Naxal Menace

Some of my earliest memories while growing up are those of my villagers carrying rifles on their back and preparing for their imminent fight against the naxals. Our village was one of the first targets of the Naxals in the region. It was way back in 92-93 and these were still the early days of Naxal terror.
I remember two fierce encounters between Naxals and my villagers and that includes my family members too. So, I can't keep myself from expressing views on the current war that PC has launched against them.
One of the encounters is still afresh in my mind, I used to study in 4th std at the village school and with 100 odd strength of the school, all students knew each other quite well. One day, I saw one of my classmates (who belonged to basti where mostly labour class families lived) holding a pamphlet and on reading, I cud see the name of my great grand father on it. Probably, the naxals came to that basti last night and distributed these pamphlets. Dadaji was asked to handover a large part of his land holdings to this naxal group or face dire consequences. In the lunch, I took this pamphlet to him, reading the contents to him. He was 90 year old then and I was amazed why they would target such an old guy. Later, on growing up, I realized dadaji was merely symbolizing those who holded bigger plots of land and hence was the choosen one :) .

After sometime, I dont really remember how much, it was the harvest season of paddy crops and I was playing in the khalihan alongwith my friends when we heard some gun shots. The sounds were coming from across the canal flowing by, it was at this place that most of our harvested paddy was kept. Naxals had declared a war on us, they came in huge numbers and planned to take away the harvest. Man, what a moment it was, I could see the whole village up in arms against them. I never saw such a unity in my village apart from those times.A long encounter, probably for 6-7 hours followed, resulting in the death of one of the Naxals. There were a dozen policemen too,but they happened to be mute spectators as they neither had the will nor the fire power to take on the might of Naxalites. Finally, the naxalites backed off, gradually they dispersed in the night after the death of one of their colleagues.

The positive outcome of this encounter was that during the dreadful era of 96-97 when almost whole of Bihar (at that time Jharkhand too was a part of Bihar) was burning under the terror of Maoists,PWG and Ranvir Sena, our village and neighbouring areas enjoyed total peace. Atleast there were no killings on this account.

For the government, I believe , they should have acted much before. Its been here for two decades and could have been stopped by exercising a proper mix of force and developmental activities. I dont totally buy the lack of development theory as is being propagated by some of the Maoist empathisers. Its true that poor people are found in large numbers in such groups, but its because they get easily influenced. They are exposed a perfectly oiled machinery of maoist brain wash with audio,video and literature.
Those who are sympathising with Maoists (read Arundhati Roy and co) are doing no service to the nation. Nepal is already paying the price of not taking these insurgents seriously and it should be a lesson enough for us.

In ISM for a Day

During last week, I was back to my alma mater, ISM.I was unable to visit ISM during convocation, so it was long overdue. It was a nostalgic moment, starting with the train itself (GD), I was back in time to the days when I used to be a ISM student.

Moving on the rickshaw into the ISM campus, I could identify some familiar faces, a few teachers (though as usual I tried not to be recognised ), a couple of research assistants who helped me during practical exams(I wish to say thanx to them :), but just waved my hands ) and obviously quite a many juniors.

Though, it was a bit hectic , I enjoyed every bit of it. With familiar juniors around, hours were flowing by like seconds. On top of this, add the party on Sapphire roof top and I was truly reliving my student days.

Then, it was great to see FFI growing into such a robust organisation. Starting from a single room and a single computer, the organisation has came a long way. To mention a few of the achievements, we have caterred to more than 350 blood request in the last year, conuselling is underway for a massive 10,000 students of government schools, approximately 50 students have benefitted from the IT literacy project in this semester only. This number is supplemented by inmates of Dhanbad prison who have received IT education from FFI. The youngest of all FFI initiatives,Escape is doing a great service to kids by helping them with communication skills. I saw a few videos of Escape and was awestuck by the presentations of Escape students.However, the thing which makes FFI truly unique is besides benefitting the community, it exposes volunteers to a host of leadership and organisational challenges very early in their career, even before their formal career starts. Such volunteers can be an asset for any organization in the professional arena.


On interaction with volunteers, I realised how closely they are aware of the problems of the society, be it the blood bank situation in dhanbad or the issues they faced while interacting with the school kids. The credit of all the success must go to the ground volunteers who are putting in their extremely valuable time and efforts for the benefit of community. Some are working tirelessly infront of the computers trying to make their students understand MS-Office and Internet Explorer, some are braving the heat & dust to reach the students of government schools and help them take a informed decision about their career and some are saving the lives of poor patients by fecilitating easy blood supply to them free of cost. Infact its the dedication of volunteers which inspires me to keep working for FFI.

Overall, with 100 plus volunteer strength of FFI, the organisation is looking positively into the future. Now we are in the process of executing our expansion plans which include a new centre in Jamshedpur under the leadership of some equally dedicated individuals whom I met during ISM trip. The other cities where our expansion plans are in conceptual stage include Patna, Pune and Noida. With the experience and expertise of three years to back us, we are confident of our success in future endeavours.

Too Hard to Resist..

Some things are highly tempting and addictive, but none more than gambling and you just have to visit a Casino to believe me. I went to one,called Crown Entertainment Plaza,quite a big one. To be honest,such a thing you only get to watch in Bond movies until you come to places like these.

It was huge,it takes almost 30 minutes to walk from one extreme to another.Open 24*7,one can find every type of human species gambling over here , black, white, asian, african, adolescent, old aged, hot ones and some others not so hot.I guess, its not for making money that people come here, they just come here because they have to.Its an addiction, more tempting than say alcohol or even a hot chick. Senile people seemed glued to television like gambling machines,holding dollar coins in a plastic cup shaped container on one hand and a sparkling wine on the other,it seemed a perfect pass time for them. The figures on the screens read like credit (means the dollar coins those screens have eatem away) 300.20 and Win $52.20 . They say a lot :).

But the more thrilling and tempting form of gambling was taking place on those tables with traditional card games and fortune wheels.It really was incredible,the gamblers came with girls, orderred a wine, took out a few hundred dollars,bought chips with those bills and the game begins.

The temptation was too hard for us to resist ,and ultimately we gave in. We analysed a particular game (or tried to) which has big wheels moving and eventually the wheel will stop with the pointer pointing to some number on the wheel. The one who has placed his on that number will get multiples of his money while others placing bets on other number will loose.Suppose,you placed a bet on 11, if fortunately,the pointer points to 11, you get 11 times of the money you bet upon.The higher number meant higher multiples but lesser occurences and hence higher risk.After a really long observation and analysis,we concluded that placing bets on 5 and 3 for at least 4 times is almost sure to bring profits. The probability theory I read for CAT did helped :).
So we placed bets :), the attendent signalled 'No More Bets' and wheels (of fortune) moved.It was 5,hurray we won..in the first,second and so on..I guess, this is what they call it beginners luck.So say after 6 bets, we were already in 100% profit. But gambling had already started playing on our minds and one of my friend placing the bets decided to take some risks. We deviated from our agreed principle of sticking to 5 and 3 only,and he placed bet on 23, We lost, then we placed on 11 and again we lost. The beginners luck seemed to have deserted us so soon :) .Very soon we were back to square one,with no profit ,no loss we decided to stop placing the bets. We did, but as I say,its highly tempting
and one of the friends agains decided to play :). This time he sticked to 5 and 3 principle and he was in profits. Seemed we had found a secret.After a comfortable profit,he decided to skip the game. It was already 3 in the morning and we decided to move to our hotel.Though, I wasn't gambling(for some very very different reasons) and was merely being part of the team of my friends who were gambling, I must say that many a times the temptation to give it a try was too impulsive to resist.I can just imagine about those regular to the place,how hard it must be for them to walk away from the place.

Before,completing this piece, I would like to leave you with some lines which were everywhere in the casino warning gamblers not to overdo things..


In the End,the Machines will win..

The only thing you can controle in this game is yourself..

Dont chase your losses,walk away..

Set yourself a limit and stick to it...