Towards Resurgent & Responsible India

Stephen Hawking was regarded as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history. He was considered the brightest brain in the league of Albert Einstein. He must be probably the only scientist after Carl Sagan, whose books were popular among even the non-scientists. His best-selling books have appealed to readers who may not have Hawking's scientific background. One of his popular science book on cosmology, “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes” became a bestseller and sold more than 10 million copies in 20 years. It was also on the London Sunday Times bestseller list for more than five years and was translated into 35 languages by 2001. Writing a best seller or a book which is popular and is comprehended by non-scientists could be great but may not be a big deal. But “Brief History of Time” was most certainly a big deal. It was an extraordinary feat because Stephen Hawking was completely immobile except for few muscles on his face which...

Nothing happens until you act. All the vision, all the planning all the strategies are useless if they are not executed and executed properly.   After your planning, and strategy is done, it’s time to put your dreams and plans to action. Execution is action.   You’ve set goals to lead you to your destination. You developed strategies for attaining your goals. You’ve acquired the motivation. It’s time to go. The time to act is now. You can’t start tomorrow and you can’t’ start “someday”. Take your action plan, look at your first goal, analyze your strategy for reaching it, and begin the execution.   Action doesn’t mean blind action. You should have fairly good idea where you intend to direct your action and effort. What is required to see them to completion? It’s always a good idea to consult who “had been there done that.”   In fact it could be part of the strategy, it’s not a linear rout in execution, its spiral and at times it’s “if-then” decision flow...

What should be your strategy to reach where you wish to be from a place where you are? Dreaming your future won’t take you there. A definite and concrete plan is a must.   As they say if you don’t know where you want to go, any road will take you there. You have to know where you want to go and decide HOW you’re going to get there.   A plan will help you chart a course to arrive at your destination; it will give you a road map, a route. It will also help you provide you guiding mechanism for handling the hurdles and road blocks which might come during your journey. It will help you sail in unchartered waters without any problem because planning is your compass to help you navigate through high seas. It will prevent you from going astray and losing your track. A good plan will have following characteristics: ·          It should be action oriented. A good plan will have built in proactive measures. It will specify acti...

In a Kolkata auditorium there was a Ghazal Show, audience was enjoying and swooning on soulful singing. The singer was Jagjit Singh. The audience was ecstatic and the show was slowly reaching to its final moments, suddenly after Jagjit Singh finished one of the last Ghazals he was singing in the program, the organizer came on the dais, and started speaking, his voice was choking with emotion. He said, todays show and Jagjit ji's performance is very special, very unique one. I dont think anyone else in the world could have performed the way Jagjit ji has done, the audience was silent and was wondering what is unique about the program, it’s as entertaining and musical as any other program performance of Ghazal Maestro. The organizer went on to say, today morning when Jagjit ji was coming to Kolkata for this show, at the airport he got the news of his mother’s demise, he cancelled his flight to Kolkata and went to Delhi instead. He did the last rites of his mother, and to keep the...

So what do you want to do? I am sure you must have heard this question in your life. In fact this decision box question in our life’s flow chart is the most persistent question.   Our parents, our teachers, friends, colleagues, spouse ask this and we also pose this question to self quite often. This is not only very persistent question but sometimes most dreaded one also.   Because at times we end up answering it as – “don’t know”, “not sure”, “have not decided yet”, “you tell me” and hundreds of variants of same sentiment.   Since we are not willing to make a decision, we end up doing nothing in particular. Before we know it, its Monday again and all we have accomplished is watching TV, reading newspaper, surfing internet or doing something which didn’t pose this dreaded question. We are afraid to confront this question, and move on to the next even tougher stage – the stage of commitment. But tell you what? Earlier you confront that question, the better, ...

Success in this world is always a matter of individual effort, yet you will only be deceiving yourself if you believe that you can succeed without the co-operation of other people. Success is a matter of individual effort only to the extent that each person must decide, in his or her own mind what is wanted. This involves the use of “imagination”. Achieving success is a matter of skillfully and tactfully inducing other to co-operate. Before you can secure co-operation from others; before you have the right to ask for or expect co-operation from other people, you must first show a willingness to co-operate with them. The most successful men and women on earth have had to correct certain weak spots in their personalities before they began to succeed.   The most outstanding of these weaknesses which stand between men and women and success are ego, greed, jealousy, suspicion, revengeful attitude, self-centered selfishness, spendthrift attitude.   Success is not a mat...