Team Anna, Rise and ...

The Rise

When you are travelling alone in the dark (even though thousands are around you, you cannot see them in the dark), if you see a light, even if it might be your illusion (chances are high), your hopes will raise, confidence will boost, and senses will come to life.
Exactly thats what happened in 2011 in India. Enough scams, More than enough high profile arrests and much more high pitch debates by Media, suddenly everyone is talking corruption. And then everyone saw the hope, Anna Hazare, his team and some entity called Civil Society, which has started demanding for a strong anti corruption system to oversee practically everyone in the country. Everyone in literal sense, from Prime Minister to CBI to class 4 employees.
Suddenly the frustrated middle class, frustrated because they can clearly see that someone cheating them, eating the tax payers money, and they literally cannot do anything because they cannot control government and bureaucrats, started liking the concept of some entity controlling government, which has the power to prosecute anybody including PM, based on anyone's compliant. Its really fancy to connect and everyone literally was blown away by it. They are more than happy to see this kind of system. What happened is we have seen in August 2011.
People celebrated (almost) second independence, as some of my friends termed it. But I never understand how can we be independent overnight from anything that is grass-rooted in the system. The first independence struggle took nearly 100 years.

The Retardation

What happened in December last week might be surprising for some people. But there is a clear logic for it. Ask any successful leader, Causes will draw people, not people. People were drawn to team Anna not because of some person, they identified and connected with the cause in April and August, its corruption, plain just corruption. For people, Lokpal bill is a weapon to fight it. They dont want to be bothered by the clauses and intricacies of it, it might be painful, but its the truth.

Anyone who want to connect to masses, will always use simple things. Analyze Chetan Bhagat's success, you will understand. You bother them with clauses and sub clauses, thats the end of it. Exactly this is the point where Team Anna has failed. Even Gandhi and the other great leaders never bothered the people with clauses and sub clauses. They use simple things to create maximum impact. And the people's interest started fading in it because they are exactly not clear why Team Anna is fighting even though the government seems to be doing some thing on Lokpal.

The Contradictions

There are some people who are against it since beginning. They have valid concerns which I want to mention here.
Our constitution was written with a utmost care and ensured that none of the power centers should have absolute power to avoid the risk of Dictators surfacing and becoming a Banana Republic.
Our justice system has a baseline that even though some guilty get away, no innocent should be punished.
Will the Lokpal proposed by Civil Society ensure the continuity of it, Sorry, I have my own doubts. For me to support it, it need to be answered first.

Going Forward

Team Anna asking people for future course of action is funny. Wisdom of masses works in Marketing, not in politics, true, even you deny, they are in politics now.

Great leaders never worry if people dont come to their meetings, they never worry if they are criticised by opponents. They believe in their cause and pursuit it relentlessly. If you want to draw masses, take the small causes and draw people.


Even though its bitter to say, any society gets what it deserves. To get more, it need to deserve more, to deserve more, it need to continuously improve. And thats what every society is doing. But are we very slow in improving?

Interview - The two ways

These thoughts are based on mine and my buddies' experiences in the interviews. Thoughts and comments are welcome.

One kind of interview: The interviewer's focus is mainly on testing what the candidate know and what he/she doesn't know rather than testing what he /she is capable of doing. The questions are mainly like Do you know this, what is this, whats the purpose of so and so API?... etc.

Another kind of interview: Consists of the questions like Given this situation how will you solve this problem? or Whats your approach to develop a module which can do so and so? Tell me some interesting situation you encountered in your prior experience or in your college? ... etc.

There are more differences, If the candidate failed to answer some question, the first kind of interviewer gives an insulting look which says "See, I have asked something which you are not able to answer?".

But on the other side second kind of interviewer tries to put the question in a different way, guides the candidate to what exactly the candidate is capable of doing in that context. Here the interviewer always try to focus on how the candidate is exploiting his prior knowledge and resources available, to produce the intended result.

Irrespective of the result, In the end, in the first kind of interview, the candidate comes out with a feeling that Oh my, I don't even know these simple things, I may not fit this job. But in the other situation, he comes out with a feeling that wow!, I discovered one more way of solving so and so problem.

One of the reason for the first kind of interviewers are more in our society is our education system which always focuses on what we know rather than what we can do in a given situation.

In my view there is no point in knowing or proving what a candidate doesn't know? But it will be very useful to know what he is good at and what he is capable of doing in a given situation.

Non violence and Gandhiji's leadership

The other day I was walking to my place after work, it was late night and the road is almost empty. Then I had this thought started in me. It was the day before Republic day and suddenly my mind started thinking of all the independence and related things. That thought process raised the question, Why Gandhiji is the most successful in leading India's freedom struggle. Then my mind gave me this answer.

Gandhiji's weapons are satyagraha and non-violence, there are other freedom fighters who believed in violence. Even though you need lot of courage to use non-violence, its easy to convince the people with non-violence than the violence. Take an example, someone is beating your buddy, and he is taking all the pain without any slightest hint of retaliation. You will be at once ready to share his pain without any thought. But if the same friend of yours asked you to join hands to kill the guy who beat him without any reason, you think twice. Indians by birth are against violence. This actually made non-violence an important part of Indian freedom struggle.