I paid a bribe!

As much I feel ashamed writing about this particular incident, I feel the need of letting it out in public ,accepting my folly and feeling guilty about it.

I was driving back from Gurgaon after a cricket match, when a Traffic cop stopped me and asked me for papers of my car. On finding the papers to be complete, including a certain pollution check certificate which he desperately emphasized on for obvious reasons (that is one of the most common offence by car travelers), he started looking for other ways to book me for an offence.

What followed was a flurry of needless  and non-sense questions like where I am coming from,where I work, what is a cricket kit lying at the backseat of my car doing there and so on.

His eyes landed up on the thin film, covering the  two windows of my car (one rare and other left of the driver seat). Unfortunately, the film barely visible from a naked eye was not put up by me. For it was by a person from whom we had  purchased the car a few days back. Obviously, this is not to justify that I was lazy in taking off the film however thin it was, post the blanket ban on films by Supreme Court.

He asked me to pay Rs 1000 as fine and take my RC back, I with a bit of reluctance and some pleading that followed gave him a thousand rupee note waiting for him to make the challan. Suddenly, what followed was a set of even more non-sense questions like whether I won the match I am coming from and so on ( I should have been a little smart to gauge where this conversation would go on from here)
He thereafter, took out a Rs500 note from his pocket and gave it away to me along with my RC and told me to go ahead.

Call it my stupidity, dishonesty or rush of blood to the head,that I didn't say a word and just walked away from there. Perhaps, I was a little baffled by what happened or perhaps I was too greedy to let go off those 500 rupees, whatever be the case I gave a bribe

It was only when I was back home and gave it a good though, did I feel the pinch of what crime I had committed. By not insisting on for a challan and taking away five hundred rupees , I had committed wrongs at multiple levels.

1. I gave a bribe, which was first such instance in my life.
2. I allowed the constable to walk away with Rs 500 of black money.
3. I further, encouraged him to haraas other citizens in future and demand bribe from them.
4. I robbed the Traffic Police of 1000 Rs, which would have made more sense than half of it landing up in a corrupt constable's pocket.
5. I committed a crime in first place due to my laziness and constant procrastination.
6. Had I insisted on a challan, and got one I would have also landed up with the name of constable, which could have been a starting point to lodge some sort of complaint against him.

Though, there isn't much I can do regarding this particular incidence, I surely can take a oath to not committ such a crime again, ever in my life! Whatever be the costs involved, whether Rs500 or Rs 5 crore.

And I hope God would forgive me for this almost unforgivable crime committed by a to be Civil Servant of the country and he would give me strength to over come any such temptations in future.

Modern Day Nero's Guests

India's Monsoon: It Never Rains

Close to 17,000 farmers killed themselves in India in 2010, a country where close to 60% population is dependent on agriculture for occupation.

Nero was an ancient roman emperor who conducted one of the biggest parties ancient Rome has ever seen. And for the guests to enjoy the beautiful garden, at night Nero brought several prisoners and burned them alive for illumination.* Are we people playing the role of Nero's Guests today?

Nero's Guests is an attempt by Editor of English Daily 'THE HINDU'  P.Sainath to bring to light the cruel reality of India far different from one witnessed in shopping malls and complexes in the metropolitan cities.

A fine piece of direction by Deepa Bhatia, this documentary covers the conditions in which poorest of poor from India were forced to give up their lives and the widespread inequality present in the interiors of this country.

Please take out some time and have a look at the Real India

*Source: http://ngopost.org/story/are-you-any-different-neros-guests 

Anna Hazare: Rhetoric and Truth

Ever since the Jan Lokpal bill movement started in April last year self acclaimed ’experts' from nook and corner of the country have jumped the bandwagon of people calling Anna Hazare enemy of democracy and what not!

Some people have gone to the extent of creating conspiracy theories and cited 'hidden' agenda and 'foreign' hand behind such a movement.

Without getting into the reasons why this movement was started (which is obvious to all of us) ,I will try and examine a few allegations that have been made against this whole movement time and again, more so by people who have very shallow knowledge of Constitutional values and ideas.

Allegation 1 :Anna Hazare is blackmailing the whole country

Merriam Webster defines word Blackmail as "extortion or coercion by threats especially of public exposure or criminal prosecution"

Now, to those who have been rhetorically claiming this is a blackmail, please tell me where is the element of extortion? or criminal prosecution? or public exposure?

Anna Hazare hasn't held the so called 'political class' to ransom to pay him some money, or release some terrorists. He was asking the elected representatives, yes the very people elected by YOU and ME to show some strong political will and pass a legislation which may not eliminate corruption completely but at least address a part of it.

Let us accept it, whether it is the dwindling morals in the society or inefficiency of existing laws, we have completely failed to address the issue of corruption in particular and good governance at large. Existing institutions and laws have failed to bring any sort of relief to the common man.

This movement asked the government to carry out its constitutional obligations, is this holding the government at ransom? Demanding the parliament to provide  good ,clean governance is blackmail? You decide!

Allegation/LIE 2: Parliament is Supreme/ No citizen is above parliament/ Parliament will decide what laws to make and not people

First and foremost, it is indeed a matter of shame that even the most well read  people in this country do not understand what is so wrong with statements like "Parliament is above all".

So let me take the opportunity to clear airs about this grave misconception.

India adopted a parliamentary form of democracy with a written constitution, some of us may wonder that  constitution has to be a written piece only and what is so special about it!

But the truth is not all the countries in world have a written constitution, the biggest example being United Kingdom where mere conventions established over years are cited for working of the parliament and establishing rule of law.

So what is so peculiar about a written constitution?

a) There is a separation of powers between various organs of the government i.e Legislative, Executive and Judiciary , and none of the organs has authority to overpower the other. In simple words all three organs enjoy their own powers and status, and there is no big or small among them.

b) All the organs of the government draw their authority from the constitution.What that basically means is that all the actions of the 3 organs of the government have to be in conformity with the constitution. So much so that if any law made by  the 'Supreme Parliament' if found to be against the basic values of constitution can be declared null and void by the Judiciary. (Protector of Indian Constitution)

WE THE PEOPLE adopted this Constitution

Without going into other intricacies of the constitution, all I wish to convey is that Constitution and not Parliament of this country is supreme.

Now,who adopted the constitution?

'We the people', and what does this all mean?

Citizens of this country,the ones who adopted the constitution are supreme and not the parliamentarians who are mere servants of public to fulfill their aspirations.

So what is wrong when Arvind Kejriwal says "Every Citizen of this country is above the parliament" ?

The above particular statement was misinterpreted to such an extent that some people went on to call Kejriwal a dictator in spirit.

A particular Facebook post which I came across termed him as 'gold standard of stupidity', unfortunately people making such comments never took their Civics Lessons in School seriously.


Allegation 3: Anna Hazare will lead this country to chaos

This is probably, the biggest joke I have heard. The country is being rocked by scams where money as huge 1.76 lac crores (how many zeroes?) is being siphoned off and we don't call that as chaos?

Discussing 2G Scam became favorite pastime of all the news anchors 

Assets of MP's have multiplied by over 1000 times in 5 years, is this not chaos?

We as a society have already hit the rock bottom and cannot go further down in our moral fabric, if there is one way that is only up the ladder.

If at all anything, this movement has strengthened our democracy, brought people from nook and corner of this country to fight for a cause and that is good governance.


Allegation 4: Anna is just good in condemning politicians, why doesn't he contest elections himself?

Do we mean to say that any person willing to change anything about this country must go and contest elections? Is fighting elections that easy? Or is it the only way one can contribute to society?

Do people making such claims even know how much money goes into contesting elections, and no I am not talking about the expenses shown to Election Commission but the real ones that go into buying liquor and meet.

Liquor Seized during Punjab Elections from a candidate's house

Even Mahatma Gandhi did not fight elections or take up a political post, infact he wanted Congress to be dissolved after attaining freedom because he was way above all the petty politics and aspirations of a particular title or post in the country.

Civil society  and mass participation all over the world has been recognized as one of the most important tool of democracy and we are ridiculing it as anti-democratic?

Allegation 5: Now anyone can come on to street and ask for his demands to be met

For people making such claims, I invite them to Jantar Mantar in Delhi. There are in numerous people fasting unto death for getting their demands fulfilled, and not surprisingly government doesn't give a damn.

Irom Sharmila of Manipur has been fasting for past 11 years, has government even cared to go and talk to her?

The fact is it is the anger and frustration of masses which found a vent through this movement, and that is precisely what got the ruling government worried and jeopardize their stand on the issue.

This movement is no longer about an Anna or a Kiran Bedi , it never was, it is about 'We the People'.

Leading such movements needs a charisma and personality which only few people like Anna Hazare and Loknayak J.P have, not every Tom ,Dick and Harry can garner such huge support for such a cause.

Allegation 6: Anna's claim of one Lokpal eradicating Corruption is just a mirage

True, Lokpal is not a panacea for all the problems, but so is not just sitting idle and doing nothing about it. Our current institutions and laws have failed miserably, and what we need is an independent autonomous body to look into charges of corruption against the civil servants. Anna Hazare did not invent the concept of Lokpal, this has been on anvil for last 43 years (what is your age?) .

In 1968, the First Administrative Reforms Commission headed by Dr.Morarji Desai recommended setting up on an independent Lokpal and a Lokayukta, thereafter several expert committees headed by eminent jurists, bureaucrats, parliamentarians and who's who of Indian democracy have recommended setting up of an independent body like Lokpal at centre and Lokayuktas in state.

Why have the successive governments not acted upon it firmly all these years? I do not need to state the reason. Yes, one Lokpal is not going to bring 'Ram Rajya' but atleast it will be a starting point, remember Rome was not built in a day.

I can go on and on refuting such baseless arguments being put forward by a large number of 'Intellectuals' and 'Saviors of Democracy' but the bottomline is 'We the People' need to think what is right and wrong for us.

What we know for sure is Anna Hazare and this movement have won when  the highest TRP ratings are gathered by LokSabha Channel (winter session) and not some channel showing saas-bahu soaps.

More on this later.


P.S: This post has been written over a period of 2-3 months, so kindly excuse for the disjointed approach.

I will not vote!

62.5, 80%, 45%.  No these are not marks secured by a student in school examinations, these are not even some random numbers generated by MS excel. These are the voting percentages in recently concluded State Assembly Elections (UP,Manipur,Meghalaya) and Civic polls (Maharashtra)

Chandauli, one of the worst affected districts in Uttar Pradesh by Naxalism registered a record voter turnout of 62.5%. The same district where close to 13 policemen were blown up by Naxals in broad day light.Manipur, a state that was affected by a shut down of more than 100 days last year registered 80% voter turnout. 

Such scenes are a daily affair in Naxal belt of India

Brihan Mumbai, the richest civic ward in India registered a dismal and shameful 45% voter turn out. Times Of India paints an even dismal picture of other places in Mumbai , “The tony neighbourhoods of Colaba, Churchgate and Cuffe Parade repeated their past record with a measly turnout of 34 per cent, the lowest in the city."

Richest Civic Wara in the country

I am not going to discuss reasons of low voter turnout in such an affluent part of 'Shining' and 'Rising' India and leave that to Arnab Goswami and likes of him , in fact I don't have reasons to explain such apathy. And before Mumabikars point their guns at me saying that I am a Delhihite and blah blah... Delhi too has registered pathetic voter turn outs in past, and why only Delhi? Make it most of the bigger metros in India.I am just going to talk about  the sheer apathy and ignorance people have about the 'Right to Vote', for very few people actually know what it took for our forefathers to get this right.  

The duties or responsibilities of a citizen in a Democratic Society can be separated into two parts:

a) Mandatory responsibilities, such as paying taxes;
b) Duties not demanded by law, such as voting.

The right to vote is a duty and responsibility, as well as a privilege. Modern democracies, including the India , extend the right to vote to almost all responsible adult citizens. Infact One Person One vote is said to be the most important pillar of modern day democracies.

So why do these people not vote? Their must be some compelling reasons right? For so many reasons, they do not bother to vote, preferring instead to let others decide for them how their futures will unfold. Yet, there are other countries in the world where people are protesting, fighting and even dying for their right to vote. Let us explore a few reasons cited
         
Reason 1: All politicians are criminals/ There are no good people in politics/ Politics is a dirty game/ I will not support criminals blah blah....

From one of my twitter feeds

The fact is if all politicians are criminals and everyone standing up for elections are bad then so are you because as they say in Hindi  'Yatha Raja tatha Praja'. Why blame them alone ? What have we done to clean up politics and the 'System'?  Slept on an election day ?

How many of these people actually knew that there were as many as 79 citizen candidates which stood up in Mumbai Civic Polls? Parties like LokSatta (read about them here:http://www.loksatta.org/cms) managed to get only 2000 votes.
The fact is these people did not even make an effort to know who are the candidates, since they are already wearing tinted glasses of their prejudices.

Reason 2: What difference is one vote going to make? If I won't someone else would.
Many people argue that their votes do not count. They point to the 121 crore voters in this country and to the electoral system as proof that no individual vote counts.

Our country has adopted a first past the post system for elections i.e If there are 3 candidates and 100 votes are polled, it is not necessary for the winning candidate to get 50 votes (majority) rather he can win if he has the highest votes (even 33% would do in this case), in a Multi-Party Democracy like ours latter situation is more common.

One vote does not matter?

Basically, not voting takes away the “will of the majority that governs this country, and replaces it with the will of the minority”.

The worst thing is  that people with such excuses do not even know that they are biggest culprits in sending the criminals to our legislatures.

"The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all."- John Fitzgerald Kennedy


Reason 3: Voting is too much an effort, have to stand in long queues/ Polling booth is very far from my house, I don't have a conveyance.
I am sure people with such complaints would surely have better conveyance than them..

People in Pilibhit (UP) crossing river Sharda to caste their votes

and shorter queues than them..

People queue up outside a polling booth in Firozabad, UP

People offer a variety of reasons for ducking this responsibility, yet all of them amount to excuses. Still, those who refuse their duty feel no restriction on their right to complain. They will not voice their opinions when it matters, yet feel entitled to express them at all other times.

Call it ignorance or apathy

Wars still rage so that citizens of other countries can earn this right; the right that many of us now take for granted. 

Thousands laid their lives in Arab countries to get the Right to Vote 

"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference and undernourishment." - Robert Hutchins, Former Dean at Yale

My name is BOND- SHANE BOND

One bowler whom I could watch bowling for hours. 

His smooth and silky action,fiery pace, ability to swing the ball both the ways, the fact that cricket was never an option but passion for him and no non-sense approach on field made him special.

And what made him more special was spells like these.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/605045.html

I had a pretty simple motto. I would just keep running in even when I was knackered. I remember never wanting to let the batsman feel I'd eased off. I remember thinking, "Well, if it's not going to be me, it's going to be no one."

Fitting the pieces together

India is a perfect microcosm of this world. This one sentence can easily sum up everything I’d like to say. Yet words fall short when I want to explain each constituent unit of this mosaic. Mosaic! Yes! That is the perfect metaphor!

Just like each cell in a mosaic is distinguished from the other by narrow spaces and spells its individual identity, each characteristic of our country stands apart showcasing its beauty, its exclusiveness.

Geography, climate, language, religion, race, culture, festivals, food, beliefs, values all exhibit their variety in abundance. This variety adds to the strength of its concrete foundation.

However, in recent times some of the constituent units have begun to complain about their position in the picture frame. They believe that not having been given a central position or lying somewhere on the periphery has reduced their value or undermined their contribution. To realize their aims these components struggle to emerge out of their defined space and cloud the complete image. What they forget in their entire pursuit is that an image is a two dimensional array. Sticking out may mean distorting the complete image and becoming “the ugly part” of it!

The importance of the peripheral objects in a picture frame is immense. It can tell the difference between a day and a night, a warrior and a sailor, a glad and a sad face, an angel and a daemon and most importantly between togetherness and disharmony.

India from time immemorial has portrayed a picture of peace with strength, of compassion with courage and of grace with valour which makes each and every cell on the periphery play its own part to conserve the true essence of this incredible image! The incredible India!

I hope that one day the people of this exquisite land will learn to look beyond the confinements of their cells and remember that just like living cells have the autonomy to remain selectively permeable they also have the distinction of being differentiated to perform their individual and specific tasks!

Commonwealth Games: A numbers perspective

I have been itching to write this blog entry from the time Commonwealth Games 2010,Delhi came to a close. I will not be giving any gyaan on how a certain Suresh Kalmadi was made the scapegoat of a highly corrupt and inefficient state machinery and nor try and explore the reasons why sewage system of games village was blocked.

What I will be doing is presenting plain simple facts and numbers most of you would have come across but probably wouldn’t have had enough time to play around with and analyze.

Fact Number 1: There were a total of 272 gold medals at stake in the games out of which a whopping 56 were in Aquatics alone, athletics was the next to follow with 52 gold medals at stake. Australia won 21 golds alone in swimming!

Fact Number 2: Australia’s overall medal tally went down by 20%  from 2006 games where they had won 221 medals  to 177 medals in CWG 2010. India on the other hand almost doubled their games medal tally to 101 medals compared to 51 medals in 2006. Canada’s total medal count went down by 13%.

Fact Number 3: Out of 52 medals in athletics Kenya alone won 12 gold medals in running events.

Fact Number 4: Indian shooters grabbed 14 golds out of a total of 34 Gold Medals at stake in shooting.


Fact Number 5: India won astounding 10 Gold Medals in wrestling, collecting nearly half of the 21 Gold medals on stake across various categories .

Fact Number 6: Northern Ireland despite sending out an overall weak contingent for the games pipped India for the top spot in boxing events with 3 golds and 2 silvers compared to host nation’s 3 golds and 3 bronze.

My take on above numbers:

#1. Nations which one would term as developed, having a good sports infrastructure and conducive to development of sports etc. have actually dropped down in their share of medals and so called “Third World” countries have been catching up fast.

#2. India finished second in the overall medals tally owing to more number of gold medals as compared to England but we need to start focussing on the right games to get closer to Australia, we can no longer ignore Aquatics and Athletics with as many as 108 gold medals on stake out of total 272.

  Is this the state of Indian Swimming?

#3. Do Infrastructure and the amount of money which goes into the sport academies etc., really have a big role to play in number of medals earned at international sporting events? I agree that they do have a correlation with performance in long term, but what explains excellent showing of countries like Nigeria and Kenya?

 Kenya won 12 Gold Medals in running events

#4. Indian shooters and boxers have become major contributors to India’s medal tally at International sporting events but it is to be seen for how long will the dragon be silent in these two sports and let countries like India walk away with medals.

#5. Indian culture of breeding pehalwaans in akhada’s since ages is finally paying off, the next step needs to be to introduce wrestling on mats in all of these akhadas(many of them have already adopted) to make India a wrestling powerhouse like Eastern European countries.

The Age Old Indian Akhaadas are finally showing their worth

#6. Indian women won 13 gold medals in total compared to 6 golds in 2006 edition, which is a heartening fact for a nation that has taken more than two decades to get women reservation bill passed in its parliament.

#7. Our performance in athletics deserves a special mention with our athletes gathering as many as 12 medals (2 gold,3 silver and 7 bronze), this surely is a key takeaway for India from these games.

#8. And finally with all due to respect to all the athletes who took part in the games, the games were nowhere close to being a world class event.A look at comparison of games timings with Olympics and world record timings tells how substandard is the level of these games compared to other international events.

Swimming -Men’s 200 m breaststroke 1:55.58 (CWG 2010): 1:53.94(Olympics 2008)
Swimming -Men’s 400 m freestyle 4:05.7 (CWG 2010): 3:41.86(Olympics 2008)
Track and Field: Men’s 200 m 20.45 (CWG 2010): 19.30 (Olympics 2008)
Track and Field :Men’s 800 m 1:46.60 (CWG 2010): 1:44.65(Olympics 2008)
Track and Field: 400 m Hurdles 48.52 (CWG 2010): 47.25 (Olympics 2008)

  The Perennial Question

But without getting into the above debate further the silver lining is that these games could indeed be a turning point in Indian sports history pretty much like the 1996 Cricket World Cup was for Indian Cricket, but then instead of resting on laurels of CWG 2010 we need to get ready for 2016 Olympics at Rio because London 2012 are too close to expect any miracles.

Though special attention is needed towards development of sporting infrastructure and bringing in sponsorship for our athletes, money spent necessarily does not translate to number of medals won.
A very peculiar case supporting the over argument is that of England, England won only one more gold medal than they did in CWG 2006 inspite of spending close to 500 million pounds in preparation for CWG 2010.

Time to put money to Social Causes?

That amount of exorbitant money for one gold medal surely doesn't seem right, some of us may argue that 4 years is too short a time for any kind of substantial results to show up but one cannot rule out the possibility of this correlation.

We need to learn from mistakes of others and need to realize that building passion for sports is equally important as building up infrastructure for sports.

A whole lot of questions still lurk over the performance of India in sporting events and it would be interesting to see how things shape up in future.