Thursday, February 5, 2015

Einstein and Music

Yesterday I was reading a book on Einstein's life by Swami Tathagathanada of Vedanta Society of New York. I was pleasantly surprised to know that the great physicist was also a musician and a very talented one . At the age of 5 music was Einstein's inner necessity. Not only did he play beautiful works of Mozart , Bach and Schubert but also improvised them. 

    Einstein's friend Paul Plaut mentioned in 1928 that  Dr Einstein would often play his violin late in the night improvising melodies while he thought over complicated problems. As he got his answer in the middle of playing , he would shout excitedly "I've got it". It seemed as if somehow the solution of his problem came through music. 

We know very well that Einstein devoted his entire life to Physics but what we don't know is the other thing to which Einstein had devoted his life was music. He never discussed music with others but simply said listen, play , love , revere and keep your mouth shut. 

It also states that Einstein found some harmony between physics and music. Maybe it something that's worth doing some research on if music can indeed make the mind work better. 

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

India - Education, Economy

When Swami Vivekananda was alive ie in 1901 a population census of India was done by the then colonial government. Back then the Literacy rate among Indians was a meare 5.35% , male literacy was 9.83% and shockingly female literacy was a mere 0.6%. Such a nation was bound to be a slave since without education man is nothing but an animal. 

One more fact is that this figures are for literacy. Now literacy is not education. Education is a relatively long process. Being able to read and write was just the begining. By 1941 the literacy rates had risen to 16.10%. Female literacy in 1941 was 7.3% a growth of 1200% over 1941 and male literacy was 24.9% a growth of 270% over 1901. This probably explains why we got indepence in 1947 more educated people around. 


So in 40 years India's literacy increased by 300% and what happened after that which included 33 years of Indian Independence. In 1981 the percentage of literates had gone up from 16.1% to a mere 36.23%.One more thing that is noticeable is that the growth in literacy of India between 1941 to 1951 was very small from 16.1% to 16.67%. So in 40 years the growth in literacy was a mere 125%. Compare that to South Korea in 1945 its literacy rate was 22% which increased to 87.6% in 1970 and by the 1980s its literacy went up to 93%. This shows that the Indian government made very little effort to increase the spread of education in the first 40 years. This explains why South Korea developed so fast and India lagged behind. 


Since Indian Independence the government consisted of people who were not interested in the well being of the nation. They hardly did anything to stop the rapid population growth. Even today each year we are adding an Australia to our population. While South Korea is actually has a birthrate that would reduce its population. The South Koreans are economically prosperous. They became independent much after India . South Korea was a very poor nation when it became Independent but withing a few decades it grew into a very prosperous nation. 


Some of the biggest companies from the world are from South Korea. Although it did have a quite a rough political history but South Korea went through decades of very rapid economic growth and today its per-capita income is more than $35,000. South Korea has one of the most densely packed population in the world it has a population density of 472 people per square kilometer. 


Same is the story of Israel . Countries like South Korea , Israel became independent much latter but today are way ahead of India in economic and technological achievements. India has lot of catching up to do and for that people have to vote for correct people who work honestly for the people. The sooner people realize this in India the better it is.