The Indian army, spending, my legacy and god

Im writing this post while watching Lakshya. It’s a Hindi movie about a young man who finds focus after joining the Indian army. This is of course the second time I’m watching the movie. The first time I watched the movie was with gentleman cadet Nikhil ‘Damru’ Saxena. He’s become a lieutenant now. But even then he gave me a running commentary on the weapons, their usage and about the Kargil war, which is the culmination of the movie.
The Indian army is one of the world’s oldest armed forces with regiments much older than free India itself. Formed in pre-independence India, most of these regiments are steeped in tradition dating to the British Empire. Having participated in the World wars, the Indian armed forces have won a whole lot of Victoria crosses (a brit war decoration) and have shown courage against the odds in battles against Germans, Japanese, Chinese and of course Pakistanis and have battled in most continents of the world. Discipline is the hallmark of this army which has never occupied any foreign soil nor has interfered in the running of the country.
We are one of the largest spenders in terms of defence equipment. With a large amount of money being spent on modernisation of the army, navy and airforce. We are well on our way to become a blue water navy with international presence and patrolling of the Indian ocean. Our airforce has some of the best fighter jets with AWACS and more jets in the pipeline.
All this though comes at a huge cost. For every million dollar jet we purchase there are million people dying due to starvation and poor medical facilities. People who need that money really badly. Every weapon we purchase forces an equal purchase by our neighbour Pakistan and vice versa. The difference being that we have a much larger economy to support our purchases. The only people benefiting are armed dealers who feed off both nations.
Any which way, there is a certain respect that an army officer gets. People always know the local army guy and respect him for it. Cant say the same for pot bellied MBAs:). We are a tribe people believe live only for profits. Must say that that’s far from the truth. Our college has its own Social service group who try and do their part for society and are supported by students many of whom have volunteered for NGOs. My cousin Dev, a social worker with Akanksha, a respected Mumbai NGO tells me about numerous corporates, who help sponsor their activities and also help them out with space and all. But in no way can we match the social workers. These people live for others (must try doing that). Dev walks around in a khadi kurta pyjama (the social worker dress code) and has that ascetic look about him. His job is to find space where children from the lower strata can be educated. His work day starts before most people wake and ends when we are all asleep. You might think he would be hassled by all this. No wayz, he seems very happy. In more ways than one his legacy is in the making.
I know for my life that I can’t match upto any of these individuals who live their life for their nation, for other people, for their religion (by this I mean people who serve their religions as saints, priests, maulvis and not people who persecute those belonging to other faiths.) I just realized that I’m 24 and in no ways have I done anything which could form my legacy. I only hope that 10 years down the line I would have done something, some selfless act of charity, lived at least a moment for someone else. I must have some legacy to leave behind, shouldn’t I?
Sud recently had a comment on one of my posts about the lack of evidence about the existence of god. Must say that I too had gone through one of those phases. That was ages back. But all through my life there has been a divine hand in my existence. Whether it be a miraculous recovery from a mystery stomach bug in dip. Engg. or the recovery from an eye problem, god has been there for me always. Even at K, my first year needed God’s intervention in more ways than one.
Sometimes I think that even obtaining admission in a Bschool in Kerala, the land of my forefathers is an act of god. I never ever thought that I’d go down south to study (something my grandfather always desired). Maybe God has chalked out some path for me. I hope that I’m upto it.
Yesterday was my sis’s engagement. It went off well. Got to interact with so many of my cousins after such a long time. It was fun. One thing about being in an IIM is that people respect you for just being there. Everyone wanted to know about life there. I did praise everything there but try as much as I could, couldn’t praise the mess food. Seems fees are increasing but mess charges remain the same. Ironically that seemed the only thing which should’ve been improved.
A compliment I get a lot here is that for an IIM guy, I’m down to earth. For starters I must assure everyone that a jet pack is not part of our study material so we are firmly on the ground. HEE HEE. People just assume that an IIM guy would be snooty and all, when they realize that we are just one of the guys they like it. We are after all human beings who are not much different from other individuals. The only common thing you can attribute to us is a good aptitude. What really makes us good MBAs is the rigour of the course, a peer group of people from various backgrounds and good faculty to guide us. Our distinguishing feature is the amount of work we put in to get here and the work ethics necessary in a course like ours. For one thing IIM is a means to an end and definitely not the end in itself. There is a definite pride associated with being part of this institute but it must certainly not be mistaken for arrogance.
Just got a summons from the local election officer. Seems that me and my sis are listed twice in the electoral rolls. For all the trouble we had to get it in there in the first place, we now have to go back to verify our address and strike out one instance. Amazingly, the other instance has some address Ive never seen. I just hope, it hasn’t been misused. Brings me back to my idea of a database of every individual in this country. It doesn’t even need a card as such. Fingerprints could work as an identifier. The system could be used in place of ration cards and funding could come via banks who can use it for their atm system. Would definitely be a major deterrence to identity misuse. Most laptops today offer the technology as an add on and every third engineering student has done a project on it. Definitely a business plan in the making. Of course the logistics of the operation would be huge but fingerprinting is something everyone would be comfortable with. Then being an angoota chap (person who uses a thumb impression for official documents) wouldn’t seem uncool anymore, wat say?
Now I must say bye to Mumbai and then back to studies. Breaks over. Summer internship gave me the feel of an actual job, now it seems odd to go back to studies. Of course identifying with job related stuff is gonna be easier and then there’s Synapse to organise and Spandans to get published.


Miles to go, before I sleep.
Things to do, promises to keep.
A life to live, for someone else.
A desire to put others before oneself.
Time to learn the joys of giving,
To stop dreaming and start living.
To let not my thoughts stay a fantasy,
To create my life, my Legacy.




till my next post,
Ciao