When we will run as a country?

More than 60 years after becoming independent from British Raj, we have progressed in the no of cars our fellow contrymen own, but we have regressed considerably in our average speed. We have progressed in the no of fellow countrymen, but the maintenance condition of any public building / structure / road has gone down considerably. Where are we progressing? Is the only benefit of democracy is " I can write these sentences without worrying that the might state would hang me for writing these things"?

It's an irony. As India produces more cars of more varieties for more people, traffic in its cities gets slower and slower. While new trains are introduced by the dozen, speed of our railways hasn't improved in a hundred years.

New highways are being built, but cargo trucks on our roads don't move at more than 20 km an hour, on an average. The more we make a move, the more we seem to be stuck. The better our economy does, the worse is our gajagamini reputation.

In many cities, the average speed of a bus is 10 km an hour. A 'Duranto' means little when 80-85 km is the best average speed of even our fastest trains. What can one call a highway where driving is like running a hurdle race? What's the use of arriving at world-class airports, if getting home or to the hotel from there can drain all your patience and good humour?

Buoyant GDP growth alone won't make India a dynamic nation. We've got to speed it up, literally. Of course, a nation's ultimate dynamism comes from the buoyancy of its people -- the way people walk, move, react, respond, interact, and carry themselves in public, in offices, on the road and at places of services.

That's a matter of culture, discipline and motivation, which aren't easy to acquire. But a fast and effective speed-up of visible mobility is a useful first step in that direction.

We need to unclog our cities to make them more movable and liveable (the two are interrelated). Our urban focus must turn to enhance public mobility, as there isn't enough space for all the private cars we want to own and drive.

And, since we can't go on adding buses ad infinitum and dedicated bus corridors aren't always feasible, we must emphasise underground metros as the key element of our urban transportation policy. Only underground metros can move people on a large scale while easing up the scramble on the surface.

For the rest of the country, however, we need more travellable roads -- highways, expressways, all-weather byways -- and more cars to take us places. Mobility must be decentralised as widely as possible, with all the links in place. But we've got to re-examine how we build our roads and for what all purposes.

In all the world's highly mobile countries, highways are meant to provide a thorough passage, unhindered by crossroads and traffic signals. They run either above or under intersections. Road signs are visible from a distance. Exits are clearly marked and numbered.

Local traffic uses service roads. Nobody bolts across at will. All these factors have a positive impact on speed, but we haven't learned to care. Our highways are little better than upgraded village roads, but we don't seem to mind that.

We need to change. We must run our highways and expressways the way the rest of the mobile world does. We must have separate corridors for passengers and freight.

That's the primary condition for gearing up our drive. We must also enforce highway discipline while removing interstate bureaucratic hassles and legalities that are often a major cause of highway delays. That's condition number two.

China is one country that is reaping the benefits of streamlined, disciplined, purpose-specific transport infrastructure, and if we have any ambition to be identified as a mobile nation, and not as a sloth, it would be wise to go in the same strategic direction.

Simultaneously, we must transform our railways. Those who have read Paul Theroux's Riding the Iron Rooster will agree what China has done with its railways is nothing short of a revolution. India is still in an age where it takes Himsagar Express 75 hours to run the 3,745-km distance between Kanyakumari and Jammu Tawi.

That's 50 km an hour, nothing better than a mechanised elephant. Our fastest train, the Bhopal-New Delhi [ Images ] Shatabdi, has an average speed of 87 km an hour. Call it a motorised rickshaw?

We need faster trains and a thorough renovation of tracks to support them. We need a vigorous programme of laying new tracks, reaching new destinations, electrifying the route network and putting in sophisticated signalling systems. What we don't need is eyewash.

Above all, we need total and dependable connectivity. As long as India's rural interiors aren't served by all-weather roads, India will always look to an outside observer to be stuck in a stagnant pool of time, no matter how fast its economy grows.

We may call that ahalya bhumi eternal India, but that has no value for a nation with dynamic ambitions.

Ironically again, while Tata's Nano [ Images ] seeks to bring mobility to the Indian heartland, Jairam Ramesh [ Images ], the environment minister, thinks it is a bad idea. He doesn't say we must build more roads to help that effort. Talk of turning an elephant into a leopard!

A genius named S.R.Tendulkar

My feelings for the maestro have vacillated between "you-are-past-your-sell-by-age" to "you-are-the-man". I have never been able to form my opinion about him objectively. May be, I need some help from some writer or journalist..

Where were you on November 15, 1989? I know where I was: glued to the television in my newspaper office watching a 16-year-old boy with curls and rosy cheeks take on Pakistan's fast bowlers. Twenty years later, the curly locks are showing a hint of grey but Sachin Tendulkar is still doing what he does best: score runs for India. Much has changed in the world around us in the last 20 years. One thing hasn't: the presence of Tendulkar on the cricket crease.

Remember 1989? It was the year that the Berlin Wall fell, symbolising the end of Communism. It was the year that Rajiv Gandhi was defeated in the General Elections, as VP Singh was transformed into a middle-class hero. It was the year that the militant's gun first echoed in the Kashmir valley while the bugle of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was sounded in Ayodhya. In 1989, five hundred dollars remained your forex limit when travelling abroad, Dr Manmohan Singh was far from being the finance minister, there were no private television news channels and India was still struggling with the Hindu rate of growth. To many Indians of my generation, there is only one link between then and now: the batsmanship of Tendulkar.

Forget the mountain of runs and the gush of records. That is for historians and statisticians to archive for the future. For the genuine cricket fan, Tendulkar has always been much more than a run machine: he has played the game the way it was meant to be played, with passion, unbridled enthusiasm and, above all, dignity. It's true that the gay abandon with which he lit into an Abdul Qadir on his first tour to Pakistan has given way to a more methodical approach to batting. Yet, as he showed a few nights ago in Hyderabad, the core of his being is still in playing attacking cricket. Incredibly, even towards the end of his Hyderabad epic, he was running faster than his partners who were almost half his age.

It can't have been easy. Cricket's history is littered with stories of schoolboy prodigies who never quite made the transition from maidan cricket to the big league. Not only did Sachin make the great leap, but he did it in the span of less than two years. Lesser men would have simply buckled under when hit on the face as he was in the first series by a Waqar bouncer. But he didn't. In that one fleeting moment when he dusted himself up after the injury, a teenager became a man.

We all have our favourite Sachin moment: was it the sliced cut off Shoaib Akhtar for a six in a famous run chase over Pakistan in the 2003 World Cup? Maybe, it was the emotional century within a week of his father's death, a father who had been his role model? Or was it his demolition of Shane Warne in Chennai on a turning track? Or the Sharjah innings that remain his signature One-day knocks? Or a monumental double century in Sydney? Or the match-winning innings last year against England within weeks of the 26/11 terror attack that appeared to miraculously lift the gloom? When you've scored a staggering 87 international centuries, then picking a single cricketing achievement isn't easy.

But his real achievement is beyond the boundary. We live in an age of instant stardom and mini-celebrities, where fame is an intoxicant that can easily consume the best of us. In the crazy whirl of hype and glamour, there is every chance of an individual losing his way. Sachin, remarkably, has been almost untouched by the fact that he is contemporary India's biggest icon, arguably bigger than even an Amitabh Bachchan or a Shah Rukh Khan. As Khan revealed in an interview, at a party of cricketers and film stars there was a big noise when Amitabh entered. Then, Sachin entered the hall and Amitabh was leading the queue to grab hold of the cricket champion!

Through the many highs and a few lows, Sachin has been calm and focussed. He has consciously avoided controversy, remaining an intensely private individual while displaying his talent to millions. He may not have gone to college, but life has perhaps taught him more than he could have ever learnt in the classroom. He is fully aware of his commercial value but his badge of identity is that he is the Maharashtrian middle-class boy who has remained true to his roots. He may lack the gravitas of the original Little Master, Sunil Gavaskar, but on cricketing matters he can be just as articulate.

In a sense, the passing of the baton from Gavaskar to Tendulkar represents the coming of age of Indian cricket and a new India. Gavaskar was the architect, who built every innings with a clinical precision that perhaps was symbolic of a Nehruvian India when neither cricket nor the country could afford any form of extravagance. Tendulkar is the free-spirited artist who bats with the freedom of an India unshackled of its socialist baggage, where cricket is now part of a lucrative entertainment industry.

So, how much longer will Sachin continue? Sir Don Bradman, statistically the greatest-ever batsman, played for Australia for 20 years, interrupted by war and benefiting from the fact that cricket was then a seasonal sport. Sachin, whom the great Don likened to himself, has been playing virtually non-stop for two decades in the most high-pressure environment that modern sport can throw up. Maybe, the body is creaking a little, but the mind doesn't seem to have given up yet. Maybe, the goal of the 2011 World Cup is still the ultimate motivation. Of course, he will retire one day, but till he does, we must savour the magic. A banner in Sharjah once said it all, "I will see God when I die, but till then I will see Sachin!" Amen.

No pain, no gain applies to happiness

People who work hard at improving a skill or ability, such as mastering a math problem or learning to drive, may experience stress in the moment, but experience greater happiness on a daily basis and longer term.

"No pain, no gain is the rule when it comes to gaining happiness from increasing our competence at something. People often give up their goals because they are stressful, but we found that there is benefit at the end of the day from learning to do something well. And what''s striking is that you don''t have to reach your goal to see the benefits to your happiness and well-being," said Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University.

The study found that people who engage in behaviours that increase competency, for example at work, school or the gym, experience decreased happiness in the moment, lower levels of enjoyment and higher levels of momentary stress.

Despite the negative effects felt on an hourly basis, participants reported that these same activities made them feel happy and satisfied when they looked back on their day as a whole.

The surprising finding suggests that in the process of becoming proficient at something, individuals may need to endure temporary stress to reap the happiness benefits associated with increased competency.

The study examined whether people who spend time on activities that fulfil certain psychological needs, believed to be necessary for growth and well being, experience greater happiness.

In addition to the need to be competent, the study focused on the need to feel connected to others and to be autonomous or self-directed, and it examined how fulfilling these three needs affects a person's happiness moment by moment within a day.

While behaviours that increase competency were linked with decreased happiness in the moment, people who spent time on activities that met the need for autonomy or feeling connected to others experienced increased happiness on both an hourly and daily basis.

The greatest increase in momentary happiness was experienced by participants who engaged in something that met their need for autonomy-any behaviour that a person feels they have chosen, rather than ought to do, and that helps them further their interests and goals.

The authors suggest that shifting the balance of needs met in a day could help people find ways to cope with short-term stress in the workplace.

"Our results suggest that you can decrease the momentary stress associated with improving your skill or ability by ensuring you are also meeting the need for autonomy and connectedness, for example performing the activity alongside other people or making sure it is something you have chosen to do and is true to who you are," said Howell.

Time for Coffee with Friend

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the story of an empty jar and the 2 cups of coffee.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large empty jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks until the top of the jar.He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was! So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous "yes."

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed."Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, " I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The rocks are the important things - your health, your family, your partner, your children, your friends, your favorite passions - things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car. The sand is everything else - the small stuff.If you put the sand into the jar first, there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the disposal"Take care of the rocks first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented.The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked.

It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

Australianism means single-minded determination to win

5th Match of India-Australia ODI series 2007 has gone to Australia..

Congrats Australia, a team battered with injuries has hung on for a memorable win.. Sixty one years ago, at the end of a tour of England by Don Bradman's famous pack, John Arlott put it thus: "Australianism," wrote Arlott, "means single-minded determination to win - to win within the laws but, if necessary, to the last limit within them. It means where the 'impossible' is within the realm of what the human body can do, there are Australians who believe that they can do it - and who have succeeded often enough to make us wonder if anything is impossible to them. It means they have never lost a match - particularly a Test match - until the last run is scored or their last wicket down."

Spare a thought for Sachin Tendulkar. He seemed to have done everything possible but didn't last the final lap. That will really hurt him no doubt but that's that. Australia go ahead in the series.

Milan Beeka: "ODI no. 2923 will always be remembered for Sachin- 17 000 runs and a knock for the ages, Marsh's maiden century and the Australian spirit for winning against all odds! What a true spectacle.:

Hang on for the quotes from the post-match ceremony

Dhoni: "They got off to a good start and we never got into a postion to contain them. It was up to us to chase it. We got a good start and we came in the end due to Tendulkar and Raina. We lost it in our mental calculation, not because of our talent. It was one of the good ODI tracks we have seen in India, you have to be smart. Hopefully we will be up for the next two games."

Ponting " It was one of the amazing games and certainly one of the best innings ever from Sachin. You just have to keep hanging in there, you just have tell your bowlers to keep bowling to the plan. just one bad shot and we could come in but Sachin didn't play many bad shots today! Its really unbelievable how we have played, considering al the injuries. Marsh played realy well.:"

Man of the Match is Sachin Tendulkar: "I thought we started off really well then lost wickets. Suresh and I had a good partnership but in the end, it was disappointing. yeah It was one of my best knocks, the pressure to keep scoring runs was there and we took it very close. I thought Suresh has a terrific talent; he can play the big shots, so if we can get the partnership going, and with powerplay left, the game can go anyway. I care about playing for India, it's a passion and I have been absoloutely honoured to play for India so long."

Why do we refuse to learn from past?

Ruling class is united in downplaying recent chinese incursions despite SOS calls raised by Uttarakhand and Arunanchal Pradesh CMs. The same government started crying when Musharraf disclosed the Pakistan had modified and deployed the America-gifted aumminitions against India. These were exact scenarios and responses in 1962 vis-a-vis China and in 1965 vis-a-vis Pakistan. The question is why do we always behave as an ostrich keeping our head in sand?

This is from rediff -

A student of military history would be justified in feeling a sense of deja vu at recent happenings. Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf [ Images ] disclosed that he used American aid not against terrorists but to bolster Pakistani capabilities against India. Our leaders then go ballistic and beseech the Americans!

Cut to April/May 1965 -- Pakistan used the Patton tanks against India in the Rann of Kutch -- we spend time and energy in taking photographs and again go to the Americans.

As in 1962, we seem to downplay Chinese intrusions -- not unlike the famous Nehruvian jibe about Aksai Chin that not a blade of grass grows there!

To cap it all is the recent disclosure by nuclear scientist Dr K Santhanam, that the May 1998 thermonuclear test was less than 100 percent successful has fuelled a much needed debate on our security and defence preparedness. Dr Santhanam is a scientist connected with India's nuclear programme and his views have to be taken seriously. Since 1998, India has openly shifted from 'defence' to 'deterrence' as cornerstone of its security policies.

India did not have much choice in the matter. In the decade of 1980s a reckless US supplied weapon systems to Pakistan (the F-16s) which in turn for the first time gave that country reach and bomb weight to pose a direct threat to Indian cities. Our nuclear reactors came under threat. Thus should Pakistan have so chosen it could target these and virtually 'nuke' India?

The critics of 1998 Pokhran II and an overt Indian nuclear posture to 'deter' this attack, ignore this reality. All that the 'Shakti' tests did was to go for overt in place of 'covert deterrence', itself a contradiction in terms. Ten years have passed and during this time these theories were severely tested and a comprehensive debate ought to be welcome.

While the attention of Indians and the world is focussed on the economic progress of our country, the age-old weakness of our civilisation -- the neglect of the security dimension, casts a long dark shadow on our future.

India is unique in several ways -- unlike other countries, in India ardent and idealist 'peace lobbies' are part of mainstream politics and not on the fringes as in all other countries of the world. In its 5,000-year-old history, India has produced treatises on virtually every subject on the earth, from astronomy, medicine to even sex, but we do not have a single major work on warfare or the art of war.

Time and again our use of war elephants was shown to be ineffective, yet we persisted in it.

We were the first to use war rockets in the 18th century, but never developed them to make them bigger, longer or more effective. Intellectuals stayed away from the war strategy and weapons.

We refused to change with the times.

In the nuclear age as well we seem to be repeating our dismal history. The new 'mantra' is minimum deterrence and second strike capability as panacea solution to face all threats. India went wrong in Kargil [ Images ] in 1999 when we realised that the proxy aggression 'used 'the nuclear umbrella while we lulled ourselves.

The 2002 Operation Parakaram in the wake of the attack on Parliament as well as our inability to react to the Mumbai [Images ] attacks on 26/11 showed the limits of our retaliatory capability.

Through successful use of rhetoric and threats, Pakistan neutralised our conventional response.

Now over the last 10 years it has become an established pattern of behaviour on our part. Our strategy of retaliation with surgical strikes or the new strategy of 'cold start' remains moribund and ineffective for the enemy believes and rightly so, that we lack the will and wherewithal to implement it.

Our conventional retaliation strategy lacks 'credibility' and therefore is no deterrent. The issue is not of mere 'will' either. India lacks the overwhelming technological/numerical superiority to implement this. For instance, Israel has been successfully employing 'threat of retaliation' as a deterrent to proxy or terrorist threats. Israeli technical prowess makes it a credible threat and its past behaviour has established its will to act.

In 1773, the small kingdom of Thanjavur was threatened by the combined forces of the Karnataka nawab and the British. As enemy troops massed outside the city, the high priests of the famed Thanjavur temple assured the king that their 'mantra' was powerful enough to defeat the invaders, and went on to sprinkle the water sanctified by the 'mantra' to stop the invasion! Of course the 'mantra' failed and the kingdom was annexed by the British.

Today we have the high priests of nuclear strategy in Delhi [ Images ] similarly chanting the 'mantra' of no first use and minimum deterrence! Will the result be any different than at Thanjavur in the 18th century?

An analysis of why 'we are like that only' is necessary so that we can rectify this fatal flaw in our national psyche.

The Diagnosis: What ails Indian thinking on defence?

We are a peculiar nation that is obsessed with the 'eternal truth' while we ignore the 'practical' or the realistic world. Carl Jung, the Swedish psychologist visiting India about a century ago, had remarked about this and felt (as a Westerner) as if the whole country lived in a trance or maya or illusion.

Let me illustrate. It is a fundamental belief of Indians that there are no evil beings only evil deeds and fundamentally theatman or the soul is universal and part of the divine in all of us.

While this is so, yet there are evil individuals, for instance the terrorists who mercilessly killed hundreds in Mumbai or have been planting bombs in busy trains and markets. We have to deal with this evil ruthlessly. But what do the Indians do? We question every action of the police/armed forces, we have karuna or pity for the Mumbai terrorists.

The list of our foundational weaknesses is a long one. Here I would just mention it and leave the rest to the reader's imagination.

• We tend to think that security is the sole prerogative of the armed forces and police.
• Divorce between theorists and practitioners -- it is politically incorrect to think of national security in academia -- the British implanted a colonial mindset whereby Indians were kept out of this vital area. Even 62 years after independence this persists.
• The lack of strategic culture -- in case of nuclear strategy we have scientists as strategists -- like asking chemist to prescribe medicines (as many Indians do).
• Segmented approach to security -- armed forces kept away from decision making on the nuclear issue.
• Treating low intensity, conventional and nuclear conflicts in isolation and denying the linkages between them.
• Isolating defence industry/research from mainstream and colossal inefficiency of the bureaucratic structure of the Defence Research and Development Organisation empire.

Colonel Anil A Athale is the Chhattrapati Shivaji Fellow at the United Services Institution and coordinator of the Pune-based think-tank Inpad.

Travels of cuisines

Where all our indian cuisine has travelled? One of my friend in Charlotte sampled Ethiopian themed lunch last week and had a dish called  Sambussa sounding like Samosa which we get in India. That started me on the thought that how does the cuisine gets popularised in far-flung places and what form the cusine takes in its adopted land. Essentially, If a cuisine is adopted even 50 kms away from its origin, you can expect it it be quite different than origin...sample Chat in B'lore vs. chat in delhi...Dosa in B'lore vs Dosa in Delhi..And North Indian food in Bangalore and Bay area vs North Indian food in .well..north india..