Somali Piracy: Looking for Solutions
shiv wrote:RajeshA wrote:The only countries, where I would recommend the strategy of large-scale marriages is where we have a definite advantage in wealth differential.
Where the wealth-differential is not there, there marriages can take place only through individual efforts and as such cannot become a large-scale phenomenon which is required to make a big demographic impact in the target land. Also to make demographic impact, the current population of the target land cannot be overly big, for otherwise the challenge becomes too big.
Rajesh - let me be frank with you. I only get irritated with these "change society" ideas of yours because the most kind words I can use for them is "nonsense".
Thanks for the kindness!
Actually I would consider myself to be the one, who least advocates "change society" ideas on BRF. Except for my little recent foray in the "Women in Combat" Thread and my little lighthearted banter there, I've never really written much on "change society" ideas with regard to India. And even there too, I got involved because of personal interest, and hardly altruistic reasons. Anyway, I noticed that the roof was caving on me, and I ran!
Perhaps reform of Indian Muslims society to better reflect Indian national interests, too has been of interest to me. Apart from that, I don't venture to preach how Indian society ought to change or transform. There are much more capable and knowledgeable Maulanas on BRF for such weighty stuff, and WKKitis-Curing, P-Sec Psyche Exposure, De-Macaulayization, Counter-Deracination, Dharmicization, Rashtriya-Consciousness Building, Anti-Corruption, etc. come to mind here.
shiv wrote:There is a simple reason for this. No matter how good and advanced your idea may be it cannot be implemented unless you first convince Indians and Somalis (or Pakistanis) that it is desirable. The next step would be to get the marriages going and even if you were to have a "pilot project" of just 250,000 marriages - it would take years. After that those couples will have to produce a new society that will start making a difference in 30 years and start having major effects only in 50 years when the children born of those marriages reach positions of influence. If at all. When it comes to ideas about marriage and wealth you are ignoring how societies have behaved for millennia.
If there is a desire among others, I'd be more than willing to cooperate in fleshing out any proposals.
I'd like to point out to some models we have of public behavior:
a) Often where a natural disaster has struck, e.g. we still can remember the very moving pictures of Pakistanis scrambling and jumping after the floods to receive some aid, some flour, etc., we see a multitude of people just rushing towards something that is on offer. Their plight drives them to seek it. Those who think of providing aid, they seldom think of first starting a pilot project to provide aid, and then one will see if it becomes popular.
b) When some film studio brings out some movie like
Ghajini or
Pirates of the Caribbean, they hardly think if there would be any takers at all for the movie. They don't think whether they will be getting more or less than a thousand people interested to come to the cinemas. They already have an idea that it would be more like in the millions. So why this confidence? They expect that simply because they know they have a machinery in place to market the product, to build up people's expectations, to play on their tastes. They can't predict exactly if it would be a blockbuster or not, but they usually know that it would get millions of people would see it.
c) In the early 90s, when Internet started, somehow it got out that Computer Engineering was the degree to have, and Indians thronged to study Computer Engineering by the 10s of thousands, so much so that in a short period of time, India had built up a huge pool of Computer programmers, much more than in any other place in the world. Now how come so many people jumped on the bandwagon all of a sudden? Was the CRPF forcing people to study Computer Programming at the tip of a gun?! It happened simply because a population saw salvation and a future in the prospect!
With this all I want to say is, that I am a believer in the power of desperation; machinery to manipulate people's positive attitudes towards something, i.e. generation of demand; and how people get fired up if something proves rewarding.
More importantly, I am a believer in the exponential function.
So I think if the value proposition in front of a poor Somali family is to get a
damaad, who has a steady job, who pays mehr upfront, and who is willing to be generous with the family in the future as well, allowing the large family a slightly better standard of living; and a damaad, who subsequently
proves himself to take good care of their daughter, remains on friendly terms with the family, makes efforts to learn the Somali language and customs, respects the family, the family gets to rejoice over the gifts that they receive every now and then; then IMHO, such a proposition would definitely be of interest to the Somali family with a daughter in marriageable age.
When that happens many more Somali families would get interested in getting an Indian 'damaad'!
I presume many matrimonial agencies can be set up to further this cause.
Initially though, I think religion would be a barrier. So if the Indian Army encourage 2000-3000 of its Indian Muslim jawans to marry locally, the Somalis would be far more willing to give their daughters. Subsequently they will simply start saying that their daughters are married to an Indian, blending out the aspect that the damaad is a Muslim, making marrying daughters to Indians a normal thing, where the religion of the 'damaad' is not seen as too big a hurdle. So many more Indian jawans, including Indics, would be able to marry locally.
When Indian firms start putting up shop, they too can be encouraged by the GoI to offer their employees similar offers of jobs and wives in Somalia, and many more Indians will come, and Somalis would be willing to give their daughters to many more Indians.
Once sufficient Somali girls have married across the religious divide, it would become acceptable, and the practice would continue!
A couple of anecdotes to "changing society"!
a) A close Erithrean friend of mine, told about his aunt having married an Indian restaurant owner in USA. Since then the family felt somehow connected to India.
b) A German friend of mine, who actually comes from a more traditional German family from the countryside, often speaks of his uncle who married an Indian woman from South India, and since then India is ever present in the consciousness of the larger family.
All I want to say, is that if some non-Indian family has a member who marries an Indian, it has an effect on the whole larger family, who feel sympathetic towards India.
That is the kind of sympathy and warmth India can expect within the Somali society within a few years of our deployment there. We don't have to wait for generations to notice some change. Within 10 years one would be noticing the change in Somali society and how they view Indians and Indian involvement in Somalia.
shiv wrote:Rajeshji - you will be dead long before the fruits of your thinking can be proven to be right or wrong. I don't know whether you want to be known as a radical thinker who came up with brilliant ideas that are being written by you now but their value will be noticed after 200 or 300 years and you will be recognized then, But right now there is nothing in these ideas that appears practicable. You are dumping revolutionary "Let us change society" idea with no information of how you will bring about that revolution.
If you are unable to flesh out how you will implement your revolutionary ideas and merely throw a large number of ideas ideas in the air hoping that some might take root - you are merely filling up forum space that makes it easier to ignore your messages and read what others have to say. You are not doing yourself do anyone else a favor. Initially it is amusing and fresh to see new ideas.But as they get profuse and impractical and laced with rhetorical argument - it only gets boring and easier to ignore. Pardon me for being frank.
shiv saar,
I don't have any pretensions that somebody of influence would notice what I have written here, much less consider me some "radical thinker" worth remembering. I am just one voice among many many knowledgeable BRFites. Internet is a big place. All I produce is a little noise on the Internet. Take it for what it is worth.
