Saturday 25 February 2017

Mission has enough space to cover…

Last couple of weeks witnessed some unforgettable moments in our Nation’s history. Some are unforgettable because of the scar they have left and the lessons for the society which has seldom shown the needed alacrity to learn from its mistakes. The mockery of democracy during the course of the power struggle between the convicts and their erstwhile aides, is something which will remain undigested in our minds for a long time to come. The other unforgettable event that happened was the launching of 104 satellites in a single mission. This has shattered the previous record of 37 satellites launched by Russia by a mile.

This moment of national pride and importance was rightly explained by the scientist of ISRO, who said that they are aware that it is not a number game and they are aware that number of satellites launched is not comparable to the runs scored on the cricket field. Our media instead of detailing about the intricacies involved in carrying out such a challenging mission, hyped only on the numbers. There is a lot of engineering innovations required for stacking the tiny satellites in the available space and ejecting them sequentially in the desired orbits without colliding with each other. This is the achievement of ISRO's launch vehicle team that calls for celebration. Not only that, the money earned by carrying them almost halved the launch cost of the PSLV. Buoyant with this success the Chairman of ISRO also said that our country is now ready to setup a space station. It would indeed a real giant leap. All these are made possible by hard working men and women who have nothing else in their pursuit other than excellence. 

See what Sri Sujit Menon, a scientist working with ISRO, has to say about his colleagues. ‘Most of the ISRO employees are ordinary Indians. Most of them did not attend an Ivy League University. Most of them have not graduated from the IITs or the NITs. Most of them do not even have a doctorate. Many of them are from middle class families. Some are even from poor households. I have personally worked under the person responsible for creating ISRO's supercomputer, the SAGA-220 housed at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center. He has a BSc degree in Mathematics. That's it. No B.Tech, No M.Tech, No PhD, No Post Doc. I have a degree from IIST, a reputed national university. But I'm awestruck at the depth of his intellect.  I asked him how he was able to achieve so much in his career and rise to the highest of ranks. His answer was simple, Perseverance’.

The success of PSLVs, GSLVs, Chandrayaan, Mangalyaan etc that most Indians see on their television screens has been made possible by the consistent hard work of many such individuals. Ordinary people with extraordinary dedication. May their tribe increase.

V.V.Balasubramanian
YB-ET


Wednesday 1 February 2017

The Marina Breach…

The Jallikattu protests by the students started of just like the people against corruption movement started By Sri Anna Hazare at New Delhi, and it veered off like just that movement. This should be a lesson for the youngsters who started this with good intentions. It is not just enough to start a movement, but sustaining it in the same avowed path is also more important. The chances of such movements getting hijacked by vested interests are more and those who were in the forefront should have been careful about this. Anybody who has witnessed such democratic protests being exploited by vested interests earlier, like the one happened at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, would have said that this will also follow suit. The indications were very obvious from the beginning and any sane mind would have recognized it easily. First and foremost was the fact that Jallikattu is a Hindu Tradition, part of the Hindu Festival Pongal, which is also celebrated as Makara Sankaranti all over India was never told by the people who were protesting. They wanted to whip up the linguistic passion of the people of Tamilnadu and were terming this as a Thamizhan Tradition, meaning Tradition belonging to Tamils. They chose to hide the Hindu identity to get support from the Pseudo secular media and the fringe elements. Never ever there was any voice raised against the cattle trafficking which is the reason for the dwindling number of the native cattle in our country. Ban against Cow Slaughter was not a demand by these misguided youths who were protesting. Ban against Cow slaughter is an inherently important issue upon which hinges the future of our Native cattle breeds. The fact that they didn’t do these also gives rise to the doubt whether these anti national elements who hijacked the movement were there right from the beginning, and whether it was they who goaded the youngsters to drop the Hindu identity from their protest. 

This sinister looking start to the movement meant that it surely going to get deviated at a later stage when the anti-national elements feel that they can carry it on by themselves. The mass hysteria of the people of Tamilnadu, who were ignited by the pseudo pride and linguistic jingoism paved an easy way for anti-nationals to percolate inside and poison the crowd. Many Hindus felt that these protests would enable for a concrete action from the government to bring back Jallikattu, which they dearly wanted. So they too turned a blind eye to the dropping of Hindu identity. When the issue was heading towards a plausible solution, the ugly heads of these poisonous minds started showing up. The state government drafted an ordinance, and it was given assent by the Home ministry and then by the Hon’ble president. At that time these usurpers of the movement started asking various other demands which were not there in the beginning. The people who started the movement also resigned themselves from the protests and were booed for that. Slogans against the central and state governments, especially against our Prime Minsiter were raised much to the anguish of the youngsters who were watching all these helplessly. All these could have been avoided had they not shunned their Hindu identity in the beginning, because these anti nationals are also virulent anti hindus and they would never work for a Hindu cause. It was an unholy alliance formed by the leftists, Missionaries, Jihadis and the Pseudo rationalist tamil Jingoists, trying fish in the troubled waters. It is a lesson learnt in a terrible manner for the Hindus in Tamilnadu. But it has also brought out in the open who their enemies are. Hindus have a weird tendency not to learn any lesson from history. Let’s pray to that almighty that it doesn’t happen this time.