The Hypocrisy of Our Politicians

Todays newspapers at Raipur screamed in their headlines about a bar-feud that involved a local Shiv Sena leader. This leader, Dhanajay Parihar, is basically, and more of, a criminal. He was behind bars in a murder case, though acquitted lately. These days he is busy capturing the cable business at Raipur and uses his goons for the purpose.
He has started a restraunt on the outskirts, and is known for its pub, bar dance (in the name of DJ) and flesh trade as the media reported.
Saturday night's story was a little different. Some engineering college students were in the restraunt to celebrate a birthday party. They had their stint at the pub and were now at the (so called) DJ where allegedly they tried advantage towards the bar girls. A feud started and soon Parihar with others reached there and the students were thoroughly treated.
Unfortunately for Parihar, one of the students happened to be the son of Mr. Prabhat Jha, an MP from Madhya Pradesh and also the state head of the MP BJP unit. The son promptly reported his powerful father and the action was taken at Raipur. The police amazingly reached the site even as the action was on. Parihar with his henchmen was arrested and th Court sent him to 14 days' Judicial Remand.
But the real story is not this. The story dates nearly a year back. Vijay Mallaya, the liquor baron of India sent a bottle of wine to each of his MP colleagues, to celebrate New Year. Prabhat Jha was one of the recipients who not only refused the gift from Mallya, but also admonished him for the overture, that did not conform to his Indian culture, Indian ethos and Values.
Did Mr. Jha even once asked his worthy son even once, what was he doing in a pub and a dance bar at nearly mid-night? Did this behviour conform to his Indian ethos, culture and values? Or was the previous overture of Mr. Jha was intended to merely hog the media Headlines.

The Khaps and the Gotra Syatem of Marriage.

Have you heard of Khaps? You must have, by now if you are in India. Primarily they are social institutions linked to castes. They are supposed to be the highest bodies to decide on matters concerned with that particular caste. In older times, they had much relevance because then the castes were important. In fact all social institutions were relevant then. India was primarily an agrarian society.

With the changing times, all social institutions are loosing relevance. The society is changing the economic activities of the people. More and more people are going for jobs. At least the urban population has acquired a service class character. Many typically caste oriented compulsions and rules are being ignored. Untouchability is one of them. So is the inter-caste marriage.

However, the Khaps are in the news a different issue. It relates to Gotra identity. Gotras are the lineage of a person. Here in India, it matters in marriages. A person is supposed not to marry in one's own gotra, as it tantamounts to incest.

Even as khaps have themselves been defamed and so has the gotra system, traditionally the mediators in marriages have ensured, and it used to be a matter of special attention, that lineage on both father's side (in fact grand mothers' and their mothers' side) and mother's side were not common, at least upto 5-7 earlier generations.

In that sense, the khaps are not wrong. Their demand of prohibiting marriages within a gotra by law is not baseless or useless. It should neither be seen as old fashioned or retrograde step. It saves the Hindu society of many endogamous diseases. Government should oblige by adding this provision in Hindu Personal Law.

However, what goes against Khaps is their method. They should not act as whimsical 16th century social bodies. They are ordering murder, and openly. They have ordered a couple to live as brother and sister. The couple has grown up children! The khaps must act judiciously. They should not traumatise a family after so many years.

They could have put up their case in a sensible manner and there was no reason why they would not be heard, and hailed.

Whither Parliamentry Ettiqutte in India

We had, till recently, the tweeting Shashi Tharoor, the intellectual. Now we have Jairam Ramesh, self-styled intellectual. The two have one thing in common. They never think twice before they speak. And every time they fell, or continue to fall, in trouble. They both are part of the parliamentary system in Indian governance. (Let us assume that Shashi Tharoor is still, though he has been removed, in the Cabinet)
Shashi Tharoor once tweeted that Indian democracy lacks tolerance to free views and opinion. He forgot, or rather pretended to forget, that like the Great(?) Britain, India also has Parliamentary form of government where there happens to be a Cabinet. This Cabinet, in Constitutional parlance is a Unitary Executive, as against the Plural Executive of Switzerland.
This is not the place to discuss the differences between the two, but in nutshell, the Cabinet is one single UNIT, and acts as such. In effect, the decisions of a Cabinet are supposed to be taken by voice vote, and no minister is supposed to disagree with a Cabinet decision.
Tharoor grossly failed to appreciate this basic concept and it is unfathomable that he did not know this.
Ramesh did a Tharoor in China by casting aspersion on his colleague P. Chidambaram. That also on a foreign affair matter. Even in the US, where the executive committee is not exactly like a cabinet, this type of public differences is not seen in good light.
Long ago, even Arjun Singh had claimed disagreement with a cabinet's decision he was part of. And he was criticised even by his political opponents who could easily benefit by this disagreement.
Indian politicians should take a lesson or two on their form of government. One, particularly those of political ilk, must keep in mind that the democratic right to free expression is not available to members of the armed forces and those of the ruling elite. Ignorance on this front may be detrimental to the nation at large.

Happy Earth Day! How did it all begin, why you must take charge.. « Green Blog : Take Care Take Charge

Happy Earth Day! How did it all begin, why you must take charge.. « Green Blog : Take Care Take Charge

Is really there anything to be happy about this Earth Day, or for that matter any Earth Day? It is one of the many similar moron, formal days that come and go with some seminars being organised and write-ups published in the media.
It is much hyped concern by a handful of activists. Not that the threat is not real. The hype is unrealistic. How many literate persons think in their daily routine that they are damaging the environment? Ask, and they will pour down data. But the bahaviour and habits are unchanged. The threat is unreal to them.
The activists must come to the people not with scientific data and jargon like carbon foot print, green house gases, temperature of earth rising by 0.5 degree, they are blah blah to common man. Just tell them what it implies, how they are already affected, why there is food scarcity, why the prices are soaring. And they will understand, they will behave, they will contribute.

Tackling the Naxal menace

Here, in Chhattisgarh, we are aface to heightened Naxal menace. We recently lost more than 75 security personnel in a Naxal trap. It was shocking but not at all unexpected.
Without any disrespect to the loss of life by soldiers who did not belong to this area (may be a strong reply to those who keep raising the talk of outsiders in Chhattisgarh), one must admit that the tragedy was long slated to happen.
Reports have been saying that the local deployment of CRPF was a reluctant player in the naxal field. Their units avoided venturing in the field deep enough and kept close to their camps. They were never proactive. The local police, on the other hand, is ill-equipped to handle the situation.
What makes a bad scenario worse is the lack of coordination among the forces. This has been a problem in India on all occasions. Whenever there is a multiplicity of forces to tackle a problem, one-up-manship starts. Various forces don't share their intelligence reports, hardly coordinate on expeditions, seldom rely on each other, and nearly invariably fail.
Chhattisgarh presently has CRPF, BSF and the ITBP besides its own police force to fight with the naxals. In this multiplicity, the lack of coordination looms large among them. And, the tragedies like Chitalnad are more probable.
The opinion that comes out then is that the situation should be handed over to the Army. It may be pointed out that the Indian Constitution does not rule out a martial law. So, the Government of India should declare martial law in areas like the borders of Chhattisgarh-Andhra Pradesh-Maharashtra-Orissa, Jharkhand-Chhattisgarh-West Bengal, Bihar-Jharkhand and such areas and should be handed over to the army for action.
People may object that it may be undemocratic, that it may violate human rights etc. Let it be so. The people we wish to eliminate are not humans. They have waged a war on the State of India. We need special powers, and efforts, to fight it and to fight it out.

Remembering Bhagat Singh

It has been a huge huge gap of time since I last posted. There were engagements and some lethargy. Hopefully, it will be regular, again. And, what a date to resume. Today is 23rd of March, the date on which Bhagat Singh with two of his allies Sukhdev and Rajguru was hanged by the British at the tender age of 23 years.

Bhagat Singh is considered the revolutionary by the people in general as well as the intellectuals and scholars. Was he? Was he only a revolutionary of India's struggle for freedom? Probably not. Probably definitely not.

Bhagat Singh was a visionary. He was only 23 when he was hanged. Still he was not immature. Neither mentally, nor ideologically. He definitely was a freedom fighter. But, for him freedom of the nation was only a means rather than a goal. Most of the political leaders of the time, including even Gandhiji, of the Indian National Congress did not visualise India after independence. Jawahar Lal Nehru was one leader who, only later, came to terms in this regard.

Bhagat Singh was miles ahead of his contemporaries in his thoughts and vision. He did fight for India's freedom. But has he been labelled a revolutionary only because he was associated with Hindustan Repulican Army which he renamed Hindustan Socialist Repulican Army? He never wielde gun to kill any British (this does not mean the likes of Chandrashekhar Azad were killers) and even if he exploded bombs it had a design.

Bhagat Singh was more of a philosopher than a freedom fighter, a revolutionary. I bow before his greatness and remember him in great spirit on this day.

The Transexuals, and Transexuality

It has been a real long long absence from the blog. Much has happened in between one should have commented on. One such major issue is the so-called legalisation of the transsexual relationship in India. In fact s. 377 of the Indian Penal Code classifies homosexual relation as unnatural and therefore a crime, a cognisable offence. When some organisations and individuals fighting for gay rights went to the court, the Supreme Court decided that any physical relation between two adults of the same sex by consent shall not be treated as an offence because it is a natural insinct. In other words, homosexuality has not been legalised but only de-criminalised.

As it happens in India, much hue and cry has been made on this verdict. The Court felt that homosexuality was not quite unnatural, and this was the basis of construing it as a crime in the law books. What the Court failed to take cognisance of, and what even many of the verdict's critics fail to raise appropriately, was that law, and also justice, should not only follow what is natural and what is not. We are living in a civilised society. What is raw natural, should not rule our system. Sexual desire is very natural, and naturally one needs a partner to quell it. Just a partner -- may it be of opposite sex or of same sex. No other consideration -- age, relation etc matters.

Going by the logic SC used in deciding the case, will an extra marital relation, or even an incest by consent shall be decriminalised? And what about prostitution? It is already a relation between two adults, by consent, of opposite sex at that. Should it also be a non-crime?

Law does not have always to be based on our natural instincts. A civilised society is civilised just only because it puts restrains on many of our natural instincts. So, the Court should endeavour to make our society civilised rather than natural. It has many hazards.