Passion cannot be driven by reason

Believe. Passion is purely divine, it has nothing to do with reason. 
[PHOTO: Georgie Pauwels/Flickr/CC BY-ND 2.0] 

By Yogesh Pandey | The real passion has to be bereft of reason. In fact reason has no place in driving the passionate you. The moment reason creeps in, passion vanishes. It is somewhat innate, a gift from the god to the mankind, whose envelope has to be opened by the man himself. Whosoever succeeds in finding and opening that envelope gets life’s treasure. The treasure, which keeps up the quest for doing things madly. It is energy, an adrenaline rush that runs through the veins and makes us go deep in the work we cherish the most. 

One may ask a singer why he loves to sing. He may simply answer that singing is the source of immense pleasure for him. Now, if he is being asked again as to why he derives pleasure from singing, the singer may not answer further because he has no idea as to why singing gives him an utmost pleasure, but doing so certainly lifts his spirit up. 

The above example suggests that passion to do something is driven by inner and in-born traits which are natural and bestowed by god. For example, an infant responds to the pamper of everyone, even a stranger, but this may not be the case with every child. And if he responds or does not respond, one cannot reason it out. It is the nature of the child gifted by the god Himself which cannot be questioned. He is unique, so are his traits which were embedded by the god before his birth. 

Similarly, passion too has its manifestations in the process of one’s creation. The process is purely divine in nature. And if the process is divine, the result that comes out of the same will equally be divine. 

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Five things you can do in life if decided to remain a bachelor

It becomes imperative to make most of a life that has less to do with family issues and obligations. 
[PHOTO: Sebastiaan ter Burg/Flickr/CC BY 2.0] 

By Yogesh Pandey

People who decide against getting married are confronted with questions as to what would be the purpose of life without marriage, the reason for taking this unusual decision and several other whys surround the person from all the sides, from friends to relatives and family.

However, considering the societal clutches one finds himself in, it becomes a tedious job to satisfy everyone with the rationales and reasons.

Moreover, the reasons for taking this decision may vary from one individual to another. But, it becomes imperative to make most of a life that has less to do with family issues and obligations. 

Here are five ways that will change the way one perceives a life without getting hitched.

1# Read Books: It is for the wisdom and knowledge seekers who do not give up on knowing. Books on Religion, Philosophy, Economics, Psychology, Politics, Law, different genres of novels, Biographies, and sports can be read to satisfy the quest for knowledge. Those who do not have the latter, can develop the same and transform their lives.

2# Write: With ample of knowledge acquired through extensive reading, one can try his hand on penning down thoughts that will have a continuous influx once reading becomes steady. Writing extensively on subjects mentioned above, digging deeper, developing ideas, making your own conclusions and opinions, and engaging in constructive debates can make life interesting and better.

3# Explore the World: This is the practical way to know yourself and the world, one of the things that every great individual did before they became factory of ideas. Those who have a decent job or enterprise can afford to travel the world every weekend or fortnight with handheld camera, meeting people, getting acquainted with their cultures, problems, joys, and discovering new things. A travel blog dedicated to your travels can be made for recording the moments with words.

4# Help People: This is the application of what one has gained through reading, writing and exploring the world. The ideas thus created will be utilized for the service of mankind by helping people in their thick and thins, helping students achieve their goals, counseling people who are stressed, arranging for the education of marginalized children to uplift them from poverty etc.

5# Simply Follow Your Passion: We all like a thing or two to do endlessly without feeling even an iota of exhaustion. We all have one thing which by a mere mention lifts our spirit up, energizes our acts, engages us to the core, and gives an adrenaline rush. Stuffs like, sports, painting, music, trekking, mountaineering, river-rafting, sky-diving, swimming, scuba-diving, reading, writing etc that one is fond of can broaden the purpose of life with ease, giving it an entire new meaning.

P.S: The article does not contain any anti-marriage overtones. The things mentioned in this article can also be done even if the person is married, but the writer is of the view that one gets enough time to follow his passions if he is not married.

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Delhi polls: Probables and their impacts

[PHOTO: Goutam Roy/Al Jazeera English/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0] 

By Yogesh Pandey*│(@yogesh_pande901) 

Never before were Delhi poll results in India  so crucial as this time around, thanks to the thumping emergence of a political outfit Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which has been able to make headlines by all its acts of hook or crook, movement, protest and expose, thereby offering people with what they call themselves a best alternative.

The same party with some oblique support from section of liberal media and other anti-saffron organizations is now contesting against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for Delhi throne by challenging it on host of issues--water and electricity tariffs, communalism, crony capitalism, women security, corruption etc. The BJP under the tutelage of Narendra Modi got a massive mandate eight months ago at the Centre.

The importance of Delhi elections can be gauged from the fact that a small happening here makes national news and if a newbie comes with a victory, it will have a tall effect on equations of national politics.

Here are three probable scenarios Delhi elections can throw and their likely impacts.

#Scenario-1: AAP gets majority:

Opinion polls in India have already predicted AAP winning Delhi with comfortable seats. This if comes true will give birth to a formidable challenger to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the form of Arvind Kejriwal. Bitter centre-state clashes will ensue again over giving full statehood to Delhi and handing over the reins of Delhi police to state government. With this grown clout, Kejriwal’s party will be treated by the media as the main opposition party in and out of the Parliament providing a massive surge in party’s base across the country. AAP contested more than 450 seats in 2014 Lok Sabha elections, a result of its good show in 2013 Delhi assembly polls.

#Scenario-2: Hung Assembly: 

In case of a fractured mandate, it will be more interesting to see how AAP and BJP prepare themselves for the next big fight. In any event of hung assembly, BJP will be credited for refusing Kejriwal another chance in Delhi as pollsters have already written them off. However, the game would still remain wide open.

#Scenario-3: BJP wins:

The magic of Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo will come full-blown with their unblemished record of remaining invincible since 2002. Kejriwal-led AAP may fight for its relevance. Narendra Modi will retain his tag of most powerful leader for the next five years with no challenge from any party in India’s political spectrum. The win would put a question mark on media’s opinion polls that have given AAP majority in Delhi. BJP’s CM candidate Kiran Bedi will take over the reins and she would be dealing with India’s most ferocious opposition, AAP.

(*Yogesh Pandey is the Consulting Editor at news.BDTV.in. He can be reached at yogesh(at)bdtv.in)

[Opinion] Democracy and progress in India

Indian PM Narendra Modi and the US President Barack Obama at the India-US CEO Forum Meeting, in New Delhi [PHOTO: Special Arrangements] 

| Elizabeth L. Littlefield

Sixty-eight years ago this week, India gained independence and began to prepare a constitution, paving the way for the country to become not only a democracy but the world’s largest democracy. Today, as a country of well over a billion people encompassing great diversity of ethnicity and economic status and spanning crowded cities and remote villages, India is a paradigm of both the challenges and the successes of building a government that seeks to empower all its people.

This week, as I travel to India with President Obama on the occasion of Republic Day, I am heartened to see an extensive portfolio of projects that OPIC has supported with financing and political risk insurance to advance development in India in sectors from power generation to technology to small business finance. As the U.S. Government’s development finance institution, OPIC has invested nearly $2.7 billion across 148 development projects in India since 1984. Over the past five years, our portfolio in India has increased more than five-fold to $734.3 million.

This large and growing portfolio underscores what I see all over the world: that while a stable, democratic government can help foster the conditions that make development possible, government cannot on its own perform all the challenging and costly work of ensuring its people have sufficient access to housing and healthcare and education, water to drink and electricity to power their homes and places of work.

Much of OPIC’s recent work in India with our private sector partners has been aimed at the country’s extensive rural population that lives without some of the essentials of modern life, like clean drinking water, access to financial services, or basic lighting to enable their children to study or keep their shops open after dark.

For example, we recently agreed to provide a loan to a company that provides pay-as-you-go solar kits to rural villagers, so they can light, and in some cases cool their homes and small businesses using an innovative technology that is both affordable and easy to use. The founder of that company, Simpa Networks, captured just how much this simple technology can transform life in remote communities when he said that it provides not just a few more hours of light, but a few more hours of life: more time for people to work, play, converse … and live fully.

OPIC’s success advancing development in India is a reflection of the strength of our private-sector partners, which have developed innovative solutions that address the specific challenges of this expansive country and its massive rural population. Azure Power used OPIC financing to build the first independent solar power producer in the country. An OPIC loan helped QuantumID Technologies introduce a cargo-tracking technology that’s improving the efficiency of local airlines and cargo industries. And, because one of the key ways to advance development is helping people start and grow their businesses, OPIC has partnered with multiple microfinance institutions to provide small loans to entrepreneurs and small businesses.

These projects are improving the way people live and work across the country and they underscore what successful partnerships between business and government can accomplish. I am excited about the future prospects for India, and I look forward to continuing to work to continue to support investment that will make a positive impact in the country. 

Elizabeth L. Littlefield is the President and CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). The views expressed by the author in this article are her own and do not necessarily reflect the views of news.BDTV.in)

How to ensure a nuke deal with Iran

[PHOTO: Yeowatzup/Flickr/CC BY 2.0]

By Dr. Behrooz Behbudi*

In Washington President Obama is challenging a new push by Republicans and Democrats in Congress for another immediate round of sanctions on the Iranian economy. At the same time in Tehran President Rouhani is desperate to get the existing sanctions removed. If Obama fails in his bid he will still remain in his post, while a failure for Rouhani will have detrimental consequences for the Islamic republic and the Middle East region.

"I will veto a bill [for new sanctions] that comes to my desk," President Obama said in response to a question at a joint news conference with the visiting British Prime Minister, underlining his decision to continue with the current negotiations with Iran "until they play out".

The latest threat to the success of a nuclear deal with Iran comes on the heels of the Paris atrocities, which has once again raised the growing fear of terrorism, and how the bloody Middle Eastern politics and conflicts are now spilling over into Western capitals.

It goes without saying that the type of terrorism that the world is now facing has its roots in state sponsored ideologies, with the Iranian regime as one of its instigators, despite prettifying and justifying it as promoting "Islamic principles".

With its heavy military involvement in the trouble spots of Iraq, Syria, Yemen and North Africa, the Iranian regime regards itself as the bastion of "revolutionary Islam", in opposing the influence of the conservative Arab states among the Muslims. The Shia v Sunni differences of the two camps make matters worse, effectively leading to a new era in the history of Islam whence Muslims are at war with each other.

The general view in Washington is that with President Hassan Rouhani in power the Western world has found a political partner in Iran who is willing to bring peace between Iran and its Muslim neighbours and make a compromise on the nuclear issue, thereby removing the threat of a nuclear race in a region already fraught with, wars, terrorism and anarchy.

True, Rouhani, in fear of an economic collapse of the Islamic republic under the sanctions is willing to make such a compromise. However, he only represents one faction of the Islamic republic. The other faction, led by the supreme leader ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his close ideological associates among the top brass of the Revolutionary Guard, see an eventual nuclear deal with the West as the beginning of the end of their political power in Iran.

A close look at the record of Rouhani's government so far tells us that he has not been able to deliver any major social or economic reforms to the Iranian society as with the absolute rule of Khamenei within the medieval notion of Velayate Faghih (Islamic government) "the post of President in Iran is nothing more than a subordinate of the supreme leader", as the former reformist president Mohammad Khatami once said in justifying his own failures.

With this reality of Iran's leadership structure, even a "final deal" on the nuclear issue that President Obama is so firmly pursuing, there is no guarantee that it would last, once he or his counterpart in Tehran are out of office.

World powers need to make sure that any such deal, once agreed, will also be signed by ayatollah Khamenei and commanders of the Revolutionary Guard. It is only then and there that these true holders of power in Iran can demonstrate their commitment to peace in the Middle East and prosperity for the Iranian people.

(*Dr. Behrooz Behbudi is the Founder of Centre for a Democratic Iran (CDI). He can be reached at contact(at)bbehbudi.com. Views expressed by him in this article are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of news.BDTV.in.)

Delhi polls: Why Muslims will vote en-bloc for AAP?

Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal
[PHOTO: TY/CC BY-SA 3.0] 

By Yogesh Pandey* 
(@yogesh_pande901)

India’s poll equations are fraught with inevitable intricacies of caste and religion politics. This time too it is going to be manifest in much talked forthcoming Delhi elections where country’s political newbie Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have much at stake.

More than caste factors, it is minority votes set to come handy for parties jockeying for Delhi’s chair.

As per rough estimates, Muslims constitute around 15 per cent of Delhi voters. Also, the community has sway over 10 assembly seats out of total 70.

Here are four reasons why minorities are going to vote for the AAP:

#1. Recent controversies over conversions and perceived anti-minority statements made by BJP leaders have further alienated the community from the BJP.

#2. Last assembly elections saw majority of Muslim voters in the absence of any ‘viable’ alternative going for its traditional party Congress.  Now with the Congress not in the scene, the Muslim voters have alternative in the form of Kejriwal, who is also making frequent overtures.

#3. Speculations were rife couple of months back about AIMIM (All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen) eyeing entry in Delhi. But as the party is yet to come clean on it and has not been able take a decision, the AAP is surely going to be benefited.

#4. The weakening of Congress and Muslim voters’ traditional aversion to BJP and Narendra Modi are enough to make AAP a sole recipient of their trust. 

Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party after suffering the BJP’s onslaught in 2014 general elections in Delhi, where despite high hopes the party drew blank is leaving no stone unturned to retain the lost glory.

No doubt the party will have to repeat the performance of 2013 when it surprised others by winning 28 seats riding on the anti-corruption wave.

BJP on the other hand is well aware of the fact that Delhi is not going to be a cakewalk, thanks to capital’s well-known uneven voting pattern and AAP’s rigorous electioneering.

Moreover, the saffron brigade is striving to ensure that Modi juggernaut runs unbridled for the next five years which can otherwise get threatened if Kejriwal makes an impact in Delhi.

(*Yogesh Pandey is the Consulting Editor at news.BDTV.in. He can be reached at yogesh@bdtv.in)