India's treasures - One more unraveled

I have never been to Sri Anantha Padmanaphasamy temple in Trivandrum, Kerala but I have always been enamoured by the temples of Kerela. I have visited some of the other famous temples and really been mesmerized by the ambiance and the way the temple custodians go out of the way to maintain the decorum and enforce temple rules. That said the reason I'm blogging is because of the interesting breaking news about the treasure trove found at Sri Anantha Padmanaphasamy temple ($ 22 bn by one estimate).

While the whole country and media is going berserk and debating on who must be responsible and what must be done with the treasure and how must it be utilized in the future, I for one is excited with the find.The treasure represents our country's history and a provides a rare insight and  reflection into our country's heritage.

The treasure must remain under the custody of the temple authority as the treasure rightfully belongs to the temple. The royal family must be commended for the way they have managed the temple and the treasure for hundreds of years. I think the issue is that we have very little appreciation of the history and part of this is because of the effective damage to our psyche by the British rule and I think policy makers even after independence have made no elaborate attempt to repair that damage. A good example is the history that is taught in schools. Each state has its own history text book with a lot of focus on independence struggle. Agreed that the independence struggle is an important aspect of our history to learn but what about the history for over 3,000 years before that!

We must revamp the history our kids learn in school and provide them with insights into the vast treasure trove of history that we have as a nation. If that is not done  then we would never realize the real value of the treasure like the one found at Sri Anantha Padmanabhasamy temple.

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Anti-corruption (Lokpal Bill) - How to go about drafting one?

Corruption without doubt is the greatest threat to our moral and social fabric in India. No other threat is as grave and as real as corruption. Corruption occurs on a daily basis and is so much a part and parcel of our lives that we consider it 'Normal'. Now that is a scary thought.
There has been some awareness and some political movement recently against corruption (like Anna Hazare's protest and Baba Ramdev's fast) though all this helped in highlighting corruption in the media and our dinner table conversations but it is very disheartening to see the members of the civil society and the government fighting and squabbling like kids.
The larger question is:
Is this the right way to go about address this pivotal issue without really including every democratic constituent into the whole process. No single committee of the civil society or a political party can preside over the process of finalizing the draft of the Lokpal bill. We will need every constituent representation and ideas to be involved in the process.
I think we have the political, judiciary and the executive representation but how do you really get in the common man especially the Indian middle class represented. And, I say that the participation of the Indian middle class is necessary because there is no one real representation for this important section of the population. We will need a platform so that people can voice their anti corruption ideas and suggestions. With regards to this one story caught my attention, in Iceland the government is using social networking to ensure participation by its citizens in drafting a new Constitution (more than 2/3rd of Icelanders are in Facebook). But, skeptics may say that this will not work because of the low level of computer and Internet penetration in India. I totally agree with that but the point is, not that one solution fits all, the point is explore and add in new ways of including people's participation along with other democratic means to important pieces of legislation like anti-corruption bill  draft and make sure the best ideas and the most practical are not lost in the jungle of politics.What do you think?

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