I have seen the whole event on TV and felt it very closely. It is difficult to put in words how we feel when something like this happens in our city in our country. As i was listening to people on TV & Radio, there is a lot of Anger in people's mind, and rightly so. But everyone was talking about issues and blaming politicians...hardly anyone talked abt solutions (other than a war with Pakistan which i dont think is the solution)..so i sat back and thought of ......A Call to the PM's office and the following email sent to the PM
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Dear Mr. Prime Minister,
I am not sure if this would even reach you but still I want this to be heard. I am a working professional in Mumbai and wish to help in the hour of crisis in the country. I will try to make this as precise and to the point so that I don’t waste your time.
I am sure you have heard people’s opinion about politicians and authorities in the country post the havoc in Mumbai. Being an Indian myself I can totally understand the emotions. But I want to put my energy in to something constructive and suggest solutions instead of blaming people and talking about just issues.
The Idea:
To save its face and to save the country, the Central Government should run a campaign asking people of this country to suggest their ideas to curb Terrorism in the country. You should promise that the campaign will be wholly promoted by the PMO and some of the filtered ideas would be debated in the working committee and parliament for implementation (live telecast of the debate). I know the idea sounds overly optimistic but then I guess that is required at this point in time. The high energies of people in the country need to be directed in to something constructive and only you can do this through your team. Ask them to SMS, email or write letters with their ideas and put up a team of 100 people to scan it and filter it. It won’t cost much to implement this considering the following benefit.
Benefits:
• It gives People of India a feeling of involvement towards the country
• It gives some saving grace to the government by showing that it cares and is willing to take steps
• It allows the millions of brilliant brains of the country to come up with innovative (cost effective & practical) solutions
• It actually might end up saving my country, our country from many disasters
• AND IT’S NO SHAME TO ASK FOR HELP……. AFTER ALL EVERYONE IN THIS COUNTRY IS EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE
Please note that I am not questioning the intelligence your team has but I believe 1million brains will provide you a better pool of ideas to work with.
I am not sure if these emails are read by you, but I m optimistically looking forward to your reply.
Best Regards
Rahul Choube
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I dont know if this is the right way, but I truly believe that its time to consider it our duty to contribute in whatever way we can to solve the problem.
Looking for your thoughts
Cheers
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Dear Mr. Prime Minister,
I am not sure if this would even reach you but still I want this to be heard. I am a working professional in Mumbai and wish to help in the hour of crisis in the country. I will try to make this as precise and to the point so that I don’t waste your time.
I am sure you have heard people’s opinion about politicians and authorities in the country post the havoc in Mumbai. Being an Indian myself I can totally understand the emotions. But I want to put my energy in to something constructive and suggest solutions instead of blaming people and talking about just issues.
The Idea:
To save its face and to save the country, the Central Government should run a campaign asking people of this country to suggest their ideas to curb Terrorism in the country. You should promise that the campaign will be wholly promoted by the PMO and some of the filtered ideas would be debated in the working committee and parliament for implementation (live telecast of the debate). I know the idea sounds overly optimistic but then I guess that is required at this point in time. The high energies of people in the country need to be directed in to something constructive and only you can do this through your team. Ask them to SMS, email or write letters with their ideas and put up a team of 100 people to scan it and filter it. It won’t cost much to implement this considering the following benefit.
Benefits:
• It gives People of India a feeling of involvement towards the country
• It gives some saving grace to the government by showing that it cares and is willing to take steps
• It allows the millions of brilliant brains of the country to come up with innovative (cost effective & practical) solutions
• It actually might end up saving my country, our country from many disasters
• AND IT’S NO SHAME TO ASK FOR HELP……. AFTER ALL EVERYONE IN THIS COUNTRY IS EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE
Please note that I am not questioning the intelligence your team has but I believe 1million brains will provide you a better pool of ideas to work with.
I am not sure if these emails are read by you, but I m optimistically looking forward to your reply.
Best Regards
Rahul Choube
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I dont know if this is the right way, but I truly believe that its time to consider it our duty to contribute in whatever way we can to solve the problem.
Looking for your thoughts
Cheers
7 comments:
hey Rahul whats up?
Though you've framed it up very nicely, the format was exquisite wordings were like that of a true orator and talked much about finding solutions but I couldn't find any single solution in your writings. You just gave an idea of what everyone is thinking.
Really everyone is thinking about finding solutions only. And even then most of the people will come up with the same old idea of isolating or even attacking Pakistan to which you are anti and don't even consider it as a solution. By the way terrorism in Mumbai is not the first case of terrorism in India. I will be grateful to you if you can count any 3 states which have not faced terrorism in India. In Kashmir there are reports of terrorism each day. And none should forget the Delhi or Bengaluru blasts. You don't get to see it in front of your eyes from '1.5' km doesn't mean that it is a minor affair. It is a very major issue and needs to be tackled strictly. You can't ask 1 million people to give their views for every case of terrorism. News channels are still doing this and getting a lot of TRP and hype. Initially the very purpose of print media and electronic media was to:
1. give public a chance to give their opinion by providing them with sufficient information and
2. getting back their opinion. And if a team of 100 people is appointed for the given purpose, I am sure it will be a waste of time and energy.
Regarding giving a feeling of involvement to all the people, I think this has been the strategy of the govt. for many years and will continue for years to come and is found to be futile. As has been the strategy of Pakistanis "Haske liya hai Pakistan, Ladke lenge Hindustan". Since independence they have kept their promise. And a war on Pakistan will also be better for them as there is no law n order, and they have two different rulers viz the Army and the Govt. Yaa u sound overly optimistic, but hope for the best and hope it will keep everyone going. And I urge you to give atleast one practical solution and use this blog as a medium to reach people if they like your thought they will spread the word (they will do the same even if they dislike it).
thanks a lot for your views sugat.. I totally understand where you are coming from. When i wrote this.. I was thinking 1 level above and trying to make a strategy which could get more solutions.. we have limited brains and imagination.. so me giving 1 solution will make the exercise very micro level..
When i said i have seen it closely .. i didnt mean to undermine the previous attacks or bomb blasts.. i was just starting the blog with a pretext..
One of the solutions is to change our own attitude towards security and treating our nation as our home. Being vigilant enough to report any unusual movement around us.
Another solution as it is being implemented is putting enough pressure .. and i mean constant pressure on pakistan in investigating the issue to the core..(although i m skeptical of how successful this attempt would be)
Then there are those usual logical solutions everyone is suggesting, more NSGs, better equipped police..
I am looking for more technology based and very innovative but cost effective solutions, and quick to implement.. for which i m sure we need more than just few people's brain...
Hey rahul, i would like to add a thing over here.
as per news, the Gun provided to one of the cops, forgot his name, was jammed. when he wanted to fire his first shot, he couldn't. Bulletproof jackets had holes in it. Our intelligence team RAW' has informed the authorities about the possibilities of upcoming risk in Mumbai, but they didn't pay heed to it.. common man has given power to a few people.. and when these people wont help us, we'll suffer.. and optimism wont be a soltuion to that u c.. I understand we'll have to help us but we want some help from the authorities too, otherwise whats the use of selecting them as our well wishers, ruling us, exploiting ourselves and our resources all year round.. Even if not always, they must help us atleast during these phases. theres no way we can forget these mistakes which took so many lives.
well writing a letter to a pm and hoping for his feedback is just too much of an idealistic approach. How can u say 100 people appointed for this task wont get indulged in corruption..
lets leave it..
Anyway here i too think solutions frm people is waste of time and money. People are so much irated with the ignorance of govt. that chances of trusting it are just low now.
Have you seen our responsible media, it has been of sucha great help to these terrorists, that it was giving Live news of each and everything outside, helping these people to formulate their plans and activities accordingly. So india is not just abt politicians.. media is adding zing to the situation with no responsibily at all. Grhhh!!
I can just think of three immediate solutions at this moment..
First Solution:
as u said, we must be aware of our sorroundings and should immediately report any suspicious object, person or activity.
second one can be:
We must be trained as to how to tackle these situations when they arise, and how to protect ourselves.
third solution:
Blow up the army of pakistan. the main supplier of terrorists.
Thanks Shesha for your thoughtful remarks.. I was discussing similar points with someone recently.. but its not as straight forward as it seems..
I totally agree the equipments given to policemen should be up to date and better however the info from intelligence as we hear from media is not always specific and then most of the times it becomes like the story of "wolf and sheep" means.. in a city like mumbai there are intelligence info coming almost every other day..which are not very specific.. so its sometimes difficult to interpret which is an actual threat and which is a false one...I am not saying this is an excuse to having lapse in security.. just that it’s not straight forward..
I agree that writing a letter to PM is a bit idealistic.. but then I thought if.. with that 0.0009% chance if there could be some positive impact.. it would mean a lot for many people
The idea of asking people for solution was to direct the energy and enthusiasm people are showing in the peace march in to something more constructive .. and I believe many news media like Dainik Bhaskar are actually doing that..
About Media except for some of those stupid channels like India TV, I believe they did hide some of the operational info so that it doesn’t help the terrorist. Also don’t u think watching all that on TV in live has made people more concerned and more active about making the government work…,. If it was not for the media and debates.. the matter would have scaled up to the level it has.. and I guess we should give credit to them for that.. with everything there are side effects.. so may be you are talking of the side effects of the media..
Again I am not sure if war of any kind is the solution to this problem, what the terrorist want is to have a war so that Pakistan is forced to move its army for Afghanistan border to India border. From heart they don’t wana fight with Taliban because it’s a baby of ISI and these terror groups itself. So by having a war would mean giving in to what they actually want us to do. Also with Pakistan being a nuclear country, it will cost India more damage because India has more to loose… Pakistan hardly has anything anyway..
International community pressure is what is required.. and the basic basic solution lies with us.. i will elaborate on this in the next blog
Cheers
hey rahul ,
no doubt whatever u hv written is one of the best possible way to get towards the 'Ultimate Solution'. And in India there are millions of people who knows or who has different Ideas to get rid of many problems such as terrorism,poverty ,corruption etc etc . Do you think government has No solutions or No Steps with them ?? ofcourse yes. governemnt is made up of polititions who are Incapable of doing this , to write on our polititions is a different topic altogether , but say we all have given our best thought and forwarded it to these polititions who are in turn going to take decesion , what will happen ?? total waste right ?
So now what ? we keep blaming polititions ?? yes we do and thats the only thing we do right ? but the question is who has voted these people ??? WE right ?
why cant we elect good people ??
and in that also do we know how many people are there who really stood up for election and couldnt win ? I know one person - Avinash Dharmadhikari and there are many leaders who are capable of taking good decisions but we are not making them win , thats the whole point I think for the long term solution. So lets start brainstorming on WHO ARE GOOD PEOPLE TODAY FIGHTING THE ELECTIONS ??
I think Rahul's thoughts are quite pertinent and echoed in the following quote by Bernard Shaw -
"We must either breed political capacity or be ruined by Democracy, which was forced on us by the failure of the older alternatives. Yet if Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters."
I would like to invite all active bloggers on this thread to read Gregory David Roberts' response to questions from a concerned worldwide audience re the Mumbai attacks on his website http://www.shantaram.com. Gregory David Roberts (aka Shantaram) is the author of the critically acclaimed masterpiece Shantaram.
On his website GDR provides a factual representation of the global history & mindset behind these attacks as well as itemizes 6 actionable steps that can be taken to counter the imminent issue of Jihadist fundamentalism that has disturbed world peace & order. Based on his real life experiences in the Indian subcontinent, his close association with Leopold's café, the Taj Mahal hotel & the Oberoi hotel in Bombay, and his love for the city of Bombay he provides quite a logical perspective to an emotionally charged audience.
Here is Shantarm's signature style quote from the article which essentially echoes my thoughts on the responses on this thread "You can't kill an idea with a bullet. You can only kill an idea with a better idea."
P.S. If you havent read Shantaram I would recommend you do.
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