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?

Forced to Carry the Burden of Government's Economic Sins!

Recently I ventured into a Tanishq store to explore if I could afford a miniature piece of jewelry to be given as a wedding gift.  There wasn't much on offer that could fit my budget.  It was partly on account of skyrocketing prices of gold and partly on account of steep making charges that account for almost one fourth of the total cost! Why not gift a small gold coin then?  I made inquiries with the salesman and learnt a couple of things.  First is that even gold coins have a making charge though it is much less than jewelry.  It may be okay as they use a single rate for buying and selling.  Hence making charges must at least cover a margin for trading too.  The second fact was that they had no coins to sell!!  A few that they did have were fitted with a hook to make them a pendant - a jewelry!

This was a rather shocking discovery.  The salesman explained that there were directives from the Government NOT to sell gold coins.  There is a news in today's NavBharat Times that says that Post Offices will NOT sell gold coins.  This makes the salesman's explanation sound credible.  This also means that gold coins were selling fast and the government did not want them to.  It is significant that there is no ban on wasteful and expensive gold jewelry and its sale doesn't bother the government.

If gold coins were selling in large quantities, it could not be just for gifting.  People are using it as a store of value.  This a function that money is supposed to fulfill but the the fiat money is failing miserably to do so.  Inflation is high and the government is using pressure tactic to keep interest rates artificially low.  On top of these meager interest rates, the interest income is subjected to high income tax! This means that if you keep your savings in the form of fiat money or even bank deposits, its value is getting continually and seriously eroded.  And the blame for all of this squarely rests with the government.  It is their economic policies that have lead to this bleak situation.  Ordinary citizens facing such predicament cannot be faulted for trying to store their hard-earned savings in gold which is far more inflation resistant and risk-free.

This being the case, denying the option of investing in gold to a common citizen is unfair and unjust. The government is persisting with its bungling, inefficiencies and populism happy in the knowledge that the costs can be forced down the throat of a hapless middle class.  Will the judiciary take notice of this please and can they remedy the situation?  We don't know who else to look to for a remedy.

Search for the Right Sized Gadget(s)

First we had desktops that needed a huge carton and help for transporting around.  Then came laptops that one could lug along in a backpack.  Recently tablets are on the rise and these can be carried even by the 'suits' in a briefcase.  But in between laptops and tablets we also have phones which are aspiring for total convergence by becoming phablets!

This is all the outcome of hardware that is shrinking just as fast as it is becoming powerful and a desire to have an omnibus device into which all electronic devices converge.  People have already started wondering if someday we will have a tiny device implanted into us that will be wired directly  into the visual, auditory (and maybe olfactory and touch and taste) centers of the brain obviating the need for output devices like screens and speakers etcetera.  The input devices are already on the path to redundancy with the rapid advancements in voice and gesture recognition technologies.  In the meantime keyboards have shrunk to occupy a small part of the screen with just two thumbs sufficing for operating it instead of all the ten fingers.

By way of a side note, I wonder if the implants mentioned above were to become a reality, will CEOs be the first to go for them.  Thus far they have always been at the head of the queue for all new sophisticated gadgets, their inability to make full use of it without secretarial assistance notwithstanding

In any case the implants are going to be a long time coming.  So for the present the right size for a phablet remains a contentious and vexatious issue.

As far as screen size is concerned, bigger will naturally be better.  But then we have to keep in mind that a phone, unlike a tablet, has to be carried in your pocket and not in a briefcase.  While suits may find even a bigger size okay, those accustomed to casuals or semi-formals may become uncomfortable with a size exceeding 4.75".  Then weight too increases with the size and the pocket sagging index poses stricter limits.  Inflexibility of the screen and accidental pressure on the hardware button for awakening the phone become a problem if the phone is carried in a jeans' pocket and one has to sit down.

As one of the billion consumers, I would be quite happy if someone could come up with a tiny phone that could be used only for voice calls together with a tablet that could be carried in a carry case with a wrist-strap.  The tablet must have 3G / 4G and wifi connectivity while the phone could very well work on 2G.  Also it should have wi-fi connectivity and applications like Whatsapp and Viber preloaded.  All other apps not meant for voice calls or texting should reside only on the tablet.

I will be even happier if manufacturers could come up with batteries that will recharge themselves through normal movement / body heat / electromagnetic radiation all around us or whatever except a mains which effectively renders these mobile devices immobile.

No Adult Franchise for Citizens for Profit

A government can be viewed as a very special service provider for its citizens.  Its principal duties being to protect the rights, life and honor of its citizens, and make and enforce laws for the purpose.  These services are paid for by its consumers - the citizens.  The payment is in the form of contributions to the economy and payment of taxes.  In return the citizens get the right to choose the people who can best provide these services.

It is unfortunate that those who have tasted the fruits of power grow so addicted to it that instead of performing they resort to bribing sections of electorate through offers of free entitlements.  To be sure these are not free.  These have to be paid for by the productive citizens.  There is a very real danger here. The aspirants in a democratic system will be all too happy if the recipients of free entitlements are and remain or grow to be more numerous than the productive ones.  For this majority will keep them in power. They don't care for the productive minority or the long term fallout for there will be another election in the long run!

It is true that there are destitutes in our country who do need support from the state.  However it cannot be gainsaid that the long term goal ought to be to enhance the number of citizens who take pride in their contributions to the economy and are capable of paying for quality governance.  This calls for striving to bring down the numbers of those who have to be provided free services and more.

This desirable long term goal seems to be in conflict with the political machinations in a democratic system.  How can this be corrected while holding on to democracy?  A clue is provided by Article 102 of the Constitution of India.  It says that a person shall be disqualified for being chosen as, and for being, a member of either house of Parliament, if he holds any "office of profit" under the Government of India or the Government of any State.  The reasons must be obvious.  You should not be the one to define and amend the system if you directly benefit from it.

On the same lines adult franchise should be limited to those who are net contributors to the economy.  One way of doing so could be to limit the right to vote to income tax payers howsoever small be the tax paid by them.  However this will exclude the most important class of citizens, namely agriculturists, from the democratic process.  So the criterion could be to include all income tax payers and all those who have an income which is at least two times the monetary value of all subsidies and entitlements received by them at current market prices.  Those who do not meet these two criteria should be excluded from adult franchise (It is these people who have been referred to in the title of this blog post as Citizens for Profit.)  This will arrest the political processes that seek to maintain and increase destitution for garnering votes.

It may be argued that it is going to be a tough job to identify the people who are to be excluded. But this may not be the case. All the recipients of subsidies and entitlements are always required to produce an income certificate from a local government functionary first.  All that is needed is a liaison between this official and the election commission's office.It may also be argued that as such destitutes will have no power to vote, no party would care for them.  I feel that they would, on the contrary, show genuine care for them and try to lift them to the voting class as a loyal supporter.

I would love to hear your views on the topic.

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.