O.k. people, here's where I vent some of my frustrations at the world! If you agree with some of the stuff you're about to read, drop me a line and say so.Most of the material has been taken from articles i have read during my web surfing expeditions.If anyone feel offended or if there is any copyright violations do feel free to write.You can contact me at maheshnairm@yahoo.com.
It's a repeat of the same, old story Now that yesterday morning's earthquake is last night's news, a familiar drama will be played out over the next few days.
The Gujarat government -- like all bankrupt state governments struck by natural calamities -- will make an exaggerated claim of death and destruction to extract just that little bit more from the Centre to pay a few more months' salaries.
The Opposition in the state -- "cutting across party barriers" -- will rally around the government and demand that the quake be called a national calamity, as if that alone will ease the burden on the heads trapped under the mountains of rubble.
Arundhati Roy -- and other Arun Shouries of the Left -- will say we told you so, and call for a renewed discussion on Narmada. VVIPs from Delhi will descend like vultures and prey on the tragedy for a spot of reflected publicity, while their civic and other pet poodles ditch the rescue efforts and accompany their political masters.
Union ministers will come and offer vacuous condolences to the bereaved. One of them will even announce the formation of a "task force" -- we no longer appoint committees, only task forces -- to see how such tragedies can be avoided in future. Television babes who have never stepped out of the municipal limits of India International Centre in Lodhi Estate will take great delight in screwing the happiness out of some hapless municipal worker in Mehsana.
The Prime Minister's Relief Fund will be reopened. Newspapers and magazines will invite donations in cash and kind. Some filmi-types will gather for a concert to raise funds. Soon, the "breaking news" will become a ticker, and Gujarat's calamity will be consigned to the dustbin of calamities that is 15 per cent India, 85 per cent Bharat.
Haven't we been there, done this all before? Admittedly, there was no way even L K Advani could have guessed that the ISI and Lashkar e Tayiba would have decided to attack the Indian Republic on its 52nd anniversary by messing around with the Richter Scale in such a dastardly manner. Admittedly, there was no way even L K Advani could have stopped the tectonic plates from doing their little tandav nrutya even if "intelligence reports" had suggested well in advance that the earth was going to open up and swallow up thousands like a glutton. But there is a palpable sense of replay in all our national -- calamities. And that is the extraordinary lack of infrastructure among our civic authorities to tackle crises of this size and magnitude, and the complete lack of preparedness of their staff to handle such emergencies. And, worse, the extraordinary absence of any effort to rectify the picture.
As Republic Day tableaux go, nothing can come close to beating the one Gujarat put up yesterday, a tableau showcasing the true plight of 'We the People.' Sure, we are all immensely wise after the incident. But we have to face the truth: as a nation we are repeatedly being shown up to be a bunch of big-talkers, for whom the word "people" means little if they are not prefixed by "very important." Be it the earthquake in Latur seven years ago, or the supercyclone in Orissa two years ago, or the drought in Rajasthan early last year, or the cyclones and floods in Andhra Pradesh in the middle of last year or the starvation deaths in Orissa late last year, there is a common strand running through.
And it is one of neglect of and nonchalance towards the most valuable commodity known to humankind: Life. By their very definition, natural calamities are not something we can predict or put a full stop to. But what have we done in the 52 years of our glorious Republic to put a system in place which protects not merely our VVIPs but the common man and woman too? Cyclones are an annual occurrence in coastal Andhra Pradesh. Just how many villages and towns and cities have cyclone shelters that will house those who need them?
Drought has become an annual occurrence in Rajasthan. Just how many villages have evolved water mechanisms that will last them through the lean period? We have had a fair share of earthquakes in the past decade. Just how many villages and towns and cities have been identified to be in the seismic zone and put on alert? And so on and so forth.
Floods, fires, famines, droughts, cyclones, earthquakes, diseases, riots, you-name-it... we have been proved to be such doddering fools that crisis management should clearly be an oxymoron in the books of our political masters and administrators. And so it is with the latest quake. There is not much joy in crying over spilt milk, but pictures of relatives waiting for hours for the rubble to be cleared so that they can retrieve the bodies of their near and dear ones shows what a mess our infrastructure is. That is not half as arcane as it sounds. Do our cities have enough fire tenders commensurate with their populations? Are they adequately staffed? Are they on alert all the time? Do they do regular rehearsals?
Can our cities round up enough bulldozers and cranes at a pinch if a building collapses because of a quake or other reasons? Do our cities have enough ambulances and hospital beds in case there is a large-scale tragedy like a riot? Are there enough volunteers who can be pressed into service to help? Do our building inspectors examine buildings for cracks on a regular basis? Are the lifts working in big buildings? Are the emergency exits in usuable condition? No, is the simple but true answer.
Yesterday we saw it in Gujarat. Late last year we saw it in Orissa, the middle of last year we saw it in Andhra Pradesh, early last year we saw it in Rajasthan. Seven years ago we saw in Surat and Latur. Whether it is Bhuj or Bongaigaon, the bottomline is simple, was always simple. Nuclear bombs cannot halt earthquakes, missiles cannot stop supercyclones, battle tanks cannot halt droughts. But what is it that we as a people, they as a government, have been doing with all our money, all these 52 years, that when a natural calamity strikes in peace-time, about the only thing that can save us is a super-natural phenomenon?
True, most slums are owned by criminal slumlords. True, many street vendors are protected by the local mafia. True, some of the street temples and prayer rooms are a cover for land grabbing. But is that their fault? Is it the fault of the poor that rich slumlords exploit their poverty and force them to live in ugly shanties? Is it their fault that mafia warlords carve out entire cities between themselves and, unless vendors pay off local goons, they have no protection? Is it their fault that the big temples are in the clutches of the rich and you have to pay speed money to get a darshan?
After all, it is we who have created this city of gold where even the pavements are parcelled off to local goons for hafta. It is the cops who do the collection. It is the cops who loot the poor even as they protect the so-called VIPs of our society. The Laloos and Sukh Rams, the Subhash Ghais and Kapil Devs are protected by them while the middle class boy who cannot get a job despite his second class masters degree gets beaten and thrown off the streets because he tries to earn his livelihood selling second-hand books or cheap white shirts for not so affluent office-goers.
You and I have created these slums. Not the slumlords. They are only exploiting an opportunity. The cars we buy need bigger roads, more overbridges. The contracts are distributed among politically well connected builders who save money by bringing in slave labour from Tamil Nadu and Andhra and Orissa, from drought ravaged districts, from villages wiped out by floods and diseases. These desperate men and women have nowhere to go after the roads have been widened, the bridges built. They hang on, looking for some menial jobs to stay alive. When everything fails, they turn to begging or petty crime.
Those who slog for you at home, your newspaper boy, your dhobi, your milkman, your sweeper, your daughter's ayah, your wife's driver, your servants: they are all your contribution to the growing slum population. And now, when the chicken have come home to roost, you want someone like Khairnar to go and do your dirty work for you. The system of dependencies you have created has brought urban civil society to its knees. Too many cars, too many servants, too many luxuries. Now, you expect a mindless demolition expert to solve your problem for you?
Remember one thing: No one is easily destroyed. When you break down homes or ruin means of livelihood, you end up criminalising people. You create more cheats, more thieves, more murderers. More desperate people ready to slit someone's throat for a meagre supari. At some stage, such people cease to see murder as a crime. They see it as yet another means of livelihood. This explains the popular appeal of Satya and Vaastav. We have pushed the poor and middle classes to such a corner that they are now romanticising crime and actually believing that there is something noble about extorting the rich.
Every slum you break throws up a dozen defiant rebels who then challenge your smug moral authority. Every young hawker whose wares you seize becomes a full-fledged enemy of your unjust, nequal society, ready to set it on fire.
Does this mean that slums must grow, streets must be taken away from pedestrians and hawkers must be allowed to sell their wares wherever they want? No. But a responsible society cannot respond to one wrong with another. It cannot destroy the rights of one group of people to protect the interests of another. There must be some give and take. You and I must stop buying the third car if we want our streets not to be clogged. We must stop hiring slave labour at home if we do not want to be killed. We must stop lionising a good and honest but imbecilic officer of the State simply because he goes out and breaks down the homes of the poor, robs vendors of their wares, destroys places of worship, all under the pretext of cleaning up.
Of all the stupid ideas in the world, this is perhaps the stupidest. The banning of lotteries mooted by the Union government. The reason is simple. The ban is hypocritical and unjust. It will achieve exactly the opposite of what it sets out to do. For it will drive underground what is happening before our eyes and which can be far more effectively controlled by simpler means than outlawing it. What is worse, the ban hits at the heart of our democratic society by treating different people differently for doing exactly the same thing. Gambling. Simply because they belong to different social strata.
What is a lottery? And why, for heaven's sake, does the state want to interfere in it? The political argument is that lotteries encourage gambling and gambling destroys homes, families, societies. I am sure it does. But so do many other things which we happily turn a blind eye to.
Cigarettes, for instance. Has the government banned the manufacture and sale of cigarettes? No. It has not banned the manufacture and sale of cigarettes even though there is now absolute and conclusive medical evidence to prove that cigarettes kill. That they too destroy homes, families, societies.
The government has not only not banned the manufacture and sale of cigarettes; it has deliberately put in place weak and effete laws that allow cigarette manufacturers to openly flaunt their products through the print and television media, including the government's own national broadcaster.
What is worse, cigarette manufacturers are promoting their products through hugely popular games like cricket and getting dimwit movie stars to sell the stupid idea to millions of ill-informed people that it is a wonderfully macho thing to smoke. The idiots who fall for this argument do not know that even the Marlboro man (the cigarette industry's ultimate icon) eventually got laid by cancer.
By banning smoking on buses and planes and in a few public places, by compelling cigarette companies to print a one-line warning in microscopic type size on their packs, the government has achieved nothing. For these companies are now openly using huge backlit hoardings and putting hundreds of millions into newspaper ads and television to lure millions of adolescents all over India to try out smoking. This huge ad spend also helps to neutralise (if not silence) the media. While the tax revenues are so large that the government keeps its moral posturing on hold and even encourages 100 per cent foreign entities to come in and join the gang rape.
So what if cigarettes kill. So what if they are the single biggest reason for cancer in this country. So what if they put a huge burden on our already cash-strapped nation and its vastly overstretched health-care and hospitalisation facilities. The cigarette companies are too big, too well organised, too ruthless a criminal force to care for what they are doing to India. And of course they have too much money to spread around, to keep their ugly, killing business alive and legal. While the poor Nigerian students who peddle cheap drugs on the streets of Mumbai get picked up and hammered by the cops and jailed for long terms. For they do not have the same patronage and the same amount of cash to distribute. That is why their business is illegal and criminal. While the cigarette companies get away with murder in broad daylight. Yet both are in an identical business. Selling death. While one gets away scot-free, the other is hunted down and punished. Even though far more people die from smoking in India than doing drugs. As for killing, so for gambling. There are many forms of gambling in our society, but those which the rich and famous indulge in are treated as perfectly legal. It is only those which the poor patronise that are outlawed and treated as criminal activity. So matka ends up as a crime while horse-racing is a wonderful sport. It is covered by all the newspapers, funded by corporates, endorsed by celebrities. Its tipsters are heroes. Not villains. While the poor matka operator is hunted down by the police. He is a criminal simply because his clients are not dressed in Armani suits, do not speak English and would not know how to uncork a bottle of champagne after winning. If gambling is politically incorrect, how come so many states have in recent times licensed casinos? Most of the Goan five-star hotels already have them. Madhya Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir are following suit. Hotels elsewhere are also clamouring for them. They have become the new destinations for the rich and famous. And, yet, the humble lottery ticket is a crime. Why? Because it offers dreams to the poor. Dreams of sudden riches. Do not casinos do the same? Do not races do the same? Do not stock markets do the same? If it is not socially desirable to encourage people to have dreams of getting rich quickly, why do we allow them to invest in stocks and shares? Why do we allow them to put money on the races? Why are we allowing hotel owners to start casinos and put up those one-armed bandits that have robbed millions of people all over the world of their hard-earned cash? We all know that gambling attracts the underworld, it nurtures crime and creates a miasma of sleaze around it. Yet we turn a blind eye to that. We want to only hit upon those poor middle-class boys who sell lottery tickets on the streets of Mumbai and earn a small livelihood from what is essentially a hawking profession. Next to them are those selling application forms for public issues, but no one dare touch them because their business is legit, it is protected by the corporate sector. By the Harshad Mehtas of the world. Tell me one thing: I know the Internet is a wonderful thing and I know India is going places because of its information technology expertise, but those who are playing around with Internet stocks on our bourses today, are they not gambling? Are they not gambling over what the future holds? Was Satyam not gambling when it picked up the Indiaworld stock for nearly Rs 500 crore when the company's turnover is barely a crore and its profits a pittance? Was Hutchinson not gambling when it picked up Analjit Singh's holdings for over Rs 500 crore when Maxtouch is so deep in the red? Are Coke and Pepsi not gambling when they invest more and more money into their Indian subsidiaries that continue to bleed hundreds of crores every year? Is gambling such a crime that you need to outlaw it in a world where every winner is in some way or the other a gambler?
We are all gambling when we invest in the future. Sometimes we win. More often we lose. For the odds are always stacked against us. Given the health of some of our public-sector banks, even banking your money is a gamble today. So why deprive thousands of poor youngsters of their livelihood by picking on lotteries only? Tax them harder if you want. To make the point that gambling is not socially desirable. But banning lotteries is wrong. For it punishes only the poor for a crime that all of us commit all the time.
I feel that we no longer live in a Democracy. Sure, we elect officials to public office and that gives us a false sence of control but, if we have control over our government, then why are they able to hide certain truths from us? National Security? The only way we can change our country is to vote the politicians out of office and put real people in thier positions. Vote for farmers, doctors, teachers, factory workers and others that make up the heart and soul of India! Please don't vote for career politcians. Those poeple are screwing you and me out of our god given right to live in a free society. Politicians who in the name of security are keeping half of our elite commando force as their body guards .These NSG guy's should be sent to siachen or kargil or the kutch sectors.Politicans who are syphoning off huge amounts of money meant for developmental works......This is ridiculous yaar
I want to talk about free speech. You all know it, you all love it. Why then does our government insist on limiting what we can read, see and hear. I'm talking about internet censorship, T.V. censorship and keeping materials deemed classified from a media hungry public. All in the name of "Protecting our children" from filth. Well guess what? If parents would police their children or learn to download certain programs to keep their nosey little brats from veiwing this "Filthy" material, then there wouldn't be a problem. It won't end with just porn sites either, once the government gets ahold of the internet there will be many other sites deemed not net-worthy and subsequently removed. Who knows, maybe my webpage will be targeted one day. It's time to rally together and let our government know that this is B.S.!!!!! I want the right to check out nasty porn if I want! I want the right to learn how to make drugs and bombs and other cool stuff, just by pointing and clicking! I want the right to write whatever the hell I want on my own page!!!!!
I just want to say thanks to everyone who has surfed on in and took the time to actually read my bullshit. For those of you who thought you were gonna get some kick ass porn at this site well sorry
Let's think about friends friend is someone who is always at your side, A friend is someone who likes you even though you stink of shit, and your breath smells like you've been eating cat food, A friend is someone who likes you even though you're as ugly as a hat full of arseholes, A friend is someone who cleans up for you after you've soiled yourself, A friend is someone who stays with you all night while you cry about your sad, sad life, A friend is someone who pretends they like you when they really think you should be raped by mad goats, then thrown to vicious dogs, A friend is someone who scrubs your toilet, vacuums and then gets the cheque and leaves and doesn't speak much English... -no, sorry that's the cleaning lady, A friend is not someone who sends you chain letters because he wants his wish of being rich to come true.
