Category: National problems

In my point of view terrorism is not a problem. It is by-product of other problems. If we solve the real problem, terrorism disappears automatically.

The way this world is attacking terrorism is funny. Every country is doing something to kill terrorism. How they do is the funny part. Terrorism is a huge tree spread over many countries. To kill this tree, every country is cutting its leaves. That too, it cuts only the leaves which are spread over it. The country feels that it has killed/eradicated terrorism after it cuts some or all leaves visible in its territory. It forgets the fact that the tree is huge and spread across many countries. Next year new leaves come up. The country/government reacts shockingly, thinks it as emergence of new terrorists and spends lot of money to cut new leaves. This process is going on for decades.

If you just stop water supply to the root of a tree, how long the tree can survive? Whatever is the size of the tree, it dies very soon. Why these countries and big governments not stopping water supply to the tree of terrorism?

What is water for tree of terrorism? It is money especially black money. The fertilizers to this tree are poverty, poor people or hungry people who can do anything for food. If we can remove black money from this world and reduce poverty, terrorism disappears.

Poverty gives man power for terrorists’ operations across the world. Black money gives money power to buy weapons, vehicles, food and also man power. So black money is the main root cause of terrorism. Terrorists can do nothing without money. All their purchases and transactions are illegal. For illegal purchases, they need to pay more than market price. Terrorists cannot operate without support from local people. Knowing the risk local people will not support so easily. But there are two factors that make people obey them. One is huge money and the other is fear. People rarely obey only with fear. Most of the times, it is both. So terrorists contact local antisocial bodies and pay huge money. These local antisocial bodies will be accumulating hungry poor people for their operations by scaring and showing money. When a weak minded poor person sees huge money which he/she cannot imagine to earn in life time, his/her senses stop working and get ready to do anything. Or if they frighten a person about his life or his family member’s life, without any other option, the person may commit the crime. Once a person commits crime in extreme condition, the criminal leaders use that person as weapon in the society by blackmailing or by showing money.

In all these conditions, money is the dominant part. If we just cut off money inflow to terrorists, none of these can happen. Their activities cannot run longer only with fear factor.

Who is supplying/giving so much money to them? People that are having black money are supplying money to terrorists directly or indirectly. Personally they may be against terrorism. Then how are they supplying money to terrorist? It is very simple logic. Terrorists attack the people that are having huge black money and rob part of it. The person who lost the money cannot report to police because it is black money and cannot fight against terrorists also. These attacks are never recorded in police records. Some of the black money holders grow local terrorists and use them for antisocial activities and earn money illegally. Some people who do illegal business will have direct links with terrorist groups and support them financially. Here also the money used is illegal or black money.

The second part is man power. For terrorist operations, they need huge man power. They gather street children & orphans; provide food & shelter and then train them for antisocial activities. They do brainwashing of those children and make them live and die for their principles. Once the children believe that they are living only for terrorism, they cannot be changed. These children form the core manpower of terrorism. Poor people are the low cost manpower for terrorist groups. Mostly they use poor adults for one time operation. Their permanent and reliable manpower is local antisocial groups. Though these are costly people, they help each other reliably. Along with all these people, there is one more category of people who work as manpower. They are the rich people who are in higher positions of government offices and in other companies. Terrorist groups buy these people by paying huge money. All the security breaches and infiltrations are caused by these people. All the weapon movements and terrorist movements are guarded by these officials. It is difficult to catch them because they will not involve in final operation. Usually only poor people are caught and killed in terrorist attacks and encounters.

Terrorist groups need a lot of money to maintain and grow manpower. Whatever way we see, terrorism is living because of huge inflow of money. It is like water for a tree. Somehow if the world cuts off all the sources of income of terrorist groups, terrorism disappears. If terrorism dies, all the countries that are affected by terrorism start developing similar to the small trees living under the shade of a big tree. When the big tree dies, the small trees living below the big tree start growing.

Proposals for Election Process

The following proposals are very important for national development. The proposals are:

(1) Changes in Election process

(2) Demand for solutions

(3) Concept of minimum support

Changes in election process

There is a problem in election process. That is causing all anti-government agitations. If that is corrected, we will have better leaders and the country will develop faster.

In one region two politicians are nominated for election. So for voting, people have two options. When people go for voting, they need to select one of them. Whichever politician gets majority becomes leader. What if people don’t like any of them? People don’t have choice. Some people don’t vote if they don’t like any of them. Even then one of the politicians becomes leader because majority is checked within the collected votes. When people are frustrated with the current leader, they select the other one. When they are frustrated with the other one, they select the first one because they don’t have any other choice. There is no option to say that we don’t want any of them.

Currently democracy is giving options to the people. It is implementing people’s choice. The following example describes the current situation.

Government gives two options to the common man and forces him to select one of them.

Option 1: Cut my left hand

Option 2: Cut my right hand

After cutting one of his hands, government says that common man’s choice is implemented successfully.

There are some villages where the richest person is leader forever. If not one, there will be two alternating. Their families enjoy power and money. They keep poor people poor forever. If the leader becomes old, his family member will be the leader. It is going on for decades. Where is democracy? Where is people’s power? Where is the development?

It is often said that VOTE is the most powerful weapon. When you cannot say with vote, “I don’t want this person as leader”, what power the vote has? When you cannot say with vote, “I want new leader”, what value this vote has? When a vote cannot disqualify a criminal, when a vote cannot disqualify a corrupt person from politics, why should we value the vote or the election? When a criminal is contesting in a region, they keep equally powerful criminal as opponent. We are bound to select one of the criminals. If there is no opponent, the only person contesting is the leader. Where are people coming in to picture? Political parties decide who will rule that region. They keep few people as contestants. They know that one of them will be the leader for that region. How can we call that as people’s choice? Even if none of the citizens except family members of contestants votes, one of the contestants will become leader for that region. That means that leaders are decided much before the elections. Sub-set of the contestants will become future leaders. If we don’t like any of them or some of them, our choices are limited. Even if we know that all of them are corrupt, we can do nothing. So value of our vote is nothing.

I propose an option “None of the above“. Let people have “None of the above” option along with contestants list in elections. If a person gets the majority, he/she will become the leader. If “None of the above” option gets the majority, disqualify all the contestants of that region from elections and seek fresh nominations. It is because people are not supporting any of the nominated politicians. They want new leaders.

New leaders emerge only when powerful, rich, corrupt politicians get disqualified. With fear of disqualification, leaders work for national development. People should have power to select the leader and power to disqualify the leader also. Only then real leaders emerge. That is real democracy.

Demand for solutions

All the political parties promise a lot of things before elections. If people like those promises, they vote for the party. Nobody asks how these promises can be met. If anybody asks, there will not be any answer for that.

We should demand the list of problems that the political party likes to solve in their tenure. We should also demand the procedure of how exactly they like to solve the problems. If they don’t know the solution before election, how can they get solution in one day after they win? We should demand solutions to all problems. The solutions to all problems should be manifesto of a political party. Let professionals review those solutions and give their comments. All that information should be available to every citizen. Let the citizens decide which solution they like to have for their problems. News papers and media can show the solutions of political parties and table of their comparisons before elections (like online product comparisons).

Political parties and political leaders should think about problems of people and solutions for them. If a person does not worry about problems of people, that person is not eligible for leadership. A political party should have a solution before promising to solve the problem.

Majority of people get in to trap of promises very easily. One example:

One of the political parties promises free electricity for all. That party gets full majority. First day as minister the head of the party passes the GO of free electricity for all. People are happy that their party kept its promise. Next day power goes off in all homes before news paper reach their homes. When they get news paper, people see the message of the minister. “To recover losses of free electricity we are selling electricity to adjacent states. So there will be 23 hour power-cut per day”. Next day people start agitation to reverse the change. Government promptly agrees for people’s demand and cancel the GO of free electricity. After a week again news comes from government. “There is shortage of electricity in the state. So the unit rate is doubled to control the usage”. The party proudly says, “We kept the promise. Later people changed their choice. We followed people’s choice. Our party is always with the people”.

One party says that it will create jobs. Every year thousands of people retire from their jobs. Those positions should be filled. So every year there will be recruitments. Is the party talking about this refilling as job creation? Or is it really going to create new job opportunities to solve unemployment problem?

One party says, “We improved literacy rate from 47% to 48% in 5 years”. People, who do not know that the adjacent state has 95% literacy rate, take it as a great thing that this party has done. What exactly the party has done to improve? Nothing! The percentage got changed because of growth in population.

False promises, impossible promises and promises without solutions trap poor people and gain votes. Poor people remain poor forever to get in to their trap again and again. The literates, the professionals, the knowledgeable should make others aware of these traps. We should make them aware of how they are losing their rights because of wrong choices. We should make poor people aware of how they are looted for 5 years by giving money on Election Day.

Many of us are spending lot of time, money and effort to improve a small part of our nation. With wrong leaders all our efforts are going waste. We should spend our efforts in selecting proper leaders. When leaders try to develop the country, our efforts add value to that development. When leaders try to loot the country, our efforts help them. So electing proper leaders is a must and very urgent to have any development in the country.

To elect a proper leader, we should make every citizen aware of complete biodata of each and every politician along with their future plans on how they like to develop the country. In this communication era, sharing the information with all is not a big task. But collecting true data is a challenging task.

We should bring poor people out of thinking of short term self benefits. We should teach them to select the solutions that benefit majority of poor people. We should teach them how national development helps them and improves their life. If farmers always vote the party that gives loans to them, their overall life will never improve. We should show them how other developments of the country improve their life. With these teachings people will have global thinking. Then they can support the solutions that give real national development. Currently that global thinking is not there. That’s why people protest when new industry starts or when a new technology is adapted. They see only loss of 100 jobs or loss of 100 acres of land. They don’t see the benefits that people get with the change.

Concept of minimum support

To declare a contestant as winner, he/she should get at least 45% of votes. Just gaining more votes than all other contestants should not make the person winner.

Assume that there are 10 contestants in a region. Each one of them earns around 10% of votes. One of them got couple of votes more than all others. That person becomes leader. How many people are supporting the leader? It is only 10%. That means that 90% of people are opposing the leader. What development is possible when 90% of people are opposing? Some contestants nominate just to check their luck. By chance if the person gets one vote more than all others, he/she will rule the region for 5 years. As number of contestants increase, the luck factor increases. So leaders are getting selected by their luck, not by people’s choice. If a leader has at least 50% of support, the leader can fight for development of that region. When there is 90% opposition, how can we call the person a leader? When all these lucky winners join together and form a government, 90% of population will be opposing the government. If every decision of government is opposed, is there any point in having a government?

So we need to filter leaders that are not having enough support at local level. If none of the contestants get the minimum required votes, none of them is a winner. Disqualify lowest vote earning contestants and call for fresh nominations. Set a minimum support of 10% to qualify politician to contest again in election. If a contestant earns less than 10% of votes, he/she will be disqualified from elections. When leaders with enough support form a government, the government will have enough support countrywide.

Another point that we need to consider is percentage of collected votes. If less than 50% of citizens come to vote then there is some problem in that region. Enquiry is required to understand the problem before declaring the winner or before conducting elections again. If required, presidential rule can be implemented till the problem is solved.

If an illiterate does business, he will do only business. Business means gaining profits. An illiterate thinks only about earning profits from his business. The other parts of business will be missing, like profit sharing and social responsibility. He never gives bonus and never increases salary of his employees when profits increase.

Similarly if an illiterate politician becomes leader, he will just rule the country, nothing else. A knowledgeable leader can understand the nature, changes in the world, new technologies, etc. So there is possibility of development. An illiterate without broader thinking cannot improve the lives of people. So, minimum educational qualification has to be made mandatory for every political leader.

Poverty

What is poor? What is rich? Who is a poor person? If a person earns Rs.1000/ day, is he rich? Some other person earns Rs.100/day; can we call him poor? Are poor and rich relative? How can we say that one person is rich? What are the parameters to decide whether a person is rich or poor? First of all, it depends on his/her earnings. How much is his/her earning per day or per month or per year? How much is his/her spending? Whenever earnings are more than spending then that person is a rich person because that person can save some amount every month. Whenever earnings are less than or equal to spending then that person is a poor person. A poor person needs to reduce his/her spending or increase earnings for comfortable living.

When a healthy person can work and earn his food, how can he become poor? What are the things that are making him poor? The important thing that is making him poor is dependents. Even though a person’s earnings are reasonable, if he is having many dependents the person’s expenditure increases and he becomes poor.

Who are a person’s dependents? His parents, if the person is married then the person’s spouse (in case the spouse is not earning) and children (if any) are the main dependents. While taking care of all his dependents, if his spending is more than or equal to his earnings then he is a poor person.

To become rich, he has two options:

Increase earnings
Decrease spending

For increasing earnings, he has to do more work, work for more time, gain more knowledge, improve and utilize talents. For decreasing spending, he has to reduce/avoid unnecessary expenses and fancy spending. He has to review his expenses. Maximum spending is on dependents. Most costly items on any person’s expense list are education (for children or for self) and medical expenses (this could be for the children, parents, spouse or for himself/herself). Other major part of expenses includes purchase of luxury items (here luxury items are the ones without which one can live), transportation, festivals and functions, hobby or habits. By looking at all these, a person has to identify which items of his expense list are avoidable or at least reducible. He slowly needs to reduce these expenses to increase his savings.

Even if a person is earning Rs.100/day and his spending is less than that, the person is rich person. After a period of time, that person will have some money which can be used as capital for starting a small business or to cover his future requirements. If a person is earning 200 or 500 per day and his spending is more than or equal to that, that person is poor. If he does not earn for one day, he won’t get food for that day because there is no saving.

Definition of rich and poor: If a person earns more than he spends then that person is a rich person. If a person earns less than or equal to his expenses then that person is a poor person.

With this definition, now we see why there are poor people in this country.

When government is spending huge amount of money for poor people every year, why is the number of poor people in this country not reducing? Government is making lot of policies and schemes to make poor people’s life better; it is facilitating self employment which will help poor people to earn on their own by giving free land, homes, loans, etc. Every year the government claims that it is bringing many people out of poverty. That means it is making poor people rich. Then why today, after many decades, we have so many poor people?

Every year if the government brings few lakh (100,000) families out of poverty, then after 60 years of independence we should have covered most of the poor families. But the numbers are more or less same compared to last decade or few decades earlier or before independence. Along with government, many NGOs are also spending huge amount of money and working for betterment of poor people and poor children. Even then we could not reduce the number of poor people in this country by 50% or even by 25%. What is the problem? What is happening there?

When government spends some money, it spends the money over whole country. With this it covers 5% or 10% of people one way or the other. It plans to cover another 5% in next year. But by the time next year plan comes, the people who got benefits this year will consume what they got and comes back as poor people because there is no tracking and there is no proper verification. So every year more or less same people are getting benefits or there may be fake poor people as many scams are happening every year.

How to tackle this problem? People are paying taxes, government is showing huge budget and NGOs are spending so much, even then there is no much improvement in the country and no reduction in number of poor people. If it goes the same way, after 100 years or after 1000 years, we will have same number of poor people or more.

The problem is the way government is handling the problem and the way government is spending money for policies. When government can give benefits to 1000 poor people a year, it selects 1000 people from all over the country. So in records 1000 people got benefited. Next year again it gives benefit to 1000 people. Is it tracking whether some of the last year’s people are repeated? If not last year, 5 years ago or 10 years ago that person might have taken government benefits as a poor person. Without tracking it properly, government can never cover all poor people. Some people get benefits repeatedly and others never get anything. If the person who is distributing government’s money is not a sincere person, he/she may be giving fake list or giving the list of his/her relatives always. If government is not verifying, this process continues forever. Poor people never get anything. If this continues, government will be spending lot of money but there will not be any improvement in the country. To reduce poor people or to give benefits to poor people, it should be done in a systematic way.

Solution for this is: if the government plans any scheme for betterment of poor people, it should be done for a section or a village or an area. If it has bigger budget, it can cover more villages. Whenever it selects a village, it should cover complete village. It should not do it for parts of many villages. If government shows reasonable income source for all citizens of a village, there won’t be any poor people in the village in future. So government need not to apply those schemes for that village in future. If government can cover many villages same way in one year, all those villages can be labelled as developed villages and they will be removed from this type of schemes in the future. Only in this way, one day in future, we can say that all villages in the country are developed and there are no poor people in the country. That day can come after 20 years, after 50 years or even after 100 years. Once we achieve that, government need not spend money for poor people any more. The full budget can be utilized for advancement of whole country. Lot of developments are possible if full budget is available. The budget itself will grow as number of tax-payers increase. I have taken village as an example. It can be slums in city. When we tackle problem of slums, we should cover all slums in a city at once and label that city as No-slum-city. If we handle one part of the city at a time then the process never ends.

How to make poor people rich? There are many ways to make poor people rich.

Increase income: After a person takes benefits from the government, that person should not depend on government again. That is how government should plan policies or schemes. The government’s scheme should make a person or a family capable of earning income on their own such that they will not depend on government or others in future. It should show some way to earn more income than expenditure. It can be done by training them, teaching new skills, identifying their skills and showing matching employment or business, creating local employment, providing capital fund, etc. Once they start earning on their own, they are rich. They can take care of themselves.
Reduce expenditure: The other way of making them rich is by removing/reducing their expenditure. There are many ways to reduce their expenditure. Their expenditure includes food grains, other food items, cooking gas, electricity, transportation, etc. Let government take care of these necessities for poor people, may be up to some extent, like giving subsidy, setting limits (Ex: Up to so many units of electricity free), giving low cost bus passes, etc, so that their expenditure becomes less than their earnings. And they become rich. But this way, government needs to pay every year. So this is not a best solution.
Increase income and reduce expenditure: Follow both (1) and (2). But the subsidy will be given only for few years till they stabilize on their income. Reduce or stop subsidy after few years depending on their income source.
Reduce dependencies or dependants: This is very important way of reducing poverty and developing country. Lot of thinking has to be done here. Because government has to do lot of things to make it happen. Now we see who the dependants of a person are and what to do with them.
1. First of all, his/her parents, who cannot earn on their own. Health problems of old people will be major expenditure of care takers. For very poor people, providing food and shelter to old parents is also a problem. Slum dwellers cannot provide proper shelter to all their dependents. If governments can take care of old people, some part of expenditure of poor people will reduce.
2. Next major dependents are children, their education, their health and many things. This is one place where government can do many things. If the family is very poor, government can take care of the children completely. Otherwise, depending on their income level, government can support part of their expenditure like children food, books, health insurance, etc.
3. Another type of dependent is disabled person(s) in the family. In this there are two types: (a) Those who can take care of themselves. If children are there in this category, they can be treated as other normal children. If they are adults, then we can provide some way of employment and subsidies so that they can earn on their own and live on their own. As they can take care of themselves, they can take care of their expenditure if suitable employment or business is given. (b) Second category is those who cannot take care of themselves. The family will have extra burden if this type of disabled persons are there in the family because one person gets locked to take care of disabled person. Earning ability of care taker comes down. Here government can take care of these disabled people completely. We can have special schools for them, special homes for them. Depending on their disability and age, we can have different homes. If a poor family cannot afford to take care of disabled children or relatives, they can send them to these special homes. There disabled people get food, medicines, shelter and required care.
4. Another type of dependent is a sick person or a person with some disease. There are many hospitals that give free treatment. There are government hospitals and many other hospitals run by NGOs. Government can provide proper information to poor people about all hospitals and the options of treatments available, depending on the disease. It can setup a helpdesk with toll free number for all types of enquiries. So that people can find best affordable option for their treatment, depending on their location, disease and severity.
5. There are special cases like death of the only earning person in a family. These situations need to be handled case by case basis.
6. The common dependent of all rich and poor people is beggar. There are many social problems because of beggars. Even if you decide not to give money, sometimes to avoid their nuisance or for some other reason you pay beggars. Many sensitive poor people lose their hard earned money to beggars. There are many other problems also because of beggars. We will discuss them later.

In one of the many ways, by increasing income or by reducing expenditure, government can make a poor person rich. After that the person can take care of his/her family without depending on government.
I like to discuss about old people and children in more detail, not as dependants of an earning person. Government can do a lot to these people and gain much more from them in long run.

Old people or senior citizens

There are people who send their old parents out of their house because they cannot take care or they don’t want to take care. This is extreme case, happens very rarely. But most of the poor people are struggling to take care of old parents, children and themselves with their very low income. They are not able to see any other option to decrease their expenditure or to increase income. This is where government or NGOs can come forward and take some burden from poor people.

Create old-age homes in all parts of the country. Invite old people to come and join the homes. Old-age homes should be better than a poor person’s house. Senior citizens should feel that they are in a better place and they have right to live comfortable life. They should feel relaxed after so many years of their hard work, their contribution to their family, society and nation. At the same time they need to have many activities depending on their physical capabilities. As senior citizens are talented and the most experienced people of the country, they can contribute in a large scale for betterment or development of the country.

Our country is not fully developed even today when the whole world is advancing so fast because we are not utilizing talent, because we are not utilizing experience, because we are not utilizing senior citizens. Huge experience and talent is getting wasted. Senior citizens are having maximum experience. If they are brought together, they can make wonders. Earlier days, in our country, we used to have “Vaana prastha aasramam”. That is a stage in life where senior citizens dedicate their time (and their life) for social service or for teaching. To enter this stage, they come out of all responsibilities of family life (gruhastha aasramam) and they were available completely for society or nation. Those people were respected everywhere. They eat fruits or beg for food from local people. So they were free to move to any location without worrying about their food and accommodation. Their only job was to teach, train or develop local people. That is how the knowledge and experience used to flow to younger generation.

Thousands of years ago when there was no concept of writing and reading, people used to take Vaana prastha aasramam as responsibility of their life. That’s how India had sustained and grown its knowledge over so many generations.

Now, at present, in this so called high-tech world, poor senior citizens are searching for food. Most of rich senior citizens are relaxing. The knowledge stopped flowing to the younger generations. For learning something, a student is paying large amount of money when so many senior citizens with that experience are available in the country unutilized. A brainstorming session of few junior engineers for an hour generates lot of ideas. Just imagine how many innovative ideas can be generated by a group of seniors each with about 40 years of experience and how many world problems can be solved easily. About 20% of population is with more than 60 years of age. So there is no question of shortage of experience. Please don’t consider only highly educated people as experienced. That is a major mistake people make. Experience is the duration you have worked. Number of years of education is not considered as experience. Illiterate people also worked for so many years. Hence they also have same level of experience. Frankly speaking, they gain more experience than highly educated people because when educated person was studying the illiterate was working. A farmer or a mechanic has many years of practical knowledge and practical experience. That person might have handled many practical problems which were not recorded in our books yet.

When there is so much of man/mind power with highest experience, why are we not utilizing? That is because we are not able to bring them together. Old-age home is an opportunity for country to bring talent together. Bring all poor senior citizens to old-age homes and provide better facilities or environment than their own house. With these many talented people coming together, we can utilize their talents without giving them much of physical or mental strain. If this movement starts, rich senior citizens will also join them slowly because they will be searching for opportunity to discuss. Once they find a common place for gathering, number of participants will increase. Later they can have planned activities, planned gatherings for discussing about problems.

With the latest technologies there is a risk of losing knowledge. With huge storage spaces we are dumping all the information in hard-discs and cleaning our brains. We are depending on internet more and more day by day. When we need a file we are searching in internet without searching in our own laptop. When we need a simple addition we are using calculator without using our mind. A day will come, when somebody will ask your name and you will be reading your name from mobile phone. If all electronic storages get destroyed, we will not know even how to make our food. Apart from storing the knowledge in electronic memory, there is a need for knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer. Our ancestors kept knowledge alive across many generations without any storage requirement. The electronic storage is required because the knowledge has grown exponentially in last few decades. All that information can be stored only in electronic memory. But the basic knowledge and the fundamental science has to be stored in human memory to give better future for next generation. That is possible by bringing senior citizens together and utilizing their talents.

Developing old-age homes is best way to take care of poor old people. This reduces expenditure of poor young people. Government or the nation gains a lot by utilizing their talents in better way.

The following are a few things that senior citizens can do without much of physical strain while living in old-age homes.

They can go to government schools and deliver lectures or take classes on general topics. The topics can cover anything that is useful for a child. Examples: Daily activities of a child (brush, bath, etc), hygiene practices, common diseases and prevention, nutrient values of vegetables, fruits and other food items, value of yoga and exercises, value of education, value of trees, problems with pollution, problems caused by wasting natural resources like water and fuel, triggering innovative thinking and so on.
They can work for vegetation, gardening, etc. Or they can help in planning and monitoring vegetation and farming work.
In-house product development. They can involve in planning and making of small products that can be sold in local markets.
They can work as consultant or as advisor in their own field. Outsiders can contact them when they need senior person’s help/advice.
Groups of senior citizens can do brainstorming to find better solutions for local, national or international problems.
They can write books about their experiences. They can even publish papers with their practical knowledge.
They can review all new policies of government and prepare a document with pros and cons of the policy. That document can be submitted to government or to public interest organizations to refine the policy so that people will have more positive effects.
Senior citizens with similar interests or similar talents can be grouped. Lot of inventions are possible if a group of talented senior people discuss about something for a long period of time. If one invention is successful, they can financially support all old-age homes in the country.
They can give free training in latest technologies to poor students
With large number of senior citizens and broad diversity of knowledge, every problem can be seen from all directions. Obtaining a solution becomes very simple task for them.

As they are the most experienced citizens of the country, there is no limit on what they can do. They need food, shelter and medicine (if required). More than these, they expect dignity. Respect them as experienced people, not as physically incapable old people. The country which respects talent and experience develops.

When a person cannot take care of parents financially, the person can send their parents to old-age homes. Here the feeling should be: he/she is sending parents to a better and respectable place than his/her own house. The old parents also think that they can reduce their child’s financial burden by going to an old-age home.

Children

Though people feel that they need to take care of their children, there are poor families that cannot take care of their children. They cannot provide proper food, education or medication. These families send the children for work at very young age and create child labour. Because these people cannot earn enough, they put financial burden on young children. That is how child labour starts.

There are many orphans. In most of the cases, we will not know how they have become orphans. That is again because of poverty. Some poor people are simply leaving children cruelly because they cannot take care of extra child. Whether they keep child and don’t provide food or leave the child, both are same. Beggar created orphans are also there. (We will discuss that in next section.) Some of the orphans are becoming child labourers. Hunger can make a person do anything. If these orphans fall in to hands of criminals, they become criminals.

This is a place where government has to act. It has to take care of orphans and poor children. It can start orphanage homes or child care homes. Give food, shelter and education. Find all orphans and street children and bring them to orphanage homes/child care homes. If a poor family cannot take care of their children, give them right to send their children to orphanage/child care home. Let orphanage/child care homes take care of those children and make them better people. This is a big opportunity for government to develop the nation.

Orphans are the free children who are really required for the nation. For these children, there is no mad pressure from their parents to become something without understanding the child’s interests and abilities. Now-a-days parents are forcing children to study what parents like. They are not worried about the child’s interests and talents. Some parents rub their childhood dreams on children. Some parents rub market trend on children. Some parents force children to take their family business or the business that they think is profitable. Many children are studying only for competitive exams. Starting from elementary school, students are preparing only for the entrance test they need to take after 10 years. All their subjects, books and teachers are customized for the entrance test. Long hours of study and no time to play is killing child’s ability to learn. When the child reaches 20 years of age, he/she knows nothing but the questions of the competitive exam. When a new technology comes up with high salaries, all parents force their children to get in to that technology and make them get degree and job in that area legally or illegally. In this process, the child’s interests, talents, aspirations and goals are all crushed. When all opportunities of achieving life’s goal vanish, the child (an employee now) loses interest in work and then in life. This will not happen with an orphan. Orphan is an independent person. Given an opportunity and suitable environment, an orphan child can make wonders.

In orphanage homes, teach all subjects, teach everything. When a child develops interest and talents in a subject, encourage the child to study more in that subject. If children get interest in a subject, they learn a lot very fast. If the talent improves, the child can take that subject as specialization and as profession later. If the interest and profession matches, the person can make wonders. There is nobody to force an orphan child to move out from interesting field. So each orphan child can become a specialist in his/her field.

At orphanage homes, we can seed patriotism in the younger minds. Let the knowledge grow on top of it. We can keep the environment with all positive thinking about the nation. If patriotism stabilizes in a younger mind, the person can never get in to corruption and can never harm the country. They will be the true soldiers of the country. They can do lot of things for the country. This is possible only with orphan children or free children. Other children are busy with their next competitive exam. They are not having time to think about country and about their life also.

Some of the current orphanages are feeding religion and helplessness in to the young minds. Please don’t do it. Please don’t force religion in to these children’s mind at this age. We don’t have control over other children because they get religion from their parents. Orphans are religion-less pure citizens. Please don’t pollute them. Let them live unbiased. Let them have freedom to live without religion or to select any religion.

Instead of giving benefits to poor parents in the name of children, take care of children completely and help them to grow as powerful citizens. Take all orphans and very poor children, label them as government children and give them better education and better facilities than that of private schools.

This is not just to help poor people. It is very important and necessary step for government because hunger can make a person do anything. Most of the criminals, anti-social bodies and even terrorists were hungry people once up on a time. The criminal leaders gather hungry children, feed them, train them and turn them against the society. If government can take care of all hungry children, there won’t be criminals in the future. Instead there will be many real patriots and soldiers in the society. “When immune power increases bacterial attacks decrease”. When patriots increase in society criminals and criminal attacks decrease automatically.

Beggars

When a construction worker is working for a building construction, he/she gets wage. Because of that work, the building owner gets more than what he pays. For his earnings, the owner pays tax. That means government gets money as tax because of the work done by the labourer. The tax will be utilized for national development. That means the work done by a labourer indirectly helps the nation to grow. The effort spent by labourer, worker or employee of any company helps the country to grow. If we do any work, that should help an individual or an organization. Otherwise that effort is waste.

The effort spent by a beggar is not helping anybody. The beggars take the hard-earned money of tax payers and poor people. If a beggar does some other work for earning same amount of money then that effort helps country. Just begging without helping anybody or without helping society is waste of effort. That should be avoided. Beggars are not poor, they are lazy.

When government takes care of senior citizens, children and providing free medication for poor people, every person in the country can earn more than his/her basic needs. That means every person is rich. In this environment and in this country beggars are not expected.

Begging as a healthy person does not yield much returns for a beggar. So the beggars find many ways to win over kindness of people. Sometimes the acts of beggars are very cruel. The helpless people, who cannot stop that cruelty, just pay money and go. The cruelest thing that I had seen was a woman standing in the middle of the traffic with an infant, in hot sun and heavy pollution. She was busy collecting money and not caring for the baby’s cry.

Beggars steal babies. This is a major crime where police cannot catch the criminal. Beggars use these babies for begging purpose. If a baby starts walking, the baby starts begging. As long as the child gives the earning to the elders, the child gets shelter with them. If the child starts using the money, that child is thrown out. From that day, the child is street-child or orphan. There are criminal groups waiting for these children and the child grows as a criminal.

Criminals create criminals. Beggars create both beggars and criminals.

Beggars are the people who can go to any place in the country including prohibited areas without having identity cards, passports or anything to identify them. We cannot know whether they are foreigners. We cannot track their history of activities and where they used to live. If they have a bag and a bowl, they are identified as beggars. Security people won’t catch and question them. If at all security finds a beggar in wrong place, beggar is simply sent out from that place. Usually suspicion of bomb installation also won’t come to security’s mind. If a person dresses like a beggar, he/she can go to any place, do whatever is required and come back freely. Usually police will not arrest beggars because of the assumption that beggars commit crimes to get free jail food. Criminals live like beggars and do all the planning as they can live on roads, near banks or any place they like. Police cannot suspect beggars as criminals until they commit crime. Criminals hide in beggar skin and beggars become criminals.

Ban beggars in the country. If begging is banned then they will become poor people. Take care of them as poor people, show them opportunities and make them rich. If they don’t want to work and earn and they just want to beg, throw them out. Country does not need beggars.

Advantages of making people rich

When government is showing employment or some way of earning more, taking care of dependents and showing options for free medication, every person becomes rich. A rich person will not become poor in life time. A rich person’s family and next generation also lives rich, never become poor because the next generation learns more and earns more.

What happens if everybody becomes rich? What are the advantages?

First of all we discuss the disadvantages of being poor or having many poor people. Let’s assume that there is a village with many poor people. Also there are few rich people living in that village. Suppose a rich person wants a service which normally costs 100 rupees. He would go to the place where poor people live and ask for that service. One poor person says it will cost 100 rupees. Before the rich person opens his mouth, another poor person shouts, “Take my service, I charge only 90 rupees”. Others reduce the rate further. Within few minutes the rate of service reduced to 10 rupees. The rich person agrees to that and takes the service.

There is competition among poor people. A hungry person thinks that getting 10 rupees is better than nothing. Hunger does not allow him to think about loss of 90 rupees or about the other people who are also hungry. So if there are many poor people living in an area, their earnings will always go down. They can never become rich.

Assume that all those poor people are having enough food. In that case, they would not have reduced the service charge. Instead they would have waited for another customer who could pay full service charge. They would have thought about group sharing. Some of them would have moved to another location or another job to come out of the heavy competition.

Hungry person thinks about short term or for that day. A rich person thinks about long term business and uses his asserts for long term benefits.

If rich people stop competing with poor people, poor people get many opportunities and they grow faster. As we start converting poor to rich, the competition at poor people level reduces, costs of services increase, gives more opportunities and income for remaining poor people which in turn makes them rich. Quality of life improves; health of individuals improves that in turn improves quality of society.

Population control

This article gives simple solutions to reduce child mortality rate, to reduce maternal mortality rate, to reduce number of malnourished children and to control population.

Controlling population should be done in a very positive way. In democratic country like India, putting strict rules to restrict number of children will not work. With a large ancient history, these types of rules are treated as sin. So this problem has to be handled indirectly. We should make people think on their own to have less number of children.

Let government decide how many children a couple can have. It is two per couple in India. Give maximum benefits for first two children and don’t give any benefits for other children. This process of giving benefits is active from the day pregnancy is confirmed till the child completes 5 years.

The benefits that need to be given to mother and child are as follows:

For mother, full free medical treatment and nutritious food for complete duration of the pregnancy and 2 years after the delivery.
Free bus-pass for mother and an escort for complete duration of the pregnancy and 1 year after the delivery.
For the child, full free medical treatment and nutritious food for first 5 years.
The registered women get higher priority of medical care at government hospitals.
Poor women with gynaecological problem can have special treatment for free before pregnancy.

Rules of the policy

A woman can register maximum two times for this benefit.
These benefits are applicable only for first two children. If a woman is already having two or more children, she cannot register for these benefits. If a woman has one child, she can take the benefit only for the next child even if she had not utilized the benefit earlier.
It has to be decided whether to take the benefit for the current child in first 4 months of pregnancy. This is to avoid abortion after sex determination. After registering for this policy, she loses benefits if the pregnancy is aborted unless because of medical problem. If she waits till the sex determination, she cannot register for the benefits for the current child.
There is special consideration of abortion because of medical problem.

These benefits should be applicable to all women irrespective of their economical status (poor or rich). Rich people may not utilize government benefits but they should be offered. With this offer, middle class women also will be benefitted. The process becomes simple as government need not have extra check for economical status.

Benefits to government/country with this policy enforcement:

Faster population control. In future, if further population reduction is required, the policy can be made to have single child per couple. People will adopt/accept the policy easily.
Reduction in number of malnourished children. Children will grow with strong body and mind. When the children go for education, they can learn effectively. Even if they do not go to school, they will be strong enough to earn their food.
After 20 years, they will be strong young citizens with high productivity. They can take care of their family. Number of poor people reduces and burden on government will also reduce. Otherwise, malnourished children will grow as weak bodies with low productivity and they will live as poor for whole life.
Poor young women get respect. As all their expenses are taken care by the government, they may get choice of not working in the critical period of pregnancy.
Though the bus-pass is given for hospital visits and for work, the poor women can utilize that for visiting parents or other places. The poorest women never cross the village in their life time. The free bus-pass gives opportunity for the poorest woman to visit few tourist places along with her husband. The concept of “She taking her husband to tourist places” gives more value and respect for the women.
Reduction in number of abortions after sex determination that reduces gender discrimination
Reduction in child mortality rate
Reduction in maternal mortality rate

After reading about this process, one question comes in everyone’s mind. People are having children without these benefits now. With this process, they will have 2 children with benefits and then they can have more children with their own cost. How can you say that it will control population?

That is how human mind works. If you are used to get benefits for a particular work and on one day the benefits are stopped suddenly, you feel like avoiding the work. Before the benefits were started, you were doing the work faithfully. In-between you have seen the taste of benefits. So you start demanding benefits for your work. That is how corruption has started.

I will give you one example. One day a person called X goes to his relative’s house. After some time, lot of shouting and abuses are heard from outside. X asks relative about that. The relative says that they are college students who daily come and shout here. We don’t want to fight with them that’s why keeping quite. X gets an idea, goes out from other door. He meets those students as if he came from outside. He tells the students, “Thank you for abusing them. I am very angry with them. As I am a known person, I cannot shout at them. From today onwards, I will pay you for shouting at them. You please come daily at this time, shout at them and take money”. He gives 100 rupees to them and leaves. The students are very happy. Next day also he comes and gives them 100 rupees. After 4 days, he comes and tells the students, “Dear friends, I cannot pay you anymore. But I am still angry with them. Please continue shouting at them daily as you were doing earlier”. The students say, “Why should we shout to cool your angry. We will shout only if you pay us. Otherwise we will never come here”. X requests them again “Please do it without money”. The students said, “No” and left from there.

Government can also create similar scenario. It can say, “Children are for the country’s future. That’s why we like to take care of them”. Once people start feeling that they are having children to support the country, they can demand benefits. After enjoying benefits two times, the lack of benefits for third child will show a lot of difference. In parallel, other campaigns will be there to show why having single or double children is better for their family. Poor people feel a major difference between having benefits and not having benefits. Like the fox and sour grapes story, poor people will start thinking why to have more children without benefits now and extra burden later, better to live happily with two children.

To get this result, all benefits should be valuable and accessible to all. Then only they feel the real difference of having benefits.

Corruption

The root cause of corruption is common man. Corruption is neither caused by rich people nor by politicians. Corruption is not started by government employees. Corruption is created by common man. Corruption is fed by common man. Corruption is of/by/for common man. Common man is using government employees for maintaining corruption.

Only common man can destroy corruption. Common man likes to kill corruption because he is affected maximum by corruption. But common man is waiting for government to destroy corruption. Government cannot destroy corruption without help of common man. Common man is ready to help government in all possible ways to destroy corruption. But common man cannot stop himself involving in corruption. Now it is responsibility of government to destroy corruption by taking help of common man to save common man.

Corruption started when a common man tried to save some time by intruding a queue with help of a known person. That got extended and reached to government offices to move files ahead of others in the queue with help of known person or money or power.

One day common man went to a theatre to watch a movie. There was a queue of 10 people. He just scanned the queue and found the 7th person as a known person. He went to the 7th person, said “Hi” and stood behind him. Corruption started there. Others had not objected him. With this, he saved time taken for 3 people to take tickets. But 3 people got delayed.

Next day the common man went to a government office. He gave his file and asked how long it will take. The officer said that there were 3 files before his file, by afternoon his work would be completed. He thought for a while and said, “I have to come all the way again. Please take 100 rupees and complete my work first”. The officer thought for few seconds, “My work is not increasing or decreasing. I am getting extra money for doing my work, why to lose it? After all who knows in which order I have done my work?” and agreed. The officer took 100 rupees and completed common man’s work.

From then onwards, every time common man goes to government office for work, gives 100 rupees and gets the work done immediately. The officer got used to it and when somebody comes with urgency and requests him to complete work immediately, he started demanding 100 rupees. As people understood that by paying 100 rupees their work gets completed immediately, many people started paying. The files of those few people who are not willing to pay are pending forever.

Another day common man went to the office, gave 100 rupees along with file. The officer asked him to come after 4 hours. Common man was shocked and asked, “I am paying money to get the work done immediately. Why should I wait for 4 hours?” Then the officer said, “The other people also paid 100 each. Why should I do your work first?” Common man thought for some time and gave 200 rupees to get his work done immediately. The officer took the money and completed his work.

All those who could pay money got their work done. Those who never paid bribe were still waiting for their files to move. One person went to the officer after a long wait and checks for the status of his file. The officer strongly says, “I am busy with my work. Pay money if you want your file to move faster”. The person understood that his work can never be done without paying money. He paid money and got his work done.

The officer understood how to gain more money. He just kept most of the files untouched for a long time. He got hundreds of files piled up on his desk. Now he shows these files to new customers and tells them that if they go in queue it will take very long time and if they pay bribe their work gets done faster. The choice is given to the customers. If customers want their work to be done, they have only one choice, “Paying bribe”.

Now there are millions of corrupt officers. Common man is asked for money for every work and everywhere he goes. The bribe he started with 100 rupees has grown to thousands of rupees for simple tasks. Half of his earning is going for paying bribes. Now he is ready to wait for his turn. But officers are clearly saying that his work cannot be done without money.

When his hard-earned money is going out of his hand for unnecessary reasons, common man is helpless and has started complaining. But there is no one to listen to him. Corruption is happening at all levels of all offices. Some people started taking bribe because they need to pay bribe at all walks of their life. They started taking bribe at their work place to compensate what they pay at other places. Some officers take bribe because of pressure from both seniors and juniors. If they don’t take bribes, they will be treated as untouchable.

The most affected is the poor common man. One day if all common men decide not to pay bribe, corruption ends. But that is not possible in this millennium.

Corruption has to be slowed down slowly to stop it completely.

The best solution for all types of corruption is Complaint Box. This is an independent department that supports all types of communication mediums to collect complaints. This department does not control any other department and is not controlled by any other department. The main tasks of “Complaint Box” department are:

Collect complaints
Create statistics – It has two groups to create statistics. One group gives area-wise statistics and the other group gives crime-wise statistics.
Report generation
Give data on demand – CBI or police department can request for data.

Complaint Box does not disclose identity of the people who give complaints. This is the most important thing in this process. Only when we hide identity of the people, we can get more number of complaints. The idea is to get maximum number of complaints for all small and big crimes.

Complaining people can be contacted to know whether they can give evidence at court of law. Even if they don’t agree to disclose their identity, CBI and police departments should follow up on the complaint depending on severity and type of the crime.

Terrorists cannot hide without local people’s knowledge. But people don’t give information to police because of fear of their identity getting exposed. When they can hide their identity, they will give all the information. The timely information about terrorists helps to control their attacks.

Nation-wide and state-wide detailed reports are generated and given to heads those states. Summary of the reports will be given to the media periodically. Only report creation will be done for few months. Robust action plan will be prepared by looking at the reports.

As the reports show the city name and corrupt departments, corrupt people understand that they are getting exposed. Though corruption is everywhere, no corrupt person likes to get exposed himself/herself. Corruption slows down even before real action is taken when reports point out the corrupt people with number of complaints on them.

For few months, only the statistics will be announced without any action. When the number of complaints increases, the action can be started from all over the country. But taking action against all complaints at once is not possible. So for selecting the corrupt person, we can have an algorithm in the system which selects the person and gives the details. The algorithm selects a set of corrupt persons for action in each district as follows:

The person with highest number of complaints
The person who involved in maximum amount of corruption
A randomly selected person from complete list
A randomly selected person from the latest complaints

Random selection shows the real action against the corruption. When we go in a strict order of level of corruption many people feel safe. But when randomly selected for arrest, action is visible everywhere and corruption slows down. Whether it a single complaint with small amount or relative of a minister, when it comes in random selection that person has to be arrested and prosecuted. One day in one corner of the district and the next in a remote village of the other corner of the district. Before people think that arrests are happening very far from their place, they understand that their neighbour or colleague is also arrested.

Arrest the corrupt person. Request the people who gave complaint to come in real to give evidence. CBI and police can also do little bit of ground work to collect evidence apart from the complaints. If CBI cannot find evidence and the complaining people do not turn up in real, the person is released. But for the people with large amounts of corruption, CBI has to do enough ground work to get all the evidence before prosecution.

Other crimes have to be separated from the general corruption cases. Other crimes have to be handled on priority basis. There may be signals of terrorists, bomb installations, attempt to murder, etc. These cases have to be responded in real time. Complaints on other crimes also have to be monitored in real time and responded depending on the priority.

People can be given guidelines on how to give complaints. Categories of crimes, urgency of response, number of criminals, number of people that may be affected, simple traceable address, whether you are available to give more information and so on.

The following process can be followed to avoid corruption in government policies.

When government allocates money for a policy, the money is deposited in a bank. For example, the policy is to give loans to the poor farmers. The concerned person identifies all the states that get the benefit and the amount for each state and gives the number to the state head, does not give money. That person breaks the number in to parts and gives them to the district heads. District head identifies the villages that will get the benefit. Gives number for each village head. The village heads identifies qualified farmers for this policy, takes their bank account details and sends the list back to district head. The district head collects lists of all the villages and sends them to state head. State head sends the complete state list to the concerned person of central government. That person collects bank account details and the amount to be given to each farmer and gives the list to the bank. Bank deposits money according to the list and gives the tallied full report back to the government. If one of the states could not find enough farmers to utilize the entire budget, the gap will be clearly shown in the final report and the money remains with the government.

The same process has to be followed for all policies. Verification of government money distribution has to be done by matching amount given and the amount received by the end users. The reports of all the policies have to be compared to see if there are any repetitions. Same person may be enjoying benefits from many policies. The system shows list of people that got more than one benefit. Illegal cases can be easily identified from that list. Similar reports have to be generated every year and compared with old reports to find who all are enjoying benefits every year.

Major scams happen when there is natural calamity. Large amounts of donations are collected. But very little goes to the affected people. If money distribution happens through banks, corruption can be minimized in these cases. Donations should be deposited in banks. Banks should deposit money in to the affected people’s account directly. Politician’s job is to identify real affected people and give their details to the bank.

Government should make sure that every poor person has a bank account with zero minimum balance. At least all the people who seek government benefits should have bank account. Government should negotiate with the banks to give zero balance saving accounts for all poor people. Let government take care of the expenses incurred by banks to maintain these accounts without balance. Every village should have at least one ATM. Banks can join hands to provide one ATM in each village and allow villagers to withdraw money with other bank cards also.

If we can stop all new people from entering corrupt path, corruption will die in few decades as current corrupt people will retire from work. So we need to make sure that none of the new employees will get any option of corruption. To save the people who take bribe because of the pressures from seniors, we can give an option to them. If the person can show at least three persons who are more corrupt with proper evidence, this person can be released without punishment. If any complaint comes on this person after this, he will be prosecuted without any options.

Brand building of anti-corruption has to start from schools. Every student should utter anti-corruption slogans at least once a day. That gets recorded in their brain. When they see a corrupt person, their mind shows the person as bad person. With this discriminatory power, their mind won’t allow them to become a bad person when they grow.

Black money