Indian Flag

Indian Flag

The Indian Flag, also referred to as ‘Tiranga’ which means tricolour, is rectangular in shape. It has three colours- saffron on the top, white in the centre and green at the bottom. There is a blue wheel called the chakra with 24 spokes in it. This wheel is in the white centre portion of the flag. Our National Flag was born on the 22nd of July 1947. It was hoisted on the 15th of August 1947.

The saffron colour stands for bravery, courage and sacrifices.
The white in the middle stands for peace and truth.
The green at the bottom stands for greenery and prosperity.
The blue wheel with 24 spokes in the middle symbolises the 24 hours in the day.
The current flag was designed by Pingali Venkayya for the Indian National Congress.
Our national flag has been through a series of changes in its design ever since it was conceived.
Some of our earlier flags can be seen below.
     The first flag to be hoisted was on the 7 th of August 1906 at the Parsee Bagan Square in Calcutta (Kolkota). It was a horizontal tricolour flag comprising of dark blue on the top which consisted of 8 stars of different points. It was yellow in the centre, with ‘Vande Mataram’ written on it in Devanagari script and red at the bottom with a sun, star and crescent.
     The second was hoisted by Madame Bhikaji Cama in Paris. This flag was similar to the first one except that the top portion of the tricolour had one lotus and seven stars. This flag was exhibited in Berlin, Germany at the Socialist Conference.
     Dr. Annie Besant and Lokmanya Tilak hoisted the third flag in the year 1917 during the home rule movement. The flag had five red and four green, alternately arranged horizontal lines. The top left corner had the Union Jack. There were the seven stars and also in the corner there was a white
crescent and a star.
     Fourth, in the year 1921, a young man from Andhra Pradesh presented a flag to Mahatma Gandhi for his approval. This flag originally had only 2 colours, green and red symbolizing the Hindu and Muslim community. It was only after Gandhiji’s suggestion, that the white strip denoting peace and all other
communities of India, and the charkha symbolizing progress were included.
Our current flag is very similar to this, the only difference being that we have replaced the charkha with the Ashoka Chakra or the Dharma Chakra as it is called. It was the Congress Party flag that became the flag of Independent India.

Politics and Morality cannot be segregated.

     Politics, basically is a term derived from the word 'policy'. The process of formulationg policies is called politics and those who formulate policies are called politicians.
     For the past many years, the word 'politics' has got a bad image. It has come to be associated as a dirty game being played by politicians in a conniving and a ruthless manner to gain power and extract advantages pertaining to vested interests from others. Though this is true to a large extent yet if we go by the basics, this process of policy formulation leads to formation of rules and regulations that govern the society at a large and affect its day-to-day living.
     Now, the policy that is to be framed, must be bona-fide in its intent and must lead to welfare of the society. This implies that the person, who is formulating it, must be morally sound and ethical. This leads us to the concept of 'Morality'.
     Morality is defined as the attribute of a person who is 'moral' i.e. one who has a bona fide intent and thinks of such practices which are in the best interest of society. This means that a politician must have morality in order to formulate policies that will serve the interests of public in the best possible way. This means Morality and Politics have to be intertwined for societal welfare.
     Now, there's another aspect to it. As we see, politics has taken up the image of a bad game in the quest to power. In this game, all morals are generally kept aside and the use of "sama, dama, danda, bheda' is open for all. In this case also, morality, is still the same i.e. the societal welfare. The difference comes in approach and path undertaken so as to achieve larger good. We don't have a choice between "good" and "bad" but between "larger good" and "smaller good" where the former will lead to losses for the latter i.e. a small section of people.
     A person in politics should always intend good of the most. Hence, his morality is correct if it guides him to the larger welfare. He might have to do some bad to achieve greater good but he still will be said to be right because of his bonafide intent. His actions were just to root out the malafide intentions.
     Thus we see that Morality and Politics can't be segregated but still the definition of morality remains the same in all cases i.e. larger good and politics should work in a direction to achieve morality. However, morality is a human made concept in which perspective differs. Basically, it is a teleological concept where the definition changes from case to case i.e. there may be a difference in path taken to achieve a result but the end result remains the same.

An Open Letter to Chief Election Commissioner on election duties.

Dear Sir,

I am an ordinary citizen of India giving a suggestion as per my capability for duties in polls. 

First, in every elections, I have been seeing election duties of working employees of government viz. school/college teachers, bank officials etc. In today's scenario such election duties take a toll on students(in case of teacher's election duty), citizens(in case of bank officials' duty esp., after demonetisation) and similarly in various other cases. Moreover, they are already earning and already under a huge job burden. Instead the election commission should consider retired Group A,B,C and D employees or their equivalent in PSUs/PSBs and schools/colleges for election duties. This serves a dual purpose of

1. Not putting more burden on currently employed
2. Giving a chance to retired employees to earn some extra income alongwith utilisation of their free time in service of the nation

Second, unemployed and willing people can be considered for such duties

Seeing that they get money for a duty, they will work with utmost sincerity. This will also reduce government's burden and exchequer's bill in considering unemployed and educated youth for a minimum wage. In any case, election commission does a training programme twice/thrice before elections and this will also aquaint the youth and common citizens of the electoral process besides making them a responsible citizen to take part in democracy. This will reduce burden on programs like SVEEP of ECI.

Third, the EC can consider sending those people on election duty who did not vote in previous elections. This will make them realise their duty towards the world's largest democracy and make them more sensitive and responsible towards their duties as an Indian citizen.

I hope you consider these suggestions before allotting duties this year.

Thanks

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Thanks and Regards,

Aditya Gupta.
An Engineer by Academics and a responsible citizen of India.