Welcome!
This website represents my attempt at creating a personal home page using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). CSS separates content from design, and alllows the webmaster to easily make design changes on all the pages of the website by simply changing the relevant sections of the Style Sheet. Most of these changes require just a few minutes and the webmaster does not need to touch the actual content while doing so. At the same time I wanted to put in one place whatever I have written in the recent past. Filing papers, reports or documents has never been my forte, and failure to find a document when required has often resulted in unnecessary frustration.
I consider myself extremely fortunate that my ten-year stint at the United Nations University in Tokyo and the overall twenty-five years in Japan gave me the opportunity to observe how discipline, sincerity, work ethic, and good governance can bring about progress and rapid growth. It also embedded in my mind an appreciation of different cultures and lifestyles, and the flexibility to understand the others' point of view.
In my opinion, Japan is perhaps the only capitalist country in the world which has been able to achieve social equity and stability to the point where ninety-seven percent of the people polled in the annual Prime Minister's official survey express satisfaction with their incomes and standard of living. This is a tremendous achievement and it means that in terms of Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH), Japan ranks at the very top.
Most of my articles presented here may give to the reader the impression that I am overly critical in my observations about India. Perhaps I should clarify that this is not intentional and merely reflects the importance I attach to looking at various issues with a critical and comparative perspective. I must admit there is a question always popping in my mind: If Japan has been able to achieve so much, why can't we?
Recently I developed an interest in Haiku and other traditional forms of Japanese poetry. I have written a few which I am including here. I hope you like these.
If you wish to contact me I can be reached by sending an email to satish@satishtandon.com.