A USA based NRI- Dr Themplangad- has filed a writ petition against Indians Railways to improve practices of human excreta disposal as the current practices of disposing excreta in the open is not healthy and environmental friendly. Good job! We actually need many more such actions to improve civic amenities back home. Here is the link to this article published online on rediff.com on Januuary 28, 2007.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/jan/28rail.htm

Atanu Dey (http://www.deeshaa.org/) has written this beautiful critique on Indian voters. Whereas we Indians typically like to bask in the glory of our past, this is a slightly different prespective. He makes a valid point, though I think the helplessness of Indian voter is partly due to the lack of reforms in our electoral process.

I am never quite sure why people insist that the Indian democracy is so great. To me it appears to be the greatest curse imposed on India from up on high. It is totally politically (sic) incorrect to take this view, of course. But I don’t apologize for believing so and I am convinced that the Indian voter is corrupt.
Rajesh Jain’s blog has an item on lessons from India’s elections which got me thinking. The claim made by Shekhar Gupta of the Indian Express is that India’s voter has become smart.
Compared to whom? I ask. Compared to Shekhar Gupta?
I guess so since Shekhar Gupta claims that the Indian voter has become smart. For I don’t see any reason to believe that the Indian voter has changed in any substantial way. The Indian voter continues to be a narrow-minded, ignorant, casteist, bigoted, vacuous idiot it has always been.
Here is my reasoning.
Exhibit A: I look at the politicians of this country. To a first approximation, they are ignorant, bigoted, casteist, vacuous idiotic criminals. These bunch of unspeakable criminals (where I use the word in its literal sense) are consistently voted into power by the Indian voter.
Fact B: A population of wise, informed, well-meaning, broad-minded, intelligent voters cannot continue to vote a bunch of corrupt ignorant bigots as their political leaders.
Major Premise C: Voters reveal their character by expressing their preferences at the polls.
Minor Premise D: Leaders are endogenous to the group, that is, they emerge from within the group and so reflect the dominant traits of the group. Mr Gupta writes that the voter is not swayed by charisma. Well, how would we know? We need charismatic people first and then if the voter is unmoved, we can say that it is true.
We do know that the Indian voter is swayed by “big names”, though. Why else would they trot out an uneducated chap (Rahul Gandhi) as the Congress mascot unless they were confident that the Indian voter will be swayed?
What else explains the tenacity with which the entire Nehru-Gandhi clan is totally into getting into the highest political positions? By their indomitable courage? No. Their astonishing brilliance in academics? None are really even educated. Their thorough understanding of the problems of development? Never done an honest day’s work. Their undying dedication to the hard task of nation building? Shirley, you jest. Their selfless sacrifice demonstrated by their social work? Not a bloody chance in hell.
What then explains the astonishing idiocy of the Indian voter to continue to vote the Nehru-Gandhi clan to power?
Let’s face the facts. I would have loved to report that we are a great democracy. We are not. If we were, we would not be facing the prospect of having an Italian aupair as the prime minister of a country of 1000 000 000 people. She says that she is loyal to her adopted country (never mind that she did not apply for Indian citizen for over a decade). Well, I would ask her whether she has any loyalty to the country that she was born in. No? If a person has no loyalty towards the land of one’s birth, I would not pay a tinker’s damn to any other oath of loyalty that the person takes. If you change your allegiance once, it is all too easy to do it once again. Indians who don’t understand that simple concept are idiots and I don’t care how accomplished they may be in their respective fields. If an Indian says that Sonia’s origin is not an issue for the prime minister’s seat, I would say that Indian is a moron.
I have met only a handful of politicians personally. I have known some of them well and all of them—every one of them to the last person—has accumulated vast sums of money through bribery and corruption. It is a random sample. I have no doubt that the vast majority of Indian politicians are corrupt. Politicians are endogenous to the population. They are random samples drawn from the underlying population. In other words, the sample characteristics give an indication of the population characteristics. The corruption of the politicians is the single most damning evidence that the voters are corrupt.
That is the law.

Where do we stand in the contemporary world !

In year 2006: India ranks very low at 126 in HDI (Human Development Index) as released by the UNO.
Poverty Index is another way of looking at the things and surely we have no respectable scoring here too as we have lop-sided development in our stride so far.

Wikipedia provides the following info about these indices:

1] The Human Poverty Index is an indication of the standard of living in a country, developed by the United Nations (UN). The UN considers this a better indicator than the Human Development Index, which in turn is considered a better indicator than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

2] The Human Development Index (HDI) is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, and standard of living for countries worldwide. It is a standard means of measuring well-being, especially child welfare. It is used to determine and indicate whether a country is a developed, developing, or underdeveloped country and also to measure the impact of economic policies on quality of life.[1] The index was developed in 1990 by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and has been used since 1993 by the United Nations Development Programme in its annual Human Development Report.

I thought issues are politicized only in India, not in USA! The way the issue of il-legal immigrants is being handled with a vote in mind just reflects that vote bank politics can lure anyone!

The people and groups who are advocating to be soft towards il-legal immigrants and that a humane approach be taken towards them often say that these il-legal immigrants are doing the jobs that no one else will do and that they are contributing so much to the economy of USA. But that is not the issue. You cannot compare burglars with home-guests! And americans (or legal immigrants for that matter) will take up the jobs when there is no one else to do them. Why not! When there are no one to do a particular job, will not it be offered at a higher wages and will it not attract workers! I mean free market will balance the things.

The way the federal government is acting as a rolly-polly umpire towards il-legal immigrants, that is a certainly disheartening to right-thinking people who want to abide by rules to attain a respectful immigrant status in this country! The way an illegal mother (of a child who was born here in USA and thus became citizen) has taken shelter in a church in chicago and has ‘refused’ to leave and certain groups of people are supporting her for ethnic interests just reflects politics of populism and nothing else.

I have always considered that 3 malaises need to be fixed if we were to ‘liberate’ India. The very good thing is that we are a democracy and have over last 59 years of our electoral history has demonstrtated again and again that people’s will cannot be turned down. We have a documented history of tolerance and pluralism.

1. Electoral reforms to make democracy more accountable and ’empower’ people as we have seen that the current electoral mechanisms have actually resulted in the fiefdom of crminlas and goons and the common man has no say.
2. Corruption has to be weeded out. In this regard, the shackles of governmnet control on many things must be liberalized.
3. Even though we are a secular country ,religion has been a constant shadow in our polity. This must go. For a secular country, religion has no official place and is for personal use. You cannot divide people of a secular state into minorities and majorities and accord special rights based on religion. Uniform civil code should be implemented asap and will go a long way in ensuring a secular, equitable and just society. The National Minority Commission must go.
Gandhiji also said: ” We must get rid of the miasma of majority and minority”.

Similarly, reservation must be phased out with an aletrnative mechanism being brought into place (identify people on the basis of economic status and provide them the opportunities for education and growth). In a secular country, where is the place for identifying people as Dalits and non-dalits? Why political parties create minorities cells in their organizations (including BJP which claims its inspiration for RSS- the parent organization which refuses to identify Hindus along caste base!)!

Given below is a book review by MV Kamath. A must read for everyone.

“Insight into Minoritism” written by By Muzaffer Hussain

In almost all countries in the world, a certain segment -ethnic, religious, linguistic or ideological would be in the majority and some others would be in a minority. That is inevitable. A multi-cultural nation like the United States has its majority and minorities as well, but one seldom talks about them. The biggest minority would be the Blacks, but whoever would think of providing reservation for them in the Senate or Congress or in government service?
Indeed in older textbooks on political science there would hardly be any reference to majoritarianism and minoritarianism. These are recently-coined words. But India is different. Here we constantly talk of minorities as if they are a plague and we even have a Minority Commission! It is a carry over from British colonialism. Nobody in India talked of a majority or a minority in the days of Tipu Sultan or during hayed of Mogul rule. Hindus were even then in a majority but they were often treated as if they were non-existent. Hindus were made aware of their majority status during the time of the British, as were Muslims of their minority place in society.
That may have been a display – and a distorted one at that – of British sense of Justice, but the consequences were severe, resulting, for one thing, in partition of the country. Reference has been made to this in Muzaffer Hussain’s well-argued book Insight into Minoritism, which goes into the subject in different contexts and in some detail. Minorities have been dealt with very poorly in Pakistan and Bangladesh, India’s immediate neighbours. Hussain draws pointed attention to that.
Says Hussain: “There is a sizeable population of Hindus in the Gulf countries but those countries are not ready to give any facility to them in the name of minority or Human Rights. The Hindus are not allowed there to cremate their kith and kin as per their belief. They can’t construct places for worship nor can they celebrate their festivals at public places. During the Ramzan, non-Muslims can’t eat anything at daytime in public places. The Muslims expect to get everything as minorities in the countries of Hindus, Buddhists and Christians but in Islamic countries the minorities don’t have such privilege..”
We have to blame history for that. In India, minorities like Jews, Parsis and Christians have full freedom. No Christian missionary dare try in an Islamic country, but in India every citizen, especially if he is a tribal or one from the lower caste, is fair game to Christian missionaries. In India propagation of religion is not a crime. The freedom given is often interpreted to mean that one can resort to conversion, which is frequently resorted to in tribal areas. It started under the British when missionaries flooded the northeast and converted large number of tribals to Christianity. Unconsciously this has caused problems for free India.
Hussain damns minoritism as a “menace” which it has indeed become. Hussain maintains that Christians and Muslims in India can’t be dubbed as minorities because they are very much Indian. As he puts it: When all are born and brought up in the Indian context, the question of ‘alien’ and ‘indigenous’ people don’t arise”. Hussain’s argument is that all over the world, a minority status is granted only to those classes, which have migrated from abroad. So he says: “Hence it is not proper to designate Muslims and Christians (of India) as aliens since they, too are very much Indian”.
All are one in this country where there is one citizenship for all and everyone is a part of this nation. The word ‘minority’ Hussain asserts, weakens the unity of the country and draws a dividing line between individuals”. How right he is. Hussain is critical of Muslims in India who, he says, haven’t accepted democracy. Inevitably the Islamic world has been gripped by fanaticism and narrow thinking. The point indeed was well made by Justice Chandrashekhar Dharmadhikari in his preface. Writes Mr Dharmadhikari: “India as a nation has suffered continuous tussles between the religious and orthodox religious fanaticism even after the creation of Pakistan. How many Muslim mohallas or Madarassas hoist the national flag and sing the national anthem collectively on the occasion of Independence Day!”
How many indeed. The former Justice adds: “To accept special rights for any community along with the provisions of equal human rights are mutually contradictory principles. This creates a controversy and the majority class begins to feel unprotected and adopts a defensive mechanism”. Hussain in his treatise goes into this subject in a special and separate chapter entitled “How to tackle minoritism”, He notes that there are three distinct approaches in handling minoritism”. In the Arab world minorities like Christians and Hindus have no political or religious rights. The second category belongs to western countries where religion is recognized but the country comes first. Religion has no role in framing laws and rule. National interest alone is taken into account. In the US, 18 per cent of the people are blacks but they are not given any minority status. Britain and France solved the problem by enforcing a uniform civil code. What should India do in the circumstances?
Hussain has his answer ready. He says: A uniform civil code is the only answer.” He points out that the Fundamental Rights as enumerated in the Constitution ensure religious freedom for all. As Hussain sees it, minorities will continue to exist in one from or another anywhere in the world. That is only but natural. The term ‘Minority’ Hussain concedes, is not in itself bad, but problems arise when it is used by vested interests, As he sees it, minoritism is a ‘deception’ practiced on human civilization of which one should be aware of. And majority communalism is a myth.
In a democracy, Hussain insists, it is essential to respect the opinion of the majority in day-today life. There haven’t been many treatises on this subject and Muzaffer Hussain’s attempt, almost the first of its kind, is highly praiseworthy. He has no hesitation in asking inconvenient questions. For example he asks: “How can Muslims who form between 15 to 20 per cent of India’s population consider themselves a minority?” Not many have dared to raise this question. Hussain has. All praise to him. This is a book that our policy-makers and politicians would do well to read. It may not necessarily have all the right answers, but it certainly raises all the right questions. And isn’t that what a good study should be all about?

Book review by M. V. Kamath, Free Press Journal,155pp, Delhi: India First Foundation, Price Rs.250