And then I am back again...

Well, I have been pretty off the blog lately. One main reason is that it is blocked in office. And I hardly get time off office hours. Other reason is that I had too many things happening in my life and too little time to think and pen things down. I am back now and hopefully will stay!

The first thing I want to comment about is IPL. For once I am with the government. Come on.. what is IPL? A game? OK A multi billion dollar game... but more important than is our loksabha elections. I wonder what they would have lost had they held it a month later. The government for once was right. They couldn't probably give enough security to all the players and also manage the elections. On top of that it is Indian Premier League.. what was the hurry to conduct in a foreign land and make it easy for others to pin point and say that India couldn't manage security for a game. Its easy to point fingers at the Govt and say that they couldn't come back on time and promise that the security will be taken care off.. but then we all know how election times are... do we need to add more salt to all the chaos?

The second thing I wanted to comment about is the elections itself. Have you noticed that the majority of election violations are done by BJP candidates? Its becoming too obvious. I mean its common sense that the ruling party now is now really worried about retaining the power and hence will resort to any tactics to put black mark on the other party.. I just hope that the public is not blind. I am not for this party or that.. I would rather vote for a capable candidate than what party he belongs to.

The third thing I want to comment about is the obsession of housewives to serials. On an average my mil watches round 6 serials in a day.. just imagine! While I have no reason to complain, I am just amazed at the reach these serials have. At first sight I thought this is the best way to address social issues, as it has the widest reach and people follow these with so much interest. But then I was wrong, while it is acceptable in a serial to have an inter-caste marriage the same is not acceptable in the family. While it is ok in the serial for the son to live separately from his parents along with his wife due to compatibility issues, the same is frowned upon in the family. There goes human nature :)

Hello? Can you hear me?

There is "strike" trend these days.... For any problem, all we hear is that people are on the streets protesting about something or the other. Usually its the general public that suffers. Whether the strikers achieve their objective or not is case specific, the inconvenience caused in-general to everybody cannot go unnoticed. Few examples:

• Punjabis halted rail transport in Punjab to protest against the firings in Mumbai.
• Mandya farmers are famous for blocking the Bangalore-Mysore road for any small/medium/large problem.
• Gujrars halted trains, burnt buildings, attacked officials etc, to get reservation.
• The farmers had to come on roads to ask for fertilizers and one even got killed in the process! (I personally believe that this was politically motivated, but never mind that).
  

What does this mean? For me it means two things; one, we as Indians have generally become very aggressive overnight. For everything we come on the road and fight. We simply don't believe in getting justice the right/legal way at all. Two, the governing body (state, center whatever) has become so deaf that they won't hear us unless we come and shout on the streets. Or the red tape is so much, even if there is justice given after some 100 years it is absolutely useless simply because justice delayed is justice denied.

where are we headed?

I thought I was dreaming. In the dream, P actually asked me to write a blog post! Yes the same P who rarely reads my blog that I sometimes have to tell him myself to please read where there are some references of him. By the way he wants me to write about Ram Sethu and even provided me with related links!! Thanks P, and here is the much awaited post.

I purposely didn’t want to write about it. I strongly believed that it had nothing to do with Ram or Hinduism. It was plain dirty politics. I was convinced I was right. My theory: MK is sure that congress will not be in power next term. He wanted to be out of the alliance, yet did not know how to say bye. (He has not seen Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna itseems!)So he played this game. Yes he invited a lot of trouble. But indirectly it’s the central govt that’s facing the storm. They can neither publicly denounce him and his comments nor can they openly go ahead with Sethusamduram Project. Congress is doomed which is what MK also wanted.

Things turned a little sour when he (as foolish as he is) made some stupid uncalled-for statements.

“Raama is a fictional character and neither he nor his bridge ever existed”

“Was Raama a civil engineer to have built that bridge?”

…so on and so forth. I ignored these as well; one of his ever famous stupid comments against religion. (Particularly Hinduism because nobody has the guts to say anything against any other religion in this country)

Isn’t it ironical that neither the British rulers nor the Mughal emperors questioned the existence of Lord Ram? They were the so called foreigners, invaders who came to loot and destroy India. But our government is doing it. The very body which is supposed to protect us is questioning our beliefs itself!

I am not saying that everybody should believe in Ram and accept him as the supreme God, but we are a secular country right? Shouldn’t we respect each others beliefs?

Though I didn’t write about it, I was really intrigued. I wanted to find out more about this bridge. Just one NASA picture was not going to satisfy me.

If we just look at it with a religious eye, there are no second thoughts. You cannot just go and destroy a religious monument; Not only in our country, but in any country for that matter.

Let us keep the religious aspects aside for the time being, because there is no “debate” on that. I want to look at it scientifically.

The reasons given “for” the project are as below

1. Obtain a navigable sea route close to the coast, with a reduction in travel distance of more than 350 nautical miles (650 km) (for larger ships).
2. Expected to provide a boost to the economic and industrial development of coastal Tamil Nadu
3. Development of other ports can be done once this project is complete.
   

So, as clearly seen above, the main “aim” is to reduce travel distance and hence boost the coastal business.

Now, let us see why this project fails to achieve even the stated purpose.

1. The depth of the canal is proposed to be of 12 meters. This is “enough” only for small ships but not at all enough for larger ships (which is what they are aiming for). The larger ships need atleast 17 meters.
2. The time saved is just 2 hours. How much of a difference that makes in the naval world? This is because ships cannot travel at the same speed through the canal as they travel on open seas. Also there will be pilotage delay; meaning a pilot will board the ship at the entrance of the canal and get off at the exit to “guide” the ship thru the canal. We know how much time it takes for a ship to come to a complete stop and start again for the pilot to board and get down the ship…. So!
3. It’s not economical for the ships to pass thru the canal either. The pilotage costs are huge. Why would a shipping company pay those pilotage costs, when it can travel cheaper around SriLanka?
4. The canal is in shallow waters which is a high siltation and sedimentation area. There would be annual dredging costs to just maintain the canal.
5. Security. The coastal lines of this canal are till date in control of LTTE. What they would is unpredictable and hence risky.
   

It’s obvious that there are too many scientific reasons which seem quite obvious to even a common person like me, without any deep technical knowledge in this area which go against the proposed project. But still there is heavy pressure from the government to continue with the project. Why?

1. The dredging cost which I have talked about is a constant source of revenue to the dredging company. They have tied up with the govt to go ahead with this. More revenue for the company and hence more under the table revenue for the Govt.
   
2. MK wants his name to be etched in history (now it’s already done for all the wrong reasons anyway!) to be known as the man behind the Ram Sethu. This project was first conceived in early fifties; he will surely get the credit if it gets done in his tenure.
3. It’s a huge project and hence lots of employment opportunities to a very large number of people which inturn formulates into hefty contracts for some companies. (Any idea which companies and what contacts they have with MK?)
4. MK wants to send a strong message to his DMK community that he is anti religion and does not give importance for religious monuments (specially Hindu monuments because he has no guts to oppose other religions. Hinduism is a very easy and susceptible target.)

These are my imaginative reasons for them vouching so hard for the project. I might be right or wrong. There might be some other hidden agenda.

Interestingly here is a link which kind of proves that Ram Sethu is man made.

But at the end of the day, I am scared to see the path we are taking. Today it is one MK, but tomorrow there might be 100s of them. We have Muslim terrorists plotting to kill all of us, we have our own leaders against our religion… what more threat can we ask for?

Update:

References :

1. A Mythical Bridge to Voters
2. The Adam Bridge
3. The Nautical Details
4. Save Ram Sethu
5. The wiki story

and so on...

The news that pain me

1. I had dreams of one day becoming a “Dr”. Initially it was the MBBS doctor, but since that has not worked out, I thought I will do a PhD at least someday. But now I have dropped that idea! If a person like Shilpa Shetty gets a doctorate, I just don’t want to be in that circle anymore!!!!!
2. Are you a female? You are useless… If I know your gender before birth I will kill you; else I will utilize you only for physical pleasures (household work and sex) and all I finally want is “male” kids from you!
3. He is going away… The “Intellectual” man, the children’s man, the intelligent face of our nation, the scientist, the rational thinker... Mr. President, Dr. Abdul Kalam. Goodbye with a heavy heart...
4. Mafia’s associates are “free” and are out in the open. She walks out free even though she had “fake-passports”! And all Monica Bedi had to give was Rs25, 000 as bail amount. What is that amount to her... peanuts?
5. Women have to walk naked on the street to get “attention”, for what? For people to wake up and “listen” to their dowry harassment stories.

I can go on and on… my mood is anyway spoilt, don’t want to do the same for you guys, so THE END.

Our Rashtrapatni ji?

Pratibha Patil became a celebrity overnight when the UPA alliance proposed her as a presidential candidate. Before this nobody even knew that she existed!

Anyway all said and done she was proposed for the first citizen post. One thing which did irritate me was the “woman” tag that she had. The newspapers started boasting of first woman president and all that. It set me thinking, is it important to have a woman as our president or is it more important to have a capable person out there irrespective of their gender?

To some extent I have to agree that the President of India does not have as much power in his hands as compared to that of the Prime Minister. But still, it is THE most respectable post. Is it not then the responsibility of the parliamentarians to choose a capable candidate?

I have nothing against Prathibha Patil, but can she ever be compared with the intellectual Mr.Kalam? This looks more like yet another move from Ms.Gandhi, so that she can remote control this post also! If we remember the Office-of-Profit bill faced much resistance from Mr.Kalam and irked Ms.Gandhi to an extent. All this looks like Ms.Patil is expected to be another pawn in the hands of that Italian woman, to make things come more “her-way”.

Lets have a look at Ms.Patil’s resume

• The bank which she had set up for the so called welfare of women “Pratibha Mahila Sahakari Bank”, had it’s license revoked in 2003 for misappropriation of funds.
• It is believed that she falsely testified as a witness to protect her brother in a murder case.
• The factory “Sant Muktabai Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana” of which she is the founder directory failed to repay a bank loan and was sealed in Jan 2007.
• She claims to have had a communion with a dead guru.
  

These are only some of her achievements which I am aware of, who knows how many more are there.
The point I want to make is, is she a good successor to Kalam? He who was so respected for his intellectual thoughts… and she who is already full of controversies!
Alas! We do have to agree that if we look at our parliament today, we will not even find one clean (as in without allegations) man/woman, but this woman just didn’t strike the cord for a presidential candidate.

Wish “we” could elect our president!

Today a Bandit, tomorrow a MP

As far as my limited knowledge of constitution and it's rules and regulations goes, I don't think anybody with "proven criminal" background can contest elections, be it state or centre.

Then what are we seeing here?

First it was the famous Poolan Devi, now this one called Seema Parihar! Isn't this unconstitutional?

I don't deny the famous but often mis-used "innocent until proven guilty" phrase. But these are people who made movies out of their life stories where they openly proclaim that they have been dacoits/looters/bandits and here they are becoming MPs to rule us, to become the face of the nation, to become one of the makers of Modern-India :(

I am not being heartless. These people have gone through a lot in their lives. They have been misused, exploited which may have influenced them to take the law in their hands. I am not denying that part. As part of a responsible society, it's our duty to rehabilitate them and give them a good life. But a Lok Sabha seat? Isn't that too much to ask for?

Let us give them site/house, monthly pension and maybe a job also, if they are qualified enough to do it. But give them the reigns of power to rule our country?

So, today I become a bandit.. commit n number of crimes. Looting, killing .. you name it. Tomorrow I come up with a sad story of my life.. and make a movie out of it (with the looted money of course!) and day after tomorrow I get a Lok Sabha seat?

To answer the above question myself.. YES!