Crawl Before I Walk

The Legacy of Lester B.Pearson that won him the Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to a message from my Dad about Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in diplomacy. The liberal in me did a little dance and I considered it a personal victory of sorts having volunteered for his campaign in Philly in 2008.

Still in sleep inertia, it occured that with Afghanistan being an open chapter, this might be a bit pre-mature and that the burden of the Nobel Peace Prize might hinder any progress he wants to make domestically as well as internationally. My first instincts were confirmed as I browsed through my regular social networks and my bookmarked blogs and online publications. There seems to be a general sense of contempt for the Nobel committee for awarding the prize to Obama and his work is being compared to that of Mandela and Rabin. My personal thoughts about Obama winning the Prize have been echoed by The Field. Check it out. http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3519/congratulations-dude

Since the purpose of my blog is a learning process of Canadian history, ideas and imagination- I will refrain from taking a stance eitherway about Obama being awarded the Prize and save it for personal discussions. Instead I wanted to remember a great Canadian, Lester. B.Pearson and his contribution to the world that won him a well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize.

Courtesy: Globe and Mail
Lester B. Pearson, Peace, 1957

The Canadian diplomat and politician was integral in the decision-making process that created the United Nations' first peacekeeping force. He also headed the Canadian delegation to the UN from 1946 to 1956, being elected to the presidency of the Seventh Session of the General Assembly in 1952-1953. As chairman of the General Assembly's Special Committee on Palestine, he laid the groundwork for the creation of the state of Israel in 1947. In the Suez crisis of 1956, when the United Kingdom, France, and Israel invaded Egyptian territory, Mr. Pearson proposed and sponsored the resolution which created a United Nations Emergency Force to police that area, thus permitting the invading nations to withdraw with a minimum loss of face.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/from-lester-pearson-to-today/article1313987/

The End of Endless wars we wage...

2009-10-07T08:03:00.000-07:00

I have been interested in development issues for a few years now which is primarily one of the many reasons I lost interest in business school and pursuing a lucrative career on Bay Street. One of the things that occured to me as I was delving deeper into development work and issues, was that the only constant in development is WAR.

Yes War!

The War against Poverty, The War against HIV, The War against cancer, The War against female infanticide, The War , The War , The War...... We seem to be in a perpetual struggle with entities, many of which have no physical existence. Yes there is a manifestation of these entities in the physical world, poverty manifests in images of malnutritioned children and sprawling slums and shanties in cities of the developing world. Cancer manifests in multiple images of pink ribbons and patients post chemotherapy.The War against Terrorism manifests in images of 9/11, the twin towers in a rubble and angry faces in western media of Islamofascists around the world.

As long as we are entrenched in a mentality that requires the fight, we can always find more and more battles to wage , which spawns the endless spate of wars to be won, which in turn strengthens the fight mentality. It's a vicious cycle.

How about a shift in thinking? How about ending the need for endless wars ?How about working towards human development that doesn't thrive on perpetual fighting? How about developing and empowering people that don't find the necessity to be polarized between extreme idealogies? How about releasing development and progress from mad grip of hunger for war?

This brings me back to analyzing Canada's age old foreign policy of being 'friendly' , 'neutral', 'tolerant' and unbiased. Tolerance does not imply indifference. Lets not cloak apathy with euphemisms like neutrality and geo-political friendliness. Neutrality is in fact a much more empowering position than indifference. If we choose neutrality, it will be our ability as a nation to view the world with a lens of honesty, without taking ideological sides. And at the same time allow us to envision ways of developing human beings around the world, that have the ability to break out of insatiable need for war that is so ensconsced in our psyche.

The is an idea germinating in my consciousness and I will be developing this further through my future writings.
But I'm ending the need for war to find peace and progress in my own personal contribution to development. Have we ever found life through death? Have we ever found pure untainted love through hate? In the same vein lets stop questing for peace and progress through wars.

Number 4 Hurrah!

2009-10-05T18:29:00.000-07:00

The UN's annual Human Development Index life expectancy, literacy, school enrolment and per capita GDP has ranked Canada #4 on it's HDI Index year. Hurrah- a feather in the Canadian beret!

Undeniably the Canadian standard of living is very high- another reason for complacency in democratic participation. That didn't require extensive principles of deduction did it now? As I celebrate- the search for ideas continues

Caught my attention

2009-10-01T08:37:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth May- Green Party Leader, environmentalist, activist and writer has caught my attention.
I have just picked up her book: Losing Confidence: Power, Politics And The Crisis In Canadian Democracy. 2009.

Note: Unfortunately all books that I have come across , that refer to the Canadian democracy have had dismal titles! But I really am looking for positive ideas or the seeds for good sustainable ideas on the Canadian democracy.I'll report back to you of what I grasp from her book once I am done reading it.

Our Democracy is Broken- Maclean's panel discussion

2009-09-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

Having shared my thoughts about wanting to begin my Canadian education somewhere, I have been pestering my buddy Ryan about taking me to some events and recommending interesting books I can read. Ryan has volunteered for , Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay and is quite an avid follower of Canadian politics.He invited me to a panel discussion called "Our democracy is broken. How do we fix it?"

And I went! Keith always easily lured by intellectual debates and ideas joined me and off we went to the live taping of the debate by CPAC.(which by the way was dubbed a town hall meeting once we arrived there--hardly townhall in format since the audience asked token 4 questions before they ran out of time)

The panel had a number renowned personalities including Maclean's own Paul Wells, Andrew Coyne, Former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, Eddie Goldenberg former-right hand man of Jean Chretien and John Ralston Saul., all of them giving their wonderful opinions on how to save our democracy.

My verdict on the debate: Eventful. Really I'm no position to comment on it in great detail at the moment since I can really only grasp about 30% of all of the nuances of our politics. But what was interesting and a little surprising was this: I was one very few non-Caucasian/ immigrants at the so called town hall discussion.And interestingly enough, the panel did not address the issue of lack of diversity at the town hall.

So is this lack of diversity at events a symptom of a broken democracy? Are non-Caucasians, immigrants and children of immigrants much less engaged in Canadian democracy?

How many immigrants exist in this country that reap the benefits of being Canadian citizens but find that there is some sort of a disconnect between them and political engagement? Am I right to surmise along those lines? Or is it just that the readership of Maclean's magazine is limited to a small demographic, which is the very demographic that showed up at the town hall/ debate?

Crawl Crawl Crawl - My Introductory Purpose Post.

2009-09-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

Hola!

So lets start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start! Im Deepthi Guttikonda--young with a curiosity beyond abatement and an unsatiated hunger to learn. I moved to Canada at the tender impressionable age of 17 (I am still very impressionable I must say), became a proud Canadian citizen by 21, reaped all the advantages of being a Canadian citizen i.e socialized medicine, subsidized university education, security, freedom, and really my favorite one, the ability to be the proud bearer of a Canadian passport. And believe me when I say, I have taken advantage of that luxury as best as I could. Having traveled to multiple continents Asia, Europe, Latin America , Africa and the Middle east and not to mention my oh-so-frequent trips to the USA, with absolutely no hassles and minimal visa requirements is really the luxury of being a Canadian citizen.

Generally I consider myself well read and can engage in multiple conversations about politics, economics, and philosophy without much of a hiccup. However as soon as discussions of Canadian politics make the agenda in any particular discussion- I beat a retreat. I run as a fast as I can and seek shelter in an intellectual cave that I have built quite assiduously, occasionally peeking out to see if I have managed to avert the crisis of being roped into discussions of Canadian politics. Yes, and I have to also make the embarrassing admittance that I didn't know what a riding was till 2 years ago and I didn't vote in our 2008 elections because I was busy campaigning for Barack Obama in Philly.

Am I proud of these aberrations of ignorance- heck no! I have been secretly seething with scorching shame for the past year. Hence my resolution to spend the next 12 months educating myself on Canadian history, politics, the nature of our democracy, our political and social thinkers and our geopolitcal role in the world and investigating what it means to be Canadian.

Also let me make this quite clear- I will not be offering punditry because I really do believe that the listeners and learners of the world are taking a backseat to the constant commentators and know- it- all's of the blogosphere and the 24 hour news cycles.

I am just going to listen, learn, write , share and discuss ideas. Hannah Arendt in one of her critical essays on Socrates said that the mark of a good statesman is the capacity to listen and inhabit the ideas of others. I'm extrapolating that to being the hallmark of a good citizen- the capacity to listen first, then think deeply about issues and then lead if necessary and when possible.

This is how I choose to begin the the journey of listening, learning and thinking.