Absolutely Clueless

Hats off kids !!

2005-11-25T05:14:00.000-08:00

No Sarcasm this is. A heart felt kudos to these two kids for their bravery.

Wah Wah..

2005-11-25T04:07:00.000-08:00

We must praise the system. Wah Wah. I am left speech less. I might continue saying just this for the rest of the post. Let me just halt take a breath and write about what i want to.

There's this well known mafia don. He's been wanted for a major bomb blast that not only rocked the buildings but the entire nation for it was a first of its kind. After more than a decade, he's now in police custody. Some of the demands from his lawyers :-
* Home made food.
* Better bedding.
* No torture from the police.

I am really glad that the system allows all this and nothing more else the lawyers could be asking for:-
* Food from the five star hotels.
* Water beds.
* Police must undergo training from Latha Mangeshkar to sing lullabies when he wants to sleep and 'suprabaatham' to wake him up.

It make sense to provide for a fair trial no doubt. A fair trial to ensure no innocent gets victimized. However, does it make sense to ensure luxuries for a person convicted in a genocide case and who has been evading arrest for a decade in a foreign country ?

The application said that he does not want to make any confession in the case, and does not want the police to torture him in custody.

What the hell, is that an option ?!! Not wanting to confess ?!!

If he is ready to co-operate with the police, the system must definitely think of ways of putting him to better use to the society. Ready to co-operate as in helping them identify the other miscreants and bring them to justice. If he is not ready to co-operate, the truth must be extracted by all means for the better of the society. As the criminal does not beleive in the good of the society, he must be kept away from it, behind bars.

Prison is one place which must lend out equal treatment to all the inmates. No distinction, whether one was a graduate or a post graduate or an ex-MP or ex-PM. The very thought of having to sleep and eat and live amongst murderers, thiefs, terrorists,... must evoke disgust among people not to comit crimes of any degree. Prisoners on return from their sentence must be put in a probation in an orphanage or an old-age home to take care of the lesser priviledged members of the society and should be monitored until they are socially acceptable.

BTW, will the lawyer be interrogated too at a later date for connections with the underworld ? Why not ?

Voting !!

2005-11-19T23:40:00.000-08:00

Firdaus commented on my previous post and linked to this wonderful article.

http://firdausjanoos.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_firdausjanoos_archive.html

[updated on 21/11]
The article linked here seriously made me think of alternate forms of government. Some random thoughts on the same lines.

Right now, the 'representative', 'democratic' government here is quite far from being representative. I am not sure if democratic means anything more than running elections to determine who takes over the governing role. So I will leave it at that and just take a dig at the 'representative' part alone. For sake of simplicity and to localize the issue let me take the case of just any one state here and later generalize it to the whole nation. Do the members of the legistlature truely represent the constituency ? I shall take the localization one more step closer to just one constituency. In a typical district in Tamilnadu (other than the capital), there are people involved in farming, weaving, small scale business, owning factories and salaried employees. Which section of the population can a legistlative representative truely represent ?

All of them ?
No way.
Any one of them ?
Not necessarily.

Once they are elected, do people have any control over the decisions that can affect their very lives ? Is there a channel for people's voices to be heard by the government without a road rally or a strike of some sort ?

So what does it actually mean by the term "peoples' representative"? Ok, this kind of a representation is quite far from reality. What actually happens is a super-star idol leader of a party (not necessarily from the film world, but it helps to be known all over the state), who is quite popular with his 'image' gets to choose who will represent his party in a particular constituency. If we are to avoid the chaos of a hung legistlature, we are forced to choose a pseudo-representative from a party that is 'popular' in the whole state. Whom does this 'representative' represent ? Just his family.

Now how would the scenario be different, let us assume that each section of the society, the weavers, the farmers, the business folks, etc.. each come up with one candidate for a constituency. The problem then becomes which section of the community has the highest voting population rather than. I am assuming a very modest level of altruism from the candidates that he would represent atleast his community's interests.

To ensure fairness, the powers of these representatives would be largely stripped down. I shall narrate their responsibilities soon, first let me describe my idea of the way the government as such would be run. The government would be primarily run by administrative officers much like running a business. There would be one or more IAS officers in charge of running the day to day affairs, coming up with a charter for the next financial year, calculating the budget, deciding on the roadmap for each of the ministries that exist today. Any policy decision from the ministry would be brought to the assembly for the approval by the people.

Now comes the job of the representatives, each representative must come up with a detailed write-up about the pros and cons of the issue being discussed within a week. There would be no staging walk-outs of elected representatives. Absence for inappropriate reasons may lead to a representative loosing his role. In the event of a representative not coming up with a write-up of his own, he has to agree in full to a write-up by another representative. This write-up may or may not be biased based on the individuals' background and the section of the population or party he represents. Each issue would be recorded and archived with the complete details of every such write-up from all the representatives. Something like a wiki. The representatives of the legistlature also have the moral duty to raise issues on their own to be addressed by the governing administrators, any decisions based on that would be sent for public polling again.

Every home in the state would then be mailed a link to the issue. Just like reading a newspaper in the morning, every family head would then have to go through the government issues pending in his name and cast his vote for or against the move being proposed. This would be done in a secure channel establishing the identity of the voter at multiple levels. Every such poll would have a maximum lifetime of 3 days. Failing to vote would imply a yes. Hence, to avoid nasty surprises every citizen or head of family would necessarily have to voice his say on all government issues.

Citizens then cant have the luxury of blaming it on the government for any lack of progress. Representatives cant have the luxury of boycotting any legistlative meeting. The public would not be as clueless as I am about the activities of the government.

Would this system be called a democracy ?! Why not ?

But, what about the population that simply cannot read/understand the technical details ? What about the population that cannot use a computer ? Well, much like the village panchayat office, there would be an office and an officer who would read out the days issues and opinions of elected representatives to the older illiterates. He would then cast the votes on their behalf. As this is a daily event, people would get to know how to say yes and how to say no so that they can vote themselves after the officer explains the texts.

Is this too far fetched to be practical ? Perhaps. But is there something wrong with this ?
Do comment about it.

Questions to whomsoever it may concern

2005-11-18T05:26:00.000-08:00

I beleive the title is too general to the extent that all subsequent posts might run out of an apt title.
Anyways, this rant is just about 'the action the BDA(/whoever is the appropriate authority) takes to address the bad-road problem in Bangalore'.

Some questions:

Do the authorities have an estimated cost to fix ALL the bad roads by relaying them ?
Do the authorities have a clear idea about their sources of revenues ?
Do the authorities have a good gameplan to raise funds to meet the deficit?
Do the authorities have a timeline by which they intend to solve the problem ?

Will there be answers to these questions ?

Another chain of clueless thoughts !!

To Damn with Times of India (Bangalore)

2005-11-18T04:27:00.000-08:00

Times of India, end of subscription today.

I am so pissed of with their absolute lack of integrity. All they do is keep bashing victims. Be it BDA, the CM of Karnataka, Sourav Ganguly or if it could help the circulation even YOU.

I am going to digress a bit here. I had the opportunity to watch the movie 'Gandhi' again, last week after about 20 years. Something as harmless as 'non-violent, peaceful, non co-operation' to shake the roots of the British empire from India protests is simply an astonishing feat. This man, has by practice demonstrated that self-respect is something no (external) force can take away from us. Armed with such a powerful force within even your worst adversaries will have to respect you. But how did the act of one man draw support from the whole nation ? Newspapers, the press, they played an active role.

Disturbingly newspapers continue with the act of 'sensationalizing news' even now. Come up with a good for nothing survey about sex lifes it gets printed. Where is the social responsibility ? The press seriously needs a moral-science course, a full fledged one at that.

Today, I took my usual route to office and in one important arterial road connecting the lalbagh garden to the Richmond circle, there was a road construction work making the entire traffic go through just one half of the road.

Was this a surprise initiative by the BDA or whatever body is responsible ?
Cant the newspapers investigate about such activity sufficiently in advance so as to caution their readers ?
Is it THAT important to have the photos of not-even good looking but less clad individuals who attend some god forsaken party EVERYDAY in the third page ?

If they cannot publish news about scheduled powercuts, scheduled road blocks, what good are they as a CITY newspaper ?

Some clueless thoughts !!

The Answer to life, universe and everything...

2005-11-17T02:37:00.000-08:00

42 !!

Would we be this clueless in the end if one were to seek out the ultimate answer to 'Life, universe and everything' ?