Of a political idea...

There is a reason I rarely write about politics, even though I'm hyper- aware of a lot of things that happen in that field- there are too many people on my link list who write so much better about it, and know so much more than me.

I also don't know too much about Sri Lankan politics, but this is a very powerful article written by one of those people I have mentioned above, and an even more powerful stream of thought... PseudoRandom mentioned in the comments section of said blog post about spoiling the vote. That's a new and interesting concept to me, since in India we're just trying to get people to go and vote... the new concept for the state legislative body election was to go to the election booth, and opt not to vote, in which case we could take a form and give our reasons as to why we were refraining from voting- exercise our power to not vote... it's always been there, but most people did not know about it.

The general elections are coming up in India, and this is a crucial time for our country- food is getting more and more expensive, terrorists are making a regular living off us, and the economy is sliding out of control... not to mention the ever present Pakistan, and now the even greater threat of the Taliban in our backyard. The Americans are sleeping, and why should it bother them anyway? It's the regular Indian that's getting battered, after all. We need a strong, decisive government that can steer us out of this mess, counter the threat of Taliban, and that of internal insurgency, and put the bread and milk back on our tables.

What the campaign suggests, however, is a horrible nightmare- a fractured polity, where alliances are being made based more on the petty rules of give- and- take, rather than national unity and integrity.

This article began as a comment to the article I have linked to above, but the thought presented there excited me enough to write a post on it. Spoiling a vote... what I take it to mean is that as voters we make sure there is no absolute majority, keeping store by the adage that tells us that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Such an experiment is not possible in India at the moment, where there are no guarantees about who will win, since unlike the current Sri Lankan government, ours has really not achieved anything that has put the entire nation in a mood of joyous celebration. Of course, uptil now, what I understood about spoiling the vote was to just put an ugly slash across the ballot sheet, but this will also not be possible in India anymore since we now use electronic voting machines.

In Sri Lanka, however, this interesting concept can be put to good effect, if enough people participate. This is how it goes- everyone there is quite enamoured by the Mahinda Rajapakse- lead government, due to their success in the prolonged civil war, and will most probably go ahead and vote for them, so my friend here has asked his fellow Sri Lankans to either not vote at all, or vote for an opposition party, so that a democratic system of checks and balances is maintained, and the current ruling party does not get an overwhelming majority, which he says has lead to much abuse of power in the past.

It’s a situation that has occurred previously in India- in 1971, Mrs. Indira Gandhi won the elections with a tremendous mandate, and became the Prime Minister. Four years later, the Allahabad High Court declared her election to the Lok Sabha void on grounds of electoral malpractice. The Lok Sabha is the lower house of the Indian Parliament, and a prime minister must be either a member of this, or the upper house to continue to remain in office. Since it banned her from competing in elections for six years, this decision effectively removed her from office. However, Mrs. Gandhi had then refused to vacate her office, leading to mass protests all over the country, and a state of civil disobedience. In 1975, to hang on to power, she declared a state of emergency due to internal disorder, and within a few months the entire country was under direct central control.

Well, you can imagine what followed- Mrs. Gandhi used the emergency provisions to grant herself extraordinary powers, and even replaced chief ministers from her party who had an independent power base with those who were personally loyal to her, most of the opposition was jailed, crippled the system at so many levels that she was able to rule by decree, and even initiated the clearing of slums around Delhi's Jama Masjid area, which allegedly left thousands of people homeless and hundreds killed, and led to communal embitterment in those parts of the nation's capital; Oh, yeah- the family planning program which forcibly imposed vasectomy on thousands of fathers and was often poorly administered. Of course, the press was also heavily censored. My parents tell me that the all the major national dailies had started printing newspapers with the editorial section left blank as a mark of protest, but the government couldn’t stomach this either, so the press was heavily bashed up as well.

After twice extending the emergency, she went back to the people, hoping for vindication, however, the public chose democracy over dictatorship.

Well, her story continued, and she came back once again to rule the country, but there, Dear All, is an example of how completely power can corrupt. I wonder what it would have been like if this whole spoiling- the- vote thing had been practised when she was originally elected...

There is also this other point about the on going general election in my country that I find quite amusing... well, the situation itself is not amusing, it’s just that elections time can truly change a politician’s nature... the Sri Lankan civil war has always been a touchy topic in the land of Tamil Nadu, but now that the band of terrorists are facing an ouster from the Island Nation it is even more emotive. People who were earlier clearly calling Mr. Prabhakaran a terrorist, are now a little more careful with what they say, and the focus has, of course, shifted to the Tamil origin civilians caught in the war.

Another interesting aspect to this is that the current central government is run by the Indian National Congress, whose boy wonder Rajiv Gandhi (very competent prime minister) was assassinated by the LTTE for openly supporting the Sri Lankan government over the so called ‘Indian brothers’. His son, and current poster boy Rahul Gandhi has clearly stated that he has no sympathies with the LTTE, and that he will never forgive them. The government has asked for Mr. Prabhakaran to be tried in India if he’s found alive. God forbid- I can just imagine the drama.

In fact, I hope the bastard is found with a bullet lodged in his brain. Life will be so much simpler.
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In other news, I wrote a Financial Management exam yesterday, and I don’t believe I’ve ever written a worse paper. Thankfully, the look of shock was visible on every face after leaving the examination hall. There were even some tears shed.

Please, God, please- I must pass.

Dear Reader, I ask you, please pray for me.

May this be a new year

Firstly, I want to wish you all the happiest of times in the coming year. May you be blessed with good health, contentment, success, peace, acceptance, and love. I hope you don't just have a wonderful year ahead, but make it so for others as well.

A new year... I was always thrown off by the change in the dates... now we're in 2009, not eight, it'll probably take me until February to remember to write it correctly.

This new year, however, I'm surprised at myself. I'm actually waiting- waiting for so many events and occasions- almost all of them a continuation of the previous year, of course.

The US will get a new president, one whom the entire world seems to be pinning their hopes on, poor guy. It's ironic that almost the entire world was hoping this guy would win- including himself, I'm sure, and now that he has, he has to stop the same world from annihilating itself, which is also something it seems hell bent on doing. I wonder if he can make some sense out of all that's happening though, because if not, we'll be in it for the very long haul. He doesn't have a magic wand, though, and we'll all have to pull our own weight if we want to hear any good news before the end of this year.

The one question is, whether or not we'll be able to prevent a full scale world war... or is that a matter of perspective, I wonder, since there are various degrees of war already happening in different parts of Africa, the middle east, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh?

There's also the economic slowdown. Well, it's a slowdown here, in the west it's more like recession, really

I wonder if Roger Federer will win back his No. 1 position on the ATP rankings, or if Rafael Nadal will manage to hold him off again. I personally want Roger to win all the four slams this year- not that I don't like Rafa, because truth be told I can never decide who I'm supporting when they're having it off against each other- it's actually pretty torturous, being forced to watch as a neutral party just because I cannot decide who I like more. I just think that Rafa won Wimbledon last year, so Roger should win at Roland Garros in 2009. He (rafa) just lost his quarter final match to Gaël Monfils of France at the Qatar Open, by the way.

Then there's cricket! I'm pretty sure Australia will not continue to be the world champs this year as well. I'm not feeling particularly vindictive about it, though- what do you expect if all the best players on this planet, who just happened to be on that team, suddenly retire en masse? It's bound to happen, but I'm glad to see that there is more than one team willing to slug it out for the top spot- and in all three forms of the game, no less. Yay for good cricket! :P Yayay for good cricket played by India! :D

The most important thing this year though, as opposed to all the previous ones, is that now we, the people, will have to stand up and be counted. We must now speak out, because as our carefully built worlds crumble around us, we have a choice to make. A choice that few have had to make before us, and one that will determine the course of our many races on this planet and in history. There are many questions that will be asked of us by those who inherit time from us. Who are we? Are we the people who stood by and watched as women were raped and children orphaned? Did we step up and protest while the poor and helpless became even poorer and more helpless as the wealthy became wealthier? Were we there to stop needless destruction of man, animal and planet? Did we put a stop to it? What did we do? It is time now to make our voices heard, for there will come a time not so far in the future when we will have to ask ourselves these questions.

There is something called the 'Responsibility to Protect', the intervention by external actors (preferably the international community through the UN) in a state that is unwilling or unable to prevent or stop genocide, massive killings and other massive human rights violations. The responsibility of a state to protect the citizens of another country, in case their own government cannot, or will not, do so. I believe that each of us has just such a responsibility towards every one else- If someone does not have food to eat, no matter where the live, then it is us that have failed our duty of care. It is us. We are responsible, for the simple reason that we can think and feel, and because we have knowledge of exactly what is happening in different parts of the world, now.

For years and years, humanity has been a silent sentinel to it's own destruction, whether it lie in religion, race or gender- whether it be in concentration camps, colonial fantasies or the lack of universal suffrage. Those who came before us have let it happen, and we have judged them harshly. It is time for us to right the wrongs- so today, and every day after today, ask yourself how did you help. Choose to be the person we need- choose to be courage, choose to be hope, choose to be truth, choose to be faith, choose to be charity, choose to be love, choose to be perseverance, choose to be tenacity, choose to be knowledge, choose to be thought. Choose to be the one who takes the next step forward into tomorrow. Choose to be action.

Be that change. Be that light.

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge - myth is more potent than history - dreams are more powerful than facts - hope always triumphs over experience - laughter is the cure for grief - love is stronger than death.”

- Robert Fulghum

Notes from nowhere

Hi :)

I'm in the middle of exams. Again. In fact, I just wrote a paper today, and since the muse is not happy, I think I'll just tell you all how my month has been...

Lets see, today's exam- it was interesting... yes, that's the word... a numerical problem we had to do got cancelled because it had no data available to solve it. Ten marks. We couldn't stop smiling.

:)

See what I mean?
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My cousin's wedding is coming up sometime mid December, and I'm desperately trying to lose weight. It makes me laugh that after all the times I've wondered in that holier- than- thou way about why people do things just to fit in, I'm trying to do the exact same thing. Later, I'll probably be banging on about thin models again, but for now, a quick tip or two to look a little bit like them won't go amiss.

So what's with the hypocrisy, you wonder? As do I, actually, not because I don't know what the problem is, but because I know exactly what it is. You see, it would be nice to not be ignored at this particular function. I've noticed that with some of my family, the attitude changes with how socially- acceptable you are, including amongst other factors, your dress size. Last time there was a get together with this part of my family, I was actually acknowledged- can you believe it- and the singular comment from most people who wouldn't otherwise have bothered was something along the lines of how fit I was looking... So, yes, I'd quite like to be acceptable again, thank you.
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The weather in Delhi's become even more annoying than usual these days. Earlier, we just got baked for eight months and frozen for two. Now we're served toasted in the day time, and chilled through the late evenings and nights. It's probably the reason for the bizarre cases of flu in the city, anyway- it happens to be a strain that just won't get cured. Or maybe we just keep relapsing without first getting fixed.
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I registered as a voter a while back, but have still not received my electoral card... wonder when it'll finally turn up, if at all.

Oh, and on the mention of politics, I saw a poster on the college notice board today put up by the Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) asking the teachers to join in a demonstration to protest against the 'undemocratic' attempt of the vice chancellor to introduce the semester system into under graduation programs. Undemocratic my ass. They're just resentful that they'll now have to actually do some work and be held accountable, the deceitful, double dealing old frauds.
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My Marketing Research teacher told me today that she'd like to get our project published.

:) :) :)
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This has got to be the most disjointed piece I've ever written.
Oh, yes,
Thank you for putting up with me.

The Order of the Billion Clones

I went to a wedding party today. The gentleman whose daughter was to get married, has two children- a son, who is the elder one, and the said daughter. A few months ago, we also attended his Son's marriage. His wife, apart from being breathtakingly gorgeous, also hails from the North East side of India, a fact which caused much argument between the Father and Son, because somebody told the Father that women from that part of our country are not of 'good moral character'. The situation was, in fact, so bad that they eloped. The Son with his girlfriend, I mean, not the Father- Son duo.

When I was in XIth grade (the year we have to choose our subject stream in India from amongst Science, Commerce, and Humanities) I was forced to take up science, even though I wanted to do commerce because of my mother's insistence. I later almost had a breakdown before I shifted to commerce. Not that my parents were waiting for such a dire situation- they could see that I could not keep up with the demands of the science stream, and had asked me to reconsider, but I did want to give it another try. I'm today studying a set of commerce based subjects, and the above mentioned situation is probably the reason my base concepts are still slightly confused, not that I blame my mother for it.

Currently, I'm doing a project on how parental pressure affects students in general, and their choices in academics in particular. Honestly, I never knew people could be such absolute hypocrites. While surveying for people's opinions, parents often said to me "I don't actually agree with that, but it'll sound so bad if I say so..", because you see, we just want our children to go into 'respectable' professions, and be doctors, or engineers, or lawyers, and we will do almost anything to make sure our child 'knows' what we want... however, we don't want to come across as domineering and authoritarian. It'll look so bad.

They explained that to me, and went on to check one of the other options on the questionnaires.

Of course, it's wrong, or let's say inexact, to only blame parents for such situations... our parents also have to answer to their families, their friends, the neighbours, the postman, etc. I'm not just taking a dig- for those not familiar with the Subcontinent, this really is the case. The answer to 'What will people say?' drives most decisions here. It's the reason why there was such a row over some poor girl's ethnicity- after all, someone said that people from her home- region are not well brought up, so of course, everyone else must also think something alike. We cannot associate with that girl- she'll bring a bad name to the family, never mind that my Son is in love with her.

And sometimes, it gets really strange, and on so many levels- a really close friend wished to take up Mathematics Honors as her graduation degree subject, She even got through to some really good colleges for that subject, however, her parents refused to let her- not by forbidding it outright, but they were upset and insistent, and, well... there was just one way for her to go from there. All through school, the brightest kid is the one who does well in Math, and suddenly, once we're out of school, it's not a good enough option anymore- why? Oh, you see, the greatest opportunity is in the field of commerce, or business- so now you're compelled, even obligated, to take that up.

Then there is this friend, Z, who really wanted to pursue Mass Communications, and got through to the personal interview process of the best course for that subject on offer in India. The interviewers took one look at her school- leaving examination's mark sheet and asked her, dumbfounded, "Par Beta, apke to 92% aaye hain! Aap yeh kyun karna chahte ho?" (But, my child, you've scored 92% marks- why do you want to take up this course?). Z raised an eyebrow, and asked if the course was not good enough for somebody with a good (great) percentage, to which they hastily (and unconvincingly) responded that of course it was...
The point is, an unconventional course, or one that is considered to be 'professional', apart from the regular Engineering, Law, etc., is only meant for students who don't score well enough to go anywhere else. The idea that somebody may actually want to study that subject due to free will is blasphemous.

Why does this keep happening to us? I know that our parents' want what is best for us, but so what? Don't we also aspire to the very best on offer as well? Isn't it a natural human tendency to gravitate towards the best available opportunity, whichever that may be for our individual selves? So whether it is our life partner, or the subjects we choose to study, should we not have a greater- No, the greatest- say in who or what we choose, and how we select that pick? After all, who can know us better than ourselves?

Well, the most important, I guess, is the fact of our financial dependence on them and secondly, our parents definitely want to save us from regret- you know, that potent (and rather dread- inducing, if exercised by somebody other than yourself on your life) question of 'what if?'.
What if I had done what everyone asked me to do? Would I be better off today? Would I be happier? More financially secure? Would my marriage work better? Would I own the house that I want, and the best car available? Would I?

To answer these, I will have to turn to those stores of such infinite and apt wisdom, Google, and my favourite, Professor Albus Dumbledore-

"The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed ..."

I love the man, I really do. I first read that line as an eleven year old, and have never second guessed my actions since- or tried not to, in any case. My mum says something similar, but since the applications of her theory are somewhat confined only to shopping, I shall refrain from quoting it here. And besides, Dumbledore said it first.

That reminds me, that we are also studying Public Relations as a subject, and our idea for the project suddenly went kaput, and so we had to hurriedly come up with new suggestions... One of my five other ideas was to look into 'The Harry Potter Alliance', and all their PR activities, since I found the concept really interesting, and their Board of Directors are available on public forums such as Facebook, etc.

They take the concepts presented in JK Rowling's books' and apply them to regular every day global problems such as poverty, free media, discrimination, government unaccountability, etc.

So, what happened?

I started getting panicked calls from the other members of my group, to tell me that we absolutely cannot do a project on 'Harry Potter'- "I mean, come on, how childish! It has to be a good project, yaar (my friend), we must get full marks in it. There's just no way I'm submitting a project on Harry Potter!" When I asked them if they're familiar with what the HP Alliance does, they were clueless, however, they wished to be taken seriously, and therefore would not be associated with anything to do with 'Harry Potter', no matter how interesting the project actually turned out to be. They even made sure I had nothing to do with that project anymore- since we're doing all other projects together, they asked me to concentrate on another subject, while somebody else handled PR. My greatest problem with this was that nobody even bother to go through the links I sent them, or any of my other suggestions.

So how can I say that our parents' are the only ones affected by social perception and the pressure to conform?

Help! My text book is in Latin!

Hello, again :)

Yes, I know I should be studying, thank you. I've actually even confirmed the syllabus. I also know 'studying' entails more than just staring at the cover page, and then the index. However, I've given it up as a bad job. Seriously, it's all incomprehensible gibberish.

How is it possible that after an entire half- semester of attending almost every accounts class regularly, I still cannot fathom what's been printed in the book? There's no other explanation for it- I mean, I know I'm rubbish at Math and stuff, but seriously, this is taking it a little too far (shh!)- I think they've printed it in Latin. (I said, hush!)

It's all a conspiracy. They just want to trip poor unsuspecting students into doing quant- based subjects again and again. It's their secret torture weapon. Didn't I always say Math teachers are terrorists in disguise? Well, look, here you have the proof! They get all these books printed in obscure foreign languages, to baffle people like me, and then a few chosen ones actually get the classified codes to solve the questions. They're building an army to take over the world.

I know.

Meanwhile, another case has been solved. Did you always want to know what happened between spinner Harbhajan Singh of the Mumbai Indians and paceman Shanthakumaran Sreesanth of the Kings XI Punjab during their Indian Premier League tie at Mohali? Here is the sensational answer!

The view from outside

Yesterday, while travelling in the Delhi Metro from North Campus to I. S. B. T., I found myself in a compartment full of pro- Tibetan demonstrators. They were all Buddhist monks, and carrying Tibetan flags. Some of the younger lot had 'Free Tibet' and such like painted on them in black.


I debated with myself on whether to ask them some questions or not...
Do it!


No.. it'll just look strange...


Just do it! ! !


NO! Everyone's looking!


Look, just stuff it up your-



"Excuse me, may I please ask you some questions about your movement? If it's not a problem... "

Oh, right...

The guy I had spoken to seemed surprised, but agreed anyway.



Yeah, right, like the poor bloke had a choice, with you doing your Rita skeeter act... Skeeter never said ‘excuse me’. Oh, just shut up, and concentrate...


Well, yes, I did kind of ASSAULT him with questions, actually.

Q1. So, do you want independence or autonomy?

Ans. Independence..


Q2. But, the Dalai Lama says he'd like autonomy...

Ans. Yes, but we want independence...

Q3. So.. do you think the furore about the Olympic torch around the world will help?

Ans. Yes, I believe so...

Q4. And what about world leaders debating about whether or not to attend the Games? The German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for example, do you think it'll work in your favour, or do you think it'll make China more brutal?

Ans. Yes, I think it's good...


Well, I could barely wait for the guy to get his answers out, and I was already asking my next. Honestly, I didn't even know I was that interested in the subject... Meanwhile, he was getting more and more flustered, which I finally realised, and said thank you before moving away slightly.



Then I realised, I hadn't asked him a rather important question, and went on to do so belatedly:



Q5. Excuse me, I'm sorry, but could you please tell me if you're a citizen of India or Tibet?

Ans. I'm Bhutanese.

I later realised I should have asked him if they were all from Bhutan.

Maybe five hours after this I told a group of friends about my encounter, and though initially interested, one of them told me, "You know, you should not speak to these people, these chink- eyed people, they're mostly prostitutes and drug addicts. You should be careful."

When I reminded her that they were monks, she shook her head and said "No, I live in North Campus, I know all about this. They're all mostly Pro's and druggists"


I didn't point out the contradiction in her sentence, and in any case, I didn't really know what to say to that, so I kept quiet, and let them change the topic of the conversation.

Later, I wished I'd said something, anything- to defend these 'chink- eyed' people.