Sunday, August 27, 2017

Precious and Thrown Away

Vasu Reddy from Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com
Life itself is fleeting. For the earth is referenced to in billions of years and many references to the creator for his magical creation of forms of life, mainly the most intelligent of them of all; the human being.  While the evolution of humans is something we continue to discover, we already know that life is fleeting and precious.  We know that it is one life to live and whatever before or after is irrelevant.  Very few human beings live up to being a 100 years old, remining all of us that the life span of any human being is just a fleeting moment on earth.
In the human mind invincibility with life and what each person makes life to be is the thinking.  We are certainly creatures made of circumstances and opportunity.  (We continue to prophesize on opportunities are what we make of).  We throw in the conditions of life and continue to evolve into a mundane environment of what we want to look up to.  Just imagine what is on the mind of a just born baby? Probably only hunger followed by nature’s call and a warm embrace of the mother.  We quickly start to build our mind around (ideas) our circumstances and start to behave (adapt) to whatever they might be.  In each case our daily routine and behavior revolves around circumstances.  The tenacity of human beings is their ability to try and adapt to their given circumstances.  In most cases a generation ahead of us will keep instilling the desire to do better, and push us to an environment less challenging than theirs.  Study, work, live and have a smarter and cleaner life than theirs; and often with their sacrifices through their time, effort, resources and efforts.  All are geared to make things better for their next generation.
It is natural for us to want our off springs to have better opportunities and better conditions for life.  All our emotional wellbeing is typically attached to our children and what happens with their life.
From an open-air living and working only for food, only with a few people as a clan, we have grown to 7.5 billion people.  The basic instincts (I believe) are still intact on human reflections.  We have formed countries (keep forming and redrawing or encroaching), religion(s), boundaries, governments (various forms of them) and more over leaders.  One would have to guess if all 7.5 billion humans were one single clan (searching for a term here) how life would be monotonous.
One major psychological factor that we have developed is following one more human.  This not simply to follow their path of success or righteousness, but simply follow the ideology for another person.  In this time and age where we have every bit of information to appreciate and understand the minute by minute happenings in the world, we still are ideologically tied to what we call as leaders.
While our history is full of people who have set notable examples of life, teachings and practices we also have a great deal of leaders who have tried to influence on our nuances of fear and future.  Why we behold to any fear is really out of the observable human reaction.  We are all fully capable of making our own decisions, and whatever environment we are a part of we have a choice to our own wellbeing.  In 2017, we continue to behold our thoughts to others.  We also look at great wealth creators give away all their fortunes to betterment of fellow humans, we also look at leaders driving their followers into things what we really don’t need to inflict on each other. So much disparity on the same earth and same world, and same human beings.

Monday, August 14, 2017

Continuous Reinvention of Democracies

Vasu Reddy from Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

The law of the land in any democracy is to make the law and all its people follow it.  Defining democracy can be very simple or very complicated, but enjoying the freedom that is fostered what makes it a rightful aspect of life.  The law of the land starts with electing representatives with a simple majority, who in turn manage the people’s business the administration and making or adjusting the law of the land to best suit the needs of its population.  As all the elected representatives are for a definitive period (sometimes limited to reelection, or term limits), the electorate always has the option to replace or reelect the same person.  Essentially people have the ultimate power to choose who represents them.

Voter preferences, choices and needs are reflected each time they vote.  Exercising the right to vote and choose the representatives that follow, enforce and reinvent the law of the land on a continuous basis makes the democracy to reinvent the people’s process again and again.  It is continuous.

From the oldest democracy to the largest democracy, the right to vote is the supreme form of expression of freedom.  The votes evolve with the nation and international needs, and they also evolve with the practical needs of the society.  The experiences of the past and the needs of today, and how candidates represent their ways to address them, and finally how convinced is the voter makes the next winner.  A combination of socio-economic reality and the combination of promises verses deliverables to make up the choice for the voter, over the past 20 to 30 years the television, internet and more recent mobiles have made the voter interaction and reach instant and readily available to feed to the information overload.  Voter once again must decode the truth from what is being fed.

Irrespective of the election cycle, the voter choice is made on perception and need.  It is true that each election and its electoral deliverables adapt to the current events.  Although long term implications of the decisions taken by the government impact past and future, the current needs weigh heavily on voter decision making.  Catastrophes do play into elections, but they don’t happen every day to swing the elections.

Today’s events and coverage, the mood of the electorate and certainly how a candidate pitches will sway the percentage of people who comprise of the swing votes that will determine the winner.  The swing is slim as most elections are so close and 50.01% is all that is needed to victory.  When the electorate is deciding to vote on a party platform (irrespective of what they are pitching) the undecided or independent voters are to a minimum in the population, and almost all the time the candidates are not just pitching their base of voters, but also to the undecided.  The undecided are the ones that typically deliver the electoral victory.

Huge electoral margins are anomalies in democracies.  People are divided based on their ideologies, need, opportunity, opinions and many other factors that are unrelated to governance.  So, gaining the swing voters into perspective typically determines the victory.  Prejudice and dislikes also count, but in a democracy, you are free to decide on who to vote, as only you are aware of what is in you mind.

While democracy itself is self-sustaining (people like being free to make choices) the process of democracy itself continues to reinvent and incorporate the nuances of a free world.  Each election also reinvents the process and systems of democracy, and peaceful transition of power.  Freedom of choice allowing free thinking, allowing the citizens to evaluate, reevaluate and reinvent the thoughts into each election, and continuing to drive them for the benefit of people.

Sunday, August 06, 2017

Rich Man & Poor Man

Vasu Reddy from Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

India the largest democracy lead by Modi as its prime minister and the USA the oldest democracy lead by Donald Trump as its President, are both quite a contrast in making daily news.  Both the leaders have robust opposition to their agenda, but the contrasting personalities handling the politics, policy, perception, personalities and pertinence are as different as day and night.
The common trait between Modi and Trump is their use of social media.  They have millions of followers and both are active on social media.  That’s where the similarities end.
For their followers on social media, the leaders of the largest and oldest democracy the contrast is obvious and reflect their approach to governing and life.  The reality is that Modi is from a very small town with very limited resources to his family, and Trump a well to do real estate family with New York as his base and a wealthy man who just wanted to be president.  For both India and USA, the elevation Modi as PM and Trump as President is a true mark of democratic society.  The fact that they are the leaders of India and USA reflect the processes that are people oriented and people driven.  This is one more time we must remind ourselves of the value of democratic societies and free speech.
Modi in general doesn’t publicly criticize or admonish his staff, ministers or anyone around him.  He works very long hours and he is agenda driven.  His party and his administration constantly reinforce their manifesto, and generally stick to their stated agenda.  Modi in his first term as PM of India, has been taint free and focused on his basic intent to drive India to a better human, political and economic environment.  As large as the Indian population is Modi has a challenging task of bringing the Indian population to a surviving wage and sanitary environment.  What is endearing to me is Modi chronologizing his social media accounts with his travels, his policies, his remembrances, his meetings, his plans and his challenges.  Almost all of Modi’s daily updates somehow reach out to a section of the Indian society and at least make them be a part of the nation’s leader’s work and his plans and schedule.  He has been the PM for more than 3 years and he has been continuing to push his election (his party’s) manifesto, and has been successful to a good measure.  Modi’s challenges are not what he would like to do, but the massive task of India as a nation and its ever evolving political and regional challenges.
Trump is rich and new to politics.  He is used to managing a private real estate enterprise (nothing public that must report to the shareholders) and only he was in control of his actions.  His life is well documented and until a couple of years ago he was not involved in public policy or politics.  In his still infant presidential role, Trump has continued to be impulsive as he was in his private enterprise.  His social media challenges are more challenging rather than policy, and his contrasting communications are often contradictory to his own public pronouncements.  As every word that was said before being a politician and after he has become one, the difficulty is to keep the message straight.  USA is a well healed nation with its economy, its people, its military and its borders are all in contact motion of protecting the nation, and running despite of the politics.  USA is much too large for a single person, or single party to put it at risk, and it can self-correct any anomalies.  Outside of the truly democratic enterprise, the nation is also self-affecting and self-analyzing.  No one person even if it is the nation’s leader is above the law of the land, and respect (eventually) for the rule of law is still followed.  The problem with Trump might not be his social media skills, or his political skills.  His problem is exact opposite of Modi.  Trump and his message can be directed to his election (republican) manifesto.  No matter what the political pressures are, Trump should stick to his work to do, and stay with policy making.  The first six months of Trump’s issues have been more with his own party and his social media attacks.  All we need to keep Trump and the republicans on the same agenda, and leave the personal attacks on social media to himself.  All will be well as we do have a Republican congress and Republican president, and a republican agenda is supported by 50% of the population.  If Trump’s presidency will have to start working on policy and legacy, it can simply stick to the republican agenda and push a daily resolution of the republican party agenda.  Trump offering to cut the deficit to zero sounds wonderful to me, and most of the forward-looking citizens.  If he does nothing but simply eliminate the government waste and budget deficit, he would have brought his businessmen skills (he keeps touting) to governance.  Trump certainly has the business skills and he has his party in his tail winds, and pushing even a single point agenda (zero deficit) he will be well deserving of a legacy of performance.  He is only number 45 on the presidential list, and the citizens are for sure capable of choosing a leader.

The poor man as a prime minister and a rick man as a president are both in the same time for the civilization and have a huge contrast in where they come from.  Their social media skills are reflective of their personalities that are in opposite spectrum, and perhaps also reflective of the economic agendas of the nations.  The reflection of the contrast in reaching the massive audience is also reflective of the audience and its interest in what they expect of their leader.  The audience is what will drive these leaders and their agenda and policies.  We can perhaps reflect the nations receptivity to what their leaders represent.  It’s us people who drive democracies and it is us people we elect our leaders, and whatever messages we get back from our leader’s is simply our doing.

Cinema and its Magic

Vasu Reddy from Chicago vasureddy@aol.com   While in my college days in India, there was no internet, not much television except single chan...