Village Corp, an idea from an empty stomach
In what state I put up this post is immaterial. I m just saying, this post is something that came from a mind working on an empty stomach. Maybe you could say I empathize with the people who live on empty stomachs. Mind you I am personally responsible for my empty stomach as I was lazy to cook lunch.
India as a nation is intricately tied up with the regime of the middle man. No one really owns any land. Everything belongs to the government. Hence Government servants and government profession grossly overrated. People capitalize on it, they make good for themselves at the expense of the others. No one can really make up their minds on anything in India because our motto is so confusingly vague. Unity in diversity they call it. My attempt here might not make any noticeable change. But what is wrong in an idea. After all it is tax free.
I believe, given the right expertise in handling certain scenarios and following seriously bold actions this idea can be made something that can make life so much better for the ‘people’ of the nation. The quotes in the previous sentence were no accident. I am talking about the people who we tread on to make ourselves better.
The present is not what we had in mind some 30 years ago. In fact it is not even close to what we had in mind. Don’t even dare think it is better than our visions. The poor is still poor and the rich still rich. People as a whole are no different. Everyone is selfish as selfish can be. The ignorant are still ignorant and the enlightened ones are too busy with themselves.
I could write books on the past short paragraphs but I m not going to, because I know it would be futile just like so many other books by so many other authors. So coming to the point finally…. In India we have people who we call tenants, then there are people called landlords and then there are people who no one calls marketers. At all three strata of people everyone is concerned about only him or his family (ladies are avoided on purpose, cos quite frankly you haven’t stood up for nuts in 60 years of so called independence). The tenants make the least money of them all as they feed on an agreed portion of their produce and whatever left over the landlords give them as wages (as we call it) . The landlords sell their goods to the marketers who pay good money for the landlord… It is good money for the landlord because he is an individual, maybe a family but nothing more. The marketers sell it to the population as over-priced farm produce and make good monies for him. In good time the marketer becomes big private power like todays big bazaar network and so on. The central question here is, are we following a capitalist approach or a socialist approach??… The answer… no one knows ,or better, no one cares. Everyone gets some money according to their position in the money chain of tenant landlord marketer.
Then on a different byroad there are the so called city consumers who feed the money into the chain. This strata comprises of all the white collar professionals, blue collar professionals, the city rich, the city poor and all the other people who haven’t planted a single plant that gives produce.
Of course everyone of u know all this, but have u noticed what is wrong. Have u noticed why things are so shitty. I am not claiming that I know anything but I proudly claim I am better than u because I think this can state of affair can be sorted out with or without your help.
The problem my friend is that everyone thinks small, and no one gives a damn about pushing the development into the lower parts of the chain because we fear that it will affect our so called income and growth. We deter ourselves from making an effort because we think small and we think we will not get the required help when we work as individuals.
What follows is my vision of a socialist-capitalist approach of tackling the problem of pushing development to the lower stata. Of course people might have wrote thesis papers on this with supporting data, but more than a simple blog post this is an appeal to join me in my effort to make a difference. I m not claiming any proprietary rights for this idea so feel free to use it wherever u want in the right sense of the post, or maybe even implement it. I will be more than happy to join ‘your’ cause if u give me the honor of working for it.
The idea is tentatively called VILLAGE CORP and this project is to be initiated with project Gandhi with sufficient cooperation from like-minded individuals. This project is going to be about setting up a conglomeration of production-distribution enterprises each based in a village comprising of the people from that village and a few consultants. Each unit autonomous and each catering to the output of one village and having brand name uniting everything. In sufficient time make a corporation with public issue of stocks to the members and other investors to make a corporation that thinks as a whole and makes every farmer, landlord and tenant a share holder and an owner of the company. This brand name should embody the role of an NGO in the villages it operate…. This is the synopsis… a more detailed post shall follow unraveling how I think this can be initiated and worked upon. I invite co authorship on this idea, maybe someday we, the so called enlightened ones can finally put our education and our freedom to good use. Hoping Gandhi has not given up looking down on us with contempt… I bid adieu to return with my plans. Might not be a good read but definitely a gratifying one to write.
Discovering the spirit of India. A plan
A reliable steed. ONLY Royal Enfiled will do.
This is one of those posts that ur friends can use to tease u for the rest of your life, but i think it is important that i say what i want to say about this dream, even if my fate or destiny doesn’t allow me to pursue this dream i have been carrying around for a very long time. So what follows is the plan and if updates or sequels to this post if they come would be progress reports of my progress in making this plan a reality. Also this is a post that i want similar minded people to give suggestions in and use as a means to contact and team up with me in pursuing the dream. Maybe i m not the first to think about this but i sure as hell don’t want to be the only one who thought about doing it. Also this post shall be a reminder to me that i had once thought of doing it, if i end up a snob like the numerous ‘professionals’ out there.
Now what exactly is this dream that i talk so highly about? This dream is about an escape, about responsibility, about knowing the truth.
Being born in India and that too in a so called ‘free’ India, among a people that takes everything for granted and who consider that the father of the nation was a joke… i have had a rather confusing childhood where i have fought so hard to let no one influence my right and wrong judgment capacity. So now here i sit in front of my laptop typing this post tagged ‘weirdo’ and what not, but i ll come to the point. So my dream is to prove a point, a point that our father of the nation has tried to put across and failed miserably if not worse. May be i will fail too but it is too important not to try. My dream is to make the same journeys and pick up the same vibes that Gandhi picked up but in a modern and not so text-bookish way in a modern India and analyze the change. (i have omitted the use of Mahatma in my references to the great man because i understand from his biography written by his grandson that he used to hate people calling him a Mahatma.).
So what vibes or what journey am i talking about? This journey is something almost all the politicians in India pre and post independence took as an act of foolishness. We all know from our text books that Gandhi spend a considerable amount of his Life in India traveling to god forsaken places which we now and then call as villages. Gandhi made these journeys in trains with a rather limited and trustworthy people who were his fellow practitioners in his ashrams. And he used to make his life look like he was more of a religious leader than a politician, he was a great proponent of science and he used to make it a point that he practiced what he preached and stayed inquisitive about the principles. As a direct consequence of the qualities mentioned above he used to make these train journeys in 3rd class. Also Gandhi did a lot of soul searching among the masses of India making friends and meeting people during his long walks that are so popular from the photographs of the great dailies of that time. During this rather inquisitive period in Gandhi’s life he understood that the problems lies in the base level and in India that base level is the villages of India. There are a lot of other things that Gandhi had in mind when he had this realization and said “India lives in its villages” or sth like that but u get the point. I m not going to elaborate on Gandhi’s theory. This is my blog and i would like to say what I have in mind and I m quite sure if Gandhi was around he would be the first to join me in making this dream a reality.
Being a scholar or a ‘wannabe scholar’ in the rather lucrative field of computer science engineering i am left with a rather lucrative job opportunity as i near the end of my degree. So I am hoping this job would give me the means, mainly as money and more importantly as time in pursuing this dream.
Finally we are at a point where I can hope that u will read about this and not think it to be a joke. Yes the dream is to retrace the footsteps of Gandhi. The dream is to document villages of India and its people that live there and understand their lives. The dream is to make an item of interest that other people can use to understand what Gandhi was trying to convey. The dream is to put a rather young and contemporary outlook to Gandhi’s dream. The dream is to make a difference keeping the base at Gandhi’s dream. The dream is to discover India.
What follows is the tentative action plan which if u have read to this point that I appeal to u to read further about.
The idea is to know the routes that Gandhi followed to the numerous villages all over India one step at a time. I intend on covering some of the villages (starting with the most remote ones) of a region say a state in over a period of 2 weeks on motor cycles and documenting the place and the people in a way that is striking enough to show the real development or underdevelopment that free India has brought to them in over 60 years of independence. And repeating the procedure in different regions in different ‘long leaves’ from the job. Then to make a documentary and a photo journal revealing the truths about the villages of India. It is a media project, It is a project to put a point forward to the system at play here. It is also a project that shall ensure that i retain my humanity even while being a component in the corporate machine.
I m quite sure by now most u would have reached ur reading limit. Hence i stop now to resume later with elaborations about the components required to make this dream a reality and my current status with regard to the completion of this dream.
I claim no proprietorial rights to the idea. So if anyone is already doing this project which i tentatively call ‘project Gandhi’, i shall be happy to help in the form of brain or barn. Also I invite You to join me if u think it is worth ur time and if u think it important enough to help me pursue this dream. Till i write that subsequent post, adieu.
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