What is a Broad-Based Education?

Here I am giving you a story which  had read in Shiv Khera's book, You Can Win . I liked it, so sharing it with you.

Some animals in a forest decided to start a school. The students included a bird, a squirrel, a fish, a dog , a rabbit & a mentally retarded eel. A board was formed and it was decided that flying, tree climbing, swimming, and burrowing would be part of the curriculum in order to give a broad based education. 

All animals were required to take all subjects. The bird was excellent at flying and was getting A's but when it came to burrowing, it kept breaking its beak and wings and started failing. Pretty soon, it started making C's
in flying and of course in tree climbing and swimming it was getting F's. 

The squirrel was great at tree climbing and was getting A's, but was failing in swimming. 

The fish was the best swimmer but couldn't get out of the water and got F's in everything else. 

The dog didn't join the school, stopped paying taxes and kept fighting with the administration to include barking as part of the curriculum. 

The rabbit got A's in burrowing but tree climbing was a real problem. It kept falling and landing on its head, suffered brain damage, and soon couldn't even burrow properly and got C's in that too. The mentally retarded eel, who did everything half as well became the valedictorian of the class. The board was happy because everybody was getting a broad-based education.

What a broad-based education really means is that the student is prepared for life, without losing their areas of specialization or competence.

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The reasons behind AAP’s astonishing forward march

Here I am giving some points which I think has helped AAP to get such outstanding success and more than that, attention of all India in the very first election which other new parties (except Telgu Desam of N.T.Rama Rao) in history of India could not able to fetch.
So here are the reasons:


Joseph Gobble’s method:
If you repeat a lie often enough, people will eventually believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself. In this case it was not lie, but people have tendency that they don’t want to waste their vote, and give their vote to the one who they think surely going to win. From the 2 months before the election, AAP has created environment that they are going to win 40 seats.


Cloud computing:
Take cloud computing for instance. AAP used a solution called ‘VoiceTree’ which took away the need to set up a massive call centre to make calls to citizens. Remember, political parties have long used recorded messages through cold calls, but that is mechanical and perhaps counter-productive. What VoiceTree did was provide the AAP with the power to make any person, anywhere in the world, a volunteer for the party at a very low cost. A volunteer called a toll-free central number and from there, he/she was connected to a random Delhi number. Once connected, the volunteer could make a personalised sales pitch for AAP, a far more powerful spiel than a canned message. And once made, the called number would be moved to a called database so that every volunteer had a fresh citizen to approach.


Social media:
The power of social media has also changed the game. The AAP no longer needed to go after mainstream media to ensure they carried AAP's viewpoints. The power of social media ensured that mainstream media had to go after AAP or risk losing relevance.


Clear manifesto:
Everyone who knows AAP has their manifesto on mouth. In every interview, they have repeated that. Even after 65 years of independence, others are promising roads, water, electricity and other basic needs. Not only this but AAP came up with distribution of power to people through their new methods – Mohhalla Sabha, Gram sabha in Delhi’s villages, Lokpal bill within 15 days after coming to power, Reduction of electricity bill to 50%, Citizen security forces, Regulations of donations in private schools and colleges.


Great team:
Party has really good team of educated members from all fields (not those who have politics as single source of income). Party has projected Arvind Kejriwal as their face of the election but others too had great influence in society. Unlike the case of Loksatta Party of Dr. JP Narayan (whose foundation based on nearly same principles as AAP) is only known face of the party. So AAP has able show basic democratic values in party through their action.

There are many other reasons, but these are I find important.

~Digvijay Sanjay Patil

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A Father Prayer by General Douglas MacArthur

Build me a son, O Lord, 

who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, 

and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid; 

one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, 

and humble and gentle in victory.

Build me a son whose wishbone 

will not be where his backbone should be; 

a son who will know Thee….Lead him, 

I pray, 

not in the path of ease and comfort, 

but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge. 

Here let him learn to stand up in the storm; 

here let him learn compassion for those who fail.

Build me a son whose heart will be clean, 

whose goal will be high; 

a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; 

one who will learn to laugh, 

yet never forget how to weep; 

one who will reach into the future, 

yet never forget the past.

And after all these things are his, add, 

I pray, 

enough of a sense of humor, 

so that he may always be serious, 

yet never take himself too seriously. 

Give him humility, 

so that he may always remember the simplicity of greatness, 

the open mind of true wisdom, 

the meekness of true strength.

Then I, his father, will dare to whisper, “I have not lived in vain.”

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My loving nest - Chalisgaon

Chalisgaon...My town.

I am compelled to write this blog because I am tired of people asking me the same question over and over again. "Isn't the name of your town weird?". First of all I want to clear that it is a town, not a village. As most of you ask me that, "gaon means you live in a village?"

So here is the story of how the name Chalisgaon came into existence:

So folks, once upon a time, there was a king. He had a huge empire and he was very fond of going to the forest for hunting. Once he had gone to the forest and saw a little deer. As soon as he pulled out his arrow and aimed at him, the deer started running. King followed him on his horse for a very long time, but couldn't catch the deer. While catching the deer, king enters in the deep forest and forgets his route.

It was the time of hot summer and after the long chasing the deer, the king became thirsty. He tried to find the river or any water source but to no avail. After a few hours, when the king had almost died, a shepherd came and gave him the water and food. He took him to his hut and coddled the king. By his service and nursing, the king got happy and offers him the 40 villages (40 gaon) and asks him to come to his palace whenever he wants to take his gift. After that king went back to his palace.

After going to the palace, he thought, that, the shepherd only give him some water and food and he foolishly offered him forty villages. He called his prime adviser and told him the story. On that, the prime adviser told him the idea - "pick forty families from forty different villages and form a new village and name it as Chalisgaon. By doing this, you will fulfill your promise as well as the shepherd would not get forty villages"

That is the story of how the name Chalisgaon came into existence...Surely, I don't vouch for the authenticity of the story.

Tourist attraction:

The world famous mathematician and philosopher Bhaskaracharya (inventor of zero) is from Challisgaon. There is the place Patnadevi(15 km from Chalisgaon) where this great mathematician had lived.

Bhaskracharya

Hemadpanthi mandir:

Keki Moos art gallery:

Visit here : http://kekimoos.blogspot.in/

Patnadevi is surrounded by the dense vegetation of the Gautala Outram Ghat Wildlife Sanctuary. During the Monsoons the Dhawaltirtha Waterfall is active in the mountains.

Pitalkhora caves:

These are an early Buddhist site consisting of 14 rock-cut cave monuments which date back to the third century BCE, making them one of the earliest examples of rock-cut architecture in India. The cliff has fallen away dramatically since antiquity, and most of the carvings that existed on the face of the cliff fell with it. The quality of the stone there was not sutaible for making caves so artists preferd to carve at Ellora.

The sculptural representations here are similar to that of found in the stupas of Sanchi, Karla, Nasik, of the same period. As these Caves are carved in somewhat softer and fragile rock, here one can also see examples of ‘ancient conservation’. A feature which needs special mention is the very ingenious arrangement of diverting water that found its way into the cave through cracks; long tunnel like openings were bored into the ceilings and the water was allowed to flow fully into the cave underneath the floor in concealed drain channel cut to lead the water outside near the cave entrance (Cave 4).

Girna dam:

Patnadevi temple: 

Sai baba temple: (Tarwade) 5 km from Chalisgaon

Photo Credits: Yours truely,

~Digvijay Sanjay Patil

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Book review: My Country, My Life

Few days ago during holidays, I have completed reading a very nice book named My Country My Life, an auto-biography of Mr. Lal Krishna Advani. It is not just auto-biography but the complete political history of India after independence. To read this book, it is not necessary that you are a follower of Mr. Advani or in unison with the agenda of BJP. Today, there are very few leaders who are active in politics in all those years after independence at national level. He is one of them. After reading this book, some of my own misconceptions have been addressed, some of my opinions, changed. 

In Ayodhya Andolan chapter and his controversial speech in Pakistan about Jeenah as a secular legend, I think he tried to defend himself. In Pakistan, they differentiate between the people who migrated from India to Pakistan and native Pakistanis. but I feel proud when I see that India is the only place which dissolves all the streams in one single "Hindi" flow. Advani, Ram Jethmalani, Deelip Kumar, Yash Chopra, Gulzar, these all famous personalities migrated in in India after partition. 

It is a very nice book to know the history of  BJP, Congress, Communists. Also it tells great information about the partition, the emergency period, riots in Delhi after the assassination of  Mrs. Indira Gandhi, riots in Godhra, Bofors scandal, his rath-yatras, role of RSS(Rashrtiya Swayamsevak Sangh) in politics, Kargil war and lots more. The book has also discussed about the national problems like terrorist attacks, Naxalites and Maoist, Kashmir issue. It is a must read for those who want to discover India. 

The Google book is also available. Here is the link:  CLICK HERE

Keep reading, keep sharing your thoughts.

Peace.

~Digvijay Sanjay Patil

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Freedom of Speech and Expression

Freedom of Speech and Expression

“Give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to conscience above all liberties.”

-John Milton.

The freedom of expression is regarded s the first condition of liberty. But now-a-days questions are raised that is the freedom of speech absolute? Or there are some conditions when one’s freedom of expression is restricted? The many cases like Shalin Dhada case, Aseem Trivedi case throw a harsh light on India’s new Information Technology Act that governs electronic speech. Freedom of speech and expression means the right to express one’s own convictions and opinions freely by words of mouth, writing, painting and pictures or by any other modes. In modern time, it is widely accepted that the right to freedom of expression is the essence of the free society and it must be safeguarded at all times. But the question is ‘How far does it go?’ and ‘How far should it go?’

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