India Inclusion Summit 2017

Today I attended IIS2017. I actually attempted to volunteer event and was invited for event. I offered to volunteer. Received multiple calls in last 2 weeks, sharing my contact person and also inquired for any additional support needed, a meticulous follow-up. Gave me a surpise element for me wth question “why attention to person who offered to volunteer?”.( got answered too).

With a sense of wonder, I reached  Park Plaza,Marthahalli around 8 AM. I saw  a lot of specially enabled children and audience. Two people I recognized were  Carnatic musician T M Krishna(aware of olcott kuppam ) and Feroze (follow his Twitter)

Krishna apologized for delay, started with tamil song on love and moved to Bengali song and to Hindi song. In between songs, Krishna was was sharing his own inner questions.

1. Can we look at “inclusion” as ” not excluding”. Who gave us right to include or exclude other?
2. why gender is looked within context of other divisions in society? Should gender be looked first?

Followed by journey sharing by Shalini Saraswathi.Earlier She introduced Krishna and I did not realize that she was specially abled . Now I  became aware that she holds railing of ramp on her way down and she blogs too. I met her parents over lunch and blown down the way they take care of their daughter. Being parent, my respect grew for her parents grew multi-fold for being rock for their girl.

• • Is it fear of the situation or helplessness of the situation? Need to accept both.
  • How do we deal with our scars?

Then, there were a few more inspiring speakers like lawyer with vision disorder and a UPSC officer with bone disorder. I was engaged in their talks where want constraints removed for differently abled people to achieve their potential. Did not take notes.

• Believe in your own strength to decide your destiny the way you want.
• When we read someone biography, does biography share the challenges and vulnerability undergone by the person?

Followed by heartwarming story from former Senator Tom Harkins, who started with  desire to create inclusion way of life for his brother. He shared how approach to create an inclusive society can start by clearing path for people with special needs, as this actually has power to clear the path for everyone.

Left me with a question to ponder upon at driver-less car beyond loss of job for drivers.

• Can driverless cars change lives for disabled people?

Followed by discussion with Kris GopalaKrishnan, who shared insights in to mental health, that led to his drive towards brain research and the reason to start research from India with strength of diversity and push to make cure affordable and also emphasized need to balance with research world-wide.

Sai shared his story starting from being confined to a small room. to become a renowned graphic designer.

• Make Sufferings your Surprises, your Surprises will make you Smile, with a Smile who is there to Stop you.

Prashant Kamat, content writer at Mind Tree was next speaker. His sister came along to the stage. She shares that the only regret growing with brother, specially enabled was  “No sibling fights with his brother”. Prashant had surprise video from his teacher at Spastics Society Bangalore. Amazed by focused attention of IIS Volunteers.

• ” The work we do at mindtree is all about inclusion. We are given a lot of freedom in work place to exercise our choices.”
• Life throws challenges at us. We must keep the faith. Believe in yourself. Only then others can believe in you and ur abilities. Do not be limited by ur constraint s, challenge ur limits.

During lunch, I finished lunch and started to observe arrangement for lunch for specially enabled folks. My curiosity lead me to these learnings.

• Their counter was closer to audience, while ours were farther.
• Their tables were of lower height to enable person on wheel chair to take their own food with little or no help.
• The specially enabled folks have come with their parents or friends who helped them to eat and other activities.

Started to realize why volunteers called multiple times to check whether I needed support for the event. They were showering me with attention and care shown by IIS 17.

Met 22-year-old anchor/dancer/writer Meghana who believes disability isn’t merely physical but people with a negative attitude are truly disabled. In crude form, I articulate her optimistic attitude as “I am blind. I cannot see you. It is not a problem. I can dance and make you see me. ”

We saw a play hosted by mix of normal people specially enable children. while I was enjoying play, a mother who sat next to me proudly shared of her daughter in wheel chair in the play. She looked too small and thought that the girl should be smaller than my second daughter(10 years). Head 25 years(if i am right). Made me realize what is love and affection of mother towards her child. (My moher died when I was 12 years old)

Heard storyteller, film director Nagesh Kukunoor, share observation that movies focus more to create sympathy rather than empathy for specially abled people, and added how that he choose to direct 2 movies where the movie is a happy story around main actors who happen to be disabled.

• Movie needs to be taken based on story and not based on cause, while one can be smart to may be embed the cause inside the story.
• Magic happens when one believes. Hope builds when we listen to stories. Stories make us believe that miracles happen with hard work and persistence.

Major Anuradha runs a trust for PWD children in Asthagram, Kurnool in M.P. She did live show of how tribal children can be enabled irrespective of the fact that they are specially enabled. She was sending message that Normal child becomes more sensitive and sharper when they study along with specially abled children.Followed by two entertaining events

• Prahalad Acharya who made us to listen and see wonderful stories told through shadows. Thought that shadows comes along with us everywhere and anywhere.
• Vasu Dixit, who brought folk-rock to the masses in kannada. IIS 17 event that started with music ended with music.

My blog remains incomplete if I do not thank Leo & Sridevi for live translation of all session. Great job at sign language by Sridevi and Leo.

Finally, I said to myself. All my so called sufferings are nothing compared to suffering of  specially abled children, their parents and families. Hence I need to build resilience in myself.

Talking about our problems is our greatest addiction. Break the habit. Think positive. Talk about your joys.

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Can robot help in Sewage & Waste Mgmt?

On hearing about self driving vehicles being innovated in  USA, I am reminded of the  number of jobs that would get lost and the need for drivers to be retrained with other skills. Being in India, the concern for drivers increases more. At these times, I observe a a lot of resentment in my mind to engage with work on automation and AI related stuff.

I started to think the jobs that needs to be automated. While reading article A day in the life of a sanitation worker, I started to look at the initiative “Smart cities” of Indian government and some large IT firms, I found that Smart Cities features had no mention about management of waste, garbage or toilets or sewage.

Prior to listing some potential scenarios, where Indians can leverage automation based innovation to create better life for fellow Indians, I want to start with question on the dependence of robots on power and whether robots are resistant to work with water.

Hearing robots can work with industrial waste made me assume that robots already have capacity to work in sewage water. May we need robots to work on batteries.  Already heard of Elon Musk promise to build the world’s largest lithium-ion battery  and may be we need to ask Elon whether innovation in batteries would support use cases around sewage, toilets and waste management.  Here they are.

Management of Waste Collection: The maid who collects waste from our homes every day. She picks wet waste and dry waste. if resident has failed to separate waste as wet waste and dry waster, maids at times ends up separating the same. Can process of waste collection on daily basis be done by a robot?

Here, a apartment utility robot goes to every apartment floor and collects dry waste and wet waste in large waste drums and then moves the waste drums from all floors to ground level via elevator and dump waste in in waste collection place for apartment.

The moment I started to think of robot to replace the maid, my mind started to ask whether it makes sense to have robot at home that collects waste from human, identify waste as dry or wet and will be responsible to segregate waste at point of waste generation. On daily basis, waste robot would go and drop waste to the common bin in the in morning. The intelligence for waste collection robot can be updated on daily basis based on intelligence available at sites like Zero waste management.

In addition, all cities have major garbage dump where wastes have been collected for years and these needs to be cleared. Can robots be deployed to clear Garbage dumps?  We can have large community robots that can be deployed for segregation to enable effective waste management. Let us remind that community robots can work non-stop for hours and days without break.   They look at waste materials present in garbage dump, identify waste and segregate waste. The waste that can be sold are disposed of by community robot connecting with appropriate buyers of the same.  The garbage robots can be operated and trained by human rag-pickers to segregate waste. May be example of  human-machine collaboration to clear garbage dumps for cities.

Maintenance of Common Toilets : Most Indians complain that toilets present in public or private places are not clean or have limited water.  I find that cleaning of toilets even in private offices is neglected job. Another good area to introduce robots. Robots can ensure that toilets are cleaned and are present in close to dried state round clock. In addition, robots can ensure that lights function in toilets and track usage of water and take care of replenishing water in tanks. The stretched goals for the robot is to reduce water consumption, while still maintaining cleanliness.

Humans are engaged in two activities related to sewage and it is  time that both these activities gets automated by robot. The cleaning of open drains, septic tanks and sewage is activity that is still prevalent in cities and that needs to be automated.

Robots need to be able to read map of underground sewage pipe structure to understand entry and exit points and also turnings. Once, robots has trained in the area, robot should be able to jump in man-hole and clean blockages. Robots should be able to work on battery mode and also is water. as it might not be able to have electricity all around.

On other hand, I observe that research has started, as mentioned in articles below.  May be times for Indians to start to leverage robotics and AI to solve local problems.

• Combine robots, big data, &AI to upend the way municipalities water pipes work
• Why an MIT robot is collecting poop from our sewers.
• Pittsburgh’s Little Sewer Robot Will Collect Big Data
• Robotics, AI to come handy in waste management and garbage handling
• This Recycling Robot Uses Artificial Intelligence To Sort Your Recyclables

 

Start determined,Go with the flow – Vipassana

Are you ready to live for few days without the following?

• without mobile phone?
• without TV, internet?
• without wallet and credit cards?
• without talking to others in silence?  Be in silence with group of people ? Not even use sign language or any other means of communication.
• without reading, writing and signing or doing heavy physical exercises.
• without food for taste. You are provided food to live.

Can one live within a bounded location  accepting to live without all the above? It will not surprise me if your answer is “No”. Sharing in this blog of having lived in bounded location for 10 days agreeing to be without all the above.

Enrolled myself in 10 day meditation program at Dhamma Setu Vipassana Meditation Center, Chennai. Check this link to know more about location and facilities.  Took  oath/promise to adhere strictly during course duration  for 10 days.

• To adhere to all rules and code of conduct of center
• To not leave meditation camp till completion of the program ( 10 days).
• To abstain from killing any being, stealing, all sexual activity, telling lies, using all intoxicants( like alcohol, drugs, etc).
• To observe Noble Silence from the beginning of the course until the morning of the last full day.  Any form of communication with fellow student, whether by gestures, sign language, written notes, etc., is prohibited.

Effectively rules focus to take great care of the participants so that their actions do not disturb anyone and they do not notice distractions caused by others. I attended the program(9 Aug To 20 Aug.), where I am going to learn of myself working in isolation.

Prior to start, I handed my mobile, wallet and books for safe keeping. The program & facilities of shelter, food  are offered free.  Simple vegetarian food is provided 2  times a day at 6:30 am, 11 am and snack at 5 pm, along with purified water around clock. The day schedule starts at 4:30 AM( wake by 4:00) to ends at 9:00 PM(lights off by 9:30).

During mid course duration, I realized that rather than cribbing about pain or ache, it is better to walk into the pain and watch it. The strangest thing happened. The pain/ache just melted away. Some times, the pain/ache in one body part disappears and appears in another body part. Once you watch/observe, all of them melt away.

I survived 10 days of Vipasanna,  finding my answer to be “Yes” for these questions.

• Can I walk with my minds only on our feet?
• Can I sit with back straight and not slouched?
• Can I sit crossed legs for 20 to 30 minutes closed eyes & not changing body posture?
• Can I live days without dinner and also reduce my food intake?
• Can I take time to chew food and eat, rather than gobbling food faster?
• Are other  responsible or I   Am I responsible for my miseries and my pain?

At end of program, I felt that program helped me to observe myself better and increased my awareness. Good, I neither has expectation of becoming happier or wiser at the end. May be I am more attentive to myself. While Sunday came with a sense of calmness, I feel getting the same lost faster in last 2 days. While I still find myself in to misery due to external scenarios, absent-minded, I  seem to catch change that happens within me more quicker than before and attempt to get mind to arrive at state of equanimous.

 

Is Aadhaar leading to fear?

Yesterday was July 31st. From July 1 , 2017 I have tried to submit my income tax returns. My understanding on Supreme Court order was “Persons with Aadhaar number need to link Aadhaar number and PAN Number”. On other hand, I I have no Aadhaar number and made attempts to file my income tax returns and was prevented by e-filing portal.

Being a law abiding citizen, I visited income tax camp at Gaythri Vihar at Bangalore. The help desk explained that my tax returns cannot be submitted without Aadhaar. I did  asked to meet income tax commissioner and was lead to a very nice person Commissioner offered me a seat across the table. When i explained my challenge, he showed surprise of not having Aadhaar and neither have plans to apply for Aadhaar and was empathetic.  Felt that he had more meetings with individuals who had issues to link Aadhaar and PAN.

• On sharing that some folks without Aadhaar number have  uploaded their returns over weekend, he explained that may be possible and added income tax returns of individuals whose PAN was not linked with Aadhaar will not be processed.
• On sharing  media intimation “Aadhaar not a must to file I-T returns'” by income tax department,  he explained that media had got the communication wrong and they have published correction on Sunday.

When asked how to move forward, He shared that “I ask individuals to get Aadhaar and submit income tax returns. In your case, where  you  have taken a stand and well aware of supreme court case, you may wait to get clarity and decide accordingly. Please understand the current stand of income tax department and things may of may not change.”  He also added ” As I have not additional tax to be paid, he does not see immediate impact other than PAN being invalid by some other govt notification.”

Thanked commissioner and wrote a note in visitor book stating “With supportive folks at income tax camp, I could not file my income returns” and dropped below letter too. 

It was quite easy 3 years back to write this blog “@Field : DBTL and Aadhaar”  as an observer and not impacted party. Today I experienced  impact of not having Aadhaar. In 2017, I am aware of  people who enrolled for Aadhaar with no choice.( did not want to)

• A bunch of state government staff did not get salaries as they did not have Aadhaar. After staying with no salary for 2 months, they enrolled for Aadhaar with no choice and received salary in arrears in 3rd month.
• I had a friend who did not have Aadhaar and his daughter goes to college this year. On day of admission, college asked them to provide Aadhaar. On friend’s inquiry, the college explained that there was instruction from UGC and they cannot risk accredition. My friend and his daughter enrolled to Aadhaar with no choice.
• I have a friend who filed his income tax returns prior to June 20,2017 and escaped being forced to get Aadhaar for filing income tax returns.
• I informed my wife that she has all rights to get Aadhaar and she went and obtained Aadhaar for her and my daughter.

I found few friends without Aadhaar number, who do not know how they were able to file income tax returns in July 2017.

I want to acknowledge the hidden fear that creeps in me of being left out. Found nice article The right to be left alone and asked myself “Do I have the right to be left alone?” To handle fear, I started to list down what are different avenues that I would be forced so that I would go and enroll.

• My BSNL connection will be blocked and my airtel connection will be blocked. I can ask my wife to get additional phone account on her name and provide to me.
• I may not be blocked to book bus ticket and train ticket as single person travel. if I travel with some one with Aadhaar, then I may be able to travel.
• My wife and I hold joint account. Can my bank account get deactivated, not linked to  Aadhaar? May be my wife  can withdraw and help me with cash for expenses.
• With no bank account, it is going to be tricky for my company to credit salary to my bank account? May my company would provide me cash to live.
• With no bank account, my demat and equity trading account gets blocked.  Quite possible and cannot transact in equity and same constraints apply to mutual funds.

In addition to fear about your own self, there is hidden fear about my family. How will l me not having Aadhaar  impact my family and my relationship with them. If I die tomorrow, what is the impact on my family that I do not have Aadhaar. Will they be forced to get Aadhaar?

Should I blame anyone for my situation? I work in IT industry and understand privacy and have been using IT for my living.  I was part of a particular group and wrote article India Stack: Powering thousands of experiments. I do not see reason to blame anyone other than myself.

While I acknowledge fear, I want to end article with question ” Would India  have achieved freedom in 1947 if the freedom fighters succumbed to fear of British? “

 

Ignore, Accept, Forget

We meet different types of people in our life in diverse areas of  work, family circles, social circles or as part of community. With some people, we develop relationship and with a few it ends up as transaction . Each and every relationship or transaction comes with its own actions and interactions, added with emotions that arise in people engaged in transaction or relationship. Started to observe few scenarios in my life and my family, and shared here.

Scenario 1: While one person focus to nurture and develop relationship, the second person focus may focus on what is required to complete successful transaction. The second person may prioritize the transnational outcome of success than people working to achieve the outcome.  If you are the first person who does not like this experience, how do you put aside your feelings?

Scenario 2: Two persons focus to nurture and create  transparency in relationship  between them and other working with them.  The first person  fails to communicate some information to other person or hides information without any specific intention.  Due to destiny, the other person becomes aware about the information misrepresented to him or withheld from him. On realizing this, the first person acknowledges the miss of not sharing vital information, adds “Sorry” followed with eagerness to push things  under the carpet.

The other person feels let down or may even feel cheated.  At times, the other person cannot  afford to have conflict or walk away from the first person( a boss or customer or powerful person).   As the other person, how do you put aside your feelings?

Scenario 3: Assume  person in focus  is  good to his/her relatives, help them whenever asked for and also been a support for them in times of adversity. May be was doing a “Pay forward” expecting  support in bad times in future.  Remember that the person has no control over how others would react in his/her bad times. If you are this person, getting pushed in to bad state caused by interaction or action of people that he helped/supported earlier, how do you put aside your feelings?

Ask yourself whether you want to forget, ignore or accept situation.

What did you do when a child had a bad cut finger? Still child thought of it, it hurts and is painful. Some one distracted child with chocolate,child probably forget the discomfort. The basis instinct of your brain is to ignore pain if it can. On other hand, try removing chocolate form the child, child gets time to think about his wound and starts crying feeling the pain again.

You can distract attention away from negative energy. There is nothing to be learnt, as your brain already knows how to ignore things not important to us. On facing scenario similar to the above, Why do I suffer, feel sorry for myself  & spend the rest of my life in misery? Can I learn to accept it, co-exist with it & ignore it when I feel like it.

Forget the other person involved and look at what you feel. May the other person is happy with situation. May the other person does not want to develop relationship with you and build trust. Start to learn this as a nuisance, that interrupts your daily life and drives you up the wall. No way to force other person to return your feelings.  You have no control over how other person feels or choose to do with his or her life.

Delete old emails or remove anything that brings back old memories of the incident and stop you from forgetting the same.  In olden days without technology and people has bad conversation, there was time for them to meet again.With the passage of time, people did forget. Today, we have stored older emails and recordings to remind of the past and prevents us to move forward. Delete the person from your contacts.

Give yourself time to feel upset. Feelings don’t just “go away” if you ignore them–they come out in other. Give yourself the time and space to express your sadness. Be careful not to get caught up in your sadness. At a certain point, you need  to start making moves to heal and its time to focus on feeling better.

Give yourself much more space as possible. If possible, please take a break from this person for a while. That does not mean to cut him/her out completely. Some  distance becomes necessary for you to put these feelings to rest. if the person is part of your daily life, find ways to do everything that can minimize your contact with him. Do not visit their home or do not sit next to them at lunch, of walk away from the person. Staying away from someone you really like can be hard, but it’s an important part of putting a stop to these feelings

Make new friends One gets to think that no one else exists or no one can make you happy. Meet new people and you are reminded that this is not true. While it is okay for some time to be alone, spending time with other people speed-ens the healing process and distract you. You can attempt to talk to someone, if you cannot let it go.

Creates new hobbies or activities for life to redirect your focus and not think about your feelings for this person. Stop giving yourself time to think about it. May be concentrate on studies or work or volunteer for a cause you are passionate about

Start to have fun Laughter can make you feel good and happy. Spend time with people who make you laugh or doing things you love. Laughing relieve your heart from the ache.

Learn to like yourself There can be a major setback to your self-esteem after rejection and forces you to focus only on your perceived faults. Focus on good things that you have done, write down your achievements and write down things you really like about yourself. When you feel down, read the list you have written.

Let us accept that we face times when we need to push aside our emotions to get through a difficult situation. While no one can ask you to live in a state of pain and emotions, take interest to practice managing the pain  to get through a difficult situation. While one may not ignore pain in full , one can re-focus pain and emotions to be less negative. At end, do not  comfort eat as this would not do any good in long run and do not  expect results right away.

Computers@schools in non-digital era

My daughters  started to work with laptop, iPad, internet, emails, Kindle and have access to computers in schools and teacher communicate over Compute devices.  Earlier, I attempted to discourage my daughters not to use emails for knowing what is Homework or test next day and write home work in diary. With more inputs send by teacher via online media, my wife registered with online portal and coordinates teacher interaction. Kids also have started using WhatsApp on mom’s mobile.

The school has set up online fee payment portal. Till now my elder daughter used to find fees for her and her younger sister. Collecting cheque, she verifies the amount, take cheque safely to drop in the school and also collect the receipt.  While online payment reduces work of school staff,  how my younger daughter will learn about school fees, due date to pay and responsibility to carry cheque & collect receipt.

School provides books and notebooks with comfort to get all things under one roof. I see lost opportunity to perform  self research, research for notebooks to purchase, store to purchase notebooks, the price paid, whether  notebook/book is worth the price.  School makes every student in class purchase same additional practice book. In 90s,additional books were bought to suit our interest.  when different books are bought, possibility of knowledge sharing  increases  with peers. What is the impact of all students learning from same additional book? 

My daughters have their email address and use them as tool for some years.  Not easy to explain children “Should children learn using computer as tool or learn to be tool in hands of the computer?”  I fail with word attempts like “Computer helps to consume more content and makes you lazy to create your own content. how to focus to create content rather than consume content? ” or “Leverage computer for things other than school work. For school work,  search books and self-learn to collect content”.

My first brush with computers was in 1990 at my father’s office computer room, where computer operator was present. Learnt to input content, do some mathematics like complex multiplication and print typed content in dot matrix printer.

In 1991, I was not sure whether to join Computer section for 11th standard. Those days in Neyveli, every child was under pressure to become doctor or engineer. Anyone who chose computer section makes a choice not to become a doctor. Another challenge was my close school friends were in Biology section.(5 sections in 11^th , 4 were biology).

When our 10^th standard results came, all 11^th standard students were to sit in assembly place when teachers read marks in public. This gave us a joint time where we could discuss as individual about our own interests and what we want to do and what we were actually doing. After 1 month in  Biology, 10 of us walked over to computer section.

While no one wants to wait 10 days to obtain original mark sheet, and today, students find it cool to view marks on internet at instant the results are declared. I want to appreciate  that experience where one waits patiently to know marks for their friends and their own, creating the collaborative space between students to discuss with less intervention and make joint decision.

Today, with women representation in IT industry is going less,  my computer journey started with two women teachers, Geetha & Praveena. Geetha helped to learn to write programs, when programming was not in 11^th book. I also remember the privilege to be in air-conditioned computer room, where principal had no air-condition in Neyevli’s scorching heat.

My  school had 2 PCs and one computer teacher for both 11^th and 12th,a count of 60 (25 seniors + 35 in my class)students. After programming using Fortran and Basic, I found programming more like solving statement sum problems in mathematics, which I always enjoyed.  I found maths and physics more challenging than computers.

Geetha drove to think open and creative exposing to a one day excursion to VGP Golden beach, Chennai.  First of its kind in school after many years in midst of concerns of school and parents.  This experience enabled students with confidence to organize and plan a 3-day excursion to Bangalore, Mysore and Ooty, during 12^th standard. I am reminded of being cashier for both excursions.

In 1990s, knowing calls for admission of educational institutions was cumbersome.

• See notification for admission in newspaper If you miss to see notification in newspaper, you missed the admission as the application date gets expired.
• No one was sure whether all newspaper will carry notification for admission. Go to library and check all newspapers whether they carry admission notification.
• On finding notification, inform all friends of the same. No easy way like Google to search or Facebook to post notification so that other friends can easily learn.

In 2017, While I am happy about better experience, I observer that students in 90s performed what Google does today to collect information and collaborate to share information with others. Today information is less shared by individual collaboration and is more shared by search engines.

In 1990s, college application submission was also cumbersome,not easy  similar to

1. Read notification and understand what needs to be done. if you have doubt, you need to go to your friend place or senior place to get clarity.
2. Obtain D.D in Bank and send to educational institution to get the application by post. Different educational institutions tied with different banks. To apply for 3 institutions, one may end up going to 3 different banks to get Demand Draft.
3. Fill application and attach Xerox’s and sometimes additional D.D and send to educational institution. Then you get hall ticket to write exam or called for interview for admission.

In 2017,  I admire the speed and comfort to perform submission and payments online, I question myself whether learning opportunities are created to students, when parent makes payment online. There is no opportunity to make errors and learn from failures.  Even in my school days, parents denied students to learn from errors. Lot of friend’s father used to take office leave to submit application for children and accompany children till the room where entrance examinations happened.

This is opportunity I got from the application process. Treat reading notification as equivalent to read and interpret statement sum problem in Maths . The application process provides first visit opportunity to banks, fill D.D request forms, carry cash safely and obtain Demand Draft (D.D) and also visit post office to drop filled applications and D.D in envelope and send by post. When they travel alone to write entrance examinations, they find how to stay at relative place in Chennai for short time, carry hall-ticket safe. Effectively learning to be disciplined and organized, essential for students staying in hostel, away from parents.

Will Identity(Aadhaar) lead to separation?

Today I was reading  articles and started to ask myself question of “why identity?” and started to look  beyond privacy

• “View: Argue for a privacy law, not against Aadhaar “
• Big Brother? 100 Small Brothers are watching you.

Identity can be sense of security, safety, a sense of being owned and of possessing, that gives great comfort, which is more of  illusion. Privacy is fear(lack of security) , when person shares data(identity)  with authority or others and fears that data(identity) in hands of authority has potential to lead to your own exploitation.

Anyone from India is aware of what happened when India society gave identity to people in terms  of caste, sects and work and gave rise to a new sect of people called untouchables.  When  children of scavenger applies for opportunity , the connection of  children’s identity with parent’s identity  has potential to bias in the judge who decided whether person qualifies for opportunity or not.  If you  claim maturity in objective evaluation, watch video கக்கூஸ்” ஆவணப்பட இயக்குநர் திவ்யா,  to understand how much society context is influenced by identity of individuals.

Look  200 years back. Did people have passport? No. Passports may be provided by kings or emperors to give special privileges to specific people. When King asks special persons of opposite country to surrender his passport, the message was “Your country has lost the belief of ours” or “There are serious differences with your country”.

Will identity leads to separation? Post industrial revolution,  new identity of of owner and workers or capitalists and socialists that separated them.  Look at  IT industry is created based on job roles that separate them and cause for conflicts.

In my daughter’s school, there are houses formed with identity and asked to compete against each other to bring success to their house. Why do students are not taught of the ability to achieve more as single school, rather than two houses in school?  May be students can use time to compete with others to learn to compete with themselves .

Having spend time as entrepreneur, I see entrepreneurial clubs based on identity of your business. Occasionally, When club fails to represent all their aspirations, a new club gets created based on their identity.  Most of times people are working hard to gain access to existing clubs and people are denied access to social network of club. One’s failure identity will make exclude you from the club’s activities.  On other end,  folks who invested in efforts to build brand identities leveraging club exploit the same to their personal advantage.

Passport is an identity document used by countries  to limit people from other countries to migrate in to the country in the process to safeguard benefits of country for people who stay in the country and do not want to lose them to migrants.  H1B or Green Card are identity got by migrants arriving to USA. The identity brings fear in migrant as it enables them to earn the economic benefits, and absence of the identity leads to loss of economic benefits. Economic benefits leads some to give away citizenship of their birth country to gain the citizenship of the new country.

When I see an article You need not submit Aadhaar card to comply with FATCA, my mind questions what is the identity of  people interested to make Aadhaar mandatory. Are these people Indians? Have they lived in USA for years? If yes, they would social security benefits. To repatriate social security benefits India and USA needs to have treaty and every India needs to have something equal to Social security number. Is Indian taxpayer money used to gain benefits for some of theses self servicing people?

Let me end with quote from world teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti  ” When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind”