Let's cure the disease; not just the symptoms

When we feel severe pain in some part of our body, we usually have two options:

1. Investigate the cause of the pain and fix it.
2. Continue to take pain-killer tablets.

Some people have been complaining that why Anna has not raised crusades against issues like hunger, poverty, lack of healthcare & education etc. Let me tell you what I think on this.

Yes, these are indeed big issues suffered by a large chunk of population of India. But these are symptoms of a disease and the root cause of all is corruption. Late Rajiv Gandhi, India's former Prime Minister, said that out of every rupee spent on development projects, only 17 paise reaches the common people (aam-aadmi) and rest 83 paise end up being sucked by corruption. We need to make sure that the remaining 83 paise reaches the intended target. 


What is the source of Government money? We pay various taxes, direct and indirect, at various times to Government. We feel very proud to contribute to nation-building. But we expect that this money is properly used and not become part of someone's Swiss bank account.


I sincerely believe that all our severe pains like hunger, poverty, lack of healthcare & education etc will go away in a corruption-free India. It's high time that we issue a Quit India notice to corruption right now.

The Selfish Life

Recently I was reading about Arvind Kejriwal, one of the leading social activists leading the fight against corruption. Arvind Kejriwal was one of the leading guys behind the Right to Information (RTI) Act too.

Arvind is an IIT Kharagpur B.Tech and then he joined civil services in 1992 as Indian Revenue Services (IRS) officer. While working with the Income Tax department, he saw the widespread corruption prevalent there. He started Parivartan, an NGO for bringing in transparency in Government.

I am also an engineer and went to one of the IITs (for my masters). But our similarities end there. After reading about Arvin Kejriwal, I have realized what a selfish life that I am living! Our lives are too materialistic nowadays. We are busy buying a house, a car and then paying mortgages (EMI) for these in remaining of our lives. We are busy thinking how to get the next salary hike and how good will be this year's bonus. We are busy replacing the our old (CRT) TVs with a LCD/LED ones. We are just busy with ourselves and no time to think about the society. We feel we live a comfortable and happy (?) life. One day we will die and no one will remember us.

Arvind Kejriwal could have led a life like ours. He was an IRS officer and could have accumulated tons of wealth like other IRS folks. But he opted for a different path. He left his own comforts so that he can make  the lives of millions of his fellow country men less miserable.

Do you also lead a selfish life? Are you happy with it?

The Great Awakening

I was born during the Emergency Period of 25th June 1975 to 21st March 1977. I never saw what emergency was; only heard about it later from others. On the morning of August 16th, we experienced some emergency like situation in India when Delhi police arrested Anna Hazare from his apartment. He wanted to go on a fast against the widespread corruption prevalent in our country. The government didn't want him to go on the fast. So they came up with numerous restrictions against his agitation.


How widespread is the corruption? Let me summarize it in one sentence. In every step from our birth to death, we face corruption. We need to bribe government officials to get the birth certificate. I heard the same is true when we try to get the death certificate!

I am an engineer working with a multi-national IT company and belong to the so-called middle class. Usually, the middle class in India have a general apathy to the direct involvement in affairs of the state.

Corruption affects everyone - middle-class or economically lower class. The poor class suffers more as corruption affects them directly in their day-to-day life.Government of India has lots of development schemes for the economically downtrodden class. But thanks to the leakage in these schemes, the real benefits never reach them! Public Distribution System (PDS) supplies subsidized food items to the poor; but it is diverted and sold in black market. NREGA gives some employment guarantee scheme to the poor; but fake identities are created who suck the benefits. (The examples of pilferage are just too many and I don't want to list them all here). On the other hand, middle class have some economic cushion that probably don't affect them so harshly like the poor people.

Let me give you my recent experience with corruption. I paid Rs 30,000/- to register my property at sub-registrar office in Bangalore. Then I again paid Rs 7,000/- to get the Khata (property ownership document) in BBMP office. I heard that there is a big nexus of builder, sub-registrar and politicians in these. (I'll write a separate blogs on these later). I knew paying bribe is bad. But then why did I choose to pay bribe? Because I knew that if I don't pay bribe, I have to make several rounds to the offices, argue with officials, my inability to speak the local language Kannada etc. I thought that time is also money. If I spend too much time visiting these offices, it will put stress on my work-life. I believe I represent the mentality of many of middle-class. We all felt bad and agitated about it; but we felt helpless.

In 2011, we have seen some big corruption cases - like CWG, 2G etc. Then came Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and their India Against Corruption campaign. Anna Hazare has awakened the sleeping middle class. Middle class is on the street these days. I have already seen that the agitation is gradually percolating down to the poorer classes. (Yesterday the Delhi auto-rickshraws joined the protest.)

I'm joining the protest for a better India, a corruption free India. Are you?

Purpose of learning history

Why do we read history in school? What is the advantage of learning our past? What benefit do we get by learning what our forefathers did many hundred centuries back?

I feel the purpose of learning history is about knowing our base, knowing our roots. Another purpose of learning history is to learn from experience and not to commit the same mistakes someone did some years back.

But interestingly, history involves some politics too. History is written in such a way so as not to cause displeasure to the rulers. Sometime same history is written and told in different way to two different audiences.  (I know the same history is presented in different way in India and Pakistan!)

History usually tells us about lots of bad things also that happened in past - wars, massacres, loot, exploitation, rape etc. Many hundred years back, people were not so civilized. There were blood-thirsty kings who always wanted to expand their kingdoms. Some people were aggressors and some people were victims. In twenty first century when we read bloody history that my ancestors were attacked by their ancestors, should we seek revenge for those misdeeds committed many hundred years back and attack their descendant now? If we follow the principle of revenge, then India should now attack England because the English men came here in 1601 to do business but then colonized and looted my country for three hundred years. Or, whole of Asia should attack Mongolia because Genghis Khan created lot of terrors here. No normal person would ever think to do these. We can't undo what has happened in history. We shouldn't try to take revenge for something that happened in past. What has happened in history has happened. We should learn from it rather than seeking to undo events in history.

But the most important question is: should we seek judicial intervention now for some of the misdeeds of history? Will the judiciary be able to resolve it? I wonder!

Me and my multi-way (m-way) stories

Recently there is an ad campaign, titled Me and Meri Maggi, going on for Maggi Noodles. This has inspired this post. I wanted to write some of my encounters with multi-way, (I sometime call them m-way), people.

Circa-2003, Place: My residence at RT Nagar, Bangalore

I was a bachelor at that time and shared the house with my brother and another friend of mine. I enjoyed sleeping till late into the morning on weekends. At around 6:30AM, someone knocked at my door. I was obviously annoyed at this unwelcome intrusion and wanted to shout at whoever was on the door. I opened the door and there was one of my friends standing at my door with one more person. I welcomed them to my small living room.

Let me tell you some background. My friend who has just come has been calling me for last couple of weeks to discuss some business plan. He called me on many weekends to attend a meeting to discuss their business plans which will be attended my many like-minded people. I asked him what is the business; he won't reveal me the type of the business...

Now I come from the wash-room and give them two glasses of water. The other person accompanying my friend asked me what is my future plan. He warned me that there were going to be much expenses in life and income from my job was not sufficient enough. So I should do some business. I was actually forewarned by a few other friends about this multi-way business. I could strongly and politely refuse them.

Circa-2004, somewhere in Sadashiva Nagar, Bangalore
Whenever I spoke to this friend of mine, he told me he had some business plan. I respected him (and still respect him). He was a brilliant guy who passed out from my college and was my senior. He earned a lot and possibly the highest paid guy amongst our contemporaries at that time. I thought he wanted to do some start-up. So I was interested. I asked him what was his business plan; but he won't tell me directly his business plan. After many conversations, I started getting a doubt that the style of discussion was going in the same way as my first story. I wondered how much money does one need. Here's the possibly best paid guy from my college and he is into this multi-way thing..



Circa 2003, Manipal Hospital, Bangalore
My younger brother was admitted into the hospital. While settling the bills, I had some interaction with a guy who handled medical insurance. We  exchanged our business cards. This guy later really pissed me off. He kept calling me for almost every alternate day for multiple weeks to attend some meeting to discuss some business plan. I had to be really rude with this guy.

May 2006, The Great Mall, Milpitas, California

I went to the Great Mall with my bhabhi. While shopping there, I came across an Indian family - husband, wife and a kid. They asked me what did I do and if I were shopping for my wife. The guy told me that he ran his own business. On hearing that, my bhabhi suddenly  pulled me away from them. I was a bit surprised as to what happened. Bhabhi tod me that these friendly-looking families are those multi-way people. Two of my friends who were also there in the mall kept talking to them. The family took the hotel phone numbers of my friend and reached our hotel in the evening with a box. Yes, their business plan start with a box. :-)

Feb-March 2008, Castro Street, Mountain View, California

My friend was enjoying a walk in  Castro street with his newly married wife. They met a very friendly Indian family and exchanged pleasantries. The next day this friendly-family reached my friends' apartment with the business inside a box. I kinda warned them the scenario. They politely avoided them.

October 2008, on a vacation in Assam

I got a call from Bangalore at my cell phone. The caller introduced himself as a friend of one of my friends, who I knew were already doing the multi-way business. The caller told me that he has some business plan and wanted to discuss with me. I asked him straightforward if he was a multi-way guy. He said he was. I politely refused. Told him that my work demanded long hours. Whatever little time is left after work, that is exclusively for my family. That's all..

2009, the Bay, RMZ Infinity, Bangalore

A stranger started talking to my friend (the same guy in Castro) saying that my friend's shoes were very good. He kept on the conversation that led to a business plan. But my friend was already experienced by now. He quickly found that this stranger was none other than multi-way guy..

Today (15th July 2010), Bangalore

My wife got a call. The voice was very familiar to my wife. The same lady called my wife last week also to sell some product. The lady on the phone introduced herself by some other name. Today my wife actually identified who was the caller.  She wanted to sell some international standards multi-way facial product. My wife knew the caller was actually a friend of her, but pretending to be some business-woman. My wife refused her strongly.

Do you have any multi-way (m-way) moments. Wanna share these with me here?

Yes, Indian is my caste too!

One social evil that I've hated since I first came to know about it in my childhood is the caste system in Hinduism. There are many good things in Hinduism and I'm proud about that. But caste system is one thing which I can never agree to. It's disgusting; it's very inhuman; undemocratic. I see traces of racism in caste system.

Fortunately I was born in Assam where caste system is much less prevalent compared to other regions of India. There was a great social reformer in Assam circa fifteen hundred century named Sankardeva. There is no politics or politician in Assam based on caste. Assamese surnames are not based on caste. My surname Saikia can be written by people from different castes. But Assamese society is still not a completely casteless societies. Villages were named after castes. For example, hira-gaon (village of the caste hira), kalita-gaon (village of kalita caste), koch gaon (village of koch caste) etc. In rural areas, people from upper-caste-Assamese-Hindu won't eat at the same table with people from lower castes. Inter-caste marriages take place in Assam; but across some castes; not all.

Caste system is much more prevalent in rest of India. There are political parties whose main vote plank is castes. Inter-caste  marriage is a very rare phenomenon.

I wonder why caste system was not abolished during the social reforms that took place during the 18th and 19th centuries in India. We could abolish other social evils like untouchability, sati, and aversion to widow-marriage etc. I don't know if there was any social revolution against caste system in our history.


I thought gradually caste system will go away from India. With education and contact with the rest of the world, I thought Indians will realize how inhuman is this caste-system. I would love to see a society where there is no caste. I wish the government enacted a law banning the caste system. But I don't see that happening. One recent phenomenon has demonstrated that instead of  discarding the evil, we are moving towards it! In the latest census currently undergoing across the country, people will be asked to mention their castes.


I have always rebelled against the caste-system. I won't teach about the caste system to my next generation. I know there are many like-minded people in our society now who abhors caste-system. I'm very inspired to know that Amitabh Bacchan in his blog has written that he would write his caste as INDIAN in the census. Let's us all record our castes as Indians.


References

1. Interrogating the caste census, K. Subrahmanyam , Indian Express
2. Reviving the caste system, Kuldeep Nayar, The Dawn
3. Untouchable, National Geographic
4. Rediff's campaign against caste in census

Where to post?

I go back 10 years in time using a time machine. I meet someone on the street and ask him: I wanted to post something. But I don't know where to post it? He replies, "There is a post office drop box just across the street. But if you want to send it by Speed Post or Registered Post, then go straight on the main road and in about half kilometer you'll get the Post Office." Cool. I said thanks to him.

Now I come back to the present time. I ask my friend the same question where to post. He said if it's brief, I can post it in Twitter; if it's mid-size, then I can post it to my Wall at Facebook; else I can post it in my blog!

In ten years' time, the meaning of post is changing. And there're just too many places to post: Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, Blogger etc etc. This morning I was wondering if there is any application by which I can say that blogger is my primary place to post and then create one pipe from it to every other secondary places like Facebook, Twitter etc. Then I came across Twitterfeed. I've just enabled it and connected it to Twitter and Facebook. If it works, then I don't have to post in multiples places.

The purpose of this post is to find out if the pipe created by Twitterfeed from my blog is working or not.

PF Transfer Woes: Here is a Workaround

Transfer of Provident Fund from one Employee Provident Fund office to another is a real pain. It's a pain because there is no way to find out if at all the transfer took place involving substantial amount of our hard-earned money (sometimes the only savings that people like me resort to :-) ).

I relocated to Bangalore in September 2007 from Noida and filled up the PF transfer form on the first day of my joining. I wanted to check the status of my PF transfer in one year's time. But I found that the lady from finance department dealing with PF transfer had left the company and now it's handled by some outsourced party. I then contacted the outsourced agency. They had no records if and when the lady filed my PF transfer application. I met some of my friends who relocated from other cities to Bangalore three years back and they told me that their PF transfers were still due. I felt frustrated with the system like many others.

Then I thought that let me re-apply for PF transfer since I was not sure if at all my PF form was submitted. So I reapplied using the standard procedure through the finance department. It was after 1 and half year of my joining the new (was it still new?) company.

In three months' time from my second application, I received a letter from Noida EPF office. The letter was written in pure Hindi. First thing that I understood was that my transfer application was rejected. Then it had a table showing the various reasons for rejecting a PF transfer claim. The reason that they ticked for my case was that my PF of amount ............ was already transferred on so & so date to Bangalore EPF office! I was much relaxed to know that finally my PF was transferred and , damn, I knew the amount too.

So the workaround is to re-apply for PF transfer after a gap of some months or a year of submission of the first application.

Travesty of our Criminal Justice System!

Ruchika Girhotra was 15 year old in 1990. I too was 15 year old in 1990 busy in my studies for class-X board exams. There was no cable TV and no Internet at that time. So I was not aware of the ghastly circumstances that she passed through in August 1990. I heard her name 19 years after that incident. Most of my fellow countrymen will be ignorant about her likewise till two days back.

Ruchika committed suicide in 1993. But she was again murdered by the criminal justice system of our country this week.

Ruchika, a 15 year old promising tennis player, was lured by a senior police official into his room and molested. This officer named SPS Rathore (an as..ole) was posted as a DIG and was also the president of Haryana Lawn Tennis Association. It was August 12th, 1990. Ruchika filed a written complaint on August 16th. But this as..ole Rathore harassed the family of Ruchika. Finally Ruchika committed suicide three years after that incident.

Our criminal justice system took 19 years to pronounce the verdict that Rathore was indeed guilty! But he was given a sentence of just 6 months in jail. I was completely aghast to see Rathore coming out of the court smiling and joined by his wife.

Now this case will take another 20 years in higher court. By that time, Rathore will be gone from this world.

Ruchika's friend Aradhana has fought a lonely battle against this powerful Rathore till now. But with the widespread media coverage about this news, entire country will stand behind Aradhana and the family of Ruchika.

The mighty and powerful people always manipulate the system and manage to get away scot-free. Unless our criminal justice system is reformed, common people like me will lose faith in the system.

Read more on this:

1. Statement from Ruchika's father
2. Ruchika's case
   

Once upon a time when gay meant merry, joyous, cheerful, happy; but now..

I go back to my high-school days in a time machine. It was late 1980s and early 1990s. I read a story that has the following two sentences:
Once upon a time there was king. He was always gay...

Being gay at that time meant being cheerful, full of merriment. I use my time machine to come back to the current time. Today is June 29th, 2009. This morning the newspapers were full of news and photo-graphs of many gay people. It was a front-page news in all the news papers. Many gay people organized a parade (all the newspapers made a spelling mistake and they printed it as gay-pride. I think nowadays there is scarcity of good proof-readers in news-paper houses!) in Bangalore yesterday and it got full media attention. I was happy thinking that finally newspapers have started writing stories about some happy people in the front-page instead of the daily dosage of news full of murder, rape, bomb-blast etc. I was happier when I came to know that similar gay-parades took place in major cities across the world. I felt that at least some happy people wanted to display their happiness strongly and collectively to the enemies of the humanity - the terrorists, religious fundamentalists, racists, and many other evil elements that threaten humanity these days.

I turned my newspaper and saw the picture of a very beautiful girl (along with some other girls) with a placard in her hand with the message "repeal IPC 377". I thought that this girl must be from IT industry and writing system software code. She is probably appealing to IEEE or USENIX to do away with certain Inter Process Communication technique. My Linux-friendly-mind quickly translates 377 to --wxrwxrwx. But then I was flummoxed by the news that said that Veerappa Moily, Cabinet Minister in the Department of Law, Government of India, will soon take a decision on IPC 377. Then I read that certain Muslim cleric has opposed repealing IPC 377! I was completely at sea. I wondered when Veerappa Moily and the Muslim cleric started writing Unix Inter Process Communication code! Due to recession, our programming jobs (I call it thinking-typewriter's jobs) are in peril. Now we're threatened by our in-house politicians and clerics too! I was calculating how much agricultural land my dad has in his village. I see no future but to go back to farming if everyone starts writing software programs in India. I was lost in my thought when G's banter about my absent-mindedness woke me up. I told her: it's time for us to pack up and go back to our native village and start farming. She asked me what did I drink last night that the hangover was still not over. I told her that I was frightened of the job prospects since everyone around now was talking about IPC. I showed her the news items, including statements of Moily and the cleric. She said they were talking about Indian Panel Code and chided me for being a nerd all the time!

I then went back to my all-weather, trust-worthy buddy named Google and ask him what was the section 377 of Indian Panel Code. Google told me Indian Panel Code 377 considers gay activity as a criminal case. Come on, why on earth the IPC section impinges upon someone's right to be joyous and cheerful! I smelt something wrong. I then approached another buddy Dictionary.reference.com and asked what was the meaning of the word gay. Amongst several meanings, one is described in uppercase letters and underlined: HOMO.....L!

It seems the world has changed a lot since my high-school days. Dictionaries still say that gay means merry, joyous, cheerful, happy etc. But then there is a more powerful meaning to this word. The later meaning has come to be associated with the word gay predominantly now.

I do have a liberal mind. But I still cannot accept the new meaning of the word gay. I consider it to be unnatural, against the law of the Nature. But at the same time, I don't deem it as a criminal offence too. Section 377 of IPC is too draconian.

I read the same story of my high-school days about the king who was gay. But hey, my impression of the same king is different now. I soliloquy - the king too was gay!

Falsehood sucks!

I hate liers. I don't challenge someone's right to lie. You're free to lie. But it hurts when you assume that the person to whom you're lying is a stupid person. When you start lying to me and consider me to be fool, then you suck! I feel pity with such lier.

A lie breaches many things: integrity, trust, friendship -which take a longer time to build. In the shorter time, you may consider yourself as smart because you could hoodwink someone with a lie. But in longer time, a lie is more expensive thing than the truth. You have to follow-up the first lie with many other lies and then you lose your integrity, trust and friendship. So do consider the longer scenario before you lie next time.

I rarely lie. I find it very difficult to lie. In order to substantiate one false statement or conceal some fact, I then have to say many other untrue things. I find that to be the most difficult consequence of a lie. Rather than saying one lie and concocting many other follow-up lies, I'll prefer to say the truth in the beginning.

A painful moment

Yesterday evening I was driving to EDM mall at Kausambhi from Sector-62, Noida. My parents and Gitika were with me. I stopped at the traffic light after Ghazipur from where I'd take the right turn for EDM mall. Traffic was very chaotic. It was an auspicious day for weddings and wedding processions created these traffic-chaos. I saw some hugely decorated pandals being setup at a little distance away from the traffic light. I'm sure lakhs of rupees, or may be crores, must have been spent on all of these weddings in Delhi today.

All of a sudden, just to my right I saw two little girls trying to sleep on the divider in this busy highway. It was cold outside and they had a small piece of a torn blanket to share with them. The elder of the girls tried to cover the younger with that piece of the blanket; but she herself was shivering from the cold. There were noise, flash lights, cold winds, wedding processions around them. Then the green lights came and I had to drive away from the signal.

I know my country has seen lots of development in past one or two decades. There are new cars, new roads, new malls, apartments, and widespread use of mobile telephones etc etc. There are jobs in IT, ITES, retail, media etc. But at the same time, we've these street children who don't have the basic shelter in life! I always dream of seeing India as a developed country during my lifetime. But can we actually become a developed country when we still have many of our people who don't have a basic needs of life?

I don't know if any of our governments (central/states) is doing anything to help these street children. They might be; but I'm not aware of any such schemes. Our politicians are busy these days in discussions for giving more reservations for backward classes, religious minorities etc. But do these street children have any class or religion? Do any of our law-makers think of these little kids when they discuss about reservations?

We ourselves need to do something to alleviate these problems rather than waiting for actions from government. But I'm not sure how can I help them. I'd love to get involved with any agencies who work for the street children.

Riot

At about 9:30am today, Parthajit called me and said that there was some accident on the Bhangel road. He asked me to take the Expressway while going to office.

It was about 10:55am when I was at the T-point from Sector-82 to Bhangel road. I saw some crowd; which I thought is quite normal at that place. But when I approached the crowd, I saw something crazy. It was actually a riot! A frenzied mob stopped a bus and asked the passengers to get down. They went berserk and started to attack the bus with lathis and stones. There were already about 6 or 7 cars including mine. Mine was the first car facing the mob. Those people threatened us with stones. It was difficult to take an about turn. Somehow I could take an about turn. Then I took the road by the side of sector-82 which reaches the petrol-pump. But I saw crowds all along the road. Then I decided to come back home.

I'm still very frightened. At one point, I thought that I'd leave my car and just run away.