एक कविता और एक पैरोडी - AAP के नाम

उड़ाते थे जो आम आदमी की खिल्ली,
वो सभी हैं अब बन गए भीगी बिल्ली,
फकीरों की देखेंगे वो बादशाहत,
खुशकिस्मत जो हैं बाशिन्दा-ए-शहर-ए-दिल्ली.


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बाबुल मोरा करप्शन छूटो जाय,
AAP तो पर्वत भया, कुर्सी भई बिदेस,
दे के समर्थन आप को मैं चली पिया के देस।
बाबुल मोरा ...

आठ विधायक मिल मोरी डोलिया उठावें
मोरा दिल्ली NCR छूटो जाय रे,
बाबुल मोरा ...

Ideas for a truly secular government.

Religions, sans a small obligatory core of spirituality, are essentially a code of conduct and framework for governance for a society.  This framework extends to all aspects of mundane life - gender rights, property rights, definition of and penalties for crimes, duties towards family and society etc.  It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that religions arrogate to themselves the authority that should belong to the government.  I feel that initially, in homogeneous societies, governments must have necessarily been theocratic with a Rajguru or consultant priest in place.  Problems would have started arising when explorers / traders / invaders started moving into alien territories and overpowering them or mixing with them.  The differing frameworks and codes of conducts could perhaps only be reconciled by suppressing all but one or coming out with a new one to be followed by all the different groups.  Most modern governments go for the second option.  But there are compromises too.  Governments like ours have common laws for other spheres of life but the civil laws governing property, marriage, and gender rights are offered only as one more option with each group free to choose between this and those prescribed by its religion.  However this leads to conflicts and the best option remains to have a common code for all subjects.

In my opinion it may be a better option for the state to assert itself as an alternative to religion rather than feeling obliged to find a way to comply with conflicting demands from differing religions and appeasing the more militant ones.

Thus the State should actively promote conversion of people to its ways.  Those who abjure all personal laws in favor of the common one promoted by the State should be given a privileged status.  By the same token absolutely no concessions, or incentives, or encouragement should be provided for practicing any (other) religion.

However for this to happen it must be realized that regular religions provide not only a code of conduct and framework for governance but also provide formats for solemnization of important landmarks in one's life, for example, birth, start of education, marriage, death etc.  Each of the regular religions also provide a core imagery and content that foster art forms like music, dance, painting, drama and others that add zest to life.  The state must necessarily provide all of this to posit itself as a credible competition to religions.  All registrars for various life events have to be cheerful masters of ceremony and not just drab and officious officials.  There also has to be a vibrant wing for arts and culture inspired entirely by the values promoted by the governments.  Their services should be offered free to all the citizens who have gained privileged status by abjuring their religions.

A truly secular state ought to try this out even if it all sounds impractical and difficult to achieve.  You may argue that substituting a single religion for the numerous that exist today will take away all the variety from life.  But then it has to be realized that it will also take away all the unnecessary strife.

Ill defined processes and corruption at the grassroots level.

Many theories have been advanced to explain higher levels of corruption in our society, especially that at the lower levels of hierarchy, as compared to certain developed western countries.  One theory attributes lower levels of corruption in the west to their individualistic tendencies while an individual in India is defined only in terms of his family, community and society.  Another theory attributes corruption in our society to our firm belief in placating planets and gods and, by extension, all authority figures through offerings.  There are other theories too.  I would like to add one more theory to this collection.  I have constructed this theory on the basis of my observations during a few brief visits to USA.

I have noticed during my visits that operating procedures are very highly standardized and are modeled as an assembly line.  You notice this in fast food joints, retail stores, government offices and everywhere.  As a friend put it, USA is an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) driven country.  I am sure that the standard procedures are defined at the very top level where people have a complete view of the business and apply careful thought to processes.  As against this each operative at the customer contact point has a rigorously defined process to execute.  They are so focused on their process that they neither have the time nor the inclination to go or learn beyond it.  Even the language for interaction with the customer is standardized and any deviation from it often leads to confusion.  This ensures efficient delivery of services and eliminates any discrimination.

I feel that the situation is very different here in India.  Of course we are excepting the organizations that are an offshoot from the west or have deliberately modeled themselves on that pattern.  In our country the top only defines things in broad terms, if at all, and seldom takes the trouble of structuring the processes and procedures in complete detail and this is left to the people at the lower level who actually deliver the service.  I used to work in a bank and had the opportunity to see the manual operations being computerized.  There was frequent bewilderment while defining the standard procedures for implementation in the software because several branches and regions were found to be following a different procedure of their own.  I have seen most formats received from RBI or the government at the head office level for certain data being passed on to the branches exactly as they were received.  Nobody bothered to consider why should a format to be filled out by a single branch have rows for district-wise and state-wise totals.  As the government bureaucracy was the role model for Public Sector banks, I presume things must be the same in the government offices too.

The result is that while the top is busy with unabashed exercise and enjoyment of power, people at the lowest levels evolve all the detailed processes.  Their motive is seldom to provide the very best service to the customer.  Things are often kept vague to enable staff to evade responsibility and to browbeat the customer into submission to their demands.  The system is designed, rather misdesigned by them and they know it too well to twist and bend it as they like.  So if you are from the VIP class and have the contacts to get me chastised, your job gets done in a jiffy using embedded alternate shortcuts.  If you are not, God help you.  I do wonder if it is the lack of discrimination between VIPs and non-VIPs that offends the sensibilities of our VIPs when they travel abroad to more egalitarian and process-driven parts of the world.

The insistence by Kejariwal and his party for having well defined Citizens' Charter and ruthlessly implementing it is only an attempt at straightening out the garbled up processes in government offices.

This is also the reason that IT-enabling the bureaucratic processes is seen as one way of curbing corruption.  IT-enabling forces you to define your processes clearly and also provides efficient tools for monitoring (by a Lokpal!?)

Devyani versus Sangeeta

Live-in domestic help seems to be a common practice amongst the better-to-do Indians.  Quite a few of these workers are minors too.  A shelter and two square meals with a much-too-meagre salary thrown in is all it takes to lure them in.  If you are in a position of power and can promise a job or a visa to better pastures, the attraction becomes fatal.  The other party would trade in all its rights for this offer.  The practice is widespread and hence any questions on its legality are always brushed aside.  But in case a legal dispute did arise on whose side will you be?

I am surprised to find Mayawati siding with Devyani simply because she is a Dalit by birth.   I do not know whether Sangeeta is a Dalit or not.  But I do feel that Mayawati's sympathies  should have been with Sangeeta, a Dalit in the real sense of the word.

I agree that USA has been callous and totally mindless of Indian sensibilities in the way it handled Devyani.  But has it also not done a service to us by drawing attention to the plight of Sangeetas of our country?  And does our unusually stern reaction stem from our discomfort in facing this issue squarely?

Homo sapien homosexuality

I am indeed bewildered by the shrill and loud cries demanding rights for homosexuals and perplexed to find sane and logical persons defending these cries equally vigorously!  I always thought that homosexuality was the result of treating sex as a taboo and tightly controlling all access to members of the opposite sex.  It is indeed perplexing to find it flourishing in today's world that is liberal to the extent of being licentious.

It is all too easy to see the beautifully designed (evolved for Darwinists) algorithm of procreational sex.  Features of female anatomy that males find most attractive are precisely those that facilitate conception, delivery and nurturing of a baby.  Though modern society severely discourages body odors and encourages supplanting them with manufactured ones, research shows that body scent too is a mechanism to help sniff out the person whose gene-set compliments yours.  The whole algorithm underlying human sexuality is geared to help conception, delivery and survival of best possible offspring.  Though, to be sure, these algorithms are impeded by societal controls and sometimes even the institution of marriage.  Now that both the impediments are weakening, the sexual activity seems to be going wayward instead of correcting course.

It is difficult to fathom where has the nature's algorithm gone wrong.  Could it be a deviant preoccupation with recreational sex to the exclusion of procreational?   Is it a phenomenon similar to addiction to junk food to the exclusion of the healthy ones?  I wouldn't know.  What is obvious is that nature never meant it to be this way and homo in homo sapiens does not stand for homosexuality.

Asking for such relationships to be granted legal recognition is like an insistence that doctors classify junk food as healthy and narcotics as normal drugs.  And the demand by same sex couples for adoption of children must positively be denied.  You just cannot condemn a child to such upbringing.

The only concession that can probably be granted is to not to persecute consenting adults for homosexuality.  Though it will help if they could be persuaded to undergo the course that is sure to cure them according to Baba Ramdev.  Of course this means that we insist on treating it as an abnormality.  This also means that politicians stop pandering to this new found vote bank and journalists stop propagating it as elitist and fashionable.

A discount coupon consigned to the dustbin!

Recently my credit card company was kind enough to send me two vouchers for Rs.500/= each to be redeemed at a Wills Lifestyle store.  As jeans and t-shirt has become the standard dress code for me post retirement, I thought of getting myself a full sleeves T for the winters.  I visited the Wills Lifestyle section in a West Side shop.  There I learnt that I had to go to a full fledged Wills store to redeem the coupons.  And then while reading the terms and conditions again I further realized that the two coupons could not be clubbed together.  That meant that I had to purchase two separate items from a Wills store.  I regretted having parked my vehicle in the paid parking for such a brief transactions and drove to the Wills store in a Mall further down the road.

Wills did not have the kind of T that I was interested in.  And amongst what they had, the least expensive one was priced at around Rs.2000/=!! It looked like a pretty bad bargain even after discounting the coupon value.  I decided to take a look at the shirts.  I knew that Wills Lifestyle is an expensive store but was hardly prepared for what I stumbled upon.  It was a stack of shirts each priced at Rs.5,495/=!!!!!  Yes, you got it right: Rupees Five Thousand Four Hundred Ninety Five for a single shirt!  I told the salesman that this was a discovery that I was going to share with all my friends even if they already knew it.  He showed me some "affordable" shirts priced at around Rs.2000/=;  but my mind was already made.  I threw the coupons in the nearest dustbin and proceeded to Spencers' where I got exactly what I had in mind for a price in three digits.

I am wondering how far below the "Wills" poverty line do I lie?