There’s a dire need to upgrade and increase the capacity of the Indian Railways. When you look at the 6-lane, 4-lane and sometimes 2-lane highways in the US, you feel how could India have had something similar. We don’t need anything of that sort.

India’s answer to the US and European highways would be the Indian Railways. We don’t need to replicate what everyone is doing, we just need to have a way of our own to do it. Every Indian would use the Railways as efficiently as people use the roads or air travel elsewhere in the world. Instead of bailing out Air India, bloody shut it down and use all that money to make a new track between Delhi and Mumbai and Delhi and Calcutta. Just kill the Maharaja.

We have an excellent mesh of Railway network that just needs to be upgraded. There are hundreds of stations in just about an area of thousand kilometre square, which makes it the best point-to-point network that has ever been. More so, the Railways are an automatic way to reach from point A to point B, with minimum risk and fatigue. The advantages are way beyond what anyone could imagine. My point is, India needs a major infrastucture investment in the Railways and not the highways.

Consider this article from SCIAM. The article points to the fact that selfish drivers would do better in an environment of less convenience rather than in an environment that was better suited to their needs. The very fact that they tore down a highway between two points in Seoul and increased the traffic efficiency, is indicator enough of how things can churn out.

Consider the fact that India invests another hundred thousand crores on the highways. It would only add more pressure on the cities and that now the infrastructure is available, fuel prices would go up for want of use of the highways. Instead, let’s build more railway tracks. Here’s what we could do:

• Build more railway tracks – upgrade two lane tracks to four lanes between major junctions
• Upgrade all single tracks to a minimum of two lane tracks
• Re-enforce all bridges along major railway tracks or build alternate bridge routes with hard deadlines
• Increase the number of central stations that exist in a city – upgrade normal stations to central (or junction) status to de-pressurize the number of passenger boardings on central or city or junction stations
• Increase the number of general class coaches to a minimum of 10 coaches in short distance trains and a minimum of 5 coaches in long distance trains. Right now, there are at most 3 general coaches in both long and short distance trains.
• Reduce the number of classes – abolish coupe class, abolish AC first class, abolish First Class (2 tier sleeper)
• Do away with Pantry cars and catering services – focus on what we have to do – travel.
• Make mandatory electrified routes between all major stations: Delhi – Lucknow, Bangalore – Chennai, Mumbai – Pune (which doesn’t even have a train route yet), Bangalore – Hyderabad, Bhopal – Raipur, etc.
• Ensure that if there are more than 36 (half of the number of berths in a Sleeper Coach) waitlisted passengers, then all of them should be guaranteed a seat with extra coaches being added to the train.
• Run emergency trains to cater to any extra capacity required and increase the number of coaches/engines.
• Introduce Ultra-super-fast trains for long distances that would run on dedicated tracks and stop only at junctions
  • Target run-time of such trains should be less than 24 hours. It is doable:
  • From Jammu to Kanya-Kumari, the distance is approximately 3500 Kms
  • If a train runs at an average speed of 180 Kmph (which is a doable speed on a new dedicated track), it can do the distance in 19.5 hours.
  • Add to that any extra time taken for boarding/stopping/cleaning etc. and you have another 4.5 hours.
  • If the train stops at 12 points for an average of 15 minutes at every point (which is extremely sufficient), it would have used only 3 hours out of those 4.5 hours.

There are a million other things to do. If even half of my above wishes see light, we would see a much better India in future.

Who cares what the church says? The state should not be interfered by any religion. India is a secular country and nobody cares what they think inside the church. They can keep it to those who do not have any choice.

As India matures to yet another line of thought: NDTV reports on the issue. Article 377 is the extreme, there in the constitution to appease religous sentiments. Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism – the religions followed by the majority, do not have any firm lines of thought on homosexuality. Extremists and fascists from these groups might have strong thoughts, but they are not based on any proofs of banishment of homosexuality in any of these religions. Though it is for sure that the BJP would disagree on this, I for one, do not care about them when it comes to this. Both Christianity and Islam have strict opposition to any kind of homosexuality. Nobody cares.

This is most unfortunate that the Indian constitution is being affected by hypocritic ideologies. Statements from Church officials say, “We know and understand the need of someone to be homosexual. What we do not accept is that they have sex.” Hey Mr. Smart A**, if you could write down the spelling of homosexuality, you would understand that it does have the letters “s”, “e” and “x” in it (in that particular order). So go and dig deep somewhere.

For the most part, the problem is not the church. The problem is the other half of our society that is still bothering with control on individual preferences and does not have any inclination to fix other extremely basic problems (related to the mother and child).

Scrapping Article 377 would be yet another police reform and rid the police of any extra annoyances they had to worry about.

Update: Since the Government is back, there’s a lot of excitement in the markets and the general public. My pessimistic comments about Congress and their manifesto still hold – though it would be interesting to see if the manifesto gets changed along the years (so as to mend the general way in which Congress functions). Am up for anything, as long as it works.

“It will take 15 to 20 years to eradicate poverty.” Those are the words of Dr. Manmohan Singh. Talking of optimism, he is confident that India would be a poverty-free country but he has hopes of it happening only after another 15 to 20 years (I guess he said 20 to 25, but let’s give him a break). This was during the release of the Congress manifesto.

Update: See search results as to how Dr. Singh’s statements have changed – from 5 to 10 to 20 years – all through the last 3 years.

You don’t need to ask them why. Dr. Singh is a truthful man and he knows that the  Congress will take at least 15 to 20 years until it gets cleansed. Or shall we say, until it gets broken into smaller factions which would ensure there is no single-headed corruption-infested jaw alive. Why shall we vote for Congress? Here are the reasons:

• to make sure that more money gets spent in useless foreign encounters
• to help an extra number of terrorists and Bangladeshi nationals cross the borders
• to help increase the poverty so that it is maintained at where it is today
• to further insulate development money from reaching grounds and convert it into black market
• to fund influx of tax money into black markets and then back into share markets
• to accelerate false growth, burst bubbles and then go into damage control to take credit
• to decelerate country’s actual growth  and then increase it to manageable levels (to take credit)
• to pump goons back into the parliaments – they can’t be run without them

So go ahead and pick your vote. Congress manifesto is nothing but a chunk of shit which has no material in it. There is no study and plan on how things will be achieved (as always) and false promises have been underlined. They will do things which they haven’t done in the last 30 years (just considering their number of misruled years). Once again, innocent people will get killed in some blasts across the country and all the Congress would do is give a false face to it by resignations – moral shit. Wouldn’t you have resigned when the first blast killed people in Varanasi two years ago? Cuz you still had two years to go. Any way the election was coming in about 6 months, so what the heck. Sign a paper and wash your hands off the blood. We have lots of blood any way – and it comes free for the Congress.

Things the Congress did to set India back by 10 years:

• pushed back the National Highway project (Golden Quadrilateral)
• stopped the work on the Identity Card for everyone (MNIC)
• stopped considerations on the river interlinking project (Mr. Vajpayee’s plans)
• pushed back the reservation bill – hurting the country more than ever
• mismanaged finances to bring down growth by about 3% (it was ~9% before the present Govt. came to rule)
• increase in corruption, terror attacks and influx of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh

On the contrary, look at the BJP’s IT Vision here. Here is what is magnificent about it:

• clear ideas – the thought processes look natural and doable (not that they will really do it)
• plans that are actionable and quantifiable
• no airy dreams: “we’ll make india shine!” – with what? sand-paper?
• excellent technical content (reference to open source, VoIP and 3G – just what we need)

Your decision.

Now if you’ve run out of reasons why you can’t vote, here are some more to save your day. Just toss in these excuses when someone asks you. Be sure to screw your country – do it proudly.

• Reason No. 3:  The black mark they will put on my finger would make me look like Goga Kapoor. I am afraid I’ll lose my identity.
• Reason No. 2: I am a Shakladwipi Brahman (or a Mayuri Kumhar, or a or a Suryavanshi Rajput or some sub caste/caste) and the voting booth is across a stream and we are not allowed to cross water streams on Tuesdays. Plus, the stream is coming right from Kailash and will flow into the Bay of Bengal so by the time I go around it, the voting would any way be closed. Unless I go missing for two days.
• Reason No. 1:  We have a family of 8 (or 6 or 4 or 2 or some even number) – and half of us would vote for Congress while the other half for BJP. So it cancels out each others’ votes – so we decided to have a mini election at our house and not go bothering the Election Commission. See, how socially responsible and extra smart we are?

Yes you are. Let’s get together and f**k this nation by not voting and finding more excuses. Thanks!

Stephen Cohen does not have a standing in the Asian world (that includes a section of the Pakistani diplomats and journalists too). There are sources (search keywords: stephen cohen india pakistan) that would prove how this guy dabbles – his sole objective is to clean up the creases in the US media and smear blame on everyone else. As always, there are people in the US media who question Cohen’s objective analysis, which sways mostly in their favour without any capacity to be fair.

Cohen has always been against India (in a few exceptional circumstances not involving Pakistan as a subject) and the Indian diplomacy. It would be fair to say that India’s diplomatic standpoints are almost always ridiculed, no matter how much of a good effort has been put into it. There are indeed blunders committed but as I see, Indian foreign relations have seen a new high in the past fifteen years (with the beginnings mostly in the Vajpayee Ji’s era). Of course, Cohen would not like to see subtelities to his disadvantage. I would never pay attention to him again. Ever.

Update (Feb 12, 2009): This turned out to be false. Congress came in for another 5 year tenure, and in the best interest of the country. I eat my words here. Owwm jaum naum.

Congratulations Mr. Singh! You’re in for another 8 or so months, only. Thanks for pushing the nuclear deal through though. It’s some good combination of great co-incidences that things are wholesomely moving in the favour of Indian masses.

The deal done, so will be the Government. There are a hundred other things to worry about and the BJP will take advantage of these. The Left is out of way and hence there will be some major decisions taken in the next few months. There would be a great deal of movement in the upper crust of legislature – both in terms of humans and work. None of that can still save the Government in the next general elections. Nothing can save the Congress now.

Winners of today were to lose the final game. Whoever drives the car before coming to the dead end is a bad driver. Never mind who drove it all the way. The next best thing to happen for India is that we replace Congress (C) with BJP (B) into power and install an AC circuit in the Lok Sabha to keep on going from C to B to C to B until we get something apart from the evil L (Left). The advantages are obvious, C strives until B comes up and B strives until C comes up. You get delivery and they get 5 (sic) years of money.

Thank you Mr. Bush – you’ve been doing the wrong things at the wrong times for the wrong people. Just that all of it has turned out right at the far end.

All in Bangalore, your “duty” to vote has arrived. The first step to ensuring that you can vote, is to get a Voter ID Card, also known as EPIC (Elector’s Photo Identity Card). The only catch is, you have to act fast – as the last date for getting your name on the Electoral Rolls is 22 Feb, 2008. All the details can be found here: BangaloreVoterID.org

• You have to fill up Form 6, indicating your current residence, supplemented with some documents (for proof of age and residence – see below)
• You don’t have to be a permanent resident of the place where you want to get a Voter ID card (you can be a tenant)
• If you are working at a place different from your home town, you are eligible to get a Voter’s ID at your town of work
• Please make sure to fill Form 7 to get your name deleted from electoral rolls elsewhere in the country
  • Search here to know if your name exists in the electoral rolls of your home town
    • Doing this will ensure that your name is not used to register bogus votes at your home place
• You can also fill the same Form 7 to de-register people you know, who no longer are residing in those places (and hence can’t vote) due to migration or death
  • Please do this for as many people as you can, you will do a huge favour to the nation.
  • You can search for names in the same way as you did for yourself
• Documents for proof of age (18+): High School Marks Sheet, Birth Certificate, Passport, Driving License or this affidavit on a stamp paper stamped by a Notary (I created this from Annexure A of the Passport Form).
• Document for proof of residence is not necessary. But it would help to facilitate (speed up) the work of registration if you can provide any of these: Passport, Bank Pass Book (or a letter from bank), Driving License, Telephone Connection (your name), Gas Connection Documents, Employee Certificate or any Govt. document.

Update: Here is a fresh site where you can find details on deadlines and addresses of electoral registration offices.

Update (21.Apr.08): You can now drop a filled in form (with your photograph pasted on it) and get the Voter ID card within 48 hours. Check this news article from Times of India.

It is your duty to vote, not just a right any more. Please see FAQs and detailed steps on how to get a Voter ID card at BangaloreVoterID.org