On this website, I'm not selling something that requires you to pay; instead, I’m here to explore an opportunity to air various issues with you on which you and I as concerned individuals could meet because they just might be very dear to us. There are many infuriating things we are constantly required to endure; I wish I knew how to solve them all, where to begin, how to approach, and how to proceed. But I simply don’t. I’m hoping that perhaps through common understanding, empathy, respect and awareness for the world that we live in and on which we all have a significant stake we could raise these issues, discuss and figure out how to advance with them to our common advantage. Our ideas, if they naturally resonate without any fiat of any kind demanding attention that they deserve, may ultimately provide the impetus to explore what we need to do as a society now and how we should as one unfragmented entity proceed.
We are not launching another political party; we have already too many. Regardless of our individual alignment to polity, I think there are some issues on which we could significantly converge taking common steps together. This is the basis to project and capture the common denominator of our assertions, our understanding, our hope, our outrage and our thoughts on a world that we share with each other with an ardent hope that in some ways we can make the difference we desire.
Right now, I'm in the process of developing this site which is far from being complete. I thank you for your patience and tenacity to read up to this without losing your curiosity.
Your's truly, Saumen Sengupta
| Our Worst problem: | Our lack of awareness |
We are not aware about our own
world. Consequently, we live in a world often shaped and influenced by others. We
live in a world where our own input is significantly less than all the others we
interact with. We live in opinions, what other significant ones do tend to claim are more
important than our own examined position. We, thus, exist through reactions. Thus, if others around us are
violent, petty, and shallow, we, in turn, let them shape us precisely in that
way. As a result, we become violent, petty and shallow. If we could only be
masters of our own selves, if we could be thoughtful, self-enquiring,
challenging, demanding more than what our own mediocrity suggests, perhaps, we could all live
differently. Instead of being guided, we could probably pen our own history
discovering ourselves at each step anew.
So long as we remain "unaware" we'd be part of the "herd", part of the "collective". To be an
individual, to be "serious", we must be able to question and challenge our collective wisdom, challenge our pet
positions, our dogmas, our own nurtured beliefs. Only when we have the capacity to question ourselves,
capacity to question our vested interest that meets the world as our 'traditions' could we be aware; only then
we are truly attentive to the world that we share with each other.
Becasue we are not aware and we do not realize the importance of awareness as a social force, we have no stake in
shaping our societal checks and balances; we are told what to do, but our voices are never heard. There is no
feedback system that could capture the actual dynamics or dialectics observed at the grass-root level to present it
at a global level. Our leaders decide what we should think! We are imbued in a Faustian design continuously selling ourselves to our
highest bidders. That's why we are in a 'collective' as long as we remain unaware. Sure, we do complain
every now and then, but our complaints have no momentum. Because we are unaware, our complaints and criticisms
about our environment, about our government, about our polity, about everything are like those emanating
from a prisoner whose sole interest is to improve the prison condition.
Must we continue in our own custom-designed prison?
| Our profound neglect: | Our continuing interest in gender, caste and race-based discriminations |
In our
bourgeois framework, maintained and endorsed by the all powerful patriarchal
society, gender,caste and race continue to haunt us even in this century. Education is
sought-after quality for our urban high-caste men, but the same is not considered necessary
for our female counterparts, for our dalit childfren, for our adibasis. Oh yes, some education
is good for them, but let that be controlled and dished out by the high-caste patriarchal
society ordained some two thousand years ago by Manu. Let men in the upper echelon decide,
our world mostly asserts, what is good for women, for the underdog, for the have-nots and what they
should strive for. Secondly, if one is not from the main stream with “proper” caste
and/or proper “tribe” tag, one could easily say goodbye to “education”. Oh yes, there are
quotas for OBC category to gain admissions in our presitgious institutes and governament operational
entities, but would that keep me alive if I'm refused drinking water in my village or if my
house is burnt down because my "uppity" behavior could not be tolerated at some level of my society!
About some
hundred years back, Swami Vivekananda observed that a nation that treated her
women folks as chattel had practically no chance to survive even in a secular
setting. “A bird cannot ever fly on one wing much as it tries”, bitterly
observed SV. See how this challenge is enthusiastically taken up in its entirety by
a group of dedicated sanyasinis, the paribrajikas of Sri Ramakrishna Saradapeeth Kanya
Gurukul situated in Jhargram, West Medinapur. If humanity is truly one existence, shouldn't
we relentlessly question how and why we do live like a bunch of islands? Can we truly live like
islands screaming "Me first!" all the time? Isn't it high time to be truly aware of what it means
when we sing "WE ARE THE WORLD"? Do we realize the responsibility it confers on us?
Must we live as fragmented beings when we are only ONE?
| Our Worst crime: | Killing others to promote and sustain ideas |
Life is the most precious
of all, most sacred of all and yet we don't mind to eliminate others via ethnic
cleansing, via suicide bombing, via acts of terrorism, via our intentional
neglect. This century and the last one are marked with violence unleashed to
promote specific ideas. My "ism" is better than your "ism", my religion is better
than your religion, my country is better than you country. Within this time, we
have fostered and nurtured nationalism, fascism, and fundamentalism. As a result
we have all kind of fundamentalists among us spreading like a deadly virus.
Here is my personal rambling on our own backyard Nandigram that has disgraced
and confounded us beyhond all proportions.
| Our Worst performance: | Destruction of our environment and ecology |
The rising sea level is
going to swallow, perhaps in our life time, the vast spread of Sundarban at the mouth of the
delta. Within the next 30 years, a good chunk of Bengal would be under
sea-water. The rest of India would soon lose all her glacier-fed rivers. The
poeple will literally die in thirst and hunger as we'd definitely lose our
agriculture through all these. Air quality in Kolkata is so bad that some 75% of
its people are destined to die early through asthma, emphysema, and bronchitis.
A well-known senior minister, when asked for an explanation, had the audacity to
suggest that it was worse in many other countries. But what was worse that we bought
that stupid answer without any hint of intelligence on our part. Why aren't we outraged?
If some 75% of our people are going to die through our intentional neglect, isn't that outrageous?
What are we going to do about it?
Kolkata continues to be filthy, cluttered with garbage, with its public resources like roads
and public parks in rampant disuse. People defecate on streets and alleyways often in broad daylight.
Why can’t we arrange well maintained public lavatories all across our city for both men and women?
Why do we spit in public places? Why aren’t our drains kept clean and covered? If it
is the job of KMC to keep Kolkata livable, shouldn’t they be answerable to people when
they fail in their mission?
We may be ready to add another 8000 post-secondary Educational Institutions
like colleges and universities very soon, but what about expanding our
primary and secondary education for our millions of children to a respectable level?
Aren't we concerned? Don't they need real education?
| Our false priorities: | What are truly important right now |
We need a government that is reluctant to lean on
excuses and short on slogans. If a particular department falls short of its stated objectives,
people should demand demotion of the attendant ministers and demotion of the top public
servants in charge of the relevant sectors. We should promote those who can do,
who can deliver. We need a work-force that is capable of working and taking
responsibility. Let us retire those who just cannot do or refuse to do. Let us
investigate those who have amassed a vast fortune via unacceptable and unethical
routes. Let us punish them severely freezing their bank-assets. Government must
be seen accountable to its electorate.
This website is
never going to be finished. We have a long way to go to live healthy without a
constant set of worries and wants. We all need to live our enriched lives in
awareness and understanding without ever losing focus of our priorities and
goals. There is no reason, whatsoever, for living a life of mediocrity
compromising our set of universal values. Talk to your representatives, your
political parties, your business sectors, your schools and colleges, your
municipalities to work with each other focused on their stated objectives to
help us live and grow responsively. Write regularly to newsmedia to discuss all
such issues. Invite your ministers and your local parties to debate these issues
to inform how they are going to solve these problems. Suggest your local clubs
and communities to participate in these issues more effectively.
We need your
vision as valuable input to enrich this site. Tell us, show us how we could be
more meaningful to our very world that is our to design, our to bequeath to our
next generation.