________________
14. Off-course you must be honest, off-course you must be truthful, but knowing yourself is
important
1.2.4.5 Extract of conversation of Sam Pitroda and Nandita Das
dated 15th Dec 2013 1. Questions on following topics were covered 2. 1. Election 3. 2. Nirbhaya 4. 3. Supreme Court-377!- Its a human right issue more than sexuality issue, its hard to pull-off
what individual wants. Let people decide what they want to live. Its hard to police private life of people. Reservation - In a family if someone is less capable, or underprivileged, it is responsibility of family to take care of that person. We need to consider reservations from the bigger family. If you are well-off, you need to give. If you are too centered on yourself, then you tend to say look, I am loosing something. In fact you are supposed to be saying, its my job to give. Also sense of
sacrifice is a part of responsibility of majority. Self should be more in giving 6. Democracy and human rights are fundamental issues, foundation of our society. 7. Need to understand privileges we have, right to move, right to speak...we take these granted. It
is a responsibility. Democracy brings lot of responsibilities. Discuss more on democracy, privileges we have, discuss in schools, local groups and various forums. It will add great deal to
their understanding. 8. People are not feeling good about themselves, so they always find faults with others. That's the
reason people do not feel good about others. 9. More conversation seen as How right I am I, how wrong you are! TV debate in India, everybody
is mad at everybody. Media is promoting views - for and against, in black and white? Tolerance
to opinion of other people is getting less and less. 10. Caste and politics - politicians may do over since it is their currency. A book written by Anil Bhat. 11. We need soul searching; lesson learnt from Mahatma Gandhi is that Self is very important. We
need to build a strong self. 12. Prakash Desai - Everybody is very concerned and sensitive about 4 key words- man-apman
abhiman-sanman (swa-man). Learn to deal with these then you create a better world. You do not worry someone insulting you. Because our system is hierarchical and feudal, so people are sensitive, like people are insulting me, not giving me respect, etc. If you are stronger self, you
never worry about these things. 13. In India everyone, at all level people are worried, why you said what you said when you said
how much you said...etc as a result you do not have good conversation. 14. How am I going to change? Have confidence on self. 15. We almost had nothing and as a nation, we have come a long way. We should be proud of what
we have done. We built institutions, colleges, universities, we built democracy, etc 16. We have lost a lot..our life used to be very simple life, values were very Gandhian, we had little
needs, not very possessive. Society has gone materialistic, following western idea of happiness, to acquire more.
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