Aadhaar or Niraadhaar (Foundation or Unwarranted)

This is an evolution of the author’s article published in the Sunday Express dated 23 October 2011.

Is the Unique Identity (UID) or Aadhaar number (slated to be allotted to every resident of India by the Unique Identification Authority of India, UIDAI), a costly case of the aphorism “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?” Is it just a means of winning hollow bragging rights, when many countries have actually terminated similar programs, mostly on the grounds of invasion of individual privacy?

The UID / Aadhaar number (reports indicate that no card will be issued after all) is ardently pushed by Nandan Nilekani and his bosses at the Planning Commission of India as a Brahmaastra (magic wand) that will somehow solve all issues faced by all Indians. For the poor, these include a severe lack of basic needs like Roti (Food), Kapdaa (Clothing), Makaan (Housing), Swaasthya (Healthcare), Shikshaa (Literacy / Education),  Bijli (Electricity), Paani (Water, especially safe drinking water), etc.

Presumably, the rationale for Aadhaar is to conserve our scarce national resources and to ensure equitable and accurate delivery of services and subsidies to people who really deserve these. The aim, by itself laudable, is to prevent ‘leakage’, an euphemism for the hijacking of funds allotted to the poor into the pockets of politicians, bureaucrats and middle-men. But will ‘Aadhaar’ really enable the illiterate poorest of the poor to get free health services, food rations and other subsidies from the Government of India, without paying bribes and without a desperate struggle?

The following issues exist with the UID and its processing.

Strangely, the UIDAI has been permitted to start its work without the requisite Bill being passed in Parliament. Currently therefore, the process does not have constitutional validity.  Despite this, it has assumed a coercive and insidious ‘get this or you’ll lose out’ tone.

The UID capture process of fingerprints, iris (eye) scans and other data is in fact a crude invasion of personal privacy and the UID/Aadhaar number is likely to become more important than the person. So if you lose it, sorry, you’re likely to be told that you don’t exist, or made to run around endlessly to prove you do!

Can the Planning Commission (the UIDAI’s parent body) really solve the ‘how to stay alive’ conundrum for the marginalized using the UID system? Its plan, apparently, is to transfer Rs. 960/762 every month (reflecting the Planning Commission’s infamous Poverty Line, which  is out-and-out knavery!) directly into the bank account of each individual of our urban/rural poor. The problem is that the majority of the millions of our illiterate poor are unlikely to have bank accounts simply because they are illiterate and poor! Also, the way the government (and its Planning Commission) have been functioning, this could mean that by merely providing this joke of a monetary dole, it might seek to escape its bounden duty  of actually providing food rations, healthcare, education and other vital services to the majority of the Indian population. Since prices will only go up, it’s highly doubtful whether the millions of poverty-stricken Indians, the ones who struggle to survive, many of whom starve to death, will actually benefit by this model. The Planning Commission’s Poverty Line clearly indicates that its focus is narrowly on individual income rather than meaningful improvement in the human condition (as measured by the Human Development Index).

The UID was envisaged to serve as a proof of identity and address, usable anywhere in India.  The Reserve Bank of India has already expressed the opinion that the UID can only be used as proof of identity and not as proof of residence for opening bank accounts, thereby negating half of Aadhaar’s brief.

Because it is to be allotted to every resident of India, rather than specifically to bona fide citizens, it will be used by illegal immigrants, even terrorists, as the first step in legitimizing their presence in this country and then to obtain Election IDs, Ration cards, LPG connections, Passports, etc.! Wonder if Ajmal Kasab already has his UID Aadhaar?! Home Minister P.Chidambaram opined on 17 November 2011 that there is a real possibility of inclusion of ‘non-usual residents’ and creation of false identity profiles using the UID Aadhaar process. 

The UID capture and validation process will keep IT operators (thousands of wannabe Nilekani’s, scanning 2.4 billion, that’s 2,400,000,000, eyeballs and 120 billion fingerprints) in employment for a very long time indeed. Remember also that each and every time the owners of those eyeballs and fingers approach the governance system, individual biometric data has to be validated! Arundhati Roy said that “the UID is a corporate scam which funnels billions of dollars into the IT sector”.

Why should all this intimate data, including fingerprints and iris scans, even be recorded for all the residents of our backward nation using up billions of rupees? After all, we have the highest number of malnourished children in the world and perhaps half our entire population doesn’t have the wherewithal for 2 meals a day (leave alone 3) or even have access to proper toilets! Don’t other dependable methods of identity and address proof already exist, like PAN cards, Driving licenses, Election ID cards, Bank pass books, Service records, Telephone bills, etc.? Isn’t this a massive duplication of work? If the UID is to be used to combat economical offenses, can’t the PAN number be fine-tuned/fortified to do that? Is it all a case of re-inventing the wheel?

Assuming that the capture process is indeed completely secure, fool-proof and of high-fidelity, a major concern is that all this demographic and biometric data including fingerprints and iris scans  will be available with what is after all an Indian governmental agency. Common experience indicates that all UID data will be available to the highest bidder or most influential seeker! While fingerprints have so far been largely used to identify criminals and are needed by the illiterate in lieu of signatures, iris scan data is highly restricted information probably used in most countries to deny access to those who are not authorized or do not belong! Reports of data corruption/leakage have already surfaced.

Nilekani junked Anna Hazare‘s campaign against corruption. Even if the overbearing tone used by Anna Hazare and his team was questionable, the intention was basically noble! That Nilekani chose to say that the mass anti-corruption movement was futile earns him and his UID intentions deep suspicion.

And if you think about it, UID data is another means for the Government to play very invasive Big Brother and track people and their dealings, already having bugged innumerable phones and wanting access to our e-mail/ Facebook/ Twitter accounts! It may be worth recalling its brazenness in slandering/harassing anyone who questions its policies or points out its faults (whether constitutional bodies like the Public Accounts Committee, Comptroller and Accountant General, etc. or Team Anna Hazare!).

Lastly and also disturbingly, reports float around that foreign companies helmed by ex-CIA functionaries are involved in the collation of UID data. Isn’t it common sense that such data about the whole Indian population must not be handed over to players abroad? If false, these ‘rumours’ need to addressed by the Planning Commission sooner than later. On 17 November 2011, the Home Minister also said  that the biometric census done by the unique Identification project does not pass security criteria.

If Nilekani can indeed justify and complete his UID project, and then actually go on to reduce corruption in India or increase the efficiency of delivery of services to needy citizens, this country will be grateful to him! Else this humongous mass biometric-mining project is a grandiose waste, attempting to do things already achieved to a large extent by the Indian Census and other pre-existing governmental procedures. It’s also possible that the Aadhaar project may turn out to be yet another monstrous scam! Time alone will tell!

Related articles

• UID fraud in Delhi (Headlines Today)
• India’s prestigious UID program faces bureaucratic and legal hurdles (zdnet.com)
• A Critical Primer on India’s UID (kafila.org)
• UIDAI-ADHAAR CARDS- A proof of identity and address for LPG Connections (ecopackindia.wordpress.com)
• India’s Individual Identification Project Adds API (programmableweb.com)
• Cyber expert fears misuse of UID numbers (Deccan Herald)
• A Synopsis of National Identification Authority of India Bill (prsindia.org)
• Aadhaar: Time to disown the idea (The Hindu)
• UIDAI clarifies on Aadhaar (The Hindu)
• Response to UIDAI’s clarification (The Hindu)

Osama: a match-fixing?

Image via Wikipedia

So the US jingoistically, and perhaps rightly, celebrated along with a large chunk of the world! Osama is dead, long live Obama, seems to be their primary sentiment! Obama, after all, HAD to do something, anything, to justify his completely lame-duck Nobel Prize a couple of years ago! And so, a ‘terrorist‘ op to end a terrorist, albeit the most notorious of all! One less terrorist mastermind in the world has to be good for it!

There’s a study in extreme contrast here: how the US pursues terrorists versus how India does (not)! Obama seems to have shown exemplary political will, which our own leaders probably never will! This wins the USA (grudging) respect, unlike their Iraq fiasco!

There, imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction were used as a cynical excuse to plunder an entire country!! And neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Blair, the lying scoundrels that they proved themselves to be, had the grace to even blush when all their lies and jabber about WMDs was proven to be motivated, fabricated hogwash, using which they sent thousands of their compatriots to die in Iraq!

It’s quite incredible how supposedly great nations are so sanctimoniously ready to use mighty military strength (“humanitarian military intervention”) to “uphold democracy and human rights”, and not too chary about killing innocent by-standers (“collateral damage”), or even their own allies (“friendly fire”, “incontinent ordnance”!) only when valuable resources are involved: in Iraq’s case, oil. And not, say, in Burma! Let’s face it, the US and UK don’t really think twice about going to war for beneficial/business reasons! Cushy arms deals don’t come easy!

In the termination of Osama (in Operation Geronimo), however, the studied lack of exhibitionism by the US, along with his instant disposal in Davy Jones’s locker, er…. Islamic burial at sea, as opposed to the repeatedly telecast Saddam & co. drama, is frankly suspicious! A sudden attack of ‘decentry’?! Accounts of the operation have been hazy and have been changing daily! First Osama was reported to be armed and to have used his wife as a shield, then later it was clarified that he was unarmed and that his wife furiously lunged at the attacking Navy Seals on her own! Etc., etc., etc.!

Plus, US biotech boffins seem to have decimated the world record for the fastest DNA match in their own, admittedly illustrious scientific history, that too on the fly in good ol’ Pakistan!  The Biochemistry professor in me thought it requires much longer than a few hours for a DNA match, perhaps even a week, depending on the type/aim of the testing! Perhaps a case of ‘fast’ terrorist genes!

As for Osama’s wife calling out his name, we must take that not with just a pinch, but a kilogram of salt, because a reasonable guess is that in that culture and that society, it’s unlikely that any wife would do that, nor any husband tolerate it! As for the inexplicable debacle with one of the attacking US helicopters…. bad maintenance, huh?! “Fair is foul and foul is fair” may indeed happen at some point later!

The Director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, said that the CIA “deliberately kept Pakistan uninformed” so as “not to jeopardize this mission”. Other US authorities have said that “there are some incredibly bad people, including from Al Qaeda, traveling around Pakistan” and that “it is inconceivable that bin Laden did not have a support  system in the country that allowed him to be there for an extended period of time.”

What does all this say about Pakistan, a nation carved from our own, but whose leadership and military have a visceral hate and jealousy for the Indian nation and its success of its democracy and economy, against all odds? This may be a sentiment that the common citizens of Pakistan may not actually share (Aman ki Asha and all that), but I’m guessing here, despite Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyer’s interminable rant (among his other choleric ones) that this is actually so! 

How is it that the ISI, that takes pride in its military intelligence, didn’t/couldn’t detect the world’s most recognizable, wanted, hunted and infamous terrorist (requiring constant medical attention, including maybe dialysis) ‘cached’ in the most imposing mansion in the quiet garrison town of Abbottabad, deep in the Pakistani heartland, a mere stones throw away from their premier Military Academy, with many check-posts, bristling with military personnel and just 122 km away from their capital?!

Logically, would any self-respecting, self-preserving master-terrorist, hiding from the world, opt for such ostentatious visibility, and at this location? Surely, the Pakistani establishment provided this comfortable lair to Osama and family (!), and was blatantly hoodwinking the rest of the world! Surely, the ISI thought that this out-of-the-box hideout was so audacious that nobody would suspect! And for 6 years, nobody did, until the US found out!

Image via Wikipedia

Scores of Pakistani ministers and bureaucrats have been frothing at their mouths for years saying that not a single terrorist, leave alone Osama, was/were harboured in Pakistan! They have proved themselves to be the most malevolent lying figures in the world, and now have said shamelessly, “this issue of Osama bin Laden is history, we don’t want to get ourselves mired in the past!” The Pakistani authorities have tried, belatedly, to cover a soft part of their anatomy by claiming that “ISI Intelligence led the CIA to Osama bin Laden’s hide-out”, “though it did not know Osama was there!” The CIA has subsequently flatly denied this! Pakistan is proven to be totally incompetent and completely untrustworthy!

The Pakistan authorities, both  civil and military, have confirmed that this was an “unauthorized  and unilateral action by the US, with no prior information”  and “with no logistical or military assistance from Pakistan”. Why then was there NO RESISTANCE at all from Pak defence forces, not even a token scrambling, against the cross-border US aerial attack unit, at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, from it, or back to it? Strange, whatever the technological superiority of the attacking force! Chances are that Pakistan were informed  of the operationat some point, and told to keep off, because once the Americans had located bin Laden, the Pak establishment had been caught with its pants down! 

The Pakistani state is not merely dysfunctional (with all the scams being winked at by our leadership, it could be argued that India, too, is a dysfunctional state, unless the Supreme Court or Anna Hazare step in!), it is a rogue state that colludes actively with the evil forces of terrorism, and in fact is the safe harbor and fulcrum!

And what does this say about the USA’s munificence with billions of dollars in aid, including arms, to Pakistan, arguably a rogue nuclear nation? Doesn’t all this prove that US Intelligence, at least until now, was simply an oxymoron? Will they learn from this? Signs are, they finally have, now that they’re using the term “Terroristan”!

And, being Pakistan, it must be asked: was this match-fixing of a very different kind? After protecting and taking care of him for years, was Osama ‘sold’? Perhaps to aid Barack Hussein Obama’s re-election?! Worse, perhaps in yet another immoral deal, to escape being “bombed back into the Stone Age”?! Was all this a cash-cow for shady people in the ISI,  a sure-fire way get some very big bucks? If posterity does not reveal the truth, WikiLeaks surely will!

Related articles

• The Pakistan Question (davidscommonsense.wordpress.com)
• Osama Bin Laden- Hidden In Plain View (milepostsproductions.wordpress.com)

What they play is life!

What an enjoyable evening I had on Sunday, the 20^th of February 2011! I was privileged to be at RaGaJAM III, organized by the RaGa School of Music (RaGaSoM). This was an opportunity for its students, and others, to perform informally on stage in front of an audience, with no competition or judgments. Ravi C.A., the Director of RaGaSoM and my student decades ago, had/has enough Chemistry with me to generously invite me!

Many of the young performers, some barely five or six years of age, went on stage for the very first time in their lives. Surely, their best is yet to come! Most of the budding musicians were confident, some uncertain, but that only added to the charm! Each and every one of them were wonderful, completed their piece, not giving up, and won generous applause from the audience! After a very long time, I had the opportunity to listen to music being performed, and this was gold!

I’ve always felt that at concerts by great musicians, we, the audience, become one collective cohesive reactive entity with them. Performers and audience each supply and feed off the others’ energy. Here, these youngsters were already captivating their audience with their music! Music is indeed a great way of simply having fun, providing enjoyment and connecting with people!

Music, the great Plato told us, “gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything”! George Eliot said, “music infuses strength into our limbs and ideas into our brains! With music, life seems to go on without effort!” That pre-eminent man of science, Einstein, also a reasonable player of the violin, declared “I live my daydreams in music… I get most joy in life out of music.” Martin Luther King said music “makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable”. “Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life” opined Berthold Auerbach. To top all that, “What we play is life!” said Louis Armstrong.

Serendipity

Do you really see the things that exist or happen around you, and maybe think about them? Have you marveled why the sky is generally a beautiful blue? And not blue at sunsets? Are you intrigued by the aroma from the soil when it rains? Does the trill and warble of birdsong fascinate you? Are you amazed by why birds fly in formation and how they seem to know their way around the world with no GPS? Did you ever think about why eggs are, well, egg-shaped, before wolfing down that omlette?  Or perhaps the seemingly infinite variety of colours in flowers, birds, and yes, fish and coral too, astounds you? And so on…, because there are wonderful things around us to be seen and thought about, if only we open our minds!

It is a fact that mostly, scientists performed well-thought-out experiments, made observations, compiled results, and thought of inferences and explanations that earned them their spot in human learning and history. But there are many instances where accidental observations helped people formulate profound theories and make useful inventions. This happy ability of making desirable discoveries by accident is called ‘serendipity’. Quite a few such lucky observations have turned out to be of great benefit to humanity.

De-constructing our Killing Fields*

Our roads are killing fields! India is the accident capital of the world! It is believed that at least 15 deaths occur every hour on Indian roads. In 2008, our country suffered 4.85 lakh road accidents in which 1.2 lakh people lost their lives. In 2010, in Bangalore alone, about 910 deaths were reported in traffic accidents.

Whether on highways or on urban roads, those surviving traffic accidents with serious injuries and disabilities (like head injuries, paralysis, loss of limbs, eyesight etc.) arguably end up in plights worse than death!

Nobody has the right to endanger others! Lives are valuable; they are at stake both on our highways as well as on urban roads! Entire families are destroyed when their bread-earners are killed on the road! Roads are for travel, not murder! We must make our roads safe by educating road-users and implementing corrective measures immediately!

To ensure safety and to secure innocent lives in future, the following steps can be considered:

• Firstly, all our roads must be made completely safe: pot-hole free, with good visibility, signs and signals, well-lit at night, with sensible and scientific speed-breakers which are not back-breakers, with clearly indicated safe pedestrian crossings (perhaps with railway-style barriers), with good security to prevent crime, equipped with excellent dedicated first-aid, emergency and medical facilities, ambulances and rescue infrastructure with routes to cope instantly with emergencies. And, it must be said, even if unrelated: clean, usable public toilets are a must on any road to preclude the vulgar pissing around that happens now:an insult to our nation’s culture and to any claim of humanness!
• Area-wise, interconnected, proactive and reactive monitoring systems should be set up throughout the country, wherever population and traffic density warrants it.

Sabarimala – an ongoing tragedy

All Indians are infinitely saddened by the horrendous human tragedy near the Ayyappa Temple at Sabarimala on 14 January 2011, where at least 102 people were crushed to death in a stampede – a national tragedy. Families have been destroyed. This, like the tragedies that happened here before, was completely avoidable! The government and the authorities who oversaw the process were inept, yet again. Sadly, no comprehensive, orderly method or strategy for crowd control is followed to care for and regulate the masses that visit Sabarimala during the Makara Vilakku season ie. around 14 January each year.

Pulmedu, the remote hilly area where this stampede occurred, is a few km away from the shrine. It is near Vandiperiyar in the Idukki district, Kerala. Many prefer to witness the Makara Vilakku, which happens at Ponnambalamedu, from here rather than from the Sabarimala Temple itself, where more than 90% of devotees prefer to go. Pulmedu is ill-equipped with even basic facilities. Normally, the place accommodates a mere 50,000 people. However, about 3 lakh devotees are said to have overloaded this remote, ravine-surrounded vantage point by about 6.30 pm that fateful night. Incredibly, a mere 3 policemen were allotted to manage this crowd!

Our Roads – Killing Fields!

Our roads have become killing fields! Indian roads have more accidents than any other country in the world, with an accident every few minutes. It is believed that at least 15 deaths occur every hour on our roads. In 2008, our country suffered 4.85 lakh road accidents in which 1.2 lakh people lost their lives. In 2010 , in Bangalore alone, about 910 deaths were reported in traffic accidents. Callous driving and/or jaywalking often leads to this sad loss of lives, and must be tackled.

The Traffic Police and RTO’s in India have proven largely ineffective in ensuring that people know, respect and follow traffic rules. We need immediate alternatives and solutions! Perhaps one solution is to outsource all or part of Traffic Safety duties to people/entities who will actually ensure it.  After all, everyone has the right to safety on our roads! If at all the whole road system doesn’t collapse, it’s because the majority of road users, bless them, drive sensibly.

Ambulances with emergency cases are NEVER given right of way, and are often actually overtaken, even incredibly, from the left! The specimens who actively prevent free movement of ambulances contribute to the deaths of many people who may be saved if they are quickly ferried to hospitals during The Golden Hour. Our cops never catch and punish this rabble, who cannot be termed human!

Now, people are yelled or horned at if they stop at red signals, give way at a circle to traffic coming from the right, or refuse to drive at breakneck speeds through busy narrow streets overflowing with humanity! Rules are now broken recklessly and with impunity.

Insanely fast, unpredictable rash riders/drivers on roads put everyone’s limbs and lives in danger, including those of policemen. These speed goons take sudden unannounced  turns, go the wrong way on one-ways, routinely run through red signals, drive across road-dividers, go/turn everywhere including on footpaths, overtake at intersections, disrupt orderly traffic lanes/ queues, and generally make a nuisance of themselves in every way possible.  Such madmen are surely the only ones in the world to actually overtake pedestrians crossing  roads at designated zebra crossings, and, at traffic signals, overtake straight-moving traffic from the left and even more insanely cut across it to move to the RIGHT, or overtake from the right to cut left! To coin the only term which can describe these half-wits: JAY-DRIVERS!

Currently, we are lucky if we get back home, unscathed, at the end of the day after a to-and-fro commute through the killing fields! Accidents and offensive driving abound. Most people aren’t even aware of what’s to be done when an accident happens, allowing perpetrators to gleefully go scot-free. Road rage has led to murders, and the murderers invariably get away!

The police do monetarily penalize innocuous rule-breakers, even if no one knows how much goes into their own pockets (yeh hai India!). Their campaign against drunken driving has achieved some results. But they have NO intent or mechanism of catching the mindless hit-men who drive in a constant frenzy, using their vehicles, big and small, as macho weapons, overtaking dangerously when and where it is most risky and/or not lawfully permitted, weaving madly through traffic and generally stressing everyone else on the road. This seems the only way these losers can make any impression on this world! And we know that one uncaring indisciplined idiot is all it takes to cause a major traffic jam, and we have a lot of these!

But all this inevitably causes the horrendous traffic tragedies reported almost every day! To add to the crazy tension of extremely unpredictable traffic, lots of morons are (loudly) horny where it jus’ don’ matter, and at least half of whom are constantly and criminally driving erratically because they’re using cellphones!

The police will never catch the nut-cases who, say, ride triples (all helmetless!) while doing wheelies going the wrong way on busy one-ways! Just about a month ago, the police impotently allowed a bunch of maniacs to ride right through some of the busiest parts of Bangalore city, doing wheelies throughout!

The police department just doesn’t seem to realize that its primary duty is to prevent innocent people from being endangered by traffic deviants! It does nothing proactively, and only reacts in a punch-drunk way. Its prime concern is traffic flow, not safety, even though there have been traffic fatalities in the police force! Yes, we realize that it is tough for traffic cops to stand day in and night out in the suffocating heat, smoke and grime of city traffic! For some idiotic reason, the police in our great republic don’t have anywhere near enough numbers. The police-to-people ratio in our populous land is probably the worst in the world.

Yet remember, dear reader, that while you and I haven’t the faintest idea of the magnitude of Rs.1.76 lakh crore, soon likely to be named a TeleRaja, surely the proceeds from this one scam would have solved the inexplicable inability-to-appoint-enough-policemen conundrum and our traffic problems both in cities and on highways FOREVER! Frankly, I think using Indo-numerical-terminology is a method adopted by our powers-that-be, devious, distorting, prevaricating, waffling and obfuscating (hey, all that’s still understating it!), to keep the rest of the world from fathoming just how corrupt they are, because the rest of the world does not, yes DOES NOT know what a lakh is, leave alone a crore!

But leaving my meanderings aside, and much more importantly, our police definitely do not have the mindset that they are actually our protectors and helpers! Instead, they prefer to function as petty harassers!

The RTO’s, too, play a major role in the mad mayhem of our streets and highways because they hand out licenses routinely to those who directly or indirectly grease their palms (guess even illiteracy, as in inability to read or understand, is no obstacle for these kings-of-the-road-to-be!). In addition to the hormonally driven, most auto rickshaw, transport and commercial ( specially the BPO pick-up vehicles) drivers in cities show extreme contempt for the rules (if they know about them in the first place!) and a complete absence of respect towards other road-users. The so-called Driving Schools are nothing but institutionalized collection agents for RTO personnel, who even openly sell expired Army stamps or some-such whatchamacallits to those who are supposed to be taking driving tests! Is it then any wonder that maybe 90% of vehicle-users on our roads have no clue at all about common sensical traffic rules, so don’t know of them or follow them, leading to valuable lives being lost or destroyed almost daily?

Some of us, sad specimens of parenthood, even break traffic rules in the presence of our children, giving them the message that it’s unnecessary and unfashionable to follow rules. Someday, maybe even after decades, when this parentally imparted impetuosity leads to the death of their offspring, who else but the foolish parent/s will be their murderer/s?!

On our nations highways also, accidents are caused due to over-speeding, faulty brakes, senseless driving, changing lanes, weaving through speeding traffic, bad roads/visibility, not using seat-belts or helmets, lack of rational signs including those indicating danger, overtaking without checking whether it can be done safely, racing with other vehicles, driving beyond exhaustion, sleep-deprivation, drunken, haphazard, wrong-lane driving (some slow drivers/ heavy vehicles stick to the right like limpets!), not slowing down for crossing pedestrians, all mean that a lot of people die needlessly. The high speeds on highways make fatalities almost certain.

Whether on highways or on urban roads, those surviving traffic accidents with serious injuries and disabilities (like head injuries, paralysis, loss of limbs, eyesight etc.) arguably end up in plights worse than death!

Nobody has the right to endanger others! Lives are valuable! They are at stake both on our highways as well as on urban roads! Entire families are destroyed when their bread-earners are killed on the road! Roads are for travel, not murder! We must make our roads safe!

Hail Bihar!

All Indians are filled with joy that Bihar, after all these decades of independence, has finally discovered the leaders (the party affiliation is immaterial in this context) with the will and vision to take its people towards hope, peace, education, opportunity and development! We congratulate the almost 9 crore Bihari people and their now progressive leaders for finally dragging themselves, at least partially, out of the rut and politics of blind ideologies, exploitation, backwardness, crime, poverty, caste, dynasty, corruption and vested interests!

This was the glorious land of Nalanda University (the oldest residential university in the world, with maybe 10000 students and 1500 teachers resident! ), the blessed land where Gautama Buddha achieved enlightenment, also where Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka and the Gupta Empire once ruled! May Bihar once again reassert its true potential, ameliorate its currently impoverished masses and contribute mightily to the progress of our nation!

With the trends towards iniquity manifesting in Karnataka recently, this progressive state shows signs of going the way of the Bihar which was until now subjugated by exploitative politics and feudal, defective mindsets! However, we, the people, cannot allow that, because our very existence will be at stake!

Our worst enemies are not from Pakistan or China, but those who shamelessly purport themselves to be Indians while prevaricating, waffling, misleading and looting the nation, sending the common man deeper into the quagmire of poverty and deprivation.

Their dastardly treachery is facilitated by the Byzantine and obfuscatory governance and legal systems bequeathed to us by the British, who used these to keep us firmly enslaved! This wretched wheels-within-wheels mechanism is also efficiently ensuring that there never are any effective inbuilt systems to monitor/regulate people in the corridors of power, who are now freely looting the nation!

Chances of them getting caught are remote because of the vague, ineffective investigative process, which includes the provenly completely inept Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), whose priority is to do anything to please its political masters. Chances of getting the looted money refunded back to the nation’s exchequer are even more remote! Crooks are now freely appointed to high offices, even by committees headed by our Prime Minister, Chief Ministers, etc. And instead of being arrested, these thieves are conveniently removed(!), so that they can laugh happily all the way to, and from, their banks! The simple question arises, who is really benefiting from all these monumental scams?

All true Indians must work sincerely together for the India our Founding Fathers wanted for us! No greedy politicians, corrupt bureaucrats/functionaries, slimy middle-men, manipulative parties or whatever other enemies of the nation, none should be allowed to take us for a ride or keep us from achieving our quest towards becoming a peaceful, progressive, happy nation!  We will together eventually recreate a nation which lives up to our glorious, ancient past (right now we seem to be living down the scams and deeds of all the human parasites infesting our country!)!

Ours WILL inevitably become a land where benefits (starting with the still sadly unachieved Roti, Kapdaa aur Makaan), security and prosperity percolate to every Aam Aadmi! Right now, this term might as well mean what it does literally – Mango Man!

Related Articles

• Ruling Coalition Sweeps to Win in Indian State – New York Times (news.google.com)
• India’s Bihar Votes for Development – Wall Street Journal (news.google.com)
• Bihar a victory of merit over dynasty: Jaitley (ibnlive.in.com)

Oh Karnataka! My Karnataka!

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The Bharatiya Janata Party, under the leadership of B.S. Yeddyurappa won a historic mandate in the 2008 Legislative Assembly elections from the more than 5 crore people of Karnataka. Sadly, BSY, along with those of his Ministers who merely served themselves and the politically promiscuous MLA’s who sold themselves to the highest bidder, have all comprehensively betrayed the people who elected them. In the process they earned national notoriety and brought indescribable ridicule to Karnataka, to their respective communities and to the BJP itself.

The sad lack of probity, greed for power and lucre demonstrated by BSY (unfortunately following in the footsteps of the Highly Deplorable ‘rebel’ legislators in cahoots with H.D. Deve Gowda and H.D. Kumaraswamy) has brought disgrace to our state, let down the Lingayat community’s admirable precepts (any defense by anyone, seer or not, with statements like “Who does not love one’s son” indicates dubious values) and also hamstrung the BJPs ability to function as a responsible opposition in parliament.

What is under attack is the BJPs moral fibre and right to fight against the gargantuan CWG, 2G, Adarsh, appointment of a shady figure as the Chief Vigilance Commissioner (to defend the appointment of this worthy, the nation’s Attorney General Vahanvati has, quite incredibly, gone so far as to say in the Supreme Court: who has impeccable integrity in this land, anyway?) and who knows what more paradigm-shifting scams.

While lakhs of ordinary citizens have applied and have waited for decades to buy a small piece of land in their place of birth, Yeddyurappa has allotted extensive land instantaneously and cheaply to almost all and sundry in his family and crony-circle (all probably already overloaded with lucre), which according to him had precedents and was permissible by law. He does not seem to have realized that his returning some of these plots (even if forced by moral pressure from the people than from his party) is but a tacit acceptance of wrongdoing! The pathetic justification he gave was: previous CMs had done this and got away, so it’s my right to do what they did, even if it’s wrong!

He even defended his son’s acts of perfidy by submitting false declarations/affidavits about not owning land in Bangalore, to get more posh plots at throw-away rates in the city! Chances are, son-in-law, sister and who-knows-who – else might have all done this (and how many times, all over the state?), given this warped sense of values! After all, everyone does it, he said! He also seemed to be saying, if I can’t ensure profits for my sons, MPs, MLAs, extended family, cronies, even a few from other parties (a case of  I’ll scratch your back now, you scratch mine later?!) from my discretionary quota, will Kumaraswamy?! Common people aren’t in the equation anywhere! In the midst of all this, he even declared that he signs in two different ways on official files (nobody seems to have taken up the legal aspects of this)!

He and many of his ministers, who include/d the likes of an alleged rapist, a degenerate kisser whose only other purpose in life seemed to be to extend bar-timings beyond midnight, more land-grabbers, minor functionaries who became unbelievably wealthy unbelievably speedily, a road-rage-slapper who felt that nobody should overtake his official vehicle and many more such human caricatures, could easily fit into a burlesque! There were/are only a few good men in this cabinet!

If the BJP had really proven itself to be a party with a difference, following ethics and justice, and if BSY and most of his ministers and MLA’s had indeed been men of reasonable virtue, they would have won the confidence of the people forever!

BSY himself has set a sorry example, doing up his official bedroom/bathroom using crores, trying to find succour for who-knows-what deeds by repeatedly donating state funds to temples (maybe as anticipatory bribes to the Gods/mutts?), by desperately visiting temples to save his chair (incidentally, what Gods will stand by all this iniquity?), weeping ludicrously in public, proving himself to be a somewhat comical, blinkered, feudal  figure, who seems to have taken up office not to serve the common people but to grab land and wealth for himself, his family and cronies.

It has been reported now that BSY, the architect of the BJP’s victory in Karnataka, allegedly threatened that he would bring down the BJP government in Karnataka if he is sacked for his shady deeds! Ironically, if he indeed does this, he would be succeeding in what the traitorous MLA’s and their mentors, universally reviled by all right-thinking people, failed to do! What a steep fall, from being thought to be a paragon of virtue to what he is today, all in a mere 2½ years! No one will be surprised if he suggests one of his sons as his replacement!

It’s tragic that the noble people of  Karnataka today have been saddled with such characterless, unscrupulous ‘leaders’, irrespective of their party affiliation. And the lesser said the better of the somnambulist former Prime Minister or his son, the former Chief Minister who proved himself untrustworthy, both of whom Never Should Have Been, and definitely do not lag behind anyone with regard to land interests in Karnataka!

Related Articles

• Karnataka: BJP defers decision on Yeddyurappa (ibnlive.in.com)
• Yeddyurappa faces fresh allegations (thehindu.com)
• Karnataka ministers also involved in land scam (ibnlive.in.com)
• http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Told-to-go-BSY-says-only-on-his-terms/articleshow/6966907.cms

• What does Yeddyurappa want before he resigns? (ibnlive.in.com)
• http://www.deccanherald.com/content/114900/lingayat-swamis-oppose-moves-oust.html

We shall overcome!

It seems that the new symbol for the rupee will come in very handy to describe the magnitude of our numerous scams! Why is there is no in-built check-and-balance mechanism that can prevent functionaries from hijacking the system, and fooling it in multifarious and even ludicrous ways?

If some poor starving soul desperately robs something to eat from a railway cafeteria, he will get a beating and jail. But if someone steals the whole Railway, there’s a good chance he’ll get hailed as a management guru! Just about anyone seems  able to take our country’s exchequer for a ride, and then other worthies, who probably got a large cut already, will announce that The Guilty Will Be Punished! The Law Will Take Its Own Course, they bellow self-righteously!

Then our incredible judicial system will take over! It just allowed Asatyam Raju, a polished crook who blatantly cheated the financial system of 25,000 crores and confessed to it, to enjoy a perfectly comfortable stay at a posh hospital, then gave him bail, and now may further allow him and his cronies in high places to laugh all the way to their Swiss banks! Even if they do decide to tackle corruption, the courts may need 300 years to clear the backlog of cases they have allowed to accumulate, even if no new cases are filed henceforth! Justice is never instantaneous, though bail may be! The fact that the Central Bureau of Investigation has repeatedly proven to be a mere lap-dog, and a pliable bumbling one at that, doesn’t help the cause of either justice or the judiciary at all!

We Indians have unfortunately developed a mindset where we don’t mind too much if politicians and bureaucrats make their comfort funds on the side, as long as they do something, anything, for us Indians! But unfortunately the politicians, bureaucrats, middle-men and wheeler-dealers tend to completely parasitize upon us, gnawing our very vitals away.

Innumerable ugly statues, forever to be splattered by bird-droppings, are built on delusions of grandeur, while farmers commit suicide. The judiciary never seems able to tackle its own black sheep. While crores starve, millions of tons of food grains are allowed to rot / rat despite starvation being ubiquitous, while food-storage facilities are used to store liquor, no less! Our healthcare system is pitiful for our impoverished masses.

Any progress we achieve doesn’t effectively trickle down to our impoverished masses now. The venal human parasites have a vested interest in ensuring that our poor are kept bereft of education. Caste, religion, language, gender, perhaps even the colour of our skin are cynically used to divide us. Our political and governance system is faulty: generally excrement floats to the top (illiteracy of our masses being their weapon). So do flunkies/lackeys who only need to swear that the sun rises in some part of their leader’s anatomy! Nowadays, self-serving incompetents are made ministers due to unholy coalitions cobbled together to somehow get a majority in parliament. Shady deals where the country loses countless crores are winked at. And so on, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!

In many ways, the longest written constitution in the world doesn’t seem to be working, nor the laws we have adopted as a legacy from the British, which are largely the same 18th and 19th century laws they used to keep us enslaved!

But like someone said, India will still progress whilst the parasites sleep! Up to the 1980s (when Bhopal was allowed to happen) India was inconsequential in the comity of nations. Then, some of our so-called leaders may have attempted to kiss the soft part of the corporate anatomy that Mr. Obama sought to kick, after the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico! Obviously the scenario is different today. The strength and growth of our economy (due to the efforts of capable Indians) has uplifted us into contention. While the British PM visited India in July 2010 for purely business reasons, Mr. Obama has repeatedly cited India, Bangalore, and even the talents of Indian children (!) as threats to American prospects! As a nation, against all odds, we have become consequential!

Ensuring food, clothing, shelter, jobs, electricity, roads, water, health and meaningful education to the aam aadmi (ordinary citizen) is the challenge for India today. We are far from deliverance. Our system has a myriad flaws and we are a long way from overcoming them. But we, a billion ordinary Indians can’t and won’t just lie down and die! As honest, cultured, progressive, hardworking citizens who love our country (which actually means our fellow-Indians!), we refuse to give in to the evil nexus that seeks to divide and rule us using caste, creed, gender, region, language and even the color of our skin, thereby thwarting our progress! We will gamely take on the obstacles that keep us from achieving our potential. Like the humble but ever-diligent ants, we will constantly strive, clean up the system and make it accountable. With our commitment and toil, we’ll make our country inclusive, caring, responsive, welfare-oriented, where every citizen is a responsible and aware stake-holder with tangible rights and responsibilities. Eventually and inexorably our nation will achieve its destiny. Yes, we will overcome!

Our nation will one day be what Rabindranath Tagore wished it to be:

 Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
 Where knowledge is free;
 Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow
         domestic walls;
 Where words come out from the depth of truth;
 Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
 Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
         dreary desert sand of dead habit;
 Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought
         and action;
 Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake!