Rally for Reason

Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev, an Indian modern spiritual guru extremely well spoken with an indefinable accent, a well known blind belief propagator of  unscientific claims like water has memory, eating during eclipse  has a negative impact on the systems, “gotra and kula” is our culture and they are having significance in deep understanding of genetics. His teachings on yoga and meditation inspired millions of the people who believe in.  

After the huge success of his flagship program ‘inner engineering’ at mahasatsang on the occasion of Mahaa Shiva Ratri, "he recently taken up a program with the objective of rejuvenating the rivers in India with 1 km wide tree plantation along the course of all major rivers, calling it as ‘rally for rivers’

In this campaign Sadguru presented a simple solution for the water storage problem in India. It has a 3 steps which we should do for our rivers. firstly we should give a missed call for the given number. Secondly we should make sure to give a missed call form the people whom we know. Third step is most important in this process which, we should make sure to give a missed call form the people whom we don’t know. That’s all. Mission completed. But please don’t ask me how a missed call will address under ground water problem and how it will help to improve the greenhouse effect. 

Rally for Rivers is a myopic solution that does not target the real issues of sand mining, too many dams, pollution and deforestation etc,. Sadguru believing that we should focus on water storage, but he ignored few unmet issues like water savings and effective usage of water with water management techniques like watersheds. A simple tree plantation is not the only be-all -end-all solution for that as it is projected to be.

Few questions remains unaddressed, Is this campaign really meant for public participation in a social cause? is it really works? Then why not for the other issues like poverty, improving scientific temper and so on? 

Initially Sadguru opposed national river linking project. But now he taken comfortable ‘U’ turn and saying if science justifies as linking rivers beneficial it should happen. Here we should remember, Sadguru’s science has no justification and his arguments always lead to a pseudoscientific conclusion till date. 

Here we should think about the possible nexus between ISHA and the  corporate world. The companies who supporting, sponsoring this project may be for lands beside the river banks. We should also think about potential possibility of massive people displacement due to ethnological and environmental disasters during the National rivers linking project. 

In my view this campaign ‘rally for rivers’ may be for the sake of fame, may be to divert people attention from the land grabbing. So I propose instead of rally for rivers, India needs a campaign to bring up awareness for REASON. Now the need of the hour in this nation - a “Rally for Reason”

- Viswanadh Jayanthi