Transition into real world

I can still remember the day 16 years ago. It was a warm day and I had this fulfilling feeling that I have never had since then. I had just completed the final exam of my standard 10 board exam in Dombivli ( a town I grew up in near Mumbai).
It was a feeling of accomplishment that I had after one year of hard work and I was not worried about the results because I knew I had given my best. I came home after school had great lunch and watched a old Tamil movie on very own DD channel.
I spent the evening playing gully cricket with friends. I had never skipped a day playing even during the exams. I used to play for 2-3 hours every day and on exam days it was about an hour.
I was busy planning on how I would spend my 3 month vacation. My planning was around playing cricket and managing my team. I was the captain of a well knit group in my colony. Those 3 months were spent playing cricket, lots of cricket and hanging out with friends and going around the place having bhel puris, pav bahjis and other Mumbai delicacies and endless hours were spent just chatting with friends. I also spent a lot of time at my neighbors place; we were a very close knit community. I never even once was worried about the exam results.
After 3 months of fun and frolic in my very own little world of gully cricket, my team (friends whom i miss immensly in my life now) and the limitless time that I had to do whatever I wanted to do the exam results were announced one day and I had secured good marks. I was happy and my folks and friends were happy too but little did I realize that this would turn around my life forever for this was the beginning of the transition into the real world which in this case was getting into junior college.

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Corruption - A way of life in India

It seems that the trend in India is that every political family has a target of amassing wealth.

Recent examples include :

Illegal iron ore mining scam in Karnataka

2G spectrum scam by A. Raja of DMK

I think corruption is an acceptable way of life in India. Even common man has to participate in corrupt activities because of the way things work. For example if some one is caught violating the traffic the traffic cop pesters the violator for money. Since the violator sees an easy way out he pays the traffic cop instead of paying a fine or going to the court (where the case could drag on) and worse still the violator is not sure what he violated because the traffic system in itself is so messed up. A common denominator in all these instances are systemic failure; let us analyze the process/ systems that fail in this simple example:

• Traffic system - Absence of any traffic rules and its implementation


• Traffic policing - Lack of training, thankless job and low pay and self- esteem


• The motorist - Unsure about traffic rules, lack of respect for the law and possibly could have procured license illegally


• Civilian courts - Unclear policies and punishment / fines for traffic violators
  


• Roads / Highway department -Bad infrastructure and lack of proper road markers,signals etc

If such for such a simple example we can actually point out at least 5 systemic failures then really think about how the rot has spread across our society and systems.

Solutions... any one...

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