Amidst of all the negative media reports on the Delhi Commonwealth Games, one would almost forget what still is accomplished in a country where it's difficult to accomplish something, due to climate, culture or whatever.
Judge for yourself through this link.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/album.php?aid=2072464&id=1111507645&fbid=1563378840343
Monday, September 27, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
The modelstate Belgium
or 'Belgium for dummies'
In this video, the organisation of the country Belgium is explained for whoever is willing to understand.
The main difference between the organisation of India and the organisation of Belgium is that India is complex in itself, but its organisation is a clear "laissez-faire, laissez-passer".
In Belgium the reality is simple, but the organisation makes it complex.
In this video, the organisation of the country Belgium is explained for whoever is willing to understand.
The main difference between the organisation of India and the organisation of Belgium is that India is complex in itself, but its organisation is a clear "laissez-faire, laissez-passer".
In Belgium the reality is simple, but the organisation makes it complex.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Why India cannot loose the Commonwealth Games
Indians are so clever that you won't believe it. Typical in their thinking is the holistic approach to reality. The number of factors that an average Indian can include in his thinking, before actually deciding something, is not expressible with digits only. Several thousands of years the Subcontinent has been refining its approach to reality, adding each day factors and realities to the concepts of its worldview.
Don't be mistaken by the Gandhian ideology of peaceful resistance! Don't let the image of Om-chanting nice boys and girls influence your understanding of modern-day Indian competitiveness.
THERE'S NOTHING WORSE THAN TRYING TO COMPETE INDIANS!
Because of their holistic approach of reality, competing with Indians is for people coming from lesser developed cultural parts of the world a hell of a task.
Take the Commonwealth Games...
We Westerners think it's about a sport competition, limited to a short period of two weeks in October 2010. We think that the competition is done by athletes dedicated to this task. And according to us, to organise such a big happening requires a series of actions in which one action causes a success or failure of the next action which is logically following the first.
What a simplification!
What a terrible underestimation of the Indian holistic competitive mind!
I've mentioned it before in one of the past blogs, in India they think: "White people work hard ... but they are soooo stupid! They just don't understand anything!"
In the Indian mindset, the competition for the Commonwealth Games started already from the moment they were assigned to Delhi, in 2003.
And by now, 22th of September 2010 and two weeks before the actual competition, the winner already is known!
For the readers coming from countries in the world with a lesser advanced understanding of human nature, I will explain this.
By first delaying all works related to the CWG and consequently distributing the news to the whole world about delays, corruption, unbudgeted costs, etc., India implemented a first climate of doubt in the hearts of all the competing countries. "Was it a wise decision to allot India these games? Are they able to properly organise such a big event?" were questions asked everywhere in member countries with a rather limited understanding of how a sports competition is to be undertaken.
Then, the more the Games date approached, the information coming out of India became more and more specific: "Only one third of all Games related works was on schedule" (spring 2010), "The CWG-song is not good" (August 2010), "The Games cost 3 billion dollars, compared to the 1 billion of Melbourne" (August 2010), etc.
Doubt in the hearts of athletes and sports representatives in the member countries with a lesser sophisticated view on sport tactics, changed slowly into disbelief.
A very strong attack on the morale of athletes was given by the Indian warning:
"Watch out for dengue!!!!! A lot of people died already!!!! You might as well be the next one!!! We doubt if we can fight this danger!!! We cannot protect you against it!".
The Indian competitors cleverly judged that especially western athletes, simple as they are in connecting competition in sport to health issues, are very sensitive to everything that is related to health. So the Indians expected that quite some athletes would give up on the Games. The Indians knew that their competitors would be confusing "getting an incurable disease" (which is a fate coming to us without our control - every Indian just knows this already in first grade!), with the "threads coming from highly spirited competition".
At this moment we are hardly two weeks before the Games should begin. What do you expect? The Indians now start showing the muscles of their holistic minds:
Three days back, the newly build Games Village was presented to the Chief Executive Mike Hooper, who was born and educated in a more philosophical backward Western country and thus never had the chance to develop a high sophisticated understanding of what is really going on in the world of competitive sports.
Of course whe cannot blame him for that. But he proofed to be no match for his Indian counterparts.
Before the said Chief Executive entered the Games Village, some carefully chosen Indians were ordered to go to the flats and to create some mess here and there. They were more specifically told to use the toilets without being too precise in targeting the pot. But of course not before the plumbery and sewage tubes were disconnected. This to maximise the effect of the sportive action.
The subtle suggestion was made as well to take along a few stray dogs which were relocated from locations far from Delhi, to add some momentum to the scene.
After inspecting the apartments, the Chief Executive told the whole world they were "filthy and inhabitable for human beings".
Can you imagine the demoralisation which occurs in simple-thinking and narrow-minded Westerners, who only have a limited and non-holistic knowledge of hygiene standards? When they realised that they would have to go to extremely dirty toilets during the games, the vaste majority cancelled their trip to the Spiritual Country! They all already heard earlier about Delhi-belly for sure!
In a strange reversal of the concept of outsourcing, some countries were even so disgusted that they ordered their athletes to chase away the dogs and clean up the mess themselves.
And which athletes were practising and training their sports without interruption during these cleaning efforts of the competing athletes? Indeed, the Indians!
Two days back a canopy erected at Nehru Stadium collapsed. How can I explain you the deep disturbing effect of this symbolic and highly competitive sportive action by the Indians? One needs to have a considerably deep insight in Hinduism to completely grasp this. I will give it a try:
The canopy itself was erected by the use of iron pillars. These pillars symbolise the male phallus. After a short erection and at the very moment everyone was thinking that they would stay firmly erected ... they came down! Can you really understand the very subtle symbolic meaning of this Indian attack on the Western limited mindset?
What a coincidence that in the previous weeks we did read in all Indian newspapers about the cohorts of sexy ladies of all skincolors available in the world (except Black) who were shipped from all corners of the country and even from across all Indian borders to Delhi NCR. To serve the athletes from abroad in all their carnal needs (and as we all know in the West: healthiness stimulates the carnal needs).
Many, many athletes REbooked their flight after reading these inviting and promising messages. Only one day after they cancelled their bookings in the previous phase of the Indian attack.
At that precise moment, the Indians let collapse the canopy ...
As if one cancellation was not good enough, the holistic-thinking Indian sport strategists forced these simple athletes to cancel their bookings for the second time within two weeks!
And all this was only realised by Indian Mind Power only. Without labour, without sweat, without even one Indian athlete being exhausted...
Yesterday a foot overbridge collapsed in the neighbourhood of Nehru Stadium. 27 labourers injured. The message to the athletes educated in traditional non-holistic physics? "In India we don't use the poor and rigid distinction between "above" and "below"". Just think for a while about what effect this destruction of the Western dichotomic pair "above-below" has on, for instance, the jumpers or the weightlifters.
Today the false ceiling at the Nehru Stadium preferred to follow the laws of gravity.
The Law of Gravity is for simple Western minds just what it is ... a physical law you can use to do all kinds of mathematical calculations and make predictions in physics. But in the hands of the Indian sportcoaches, duly educated in a holistic approach of reality, this law becomes a real weapon!
Tomorrow ...
-------------------------------------------------
Without any doubt, this Indian Master Plan of attacking the morale of athletes coming from societies which have only developed a very poor - should I say retarded? - understanding of reality, will be further executed in the next two weeks.
Up to the point where NO ATHLETES EXCEPT FOR INDIAN ONES WILL BE PRESENT AT THE GAMES.
Then ... who will get the Gold, Silver and Bronze medals and all the rewards, you think ?
Right ...
Don't be mistaken by the Gandhian ideology of peaceful resistance! Don't let the image of Om-chanting nice boys and girls influence your understanding of modern-day Indian competitiveness.
THERE'S NOTHING WORSE THAN TRYING TO COMPETE INDIANS!
Because of their holistic approach of reality, competing with Indians is for people coming from lesser developed cultural parts of the world a hell of a task.
Take the Commonwealth Games...
We Westerners think it's about a sport competition, limited to a short period of two weeks in October 2010. We think that the competition is done by athletes dedicated to this task. And according to us, to organise such a big happening requires a series of actions in which one action causes a success or failure of the next action which is logically following the first.
What a simplification!
What a terrible underestimation of the Indian holistic competitive mind!
I've mentioned it before in one of the past blogs, in India they think: "White people work hard ... but they are soooo stupid! They just don't understand anything!"
In the Indian mindset, the competition for the Commonwealth Games started already from the moment they were assigned to Delhi, in 2003.
And by now, 22th of September 2010 and two weeks before the actual competition, the winner already is known!
For the readers coming from countries in the world with a lesser advanced understanding of human nature, I will explain this.
By first delaying all works related to the CWG and consequently distributing the news to the whole world about delays, corruption, unbudgeted costs, etc., India implemented a first climate of doubt in the hearts of all the competing countries. "Was it a wise decision to allot India these games? Are they able to properly organise such a big event?" were questions asked everywhere in member countries with a rather limited understanding of how a sports competition is to be undertaken.
Then, the more the Games date approached, the information coming out of India became more and more specific: "Only one third of all Games related works was on schedule" (spring 2010), "The CWG-song is not good" (August 2010), "The Games cost 3 billion dollars, compared to the 1 billion of Melbourne" (August 2010), etc.
Doubt in the hearts of athletes and sports representatives in the member countries with a lesser sophisticated view on sport tactics, changed slowly into disbelief.
A very strong attack on the morale of athletes was given by the Indian warning:
"Watch out for dengue!!!!! A lot of people died already!!!! You might as well be the next one!!! We doubt if we can fight this danger!!! We cannot protect you against it!".
The Indian competitors cleverly judged that especially western athletes, simple as they are in connecting competition in sport to health issues, are very sensitive to everything that is related to health. So the Indians expected that quite some athletes would give up on the Games. The Indians knew that their competitors would be confusing "getting an incurable disease" (which is a fate coming to us without our control - every Indian just knows this already in first grade!), with the "threads coming from highly spirited competition".
At this moment we are hardly two weeks before the Games should begin. What do you expect? The Indians now start showing the muscles of their holistic minds:
Three days back, the newly build Games Village was presented to the Chief Executive Mike Hooper, who was born and educated in a more philosophical backward Western country and thus never had the chance to develop a high sophisticated understanding of what is really going on in the world of competitive sports.
Of course whe cannot blame him for that. But he proofed to be no match for his Indian counterparts.
Before the said Chief Executive entered the Games Village, some carefully chosen Indians were ordered to go to the flats and to create some mess here and there. They were more specifically told to use the toilets without being too precise in targeting the pot. But of course not before the plumbery and sewage tubes were disconnected. This to maximise the effect of the sportive action.
The subtle suggestion was made as well to take along a few stray dogs which were relocated from locations far from Delhi, to add some momentum to the scene.
After inspecting the apartments, the Chief Executive told the whole world they were "filthy and inhabitable for human beings".
Can you imagine the demoralisation which occurs in simple-thinking and narrow-minded Westerners, who only have a limited and non-holistic knowledge of hygiene standards? When they realised that they would have to go to extremely dirty toilets during the games, the vaste majority cancelled their trip to the Spiritual Country! They all already heard earlier about Delhi-belly for sure!
In a strange reversal of the concept of outsourcing, some countries were even so disgusted that they ordered their athletes to chase away the dogs and clean up the mess themselves.
And which athletes were practising and training their sports without interruption during these cleaning efforts of the competing athletes? Indeed, the Indians!
Two days back a canopy erected at Nehru Stadium collapsed. How can I explain you the deep disturbing effect of this symbolic and highly competitive sportive action by the Indians? One needs to have a considerably deep insight in Hinduism to completely grasp this. I will give it a try:
The canopy itself was erected by the use of iron pillars. These pillars symbolise the male phallus. After a short erection and at the very moment everyone was thinking that they would stay firmly erected ... they came down! Can you really understand the very subtle symbolic meaning of this Indian attack on the Western limited mindset?
What a coincidence that in the previous weeks we did read in all Indian newspapers about the cohorts of sexy ladies of all skincolors available in the world (except Black) who were shipped from all corners of the country and even from across all Indian borders to Delhi NCR. To serve the athletes from abroad in all their carnal needs (and as we all know in the West: healthiness stimulates the carnal needs).
Many, many athletes REbooked their flight after reading these inviting and promising messages. Only one day after they cancelled their bookings in the previous phase of the Indian attack.
At that precise moment, the Indians let collapse the canopy ...
As if one cancellation was not good enough, the holistic-thinking Indian sport strategists forced these simple athletes to cancel their bookings for the second time within two weeks!
And all this was only realised by Indian Mind Power only. Without labour, without sweat, without even one Indian athlete being exhausted...
Yesterday a foot overbridge collapsed in the neighbourhood of Nehru Stadium. 27 labourers injured. The message to the athletes educated in traditional non-holistic physics? "In India we don't use the poor and rigid distinction between "above" and "below"". Just think for a while about what effect this destruction of the Western dichotomic pair "above-below" has on, for instance, the jumpers or the weightlifters.
Today the false ceiling at the Nehru Stadium preferred to follow the laws of gravity.
The Law of Gravity is for simple Western minds just what it is ... a physical law you can use to do all kinds of mathematical calculations and make predictions in physics. But in the hands of the Indian sportcoaches, duly educated in a holistic approach of reality, this law becomes a real weapon!
Tomorrow ...
-------------------------------------------------
Without any doubt, this Indian Master Plan of attacking the morale of athletes coming from societies which have only developed a very poor - should I say retarded? - understanding of reality, will be further executed in the next two weeks.
Up to the point where NO ATHLETES EXCEPT FOR INDIAN ONES WILL BE PRESENT AT THE GAMES.
Then ... who will get the Gold, Silver and Bronze medals and all the rewards, you think ?
Right ...
Thursday, August 26, 2010
The "ethical" nature of Western companies
A while ago one of our clients, before assigning a job, explicitly told me that they wouldn't allow child labour in India for their jobs.
Of course this high noted and important condition is a give-away for us. Not many children are able to do the computer work we do. As a consequence direct child labour in our offices is unthinkable. In this respect I can just declare everything on a formal paper, so that the 'ethical' need of our client is satisfied. This formal declaration probably lands on a Western desk and will be used for all kinds of marketing purposes.
At the same time however, when you analyse this condition and what's behind of it, the picture isn't so clear any more:
- the ethical condition this client poses doesn't lead to a choice to pay more for the services, at any time he will choose for the cheapest service provider, probably also forced by the current economical crisis going on;
- though direct child labour is easily avoided in our kind of services, the jobs go within India to the lowest possible salaries and the cheapest employees whenever applicable. These employees are all parents. They have to feed their kids and try to collect enough money for their education;
- to be able to do this for their own kids, they lay a high financial pressure on the lower social classes providing services for them; often it leads to a situation where the children in these social classes don't receive any formal education any more and even are forced to do all kinds of low paid jobs to support their family. At the bottom - and I'm talking here about at least 50% of the Indian population - there's only poverty;
- even the lifes of what we could call the social middle-classes is in India always at the edge, and nowhere comparable to what we call 'middle-class' in West.
The whole capitalist system with its typical financial cascade of degradation towards the lower classes is producing poverty and inhuman situations in a structural and systematical way.
This system is invented, implemented and refined by the West and all companies participating in it.
To limit this issue to a formal declaration of the very specific moral objection of 'no child labour' and using the same for marketing purposes in any way, is highly hypocritical and opportunistic. It only serves the own targets.
I include some photographs taken in Gurgaon at a walking distance from our office.
I think I'll never get used to this, neither do I know how to handle it.
Perhaps I should go and ask the people in the pictures to sign me a formal statement that they won't do bad things to the pigs, dogs and cows who live with them on the waste belt, before I let them process my own waste.
Of course this high noted and important condition is a give-away for us. Not many children are able to do the computer work we do. As a consequence direct child labour in our offices is unthinkable. In this respect I can just declare everything on a formal paper, so that the 'ethical' need of our client is satisfied. This formal declaration probably lands on a Western desk and will be used for all kinds of marketing purposes.
At the same time however, when you analyse this condition and what's behind of it, the picture isn't so clear any more:
- the ethical condition this client poses doesn't lead to a choice to pay more for the services, at any time he will choose for the cheapest service provider, probably also forced by the current economical crisis going on;
- though direct child labour is easily avoided in our kind of services, the jobs go within India to the lowest possible salaries and the cheapest employees whenever applicable. These employees are all parents. They have to feed their kids and try to collect enough money for their education;
- to be able to do this for their own kids, they lay a high financial pressure on the lower social classes providing services for them; often it leads to a situation where the children in these social classes don't receive any formal education any more and even are forced to do all kinds of low paid jobs to support their family. At the bottom - and I'm talking here about at least 50% of the Indian population - there's only poverty;
- even the lifes of what we could call the social middle-classes is in India always at the edge, and nowhere comparable to what we call 'middle-class' in West.
The whole capitalist system with its typical financial cascade of degradation towards the lower classes is producing poverty and inhuman situations in a structural and systematical way.
This system is invented, implemented and refined by the West and all companies participating in it.
To limit this issue to a formal declaration of the very specific moral objection of 'no child labour' and using the same for marketing purposes in any way, is highly hypocritical and opportunistic. It only serves the own targets.
I include some photographs taken in Gurgaon at a walking distance from our office.
I think I'll never get used to this, neither do I know how to handle it.
Perhaps I should go and ask the people in the pictures to sign me a formal statement that they won't do bad things to the pigs, dogs and cows who live with them on the waste belt, before I let them process my own waste.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
On Independence Day
As I often proclaim in my blogs, reality always wins over all virtualisations of it.
Much is said about the colonisation and the influences of it on the local cultures.
Objective observations lead to the general conclusion, that once the colonisators left the colonies, the independence of the latter has not led to prosperity for their populations. Often these countries fared not well, as can be seen in Congo, once a Belgian colony, and India, one of the British colonies as we all well know.
As one struggles to understand nowadays India, one of the historically evidenced British policies is to be taken seriously into account: Macaulayism.
The word 'Macaulayism' is derived from the name of Thomas Macaulay, an English poet and politician who lived from 1800 till 1859. In 1830 he became a Member of British Parliament and as such he influenced the Brits India-politics to a great deal.
From his political testament two attitudes towards own and local (colonised) cultures are striking:
1) The superiority of the colonisator's culture
These are his words: "I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education.”
Another citation: "It is said that the Sanscrit and the Arabic are the languages in which the sacred books of a hundred millions of people are written, and that they are on that account entitled to peculiar encouragement. Assuredly it is the duty of the British Government in India to be not only tolerant but neutral on all religious questions. But to encourage the study of a literature, admitted to be of small intrinsic value, only because that literature inculcated the most serious errors on the most important subjects, is a course hardly reconcilable with reason, with morality, or even with that very neutrality which ought, as we all agree, to be sacredly preserved. It is confined that a language is barren of useful knowledge. We are to teach it because it is fruitful of monstrous superstitions. We are to teach false history, false astronomy, false medicine, because we find them in company with a false religion."
I don't think the tendency of these words need to be explained. Nowadays westerners should be very aware that their self-proclaimed cultural 'superiority' is in fact possibly leading to the destruction of mankind and even earth.
Despite our western 'enlightened', 'French-revolutionised' and 'scientific' thinking, western culture has simply no clue how to behave in a world which is bigger than what the mind can grasp and control.
All signs are there that in one or another way western culture lost something along the way, by limiting thinking to rational and serial thinking, to the execution of plans, assuming that the world, including societies, are rational in se.
Of course, Thomas Macaulay was a child of his time. He could not know then that his conviction of western 'superiority' would be refuted two hundred years later by the outcome of it in reality.
Nevertheless, such convictions have proven to be false by the effects.
Though I'm not religious myself, I consider the current culture in the west and it's basic assumptions to not contain enough elements any more to provide an effective (in reality) and (thus) truthful world view. Ratio, logic, serial thinking, the omission of all religious elements and traditions in thinking can only lead to an artificial view on humans and societies.
And we all know by now to what this kind of artificiality leads.
2) The destruction of cultures by the British colonisators
While the cultural colonisation of Belgian Congo was inspired by the Catholic religion, the British colonisator seems to have taken a more practical, organisational and logical-rational approach.
Thomas Macaulay's words: "It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population."
After 60 years of independence, India still seems to doubt between its Hindu/Muslim/Sikh/Jain/... deeply religious culture (I explicitly take the same stand towards all religions you find here) and this western ideology of "western taste, opinions, morals and intellect".
One can feel throughout the society that Indians are teached to admire the 'superior' white culture. One can feel daily that the result of this is kind of an 'underdog' sentiment towards the own identity, which leads often to a exaggerated and wrong-placed arrogance in fields which are not to the point.
Indians are quite easy-going and optimistic in nature, which is one of the great pleasures to be here. For everything there's a solution given that you have the time to interact with people. Indians themselves express their basic attitude as "To Live and Let Live".
I think that this basic Indian attitude is the reason why this Macaulayism in the organisational levels is still so apparent.
But ... we see the effects of colonisation and 60 years of Macaulayist independence: the country quickly evolutes into pure chaos.
I have asked this in previous blogs: Where are the (religious inspired) Indian intellectuals able to make a cultural synthesis of this beautiful religious heritage and to outline a blueprint for self-defined development of this country. Take the good things from the West, but for God's sake don't deny and abuse your mainly Hindu/Islamic heritage.
1.2 billion people are depending on you and will support you.
Don't reach out to become a weak copy of a perceived and manipulated image of the west.
Search for India's soul with your common people instead.
When will India's soul become truly independent?
Much is said about the colonisation and the influences of it on the local cultures.
Objective observations lead to the general conclusion, that once the colonisators left the colonies, the independence of the latter has not led to prosperity for their populations. Often these countries fared not well, as can be seen in Congo, once a Belgian colony, and India, one of the British colonies as we all well know.
As one struggles to understand nowadays India, one of the historically evidenced British policies is to be taken seriously into account: Macaulayism.
The word 'Macaulayism' is derived from the name of Thomas Macaulay, an English poet and politician who lived from 1800 till 1859. In 1830 he became a Member of British Parliament and as such he influenced the Brits India-politics to a great deal.
From his political testament two attitudes towards own and local (colonised) cultures are striking:
1) The superiority of the colonisator's culture
These are his words: "I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education.”
Another citation: "It is said that the Sanscrit and the Arabic are the languages in which the sacred books of a hundred millions of people are written, and that they are on that account entitled to peculiar encouragement. Assuredly it is the duty of the British Government in India to be not only tolerant but neutral on all religious questions. But to encourage the study of a literature, admitted to be of small intrinsic value, only because that literature inculcated the most serious errors on the most important subjects, is a course hardly reconcilable with reason, with morality, or even with that very neutrality which ought, as we all agree, to be sacredly preserved. It is confined that a language is barren of useful knowledge. We are to teach it because it is fruitful of monstrous superstitions. We are to teach false history, false astronomy, false medicine, because we find them in company with a false religion."
I don't think the tendency of these words need to be explained. Nowadays westerners should be very aware that their self-proclaimed cultural 'superiority' is in fact possibly leading to the destruction of mankind and even earth.
Despite our western 'enlightened', 'French-revolutionised' and 'scientific' thinking, western culture has simply no clue how to behave in a world which is bigger than what the mind can grasp and control.
All signs are there that in one or another way western culture lost something along the way, by limiting thinking to rational and serial thinking, to the execution of plans, assuming that the world, including societies, are rational in se.
Of course, Thomas Macaulay was a child of his time. He could not know then that his conviction of western 'superiority' would be refuted two hundred years later by the outcome of it in reality.
Nevertheless, such convictions have proven to be false by the effects.
Though I'm not religious myself, I consider the current culture in the west and it's basic assumptions to not contain enough elements any more to provide an effective (in reality) and (thus) truthful world view. Ratio, logic, serial thinking, the omission of all religious elements and traditions in thinking can only lead to an artificial view on humans and societies.
And we all know by now to what this kind of artificiality leads.
2) The destruction of cultures by the British colonisators
While the cultural colonisation of Belgian Congo was inspired by the Catholic religion, the British colonisator seems to have taken a more practical, organisational and logical-rational approach.
Thomas Macaulay's words: "It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population."
After 60 years of independence, India still seems to doubt between its Hindu/Muslim/Sikh/Jain/... deeply religious culture (I explicitly take the same stand towards all religions you find here) and this western ideology of "western taste, opinions, morals and intellect".
One can feel throughout the society that Indians are teached to admire the 'superior' white culture. One can feel daily that the result of this is kind of an 'underdog' sentiment towards the own identity, which leads often to a exaggerated and wrong-placed arrogance in fields which are not to the point.
Indians are quite easy-going and optimistic in nature, which is one of the great pleasures to be here. For everything there's a solution given that you have the time to interact with people. Indians themselves express their basic attitude as "To Live and Let Live".
I think that this basic Indian attitude is the reason why this Macaulayism in the organisational levels is still so apparent.
But ... we see the effects of colonisation and 60 years of Macaulayist independence: the country quickly evolutes into pure chaos.
I have asked this in previous blogs: Where are the (religious inspired) Indian intellectuals able to make a cultural synthesis of this beautiful religious heritage and to outline a blueprint for self-defined development of this country. Take the good things from the West, but for God's sake don't deny and abuse your mainly Hindu/Islamic heritage.
1.2 billion people are depending on you and will support you.
Don't reach out to become a weak copy of a perceived and manipulated image of the west.
Search for India's soul with your common people instead.
When will India's soul become truly independent?
Friday, August 13, 2010
Only money can be a motivator
From the stories I heard last half year, the Indian embassy in Belgium is making more and more problems in granting some types of visa to candidates from abroad. Though my wife and I never found any problem with this, recently we faced the same hindrance in developing our Indian business further.
A while ago I received an email from a young Belgian who travelled for several years throughout Asia, including two years in India. Apart from that he also worked two years for a local publisher in Sri Lanka, as a volunteer.
Though he has had a good education in IT and psychology, he did only work in several companies to provide him money for his travels. So he had no real career or anything yet.
But he fell in love with India and became attracted to Indian yoga and spirituality.
A year after his return to Belgium, he starts considering to move to India, so he was looking around for a job there. So he found us through Google and emailed us with the question if we could use him in our Indian office.
At first I was afraid about him being one of those late-born hippies: long hair, smoking pot, the type which has problems to concentrate on anything except finding money for the next dose.
Still, while in Belgium in July, we decided to invite him for a meeting. And his motives and expectations were very realistic. I told him clearly, as he had no real work experience and no knowledge about the job, that I could only offer him like I would offer to any Indian fresher. Of course this candidate had a very important and valuable skill for the company: speaking Dutch.
He accepted my offer.
A week later, I had prepared all the documents, the invitation letter and the labour contract which were needed for him to apply for an employment visa in India.
Ten days later I get an email from him: Indian embassy refuses the visa on the basis that his salary is too low.
So I do a second proposal, in which I offer him the absolute maximum which I could possibly give to the best Indian candidate. Again all papers were send to the Indian embassy.
Again ten days later the Belgian candidate gets a direct phone from someone from the Indian embassy. He was asked why he was interested to accept a job at such a low salary if he "can have at least double in Belgium". He answered: I want to build a career and a life in India because I love your country.
The embassy-administrator answered:
"ONLY MONEY CAN BE A MOTIVATOR".
____________________________________________________
My questions to the Indian embassy and to Indians in general:
- Do you support the statement that "Money is the only motivator" ?
- Do you really understand the negativism in the image of India that such embassy personnel is sending out ?
- Do you really support western companies to positively discriminate white people and thus discriminate Indians ?
____________________________________________________
To a simple westerner like me the situation is clear:
- If a white employee wants to accept a job at Indian conditions, but he has a skill that I could not find in India in the past 5 years, then the candidate is valuable. This does not mean I can use him profitably immediately, but we will teach him, just like we do every other Indian. As a consequence he should not be payed more than any other Indian entering the company;
- Motivation is very subjective in nature. The salary is only a small part in the total experienced remuneration. I'm still especially proud on the fact that no employee left out of free will our (small) company to work for another company;
- If I were an Indian myself, I would be proud on my country if people from abroad would be willing to live in these conditions out of interest in Indian culture. Not so the Indian officials!!!!!!! What image of India are they sending out to the world?
- It becomes for me increasingly clear that the Indian happy few are just despising India's culture and that it's their own responsibility that the society quickly evolutes to a grab-and-greed culture!
According to me, the embassy statement "Only money can be a motivator" implies the following:
- Indian officials are NOT proud on their culture;
- Indian officials are trying to discriminate Indians voluntarily;
- Indian officials are promoting a wrong image of India to the outer world;
Hopefully the expressed statement by one of the Indian embassy officials is only a personal opinion (which I doubt though), I demand apologies from this official in the name of India and its population!
A while ago I received an email from a young Belgian who travelled for several years throughout Asia, including two years in India. Apart from that he also worked two years for a local publisher in Sri Lanka, as a volunteer.
Though he has had a good education in IT and psychology, he did only work in several companies to provide him money for his travels. So he had no real career or anything yet.
But he fell in love with India and became attracted to Indian yoga and spirituality.
A year after his return to Belgium, he starts considering to move to India, so he was looking around for a job there. So he found us through Google and emailed us with the question if we could use him in our Indian office.
At first I was afraid about him being one of those late-born hippies: long hair, smoking pot, the type which has problems to concentrate on anything except finding money for the next dose.
Still, while in Belgium in July, we decided to invite him for a meeting. And his motives and expectations were very realistic. I told him clearly, as he had no real work experience and no knowledge about the job, that I could only offer him like I would offer to any Indian fresher. Of course this candidate had a very important and valuable skill for the company: speaking Dutch.
He accepted my offer.
A week later, I had prepared all the documents, the invitation letter and the labour contract which were needed for him to apply for an employment visa in India.
Ten days later I get an email from him: Indian embassy refuses the visa on the basis that his salary is too low.
So I do a second proposal, in which I offer him the absolute maximum which I could possibly give to the best Indian candidate. Again all papers were send to the Indian embassy.
Again ten days later the Belgian candidate gets a direct phone from someone from the Indian embassy. He was asked why he was interested to accept a job at such a low salary if he "can have at least double in Belgium". He answered: I want to build a career and a life in India because I love your country.
The embassy-administrator answered:
"ONLY MONEY CAN BE A MOTIVATOR".
____________________________________________________
My questions to the Indian embassy and to Indians in general:
- Do you support the statement that "Money is the only motivator" ?
- Do you really understand the negativism in the image of India that such embassy personnel is sending out ?
- Do you really support western companies to positively discriminate white people and thus discriminate Indians ?
____________________________________________________
To a simple westerner like me the situation is clear:
- If a white employee wants to accept a job at Indian conditions, but he has a skill that I could not find in India in the past 5 years, then the candidate is valuable. This does not mean I can use him profitably immediately, but we will teach him, just like we do every other Indian. As a consequence he should not be payed more than any other Indian entering the company;
- Motivation is very subjective in nature. The salary is only a small part in the total experienced remuneration. I'm still especially proud on the fact that no employee left out of free will our (small) company to work for another company;
- If I were an Indian myself, I would be proud on my country if people from abroad would be willing to live in these conditions out of interest in Indian culture. Not so the Indian officials!!!!!!! What image of India are they sending out to the world?
- It becomes for me increasingly clear that the Indian happy few are just despising India's culture and that it's their own responsibility that the society quickly evolutes to a grab-and-greed culture!
According to me, the embassy statement "Only money can be a motivator" implies the following:
- Indian officials are NOT proud on their culture;
- Indian officials are trying to discriminate Indians voluntarily;
- Indian officials are promoting a wrong image of India to the outer world;
Hopefully the expressed statement by one of the Indian embassy officials is only a personal opinion (which I doubt though), I demand apologies from this official in the name of India and its population!
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