Blog site of iVarta.com » Entries tagged with "Poverty"
US Healthcare Insurance and Pro-life Ideology
The 2012 October surprises came in spurts. The biggest October surprise was hurricane or tropical storm Sandy essentially leveled parts of water fronts in several NJ towns. The devastation brought together President Obama and Republican Governor Chris Christy into a bipartisan alliance to help people in the devastated areas. Other surprises included a private political meeting video made in September 2012 went viral in October and it showed Romney explaining his strategy to get elected and views on a variety of issue to potential donors. The Romney labeled 47% Americans as moochers and takers. A couple of Tea Party candidates for senate used voodoo science to classify rape. Some other candidates used religious beliefs to justify the pro-life stance and opposition to reproductive health care rights for women. Mitt Romney appeared … Read entire article »
Tides of Ideas
Note: The article is follow up to “Golden age of Muslims by Saeed Mirza” 0716 2012. Following topics are discussed: Inclusivist Progressives vs Exclusivist Orthodoxy Historical background and Tides of Ideas Proselytizers and Loss of Scholarship Cultural Wars Modern Science and Humanity Hope and Future References and notes Inclusivist Progressives vs Exclusivist Retrogressive Orthodoxy Successes and failures run in cycles depending on the maturity of political, social, cultural and economic institutions. The inclusivity accelerates human progress and retrogressive orthodoxy divides people and inhibits scholarship. The Muslim golden age was followed for 600+ years by a retrogressive political ideology by establishments of Muslim orthodoxy. Muslim dictators helped by orthodoxy of Arab tribal customs adopted discriminatory policies against women and non-Islamic followers to deny human rights, equal opportunities and equal justice in occupied lands. In such environment of exclusivity free flow of … Read entire article »
Corruption and Social Order in South Asia
The media often presents a variety of views from seasoned journalists, bloggers, and aam admi (common man) discussions on corruption in South Asia; the tone and substance of the discussions generally have left me more confused than enlightened. We understand that corruption is not unique to South Asia; it is all across globe but at different levels. In the WASP* (#1) culture dominated nations the social order has moved on from that developed by ‘the old boy’s network’ of elites representing the traditional upper crust of society. The new elite meritocracy took over about a couple of decades after the WWII (1970 onwards). The subject was discussed by David Brooks* (#2). Brooks had based his arguments after reviewing a book by Christopher Hayes* (#3). Both author’s arguments reflected the US and … Read entire article »
Filed under: Corruption, Economy, India
Non-state Actors, Miskeen, Education, Economy and Chalta Hain
Pakistan is like an imperfectly crafted cubic zirconia diamond. It is the nation born (1947) based on religion. On global stage in last four decades it has evolved as an epicenter of too many things vile including terrorism. Its additional imperfections include a complex political reality. Politically it is managed as fiefdom of the army, the DPC (Defense of Pakistan Coalition) and elected but weak politicians. DPC is a coalition of many non-state actors cultivated by the army. Want-to-be Arabs and non-Arabs are characterized as Miskeen (poor). Given poorly educated population incapable of generating above average to high economic growth rates and preoccupation with a regional power status using non-state actors the national economy is on a slippery slope and poverty is on increase. Wide spread public cynicism is at … Read entire article »
Filed under: America, Economy, Islam, Pakistan, Politics, World
Emerging India
The blog covers following topics: Introduction Unique Groups of creative and innovative DIY Testing a Pilot INDUSAPTI Webpage Volunteers Are Invited Goals of INDUSAPTI Mark Zuckerberg Thomas Friedman Inspiration for INDUSA Endowment Co-Directors To Conclude: A star (*) following a sentence in the text means see references, notes and appeals to volunteers. Introduction A tourist finds one of seven persons in each of 2 of 196 nations in the world; India and China are these 2 Asian nations. Continent of Africa also has one-seventh or just over one billion of the world’s people. An additional one billion people live in 35 highly developed nations. Nearly 1.5 billion mostly impoverish Muslims live in 57 OIC (Organization of Islamic Community) member nations and remainders of 7 billions people are in other parts of the globe.* Like evangelic Christians, most tribal Muslims are deeply committed to a … Read entire article »
Do the UN, and India deserve each other?!
No representation for 1.2 billion Indians on the UN Security Council “Any Human Rights Council reform that allows countries with despicable human rights records to remain as members, such as Libya, Iran, Syria, China and Saudi Arabia, is not real reform.” - Michael McCaul, US Congressman from Texas “Hezbollah-Controlled Lebanon now presides over the UN Security Council. This means, in effect, that a terror organization presides over a body entrusted with guaranteeing the world’s security. You couldn’t make this thing up.” - Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel “Do not reveal what you have thought upon doing, but by wise council keep it secret being determined to carry it into execution.” - Chanakya, 370-283 BC – Council to Emperor Chandragupta Maurya, 340-293 BC, and author of the seminal “Arthasastra.” Recently, our dear family friend, a brilliant cardiologist, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Corruption, India, Media, Politics, World
Congratulations Joe-Six-Pack!!! Celebrate – Financial Armageddon is averted (err…postponed)
Congratulations Joe-Six-Pack!!! Have you heard the good news? Financial Armageddon is averted. The economic collapse in Europe has been cancelled (…for now). Everything is going to be fine and wonderful. The prosperity is about to return to Europe and the Western world. CNBC and other financial channels world-over are telling us that the economic crisis in Europe is over. Global stock markets all soared this week on this news. The Dow was up nearly 3 percent on Thursday. Global financial markets are at the peak of optimism. The stock market is in Financial Disneyland. Time to Celebrate. Lets have a party (who cares about the bill, we shall get more debt to pay when the bill arrives) (Update on Nov 01, 2011 – Wheels Come Off Euro Plan in Just Five Days) As … Read entire article »
A Middle-East Democracy; The Perfect Oxymoron!
What is really ‘The Arab Spring,’ their hope or ours? “… democracy is a product of western culture, and it cannot be applied to the Middle East which has a different cultural, religious, sociological and historical background.” - Tayyip Erdogan,PM of Turkey, 2003-present Cultures are wrought over centuries. A culture evolves, develops and calcifies slowly over generations with rote reinforcement of a set of tangible and intangible values. In fact, what you continuously choose, eventually metastasizes into your genes. This hypothesis was explored by John Cloud in a 2010 article for the TIME magazine, titled: “Why your DNA isn’t your destiny: The new science of Epigenetics reveal how the choices you make can change your genes.” The Nabataens – the secular pre-Islamic Arabs, the Dutch, and the Venetians didn’t become great merchants … Read entire article »
Filed under: America, Christianity, Featured, Hinduism, Islam, World
Formula for Successful Developed Nation
Introduction The blog presents a formula of five pillars for nation building using education reforms. The formula is outlined after the introduction of two educational models and some ideas for building a lesson plan for the positive thinking. The two models emphasize continuous updating of the content in discussions with a team of teacher’s. As an example of potentially relevant content, the suggested reading section lists an article by Dr. Bhamy Shenoy. It advocates use of Gandhian solutions to solve some of world’s energy and environmental problems. It can be a lesson in creative thinking and may be relevant for including in the content based teaching and learning. I intuitively believe that the Gandhian solutions are not an option for all of global challenges, in general and India’s problems in particular. My views … Read entire article »
Recent Comments