Expenses on Social and Electronic Media

Suddenly there is a spate of news items saying that the Election Commission will be closely monitoring expenses by political parties on Social Media (SM.)  They all seem to suggest that these expenses are huge and some parties may be resorting to tech-enabled publicity and interactions to evade a scrutiny of their overall expenses.  Certain sections of the society may even be taken in by these insidious suggestions thinking that high-tech must indeed be expensive.

And yet large sections of the society which obviously include the reporters from print and electronic media, know how amazingly inexpensive this media is!  In fact most of these services are free.   And though you may have to pay for hosting a website and development of a few apps, the aggregate cost of these over a period of five years will be much less than a single helicopter trip to a corner of the country for addressing people plus the cost of organizing the meeting and bringing hordes of people there.  I am sure that it cannot be anybody's case that even if you use free services of Facebook, Google+, YouTube etc. a certain percentage of market capitalization of these giants must be reckoned as the actual expenditure.  Needless to add that this is only in a lighter vein.

Apart from being extremely cost effective, use of SM is environment friendly too.  I cannot forget the litter throughout our colony in Lucknow after the municipal elections last time.  The streets were full of discarded envelopes, colorful pamphlets, banners etcetera.

In fact I firmly believe that use of Social Media and Electronic Media (SMEM)can substantially bring down electioneering costs.  This can lower the entry barrier just enough to bring in competition from people who today cannot think of entering politics.  And, in turn, this can lead to cleansing of politics.

I would even go so far as to suggest that use of SMEM should be made mandatory and funded by the government.  And Election Commission must scrutinize very thoroughly the expenses of those who choose not to use SMEM or use them only perfunctorily.

Never Knew this!!

Railways have on their rolls employees called "Platform Incharge" tasked with helping passengers at stations.  How did they manage to keep this so carefully concealed from the intended beneficiaries? This calls for a case study if not a CBI enquiry.

राजकुंवर की तुतली बानी

राजकुंवर की तुतली बानी 
क्या कहते खुद ही न समझते 
अर्थ ढूँढ़ते मंत्री ज्ञानी 
राजभवन के अन्दर बैठी 
सबको नाच नचाती रानी 
दाढ़ी वाले बंधूजी ने 
टक्कर देने की है ठानी 
उठ जाओ प्यारे श्रोताओं 
आगे लिखनी तुम्हें कहानी 
राजकुंवर की तुतली बानी।

You dig?

I too had a dream last night.  Yes, you got it right.  It was about a treasure lying buried beneath my house.  This has me buried, sorry, worried.  A buried treasure calls for digging.  There is already a great deal of digging going on in the town.  Someone is digging for building a metro and someone for widening the road.  Again someone is digging for laying cables and someone is digging just in the hope of getting a contract for leveling the very potholes created by him.  Some people are digging deep into the state finances for distributing gadgets amongst the young.  In the villages they are digging up ponds, then leveling them and then digging it up again, all under MNREGA.  The digging spree has now spread to dilapidated structures and barren lands too.  All thanks to a person like me who has nothing better to do than dream!

Amidst all this digging the only digging-free zone left to a common man is his home; dear sweet home!  The very thought that this only shelter is also going to succumb to the digging spree all around it is indeed frightening.

Feeling terribly scared I approached a wise friend for counselling and advice.  He gave a long and deep thought to my dream.  Then he asked me if I still read financial news even after my retirement.  When I said yes, he probed further.  He specifically asked me if I had read the item that said that yields on reverse mortgage by senior citizens might triple after recent interventions and contemplated tax breaks.  When I said yes, his eyes lit up.

"So", said my wise friend, "it is your subconscious underscoring that dream to force your attention to the news.  The gold doesn't lie beneath the house, the house is it!"  And if you are interested in that symbolic gold, relax: You don't have to dig.  Leave it to your bankers with a reverse mortgage.  And even they will have to wait for your grave to be dug first before they can sell it to a fellow who will be obliged to demolish the old structure and dig afresh for a new one.  But then you would have been assured of a digging-free shelter for your whole long life.

You dig?

An appeal

Dear One,

I am truly glad that you chose to read this appeal.  Please read through the complete communication and then take a decision.

Many of us are currently experiencing a kind of euphoria at the possibility of getting a leader who stands for good governance and development in a no-nonsense manner.  However we must remind ourselves the sense of despair that we collectively went through when scam after scam were unearthed.  There was an uprising against total lack of values in the political system.  Any holier-than-thou mantle that BJP may have pretended to wear was found to be like the emperor's mythical  invisible clothes.  This was the time when the nation collectively realized that the ruling class, the politicians, were strongly united in their pursuit of power and pelf even as they divided the electorate along innumerable lines of caste, creed, region et al.  Remember how we desperately looked for an alternative only to be reminded again and again that there was none.  Any dim hopes that arose from Anna Hazare's movement were extinguished by Anna's firm refusal to enter politics.  We felt like a rudderless ship surrounded by rapacious pirates.

In my humble opinion the situation has not changed since then.  Congress remains firm in its pursuit of audacious and immoral politics.  BJP which was equally embarrassed by various exposes has fortuitously found a tall leader and allowed him to ride roughshod over power starved seniors and in the process make the public forget about startling similarities between it and Congress.

Many of us feel that if Narendra Modi comes to power, it may mark the beginning of a phase for the better as was the case under Atal Bihari Bajpayee's regime.  However it will be recalled that once Atalji was gone from the scene, the usual sickly tendencies sprung back with a vengeance.  Also there is a section of skeptics who think that things have gone so far downhill that the entrenched parties are incapable of delivering even with a strong and well-intentioned leader.  And who knows better than us Indians that such a leader has become the rarest of the rare commodity; and hence the euphoria over NaMo.

Whichever group you belong to and whatever may be your current affiliations, you will agree that there is an urgent, very urgent need to nurture any movement in politics that is for the explicit purpose of bringing about a change and turning the tide in favor of a clean, honest and committed government.  We have been praying and looking for such a movement to take shape, but in vain.  It seemed as if there was not one person who had the courage of his convictions and was committed enough to undertake the task.  And this is not to deny that the task is mammoth indeed.  Even an exceptional leader like Narendra Modi has to ride on the back of his party for achieving his goals.

It is wondrous that all the agitation and churning amongst the public at large has thrown up a leader like Arvind Kejriwal who has demonstrated his organizational and leadership capabilities by doing the nearly impossible task of setting up a party that doesn't draw its sustenance from funds and manpower of dubious origins.  Even stalwarts in politics never thought that he will be able to do it.  That is why they heaved a sigh of relief when he accepted their challenge to enter politics and bring about the change that we all desired.  They were sure that he will never succeed.  And yet Arvind has done it.  This reminds me of a famous quote from Pearl S Buck.  It goes like this - "The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation."

Arvind seems fully committed to running his party on clean funds only and is asking for donations.  In my opinion all of us who crave for a change in this country must rise to the call and contribute our mite.  Let us ensure that the commendable cleaning up task that Arvind Kejriwal has undertaken does not suffer for want of clean funds.

Dear reader, it is possible that you may not be a staunch supporter of AAP party.  And yet you must contribute to it so that it is up and running by the time the need for such a party becomes desperately obvious.  If you ask why, here is my reply.  We all know that genetic diversity is an absolute must for any species to survive diverse threats that it constantly faces.  The same is true of any system including our political system.  Here unfortunately the diversity in terms of ideologies, principles and commitments are totally gone.  All the parties are essentially alike with the same set of weaknesses.  This is the reason that the system falls an easy prey to viruses of corruption, misgovernance and apathy to national concerns.  We have to help AAP to grow for the simple reason that it is different and will bring back some of the badly needed diversity in the political system.

I urge you to do your bit and contribute here: https://donate.aamaadmiparty.org/.  I have already done so.

Regards,

Anil Kumar Upadhyaya

Build more toilets - Eastern or Western?

A fierce debate is raging currently on the relative importance of toilets in the life of mango people.  I would like to contribute ideas that may lead to a healthy debate on its design in case the issue is decided in favor of building more toilets - outside and within temple compounds.

The debate on western commode versus eastern seat seems to have already been decided in a democratic manner in favor of the western commode.  This naturally happened because of high prevalence of arthritis rather than any onslaught of western culture.  The minorities opposed to things western as also having sound knees are forced to perch on the rim maintaining a precarious balance.  In keeping with the tradition of minority appeasement a fusion design has emerged.  In this design the rim flattens out in the shape of the footrest in the eastern model and imparts stability to the perching minorities without compromising the needs of the majority. What a win-win situation!  The only grouse of the majority is that the squatters often ignore the additional cleaning up required because of their yogic posture.

Next comes the issue of post-relief cleaning up.  Use of water in the traditional manner involves use of both the hands with your butt lifted off the seat.  It should not be difficult to guess why use of both the hands is required - one hand to dispense the water and the other one to use it.  This is not a sustainable proposition for those weak in the knees.  So a jet that can precisely direct a stream of water at the target is attached to the rim.  However since such precision is not so easy to achieve, a post-water clean up with paper may be called for.  This completes the western setup with a toilet roll on the side of the commode.

However the setup mentioned above seems to be in contravention of the recent government guidelines for the hospitality industry.  The guidelines state that "..... shall provide water sprays or bidets or washlets or other modern water based post-toilet-paper hygiene facilities."  The guidelines seem to suggest use of paper first and water only afterwards!  However as the guidelines come from none other than the government, these can hardly be questioned.

Finally the noxious issue of ventilation remains to be solved.   Though some yogi babas have made unverified claims of divine scent in their excrement, for unsaintly ordinary mortals it is quite otherwise.  The approach to ventilation again is different in the west and the east.  The common practice in the east is to use lateral exhausts to throw the scent at the next door neighbor’s property.  The west seems to have heightened sensitivity to odors.  So they prefer an exhaust that is ducted to the roof for throwing it skywards.  And this is why one finds their toilets devoid of any opening in the four walls.

As vertical ducting through the roof is likely to be quite costly, this will have to be decided after deducting the leakages predicted by Late Rajiv Gandhi from the allocated funds.  Keep your fingers crossed; it is going to be a long debate.

Occidental driving

If one had all the roads to onself, like VVIPs do when they are forced to travel by road, driving will either be sheer bore or sheer fun depending on your personality type.  Real life driving for commoners like us involves coordination with umpteen fellow users.  And hence merely knowing the rules is not enough; you must also know what goes on in the minds of fellow users and how do they normally react to exceptions.  On your home turf you know all the user types and all the possible reactions and the knowledge has been internalized.  But this advantage is lost in a place where you are a stranger.  An example will illustrate it.

At places where a lane joins a main thoroughfare and there are no signals, the traffic on the thoroughfare has the right of way and those about to enter it from the lane are supposed to wait for a safe entry.  I was driving on such a thoroughfare in the city of Cupertino when I saw a vehicle from a lane on the right approaching at not too slow a speed.  Now I had an apprehension whether this fellow is going to honor my right of way or not and so going by the principle better-safe-than-sorry I stopped.  The other fellow had already stopped by that time and even gave a short honk to draw my attention and motioned to me to go ahead (as per the rule!)  I was lucky in so much as there was no vehicle following me closely.  Had there been one it would surely have crashed into mine as it would not have anticipated my stop.  I hardly need to add that  in India it would be the other way round: taking your right of way too seriously could be fatal!  Here in the motherland the guiding principle is that all drivers on the road have a free will and will surely exercise it and you better be ready for it.

Apart from attitudes you find significant differences in the physical design of the road too.  Our roads are plain strips with no internal modulations but only curve of the complete strip around lands difficult to acquire at the time of construction.  In USA I found most roads straight as straight can be.  But these straight roads have internal modulations that show a brilliant application of thought.  At most intersections, the side of the road feeding the intersection becomes wider and as a corollary the other side which is fed from the intersection becomes narrow, sometimes to the extent of being reduced to a single lane.  This facilitates the traffic on the feeder side to properly segregate itself for left turn, right turn, and going straight through.  Naturally the same thing happens on the road across the intersection too.  Thus when you position yourself in the lane for a left turn (and so has part of the traffic on the opposite side of the intersection), you find yourself facing one lane of traffic from the other side head on!!  (Please remember that left in USA is what right is in India.)  When you experience it for the first time it can scare you out of your wits: For you never experience this in India where everything is rigidly linear and equally spaced.  Such a widening out to the left happens at left turns into smaller lanes too.  This allows you to wait in the marked space for a safe opportunity to make the turn without holding up the traffic behind you.  Such protected lanes for a turn are delineated by solid white lines.  As in India so in USA a solid white line means that you cannot cross it from either side to move into a different lane.  The difference lies in the simple fact that the rule is scrupulously honored in USA.  On highways the solid white lines marking an exit are accompanied by a legend "Lane Must Exit."  You just cannot change your mind once you enter the segregated lane!  And this Must-Exit rule applies to left turn lanes on normal roads too just as rigidly.

Having mentioned highways, called expressways in USA, I must add that one finds the same shining examples of application of thought on the highways too.  When you enter an expressway from a regular city road the entrance is in the form of a long strip that allows you to accelerate to highway speeds before merging into the highway.  So you don't barge into a highway, you merge into it.  This minimizes chances of any collisions on account of serious mismatch of speeds.  Though at peak traffic hours when the traffic on the expressway also turns slow, a signal light starts operating on the entrance allowing only one vehicle at a time. Next vehicle enters after a couple of seconds.  This again ensures a fair match between traffic already on the expressway and that entering it at any point. You also have long exits that allow you to reduce you speed in a comfortable fashion.  There is no slow moving traffic on the expressways, no pedestrians making adventurous attempts to cross the roads and above all absolutely no traffic moving the wrong way to avoid a circuitous drive back!!  The lane discipline is superb.

Here in India I recently drove from Lucknow to Basti, a distance of around 200 kms.  It is a pretty good highway by Indian standards though I did find a couple of can-break-your-axle strengths potholes that had been painted black to minimize the probability of vehicles avoiding it altogether.  Let me not forget to mention that the consideration (toll tax) for such excellent service levels was a whopping Rs.400/= for a return trip!!  For that amount you can ride a deluxe Volvo service to your destination!!!  But let us not digress.  What was most perplexing was the near total lack of documentation on the road.  You have to strain hard to figure out which area you are passing through, where will the next exit take you and how far you might be from your final destination.  A few hoardings that you could spot after straining a great deal will be hidden behind foliage!!  All your information comes from commercial hoardings which often mention name of the place and signages on shops which are never too far away from a highway!!

Comparing the level of documentation on the roads and expressways of USA with what we have would be like comparing a well authored multi-volume leather bound book to a small crumpled up manuscript containing the first rough draft of a chapter.  Over and above the static documentation showing your location, destinations to which the roads are headed, upcoming exits, speed limits etc., you also have live displays about any adverse weather conditions or likely delays to be faced due to heavy traffic up the route.  It takes time to get used to such service levels and drive normally without getting bowled over.

Before I close I must mention the stop-look-go as mandated and practiced on roads which may lack documentation and signalling.  At such intersection on such roads each vehicle is supposed to stop and then proceed only after any vehicles which stopped earlier have passed.  Even if you are absolutely certain that there is no other vehicle except yours you must still stop at the intersection and penalties for not doing so can be quite stiff.  Such rules and well defined right of way coupled with the fact that these are scrupulously enforced and followed make life really easy for drivers.

Even the huge parking lots surrounding shopping malls or offices also have arrows and markings to guide you and keep the flow smooth.  What amazes you most is that most of this terrific network of roads was built in 1930s and 40s!

The roads are evolving in India too and we get a glimpse of future in certain recently constructed stretches of highways.  Let us hope that someday we will also have a network that will offer safe and pleasurable drive to millions of existing and upcoming new automobile owners.  Amen!