if ( City > Town/Village ) printf(" :) "); else printf("What the hell??");

Warning: Kindly do not make the mistake of taking any hints from the heading as to where this discussion went. It is adulterated heavily with my own opinion. But then...I barely speak in class. :)

Having read Shriyaa's post on "Develoment", I find myself extremely discouraged because my ability to express my thoughts in the form of words is not even close to being as good as hers. Also, as unfortunate as I am, I was allocated the task of writing the summary right before exam week which is why I may not be able to do justice to it. But I'm going to keep the promise i made to myself and try nonetheless.

In the last class, we continued the discussion that had been initiated earlier about the pros and cons of living in a city and a village or a town. As a topic for discussion this one's definitely an improvement, in my opinion, over "If you had the power, what would you like to do to change the society as a whole?" considering the fact that the no. of words that came out of my mouth was the third highest in the room, following Sriram Sir and no points for guessing, Devbrat Rathore, in that order I might add. ;)
After an hour of thinking up points in favour of both cities and towns/villages and slowly elaborating each one of them, what we had( by "we", I mean the 12 people in the room whose brains were actually processing all the information...Pulkit slept through half the class and doesn't qualify :) ), looked something like this...

Cities :

1. More job opportunities and money which eventually leads to a better standard of living.
2. Better facilities for healthcare, sanitation etc.
3. More options for entertainment and pleasure like theatres, malls and eateries.
4. Exposure(?) : That's what it says in my notes but I'm not sure i remember what it was about. Help yourself. :P
5. The kinds of work are diverse.

Towns/ Villages :

1. Comparitively lower levels of pollution of all kinds.
2. Safer to live in. Sir wasn't entirely convinced about this one and hence decided to rethink it. So he went to the person who originally suggested it and that person, unfortunately, was me. To be honest even I wasn't entirely convinced about this point when i blurted it out. But thanks to Devbrat, who gave an example from his own life that lasted 5 long minutes, Sir finally accepted it. Devbrat recalled that when he was living in Bhopal, he once saw a thief in his colony and shouted for help but got no response. He exclaimed that if the same thing had happened in a small town or a village, everyone from the neighbourhood would have gathered to help him.
3. Stronger relationships exist as the people live in a close knit society and interact on a daily basis. They share all their happiness and sorrows with each other.
4. The environment is cleaner and greener than in cities.
5. With lesser work load, emotional support and a general sense of well being, the stress level is automatically reduced greatly.
6. Towns and villages are peaceful. Life is not too fast and you get time for yourself and your family.

After listing these points, the task assigned to us was to analyze how crucial each point was, to figure out what direction would the scales tilt in.

Starting with towns and villages, we examined that pollution directly affects the physical as well as the mental health of a person. Sir asked us to imagine going to work in a city with immense air pollution and horns blaring all around. Someone(Kaushik I think) pointed out that if the money was good, it was not that big a problem. So we ended up not marking pollution as an extremely crucial factor.
Safety, as we realized after some debate, was a result of stronger relationships with the people around you which meant both these points were pretty important. Check!
Environment also turned out to be a crucial enough factor but some might argue that a city might not necessarily be less greener than a town or a village.
Coming to the next point, we were asked to examine whether we'd give up the good money and facilities for a stress-free life to which I happily gave a textbook reply that it is dependent on the level of stress. If the level of stress is high but not so high that it would drive me crazy, I'd go for the money. Check!

On the other hand, the most essential factors in favour of cities, according to Sriram Sir, were Opportunities/Money and the kind of work. No one argued.
At the very end, we compared the crucial points in both cases and reached the conclusion that we cannot clearly say that living in cities is better than living in towns or villages or vice versa. The opinions would differ from person to person. Hence, heading justified. ;)

Writer comments : This small report may seem to be too self centered and pointless. For the former, I'd say that I'm not too visible in the other posts, so I thought that this may be my only chance. Also, I'm writing almost a week(that too exam week) after the class so the so-called "exam pressure" could have affected my memory. There's no justification good enough to get me out of trouble but just this once, I wanted to do this for myself and not just because I had to.

DEVELOPMENT

For a long time we have been discussing about personal issues such as our goals, our time schedule, self-confidence etc.. So now we moved onto subjects that deal with a larger number of people. What better way than to discuss the problems existing in the society at present and what we would do to bring about change if in a position to do so!

After brainstorming for a bit of time...all of us came up with some great ideas...
For instance Kaushik put forward that he would like to see the society as an 'Anarchy' where the focus is on morals and values. There are no rules to govern you rather self-government exists. Here Devbrat contradicted by saying that existance of rules is a necessity. Kaushik pointed out that since early years the minds of a child should be nurtured such that the negativity in the society like breach of trust can be eliminated...It will take time but the 'ideal' state can be reached. Sriram Sir re-iterated the model suggested by 'Plato' for governance in one of his books...

Pulkit, Prateek,Trinath and Karan stood up strongly against corruption. A corruption free society will lead to a good public life. Pulkit also wanted to bring about self-consciousness among the people regarding the consequences of not following rules and regulations. He aims to do this by imposing heavy penalty on defaulters. The reason stated for this was of 'Singapore', a very clean and regulated city.

Karan also brought forward the issue of the rising population of India. It is one of the reasons for India's slow development.

Snehashish raised his voice against delays in the works to be done by the Government. The issue of Commonwealth Games (known for the immense delays) came forward. Pulkit also gave an example that an underpass was proposed to be constructed in Bangalore in 72 hours but eventually took 72 days! The solution to this problem that came up was Public-Private Partnership.

Lakshminarayan talked about an centralised automated society. An example given by him was that in case you break a traffic rule, the fine is added to the tax you pay to the government. This will also prevent corruption at the lower level. He also brought to light the fact that the benefits of the Government schemes like PDS, scholarships is not reaching the people who actually need/deserve them.

Devbrat formulated his points keeping in mind the rural as well as the urban sector. He talked about removing corruption. In the rural areas the middlemen exploit the farmers. The farmers are 'living on the edge'(expression courtesy Prateek!)...It is they who need our attention. In every growing economy the Primary Sector is of great importance.

Tabish's thoughts were inspired from Rabindranath Tagore's poem 'Where the Mind is Without Fear'. He says that a developed society is that where there are no injustices and there are equal oppurtunities for everyone.

Avinash wants to change the mindset of the people and wishes to imbibe qualities like selflessness in them. This led to the discussion that education is integral part of life. Trinath raised a very crucial point that the youth today does not want to be a part of the decision making i.e. no-one would like to join Politics today...

A comprehensive list of the problems in today's society was prepared by Shriyaa which everyone agreed on:
1. Implementation of Legislation
2.Women inequality
3.Education System
4.Corruption
5.Economic Growth(primary/secondary/tertiary sector)
6.Judgement by courts
7.Secular aspect of India
8.Pollution/Global warming
9.Infrastructure development
10.Poverty
11.Human Development