Once a man appeared in a village and declared that he would by monkeys for 100 Rupees each. The villagers, realizing that there were plenty of monkeys in the nearby forest, went out and started catching them. The man bought thousands of monkeys for 100 Rupees each. As supply started to fall down, the villagers stopped catching more monkeys.
Now the man further announced that he would now buy monkeys at 200 Rupees each. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. As the supply diminished even further, people once again stopped catching monkeys and started going back to their farms. The man further increased the rate to 250 Rupees. Soon the supply of monkeys became so little that it was quite an effort to even get a glimpse of a monkey, let alone catch it!
The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at 500 Rupees. However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him. In the absence of the man, the assistant said to the villagers: “Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at 350 Rupees each and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for 500 Rupees.”
The villagers squeezed up with all their savings and bought all the monkeys. But they never ever saw the man or his assistant again in the village; only monkeys everywhere!
Though this is just a fable that I found on internet, it is not very far from reality when it comes to the style of functioning of today’s markets, including Human Resource!
I observed my friends son, who turned 13 recently, behaving a little peculiar than the normal children of his age. The change in his behavior was at such a subtle level that it needed extremely perceptive mind to take notice of and his adolescence stage only added to its general acceptance as being natural. When I probed a little into the matter, as I found the situation little alarming and disquieting, I was dismayed to learn that he has been through a week long course of Mid-Brain Activation - MBA! I was speechless for some time as I tried to digest the fact that a well educated, well-to-do family close to me could do such an orthodox, insane and unscientific thing. It was further disheartening to understand that the family paid about 10,000 Rupees as fees for this ‘course’ and there was such a hurl for enrollment that there was waiting list for ‘registration’…! The lure was of 'Increasing the 'inactive' capacity of the brain along with sugar-coating of 'personality-development-through-cultivating-good-habits'.
‘Aspiration’ is one of the basic traits in human nature and moving a step up in the social status could be intrinsic in the civilized population and thus completely understandable. Also there could be nothing wrong in going to any extent, in completely ethical, legal and moral manner that is, for providing the atmosphere and ideal set of conditions for the future of humanity – our children. The problem starts when the parent generation considers their next generation as Bonds and Securities with excellent ROI on maturity. The alibis like 'parent always think for betterment of their children and not for themselves' are as lame as saying, ‘we sow the seeds to feed the earth!’ Selflessness is such an extraordinary virtue that it cannot be expected from ordinary people, but that could be a subject of different post at some other time. Once relations are transformed into commodity, every interaction becomes a transaction that is meant for profit and to raise the value of deal it becomes necessary to introduce additional capital every now and then, I am not even mentioning the fierce competition, it is deliberated!
Schooling itself is an over-sized capital nowadays that is over-traded in lieu of curious childhood and as if it is not doing enough damage to the process of learning and development, there are numerous extracurricular faculties to torment the entire being of a child on all its physical, mental and emotional levels right from sports to such, almost occult, experiments of Mid-Brain Activation. I mean, please… at least burn the slightest grey cells of your own to contemplate the possibility of a Mid-Brain? Do you want to teach your children to pretend, cheat or manipulate? Besides, the level of torture children are put through is clearly evident in the Chinese way of preparation for the Olympic Games. China, being the most competitive and presumed as the toughest competitor to US, comes up with most unnatural and imposed tools and techniques of ‘development’ every now and then and other 'progressive' Asian countries use Indian Market as either the guinea pig for their inexplicable inventions or dumping ground for the exhausted line of products, India being the biggest and most superstitious market that runs on whims and blind-following than logic and reason, particularly when it comes to future! Blind faith deprives its believers of living happily in the present and conditions their minds to think of everything in the context of the future which nobody actually can see! What a paradoxical insecurity…
Or it’s the other way round and it’s only me who looks at all these things ‘differently’? No, I mean if this is a paradox, what about the muscle building proteins, doping in sports, money laundering in politics / business (are these 2 different fields?), religion in ruling, extravagant celebrations in the drought conditions and absolutely shameless, phony commercials (the advertisements of products, not of school of thoughts on the ‘NEWS’ or ‘Religious’ channels!) that are bombarded on the TV 24x7 (have you ever met a real person in flesh, blood and skin who got at least one degree fairer by using a fairness cream?). All these and many more such things are not only openly accepted by the society but actually are celebrated; remember Vijay Mallya, flown away with a good fortune leaving India in bad debts…!?!
No wonder such an insecure, conformist, superstitious and hypocrite society falls prey to the hoax like DMIT, MET, MBA (Not to be confused with the other one, though the difference is of only type and not the hype!), NLP, PLR, and many more that sound more sophisticated and techno-savvy with ‘computerized testing’ and ‘digital reports’ (the new and more ‘urbane’ form of astrology) against the palm-readers and fortune-tellers around the corner. ‘What do you mean? How can a computer-generated and digitally printed report could be false?’ – A devoted believer of make-your-child-genius-in-a-week cult asked me. I almost fainted.
When I regained my senses, I felt extremely concerned for children, the only future that we have, can look up to and rely on, and decided to write this post for saving the monkeys from being caged (PETA, I hope you are with me!) and their progeny to be put in the box. I put up some research in the subject matter and came up with following most informative and insightful links for all my readers who would like to understand it little better and save their children the ordeal of going through any of it as I was shaken with what I saw and I am less bothered about the crooks making a business of it. I am enough a follower of Hindu Philosophy to believe that those frauds will meet their fate eventually and all we need to do is Be Aware and Take Care… of our Future Generation! Way to go…
By the way, why do people seem to be obsessed with the idea of prediction? If living becomes predictable won’t it be a ‘daily soap’ instead of a ‘life’? Can life be really planned, lived just like planned and if yes, what’s the use? And if there is no factor of uncertainty, where would we get all the excitement and surprises? Won’t it be extremely boring and dull… as Rose feared it in Titanic?
http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report-move-over-astrology-fingerprint-analysis-is-new-future-2037893
If I have missed any significantly relevant link that you could find, please add it in the comment below for everybody's reference. Thanks.
Note - I changed the words 'Indian Spirituality' to 'Blind Faith' when I learned (and agreed) that it was a (seriously) wrong choice of words, thanks to my friend Dinesh.
Note - I changed the words 'Indian Spirituality' to 'Blind Faith' when I learned (and agreed) that it was a (seriously) wrong choice of words, thanks to my friend Dinesh.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete