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Thursday, March 31, 2016

Life and reincarnation

Life is too vast a topic and it is always lively and therefore difficult to grasp in its totality.

By totality I mean even the life of an individual who wants to know and understand what life is?

But we can observe its various dimensions while we experience it, observe it, live it and so on.

Besides life is a constantly evolving process churning out all the time and throwing out certain things and taking in certain things and gradually revealing that it is an unmapped atlas wherein we want to create maps with boundaries.

Some of the facets of life which impelled me to reflect and respond in relationship to what meaning we can get out of life I have made my humble attempts to describe them as and when I came across certain situations or faced certain aspects of life as such.

Here are some such writings which try to grasp life’s multiple meanings, puzzles, and realization of reality as individuals followed by the various components which may make reincarnation a possibility.


Meaning of Life



[More or less similar story to comprehend the puzzle of physical life through philosophical and scriptural inquiry]

Reality of Life 



Experience and enjoyment of Life




LIFE WILL CONTINUE ALWAYS NO DOOMSDAY






New Year with a New Realization of Reality -the mystery of Life 



Reincarnation involving the many facets of Life 


calamity, crisis, post mortem of calamities, blame games, Chennai floods

Chennai floods- Here is an account of observed wounds and ointments to heal.

A to Z of Post mortem of calamities in India, they have a predictable pattern while all calamities go unpredicted.

Why not a PPP model for all infrastructure maintenance and monitoring beyond roads and railways?

Almanacs claimed ‘we said so’ invariably after everything got damaged;
Blame game began by all towards all;
Cheap publicity seeking stunts, mostly verbal, in front of media cameras by some;
Dodging on relevant questions by many;
Enthusiastic exaggerators were everywhere;
Fueling panic was a pass time for some;
Government departments geared to selectively inform/help;
Help however came for various aspects from all- government, individuals, organizations etc;
Information sharing on social media was helpful, of course, with some instances of mischief even amid calamity which was projected too disproportionately by the jealous main stream media;
Judge all journalists with hidden agenda showed and shut selectively according to their pay masters;
Kind souls kept everyone’s spirits in good shape;
Lasting solutions were lost forever for various reasons, as usual;
Media sensationalism diverted attention and ensured no one learnt any lesson from the tragic experience.
Nonchalant flow of suggestions inundated mostly from media anchor rooms from thier all knowing advisers;
Obvious facts were buried;
Political mudslinging popped out, district wise, in the city pin code wise;
Questions of life’s feebleness against natural calamities and accidents were quietly acknowledged;
Relief, rehabilitation, repairs were undoubtedly prioritized and performed by many;
Slowly surely all resigned to inevitable, demanding and justifiable routines of living;
Trauma of tragedy tormented all souls;
Untold stories of suffering surfaced slowly from the debris and devastations of the deluge;
Very soon all consigned the contributory factors to indifference and proceeded towards acquiring amnesia till next calamity;
We cannot go on like this for any reason and we all must own up responsibility;
X-ray we must, into all aspects and initiate all possible corrective actions to avoid recurrence of avoidable damages;
Yes, we all need to bequeath a livable planet with necessary and proper infrastructure;
Zero in on multiple possibilities, participants, and technologies to improve because everyone is a loser in any natural calamity.


Besides all the invaluable devastation, suffering, loss of lives etc, in terms of monetarily evaluable damages were too heavy for the  various government departments, real estate operators, insurance companies, corporate houses etc.

So, why not think of a PPP model where in all of the above mentioned institutions can engage in maintenance and monitoring of all possible activities like deepening, desilting water bodies, dredging and all other periodic maintenance activities as well as looking at possibilities of linking water bodies, creating large number of artificial ponds in waste lands etc and also ensure remote controlled mechanism to divert enormous and excess water during flooding into the sea.



Most importantly on the whole social media contributed more on the positive side though some elements in social media too, like main stream media, peddled in rumors, fuelled panic, politicized etc.

Some mobile network operators promptly started setting up bill collection centers at many places after everything normalized without rendering even a basic apology for lack of service for many days.

Kudos to all government organizations and their staff from both central and state government who worked 24/7 and provided enormous help along with many voluntary organizations, individuals from Tamil Nadu and also from all other parts of India.


Most importantly our education system, religious institutions, political parties etc must educate people of all ages the importance of priorities and relevance. 


Brain and its puzzling beauty

Any topic involving study of brain or any of its function is interesting, intriguing and infinitely puzzling.


This half to one KG meat in our species is an unsolved mystery.

So  discussing any topic connected with brain, mind, conscious awareness, thinking, memory  etc most of which form part of , if we can loosely call it , neuroscience .

In this subject there is no final statements can be made by anyone  irrespective of whichever approach they have opted for- scientific, structural, anatomical, biochemical, genomic, psychiatric, philosophical, spiritual, occult, scriptural rant etc.

In my humble view almost all functions of the brain in totality defies most of the explanations. Probably some functions can be explained or explained away.


I have been reading many books and trying to understand it and also through interactions, thanks to internet even with some of the leading evolutionary biologist.

Long back I bought a few encyclopedias on Mind, Psychology etc. Some of them must be with me and went about trying to lay my hands on as many of the reference books mentioned there, restricted by whatever was available at British Council library and Adyar Theosophical society library.





Many scholars spiritual and intellectual before the scientist have also tried to decipher the workings of various aspects, parts of human brain. Then later on scientist gave excellent explanations.


Starting from Adi Shankara to swami Vivekananda to Huxley to Bertrand Russell to J. Krishnamurthy to Colin Wilson to Le Comte Nuoy to Guy Murchie to Steven Pinker to Cral Jung to neuro scientist Ramachandran to name a few have helped me to enlarge my understanding about various workings of the brain.

Once a Harvard professor suggested me to read ‘How the mind works’, which I did read and enjoyed every bit of it. I asked him ‘can you suggest some book on ‘How to make it work’. He said jokingly ‘had I known I would not be teaching at Harvard nor talking to you.’

In the excellent book which I am reading at present ‘The Brain Supremacy-Notes from the Frontiers of neuroscience’- KATHLEEN  TAYLOR starts off

“Science and technology are also changing their nature—and ours.”

“Brain research is already changing our sense of what being human involves, rejecting the age-old idea of a spiritual essence in favour of an organic   approach.   This   is   what   the   feared materialism of   modern science tells us. Brains are the pieces of meat which give us our selves, allowing you and me to exist as the people we are. Without them there would be no music, beauty, poetry, or science. There would be  no vicious murder or despairing suicide either; but also no joy of sex, no delight   in  nature,   no  pleasure  in  getting  lost   in  a  really  good  book.
Everything meaningful in your life and mine needs a cranial pudding to express itself, and each of those puddings is unique, irreplaceable and still   mysterious.   Brains   are   astonishing,   beautiful,   intricate, delicate marvels. Like human lives, they are good things in and of themselves.

If you were ill, and needed a heart transplant to save your life, would you accept one?  Most people would; they feel that having a different heart wouldn’t disrupt their sense of personal   identity.  How about a brain transplant?  If your brain were removed and put into storage to make room for a new, younger cerebrum, would you be in the body or in the storage?  What if all your former synaptic settings were copied across to the   new brain?   Or   if   only   part   of   it—the   cortex—were transplanted?  These thought-experiments and others suggest that we identify ourselves with our brains in a way we don’t with other parts of our bodies. Practical experiments, ethical and otherwise, suggest that we are right to do so. We can swap hearts, lose a kidney, cope without hands or eyes, and still be human, but remove the brain and what’s left is a kind of desecration: manmade meat.”


“The power of self-fashioning.
As well as shaking  up our ideas of what  we are, the  brain supremacy promises   unparalleled  techniques   for   changing  brains   directly: not with  language  or  images  or  drugs,   or  new  gadgets  to  play  with,   but by  altering  the  behaviour  of neurons  and  the  function  of  their genes.

Of course, brain manipulation isn’t novel; we do it indirectly all   the time and we always have. The social power which bends others to your will is so greatly valued that pursuing it  is one  of   humanity’s  great occupations.

With tongues and guns, ideals and incentives, persuasion and  pressure  and  sheer  propaganda,   human  beings  have  had  a  lot  of practice in treating others, pace the strictures of Immanuel Kant, instrumentally: as means to an end, objects to be utilized and adjusted, rather than individuals who are ends in themselves. And the methods we use affect our brains and bodies. Drugs change your genes. So do stressful events, meals eaten, and conversations. Yet we often fail to achieve the changes we want. To date, attempts to control other human beings have faced a mighty obstacle: the bony castle of the skull. That barrier has never been invincible—bullets or an axe will penetrate it—but it has kept out many less violent and crude attacks. Barred from the inner sanctuary of the brain, we were left with the  evolved  skills  of  social  interaction  and  the  knowledge  built  upon them:   psychology,   anthropology,   history,   literature.   That,   plus   rare neurological patients,   years of detailed observation of human  behavior, and what we had learned from studying the brains and behaviours of   other   species. The idea of   an  equivalent   capacity  to  that   of,   say, modern chemistry applied to the management of other human beings is  therefore  a  tremendously  attractive  prospect,   particularly  for  those people  and  institutions  tasked  with  managing  or   predicting  human behaviour.”


MSM-ignoring them is the best option

Best way to deal with MSM is not to deal with it. 


1. Indian media has been dominated by a dangerous breed of leftover Indian Left who have also incidentally appropriated the label liberal [ a questionable term by itself]; pseudo intellectuals [whose knowledge is confined to what certain institutes in US of A want to feed] have appropriated the label intelligentsia; pseudo secularists [ here secularism is anything anti-Hindu and sometimes anti- Christian too because the chopping of a Christian professor's hand did not upset the concept of secularism].


2. These worthies have been funded and projected as the official intellectual voice of India by vested interest lobbies, PR mills, political dispensation that ruined India for 6 decades.


3. Is it not a scam to use public money to sponsor the trips abroad along with PM of UPA of selected private media houses? Why the present Govt is not probing into this? 


4. Anyway the media, most of the English media is anti-India and therefore is not likely to remain without peddling lies, engineering scandals, imputing motives to GOI, interpreting everything to implicate anyone who is not sponsoring them etc.


5. I have been writing a lot about MSM filth which is an actual malign cancer which impacts the collective psychology of Indian youth.



6. Though they will be left out gradually like the leftover LEFT or consigned Cong but then the damage would be heavy like it has happened to two great states Kerala and Bengal suffering without industrial development for 6 decades forcing them to migrate as nurses, laborers, chai vendors all over the globe while locally not allowing any company to function.


7. India has too many of these and needs to weed them out one by one for real development. More critics than performers; More media trials than all courts put together; More experts than victims or issues; More awards than deserving people; More political parties than number of constituencies; More NGOs working for poor than the number of actual poor people; More departments than number of bureaucrats; More criminals than police force; More companies than products manufactured; More news Channels [nuisance channels] than news items; Real Swatch Bharath needs to weed out some of these. Happy at least in one area there is voluntary cleaning up happening through return of awards similarly these media houses will close shop one by one wait and watch.


8. One of Modi’s greatest contributions to Indians is exposing maladies of MSM’s selective amnesia, collective indifference, and penchant for scandals, sensationalism, gossips, confirmation bias, and unwillingness to accept facts.


9. Media bias, like congress corruption has reached such a saturation point,similarly getting dumped so badly that actually less number of people are watching news channels and even those watching them are watching for brief period.


10. Only wish sense prevails among media persons, they bother to see facts before shoving in their unsolicited exalted judgments. FDI in media is a welcome and long due.


http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2015/06/media-menace.html


Political interference -in unwarranted spheres like personal relationship is bad,illogical and ineffective

Can we ban the words Mother and Father?


Every relationship has its own significance in the scheme of life.

As human race and its life evolve it has to become more inclusive and tolerant.

Neither fanatically holding on to tradition nor resorting to the fanatical extremism of rejecting every existing thing.

That is a mere impulsive or emotional reaction and not a sane action.

The sanctity of the relationship as well as the word Mother and Father cannot be done away with as a socio political objective as the promoters of the ban must realize they are replacing one barrier with their own set of barriers like abolishing words ‘ La mère’ et ‘Le père’.

What these politicos and social scientist want his acceptance of Gay marriages.

Let there be a Gay parent.

Let us accept anomalies as they are and as facts and accept them with tolerance.

If something happens, evolves in the process of evolution of any species then it has its own significance and logic for emerging and existing with dignity.

Gay marriages too are such events.

There are no such things such eternal taboos or eternal trends.

All changes are inevitable, and they must be accepted as they are and we must try to get into understanding them better and deeper scientifically as to why it has happened, what is its importance and impact in the context of evolution of our species.


Probably it could be something to enhance our species.


We have not fully understood it well to take positions.

We cannot deny or defy the importance of anything.


The moment you react you stop to act.

You feel that you have a passed another law, legally banned something and legally sponsored something but that does not necessarily assure understanding and conscious acceptance.

On the contrary it promotes more psychological barriers and more violent psychological aversion as the human mind feels that in matters of at least personal relationship and the words it uses for expressing its love, reverence and sanctity for those relationships are purely a  matter of personal freedom.


The subtle differences, I would prefer to call them variations, of perceiving relationship actually transcend even words. But through words we communicate and express our feelings.


Nowhere else I found this better explained and in a more simple way than in Camus’ L’Etranger. In the first chapter of those two different words ‘La Mere est decédee’ et ‘Maman est morte’ are very well depicted.

So the emotional bond that the words Mother and Father cannot be a matter to be decided by any government and it applies to the words too.


Just because I am born in a test tube my mother cannot be a test tube.

Aberrations and anomalies have to be understood properly and tolerantly and attended to with unprejudiced acceptance. You can enforce social discipline and acceptance but not by enforcing emotional, psychological and linguistic curtailments.



Art of demanding more for art

Most of the art forms of Hindu culture starting from literature to dance to music to painting to architecture to yoga to religious rituals to religious discourses have never been taken as or treated as mere modes of entertainment or professional engagement or still worse the modern money making survival tool kit, but, on the contrary they were executed with great devotion and dedication, not only because of the religious significance or connotation attached to them, but they took into account, out of conscious realization, the most vital truth of life, namely the fact that life is primarily composed of three fundamental aspects, Physical [ includes all anatomical, organic and material aspects of life], Mental [includes all psychological, emotional, socio cultural aspects] and Spiritual [ the unseen but important aspect underlying all aspects of life] and also the fact that these three are interlinked and interdependent. 
Therefore any Classical Indian music form or Dance form feeds all these three vital realms of life, otherwise these art forms should have been and would have been killed long back as newer and more attractive forms of entertainment emerged. That is the strength of our rich heritage which could not be destroyed by so many military and mental invasions. It is by no means a manifestation of being ethnocentric but excellence centric, so, let us be proud of all these.
From http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2011/11/bharth-matha-everything-in-her-is.html

Identity cages, Ideological constraints and insulating from new ideas.

The most unfortunate major problem of humanity is getting trapped in Identity cages, Ideological constraints and insulating from new ideas.

Worse still we allow stereotyped labels to linger in us as readymade templates for assigning or appropriating according to what or whom or why we want to justify rather than reason out logically or experience the splendor of life in one's own terms.

This mentality is the greatest stumbling block which prevents better understanding and unity. 





Elections- an apolitical view.

Elections- an apolitical view.

Four states and one union territory are going for elections in April and May.

Space constraints do not allow me to go into the specifics and micro details of all these territories. I also feel that will be reducing politics to geopolitical dimension alone.

Besides media is flooded with overload of information, data, facts, fabricated figures, charts, debates, analysis etc. So, I would not like to reproduce them either.

I keep reminding about this wonderful quote by Steve Maraboli , “Get out of your own way… stop the paralysis by analysis… decide what you want, create a simple plan, and get moving!” 

On reflection I noticed that there is too much politicizing and sensationalizing everything why not write about a very political topic, namely about elections without mentioning about any territory, any politician or any political party.

This is not out of non committal cautiousness and escapism but driven by another urge to avoid controversies while writing about politics and also go beyond all the negativism that is much publicized by media and public about politics in general.

All politicians are neither bad nor inefficient. Let us not generalize the entire political class with some aberrations and negative elements.

Barbara Marciniak said, “Everything changes when you start to emit your own frequency rather than absorbing the frequencies around you, when you start imprinting your intent on the universe rather than receiving an imprint from existence.”

What is of great importance in these elections, for that matter all elections.

The focus decides our frames of reference and scale of observation, and they in turn, influence our perception. [1] 

Elections involve primarily the people and ensuring their overall welfare and happiness starting from economic development, availability of basic necessities to social well being leading to happy living.

Elections offer a great opportunity to the people to elect a person in each constituency who they feel can deliver at least some of the above mentioned aspects.


Some politicians have a natural street smartness, alertness, clarity of understanding, decision making smartness as well as knack of administration; all that they need is position and power to unleash their smartness and update themselves with emerging ideas and technological advancements which most of the present day politicians do.

There is no need for a politician to know all the nuances and nitty-gritty of all issues that he is going to deal with. 

There is no need for politicians to be experts at intellectualizing issues and to be necessarily great orators and give verbal justifications for all their decisions and actions.


They need not bother about adverse media portrayals as politicians can use their own channels of communication either through individual TV channels or through their own team of supporters in social media networks.

I feel smart politicians are there in all political parties which is the great positive of politics.

I want to stress this because very often it has become a populist trend to criticize the whole political class as villains and keep questioning and scrutinizing all their activities and subject them to severe criticism as if all other professionals are honest, simple and paragons of virtue.

Allegations, blame games, one-upmanship, scheming, strategizing to score points to win are part of the poly tricks of politics.

Fortunately in the recent past, say two years, there have been  healthy political trends and discourses, of course, with distortions every now and then by vested interest groups leading to aberrations in political arena.


However, overall, all said and done, there are certain obvious changes in the means adopted to attract the voters and the projections done through manifestos.

Now if we observe the new trends, every state and union territory and every CM is vying with one another to woe the investors, all states conduct investor summits. When in the past 67 years have we seen such competitive atmosphere on economic development agenda by CMs of various political parties?

Actually the political scripts have changed from promises, projections, provocative speeches, publicity stunts to concrete proposals and performance charts on mainly economic development oriented activities like providing infrastructure in education, health care, transport, technology, sanitation, poverty alleviation, environmental protection, electricity and water distribution etc besides  generating employment, creating business friendly atmosphere and so on and these are the real perceivable changes and must be called as ‘perception’.

In short political discourse has started including proper ‘governance’ as part of government functioning.

There is an excellent word [kirinina-New Guinea] called ‘MOKITA’ meaning ‘Truth everybody knows but nobody speaks’

Not the main stream media proclaimed ‘perception’ which is imbued with trite observations, trendy jargons, statistical spins also a mixture of all these euphemistically called as political analysis; selectively sensationalizing and subverting any action or word uttered by some by appropriating and assigning labels and then subjecting them to media projections and profiling and euphemistically calling them as ‘perceptions’ and go on to debate on ‘perception deficit’ why not ‘perception excess’? Then, people will know what media means by ‘perception’.


Some political leaders of all hues and parties are soaked in superficiality, showmanship, sycophancy and pander to pseudo and parochial populist schemes.

They are churned out of some such socio-cultural bias or ideological and organizational compulsions. Such people always resort to executing wrong priorities under pressure and execute them without the necessary diplomacy, delicacy and hypocrisy of a seasoned religious leader.

So nothing comes forth from them except filth and froth.

The populace which hoists them into power and position, laps up the bubbles of this froth. It is vicious circle where certain imagined identity is ideologically acquired and most people are vulnerable victims to this unconscious vicious circle. Once they are into it they suffer from identity crisis. This is how politics and political ideologies exercise command and control over many.

I am tempted to copy Friend to Groucho Marx: “Life is hard…” Grouch Marx to Friend: “Compared to what?” and replace it as “Politicians are bad? Compared to whom?”

Wish all the best to all the voters to select the best person who can deliver the best for the constituency and through that to the nation.

Election time people must be aware of and avoid these usual traps. While exploring the facts desist getting distracted by these tactics:- Mutilating the facts, Analyzing them with preconceived notions or prejudices, Generalizing the particular and particularizing the general, Approaching facts with unloving criticism or uncritical love, Evaluating facts with our pet isms or philosophies, Resorting to statistical justifications, Unleashing unworkable utopia,  Mask them with logical fallacies, Mute them in pleasant jargons, and Give historical justifications, Comprehend with confirmation bias or pre conceived conclusions, Trying to over simplify the complicated and over complicate the simple factors/aspects.


[1]  On frames of observation and scale of reference.

With the aid of several instruments science creates more phantasmagoria: "on our scale of human observation, as pointed out before, the edge of a razor-blade is a continuous line. On the microscopic scale, it is a broken but solid line. On the chemic scale we have atoms of iron and carbon. On the sub-atomic scale we have electrons in perpetual motion which travel at the rate of several thousand miles per second. All these phenomena are in reality the manifestations of the same basic phenomenon, the motions of the electrons. The only difference which exists between them is the scale of observation" [Human Destiny, Lecomte du Nuoy]

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Language politics

Actually this language issue is too complicated by itself and further politicized for various vested interests that real, true study and balanced views get buried in the process.

The Indian Interest Retweeted The Indian Interest
The Tocharians (Sanskrit तुषार) lived in present-day western China, but were NOT Chinese. They were Indo-European.

The Indian Interest ‏@indianinterest 20h20 hours ago
The Tocharian script is descended from the ancient Brahmi script. Kannada, Telugu, Oriya, Burmese, Thai, etc. are also Brahmi-descended.

The Indian Interest ‏@indianinterest 20h20 hours ago
Comparison of ancient Tocharian script with modern Kannada & Telugu scripts. Several people pointed this out.






 Pictures from The Indian Interest twitter






Monday, March 28, 2016

Word and Music and privileged souls

Music is a word and somebody is an emotion…..

Certain individual are privileged mediums through whom some sublime things or aspects of life and hitherto unknown things are expressed to the world, these individuals appeal to us so  much at moments that they appear as the personification of what they represent or achieve or discover.

Universe in its great wisdom throws up many great souls to perform something extraordinary and these souls deserve all our appreciation, understanding and emulation too.


Nothing is a mere prosaic lifeless word because every word is made of the same ingredient as music i.e. sound and in addition impregnated with meaning or meanings assigned etymologically or acquired through usage in various contexts or appropriated through misuse.

So word and music both express something through sound.


The word Universe itself is known as ‘ekashya kaviyam’UNI+VERSE =single verse expressing itself.


I am listing below some links that you can go through when you have time which will take you into the world of relationship between word and music  as the twin siblings of sound and other links which can help spice up many areas of music with excellent quotes from great souls.

Guy Murchie has written a wonderful book ‘Music of the spheres’

The best quotes of music are :-

Music should go right through you, leave some of itself inside you and take some of you with it when it leaves. See deep enough and you see musically, the heart of nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it.- Thomas Carlyle


Music is the soil in that the spirit lives, thinks and invents-Ludwig von Beethoven
Music can exist only if it reflects the inner life of humanity, not the outer life of its technology.
-Alec Wilder



Music is the outward and audible signification of inward and spiritual realities. Music is said to be the speech of angels, in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite- Thomas Carlyle




                                                                                                                










So let us never reduce any art form or sports or literature or for that matter any science in over enthusiasm to any individual.


Saturday, March 26, 2016

Empathy and leadership

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/empathy-leadership_us_56f04d40e4b09bf44a9e1b9d?section=india
Humane values, humility and high level of compassion combined with clear cut policy designs to ensure certain level of socio-economic welfare of the maximum number of human beings at least in specific geographic areas without denying the same to others in other areas.
Also ensuring to leave a livable planet for posterity and sanity with clarity of understanding that phobia production, mania manufacturing, victim hood vending, and animosity aggravating lead only to spoil harmony and happiness.
Scientific systems, proper procedures at micro level and with passion filled intentions at macro level of concern can lead to ensure certain level of accomplishments on these lines.
This requires fine tuning many time tested values and relationships.
Relationship in all spheres- In the ultimate analysis everything is about how we relate with others, with things, with ideologies, with various identities, with the whole environment and so on that is going to determine our role and relevance in the world and in our own life. In short how we relate our inner self with the outer world and the level of synergy that we create for a harmonious and peaceful life.

Also do away with social systems which emphasis on certain identity cages as panacea for all lives everywhere and resort to frenzied attempt to homogenize based on only particular ideas, particular system of life, particular system of politics, particular system of economic model, particular philosophy, particular religious way of life etc


Education for 21st Century

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/03/21st-century-skills-future-jobs-students?utm_content=buffer18da0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Very nice article, especially with very appealing and appropriate images.
However, I wish you had also included the following broad aspects.
Functional literacy:-
Under functional literacy sixth items to include awareness of multi cultural and cross cultural literacy probably some may end up appreciating and adopting cultures from other geographical areas. This is imperative in a globalized world and also as an aspect leading to tolerance of other cultures.
Also include focused literacy on rights, rules, roles and responsibilities as a growing citizen according to the milieu or nation where one lives-some places it could be constitutional rights in some others it could be observance of expected obligatory behavior.
Environmental sciences involving comprehensive details about available natural resources and the need to use them with care to leave a livable planet for posterity along with a concern for all species.
Competencies:-
Relevant perspective on the basis of which to evaluate anything with proper scale of observation and frames of references to ensure clarity of understanding in proper context/situation as well as better adoptability without extrapolating existing templates of perception.
 
Character Qualities:-
Compassion towards all as the main principle of life born out of proper awareness, understanding and acceptance of all forms of identities social, cultural, linguistic, regional, political, ideological, religious etc.
Relationship in all spheres- In the ultimate analysis everything is about how we relate with others, with things, with ideologies, with various identities, with the whole environment and so on that is going to determine our role and relevance in the world and in our own life. In short how we relate our inner self with the outer world and the level of synergy that we create for a harmonious and peaceful life.
Ensure to emerge and evolve consciously as a global citizen