What's happening to India ?

I observe many Indians becoming slaves (again) !

After you threw out the British in 47, in a way so unique that the whole world admires you for it, you let your minds become enslaved by a criticless admiration of your non-real fantasies about Western society, culture and economy.

You threw the British out through your backdoor.
THESE DAYS HOWEVER, YOU ARE EVEN INVITING THEM IN AGAIN THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR: YOUR MIND!

You become so blinded by success, money, material status, power ... and forget completely about the basic teachings of your own culture and religion.

I have many problems convincing employees that:
- the Western societies are not only the big corporates. It is like many Indians even refuse to see reality ... chasing dreams about a reality that does not exist except in their own mind;
- professionality is not so much linked to the height of your paycheck, but more to the incremental development of your own personality and in-depth understanding and know-how about the services/product you are selling;
- the best way to achieve enduring success in your life is to constantly focus on the product/services itself, instead of be blinded by power and status. The reason is that all know-how you build up over the years, is connected to yourself and it will not leave you ever again. However, elbowing yourself a way through everchanging social or commercial structures will only last till the next crisis;
- every personal development takes time. Every "learning how to" is a lifetime challenge. I would expect that especially Indians would subscribe to this thought. However ... I find many Indians nowadays to be so blinded that they completely lost the time-aspect in their lifes. Sometimes I feel that people get confused because they earn already at 28 twice or trice as much as their father at 55;
- the promotions in the so-admired big corporates are reducing you to the status of a donkey chasing the carrot it runs after from year to year.

Ambitious is the young guy or girl focusing on the increase of his paycheck next year or on status-driven signs.
Stupid is the ambitious young guy/girl ONLY focusing on that. Crises come and go every 5-10 years. The lifespan of such stupid ambition is 10 years only !
Only fools are looking at short-term and take their wildest fantasies for reality.

Wise are those developing their own personalities and knowledge in a quiet and focused way, without paying too much attention to the everchanging external conditions.

What is happening to these Indian cultural and religious teachings:
- the importance of time and patience;
- the prevalence of truth above anything else;
- the importance of self-development over time;
- minimizing the importance of your ego.

I hardly find it here !
More and more India is evoluating into some sort of a Disneyland-for-the-few and a No-Mansland-for-the most.
More and more this fantasy is promoted to the younger generations.
However, 99% of a normal population will never reach Disneyland but has to reside in No-Mansland!
Parents should be careful promoting this. I read daily in the newspapers about suicides of young boys and girls (even 12 year old kids !) because of fear that their marks in school are not high enough! Believe me ... I know what I'm talking about ... I have four kids myself. And you can bet I've failed in making the right judgments and choices myself!

This is good for the British perhaps, because they can sell !
I doubt it is good for India !

They just don't like my white face !

Last Wednesday we were planning to shoot nice photographs from the Holi Festival. Holi is the Festival of Colours. On this day, people put coloured powder on eachothers face.
I refer to http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi-Phagwa for more background information about this second most important Festival for Hindu people (the most important one is Diwali in October every year).

So we took our camera and went to the market place. Everyone we saw had a coloured face.





Unfortunately we had not taken into account the enthusiasm of Indians. The result?




I think they were surprised to see a white babu taking part in the festival. To our surprise we were invited to a family's home where we were offered Tchai (tea) and sweets. We met the whole family and had a really good time.





Thank you India, for a wonderful and colourful day !

A bikeshop ?

No, not at all, an Indian prepress- and typesetting company !

The story of Willy Claes ...

... or: What Indians and Belgians share

1. The story of Willy Claes

Willy Claes making his statement to the international press.
(NATO Photo 785Kb Ref. no.: 15167/34)

This is a story of a Belgian politician who had made it to Secretary-General of the NATO. Within the first year investigations took place in Belgium about the bribes given by Agusta (an Italian helicopter manufacturer)to the SP (Socialist Party) he belonged to.
Despite nobody was asking for his resigning on the international scene (see: http://www.iht.com/articles/1995/09/11/claes_0.php), he was victimised under local Belgian pressure (see: http://www.iht.com/articles/1995/03/24/belge_1.php).
Finally, he resigned on October, 20th 1995. This lead to a new search for a successor (see http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CEFDE1E3CF932A15753C1A963958260&sec=&spon=)
The man later was convicted in Belgium for "passive corruption", something which sounds to me like having the same value as "visual pollution".

2) What Indians and Belgians share ...

the feeling that they are UNDERDOGS ...

Waste Management !

One thing Indians can learn from Europe: Waste Management.

I know how they do it in Europe and am ready to consult you.
Here are some of my advises, for free:

- Organise your economy in such a way that consumption is the only value which counts. Then, tell other countries very clearly that this is definitely not the way to go !
- Make yourself as quickly as rich as possible at the cost of other countries and once you cannot handle the waste anymore, let them become independent. But don't forget to keep the ties alive - you may still be able to sell something there in the future;
- Organise your society in such a way that soon 50% of the population is or overstressed or not fit to take part in regular economy. To the overstressed ones you can sell pills. The 25% waste you can hand over to the State to manage;
- Leave your wife and your kids behind whenever you have the chance to start a new family with a more beautiful wife and smarter kids. Pay some alimentation so that your ex-wife handles the waste-management for you;
- If you can afford it, do the same thing twice or trice.
- Whenever you face an economical crisis: try to outsource it !
- Lock up your physically and mentally disabled family members in state-organised institutions: waste management when officially organised is clean, cheap and you will not be bothered by the visual pollution anymore;
- Send away your parents when they become too old to be placed at the right side of your personal economical balance sheet;
- If you still suffer from remaining waste, there's an out-of-the-box solution which solves everything: Social Mobility.

Of course, all this management costs money.
No worries: if you find you are paying too many taxes, then you can always move to a country where they manage their waste in a lesser professional way ...

"Les enfants du Borinage. Lettres à Henri Storck."

In 1933 the Belgian filmmaker Henri Storck created a documentary about the "Borinage", the area in Belgium where coal mining was going on. In those times this part of Belgium was well-doing and attracted lots of workers from the Dutch speaking part of the country.
In 1999 again a documentary was made about Charleroi, a city in Belgium in the center of the same "Borinage".

Indians very often are shocked to see that Slumdog Millionaire is showing poverty in India. They don't like it that the world sees again the cliche of the "poor India".
Well, I myself also don't like to be seen as a "walking wallet" in India.
It is reducing someones identity to the amount of money he has or not has. And as always every stereotype is a generalisation ... it stands as long as you are not confronted with reality ...

So I invite both Belgians and Indians to watch the following movie about Belgium:
http://www.wat.tv/video/enfants-borinage-lettre-henry-bpgo_bmwb_.html

I refer the Belgians also to the yearly report published by Acco Publishers: Armoede en Sociale Uitsluiting - Jaarboek 2008, which follows up the evolution of poverty in Belgium. No literature to become very optimistic of !

From India, with love ...

I present you a few clips taken from the Sunday Times of March 8th, 2009.
They are related to Indian marriages, which are completely different from the habits we have in Europe regarding relationships. I think these clips speak for themselves.
You can read the ads by clicking on the images.
Don't be mistaken. Despite the tenths of pages in the daily papers these ads occupy, there's a clear evolution of the growing middle class to combine and accept both typese of marriages: arranged and love-marriages. Very often now boy meets and chooses girl and have a relation for some time before the relationship enters the "arrangement" phase. However, mainstream India is still not "middle class".
Coming weekend we have to attend an employee's wedding. I hope I'll be able to shoot some video's which I will upload.