Why Karthika Masam is such a special for me.

I have a great respect over three characters from Hindu mythology.One being the Siva and second one is SriRam and the other one is Bhishma. I like these characters not because they are super natural powers, for that point presently I am against to believe the concept of super natural power.I came from a family with certain level of orthodox values as any common and typical family that we see in India.So, I was exposed to different gods and their ritual processes all these years in my society.I was also taught with the epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata by my grandfather and also by some elder neighbors.My parents made me to run over all kind of Hindu rituals in the name of different festivals and other sacrifices. With these kind of background I was motivated myself to strongly believe in god and used to chant 'Vishnumurthy Asthotram' on every day early morning till recent past.Over the last four or five years I have exposed to a different world along with same world that I have seen previously.This different world developed many internal conflicts in my mind and the new things to which I am being exposed to read and learn are totally contradicting to my previous values what I had practiced and believed. As a new born in the lap of my mother I was with no knowledge on this society and social customs. Whatever I have practiced in past and practicing now is all totally impacted by my parents, gurus and social circumstances.As these impacting components are getting diversified in it's nature my internal rationalities also started their work on practice of my social customs.After going through the basics of many different famous religions and their core values on this world, I have realized at least myself how to practice a religion. My approach towards practice of religion taken some scientific orientation and started getting rid of superstitious belief on gods and ghosts.I have totally stopped chanting of Vishnu mantras.You may misunderstand that I have become atheist.No, I can not accept myself as an atheist because I am not opposing any religion and it's faiths.I am only against to the uncommon attitude of the religion which was introduced into almost all religions and described in a miraculous manner to attract people in order to exploit them.These uncommon attitude was latter encroachments into original doctrines of any religion.So, I am not an atheist, I love to practice any religion with it's core values which are always noble to lead our life in a harmonious way.With this kind of attitude also I am still continuing to love my favorite personalities of  Siva, Sri Ram and Bhishma. But, the essence behind loving these personalities is totally different from my childhood days to today. So, in this 'Karthika Masam' the month of celebrations for Siva devotees, I would like to share with you why I love Siva character.

I feel one should love Siva with a scientific spiritual approach instead of superstitious spiritual approach.What is scientific and what is superstitious?.Let me give you my version of explanation to it. If we go to temple and ask lord Siva to fulfill our dreams and aspirations then we are nothing but running on the path of superstitious spiritualism which I prefer to call it as materialistic spirituality. With this kind of materialistic spirituality there is absolutely no use to you and also to our society. Instead it promotes exploitation of people with different means which were well known to us through priestly class dominant society after the end of vedic society. Now let us see what is scientific spirituality. The scientific spirituality is the one which promotes it's principles to regulate your code of conduct to keep you in harmony with society. This scientific spirituality is not available in society as separate religion, but it is available as an internal core part of every religion.This core was covered with so much of mud and waste. So we should try to remove this mud in order to reach the core of the religion. The mud is nothing but what is being practiced as we discussed earlier in the name of materialistic spirituality.So, try to get rid of this materialistic values in your spiritual practice then what is left over is scientific spirituality. How to get rid of this materialistic spirituality in order to practice scientific spiritualism?. For me it is so simple to practice, the only thing that we have to follow is not expecting anything from god.We should realize that the god has no power to give us whatever we expect. Then why should we visit temples and other holy places if god has no power to offer you something. Temples doesn't have super natural or extra natural powers to offer us something, but temples have certain common natural powers which can help us a lot to build our personality development.

The physical posture and appearance of certain gods has great significance to impact our attitude if we succeeds to observe it. The concept of god varies from religion to religion. Some religions preaches practice of idolatry and some rejects it. Even with in the Hindu religion there are different sects which preaches to worship lord Siva in idol form and in non idol form as well. Many temples worship him in linga form.As per history Siva was so primitive god and he was worshiped by Indus valley civilization people also. Indus valley people worshiped him in the name of Pasupati and in the form of linga.The same god appeared in vedic culture also which was basically the culture of Indo-Aryans. Starts from that age to this age he had been worshiped by Indian people as their beloved god. We do not have any kind historical proofs for Vishnu and other gods to be practiced by Indus valley people.This primitive society of Indus valley had worshiped only Pasupati and Mother goddess. So, this way Siva has great significance in our customs starts from initial ages of Indian culture when compared with any other gods.

The main thing that I really appreciate and love to have as an integral part of Hindu religion is the process of paying our respect to Siva in temples or at different places. Let me explain some peculiar characteristics of Siva which is why I love the philosophy of Siva.

Siva was represented to us by our ancestors in the following way: His representation in pictures has great philosophy to teach us in order to lead a simple life.

1.He was made god of all......promotes equality among all people.
If you visit any 'jyothirlingas' in India , you would be straight away  allowed to enter sanctum sanctorum (Garbha Gudi) and touch the linga. There is no discrimination on the base of religion,caste or community.This feature is promoting equality among all people.

2.His life style was depicted in most simplified way.
He wears no jewels as like other gods and his physical appearance promotes very simple life style to lead.So this feature helps us to avoid unnecessary luxury in search of beauty and status.It tells us to understand that beauty is not all about the uppermost layer of our skin. If all of us removed of this outer layer then all we looks same in physical appearance.Beauty means a simple life style and it always dwells in inner most values of a person.

3.representation of poison in his throat.
This tells us to hold and sustain the evil effects of dangerous poison with in ourselves if it serves the purpose of distributing nectar to the society.This means take little pain which will not kill you but helps something good to others.

4.Ganga on his head.
Understand that your god himself had given such a top priority to ganga as it is the essential element for any animal survival.So, we should get it in a right sense and utilize water resources in a legitimized way.If Ganga gets polluted then it would put a big question mark for our offspring survival in future.

5.Very simple pooja process.
There is a belief that Siva could be pleased just by offering some bael leaves(Maredu Akulu) and Abhisekham with water.This pooja process is accessible to all people ranging from rich to poor, even a beggar can afford it. So, this process is informing us that anything supreme in society should be equally accessible and affordable to all people irrespective of their economical status.

6.Regarded as ArdhaNriswarudu.
Siva has given half of his body to his wife Parvati devi. This means we should learn from him how to look-after our wife or husband.This posture of ArdhaNariswara represents that both husband and wife should be united by their hearts with each other with no differences.Also, this bondage should last forever till the couple hugs their death.

7. Implementation of Karthika Masam.
This is the month dedicated to Siva and a kind of festival season to Siva devotees.I had a strong nexus with this month in my life.I like this moth a lot than any other month of the year.The people activities during this month is very much recommended as these practices makes all people to get rid of laziness at the time of onset of winter season. Also, it promotes a great harmony among people of village with activities like collective river bathing on early morning, collective inter dining in the name of Vanabojanas. Even the dietary habits of non-vegetarian people would take sudden shift into vegetables which is good for health.It is good for us in many aspects at least to have vegetarian food for one month out of a year.

Coming to the beauty and aesthetic view of Karthika Masam, a person is not sufficient enough with two eyes to feel the beauty of Karthika Dipam glow on the banks of rivers. Also, this river bathing is a kind of play for all village children and most healthy exercise to all. I have personal experience with this environment during my childhood and the kind of joy that I had with this season is inexpressible in my words. A small river canal of my village used to be crowded with most of villagers before the sunrise. It is so pleasant and heart touching to memorize those days.

8. The concept of Trinetra.
This concept of third eye on the forehead of Siva is really a significant one as it has great nexus with the practice of meditation which is a proven practice to have peace of mind. If you close your eyes and start meditating yourself then you will feel as if all your senses concentrated on your forehead. So, we should understand this third eye concept as source of enlightenment or knowledge.

So, I continue to like Siva with above spirit. Siva is not a god for me, but the philosophy of Siva is more greater than a god concept. It is the 'Shiva tatva' which we have to follow but not the Shiva. Historically he was not existed as a person and also mythological teachings have no strong grounds to believe him as super natural power. Instead of struggling between theistic and atheistic feelings,I feel it is better to accept anything from any religion which is giving some good message to society to regulate our code of conduct in a harmonious way.

One can not get rid of of religious practices because the concept of religion is as primitive as the human evolution.But, it is our responsibility to clean up mud covered on top of core values of religion.I recommend all my family members, friends and other people to get rid of superstitious spiritualism and to live in scientific spiritualism.


  -- I request you to please excuse me if I hurt your religious sentiments on any grounds --  

A narrow explanation of life

The time period between a person's birth and his death is generally treated as life span of a person. With in this narrow life span he lives in many things surrounded him. The surrounding activities demands him to contribute his functioning in three main categories which are personal, professional and social in nature. To live a full meaningful life, one should full fill all these three categories to its fullest. Let us discuss below diagram just have comprehensive understanding on this.

 As we see in the above diagram the bigger outer elliptical shape represents the whole life of a person and the three inner shapes represents composition of life. Personal life, professional life and social life should share equal proportion of life to make a comprehensive life. All these three inner spheres should maintain proper distinction and should not overlap on each other. But, the present life style of many people has been struggling to maintain balanced picture of life. The professional life has been slowly encroaching into other two spheres and leaving little space for the other two in life. For some people the whole life would be occupied by middle sphere of life which is totally materialistic life.The first sphere of life occupies the total life of some people which is generally called selfish life.The last sphere of the life should exist in every person's life as it promotes social harmony if exercised with noble sense. 

My views on Indian Judiciary

Judiciary is the main pillar to ensure good governance in the society. If anyone is denied of justice, it will send a vicious signal into society. The people will lose confidence on judicial proceedings, criminals will become more active by expecting their safety over the weakness of justice system.  If we see the functioning of Indian judicial system starts from post colonial period, there were clear observations where our courts have proved their ability in justice delivery and at the same time there were many cases where our courts have been failing to ensure justice to common people. Slowly Indian judiciary system has taken its shift towards commercial values than the ethical values.

Recently, I was fully impressed by a judgment by China court on former railway minister of China who was sentenced to suspended death penalty (generally commuted to life-imprisonment in China). The minister had accepted bribe worth of 64 million yuan (around 64-65 crores in our currency) against sanctioning one of the China’s biggest railway project.  At the same time we are seeing our inability to deliver judgment on many political scandals in our country. Can we expect any one of our politician to be life imprisoned for their corrupt and illegal activities in our country. This is what our judiciary system today, it is pathetic to say that justice in India has become a costly commodity which can be accessible only to rich.

 Indian constitution has conferred power of judicial review to supreme court, it is by virtue of this power that the judiciary can save the people from the onslaughts of the executive and legislative despotism. But, all these kind of powers of court are not being perceived to be practiced in an effective manner. The judicial administration from bottom to top has been struggling with corruption, dishonest judges and lawyers, crony relations with other politicians and top business men. I am not exaggerating anything here it is every common man intention in India. At the same time we are not left out without honest people in Judiciary, we have some good and honest practitioners. But these honest people are not able to withstand in front / to the power of dishonest people.

 I have close observation over the functioning of mandal and district  level courts in a civil case. A false case which was put on 8 members in a village called 'Arthamuru' had taken five years to prove it's falseness. All these years these people with no fault of them has to roam over every month or  two months judicial proceedings. This was another kind of punishment to them.Even at the end of the case it is not the court's efficiency which proved that case was false, but it is the opponent person absence over all the judicial proceedings which made the case deemed to be false.Indian courts are struggling with lakhs of pending cases.These kind of false cases are putting extra burden on judiciary and wasting valuable time of court as well as public resources. There are no proper rules to curtail false cases. There should be stringent  punishments if any one misuses justice system.If a person deprived of his privileges then he should think of judiciary to get justice, but a person should not seek for judiciary with an intention to deceive another person. The secondary case is more prevalent in our society if we observe it clearly. The menace of corruption is ruling over executive, legislature, judiciary and also media.

Judicial reforms are very much needed to make courts with adequate administrative mechanism and should ensure honest people at every stage of justice delivery.But to make it happen, we all well know that legislative proceedings should be reformed first before expecting any change in Judiciary. Without honest people in parliament, we can not expect any good change in any other areas. This was proved in many situations in India.

I have every faith in judicial proceedings of India.But, these proceedings are suffering themselves to protect from dangerous pest. Removal of this pest is the need of the hour.Fast and quality justice is one of the major component in bringing down evil activities and to promote noble thoughts in the society. 

MY VIEWS ON INDIAN SOCIETY WITH RESPECT TO ATROCITIES ON WOMEN AND CHILDREN

The menace of atrocities on women and children is not merely the problem related to women and children, it is the problem related to entire culture and civilization. The recent brutality in Delhi gang rape incident has drawn attention of entire nation and brought the issue of "women and her safety" into the nation's mainstream debate.People from different parts of country started protests for immediate justice on the issue and to amend the legal law on sex and sexual abuse to make it further stringent. I felt so happy when a needful and rightful protest, against inhuman activities on women, has been getting strengthened by consolidating rightful reactions from different parts of the country.But, the demands, to fight against these evils, should not be restricted to only legal measures.Mere stringent punishments doesn't stop this problem, punishment plays very minimum role in curbing the evil of this kind. We should extend our demands further more comprehensive to curb the dangerous evil. In my conscience there is no justice in this world for rape and sexual molestation. Any kind of justice or punishment can not mitigate the problem of a rape victim. The nature of rape is totally different from other crimes.Here the victim's loss is not any kind of materialistic item to recover from judiciary system but the loss is peace of life and social liberty which can be hardly recovered by judicial system.

So, the real justice, in case of rape and sexual molestation, is ensuring the society not to happen such  heinous crimes. Other than this no legal proceedings can restore the previous life of victim.

The threat against women is not only the rape and sexual assault, it also includes domestic violence, marital discord,honor deaths, women trafficking,extra marital relations,forcible prostitution, ill-treatment in manual scavenging and slavery,female foeticide,infanticide and also cultural,religious and economic discrimination on the basis of different social constraints.

    In this context we should see the problem of women with holistic view and should know rightful demands to eradicate this social evil on women.

Indian social architecture is highly complex with the factors of different religions, varying cultures and multiple linguistics.The change in any of these factors resembles the clear cut difference in their social customs  with respect to other.The social customs which are inherited from past generations will play dominant role in regulating lives of people belongs to that particular social customs.This social customs varies from place to place,community to community,child to adult and also male to female.


As per historical accounts, during pre-vedic period around 3000 years back from now, there was a perfect social balance with required moral and ethical code of conduct.I prefer to call this society as value based society. In this value based society women given equal priority in all activities on par with men. The mode of education is through oral transmission and it is open to all children who crosses 14 years of age irrespective of their gender.The main emphasis in education system was on character building of the student. Students were not taught in any class rooms,but their education starts and ends in the presence of nature, environment and society.Nature and society are two main components for their course of study.People lived in harmony among themselves and with the nature.It was basically an egalitarian society with no presence of casteism. People lived separated by small-small groups called tribes. There were presence of different social hierarchies in these tribes starts from Rajan to dasis. But all these different posts are open to all adults from their tribe irrespective of their gender, there is no hereditary for any of these posts.People had to prove their abilities and should occupy their respective desired posts.Women enjoyed utmost freedom and dignity during this period of time.Women allowed to marry a person of her choice and allowed to remarriage in case of husband's death or divorce.Women actively participated in economic activities.The nature of economy  was mainly pastoral.

In the latter ages of vedic period women started loosing her recognition gradually. The patriarchal form of society started emerging as all the power as the base of economy taking it's shift from pastoral to agrarian.
The slowly increasing complexities in work culture made women dependent on men because of physiological and biological differences between men and women. Brahminic society emerged as predominant and started preaching everything on the grounds of rituals. Performing all sorts of rituals were strictly prohibited to women. Caste-ism and hereditary of different posts taken it's birth during this time.The domination of men on women started first in aristocratic families and slowly entered into next line of families and finally to entire society. The priesty class started dictating the society with illegitimate rules.Women and untouchables were not allowed to access education which was open to all in pre-vedic period.

In due course of time women gradually became dependent on men for her livelihood.This gradual process had taken away her economic freedom permanently and made her complete dependent.The complete financial dependence of women led her to loose social security and liberty. She lost her say and significance in her family's financial and other important decision making.Finally society started to see her as tool to produce children. Women also convinced herself, without revolting against, and started accepting men dominance. This acceptance proved even more dangerous and gave them many social evils as gift.So, this evil gift to women was partly by men supremacy feeling and partly by women acceptance.

With all these kind of degradation, slowly she had entered into most dangerous ages where  'sati sahagamana' and child marriages were dominant.In the name of religion, the selfish priesty class had indoctrinated the society to accept sati kind of inhumane and ruthless practicesses as sacred paths for a widow to get moksha. In the name of sati, the widow has to be burnt alive in the funeral pyre of her husband.This is such an inhumane, ruthless, heinous and shameless practice against women that I ever heard in the history of human civilization.The concept of 'sati' has come from the concept of 'anumarana' which was seen during pre-guptan period.Unfortunately all these social evils taken it's shelter in Hindu religion because of some useless peoples' religious misinterpretation.In real sense these evil practices are not the spirit of Hindu religion, but these are brain childs of religious misinterpretation. Furthermore the status of women as depicted by Manu in The 'Manusmriti' was also discriminatory for women.

PRACTICE OF 'SATI'

As I mentioned in the starting itself India is a country with different religions.All these different religions played considerable role in determining the status of women in different times.I hope, I have given little account on how Hindu religion had been transformed from Vedic to Brahminic society.The other ancient religions which born against the social evils of Hinduism were Budhism and Jainism. Budhism had given proper place to women. Budhism allowed women to be educated and preached the importance of women in family building.The jainism was little women discriminatory on the grounds of their faith towards attaining salvation. The Jainism preaches extreme non-violence and vegetarianism in order to attain salvation.But attaining salvation is not possible to women as it treats women as impure. As per Jains women becomes impure and not deserves to get salvation because she kills many germs in her blood as part of her monthly menstrual cycle.

The other major religion during latter periods in Indian history is Islam.Islam started in India with Arab traders and muslim invasions  of 7th and 8th centuries. Islam as a religion preaches equality to all on the grounds of wealth and sex.The original doctrines of  'quaran'(noble book of Islam) and 'sharia'(the code of conduct for muslim) has given equal treatment to men and women.Infact it was the muslim rulers(especially Mughals) of India who strongly opposed the practice of  'Sati' in their territory. Humayun, Akbar and Aurangajeb were well known in fighting against the evil practice of sati. But, even in Islam also the latter periods religious encroachments started depriving women privileges. Oftentimes I used to see in 'The Hindu' news paper about harsh punishments given to women in some Arab countries.A women involved in adultery was given stone on to death punishment,but not to men who did the same thing.

 The one more important religion in India is Sikhism. Sikhism is very recent religion traces back to 15th century.This religion treats both men and women as equal entities in all respects.According to Sikhism, men and women are two sides of the same coin of the human. There is a system of inter-relation and inter-dependence in which man takes birth from a woman, and woman is born of a man´s seed. According to Sikhism a man can not feel secure and complete during his life without a woman, and a man's success is related to the love and support of the woman who shares her life with him, and vice-versa. I would like to quote a sikh poet's quotation on women which follows as below:

"A woman, is the favourite in her parental home, loved dearly by her father and mother. In the home of her in-laws, she is the pillar of the family, the guarantee of its good fortune... Sharing in spiritual wisdom and enlightenment and with noble qualities endowed, a woman, the other half of man, escorts him to the door of liberation."

I WANT TO LIVE

Living under such a great religion with sacred norms in their doctrines, Punjab is struggling with declining sex ratios.People are reluctant to accept girl child as they have to pay huge dowry for her marriage.Female foeticide and infanticides are very high in Punjab.I have red a case where a poor women gave birth to female child. After her birth she was thrown in the garbage dump outside the village for dogs ate her.It was very shivering for me while reading this news. Her only fault — she was the fourth girl born in a poor family. Such an evil practices are seen today across India, as per some statistics, India killed 10 million girl childs in 20 years.

With all these kind of discriminatory historical background women entered into modern world in India. With liberalized economic concepts over the last few decades, India established considerable market in services sector.The work nature of these services made Indian women once again to take equal participation in economic contribution of her family.Even in agriculture and it's allied activities also women contribution is more and it is being recognized slowly.So, on general perception comparative to medieval era's women the present women empowered considerably and in the process to become fully empowered.In spite of some matured customs in modern society still many women and children are facing some inhuman brutal activities with one or other reason .I am not getting any words to describe such wicked acts where small babies of age 2-10 years being sexually molested and raped by lusted buffalo like persons.On one side a big agitation against Delhi gang rape was going on, at the same time, I have seen plenty of such an incidents reported in newspapers on daily basis.Why all these evils became persistent in Indian society?,What causes these?.

I WAS ATTACKED WITH NO FAULT OF MINE

I can not attribute these evils to any religion as it happened in ancient and medieval periods.I would like to attribute these evils to the way the Indian society has taken it's transformation over the last three or four decades.Indian society has seen a paradigm shift in the recent years, the social values and human relations has been encroached by commercial, market and luxury orientations. People started measuring a person's social status based on his/her material possession instead of human values and character. This social and psychological feelings can be seen in majority of people now a days. We are clearly seeing this kind of transformation very much in rural India also.I feel we are in transition zone to see this transformation, there has been a clear cut differences in the social practices and living style of people from my childhood to till date in my village(located in coastal area of Andhra Pradesh).

The change of social priorities from human relations to material possession is the main root cause for many evil practices in today's world, atrocities on women is one of the component among these evils. It is very clear that the primary need of the person became money and material. This need drove our education system from value based education to market based commercial education. The pattern of education that we have today is very much interested in promoting corporate interests and money making but least interested in ethical and moral conduct of student. We see the study of ethics being offered as a master course of study in some universities. This clearly representing the degradedness of our education system. I wonder how can this course of study could be delineated from other courses of study. When you are offering it as separate course, does it mean the other course students do not require it?.We can divide physics,biology,polity, economy,etc into many sub streams and can be offered as separate course of study, but we can't afford to do same with ethics and moralities.This ethics and moral science should never be a separate subject, it should be the inner soul of every subject right from elementary school to a university study.A nuclear science student primarily should be a humanist to use his knowledge for peaceful purposes otherwise it leads to devastating effects.Likewise, every person in the society should have some moral values to recognize security of any woman is same like security of his own mother,sister and wife.

SAVE THE FUTURE

The other dimension of  changing culture lies in fashion and luxury:

Luxury: People are successfully trapped in big psychological game being played by corporates in the name of consumerism.In the process of promoting consumerism especially for luxury items(basic needs never requires promotion), there has been lot of evil impact on women.The tool to promote consumerism is mass media and public boardings. This mass media and add agencies are using women as passive sex objects to promote their clients'(corporates) product.I don't appreciate a half nude woman promoting men innerwear. This kind of adds in public are really an insult to our great Indian women.I may appear that I am pointing out small small issues, but these are not small issues, these kind of patterns will have great impact on the status of women and on the minds of young India.

Fashion:  Fashion has crossed it's frontiers and entered into dangerous zone in our society.It is encroaching our rich Indian culture and tradition and degrading our values.Fashion means not only the outer appearance, but also includes the inner attitude of a person.Modern or advanced culture doesn't lies in western dresses, it always lies in thought process of us. We can not call a person as modern who is fully dressed up in western, graduated from IIT and lives in abroad, but still harassing his wife for dowry. The present day movies are playing great role in ruining our tradition and building erroneous culture to our youth.During early ages of movie, we were shown how to respect a Guru(respected teacher), but now a days we are being shown how to tease the same Guru in class room.The story of the movie also promotes erotic feelings than the family values.People have been seriously started believing beauty of maerials and status would be recognized by fashion and luxury respectively.

 I would like to make it very clear that I am not against to fashion or luxury.It is everyone's freedom to enjoy. But our freedom should not promote any wrong signals to society, it should be practiced with proper care and awareness.

The real beauty of person never reflects in cosmetics and western dresses, rather it reflects in inner manifestation of character. Without character our dress-up is not complete, we are still nude.


Apart from all these many of our children are not being paid proper attention by their parents.The recent economic activities made the greed to conquer over the need.We have such a parents who likes to pay lakhs of rupees for corporate schools but don't like to spare time to monitor their children activities.I am not exaggerating anything here, this is real scenario that we are observing these days.

Finally, it is very clear that,from ancient to modern world, the problems of our women is more social and cultural than anything else.The remedies for these problems also lies in social and cultural aspects.We should  move forward with changes in education system first which promotes value based science than only science. Govt has to focus more on this. We need stringent punishment for any atrocities on women and children, at the same time ensuring every child is being exposed to holy and noble thoughts is more important. Today's criminal is one day's child and there had been some serious problem in his upbringing for today's act. Punishing him is utmost important to send a warning to other same mindsets and taking actions to see where the problem lies in is also equal or more  important to curb/minimize the problem in future.

We see sometimes some incidents of atrocities turn into political game in the name of caste and religion. Everyone should understand the situation and should not attribute the criminal to his caste or religion. As a human being we are all one unit though the social practices divide us multiple, when we fight for justice it is good for us to disown our general tendencies and fight together as single unit. Splitting ourselves on any line is buying the future problem directly into our home.

I AM THE FUTURE

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Thanks a lot for reading this article.I personally requesting you to excuse me for using some objectionable terminology in this article and also if I hurt you on the grounds of any religion and gender.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         -----




     

Vinod Rai(C&AG) on Public Auditing

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India Vinod Rai delivered a speech on Social Obligation of Public Auditors at Harvard Kennedy School in the US.

Here is the  full text of the speech:
     
I deem it a great privilege to be able to address such a distinguished gathering in such a distinguished school. Privilege - not because I stand in America's most elite university; privilege - not because I stand in front of some of the finest and brightest brains in the world, privilege - because I stand in front of a group who have the capacity and opportunity to transform processes and the very thinking of people. I am conscious as I stand before you that I address a group who will wield tremendous influence on the future of the societies they belong to and who will emerge as future leaders. I say this as many who have passed from this School are indeed very distinguished leaders in many countries of the globe. I consider getting an opportunity to interact with such a group, an honour.

Immediately after my college education, I joined the Indian Civil Service and have been a bureaucrat all my life. A bureaucrat, according to a definition is: an official who works by a fixed routine, without exercising intelligent judgment. Frank Hubert in his science fiction novel, 'Heretics of Doom', says "bureaucracy destroys initiative". He elaborates by saying that there is little a bureaucrat hates more than innovation, specially innovations that produce better results. Adjectives like rigid, negative, close minded, unresponsive are routinely attributed to us. So how is it that after spending 40 years in this supposedly rigid, red-tape ridden system, I stand before you with the confidence that I can call upon you to address precisely those attributes which we are not committed to doing.  I do so, with the confidence of my personal experience of a rewarding career in government.  I firmly believe that the attributes ascribed to us are bogeys.  They are red herrings.

Governance in government is, exercising power and taking decisions on behalf of people. The well-being and development of this group of people in the village, city or country, depends upon the choices made by the people granted this authority. It is easier to misuse or not use this authority. Good governance, according to the United Nations, is when its authority and institutions are accountable, effective and efficient, transparent, responsive, equitable and inclusive and follow the rule of law. In the present age, governance has assumed such critical proportions that it appears too important to be left only to the government. The stakeholders in governance have expanded beyond the executive, legislature and judiciary to civil society, social organisations, media and the public. Apart from the base expanding, each new stakeholder has become very vociferous and demanding. It is in this context that I propose to discuss with you the role of the public auditor.

All countries around the world have a provision to have an Auditor General to oversee Government's spending on behalf of Parliament.  In most of these countries such Auditors General, are constitutionally mandated to conduct audit of government departments and report their findings to the Parliament.

We in India also have such a mandate.  Considering the heightened interest of civil society, in holding its government to account, we have been introspecting whether our mandate is merely to conduct audit - prepare a Report and - place it in Parliament and full stop!

What we have been introspecting is whether our constitutionally mandated responsibility ends the moment we have placed our Reports in the Parliament or is it in any way beyond this mechanical function that we perform.  To get an answer to this query repeatedly arising in our minds, we also looked at the constitutional position of Supreme Audit Institutions in certain other parliamentary democracies. This was at the time, when we were being advised by the highest in the land, not to exceed our mandate which they believe to be mere accountants and to conduct mechanical audit of government's expenditure.  We were being advised not to get into the realm of auditing policy formulation.  The question that continues to repeatedly arise in our minds is whether the Parliament, and in fact, the public at large, expect us to be mere accountants and do arithmetic over government expenditure?   If it was so, then why should constitutions worldwide - appoint such high dignitaries as Auditors General and give them independence, freedom from the executive and accord them a constitutional position.  Evidently what was envisioned in the constitution was more than expecting them to be mere accountants.

Civil society in India is witnessing a rare phenomenon. A phenomenon where the citizen has come centre stage and is wanting to hold government accountable for its decisions.  Citizens today seek a dialogue with government and would like to participate in decision making.  They are seeking transparency in policy formulation. Today's youth is discerning, demanding and believes in respecting Institutions created by the constitution.  He is not willing to see politicians subvert these Institutions. He seeks a new moral and ethical framework for sustainable governance.  The citizen coming centre stage and wanting to be heard, is indeed a phenomenon which debunks the myth of a 'silent majority'.  This voice is seeking to be heard.  This voice was never taken seriously by political parties as it was the voice of people who merely engaged in living room debates and never came out to vote.  The administration ignored them as they did not have a history of mobilizing themselves into a potent pressure group.  Hence, the spontaneous outpouring of people as witnessed recently, has taken the administration and political parties by surprise.

There is thus a distinct paradigm shift in civil society in India.  This demands a distinct paradigm shift in the model of governance.  If so, should there not be a paradigm shift in the objective and approach of public auditing?

It is this issue that I propose to place before you today.

Should we as public auditors limit our role to placing Reports in parliament or go beyond that and seek to sensitize public opinion on our audit observations, especially so in social sector audits such as Rural Health, Primary Education, Water Pollution, Environment, Drinking water etc.

We have reacted positively to this paradigm shift and have introduced a threefold change.  Firstly, we now premise our audits on the firm belief that we are as much engaged in the business of upgrading governance as any other agency in the administration.  We do not subscribe to the WE - THEY concept and hold ourselves to be on the same side of the table as the executive. Our audits have undergone a culture change. We now engage in positive reporting. Hence, from being a bunch of fault finders who are often wiser by hindsight, we now recognise and report good practices that we observe during audit.

Secondly, to ensure a mere widespread dissemination of our audit observations - both positive and negative - we convert the salient observations in our Reports into small booklets which are well indexed and facilitate easy understanding.  We have been distributing these pamphlets, which we refer to as "Noddy" books, to the media, colleges, citizen's groups, non government organizations and the like.  This is being undertaken in the firm belief that an awakened citizenry, once sensitized about the inadequacy of government departments, would exert pressure on these departments and maintain a vigilante thereby ensuring better delivery of government services.

Thirdly, in our quest for a deeper insight and a more widespread coverage of social sector issues we have wholeheartedly supported the concept of social audit.  We recognise that our own core competence is limited to conducting audit.  At times, we may not have adequate in-depth knowledge of areas where government schemes are being implemented on the ground.  We thus engage with credible citizen's groups which are working in that area to avail of their local knowledge for a better appreciation of the efficiency in the implementation of government schemes.  This has given us a better outreach, and provided those agencies, with a more credible voice in their legislatures.  We even give prominent coverage, in the media, of our intent to conduct audits in specific places and sectors and invite suggestions as well as information about these areas.  This has evoked a very positive response.

All these three initiatives apart from engaging the stakeholders in the process of accountability by moving them from the fringes to centre-stage, has also helped we auditors in producing more rounded Audit Reports.

To ensure that we are on the right track, and indeed owe an obligation to society at large, we looked at trends among other Supreme Audit Institutions.  We found that worldwide the trend is to make Government functioning more transparent.  In this context Legislatures in other democracies are empowering their Auditors General with a mandate to hold the Government financially accountable through Performance Audits of the programmes and activities of the Government.  In July 2004 in USA, several proposals were introduced in the 110th Congress to augment the mandate of the External Auditor.  The erstwhile General Accounting Office (GAO) of the USA was re-designated as the Government Accountability Office to reflect the agency's evolution and additional duties. Most of the agency's work today involves programme evaluations, policy analyses, and legal opinions and decisions on a broad range of government programmes.  Today, most GAO blue-cover reports go beyond the question of whether federal funds are being spent appropriately, to ask whether federal programmes and policies are meeting their objectives and needs of society. At today's GAO, measuring the government's performance, and holding it accountable for results, is central to who they are and what they do.  They continue to believe that the public deserves the facts on all aspects of government operations - from spending to policy making.

There was a similar case in Estonia where the Tallinn City Body contested the mandate of the National Audit Agency to audit its activity in the housing sector.  After protracted litigation over four years, the Supreme Court maintained that it was not unconstitutional for the National Audit Authority to supervise local governments.  The Court held that local bodies function for the welfare of the people and the people need to be kept informed about the efficiency of their operations through an independent audit procedure.  Such worldwide trends have reaffirmed our belief that Supreme Audit Institutions are also mandated to sensitise public opinion.

The traditional role of Public auditors is to conduct financial attest audit.  However, the issue we debated is whether the common citizen is really concerned whether the governments financial statements are materially mis-stated.  Is he not concerned about more fundamental issues that affect his day to day life and about issues that impinge on his very existence such as food, housing, health care, education etc.?  The question that we posed to ourselves and that is my first proposition to you: does public audit address these issues by merely placing their Audit Reports in Parliament?

Do not public auditors have obligations that go beyond those achieved by conventional methods?  If the outcome of good governance is improvement in the quality of life of its citizenry, should the same not be the outcome of effective public audit?

Our answer to all these was a resounding affirmative.  It is thence that we have commenced pushing the envelope and going beyond hitherto practiced conventional and conservative methodology.  This pushing of the envelope did evolve a very sharp resistance from the executive.  This was no doubt expected.  Issues regarding our exceeding our mandate were raised.  Statements about such 'activism' tantamounted to interference in policy formulation and misleading public opinion, emerged.  However, since Indian democracy is maturing and the urban India middle class is becoming more involved in citizen's affairs, we continue to tread the new path in the belief that the final stakeholder is the public at large.

In taking the initiative as mentioned we are no doubt aware that we, as an Institution, will be subjected to scrutiny.  This entails that we practice objectivity and transparency in the conduct of our audits.  We ensure that our organization maintains a zero tolerance of lack of probity.  We also ensure that our human capital - our auditors, remain professionally outstanding and are equipped with the latest trends in public auditing.  It is imperative that we appear objective and trustworthy.  We can only deserve trust if we are judged as credible, competent and independent and can be held accountable for our operations.  Our utmost priority is to strive for service excellence and quality within a self-defined code of ethics and morality.

The auditing of government and public entities has a positive impact on trust in society. It focuses the minds of the custodians of the public purse to use public resources effectively, as they know that after audit scrutiny, the public will be aware of their actions.  Such awareness thus supports desirable values and underpins accountability mechanism leading to efficient decision making.  Once the citizens are sensitised about such findings, they get empowered to hold the custodian of the public purse accountable.  In a parliamentary democracy, it is critical that the citizens of a country are able to hold their representative accountable.  Democratically elected representatives can only be held accountable if they, in turn, can hold accountable those who implement their decisions.  An important ingredient of this accountability cycle is an independent and credible Supreme Audit Institution capable of scrutinising the stewardship and use of public resources.  It is incumbent on us to show our efficacy by appropriately responding to the concerns of citizens.  It is our firm belief that it is important for us to communicate and promote the value and benefits that we can bring to democracy and accountability in our jurisdiction. An alert media and an awakened citizenry have certainly drawn attention to such accountability of those in power. It is towards this objective that we also lend our weight. We may not be able to wipe out corruption, but endeavour to uncover instances of crony capitalism. Government should be seen to support enterprise per se and not particular entrepreneurs.

I now revert to my earlier statement of confidence that I am privileged to stand before a group of future leaders.  There is a two-fold purpose of my explaining to you of the change that we have introduced in the system.  First, that I seek your endorsement of our belief in the social obligation that we endeavour to fulfil.  Secondly, to place before you my second proposition viz., it will be very convenient for you to remain in a state of lethargic non-performance under the garb of complicated rules, fear of investigations and time consuming procedures as an alibi.  However, with forty years of experience in the bureaucratic system behind me I assure you, given a little imagination, innovation and initiative the challenge of enabling and empowering the poor and marginalised, is within the realms of possibility.  All it requires is a simple innovation of processes, a slight tweaking of the rules, sensitisation of the people who work, for the scheme and for whom the scheme works and insistence on timeliness.

The challenge is to be a change agent. Being a change agent is not all that difficult. Each one of us should have certain non-negotiable principles governing our lives. The biggest challenge facing you is to constantly change yourself without changing the core principles in you.

But change agents are not born that way. They are moulded, shaped and forged largely by their education and by their experiences. Some centres of learning consistently produce students who later become game changers in whatever field they venture into. The mission statement of Harvard states: "it strives to create knowledge to serve society".  That institution which differentiates between education and knowledge is the institution which acts as a crucible to mould leaders.

The view that "the end justifies the means" is becoming an increasingly convenient cover for behaviour of individuals, groups or governments. But the implications of this individual or collective conduct, are far reaching. History is witness to the fact that any dilution of morality has eventually led to degeneration of societal values, pushing the country into a quagmire from which it takes ages to emerge. This leads to my third proposition before you: should ethics be applied selectively? If so, who determines the purpose, the justification and the quantum? When does it stop being convenient, and become inconvenient? When from individual transgressions, we move on to institutional transgressions? A basic premise of parliamentary democracy is that an elected and accountable political executive, with the assistance of an elaborate bureaucratic structure, would manage public affairs within the restrictions imposed by the Constitution and Law. However, the reality of complex politics in every democracy is leading to convenient deviations. A dominant culture of adjustment has become prevalent, with honesty and integrity being the casualty.  Let me remind you that it is into this rather imperfect world that you now venture. You will be men and women who will matter and who will be leaders in society. Make the choice early in life and ensure that probity is the cornerstone of your actions.

The Kennedy School has given great men and great ideas. It is neither the rich student nor the poor students' college. It has no prejudices. Its only pursuit has been the freedom of the mind and the dignity of the individual. We in Supreme Audit Institution of India are also committed to these values. We are committed to the mission that when the India story is written, posterity should not judge us to say that when the challenge arose, we were found wanting. Institutions shape their own destinies. Nations also determine their own destinies. Each generation must further enrich the culture of its predecessor generation. I am firm in my belief that history will record that we bequeathed to Gen Next a value system and a heritage which was considerably more enriched than what we inherited.