BLOG-LUNCH

It was the most interesting Lunch I had in a long long time. Yeah, myself and Ravi of "ravikumar.blogdrive.com" met for lunch at Komalas, Radhakrishnan Salai this afternoon and it was a truly fulfilling luncheon meeting in more aspects than one. Ravi is indeed a picture perfect personality in all respects, very hospitable, pleasantly disposed and a wonderful person to talk to.

Today’s meeting made my resolution more strong, not to miss any of the bloggers meet hereinafter in Chennai as I am strongly coming to realise it’s a whole new world out there with some wonderful people inhabiting it. It would go a long way in helping me atleast trying to become one among them too.

COMPULSORY NATIONAL SERVICE – A NECESSITY IN INDIAN CONTEXT

I have heard that in USA every citizen has to put in compulsory military service for a specified period. I do not have any idea what other stipulations are attached with it, but I am sure this exercise of serving in the military would go a long way in shaping the life of the youth and inculcating a sense of discipline in life.

I sincerely feel that in Indian context too, we should have a similar stipulation and it should be more appropriately termed as “ Compulsory National Service” rather than limiting it to military service. Though the entry point should be the armed forces where you receive training for not only physical development but also inculcate a sense of discipline and integrity in life and a sense of patriotism towards our nation. This initial training would go a long way in creating a nation whose citizens have a healthy body, healthy mind and more importantly healthy thoughts.

Ideally this “Compulsory National Service” should be taken up immediately after finishing the graduation but should in any case be completed before the age of 30. After the initial training, the personnel depending on their education qualification and aptitude should put in various of areas of Social and developmental service, more in the rural areas of the country.

The benefits of this “Compulsory National Service” is truly multifold in the Indian context some of which I am explaining below:

• We have long been complaining of brain drain in our country with the best brains going abroad for better working conditions as well as emoluments. One cannot stop that but definitely we can utilise their service for a specified period within our country. • I read an article in “The Hindu” about Doctors in rural India who were performing as much as 12 tubectomy surgery in an hour as against the permitted 20 surgeries per day. Incidentally in one such case the Doctor ended up pulling off the small intestine of the patient. We have a huge population of doctors serving in urban areas of our country as well as abroad and I am sure a sizable number of medical graduates pass out every year from premium institutions in our country, which incidentally enjoys a lot of Government subsidies in terms of fees. So if these graduates are straight away picked up from medical colleges and put into rural areas as part of National Service, I am sure the quality of rural medical infrastructure would vastly improve.

• Another important area for National Service is in various Research & Expert Committees that the Government forms before taking up any development activities or giving clearance to projects. It has been seen that though the committees get constituted adequately with experts and intellects, there is a vacuum of personnel to do the actual work at Grass root level and give information to the committees. Most of the committees are either not able to take a decision / take long time to clear projects / take wrong decisions contradictory to the practical reality due to this problem. Our young professionals can greatly help by filling up this vacuum as part of their national service and get the nation into fast track of development.

• Lastly our illiterate or less literate population can be used in military service for various social and voluntary services besides training them in various vocations according to their skills, in turn making them more productive. They may also be made permanent recruits of the armed forces if they so wish.

This is only a brief idea of the advantages, but it is the concept here which I am looking to drive-in, which I am sure would do great good to our country despite all the implementing problems that may be associated with it.

FAILING MARRIAGES AND INCREASING DIVORCES – THE SEQUEL

Hi Everybody. As Shyam said it really seems ages since I posted on my blog though it is actually less than a month. So time moves much faster in the blogworld.

The topic of my last post was so hot and the comments so overwhelming that I could not help but put up a sequel to that post in which though I intend to convey some message but mainly summarise my reply to the comments in the original post.

I saw quite a lot of view points that marriage is a dying institution and that live-in arrangement has come of age and equally accepted as marriage. In fact Shyam interestingly pointed out that live-in arrangement is also recognised to be a binding relationship in the eyes of law. But Shyam, my point is do we need a law to keep our marriage alive. Then marriage is nothing more than a business relationship.

Marriage is like living in your own house and live-in relationship is like checking into a hotel. You home is a responsibility which you cannot leave easily, but you need not even think twice before checking out of a hotel. And the ultimate fact is that you can live forever in your own house, but not so in a hotel, you have to check-out one day or the other. In short Marriage is for responsible ones, Live-in is for irresponsible ones. It is very unfortunate that it is the female folks who advocate live-in relationships, more as a tool to assert their economic independence. With due respects, female blog friends, I consider live-in relationship as encouragement of immorality and it can never be a tool to display your strength. By adopting live-in, you are only giving more leverage to men to check-out whenever they want.

It is again very sad that Divorce is looked upon as a solution to the problem, rather than a problem in itself. And it is also felt that this solution has come up as a result of greater awareness, intolerance to incompatibility and economic independence that the we are all enjoying in the current world. But just imagine if our parents also exercised this option of Divorce during our childhood and each of them went on a cycle of marriages and divorces, then what would have happened to our childhood. We would have in all probabilities ended up in the wrong side of the society and attributed it to our disturbed childhood. In that case, words like awareness, economic independence, intolerance etc… would not have been in our dictionary itself. Today we are able to talk big words only because our parents stayed together not only for themselves but also for us.

Friends, let us learn to look at marriage as part of our life cycle like birth, childhood etc. Just as we cannot replace any chapter of our life cycle we cannot replace marriage too. Marriage as a chapter in our life is meant to change our life from youth to matured adults, from irresponsibly independent to responsible and caring. Let us understand that the impact of marriage is not just limited to two individuals, marriage is a responsibility towards your spouse, your children and for creation of a more morally displined society. Marriage is is all about CARE and BEAR and never just DARE and BARE.

Please understand that our mothers stayed in their marriage not because of economic dependence, but because they looked beyond themselves and saw marriage as a responsibility and not as a status symbol. Even in your professional life if you are not responsible, you are chucked out of your job, then why the same cannot be applied to marriage.

I am not saying there should be no divorce at all, but it should be viewed as a extreme solution, not as a tool for independence.