize 'imprisonment' as the only way of punishing some one regardless of the gravity of the crime or error. Though we may be proud of our so-called elected representatives whom we call as our law makers, it may not be known to many that it is not always these representatives who actually draft the documents that are called the 'bills' to be enacted (approved) as laws. Many times it is the lower level staff attached to the various ministries who do the drafting work, many times under stress and duress, under certain compelling conditions as dictated from their higher ups. When they are so compelled, they often adopt copy-paste techniques without the proper application of mind. Many times such application of mind get missed in the later processes as well, that the laws that get finally adopted tends to be stereotyped.

And what is more disturbing is the tendency that we blame everything on our so-called system. And what is this system? And who is responsible for this system which many people call as 'rotten'.

Why do we shy away from original thinking? Are we so pauper in our thoughts of innovation in such areas which affect each and every one of us?

Is it happening every where in this globe like this or are there exceptions? Are we prepared for bench marking our systems with some systems that have proven their effects in some better manner?

What is preventing us from trying simpler and positive laws?

Is it right to equate a drug peddler in the same way as some one who made some false declaration in a document ? What happens to our common sense when some of us are entrusted with the responsibility of making laws for the rest of us?

Why is it that we prefer to get agitated of an injustice only when we are some how affected and not when we are entrusted to execute the justice? Why do we have different yardsticks at different occasions?

All these things, in my humble opinion, arise out of certain short comings of our minds, even when we consider ourselves as highly educated, intelligent or competent. We certainly lack certain essential things which could polish our competencies. You may read what I wrote about the 4 Cs earlier!

There is a need for humanity to migrate to an era where positive laws (laws which are simpler to interpret and apply) are in force which are administered by organizations manned by leaders who are not lacking the 4 C's- Competency, Character, Courage and Compassion. And the laws then would perhaps contain less of negative punishments but more of motivational rewards for law abiding too!

No doubt, punishments should act as deterrents for potential crimes to take place. But fear can only be deterrent only to certain inferior minds, but not to all.

How could all these happen? It could, provided human brains are allowed to think originally, instead of compelling to follow those legacies which prevent original ideas. Let us not copy-paste every thing!

In any case, the thought process need to begin now.

What do you think?

There are at least two incidences in the Old Testament Bible which gives an indication that the ancient Israelis used to do human sacrifice to please their god, the Lord God of Israel.

The first story is in the first book of the bible, the Genesis, where Abraham was required to show his allegiance and obedience to God who demands his only son to be sacrificed. Abraham went to fulfill the task of sacrificing his son, Isaac only to be prevented by God at the last moment. Abraham later sacrificed a goat instead for God. [Read the full bible passage about this aborted human sacrifice here!]

Years later, another incident had happened where a human sacrifice had actually happened, according to the Bible. This is in the book of Judges. Here a would be leader of the ancient Israelis, named Jephthah, make a promise to his God to sacrifice anyone who comes to meet and greet him first after he became successful in the local war for superiority. He won the battle and unfortunately it was his beautiful daughter who came to greet him first. The Bible says that he had to sacrifice his daughter to fulfill his vow.[ Read the full bible passage about Jephthah and his daughter here!]

No doubt, these are some glimpses of records of ancient history as depicted in some ancient literature that had become holy texts of some of the great human religions in the later years. It certainly gives some idea about the manner in which some sample populations of the world progressed in their concepts about God, worship, laws, governance, religion and the like.

Yet, it gives me some repulsion in my mind when I read through these. All the more it gives me additional repulsion when I consider that these are passages of some holy texts that attempt to introduce God to man.

Many ardent followers of Christian faiths believe that the Bible is the word of God and hence is infallible. God is now depicted as synonymous with Love and Mercy whereas in the olden times as the God of War, Destruction and Punishment. How could these two things go simultaneously in the same book? If God himself had revealed himself in these holy texts, these kinds of contradictions would not have happened. That is what my logic tells me. Undoubtedly, the Bible books are works of human beings. Yet there are great reflections of divine revelations of some fundamental realities and truths sprinkled here and there within the passages. Perhaps such words of wisdom, knowledge and truth might have been divine revelations as it got caught by the human brains!

But passages such as the one I cited above about the human sacrifice as conducted by Jephthah, create certain kind of difficulties for the bible scholars and theologians. People do discuss about these and come to their own conclusions. For example read this: What about Jephthah's vow?

For those like me, it is difficult to believe that the Bible as a whole is divine truth or holy text. Bible as such would have remained as a problem for my religious and spiritual understanding, had I not known the Urantia Book, my favorite book of life guidance, now.

It would be interesting to note what the non-human authors of the Urantia Book tells about the Biblical incident of Jephthah. Let me quote the authors:

There is no more tragic and pathetic experience on record, illustrative of the heart-tearing contentions between ancient and time-honored religious customs and the contrary demands of advancing civilization, than the Hebrew narrative of Jephthah and his only daughter. As was common custom, this well-meaning man had made a foolish vow, had bargained with the "god of battles," agreeing to pay a certain price for victory over his enemies. And this price was to make a sacrifice of that which first came out of his house to meet him when he returned to his home. Jephthah thought that one of his trusty slaves would thus be on hand to greet him, but it turned out that his daughter and only child came out to welcome him home. And so, even at that late date and among a supposedly civilized people, this beautiful maiden, after two months to mourn her fate, was actually offered as a human sacrifice by her father, and with the approval of his fellow tribesmen. And all this was done in the face of Moses' stringent rulings against the offering of human sacrifice. But men and women are addicted to making foolish and needless vows, and the men of old held all such pledges to be highly sacred. [The Urantia Book, Paper-89 para 6.3]

I would give below some more quotes from the same paper of the Urantia Book which tells about the human evolutionary progress in the concepts of sin, sacrifice and atonement reflecting the views of the divine authors who keep watching the slow progress of human race:

Human sacrifice has been virtually universal; it persisted in the religious customs of the Chinese,Hindus, Egyptians, Hebrews,Mesopotamians,Greeks,Romans, and many other peoples, even on to recent times among the backward African and Australian tribes. The later American Indians had a civilization emerging from cannibalism and, therefore, steeped in human sacrifice, especially in Central and South America. The Chaldeans were among the first to abandon the sacrificing of humans for ordinary occasions, substituting therefor animals. About two thousand years ago a tenderhearted Japanese emperor introduced clay images to take the place of human sacrifices, but it was less than a thousand years ago that these sacrifices died out in northern Europe. Among certain backward tribes, human sacrifice is still carried on by volunteers, a sort of religious or ritual suicide. A shaman once ordered the sacrifice of a much respected old man of a certain tribe. The people revolted; they refused to obey. Whereupon the old man had his own son dispatch him; the ancients really believed in this custom. [The Urantia Book Paper-89, 6.2]

Men eventually conceived the idea that the offering of some part of the body could take the place of the older and complete human sacrifice. Physical mutilation was also considered to be an acceptable substitute. Hair, nails, blood, and even fingers and toes were sacrificed. The later and well-nigh universal ancient rite of circumcision was an outgrowth of the cult of partial sacrifice; it was purely sacrificial, no thought of hygiene being attached thereto. Men were circumcised; women had their ears pierced. [The Urantia Book Paper-89, 8.2]

Subsequently it became the custom to bind fingers together instead of cutting them off. Shaving the head and cutting the hair were likewise forms of religious devotion. The making of eunuchs was at first a modification of the idea of human sacrifice. Nose and lip piercing is still practiced in Africa, and tattooing is an artistic evolution of the earlier crude scarring of the body. [The Urantia Book, Paper-89, 8.3]

But the idea of making a covenant with the gods did finally arrive. Evolutionary man eventually acquired such moral dignity that he dared to bargain with his gods. And so the business of offering sacrifices gradually developed into the game of man's philosophic bargaining with God. And all this represented a new device for insuring against bad luck or, rather, an enhanced technique for the more definite purchase of prosperity. Do not entertain the mistaken idea that these early sacrifices were a free gift to the gods, a spontaneous offering of gratitude or thanksgiving; they were not expressions of true worship. [The Urantia Book, Paper-89, 8.6]

Early prayer was hardly worship; it was a bargaining petition for health, wealth, and life. And in many respects prayers have not much changed with the passing of the ages. They are still read out of books, recited formally, and written out for emplacement on wheels and for hanging on trees, where the blowing of the winds will save man the trouble of expending his own breath. [The Urantia Book, Paper-89, 8.8]

The Hebrews long practiced this ritual as a part of their Passover ceremonies, and it was from this ceremonial that the later Christian version of the sacrament took its origin. Paul started out to build a new Christian cult on "the blood of the everlasting covenant." And while he may have unnecessarily encumbered Christianity with teachings about blood and sacrifice, he did once and for all make an end of the doctrines of redemption through human or animal sacrifices. His theologic compromises indicate that even revelation must submit to the graduated control of evolution. According to Paul, Christ became the last and all-sufficient human sacrifice; the divine Judge is now fully and forever satisfied. [The Urantia Book Paper-89, 9.3-9.4]

With the direct help of the divine non-human authors of the Urantia Book, I am now learning those many fundamental truths that are now revealed for people like to me to discard the errors that got accumulated over the years in our conceptual mental frame work. Now, I am happy to declare that I am no more a confused person, confused due to the mixture of facts, truths, untruths and imaginations that got mixed up in human history and understanding.

I can clearly understand why it was not at all necessary for Jesus Christ to be a sacrificial lamb of God for the salvation of all humanity. That was a great conceptual error of our human forefathers who tried to fathom an unfathomable God with their limited brains!

The reality is entirely different than what we were forced to believe.

Again, it is not so easy for ordinary folks to discard those concepts that had got stuck up in their minds. It needs some superior mental strength to do it.

In the due course of time, no doubt, most of the humans would be able to do it.

Today is 31st December 2013 and my last working day of the year. I thought of sharing some abstract thoughts with you today, which may not be of any interest to many of you. Yet I have the compulsion to do so.

I have been thinking. Thousands of people might have departed from this world for ever and thousands of new lives might have been added. When it comes to death and birth, are we any different from plants and animals? I do believe that we are. If not, there is absolutely nothing that makes any human to boast of his life. It makes no difference to him or her in the long run.

But, I am convinced that human beings do have a greater role to play in this world not only for its material accomplishments, but also for some other things which are even greater than those. In my opinion, living a life only for living and only for fulfilling some desires associated with material living is perhaps a life similar to that of the animals, birds and plants. They also live to fulfill their inherent life desires and do contribute some thing to the dynamics of this world. They all seem to have some purpose in maintaining the material environment, the energy cycles, the food chains, the climatic and weather conditions and even the beauty of this world in some manner.

We humans with enhanced intellectual and mind capabilities coupled with independent decision making abilities are capable of doing fantastic improvements and modifications on the face of the lands on which we live. We are creative, adventurous, ambitious and also have qualities commonly found in plants and animals as well.

But what is that quality that makes us distinctly different from animals and plants and make us human? I think it is the divine qualities that are in us that makes us different from animals and make us human.

And what are these divine qualities that are within us?

First and foremost, we think about a divine personality about whom we know pretty nothing. Yes, we all think about an invisible power beyond our normal perceptions at times whom we designate with some word in our languages such as this word, God. More than that, we do love our invisible God, just as we love our children, parents, spouse, etc.

More than that, some of us are even possessive of our God, just as some of us are too concerned and possessive of our dear ones.

With our intellectual mind, we are ready to accept that God is the universal supreme and creator of our world and all worlds if at all they are there. Yet we are not ready to accept the possibility of their God as the same as our God! How can my parents be the parents of theirs? It is not acceptable. Like wise, my God cannot be his God. By this refusal of acceptance, we negate our first concept of our God being the supreme creator of everything.

We have intelligence to create these computers, but do lack the intelligence to understand the essential and possible nature of the supreme invisible power personality that we identify as the source of our existence.

We are ready to conceptualize God in our own way and are fully satisfied with our cultures, customs, beliefs and thoughts and are not willing to upgrade our thoughts and concepts as we progress just as we do in other fields of knowledge. When it comes to our beliefs and concepts of God, we prefer to be orthodox and prefer not to be progressive.

Is it not a ridiculous thing for a scientist to argue the size of an elephant being similar to that of a mouse because he had got that knowledge only from a picture earlier?

Thirteen years of the 21st century had passed. We are much progressed in our scientific and technological capabilities. But we have not much progressed in our concepts about God, the sole and unique flicker of a reverence that we possess deep in our minds!

We know clearly that we are different from those plants and animals who too share their living existence with us in this world. We know that we are much more intelligent and have immense mind capacities. Yet we are unable to nurture that unique concept that we have in our minds to any logical conclusions that are agreeable to all. Some of us would say that we are religiously different. We follow different belief systems that we call as our religions. Our religions are about God, the supreme invisible power that created every thing and that keeps us going. But we are not able to arrive at some uniform thoughts about God with our intelligence.

In other words we fail to understand God. Had we been able to do it to some extent just as we progressed in our science and technology, how marvelous it would have been! But no, it is not taking place that way!

Why do we try to fathom an unfathomable God with our own yardsticks? When our science can have the same symbols, formulas, theorems and postulates universally, why can't we have such a thing in our spiritual quests and knowledge?

Is it so desirable to leave our spiritual quest unanswered and at primitive levels and allow our scientific quest only to go forward?

If all our achievements on this earth are to be forgotten one day and we are to forgo all those experiences and knowledge that we gained in this life just on that final day of our material existences what have we really achieved?

Was it all an illusion ? Maya ? Are we still forcing us to believe that way that old philosophers taught us?

No, sir, no! There could be better answers. And we need to find it out.

We need to find an answer to the whole purpose of our human life on earth. We need to find an answer to the purpose of our higher intelligence, our creativity, our reverence to God, our power of choice and our concepts of good and bad.

Let us nurture those thoughts as well while we pursue our living careers full of ambitions and aspirations in a lot of other facets of life.

Let not 2014 too pass away just as 2013 and those other previous years!

Let us also nurture that so-called spirituality in us! Not the conventional way, but using our inherent intellectual and spiritual capacities in a better way.

Wish you all a better and enlightening New Year 2014 !

May the Universe Administration of the Almighty God be Merciful to Our World to advance more towards Real Prosperity and Happiness!

Acts of omission (mistakes) and commission (committing a crime) done by people holding responsible positions in public functions or corporate functions are liable for punishment under various rules and regulations as adopted by the concerned organization.

While some acts are easily understandable by any one with some common sense, that is not the case with several others. This difficulty in understanding the depth of an act of omission or commission causes many such acts not getting noticed for corrective actions.

This kind of a situation makes an ideal situation for the propagation of corruption in public life. By the word public, I mean all walks of functions that concerns citizens at large, whether or not the organization concerned is managed privately or publicly.

Acts of omission can happen when people entrusted with certain functions are incompetent to carry out the work properly. In such cases the mistakes they commit are due to ignorance, lack of knowledge or lack of training or lack of up-to-date knowledge or training. Acts of omissions can happen both deliberately or non-deliberately. Whatever be the case, some acts of omission can cause serious problems to the society while some other may not be so serious. Let us consider some examples:

If the pilot of a commercial aircraft or the driver of a passenger train commits an error while doing work, it could turn out to be fatal for many. Many people including the person who commits the error could die in such a case. However, it is not so easy to attribute the said act of omission to the person so easily. Elaborate investigations would be required and the findings of such investigations may not be perfect always because such investigations are also carried out by imperfect beings! This way acts of omission of any one in an organization can cause detrimental effects on others. While some acts of omission may not affect many, some others could affect several people. A surgeon committing a mistake can seriously affect his or her patient, but an engineer making such a mistake could some times affect several people. An on the job mistake of a bank employee, a financial services employee, a mechanic, an electrician, a pathological laboratory technician and the like are all likely to create small and big problems to one or many individuals or even the organizations that they work for.

Hence, it is essential that acts of omission by people at work are kept at the minimum practical levels always. The ways and means of doing this is ensured by good practices of management and governance. To prevent frequent occurrences of acts of omission, it is essential to ensure that the people selected for the work are competent to do the work and are motivated to do it error free always. This is the function of the management in any organization. If the people of an organization are not generally competent or lacks knowledge to do their work or not motivated to do their work, such a situation could be attributed as an act of omission by the management! Disciplinary actions are often resorted by many legacy organisations to prevent their employees committing mistakes or acts of omission. However, an organization in the hands of a management which is in itself incompetent cannot set things right with disciplinary actions on erring employees because of the likelihood of acts of omissions by the management during execution of the disciplinary actions!

In short, acts of omissions by the management functionaries are much more serious than that of the lower level employees in the long run. In other words, it could be an act of omission of the management that results in acts of omission of the employees of the organization. Thus a pilot or a doctor or an engineer or a technician or a clerk doing an act of omission is partly attributable to an act of omission of the management of the organization where such persons are hired for working.

The simple technique to find out whether a person could actually be held responsible for his act of omission depends on whether he or she had the full control or authority to avoid such an erroneous act. If a person has only responsibilities and no authority or facility to match those responsibilities, the act of omission is not fully attributable to him or her.

But acts of commission are deliberate acts and often done so cleverly that it would be very difficult to detect or even take corrective actions. The acts of commission are criminal or willful acts done for some personal benefit causing larger loss to the public or organization. Higher forms of corruption come under this.

It is easier for top level authorities to commit acts of commission without leaving any direct evidence. Let us consider some illustrations:

A is a large public company making a regular product for the use by another public company, B, to use it for some public infrastructure. Both companies have public servants as their Chief executives and they in turn are answerable to their boards. The CEOs and the board members keep their respective positions so long as their political bosses are pleased with them. It is possible for the top authorities to create a situation where in they could deprive company A from supplying its product to B on some excuse and get the supply from another company, foreign or domestic, who is willing to go to any extent for such a shift in the status-quo. If that happens, there is all possibility that company A go out of business and possibly incur huge losses or even a lock-out later. In another scenario, the CEO of company-A could be influenced in such a way that he or she could immediately make some changes in the production and quality control team so that the product in question deteriorates in quality and company B gets an excuse for sourcing the material from elsewhere!

There are many such scenarios and all these are not mere imaginary ones. Such tacit acts of commission have been taking place here and there in India for the past many years that it has caused the country to be projected and perceived as a nation of corruption.

It is indeed a welcome sign for those silent citizens of India to see that weeding out of corruption has now become the sole objective of an emerging political outfit called the Aam Admi Party or AAP. Whether they could make any marked success or not is some thing to be seen later!

But it is time for all those who consider acts of commission as not any thing to be seriously viewed, to change their attitudes. There is a need to purify the Indian society from this filthy dirt called corruption.

In my opinion, viewing each and every one with suspicion, as we have been doing all along, is not the way to eliminate these acts of omission and commission in various walks of like in public service or business.

Punitive vigilance alone cannot resolve these problems. The right man for the right job should be the core philosophy to be implemented with honesty.

And that is the biggest issue. For that we need people with the 4-Cs that I wrote in a blog earlier.

When we learn to give regard and respect to people with Character, Competency, Courage and Compassion and learn to entrust them with higher responsibilities of leadership, things are going to change positively.

And if people of India are now finding people like Mr Arvind Kejriwalas different from many others is some thing that reflects the desirable positive changes in the attitudes of the Indian people that is slowly and decisively setting in.

At last they are learning to regard and respect the 4-Cs for their own good! If more and more of people of this country are going to realize this, it would indeed make this nation great !

A few years ago, a person who was well known to me contacted me for a professional advice. He had just recently taken up a top management job in a well known private company at that time. He too was a professional engineer like me and much senior to me. But he knew me well professionally and did not hesitate to show his high regards and respect that he had towards me for the professional expertise that I had in some areas, especially in the field of water and waste water engineering and technologies.

His company had almost taken some decisions to spent some substantial money for improvements in their production processes taking help from an engineering consultancy group. And a substantial portion of this proposed expenditure was towards modifications in their water and waste water systems. He too being an engineer having decades of industrial experience could sense some thing not so okay with the proposal made by their consultants, but was not able to make out any valid points to question the wisdom of the consultants due to his own limited knowledge in this field. So he wanted me to have a look and give my advice.

Over a cup of coffee, I glanced through the consultants' project feasibility report and could immediately find many things superfluous. Either the consultants are not so knowledgeable in this field or they are adopting an unethical practice of enhancing the project cost with unnecessary complexities in the design. Since the consultants' fees are directly linked to the project cost, this kind of an unethical practice is often resorted by some professionals here and there!

With my experience and expertise in that field, I could immediately assess that there was a scope for reduction of the cost by a few million rupees. I told him the areas where the cost reduction could be effected and he being an experience engineer could immediately catch my points. Later he informed me that he could take up those points with his company's engineering consultants resulting in substantial savings in the proposed investments and also thanked me for my guidance.

In the professional field, especially in the engineering field, substantial sums could go to the drains with no one gaining any benefits commensurate with the expenditure due to the ignorance of those concerned with the investment planning and decision making. Sometimes it could be vested interests, but even vested interests would be able to effect their detrimental acts and proceed the way they want only when there is an atmosphere of general ignorance and incompetency all around!

This kind of a situation is not rare, but very common in the underdeveloped and developing economies. It is not limited to engineering, but to almost every field of activity. In reality, the reason why the economy is underdeveloped or lagging behind in development as compared to some others can solely be attributed to the general deficiency in the distribution of knowledge and competence among its peoples.

Engineering is that profession that has the biggest contribution towards economic development. Therefore, ignorance and incompetence in the engineering field could cause tremendous adverse impact on any economy. Economies where the decision making processes are vested mostly with people having inadequate knowledge in the nitty-gritties of engineering are bound to lag behind in economic development. They are also bound to incur higher expenditure for keeping pace with development elsewhere and to maintain their forward progress.

Engineering is both and art and a science and real engineers who develop knowledge and competency to perform their roles with confidence and perfection emerge only when those freshly trained engineering students get opportunities to practice their knowledge and gain higher experiences.Engineering is also a vast and complex field of knowledge and hence, it would not be possible for any one to know every thing. Engineering has divided itself to various disciplines at the learning stage,because of this. But in reality, every engineer who actually work in the real field of application of their skills gains vast knowledge and practical experience that cannot be taught in formal classrooms! This causes another work related problem. Often, it is difficult for even fellow engineers to fathom the knowledge and skill level of their own colleagues unless they are very keen to know about it. For managers and the so-called technocrats to function effectively, it is highly essential that they know the expertise, knowledge and potential of the those engineers in their team or teams. Knowing the potentials of others is highly essential for team leaders or top managers to make success.

In the small example that I cited in the beginning, it was only due to the fact my senior professional friend knew about my expertise and was willing to tap that source, his company could avoid some wasteful expenditures! I have seen many good technocrats making huge blunders for their organizations just because they had pretty no idea regarding the knowledge and competence levels of their team members creating situations that prevented their teams to deliver their best.

Suppose that you want to make a house of your own. If you are a bit technically knowledgeable in the basics of house construction, construction materials and the markets and if you are prepared to use your knowledge for your advantage there is all possibility that you could make substantial savings in the overall costs for getting your house made and also on the overall quality of your house so made.

Many engineering infrastructure projects are similar, but much more complex, voluminous and poses various alternatives over which best decisions are to be taken. You could possibly do the best collective decisions and implement the project cost effectively and successfully only when every one involved in the project right from top to bottom have the desired levels of competence. If the team leaders and the key members of the team are those with desirable levels of competency, character, courage and compassion (the 4 Cs) there is perhaps no reason that the projects they undertake not getting successfully implemented.

Electricity and water are burning issues in every modern economy and India is no exception.

Let us consider the set up of a thermal power plant of say 500 Mega Watt production capacity. What could be the cost of setting up production facility of this kind? Depending upon the various factors the cost of such a facility could vary any thing between Rs 40 Million to 80 Million per MW of installed capacity. That means the overall project cost could be any thing in the range of Rs. 20000 to 40000 Million. This is just an approximate assessment based on costs of power projects completed earlier. The actual costs depends on various factors, the main being the manner in which the basic engineering and the detailed engineering (ie the design and technical specifications) of the power utility, is formulated. If the plant design engineers are knowledgeable and competent and if the decision makers are able to make full use of their knowledge, there is a potential of substantial savings in capital expenditure for achieving the same end result!

Now the cost of power produced by the power utility depends on the costs towards fuel ( coal, oil, gas etc), operation and maintenance (O&M) and the costs towards recovery of the capital with interest and also on other charges such as taxes, depreciation allocations, etc. Imagine the advantage of the power utility that had spend much lower with regard to capital expenses!

Normally, the cost of the plant is reflected through the Project Feasibility Report as prepared by the project consulting engineers. The project consulting engineers hold the key for reduction of capital costs of a project. If they are ignorant or incompetent, the project completion costs could never be any thing near the costs as was predicted in the feasibility reports. In India, project completion costs often exceed much more than the estimated costs. Project completion time also exceed much more than what was originally envisaged.

Time and cost overruns in projects are routine than an exception in India. This kind of a situation creates problems for fixing tariffs and rates for common utilities such as electricity, gas and water.

The fundamental reason for this kind of a situation is because of the inability of decision makers to understand the working of professionals as a team. Engineering profession accomplishes results as a result of team effort of scores of specialists with differing experiences and expertise. It is difficult for engineers themselves to understand other engineers working in other areas of specialization. This often results in internal conflicts within engineering consultancy groups, many times affecting the quality of their professional services in formulating projects properly. Often, the constraints of individual engineers are overlooked adding to the problems and multiplying the effect of ignorance, incompetence and vested interests.

Consulting engineers are now required to quote for their services. Their services are also decided based on open market bidding and based on lowest cost considerations! But how could you evaluate the quality of their advise? Again they are required to produce project reports of large scale projects involving billions of rupees within a few days or months. Not enough time to even print the copies of their reports! Did they study the situation and assessed every aspects? Did they get the time to do the essential surveys and studies? Did they get the time to think? No one is bothered. What is required is the project feasibility report and the tendering specifications as quickly as possible. Without these documents, no one can proceed to the authorities for approvals and approvals take years! No one can speed up the time required for approvals. What can be done is only to squeeze the time to study the project details and making those documents. Consulting engineers are forced to produce their reports 'as quickly as possible'. This kind of a situation has downgraded engineering profession to its lowest esteem in recent years in India. Expertise and experience have least importance and value in this kind of a situation and professional ethics is also not talked or discussed any where. In the present environment, it seems that pliable consultants who are too willing to comply with the desires of their clients are the only preferred ones. Others have ceased to exist as engineering consultants for all practical purposes.

When we moved towards market oriented economy, competition began to play a bigger role in our decision making processes. Time has become a major factor. It is a do-or-die situation. In this process we lost our ability to think wisely. We also lost our ability to honor and respect those who thought wisely and who would perhaps had given us the best advise to save us from utter failures in the long run.

This has happened in all professional fields and engineering field has suffered the most without any one really understanding the consequences.

Imagine the situation when an ENT surgeon is posted as the Cardiac surgeon! This is too obvious a situation and perhaps no patient would ever be willing to accept such a thing. Nevertheless, Indian authorities do this kind of misadventures when no one is objecting! One can imagine the consequences!

So what is the solution?

I would only say this much. There is a need to honor and respect knowledge and competence. There is a need to honor professional ethics. Not by simply saying. But doing some thing honestly.

Unfortunately, engineering academicians in countries like India do not really understand the practical aspects of engineering profession to make any real guidance to their students in the practice of engineering. If I remember correctly, decades ago, the government of India had enacted a law that made it mandatory for all industries to provide apprenticeship training to fresh engineers for at least one year. This law is totally forgotten now and the whole thrust of engineering education has been shifted towards getting people of some employable skills rather than getting a workforce who are competent to undertake challenges of progress and development on a whole some basis and not in isolated pockets of economic activities.

When you do not know how to do some thing properly, you have to take help from others who would then do it for you. But when your skills and knowledge are at lower levels, those who come to help you would demand a high price for the services they render.

Think of this. Why are the Indian manufacturing units in many areas are shifting their bases to other countries? Why do we have to depend on foreign technology suppliers always? What could have been the cost advantage to us had we knew things better?

How could we address these issues?

You need brains to think and act !

About two decades ago, the super boss of the public organization in which I worked as a middle level engineering executive, called me to his cabin for a private discussion. This boss was about to superannuate from the organization in another couple of months and a few private organizations had approached him with some lucrative director level positions after he completed his long innings with the public sector business organization he had been serving all along for decades. And he had almost made up his mind to accept one of his choice.

But he wanted to rope in me too to his new private organization and I had my own reservations and reluctance for various reasons. No doubt, he was offering an 'attractive' General Manager position with much larger pay and perks that I was getting in my public organization at that time.

As I was still reluctant, he was trying to influence me to change my hesitation.

So at one point, he posed a question like this to me:

"Mr Mathew, I know that you have the power to take decisions that are worth millions of rupees in this organization. But tell me, do you have the power to take decisions worth ten rupees?"

I thought for a moment. Yes, he was telling the truth. As an engineer my decisions that I take during the course of my work all involve money and can have cost implications to my organization in millions of rupees. The organization knowing or unknowingly had entrusted faith in me and had allowed me of taking independent engineering and technological decisions that are too complex or difficult to understand without some expertise or technical competency. But there are so many silly things for which I have no such powers.And those silly things are those which are too easy to understand even by a child! Besides, these apparently silly matters matter much for me to carry out my work effectively.

It is a penny-wise, pound-foolish syndrome everywhere! There are so many rules and so many checks and balances for such silly things. There are too many people working overtime to checkmate the smooth progress of certain decision making processes. And there are more people everywhere to do these rather silly jobs whose overall impact to the organization is only peanuts. On the other hand, there are too few people to do works that are difficult and complex. If things are too easy for understanding, then there are too many rules! If things are complex or difficult, there are no rules!

Remember this. The IT companies made a kill initially in India because the administrators understood least about their works.

No consider this example. If I needed a pen or some other stationery material or some other such small consumable or facility which are essential for me to undertake my my official work smoothly, the procedures for getting those would take more than 50% of my time and energy that I have for doing my actual work for which I am hired by my organization. It often involves getting approvals from the highest authorities and that process is often much frustrating to those who have to do other important work! It is often beyond their common sense to understand the need for such created complications in the organizational working.

When I try to analyze the economic sense behind such things it is often difficult to make any logical justification. The whole of those materials and facilities that are required for me for the entire year to do my official work many not be worth even 10% of the salary I draw for a month!

There is a big organization generally called the general administration or establishment department who does these mundane tasks. In well managed organizations, this general administration department is manned by properly selected people who have the requisite aptitude and attitude to manage the show to the satisfaction of all while they also tactfully control any possibility of wasteful expenditures! However, in many other badly managed organizations, the general administration department is made up of people who are either with a general malice towards one and all due to various reasons.

The people in general administration are the facilitators for every other one in the organization. They serve both the mighty top bosses as well as the lowly beings. They are required to do many small but necessary tasks for all employees of the organization so that every one could perform well. They are the people who process the travel, and medical bills of the employees. They are also the ones who process the cases for allotment of office rooms, office furniture and facilities, residential accommodation, telephones, cars and the like. Of course, they do all these with the approval of the so-called competent authorities who happen to be the chief of the organization or such other subordinate officers to whom such approving powers are delegated by the chief from time to time. In government departments these powers are delegated by various kinds of administrative orders based on authority as vested by various statutes.

Private organizations also have similar administrative departments. In private organisations, people are generally hired when the need is recognized for a function or work. The pay and perks are determined based on the worth of the person or the benefit that the person can do for the organization. Work is generally recognized because the work contribution of the individual is directly seen as linked to the organization's success and profitability. So, private organizations in general would not like to create any kind of constraints in a person's work by depriving him the essential facilities that he or she might need to do his work.

But the work culture in the private administrative organizations, especially those progressive ones, do differ from the so-called bureaucratic administrative set up of the governmental organizations. As the chief executive officers of private organizations are required to prove their performances to their boards and shareholders with tangible benefits, most of them take appropriate actions to bring dynamism in their respective organizations and take such other actions to keep their administrative departments also to function in accordance with the overall requirements and vision. However, this does not mean that all private organizations are better than public organizations. I have known private organizations that are worse than even the government departments!

But one thing is sure. These administrative departments whether they belong to governmental organizations or private organizations have an important role in making the whole of the organization to function properly or function miserably. Thus the people who man the administrative departments do hold an important key for the organization to perform efficiently. If such departments exist, they are equally important as the chief executives.

The administrative departments are retained as the key functional area in most organizations for the purpose of exerting an invisible force of cohesiveness over the whole of the organization. This invisible power is called the administrative power that controls the organization. This invisible power of administration may also include powers for disciplinary actions against employees who commit acts of omission and commission. Many people generally believe that the fear of disciplinary actions is essential to have proper governance of the organization.

So administrative functions provide a kind of net worked strings to keep the organization in cohesiveness. But the problem lies in the fact that this same strings can also strangulate the organization. Many times the administrative functions are essentially silly and simple, but are required any way to control people who do higher and complex functions. Just as we use those strings called the reins to control a horse or an oxen!

But have you seen how those reins are used by different people? Those who are very incompetent and have doubts about their own personality are more likely to use those reins to harass the animals rather than to harness their energies! In a similar way, brain dwarfed individuals having inferiority complexes are bound to act when they are manning administrative organizations!

Public or governmental organizations are more likely to have their respective administrative departments entrusted with the so-called lower level functions manned by inferior people. Of course, many private organizations are also no exception. This is because such functions are relatively simple and any one with a little orientation can do it. But invariably after some period of time, these very same people who man the administrative departments become too familiar with the organizational loop holes and with their inherent nearness to higher level functionaries start behaving as if they were the big bosses who manage the whole organization. And every one in the organization who are not near to the top boss might become targets of the whims of at least a few of these lower level functionaries in the administrative departments at some point of time. The cumulative effect of such a situation prolonging for some long duration makes the organization to slip down in performance.

This happens more or less in all organizations in India. The governmental organizations and public organizations are typically affected more. Even the so called public schools in private domain are also no exceptions. The private telecom companies are no exceptions. The private electric or gas companies are no exceptions. Many small and silly administrative functions become areas of corruption when they are entrusted to give some facilities to the general public. Otherwise how could the simple functions of a registration become an area of corruption?

Organizations become handicapped to perform, not because the people who are required to work and show the results are incapable of doing so, but of the fact that they are not properly facilitated to perform. In other words, those who are essentially responsible for achieving the objectives of the organization are overshadowed by those people who are deployed for facilitating the former group. The administrative groups knowingly or unknowingly become a nuisance and cause unnecessary sluggishness in the system.

This sluggishness of organizational systems are called system lethargy. But what is not understood is the real mechanism that causes this. This lack of knowledge in turn makes it difficult to resolve the problem without any damage to the systems and functions.

So a nation where more and more such organizations are affected this way, becomes a wonderland. Wonderland because no one really knows how the systems work and how to get works done. Nothing can be predicted. Nothing can be planned. Individually people looks as if they are good and intelligent. But collectively it is too difficult to assess!

I once went to a police station for a passport verification. The police clerk who was supposed to do the work and sent the documents back to the passport office was provided with a small 2' by 2' table and a small chair. Fortunately, he had a steel cabinet which looked as if an antique from the medieval times.And it was full of shabby files. There was no place for him to keep the files, open the files or do any other thing. The whole place was stinking with ink, gum and other such things that spilled for years. There was no place for those like me who happen to go there could sit or even stand. There was no guarantee that the papers that he take out would get misplaced or damaged. Yet this man and his predecessors and successors worked apparently with no flaws. Is it not a wonder? But then, to achieve that wonder, he needs to be motivated to some extent. You need him and others like him to be motivated to work by paying them something! Because they are too demotivated to work in their official environment. They are not facilitated for work nor motivated. The very sight of their work place would demotivate any human being!

If you probe a little more, it is not difficult to find out that there are some others who are supposed to do the work for making the said police station (or for that matter any other office meant for any public service!) with necessary facilities. I am not telling that they are never with any facilities. They do get it. But it would never be the way they want it. It would be either in excess or in scarcity. It would never be in time or regular as they need it. If they have some, then they lack many others. All that is required would never be there! In any case, those who are supposed to do some public service for others become so demotivated that they no more desire to do their work because their work environment is not conducive for self motivated working.

Modern day administration has a cultural legacy from the past. It is founded on the presumption that people are inherently bad and require fear and punishment to keep them working. Perhaps, this notion would be correct to some extent for those who are intellectually weak and inferior. But applying that notion generally to all would be disastrous in modern times.

Therefore, it is a wonderland when the modernized society of the land tries to stick to the mores of the ancients. It is again a wonderland when those who have acquired enough intelligence and maturity behave as if their brains are dwarfed and not expanded to accommodate modern thoughts.

India is such a wonderland. The role of administrators, top to bottom and bottom to top, cannot be neglected in making this country such a wonderland. I do not want these individual administrators to be termed as brain dwarfs, but I can't help it. They could well be individuals having extraordinary brain growths in some directions but not in the direction that would make them befitting to be called as facilitators!

The nation administered by such brain dwarfed individuals would indeed be a wonderland!

A wonderland of puzzles that are difficult to solve!

But is it really difficult to solve these problems? In my opinion, it may not be an easy task to solve these problems totally within a short time. But it could well be done to a considerable extent now. But for doing that there should be a collective desire and an honest resolve by those who happen to occupy top functional levels in various organizations.

And it is up to us whether we want to keep our land a wonderland administered by brain dwarfed individuals always or to make it a nation where all are not kept puzzled always, by having our general administrative departments in various kinds of our organizations simple , transparent and managed by human beings with normal brain growths!

Paying taxes to the government is an unavoidable responsibility of all citizens. Taxes paid by the citizens are used for the common benefit of all people. Hence, taxing the people by the governments cannot be avoided.

There could not be much dispute on this. All right thinking people should agree to this fundamental fact of social responsibility.

But yet many people are scary and worried about taxation. They are annoyed with the governments for creating problems for them in the name of taxation. Governments world over have been in the practice of terrorizing their peoples with many kinds of regressive taxation and taxation laws. In reality, taxation laws are not essentially made with the sole objective of raising funds for the governments to function, but are also aimed for controlling the people with fear inducing whips of taxation laws laden with many kinds of punishments for the defaulters. Many times it is not enough to pay the taxes, but the citizens are forced to submit of file many kinds of reports, called tax returns, to the tax enforcing authorities and keep answering to various kinds of irritating questions from the latter.

This kind of a situation makes the lives of citizens miserable as they are forced to do complex documentation of accounts of their incomes and expenditures which goes beyond their normal level of understanding and capabilities. The governments in turn are forced to keep a large work force of tax enforcers who simply add to the complexities are eat away the good portion of the taxes that are being collected by way of salaries and perks to this great work force attached to the taxation administration departments. Imagine the situation when the governments are spending the good amount of the taxes collected as costs for collecting the taxes!

The same tax administration then becomes the policy making authorities and advisers to the government and a complex system of regressive taxation gets perpetuates in the society. The citizens are becoming angry over their elected representatives who become more and more helpless to do any kind of creative reforms as they are more and more dependent on certain administrative organisations which had grown over to unmanageable levels with complex rules and regulations over the years. When expenses of the government increases every year, there is no other way than to tax the people more. When people are taxed more with more and more regulations, productivity of the people goes down and the tax collections decline compelling the governments to adopt more regressive laws with bigger administrative set ups.

A vicious circle is formed in this process and the elected representatives who get in to the top positions of government becomes helpless to do any thing. The chances of the elected representatives knowing about a complex system of governmental finances are rare as they are representatives of the ordinary citizens. They could be good in criticizing a problematic governmental system with their high pitched voices to the full satisfaction of a good majority of the angry citizens. But when it comes to the question of making those very systems corrected the way they wish, things do not happen that way because they really do not understand the way out. Very often, their zealous attempts add up the complexities because of the lack of knowledge and competency that they and their supporting teams have in varying degrees.

As I have mentioned in some other blogs in these pages earlier, it is not very difficult to understand the difficulty one might face when he tries to remove the knots in an entangled web of strings. If he is an expert and knows the techniques, he could easily do it. Otherwise, he would make more knots and make the web more complex making it difficult for others with some expertise to try for some success. It happens in systems of human organizations as well.

In India, and for that matter in many other countries, the taxation laws are indeed regressive as it stands today. The taxation rates are too high and do not encourage honest tax paying. The tax collection costs are high. The collected taxes do not get evenly or justifiably distributed. The laws talks about only punishments punishments only and not of any incentives to any honest tax payer. High tax payers are treated as anti socials. Wealth generators and entrepreneurs live under constant fear of the authorities because they could be harassed with the tax administration laws and treated like dreaded criminals.

Out of all regressive tax laws the income tax laws in many countries are draconian and do not exhibit any reflections of human civilization or culture. They surely reflect the legacy of the bloody past of the human race when they existed as warring groups with every man antagonistic to every other.

Modern tax laws such as the service tax laws too are becoming harsh and anti people and non-progressive with more negative qualities than positive attributes.

Could there be any alternative where in governments could get the money they need and at the same time the money collection efforts do not harass the people in general. Could there be any system where in taxes could be collected without elaborate tax collection machinery? Could there be any system where in complex rules and laws are not required to be applied? Could there be any system where tax collection by the government is not very much felt by the people as pinching and painful?

It is possible in my opinion. But the only requirement in that case should be that the government should not think of using the law for the whimsical benefits of those who are occupying the seats of power and governance. They should not think of using the laws against some one whom they want to settle the scores. They should only think of getting the money needed to run the governmental functions smoothly and efficiently and nothing more than that. They should not have hidden agendas of using the laws for personal benefits or for perpetuation of corruption.

If they are honest in this, then tax laws could be much simpler. Tax collection would be simple and non pinching to the citizens. They also would not need huge establishments for tax administration which directly and indirectly cause peoples money to be wasted unnecessarily. All the more, governments and peoples' representatives that form the governments would less likely be treated as anti-people!

It is not that economists and leaders who are knowledgeable in economics do not understand these things. The Harvard educated economist and political leader in India, Mr Subramanian Swamy has favored the scrapping of income tax. Think tanks of major political parties are now realizing the anger of the people of India against the governmental establishments as reflected by the victory and popularity of the Aam Admi Party (AAP) and are seriously considering sweeping changes in the direct tax laws for gaining people's support to their favor. [Read : Can Income Tax Be Really Abolished in India?]

As a common citizen who keeps a common sense interest in the non-academic and theoretical aspects of economics, I do agree with the idea of scrapping the regressive income tax as it prevails in India. If it is done and replaced with some other indirect tax system it would definitely be of advantage to the citizens and the country.

But what type of an indirect tax? Some people have been suggesting expenditure tax. But I would rather suggest some kind of transaction tax for transactions of money done through banks. It could apply to all transactions of money transfer between accounts and could apply to the transactor at a low percentage of say 0.5 % of the amount transacted for any purpose. All transaction tax so collected by the banks should go to the government account periodically. All these accounting of deduction of transaction tax and transferring it to the government account should be responsibility of the banks done automatically through appropriate computer software systems.

This system would be equally applicable to all citizens and it is not so harsh in real terms. For large transactors the amounts would be large but for smaller transactors the amount of transaction tax would be negligible. The more the transactions, the more the tax, just as we have in the stock markets.

Assuming that I have a total income of Rs.1000000 per annum. When I get it I pay a tax of 1000000* 0.005 = Rs.5000. When I consume it by paying others, I pay another Rs.5000 and the government gets Rs.10000/- The more I transact, the more I pay taxes. If I get some interest of Rs.100000, I pay Rs 500 as transaction tax. Imagine the potential of collection of tax by the government and its easiness to implement! It is not going to pinch any one as the transactions are done distributively and the rates of transaction tax is low. When the present income tax is abolished, the whole of the income tax establishment and its maintenance costs could be saved.

I know that there are those internal experts of the IT administration who might argue in favor of the income tax again by saying that the maintenance cost of income tax administration is much low. They say that it is less than 1%. Even then, is it necessary to harass the citizens in the name of income tax? Or is it prudent only to get the necessary income for the government for its necessary functions?

Of course, the people now associated with the income tax administration may not agree with this and they are very likely to find thousand and one reasons against any such new ideas. It is understandable.

But governments are required to work for the people and not for fulfilling some desires of some of its employees! No doubt, government employees are also citizens of the country. Their jobs need to be protected. But just for that avoiding some better system is not justifiable. Governments of modern civilized worlds should try to transform their functions as real service to its people in letter and spirit and not for ruling the people with their powers in the name of service. And public servants should be service oriented and not oriented dictatorially for each and everything.

In a society which is a mixture of mature and immature citizens, the percentage of the latter exceeding much above the former, it may not be so easy for government staff to be gentlemanly always. There is a danger of the immature beings taking that gesture as a sign of weakness. Whips do have some pacifying effect on immature beings. But then only mature beings know how to use whips and carrots judiciously!

But in my personal opinion, a time has come to experiment with new systems of taxation. There is a need to change to a system which honors honesty and motivate mature people to function as living examples to those who are not so mature. And taxation laws should encourage people to enhance desirable and productive economic activities rather than discouraging.

All the above are opinions and suggestions from an ordinary citizen of India. An aam admi to be more precise!

And I know very well that there could be only a few other aam admi s (common people) who could understand and agree to what I have opined and no possible supporters from any of those who are in power positions of decision making!

Because those enjoying power positions never have any time to listen to the aam admi s. Even otherwise, power positions do block the receptive faculties of human bodies!

Humans are evolved from animals. Higher animals and humans have much in common. There are mild animals and wild animals and both become mild or wild from time to time and as per situation. Same is the case with humans too.

All animal and human varieties that we observe today have evolved to become what they are today from inferior living beings at some remote time in the past. But they are no more evolving to other forms any more. The evolutionary changes they all underwent are all events of the past.

While they are not making any drastic changes in their general features by which the biologists could separate out any new species, they are all undergoing some kind of minor changes with regard to their behaviors.

While in animals these behavioral changes may not be noticeable much in a long span of time, in humans such changes are visible from generation to generation.

In general humans are changing from wild to mild, cruel to gentle.

But such changes are not taking place en mass. Such genetic changes affecting the behavior centers of the brain cells are taking place very slowly as the generations advance.

Yet, the individual change from wild to mild is not perfectly taking place just it happens in the digital world. It is analogous!

Thus there is a big interaction among wild and mild individuals having varying degrees of mild and wild genes performing within their physical bodies in such a way that every human is unpredictably wild or mild!

In the wild world of the animals, this is more predictable. The nature of wild animals are more predictable with regard to their wild and mild behaviors than in human beings.

This poses a big problem for those humans who have evolved to higher mild natures to live among their lesser evolved cousins.

The milder ones are capable of understanding the problems and also have the physical and mental capacity to withstand the wild atrocities from their wilder cousins. But their inherent milder nature makes them apparently vulnerable.

To withstand the onslaught of wild acts of their wilder cousins, the milder humans might be tempted to revisit their discarded wildness.

In this dilemma, they might feel exhausted, tired and helpless.

But they also get some golden opportunities to find some intrinsic truths from these contrasts.

But mild looking wild animals (and humans) are anyway too dangerous for those mild and unsuspecting animals (and humans)!

The mild ones need not become wild to get away from such threats. They only need to develop the technique of identifying those mild looking ones with wild features hidden deep in their brains!

Even identifying is not enough; they also should know how to get away from getting caught by those wild teeth and claws!

Remember, evolution is not yet a finished process. It is still continuing and in the intermediate stage.

It is going to take much time before every one is finished as perfectly mild!

My friend Prof.Ujjager Singh Kooner has a very appreciable habit of sharing many pieces of humour, wisdom thoughts and interesting information to his friends by e-mail. No doubt there are many such good people in this world who take pains to create such thoughts and ideas in to pleasing visuals and keep sharing these with their friends and followers.

While many writers and bloggers do things for some material returns and personal benefits, there are a big community of people who do such things without expecting anything in return.

Whether done for some benefits or not, their services are to be appreciated. Kudos to all of them.

Let me share some of those visuals that I received today from Prof. Kooner. I am in full agreement with the wisdom thoughts reflected in these visuals.

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[Courtsey: All those unknown creators and publishers!]

Primitive humans evolved from animals a million year ago on earth slowly resolved their problems of making a living, at least partially. Their population increased to millions.

They were then confronted with the task of regulating human contacts.

The development of industry demanded law, order, and social adjustment; private property necessitated government.

On an evolutionary world, antagonisms are natural; peace is secured only by some sort of social regulative system.

Social regulation is inseparable from social organization; association implies some controlling authority.

Government compels the co-ordination of the antagonisms of the tribes, clans, families, and individuals.

Government is an unconscious development; it evolves by trial and error. It does have survival value; therefore it becomes traditional.

Anarchy augmented misery; therefore government, comparative law and order, slowly emerged or is emerging.

The coercive demands of the struggle for existence literally drove the human race along the progressive road to civilization.

War is the natural state and heritage of evolving man; peace is the social yardstick measuring civilization's advancement.

Before the partial socialization of the advancing races man was exceedingly individualistic, extremely suspicious, and unbelievably quarrelsome.

Violence is the law of nature, hostility the automatic reaction of the children of nature, while war is but these same activities carried on collectively.

And wherever and whenever the fabric of civilization becomes stressed by the complications of society's advancement, there is always an immediate and ruinous reversion to these early methods of violent adjustment of the irritations of human inter-associations.

War is an animalistic reaction to misunderstandings and irritations; peace attends upon the civilized solution of all such problems and difficulties.

There could be no such phenomenon as war until society had evolved sufficiently far to actually experience periods of peace and to sanction warlike practices. The very concept of war implies some degree of organization.

With the emergence of social groupings, individual irritations began to be submerged in the group feelings, and this promoted intra-tribal tranquility but at the expense of inter-tribal peace.

Peace was thus first enjoyed by the in-group, or tribe, who always disliked and hated the out-group, foreigners. Early man regarded it a virtue to shed alien blood.

Warfare persists because man is human, evolved from an animal, and all animals are bellicose (ready to fight).

In past ages a fierce war would institute social changes and facilitate the adoption of new ideas such as would not have occurred naturally in ten thousand years. The terrible price paid for these certain war advantages was that society was temporarily thrown back into savagery; civilized reason had to abdicate.

War is strong medicine, very costly and most dangerous; while often curative of certain social disorders, it sometimes kills the patient, destroys the society.

War has had a certain evolutionary and selective value, but like slavery, it must sometime be abandoned as civilization slowly advances.

Olden wars promoted travel and cultural inter-mixing; these ends are now better served by modern methods of transport and communication.

Olden wars strengthened nations, but modern struggles disrupt civilized culture.

Ancient warfare resulted in the decimation of inferior peoples; the net result of modern conflict is the selective destruction of the best human stocks.

Early wars promoted organization and efficiency, but these have now become the aims of modern industry.

During past ages war was a social ferment which pushed civilization forward; this result is now better attained by ambition and invention.

Ancient warfare supported the concept of a God of battles, but modern man has been told that God is love.

War has served many valuable purposes in the past, it has been an indispensable scaffolding in the building of civilization, but it is rapidly becoming culturally bankrupt—incapable of producing dividends of social gain in any way commensurate with the terrible losses attendant upon its invocation.

At one time physicians believed in bloodletting as a cure for many diseases, but they have since discovered better remedies for most of these disorders. And so must the international bloodletting of war certainly give place to the discovery of better methods for curing the ills of nations.

Do not make the mistake of glorifying war; rather discern what it has done for society so that you may the more accurately visualize what its substitutes must provide in order to continue the advancement of civilization. And if such adequate substitutes are not provided, then you may be sure that war will long continue.

Man will never accept peace as a normal mode of living until he has been thoroughly and repeatedly convinced that peace is best for his material welfare, and until society has wisely provided peaceful substitutes for the gratification of that inherent tendency periodically to let loose a collective drive designed to liberate those ever-accumulating emotions and energies belonging to the self-preservation reactions of the human species.

But even in passing, war should be honored as the school of experience which compelled a race of arrogant individualists to submit themselves to highly concentrated authority—a chief executive. Old-fashioned war did select the innately great men for leadership, but modern war no longer does this.

To discover leaders society must now turn to the conquests of peace: industry, science, and social achievement.

[As told by the Urantia Book; Visit Urantia-India Site to know More about it]

Today I would like to share with my readers two things which have been in my mind for quite some time, but intermixed with many other thoughts. But two things happened yesterday that caused these to be brought out that I write some thing about these and share with those who might happen to read it.

The first event was attending a small christian convention arranged by the small group of MalayaleeMarthoma community of thirty odd families in Ranchi to which I too belong. Such annual congregational meetings arranged for a couple days are part of the routine programs of the Marthoma parishes for keeping the members refreshed of the good teachings of the Bible and giving them an opportunity for re-dedication of their individual lives to live a meaningful life. As we human beings are inherently non-perfect, there is a need for continuing efforts from the side of preachers and teachers for keeping us in the right path always. Even those exposed to such efforts also are not becoming anywhere near perfection is another thing that many others like to debate.

So our parish committee had invited a well known revival speaker from Kerala, who also happened to be an elderly priest of the Marthoma Church. He had come all the way as the main speaker for our spiritual three nights' christian conference and yesterday night we had the first night meeting from 6-30 PM to 9-00 PM at our small chapel located in the premises of St.Thomas School, Ranchi managed by our parish members.

The opening remark of the speaker was a direct and piercing question to each one of the individuals assembled there including me who are all the so-called Christians. He asked this:

" Is your life a blessing? Or is it a curse?" He continued to expand that theme question further based on what Jesus has been told as taught as described in John 15: 1-17 . This is the famous teaching of Jesus about 'the vine and the branches' where he equates himself as the vine and his followers as the branches commanding his followers to love each other.

Incidentally this is the sum and substance of Jesus' teaching which is stressed again and again in the Urantia Book as well many times. Let me put it the way I understood it:

If God is the creator of humans, then He is the universal father of all human beings (for a moment let us forget all those other beings and things of the universe that He had created.)

Then there exists a bondage of inherent brotherly or sisterly love among all humans. The fundamental duty of all human beings is to love his creator father God and also his siblings unconditionally. Love here has a different meaning. It means devotion, service and care than what other meanings that we attach with that word in some other context.

As children of God, the fundamental duty of all human beings is to abide in the love of God. And those who are not abiding in that love of nourishment would cease to exist just as the branches of the vine that is cut and removed from the vine.

When me and my wife returned back yesterday night at around 9.30 pm IST (17th Jan 2014) I thought of watching the late night news in the TV. All Indian channels were beaming the news about the sudden death of a glamorous Indian lady, the third wife of an internationally famous Indian and a high profile central government minister of India under mysterious circumstances in a five star hotel suite in New Delhi.

The lady was in her prime middle age and was materially very successful just as her husband.

The news media has been analyzing the cause and consequences of this tragic incident. How could these very successful people could have a life of miseries and sorrows in their private lives while publicly they appeared smiling and happy most of the times?

What went wrong?

How could they become some thing of a curse to themselves and many around them while every one viewed their life with full of blessings?

Were these blissful couple a blessing to others?

Today morning while I was reading more about them using the internet resources, I chanced to read an interesting article titled : the Biblical Money Code. [It is too lengthy and you should consider clicking the link and reading the whole article yourself. It is worth reading. Book mark this page for a future reading if you do not have the time now.]

It is about the idea of money and wealth which matches with the concepts that I have been nourishing for some time now. It is written by one famous American, named Sean Hyman a successful investor, money maker and money giver. In the article, which perhaps you might have read by now, he is explaining the principles of money and wealth generation successfully in accordance with the teachings of the Bible.

Let me stress what he had stressed in the article: " Love of money is the root of all kinds of evil". But money is not the evil, it is the love for money.

And love for money and material gain is greed. I learnt a new word from Mr Sean Hyman, the humble american pastor who is also a successful investor who claims the use of the biblical money code for his success.

And that Greek word is : Philargyria [fil-aar-gee-rya] : the insatiable greed for money and material pleasures!

But when this philargyria overtakes the divine command we face the danger of being cut off from the nourishing love of God that enables us to live as a blessing to all including we ourselves.

And that is indeed a very pathetic situation.

But yet, it is indeed a puzzle for me that many of us are not able to overcome our greed and love for money, wealth and material pleasures.

Are you using your knowledge, skills, competence and such other talents for the pursuit of philargyria?

Do you want to end up your life wretched as if entangled in curses for generations even when you had all the so-called genius and talents?

Think it over.

You could still be wealthy and your life could be a blessing to all if you do not allow that greed and love for money to overtake your mind and senses.

Modify your passions and ambitions with character and compassion. While you earnestly do your work and while you gain wealth and money, remember that you do that in accordance with the divine commandments.

We are not supposed to do our works affected by any kind of dishonesty that could deprive or cause some damage to our fellow beings. We have to be compassionate to our fellow beings-children of God- all the while we do our work.

Because we all exist for doing some kind of work which is a service to some others around us and we need to be compassionate to others while we do our part of the responsibilities entrusted to us.

If it is that way we are going to live a life which is a blessing to others. If it is a blessing to others it could no doubt be a blessing to us too!

Let not that type of things similar to the tragic case that I mentioned above happen in our lives!

Yesterday night I was watching the Indian national TV news channels with tears in my eyes and chocking in my throat caused by untold emotion. I tell you, I am not a person of sentiments and emotions in the ordinary manner. But when I see evil getting overpowered even in the slightest manner, I get emotional. This indescribable emotion pervades my mind and senses whenever there is some victory of good in some way in this world entrenched in the hands of demonic forces in all subtle ways not normally discerned by ordinary souls!

Something big was happening in the National Capital Territory (NCR) of India-Delhi, yesterday, the 20th January 2014.

A group of elected peoples' representatives belonging to the brand new political entity of India, the Aam Admi Party (AAP) were proceeding to lead a peaceful protest agitation in front of the building that houses the home ministry offices of the central government of India. Leading them from the front were the whole members of the cabinet of ministers of the new state government of Delhi marching behind their undisputed leader and their Chief Minister Shri Arvind Kejriwal. They had only taken charge of the new governmental administration in the capital region of Delhi under compelling circumstances just a month ago.

And this group had a challenging responsibility with them. They had given an assurance to to the people to work against corruption that has engulfed India almost fully in the recent decades that the existing political set up had failed to accomplish. More precisely, the existing political system have become part and parcel of a corrupt system which the people have almost taken for granted because there was no escape route for them. Now on this scene, a new face has been emerging. And he is Arvind Kejriwal, a name that has become well known to most of the common people of India. His rise to popularity was not an easy task, but a saga of sacrifice, dedication and determination.

Arvind Kejriwal is no ordinary soul. He is not from my generation, but one from a much younger generation of Indians. The time when I began watching this young man and his activities towards initiation of reforms in the otherwise doomed Indian society, instinctively I was realizing that this man is a new saint in the making in my country. A Mahatma. Perhaps even greater than Mahatma Gandhi ji who took the British empire head on to free India from the foreign colonialism of the last few centuries.

Mahatma Gandhi could become successful in his peaceful satyagraha agitation because he was fighting against a system of governance which gave some credence to human values. But Arvind Kejriwal has initiated a struggle against a system that totally ignored human values in practice while deceitfully projecting it as the fundamental law. Undoubtedly, the latter's task was not at all easy when compared to the former. Besides, in the times of Kejriwal, the people for whom he took up the initiative have become a divided , confused and lethargic lot who have lost their basic ability to discern good and bad or to react.

I have been witnessing the gradual deterioration of my country with the rise of demonic forces in all walks of life in the past nearly six decades. The percentage of good people in the country have been reducing in the leadership positions and the ordinary citizens of the country have been losing their faith in good and have been moving towards evil for survival. The majority having some good still left within them have been losing their strength to resist evil in any manner. They took shelter under many promising leaders in the past only to realize that they were all demons in disguise to cheat and mislead them. The net result was that people like me were losing faith in leaders. There is no one out there who could be trusted. All are with vested interests.

This situation gave the demonic forces the ultimate cheer that they wanted to achieve! So long as the people do not have any good leader, their victory remained unchallenged! The demonic forces therefore first attempted to destroy any possible good leadership that tried to emerge either directly or indirectly. If such leaders showed any inclination to get tarnished in error or evil even to the slightest manner, the demons celebrated. In other words, a time has come where good is denounced and evil is praised.

So naturally, Arvind Kejriwal who took up the moral issue of eradication of corruption as his mission, he was naturally becoming an enemy of the evil forces who were all around him. In the beginning they were too confident of their strength. So they pooh-poohed him. But when they found that unexpected public support in his favor, they began to think of clever ways to discredit him.

The evil forces has been trying to hoodwink this frail looking, physically weakened leader with acute cold and cough in the cold polluted weather of Delhi ever since he got elevated to a position of high responsibility under compelling and shameful political drama played by the established political forces of India by all means. Many thought he would succumb to the evil influences. Many have been eagerly watching and waiting him to fall from grace to disgrace. The invisible evil forces have been making all out efforts to bring him down. But they were doing it the way the cat drinking the milk. They kept their eyes closed thinking that no one is seeing (their clever deeds that they kept doing)

I have been watching and reading those small pieces of information and news about the hard testing this innocently looking young man was facing in the political arena of India.

There is a big group of young and dedicated Indians supporting him openly. All their faces reflected a radiance of honesty, innocence and determination to fight the evil. I listened to the common Indians around me. What were they saying about this new leader. To my surprise I found that the hitherto silent Indians are now speaking out their frustrations about the system that has been suppressing them cleverly for all these years. The system so deceptively woven up by clever and intelligent people from their lot who were using it for their full benefits and selfish ends!

Now here is a leader who is not there to take advantage of the system for his personal gains.

How do you know? It is too early to tell because all the previous leaders too were like this. Even Hitler too was a pious common man's leader earlier before he became a ruthless dictator!

Of course, power and position corrupt even angels. What to talk about the lowly humans?

But yet, there is some thing different in this man, my mind was telling me. He is not going to be like Hitler or those of that kind. Neither he would be of those deceptive ones who keep talking many things but never do any thing against the societal cancer called corruption.

He is not there for making some big gains for him. He seems to be honest in his mission of fighting corruption. And that honesty is reflected on his face that is discernible by all who are unbiased.

That instills awe and admiration.

I prayed to God earnestly to give him the strength of mind that he needs most to withstand all those tacit pressures his opponents have been applying with no sympathies. For them, the cause for which he stood for was nothing. For them people and the country have been just opportunities for meeting their personal agendas and interests. They cared little for the nation in the real sense. But collectively they cared much for themselves. The demons know the real threat that could have from any being with some divine blessings! The best way to withstand any divine intervention is to influence any divine messenger to their fold.The practice of converting saints to demons have been in vogue for the past many thousands of years!

But if a saintly person keep refusing to join their ranks, the demons become nervous and showing off their demonic real faces. They then take out the weapons of physical aggression and cruelty, their last weapons in store.

But this determined young leader with a will power stronger than any other leaders that human kind has seen in recent times has been showing a determination to take the demonic forces head on. He has no army and no weapons. What he has is his strength of character and ethics and the motivation of the good mission that he has so courageously took up. He has embarked upon a mission to fight corruption, the deceptive weapon of the demons and the followers of evil, knowing well that the demons could attempt to destroy him with all their might.

They had gifted him the covet position of chief minister-ship as if as a great favor and expected him to enjoy this 'office of profit' quietly as every others have been doing so far or would have naturally done. They also began to bestow him all the associated facilities and perks. When he declined to accept those, they tried to mock and ridicule him by branding him as a person of high and insatiable greed and ambition dreaming of capturing the highest office of profit in the country- the prime minister-ship! Even the media men who were praising him a few days ago have been influenced to speak against him and tarnish him by using any opportunities that they might get.

The whole of the armed forces of the capital were paraded against him to terrorize him and his simple admirers by creating a situation initially to instigate him to a simple , peaceful but justified protest.

But he has been relentless. He has so far withstood all those pressures, an unlikely sight in India in the recent past history. And he was heavily and visibly depending on his moral strength and his conviction of the divine protection and support.

As I watched that display of moral courage that this saintly man has been showing so far, I was feeling proud of this leader. Is he the incarnation of the legendary god of India, the Shri Krishna? The famous quotation of Bhagavat Gita began to play back in my mind:

"paritranaaya saadhoonam vinashaaya cha dushkritaam dharma-samsthapanaarthaaya sambhavami yuge yuge"

[परित्राणाय साधुनाम विनाशाय च: दुष्कृताम धर्मं संस्थापनार्थाय संभवामि युगे युगे]

In order to deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to re-establish the principles of religion, I advent myself millennium after millennium

Mahatma Kejriwal ji is asking for a small symbolic gesture of giving some small punishment to a few erring policemen of Delhi now. It is not a big deal any way. But underlying that apparently small gesture is a big issue that the evil forces are scared of. The demonic forces cannot accept that small thing now because they know that would provide this frail saint a big moral victory.

But if the stories of the great Indian epic Mahabharata is any indication, then we should remember that the divine forces normally start their actions from seemingly small mistakes of the demons.

I am not sure whether Mahatma Kejriwalji is going to win his war of morality that he has undertaken now against the immoral forces that prevail the length and breadth of India, the land of Mahabharata.

But it is going to be the beginning of a big era of changes in this land that the demonic forces are scared of from happening.

Because I am convinced of the wisdom of the divine administration that pervade in the whole of the universes including our small world earth.

If you support the cause of good over evil and the views I have expressed, you should consider sharing this with those of similar views for supporting this war of morality that has begun in India.

We may not be able to involve with him directly.

But at the least, we should give this saintly leader our moral support when he needs it most.

[Read the full news about the back ground of the latest struggle of India led by Arvind Kerjriwal in this article: Arvind Kejriwal's dharna: Why Delhi Police vs. state govt row is more political than administrative?]

Have you ever heard about this word Plutocracy?

Since you are reading this blog in English, the chances of you knowing about Aristocracy, Democracy, Bureaucracy and Technocracy could be a better possibility. But plutocracy is a relatively a new term and in the 'free market' and 'liberalized' world order of the current times, it is very very important to know more about it, if you haven't known about it earlier.

Plutocracy is the situation when a society is indirectly ruled by a few rich individuals. It is the situation when a handful of the wealthiest people indirectly controls the country or the world and its governments and the people.

If you have the intelligence, capacity and interest you should consider knowing more about this by reading about it in Wikipedia.[ Read about Plutocracy in Wiki by clicking here!]

Now you should consider reading the research article by the Global Research Centre for Research on Globalization on Global Plutocracy.

Let me quote a few lines from this article which warns us about the modern economic evil called plutocracy:

There is no parallel in human history to the immense concentration of wealth that exists today, nor to the extremes of parasitism and decadence that constitute the “new normal.” Contemporary capitalism—what the ruling class and its political and media flunkies call the “free enterprise system”—has created a world in which every policy decision is dictated by the need to protect and increase the wealth of an infinitesimal portion of the world’s population.

This global plutocracy—by definition, a society governed by the wealthy—generates a huge and ever-increasing portion of the ruling elite’s wealth not from the production of useful products and expansion of society’s productive capacities, but from the manipulation of money, speculation and outright swindling—essentially criminal activities that are destructive of the productive forces.

A few hundred people, backed by an army of bribed politicians, academic apologists, intelligence spooks, experts of all sorts and the repressive force of the military and police, hold civilization by the throat and threaten to destroy it to satisfy their insatiable greed.

This social—or, to be more precise, anti-social—element is virulently hostile to the people, contemptuous of democratic rights, and militaristic.

In its effort to expand its personal wealth, it relentlessly attacks the living standards of the working class—the vast majority of the population. All over the world, governments controlled by the plutocrats impose ever more painful austerity, cutting wages, slashing jobs, dismantling social programs, closing schools, gutting health care. State treasuries are emptied to provide bailouts to the banks and corporations and central banks pump trillions into the financial markets to drive up stock prices, corporate profits and CEO pay. All legal restrictions on profit-making are lifted.

If a few persons are managing the wealth of the nation or the globe wisely, I should not have any problem with that. Rather no one should have and we should be happy. But if they draw their wisdom from evil sources and not as per divine guidance, then they are perhaps becoming agents of evil forces either knowingly or unknowingly. The end result would be catastrophe or painful destruction and misery.

When some one becomes a victim of slow poison, it is not very easy to understand its effects immediately. But end result is sure.

How do you know whether you are an advocate of plutocracy?

You should consider reading this blog too where you can read about the divine advice regarding management of wealth .

What could be done to prevent plutocracy from slow poisoning our world to catastrophe?

It is time to think!

When it comes to defining corruption, people in India often seem to be concerned with corruption that takes place with government controlled organizations such as the law enforcement organizations, the railways, the revenue and land record offices, the registration and tax offices, etc.

There are three kinds of people.

The first kind and perhaps the minority kind are the people who are innately honest. They are tuned to their inner voice in such a way that they would not do an act of dishonesty because if they do it, it pinches and troubles them. Such people when employed in any organization would not try to cheat or cause any harm to any one. They follow the rules and the laws not because they fear any consequences, but because their own consciousness would not allow them to do it. They are satisfied with the remuneration or salary what they get as allowed by the rules and would not seek adopt corrupt practices to enhance their incomes by illegitimate means or corrupt practices. The society would benefit much if this kind of people are in a majority. In India, it is generally believed that this kind of people are a minority. Their numbers would be around 10 % or even less.

The second kind of people are the majority and these are the people who do not normally adopt any corrupt practices for their own benefits not because they are inherently honest, but because they do not have the opportunities or are scared of getting caught or punished. The fear of consequences and the lack of opportunity prevent them from adopting corrupt practices. Since they are not innately honest, the removal of fear of consequences or availability of favorable situations may change them completely. A person of this kind who used to appear as honest and has been preaching honesty or fighting corruption could one day become a fully corrupt personality. India which is rated as a nation of high corruption is believed to have a high percentage of this kind of people. Their numbers could be as high as 80%. They are inherently opportunists because they are inherently cowards. They tend to adopt the majority stand and they like to be with the majority. They support the majority voice. They would not like to expose their true nature to any one. What they talk in public may not be the same when they talk in private! They are the fence sitters.

The third type is again a minority and are the dare devils. They are openly and inherently evil and corrupt. They are not honest and they do not believe in such good character attributes of people. They would try to justify their acts of corruption by giving examples of those of the second type who are in majority. They believe everything is right in war, love, politics and business. Fear of punishments do not deter them and they think that they are too clever to over come such silly eventualities. If there are no opportunities, they would try and create opportunities for accomplishing their missions. Since they are not inherently honest, they may also know the art of buttering and talking pleasantly so that others would fall prey to their cunning acts. They are usually a minority and their percentages would be to the tune of only about 10%. But they are the ones who try to perpetuate evil in a society and their acts influence the second category of people in such a way that more and more of the latter are taken to their fold.

So the people in any society could be divided in three classes as the good ones, the fence sitters and the evil ones. In a country like India which is generally perceived as corrupt their proportion would be 10:80:10. As such the good and the evil ones would balance each other generally. But the majority, the fence sitters make all the difference to the society at any given time. It is the perceptions of the fence sitters which decide the fate of a country or a society at any given time period. As the fence sitters are opportunists, they keep swinging from right to left or from evil to good or good to evil from time to time.

But when people of inherent good and honesty increases, things would change positively. Otherwise, evil spreads and every one suffers. Ratio of inherently good or bad ones changes considerably only with generation changes. In general, percentage of good people increase (though marginally) with every generation. But so long as the fence sitters are a big majority, this change would not be much perceivable for many generations.

In India, corruption is not limited to public organizations. Private business organizations and religious organizations, non-governmental social service organizations, charity organizations are all affected by it because they all draw their peoples from the general fraternity of people.

In reality, the corruption in the education sector affects more people in India much more severely than any other form of corruption. And education sector in India is now predominantly in the hands of non-governmental trusts and societies, many of them declaring their objectives as religious, charitable or educational or social or all of these. The non social and non charitable corrupt practices they adopt affect the children and their parents severely and they do it as if permitted under the prevailing laws! It is a now common practice now that the managing boards of these private institutions mint money for themselves in the name of charity or educational social work in the guise of their honorary or voluntary works. They also bribe the personnel of the statutory bodies who are supposed to monitor their functions for compliance as per the laws for facilitating them to violate the rules with impunity.

While it is easy to blame the people associated with the government sector as mostly corrupt, it is not true to assume that the private non-governmental sectors are corruption free in India. It all depends on the type of people they are comprised of.

Private businessmen in many cases deal with public money. It could be the money of the general shareholders from the public or it could be money lent by the banks. These are public money and hence the business men have to use this money with care. They cannot spend this money for making money for them in any clandestine manner. If they do, it is corruption just the way it is dealt had it been in the governmental organizations or governmental business.

Unfortunately for the country, and fortunately for those indulging in corrupt practices, India presently does not have suitable anti corruption laws that could give some deterrence in preventing corruption in the non governmental sectors. This has led to the proliferation of non-governmental organizations in India parading for doing social works and actually perpetuating corruption.

People associated with such organizations are fearing the rise of political parties such as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) because they fear the latter to clip whimsical powers that they have been enjoying for personal gains.

And it would also be not so easy for AAP to have their organization built up using only the first kind of people!

The Difference Between Mercy and Justice: What Jesus Taught His Indian Friend !

About the Functions of the Human Mind: What Jesus told his Indian Friend!

Modern Democratic Diplomacy in Mutually Disrespectful Mode as Exemplified by Two Great Democracies!

Some Random Thoughts about Food, Living, Intelligence and Spiritual Wisdom !

About Political Sovereignty, Law , Liberty, War and Peace : Some Statements of Supernal Wisdom!

Competency, Character , Courage and Compassion -the 4 C's that Ensure Long term Success of a Leader!

Migrating from the Era of Negative Laws to an Era of Positive Laws: Need to Think Originally!

Was the Lord God of Ancient Israel Pleased by Human Sacrifice ?

Adieu to 31st December 2013 with Some Abstract Thoughts !

Learning to Respect Leaders with 4 Cs for Reducing Acts of Omission and Commission in Public Functions!

The Price You Pay for Ignorance and Incompetence!

In the Wonderland Publicly Administered by Brain Dwarfed Individuals !

Thinking of A Modern Non Pinching Taxation Regime? Transaction Tax Could Be the Answer !

Wild and Mild Animals and Humans!

Sharing Some Pieces of Wisdom Thoughts That I Received Today With My Readers !

Sharing Some Advanced Thoughts on War and Peace; Evolution of Government and Civilization!

Do You Allow Philargyria to Overtake You ? Is Your Life A Blessing or A Curse ?

A New Indian Mahatma is Emerging-Mahatma Kejriwal ji - to Liberate Modern India from Demonic Forces!

Plutocracy: Know More About this Subtle Economic Evil that is Slow Poisoning this Earth to Catastrophe!

Corruption in Private Organizations in India: Something People Do Not Seem to Bother Much !