Mesmerized By A Father Figure (AAP vs Baap?)

All of us grownups have a child within that likes to frolic and have fun.  There is another child within all of us that looks for a fatherly figure that can protect him from the world at large.  The more masculine a look that this father figure wears, the more booming his voice, the more decisive his pronouncements, the more authoritative his approach the better.  For such a father seems capable of squarely meeting and repelling threats.

This is why people with such attributes are easily accepted as leaders, corporate, political or otherwise.  Though, it is doubtful if these qualities have a correlation with the kind of leader that a person will make.  After all just repelling threats is not the whole job of a leader in today's civilized world.  Yet, mild mannered introverts do not inspire enough confidence in the child inside others to accept them as leaders even though many of them are likely to make a far better leader.  Another problem with the milder variety is that they will not go ahead and grab the position while the other category is just too eager to do that.

These observations are borne out by the fact that the media persons are often not willing to show the same deference to Kejariwal in their interactions as they do to Modi.  They do not feel intimidated by Kejariwal and are loath to accept him as an authority figure and that shows in their approach.

A friend of mine was discussing the current political scenario in Delhi.  He said that while he is all for what Kejariwal stands for but the very sight of Modi so inspires him that he cannot but vote for BJP.

I say ask the child in you to be quiet while the adult in you assesses the scenario, available options and likely outcomes.

Multimedia Poetry

TV has turned HD-LED,
Gone are DVD and CD,
No one ever watches DD.

Music now plays on your phone,

And if you are tired of ceaseless drone,

Use a noise canceling headphone.

Paint on your fablet colors' haze

Display it on your FB page

If no likes then fly into a rage.

For NRIs and Their Indian Attorneys - Part II

This is in continuation of my earlier post.

Having hit a wall in my efforts to get the flat booked by my son and daughter-in-law registered in their name as their POA (Power of Attorney) holder,  I talked to the Chief Legal Adviser (CLA) who was reluctant to provide my any formats for any additional documents to be obtained.  After much persuasion he dropped a few hints and asked me to consult a lawyer in the matter.  I also did some research on my own.

Finally it was decided to get an Irrevocable Special Power of Attorney executed by both the applicants jointly from USA.  It was deemed prudent to give complete references to the earlier two General POA instruments executed in my favor by each of the two applicants individually. I will publish the draft of the document in my blog later on.

Inquiries showed that this document will have to be notarized in USA and further apostilled by the state secretary of California - the state where the executants reside.  I also checked with an acquaintance who is an officer in the UP government on this.  He gave me some valuable advice.  He said this document has to be further countersigned by the Indian Consulate and that it does NOT require registration in India.  However a small stamp duty has to be paid on it to legalize it for use in India.  He advised me that for this purpose I should take the sealed cover as received from USA to the office of ADM (Revenue) in my district who will authorize the payment of stamp duty.  If you want to read more on this topic you may read this post.

It seems that people in similar circumstances do make the mistake of taking such documents directly to authorities like LDA without getting them legalized as stated in the preceding para.  I wonder what price they are made to pay for this blunder.

So next I took this legalized document to LDA.  It took a long time to traverse the short but tortuous path from the dealing clerk to CLA's table.  As I sat across from CLA, I requested him to take a look at my file.  He took out the document and straightaway looked for the evidence of payment of stamp duty without paying any attention to the contents.  He looked a little crestfallen when he saw that the document had been properly legalized.

This cleared the deck for execution of the deed by LDA and its registration in the sub-registrar's office.  The registration unfortunately took two visits.  It will make the subject matter of a later blog.

Ignorance of Law excused?

Ordinary mortals are often told in stern words that ignorance of law is no excuse.  However it seems that this dictum is not applicable to higher mortals who are in the business of enforcing laws!  Here is an example.  India has subscribed to Hague convention, an international convention.  Under this a legal document executed in a foreign country and meant to be used in another country can be certified (apostilled, a French word, as used in the treaty) by recognized state authorities in the country of execution and then the documents become legal.  There is no need for any further legalization in the country where it is to be used.

Normally a document to be apostilled is first notarized in the country where it is executed and then apostilled by the recognized government authorities there.

However my personal experience in the state of Uttar Pradesh shows that at least two more layers are added post apostille.  The first layer is the requirement of an apostilled document being certified / countersigned by the local Indian consulate.  Here is what the site of the Indian Consulate at San Francisco says:

• Apostille Convention: the Hague Convention, to which India and USA are signatories, abolishes the requirement of legalization for Foreign Public Documents. With the certification by the Hague Convention 'Apostille', the document is entitled to recognition in India and vice versa and no certification by the Embassy/Consulates of India is required. The convention applies to public documents which have been executed in the territory of one Contracting State and which have to be produced in the territory of another Contracting State.   
• However in many places in India, they would easily recognize the attestation by the Indian Embassy/Consulate and hence may ask for attested copy despite the document already being apostilled.  Hence, to avoid any inconvenience, if you wish to have the apostilled document also attested by the Consulate, you may apply to the Consulate.    
• The Consulate will attest the documents only after they have been first apostilled by the state authorities concerned in the US. Apostilling is done at the offices of the Secretary of State where the applicant resides.

Emphasis added by the author. Does this not condone the ignorance of authorities in India?

Things don't end at this.  Once the documents are received in India you have to approach the local revenue authorities.  The envelope containing the document has to be opened in their presence.  The idea is to make sure that the documents were actually shipped from abroad and not fabricated locally!  On top of this you submit an affidavit to the effect that the documents are truly genuine, submit an application requesting legalization, grease appropriate palms for sanction and finally pay a stamp duty of Rs.50/=.  The payment is certified by the Superintendent of Stamps.  Only now will the document be accepted as valid in India by authorities in India.

Apart from questions of harassment, does this requirement of countersignature and payment of stamp duty not violate the Hague convention to which the country is a signatory.

Religion & Terrorism

These days leaders, media and intellectuals don't tire of mindlessly repeating the phrase 'Terrorists have no religion.'  This flies in the face of facts.  Terrorists kill in the name of religion and to uphold the tenets and honor of their religion.  The menace of terrorism will never be eliminated as long as we continue to deny this stark correlation.

Violence in one form or the other is sanctioned by all religions in varying degrees (Jainism may be an exception as it upholds nonviolence as its fundamental tenet.)  Today if this correlation is more visible in case of one particular religion, the reason is not difficult to guess.  Wherever religious instructions are imparted earlier or more rigorously than modern and secular school education, they harden into a core of violent faith that becomes immune to reason.  Children  who are unfortunate to be so groomed turn into deeply religious persons ready to be commandeered by cunning and villainous religious leaders.  These leaders are dead against secular education as evident from the fact that one group of them has named itself Boko Haram meaning modern education is heretic.

Hence the solution to terrorism is to give up this ostrich like mentality and state clearly that too deep a religiosity leads to terrorism.  Once this is admitted, steps can be taken to delay and moderate religious instructions if not to eliminate them altogether.

Lollipop Adventures

I received Lollipop update (Android version 5.0; now 5.0.1 on Nexus 4 and 5.0.2 on Nexus 7) on my Nexus 4 phone OTA (over the air) about a month ago and loved the new OS.  I kept checking for OS updates on my Nexus 7 (2012) tablet, but it failed to show up OTA.  Finally I decided to download the factory image from Google and update it manually.

This called for loading of JDK (Java Development Kit) and Android Studio on top of it on my Windows laptop.  Thereafter certain components of SDK Manager had to be downloaded using Android Studio.  Finally, as required, I added an environment variable JAVA_HOME with its value set to the directory holding JDK and added the SDK directory to system PATH.  This was done using System Properties on the laptop.  All this labor made available 'adb' and 'fastboot' commands in the 'cmd' window on the laptop for unlocking the bootloader and readying the device for flashing it from the image downloaded and unzipped by me earlier.

Doing all this took whole of a day.  I was afraid that I might end up bricking my device but went ahead nonetheless.  Finally I did it and felt great when my tablet booted with Lollipop 5.0.2 for the first time.  However the feeling was soon gone as the browser started becoming unresponsive and crashing.  This unresponsive attitude spread to other apps and the OS as well.  Soon I was rebooting the device every few hours.  Replacing the Chrome browser with Dolphin provided some relief to start with but that too started fading soon.

This called for more research.  The research suggested that I wipe my cache partition using low level system commands.  For this you have to get into the mode that you would for factory resetting your device - by powering it off and then on by pressing Power and Volume Dn keys together.  At this level there is no touch screen and you navigate the menu using volume up and down buttons and select an option using the Power button.  So you choose Recovery Mode and then press Volume Up and Power buttons to get the next menu.  From this menu you choose the menu for wiping cache.  Finally you reboot.

Cache wiped, the device did show a little more life.  But alas, it faded pretty quickly.  Finding myself back to square 1 I thought of killing the Lollipop and taking the retrograde step of loading the Kitkat image back on my device.  However something at the back of my mind told me to check the sync settings.  So I navigated to Settings->Accounts->Google.  When I touched my displayed Google account a large number of apps and components appeared.  All had a check in the box against them.  Desperate as I was I unchecked all the boxes.  Presto!  The system was running fine and the lags, disappearing and freezing screens were all gone.

Becoming a little bold after my experiment, I checked a few boxes in my Google account sync settings back to on.  These were Mail, Contacts and App Data.  The system is still working fine and I hope with a certain level of confidence that it will continue that way.  I have a suspicion that unchecking the box against Chrome alone would perhaps be enough to solve the problem.  However, I have deferred the experiment for the time being.

So if Lollipop is making you desperate, head straight to sync settings for your Google account on the device.  The solution lies there and not in the cache partition.

Wish you a sweet Lollipop experience.

Religious Fanaticism - A Challenge to Humanity

A friend used to tell me of his uncle's prescription for ridding India of all the evils plaguing it.  It was to ask all people above 8 years of age to stand along the shoreline of India and then push them far out into the ocean!  He firmly believed that once you have crossed that age threshold, you would never be able to unlearn or rid yourself of the belief and value system that the society has drilled into you.  Religions understand this and want initiation to start with birth itself.  ISIS, doing unthinkable crimes in the name of a religion, also understands the principles well.  And this is why they are training children as young as 3 years into beheading dolls, handling firearms and killing people.  These hapless children will grow up into criminals beyond reform.

Thus it is of paramount importance in secular societies that reason and secular values be instilled into children at an early age, alongside any religious training imparted by their communities if not before it.  Imparting these skills and values later on in life does not help.  The values and beliefs imbibed earlier in childhood prevail and hold fast.  This is borne out by well educated software engineers and doctors turning into terrorists.

States are not doing enough to instill secular values from early childhood.  But there are, and I would like to believe that all along there have been, parents who pass on overt or covert messages to let their children know that it is okay to question whatever is being taught in the name of religion.  Some communities have even stopped or allowed to wither away formal religious instructions.  Priests in such communities often openly rue about this loss.

Today Muslims are seen as one community that persists in indoctrinating their young children hard with their network of Madarsas.  It is unfortunate that these Madarsas are patronized by governments too.  And this may explain prevalence of terrorism among even well literate Muslim youth.  I say this at the risk of being accused of religious profiling.  And yet I say this because this is what Muslim community needs to do to get rid of this branding and this evil plaguing their community - go easy on religious instructions and make your children understand that their religion is just one of many that exist on this earth.

When you have not been indoctrinated hard in your childhood, you are more likely to grow into a person who appreciates his religion as merely a legacy, both good and bad, from his forbears, and yet realizes that it is not worth killing or getting killed for and that it may have weaknesses in the current age and context.  It is like a happy child who grows up to realize that his father isn't really a superman but only a man and an average one at that, and yet loves him for all the care and love he bestowed on him.  Such a person will not kill or maim another person who refuses to acknowledge his daddy as the best!  Only such persons can truly appreciate the beautiful in a religion and reject the ugly in it.

Also any hope for reform of errant fanatics from a religion can come only from saner members of the same community.  They alone have a chance of being heard.  They wittingly or unwittingly contribute to the common resources of the community that are then usurped by the fanatics.  Chetan Bhagat recently argued in an article in Times of India that peaceful moderate members must not be forced to oppose the fanatics from their faith.  I do not agree with his argument and the community must assume responsibility for its errant members rather than relying on others to reform or eliminate them.  They must raise their voice loud enough to startle the fanatics and reassure potential victims.  And then mankind as a whole must vow to eliminate this clan of demons who are killing and demonizing children and abusing womenfolk.  Will the mankind unite to do so?  Well, we have not done so for eliminating global poverty or deforestation.  Let us hope we do better on this front.