This is in response to a blog wirtten on TOI - about how Indians should stop worrying about a liberal Pak and start worrying about democratic India.

I am not sure what irks me more, the fact that these articles are written with rapid Brownian movement of thoughts wandering hither-tither or that they are just plain silly from the very title of theirs.

First of all, Shobhan hasn’t realized (even though it looks like he has spent more time in Pakistan than I have), that if your neighbors aren’t stable, you would have a hard time achieving it – especially when you’re trying to climb up against every odd on your back. Of late, a lot of alternative media has gained popularity – and I’ve seen more sensibility in blog comments,random tweets or heck, coffee tables – than in popular magazines, newspapers or news-sites. So, thumbs down to Mr. Saxena’s lack of sensibility there. Please take the reverse gear out of your mental being.

Secondly, I don’t understand the presumption that ‘we the people’ of India, don’t worry about her being democratic. I just realized that the article was written in January – and about a couple of months later Mr. Saxena would have seen that there are quite a bit more people worrying about India than he ever imagined. This is a trend I’ve seen in a couple of other TOI blogs, where the blogger would presume that they’re the only ones heading north. Look around, guys.

To conclude, there’s one more fun fact. I enjoy reading stuff that is completely out of whack. It’s like a fun filled session of somebody talking very seriously about stuff that they don’t have any idea about – or their idea about saving their listeners from extinction. It’s entertaining. Here it goes, and I quote:

But, it’s time we reflected on our country which is looking more and more like Pakistan despite our claims about 9% growth. Ironically, this decline has happened in the past 20 years of so-called economic boom: India has seen a dangerous mixing of religion and politics as is evident from the rise of BJP and its communal politics; the gulf between the fundamentalists and liberals has widened with people like Binayak Sen being harassed and RTI activists being killed across the country; armed movements have sprouted all over the country – Kashmir, the Northeastern states and in the so-called Red Corridor; and India has begun to look like a client state of the United States as clearly shown by the cables leaked by WikiLeaks. And the genesis of all these problems is the same as that in Pakistan. Some 30-odd families control Pakistan. In India that number may be 200 or 400. But, everything in this country – politics, business & trade, films and cultural life – is dominated by a few people. There is 100% reservation at the top and no entry for aam aadmi. Since 1991, we have developed such a nexus that only a few with access to other few can grow at breakneck speed. All others are free to go to bank, mortgage their life and take a loan for things they want.

It’s like, he thinks India is more like Pakistan (well, he thought that way in January, but it still doesn’t look close enough to me), and then we’re mixing religion and politics with the rise of BJP (though BJP is falling in almost every other state) – then the gulf has widened and RTI activists are harassed – (how does that relate to fundamentalism?). Dude, do you have any idea of what you’re writing about? Number of families controlling India is a wide variance between 200 to 400? Pray make up your mind and give us an approximation. Everything is dominated by a few people? Names of all of those 20 please? Classic bullshit. If Shobhan entered this essay for an examination, I would have deducted 25% marks for grammatical mistakes and another 30% for lack of originality and unclear objectives. (Please don’t start your sentences with conjunctions).

It’s small wonder that the Internet is running rampant – in support of WikiLeaks. PayPal released this statement on their blog – and closed the comments section. It’s called - the freedom to shut others up. To look at how many people are joining hands and shutting their accounts down with PayPal/Amazon see this news report which has frequent one line comments against both PayPal and Amazon. PayPal’s community links are running threads on and off about account closures and threats  (since there are reports of threads being killed).

People are using alternate payment portals to continue on – Neteller.com and MoneyBroker.com. It’s not clear though that how long all banks and credit card companies can keep their funds flowing to WikiLeaks.

This interview on policewala.in is the harsh gust of reality and fate of Indian police personnel. Since this interview is in Hindi, here is a short summary (all credits due to the interviewers at policewala.in and Amitabh Thakur, IPS).

• Mr. Thakur is of the opinion that the long standing convention of “thinking like criminals” has affected the police adversely, turning some of these men to be more dangerous than the criminals themselves
• He observes that there are two corruption situations to be dealt with separately, one that are of the grievous and serious kind with deep rooted problems – and the other that are notorious and on the street
• He observes how the police personnel are deprived of family life, living in harsh and mentally frustrating situations – and how all police men and women come to appreciate each other and develop a bond since they are victims of the same injury
• Another very important thing brought up was the fact that lower ranks don’t have a career path towards higher positions – the sepoy to  inspector ranks are basically stagnant. This is the most serious issue with the system right now since it cuts off the most basic form of self-motivation.

This was reported on NewsX with Gehlot blurting out live on camera.

News: Jodhpur blood transfusion scam – children transfused with HIV+ blood

NewsReporter: Mr. Gehlot, what’s the Govt. doing..
CM Gehlot: We’ve sent an inquiry and authorities will be following up.
NewsReporter: How much time before we can see the reports..
CM Gehlot: We just won the Panchayati elections, we’re celebrating that “arre abhi to uski khushi manaiye aap log, Congress ne kitna bhadiya..“
…err, cut it…

Seems like this bugger has more to celebrate than the newly HIV positive children.

The why. You want to change the system and do some real work you can take pleasure in than just whining about it. Get that road straightened, or better, a new one carved! But then, you have your principles and you don’t want to break them – and politics is about doing away with all the principles. Bull shit, it is about breaking principles, so what? Like they said in “Page Three”, “To change the system, you have to be in the system“. So break those bloody principles you have and do stuff to get to the top. Don’t lose sight of your aims and of what you were and when you get there, re-establish the real you.

Badami has single-rock sandstone caves carved into temples (near Hampi – around 160 Km). That was my motivation to get there and after seeing the Hampi ruins, I thought it best to get some positivity back. It so happened that the road to Badami had much more to say than probably the place itself.

The road from Hampi to Badami is kind of nice until you follow a state highway that leads you all the way until the last 35 Kms to Badami are left. This 35 Km journey was very interesting. The road is broken and slows you down completely. It’s a single lane road, meaning you can either come or go if you have the road for yourself. That doesn’t mean that there’s no oncoming traffic. Mini trucks would still ply there forcing you and themselves to go off the road on one side of the axles.

That ain’t all. It was around 7.30pm in the evening and I saw a bunch of folks walking towards Badami on the same road. The highway was converted into a single lane footpath-cum-road. It wasn’t until I saw the milestone with 35 on it (and the mention of Badami) that I realized that there was quite a bit of travel left. What geared me up was the fact that I was in a car, while these people were walking – in the dark – on a broken road for a journey as long as 35 Kms (around 22 miles).

There was ample time to wash down, since all I could do was a meager 30 Kmph on that road and I knew it would take me another hour or so. Thinking on these lines, it struck me, why was the 130 Km highway suddenly changed into a broken footpath? There’s a well paved out two lane road with cat’s-eye markers, 2 ft shoulders and signs that tell you to keep under 60 and suddenly it goes dud!

The slowdown angered me so much that I felt what the people living out there could do. There are only a couple of transport vehicles plying on the road because of the very condition of the road. Due to the bad condition, you cannot even ride a cycle there, the humps would break your knees. I wondered, what if they became violent one day in protest? Will that make a difference? Well, that’s what turns into naxalite activity. This very frustrating 35 Km stretch could well become a seed for naxalites there – people who fight for simple things and fight so hard that they forget what they were fighting for. Things Chhattisgarh, AP and Bihar are facing for a long time.

It’s not just Badami – the story is same for Karmala to Bijapur  (MH),  Lucknow to Bareilly (UP) and Shirdi to Aurangabad (MH). Bad roads are everywhere – and there are long ways to go.

So if you have done your history right, it’s time to witness it this time around because it’s gonna repeat.

This article here talks about how China’s threat over New Delhi has been growing while we have been engaged in fruitless activities. This is probably the best time for New Delhi to flex it’s muscles completely over Pakistan and get rid of the placement they find in China. China has already taken over Tibet, is virtually there in Pakistan (guess where the recent war-heads tested their came from?) and dictates to Burma.

As India gave away to the Chinese claims on Tibet, now it’s China asking for Arunachal Pradesh (a sizeable area of the size of Taiwan). We never thought they would be coming for AP, but they always had there eyes on it. What’s more, Sikkim was supposedly accepted by the Chinese to be an Indian state – but recent news has been let off where Sikkim has been mentioned twice over (thus putting light back on to where it was) – and the Chinese obviously want more and more every single day. This is why China wants AP so badly.

Chinese presence in Aksai Chin (that’s the northern portion of India – a part of Kashmir) has been strengthened and so has been Tibet. China has delivered tons of nuclear content to Tibet and has started pointing missiles towards Indian cities. There is a strong possibility that China will be engaging in strong muscle flexing before it explores the possibility of a strike.

It’s now that Indians have to wake up to this threat and start working towards a goal that will take us to the next level. India’s reopening of an Air Force base near the Chinese border is a fact that something is really serious. Time to get really serious guys. Really serious.

So, then what is it that would change India’s game? What can a normal person like you and me do? A lot of stuff.

• Sincerity in everyone. People have to start realizing that there are somethings that ought to be done. Seek out every possible way you can affect the Government and it’s decisions. What are the guys on top doing? Are there plans? Use your “right to information” to develop these questions and throw them out.
• Vote! Vote! Vote!
• Put your prejudices aside, if not get rid of them. We need to counter a bigger threat now. Get rid of your castes and religions for another two years (that’s all we have).
• Start reading up and spread awareness among people about how we’re really going to need a lot of intellectual capacity, strength and any other such help.
• Tell everyone in your family, in local discussions and every possible way that we are going to be affected if we don’t realize.

That’s the first step. Realization that there’s a problem is what we need to spread first. Next thing would be to focus on long-term and short-term goals and objectives.

For once, India is a bloody big state that cannot go down just like that. This is a ten grands old civilization we’re talking about. So let’s be positive and start working it out right away.

Update: In other news, there were Pakistani rockets fired into Punjab from across the border. I guess it might be time soon that we increase our military strength two-folds and finish off these issues with Pakistan right away. In all shamelessness, there are bloody hopes soaring when the Indian High Commissioner sends an invite for iftaar to ISI  master minds.

Someone: Not the right time to talk on his allegations. 63  people died across the state so far some are heart attack and some are suicide cases.

Me: How can I be so sure that the person was shocked because of a certain death or any other ailment he had?

To take this further, shocks happen when you have absolutely no clue of the news and you suddenly get that “X” happened. In this case, there was a build-up of a missing helicopter for over 24 hours and hence any shock that someone is dead was not supposed to be a shock. If they were so concerned, they were closely following the news and probably already had the idea that the people are dead. That is not to say that people didn’t really get shocked, but it is highly unlikely. To get media attention, there might have been wrong reports and wrong attribution.

Someone: We are nothing to do with his newspaper and news channel and steel plants rather than some employment to the public.

Me: Why so? There should be a thorough investigation into where the money came from to start up a news channel. I am not able to build a bloody room for myself and people go setting up their own steel plants? If I stopped paying the taxes that is being used in ways I don’t know (leading to Naxalite activities), I could at least think of loaning my own house. That steel plant is profiting from your money. Everyone has the right of question.

This is not just about Andhra Pradesh or this particular incident. This is about how we go about justifying actions about anyone who is dead. Going to the deathbed doesn’t mean you automatically become an angel and escape scrutiny.

We really need to change this attitude – “blah opened up two hospitals and three schools” and so they must’ve been really nice. Come on, you can’t stay in power by just building elephant figures and your own statues everywhere. You have to achieve public work, and almost every politician achieves that by merely following what the bureaucrats tell them to (so that they remain in good books).

I don’t trust media’s conclusions – they are biased, tilted and most of them have a single source, so there’s no cross-verification. That doesn’t mean we all go out in our own chartered helicopters, but that we don’t form any judgments and always remain in this fuzzy state of stupidity where we really don’t know what the exact truth is.

I had this idea of creating a wiki to collect data on how we do things with the Govt. and stuff. So finally, here it goes:

http://taach.com

In case you have any experiences to share or write up stuff there (or even if someone has a writeup I can point to from there), I’d be more than welcoming that.

I plan to keep it a text-only site and have a mobile version up soon (that would only send the body – no frills). It is just MediaWiki running there for now with the plainest skin available.