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Tarun A Rahul C Neeraja P Sriram I Rangabashyam G Kumar R Sumit Uday R Mohan U Uma Ravi S Deepak Balaji N Ashok Nandini S Naveen D Vinod K Tarun A What I single handedly had believed and defended is exactly reflected in each word on your site. I am so moved to see that there are so many people like me who feel the same that If we want our country to improve then it we who should first improve. I am one of those persons who have stood on red traffic light in a remote noida cross-section, in the middle of night,waiting it to change, when I knew no other vehicle was around because I believed that that is the price I have to pay for my principles. We still have hope for India with people like you/us in the world. Tarun A New Jersey Rahul C I am currently living in the US ( not a not responsible for India kind of person though).Anyway, I send money home to my mom and ask her to personally go and buy stuff( paper, pencils, chairs, fans etc) for the local schools. Also, other people should try to adopt a local school or some other insitute and instead of spending money on temples, should cater to schools etc. Neeraja P I amy sound a litle pessimistic. but I think our generation (people in 20s & early 30s) is wasted. ofcourse some people like you are excepetion, better exceptions. my point is, when you reach this age without having a sense of responsibility towards your country its practically too hard to change one's views (not impossible) it becomes more and more difficult by age. It is always worth the try to work in this or elder agegroup but more efforts should be given for the kids and youth group as those are hte impressionable years. The advice or the work is more effective in this age group and those are the future (sounds too much like a bhashan baji) so better work for future instead of past and present! my 2 cents in your great efforts.. sorry to sound like a school teacher.. Sriram I Hi, I am really glad that you are doing a very good work and I hope your workwill be a significant one. I assure I am a 100% Indian and have chosen to stay in my land on my volition. "Do not play with things that you do not understand" is an African proverb. I found your second advise very disturbing. Temples / Yagnas go a long way in maintaining peace in the nation and improving it as a whole. They ARE India. What is India without these ancient Hindu monuments / practices? We do not curse a farmer for throwing grains into land. For we know that they are seeds that will bring greater amount of food later. Similarly, money spent on temples / yagnas WILL improve nation / world. Have no doubt. The mechanics of how these work are much beyond reach of science (in its usual connotation). I'll be glad if you can remove that as a way to improve India. It is otherwise. I no way mean that we should pour all money to temples. But the suggestion is untrue. Regards, Sriram I Rangabashyam G Dear friends, My warm Greetings. I am glad to come across this site, which is focusing its efforts in building tangible solutions for our betterment. Truly the size of the problem is confined at Individual level. But when we see things in generic terms it looks big. We gained a lot from our predecessors. The same way we owe to give back to next generation. It is the natural journey to next level… not an end. It always makes us to feel proud and healthy…. Gives us the experience of being integrated with various life forces. We can evolve solutions thru optimized approaches. I find that frequency of thought in your conceptual stage. That impresses me. I would like to have more interaction with the organizers of this site to understand things better. About me: I am a software consultant working on data integration projects in US. Currently stationed in Minneapolis. I am very sophisticated in my thoughts as it travels towards the center of existence. Eventually, I feel the center everywhere. This takes me lot towards silent moments of life. Simply speaking I am evolving in me through inner revelations. Largely I am not an active ingredient in any process. At the same time, definitely I can be a catalyst by assuming invisible, self-effacing roles. My earlier experiences with socio, political, spiritual, environmental organizations made me to accept the pluralistic nature of our world. I started loving contradictions. This gives me the ability to transcend the superficial layers. I find the oneness everywhere. This transformation leads me to see life with non-judgmental eyes… people with their own ethos. So I never try to push my beliefs. This gives me sense of boundlessness with infinite flexibility for my inner journey. Needless to say, I have a natural urge to contribute my best at individual level. I can be an instrumental in bridging like-minded people for common goals. Kindly allow me to share my thoughts in silent intervals. Give me the pleasure of hearing from you. Ranga Kumar R Hi, First let me put forth my appreciation for the work you r doing and I hope I can contribute in any manner possible towards it. Second I would urge u to not get discouraged by the words of the detractors, for thats what they do best and thats not to be taken seriously. Third, I think the way to improve our country is two folds. One is to strengthen its judicial system and the political system, for these are the two basic systems of any democratic country. For the judiciary improvement, I wish we could model our country against a country like the USA, where the judiciary has lots of say. Where cases do not take years to complete.. where lawyeres (attorneys as they are called more here) charge a portion of the gain and nothing if they lose and so putting the onus on the lawyer to win, empowering the common man to sue the government if required and making all public offices answerable to the general public. Why is the public system working better in the US ? Because they know if they make a mistake, anybody can sue them ? They know that lawyers will try to win for their clients and its this fear that makes them cautious and makes even the government offices people friendly. I think India will improve when the common man is empowered. Now what prevents the common man from being empowered today ? What keeps them subdued and ignorant of their rights ? Its the policatal system. And what makes the system ? The politicians. And why does the politician remain that way ? Because he knows he is unchangelled. No common good sensed man wants to be involved in politics. A youth wants to be a engineer or a doctor.. a rowdy wants to be a politician!!! If this changes and if politics is made as a social profession (like doctor or teacher),thats when the system can be changed. As long as we stay away from it, it will only get worse. It will NOT get better by just criticising it. It has to be changed from within and that will happen only when common man takes a interest in politics and is willing to be a part of it. If we can achieve these two, we can patch up the rest of the holes. This will not make our system perfect, it never will be. But it will atleast make a difference like what Kamal says in the movie indian. Corruption is there is every country. But in the other countries if u bribe, u will get something extra than the others. But in our country if u dont bribe, u dont get what u normally should get. :( Jai Hind. :-) (alias) Kumar Sumit Hey Guys, First let me congratulate and support you for taking the bold step of rebuilding India. Please don't let this organization die, ever! I realize you guys are working towards changing India from inside. I want to do the same thing but sometimes I feel helpless as I am currently here in US (Madison, WI). Sometimes I feel hopeless because all the Indians around me are not interested in India. Most of them don't even know what is going on in India. It is a pity. Anyway whatever the odds might be I still want to do my share of work for my country. But I want to start from US, I want Indians to change here. I want people here to get more involved with India. Many of the people, like me, realized after coming here of the problems India have and that WE TOO CAN MAKE A CHANGE. Sometimes we can affect policies in India by doing things here. Here are some specific thoughts that I have: 1) Why Indians in US settle down for bootlegged and copied bollywood movies? Most of the times we can rent this movies for $1. First of all, we rob our Indian companies of precious revenue in dollars. Secondly, the quality of these movies is BAD (copied and boot legged), but we are fine in watching them. We don't expect good life/service for ourselves and that is how we convey to others that it is ok to treat us without respect or good service (Air India hostesses and Cathay Pacific hostesses not treating Indians properly while doing everything to please other passengers). The renting of these movies reflects a serious mentality problem that plagues us - we have no problem in getting bad quality stuff; we will just shrug our shoulders and say 'sab chalta hai'. 2) When Bajrang Dal and VHP was burning people and raping women in Gujarat why was there no single protest outside VHP offices in US? Millions of dollars are funneled from VHP donation centers in US to India. This money is then used for recruiting all the dacoits and gunda elements in a locality as VHP youth wing recruits. Why didn't we go out and made sure that not a single penny was given in donation to VHP? I talked to couple of my friends here who are from Ahmedabad and they even didn't care! They knew there families were safe but they were not even aware that there were muslim refugee camps. I want people here to be more aware of what is going on in India. I want people here to do whatever they can sitting in US. We can exert external pressure and make a change. I have other things also in mind but I want like minded people. I want to meet people like you with similar ideas and desire to rebuild India. I would like to know what you think about my ideas and if you know of people who would be interested in working with me for at least my first idea. I will be waiting to hear from you and your thoughts on this. Sincerely, Sumit Uday R Hello, My name is Uday from San Jose, California. I found your site accidently. I have thinking about how to drive the whole India into being self conscious about keeping India clean. I think we should enforce strict laws and rules just like they do in Singapore. I will be more than happy to contribute according to my capacity to help out in your project. best wishes, Uday Mohan U Hello there, My name's Mohan and came across this rebuild India site via justindian.com. I'm an NRI myself living in US for more than a decade. As it is mentioned, I send money to a child charity in India hoping that will educate a child in India and make a difference. Obviously that isn't enough, according to your website and I kind of agree to that. My first and foremost suggestion is that we should try to decrease and stabilize population growth in India and possibly *reverse* it. We have gone over one billion people. Why not give incentives to people to have fewer children? If a person crosses threshold of having more than 1 child, then this might be able to achieve, look at China. If he has more children, his pension and other benefits should be cut. If this is something that can be done, I have few suggestions, but first I want some comments to this thinking of mine. Cheers Mohan U Uma You have a very good site. My 2 cents here. Population is the major problem India is facing currently. I heard anout One volunteer organisation in Pune that has started a drive. They go to a slum/basti and advertise about their family planning program. Next weekend , They hire a minivan go to that slum in morning , pick up the ladies/gents (who are willing) from there take them to the Govt.hospital , get the opertaion done for family planning and in the evening same van returns them to their home. They have taken some donations and help from some doctors in this I think. They also report about the time and place they will be going to each weekend from a local newspaper.So people know they are coming. They are getting very very good response for this. As it has become very easy for people. Can't this drive be started in all the major cities in India. I am not aware if there are already any. You can get more info about this form a marathi newspaper sakal by writing them. Their site is www.esakal.com and the name of the organisation is 'Nirdhar' I hope it is helpful. Thanks. Uma Ravi S Dear who-ever-you-are, Congratulations! I am proud of the initiative you have taken! I am an NRI currently, without an NRI syndrome you mentioned about, and planning to return to India soon. I was hoping that I am not alone in worries and thoughts about India, and now I am glad find this web-site. I hope and pray this effort of yours will get a lot of support and will help India improve. I find that many of your ideas co-inside with my thoughts too. I suggest that you post articals from like minded people about their thoughts about India. Also, may be you help people from the same area get in touch with each others. If I can be of any help, let me know. I hope I can be of some use. regards, ravi. Deepak Hello, This is indeed a good effort from you. I fully agree with you that rebuilding India starts from the self and changing ones attitude towards ones country. This thought needs to be hammered in to everybody's mind. I have a cousin in here (US), when asked if he sent any donation to Bhuj earthquake victims, his response was, he needs receipt for every paisa of the money he sends, and since he is not going to get that, he'll not donate any money. This site needs to address such people. Anyway, I'm with you people and if you have any newsletters, please make me a subscriber, and let me know what help you would need from me. Thanks Balaji N Hello to everyone, I live in US and was pretty much excited and interested to find somebody is really trying to improve our nation. Ppl like me r for the most of the time just sit to wonder on how to improve our nation and dont really put our thoughts into action. Was it our inability or lack of initiative is a question to which I cant think of an answer.Well, anyway, I think we have here a wonderful opportunity to show our gratitude to our country through you . A couple of problems that I would like to mention here . One is the lack of proper education to our kids.I ,for one ,strongly feel that by educating the masses we would definitely be able to develop a better India.Here in US the government provides compulsory basic education to children. I do know that the Indian Government has also implemented such measures.But then,correct me if I am wrong,most of the families suffering from poverty tend to send their kids to work to earn some money rather than to school for studying.That probably leads us to another issue of child labor which I feel should be totally abolished. If we can strictly enforce that every kid receives the necessary basic education ,then I feel that most of the other issues would become much easier to solve.No help is a greater help than to educate and enlighten an other person. This will probably provides us with better politicians to rule us ,who r educated and really know how to improve our nation rather than some ignoramus who just has a mass following and doesnt know the 'AtoZee' of our problems. Well, anyway, let me stop here.I feel like I have already taken much of ur time.Kudos on ur work and wud like to help in anyway I could. ;-) Ashok Corruption - This in my mind is the root cause for many problems. I think only fear could stop people from doing it. Lets take simple things like running a red light. In the US people donot do it I think the main reason being caught by a cop. And we cannot give 50 Rs (or $ in this case) and escape from him because he does not take it, thats because, there is a camera in his car which is live and taking pictures. So it is ALL FEAR. Why can't we create FEAR to our people? Just have a surveilance cameras in all government offices. This is not going to solve the problem but this will increase the difficulty. People have to go one more step to do things wrong. And may be this will also make them work I don't know. This is a very cheap step to take. And I am sure there will be a lot of resistance initially, but hey life without hurdles cannot be imagined. Nandini S Hi, I am disturbed to read suggestions for involving students and professionals in volunteerism and community service. No doubt, these people need to be aware of the problems in the country, and need to do something about it, but is *sacrificing* their time with little profit to themselves really a self-sustaining solution? I suggest the youth and entrepreneurs of a village or an area in the city be mobilised to start mini-businesses. First they pick an area where all the residents are willing to pay for the cleanliness of their street/area. Charging the residents a nominal amount, they use this to pay cleaners and workers (perhaps unemployed slum dwellers?) to , say, clear overflowing rubbish dumps, sweep the roads, and ensure the general cleanliness of the area. This money could be used to implement the garbage collection system you were talking about. There can be other applications of this. The point is that the time of professionals and students is *valuable* and should not be wasted on doing things which are of lesser value than their normal work. (a surgeon in more productive in surgery rather than while cleaning up rubbish dumps). Naveen D I am concerned about Water problems all over India. I need a group of people who can address this or think about possible solutions. Corruption doesnt bother me, dirtyness not the priority, education is another I am concerned about. There are big list of problems. Like said, first of all people should have enough for life to start thinking of development. So people who have should share. This is "Attitude thing" Cause in India, if people get to know somebody is giving, everybody whether they are worthy or not, try to grab it. How do we change this attitude??? Vinod K I dont belong to SC/ST and i have also endured all the pains any student from forwars caste faces. But i feel that ure sneering at the reservation system is ridiculous cos u r not looking at the bigger problem of educating and upbringing of the entire indian population.we cannot go merely by merit cos most sc/st candidates do not recieve enuf encouragement from family to study. students from forward caste can alwways find a way out. can u show me one brahmin student whose first cousin is not in the U.S?..it mayb b true that the benefit goes to people who dont deserve it.but then wat else can b a possible solution to educate and bring up the majority of indian population. a sc/st candidate is capable of scoring much better if he is given the same environment as the one which is available to other students.so the reservation should not bavailaled by only those sc/st's who r not well off. there is absolutely nothing wrong with the reservatino system.
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