Skip to main content

Of Demagogue and frondeurs..

Crisis and Conflicts are moments of truth for any society. Not only because it deconstructs the secondary paraphrasings like the economy, but because also puts to test the social machinery. Modern emergencies have explored a new non-natural side to calamities, like nuclear meltdown and bio-hazards amongst others. For a common man, the question often strips down to survival, and decisions become too personal. However, for the larger social institutions, namely the government, the question is more pressing and answers quite unclear.

A crisis is the points where wealth proves to be blubber of protection. The rich are inevitably the fortunate. They have access to services and getaways, a poor can never fathom of. Adding to the misery is that as the focus shits to the exigency, the common welfare services too take a hit. However, for the rich, most of the affairs are generally from their pocket. Because the untrained human response to panic is mostly the same, the rich tend to even go out of the way to hoard in the essentials causing a larger pinch in the scanty resources. The trained brains, at times, can be more dangerous too. If you can handle panic and have made your fortune out of it; You know how basically squeeze the most out of vulnerable hands.

Government is mostly run by people's men. Essentially sweet -talkers, with street smart skills. In most cases, they are efficient managers and manipulators of public opinion. But in a contingency, it is not only the opinions that they have to take control of. This is where the professionals come into play. But they don't have the impeccable social skills of swaying away. They speak the bitter facts; talk of hard-hitting plans. The world of engineering has little room for negotiation. This becomes a nightmare for the policymakers. The setting up of a discussion table between the ones who hold the power and those who have the knowledge is the first step to successful mitigation of the crisis.

The problem here is two-fold, first that professionals are not actively associated with politics, therefore they are mostly left out of the primary actions of relief, which have the most significant of the outcome. Professionals are brought in at a time when the fire is raging and there is not even enough water left. This implies they have to work with more constraints. The second problem is with authority. Although it sounds fair to have the action team of only doctors to treat coronavirus; in reality most of the teams are bureaucrats. The reason being, politicians work only with the incentive that they are credited for the work they do. Collective political altruism is only a made-up word.

Popular posts from this blog

Changing face of Entertainment

The entertainment industry in India is waiting for yet another disruptive innovation, with millions of young users equipped with gigabytes of data every day, there is a new untapped customer base. Not particularly untapped since it makes do with pirated movies and free web series. But, there is an apparent lack of entertainment streamed towards them. Also, the shift from television sets to mobile devices, sets the stage clear for a change in content. the spikes in porn consumption and adult web series do speak of this unattended guest. The popularity of two platforms, mostly youtube and TikTok, have also helped in developing a new class of actors. To name a few Sumeet Vyas, Jitendra, Bhuvan Bam and much more. It has become apparent that the arduous task of going from one to another production house seeking a side role in a daily soap or movie, is on a decline. Not that, people won't get their debut at soaps and movies, but it seems easier to get a web series and keep working tha...

Religiously Yours: The Role of Preachers and the Search for Truth

Most people search for hope, for belonging, for purpose. Religion can offer all of that, but if it ever sidelines your freedom to choose, to think, to wonder—something precious is lost. So, what’s the answer? Not confrontation, but honest, unguarded questions. Questions that aren’t meant to provoke or undermine, but to genuinely understand and maybe even reshape how we see the world, each other, and ourselves. See, preachers—like everyone else—filter their teachings through layers of personal experience. Some are gentle guides, others take a hard line, but most fall somewhere in the middle. That’s not surprising. We all lean on what we know: our stories, our histories, our mistakes. It’s just that, for religious teachers, this bias carries extra weight. Sometimes their perspective anchors a community, offering stability and belonging. Other times, accumulated bias can make a religion feel rigid or exclusionary—raising walls instead of building bridges. There’s an intricate relationshi...

Into the fuzziness

One way to put a banner on the course of human civilization is to call it an escape from uncertainty ( most of which would have led us to death). Why do we live in societies? To save ourselves from the uncertainty of getting attacked... Why do we build houses? To mitigate the uncertainty of getting our food washed away in the rain... Why do we rear children? So that we don't fast ourselves to death in old age. So in all these cases, the sheer uncertainty in the future has made us make expensive investments in the present. And those who didn't give in to these fears took a risk.  The pay-off of that risk is, however, independent of the past. In some cases, the risk turned out to be a golden gamble. Just like a flood washing away houses of people...the ones who hadn't built their houses were a little less sad. Risk can give an unexpected reward, but the higher the risk, the greater the return.  But at times, the risk is otherwise. Instead of choice for the individual, it beco...