A Blog-post dt. 31-08-09 at Advaniji's blog

RESPECTED ADVANIJI, THANKS GOD A LOT THAT THE BETTER SENSE HAS PREVAILED AND NOW THE NATION WOULD NOT BE DEPRIVED OF THE LEADERSHIP OF ITS TALLEST LEADER IN THESE CRITICAL TIMES. HOWEVER, THE BJP SHOULD NOW REINVENT ITSELF;NOT GET TRAPPED IN THE CONGRESS CULTURE AND ADDRESS REAL GRASS-ROOT ISSUES RELEVANT TO THE COMMON PEOPLE. WHY THE MEDIA, BOTH ELECTRONIC AND THE PRINT,EN BLOC, ARE SO MUCH BIASED AGAINST "EVERYTHING BJP AND ADVANI?" ARE EVEN THE RENOWNED POLITICAL ANALYSTS ALSO INCAPABLE OF MAKING CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF EVENTS AND PERSONALITIES AND ALWAYS ATTEMPT TO REMAIN POLITICALLY CORRECT AT THE COST OF BEING FACTUALLY INCORRECT? WHILE I AM A TOTALLY APOLITICAL PERSON, READING IN BETWEEN THE LINES SHOULD NOT BE THAT MUCH DIFFICULT EVEN TO A LAY MAN LIKE ME. FURTHER, w.r.t. TO MY ABOVE BLOG ENTRIES, I DO'NT KNOW HOW TO MODERATE MY OWN COMMENTS, AS SUGGESTED?
- SANJOG MAHESHWARI

SHAH RUKH KHAN EPISODE-MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

SANJOG MAHESHWARI

WORK CULTURE DIFFERES BECAUSE THE SYSTEM DIFFERS

-SANJOG MAHESHWARI

Recently the issue of frisking and detention of Shah Rukh Khan at the Newark airport in New Jersey for two hours sparked so much outrage in the country that even Information & Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni suggested tit-for-tat action and pleaded for equally stringent frisking and scrutiny of Americans visiting India.

It is unfortunate that the incidence was not viewed in a broader perspective. The episode exemplifies the 'no-nonsense' work culture in the US. Khan was detained by a US immigration officer because his name came up on a computer alert list. Although some of the other officers present at the airport tried to vouch for Khan, the officer concerned refused to budge. Unfortunately, this culture of dedication to one's duty is something that we can never imagine in India and that led us to give vent to our impotent fuss and fury; blowing an otherwise innocuous matter out of proportion to the hilt.

Not only the incidence has not gone well with our national psyche of "so-called VIP versus Mr. Nobody" -a legacy of colonial culture of the Raj days, it also highlights the huge difference between work culture of the two countries: Ours typified by “sub-chalta-hai” attitude vis-a-vis theirs rooted in “duty is supreme; nobody above the Law” ethics. Pandering to self-delusion and parading our fondness for pretentious affectations, we take delight in parroting the oft-quoted, worn out catchphrase: “howsoever high you may be; you are not above the law” ,but has anybody ever seen the long arm of law catching up with a tainted VIP? Almost always, invariably in any given situation, the big fish manages to escape scot-free.

This American culture of dedication to duty can't possibly be implanted in the Indian psyche for obvious reasons. For it to happen in India, we will have to completely delink the Executive from the Legislature. Under the extant arrangement of things the former is the handmaid of the latter. The Judiciary is also subservient to this unholy yet formidable combination. In US and many other democracies, these three institutions work separately, but in tandem, in the best interests of their people as against the entrenched vested interests of a few.

This is not the first incident in the US where an officer in the line of duty has had an 'encounter' with an influential person. Sergeant James. M. Crowley had arrested Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., a friend of US President Barack Obama, on the charge of disorderly conduct when a neighbour suspected a case of burglary at the former's residences. Instead of transferring the police officer, ,as it could have happened had the incidence occurred in India, the police unions demanded an apology from the President for saying that "the officer acted stupidly" . The very next day, at a press meet the President not only praised the Cambridge cop for being an “outstanding police officer” but also invited him to the White House along with the Professor and the American Vice-president for a beer to assuage frayed tempers and hurt egos of both the sides. He could not do anything better to redeem the badly bruised honour of his friend, who in his own rights also, is not just another man out there on the street.

Not so long ago, his predecessor in the office, George Bush looked the other way while his daughter cooled her heals behind the bars for the whole night for the charge of illegal possession of alcohol. The US is a democracy where not even the Presidents of the country, notwithstanding the fact that they hold the most powerful post in the world, cannot wield their authority to bend or twist the law of the land. This is what a true democracy is all about. In our country such things are unimaginable.

For an emotional India, venting its ire against the American security procedure could only be as meaningless as the U.S. ambassador Timothy J. Roemer's recognition of Khan as a global icon. It is our problem that we don't have that system of democratic governance and the work culture which invests us with the moral authority to return the American compliment.

-SANJOG MAHESHWARI

C1-A-42 B M.I.G. FLATS,

JANAKPURI, NEW DELHI-110 058.

SHAH RUKH KHAN -FIASCO

SANJOG MAHESHWARI

WORK CULTURE DIFFERES BECAUSE THE SYSTEM DIFFERS

-SANJOG MAHESHWARI

Recently the issue of frisking and detention of Shah Rukh Khan at the Newark airport in New Jersey for two hours sparked so much outrage in the country that even Information & Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni suggested tit-for-tat action and pleaded for equally stringent frisking and scrutiny of Americans visiting India.

It is unfortunate that the incidence was not viewed in a broader perspective. The episode exemplifies the 'no-nonsense' work culture in the US. Khan was detained by a US immigration officer because his name came up on a computer alert list. Although some of the other officers present at the airport tried to vouch for Khan, the officer concerned refused to budge. Unfortunately, this culture of dedication to one's duty is something that we can never imagine in India and that led us to give vent to our impotent fuss and fury; blowing an otherwise innocuous matter out of proportion to the hilt.

Not only the incidence has not gone well with our national psyche of "so-called VIP versus Mr. Nobody" -a legacy of colonial culture of the Raj days, it also highlights the huge difference between work culture of the two countries: Ours typified by “sub-chalta-hai” attitude vis-a-vis theirs rooted in “duty is supreme; nobody above the Law” ethics. Pandering to self-delusion and parading our fondness for pretentious affectations, we take delight in parroting the oft-quoted, worn out catchphrase: “howsoever high you may be; you are not above the law” ,but has anybody ever seen the long arm of law catching up with a tainted VIP? Almost always, invariably in any given situation, the big fish manages to escape scot-free.

This American culture of dedication to duty can't possibly be implanted in the Indian psyche for obvious reasons. For it to happen in India, we will have to completely delink the Executive from the Legislature. Under the extant arrangement of things the former is the handmaid of the latter. The Judiciary is also subservient to this unholy yet formidable combination. In US and many other democracies, these three institutions work separately, but in tandem, in the best interests of their people as against the entrenched vested interests of a few.

This is not the first incident in the US where an officer in the line of duty has had an 'encounter' with an influential person. Sergeant James. M. Crowley had arrested Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., a friend of US President Barack Obama, on the charge of disorderly conduct when a neighbour suspected a case of burglary at the former's residences. Instead of transferring the police officer, ,as it could have happened had the incidence occurred in India, the police unions demanded an apology from the President for saying that "the officer acted stupidly" . The very next day, at a press meet the President not only praised the Cambridge cop for being an “outstanding police officer” but also invited him to the White House along with the Professor and the American Vice-president for a beer to assuage frayed tempers and hurt egos of both the sides. He could not do anything better to redeem the badly bruised honour of his friend, who in his own rights also, is not just another man out there on the street.

Not so long ago, his predecessor in the office, George Bush looked the other way while his daughter cooled her heals behind the bars for the whole night for the charge of illegal possession of alcohol. The US is a democracy where not even the Presidents of the country, notwithstanding the fact that they hold the most powerful post in the world, cannot wield their authority to bend or twist the law of the land. This is what a true democracy is all about. In our country such things are unimaginable.

For an emotional India, venting its ire against the American security procedure could only be as meaningless as the U.S. ambassador Timothy J. Roemer's recognition of Khan as a global icon. It is our problem that we don't have that system of democratic governance and the work culture which invests us with the moral authority to return the American compliment.


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Pension Rules etc-Sanjog Maheshwari

SANJOG MAHESHWARI

ENSURE COMPLETE PARITY AMONG ALL PENSIONERS

It is good that the Government has, reportedly, agreed to “one rank, one pension” demand of the Armed Forces thereby eliminating all the arbitrarily created disparities and differences between the various sections of the Armed Force pensioners. Similar arbitrarily created differences and disparities among the civil pensioners now need to be addressed and corrected thereby bringing all the pensioners, irrespective of their date(s) of retirement, at par, in all matters related to retiral benefits such as gratuity, family pension, leave encashment etc. on retirement. The date of retirement is now irrelevant for determining the quantum of pension etc. in case of armed personnel and so should also be the case with other Government pensioners. Accordingly, their pension etc. needs to be revised on the basis of their notional basic pay fixed at the proper stage in the new pay scales on every such revision of pay scales since their retirement.

Proper pension and pensionary benefits are sacrosanct, protected and greatly valued possession of a Government servant. Denying them to the pensioners whether pre-96 or Pre-2006 tantamount to travesty of justice and violation of Article 14 read with Article 31 (1) [Right to property] of the Constitution.

Article 14 mandates “Equality before the law” as a fundamental right of all the citizens. It completely outlaws “unreasonableness and arbitrariness” in executive action. However, these unfortunate elements seem to be deeply imbedded in the very psyche of the bureaucracy and invariably factor-in in their decision making processes.

Almost all these worthy super-senior citizens- particularly the pre-96 pensioners- are over 70, suffering from hosts of terminal debilitating diseases and struggling to survive the ravages of “ills, bills, pills” and “empty nest” syndromes. They have been crying foul ever since they were wronged. Sixth Pay Commission has also chosen to gloss over the matter and ignore the legitimate claims of Pre-96 pensioners. It is hightime that the Government ensured to them the similar COMPLETE parity as granted to the Armed Force pensioners.

Death and terminal diseases are no respecters of age and the government must act fast before it is too late. It is hightime the pension rules framing system is reoriented on the lines prevalent in the U.K. from where it, though originated, materially differs. While in the U.K. the system is governed by and flows from the “Statute”, here in our country instead of the “Statute” it is governed by the rules made in a government department manned by unduly biased bureaucrats for whom the word “reasonableness” does not seem to exist.

Parrking space crunch 02-04-09

PARKING PROBLEM – AN OFFSHOOT OF LOP-SIDED DEVELOPMENT

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The severely limited parking space in almost all the Metropolises, getting increasingly shrunk by the day, is sure going to cause nightmares to the harried citizens. Add to it the thickly congested roads used by incessantly tensed drivers with frayed tempers, shouting and fighting all through the way to their destination and you get the big picture. The family would be thanking God for his small mercies, if their near and dear ones drive back home in one piece, even after being involved in an ugly incidence of road rage, accident and/ or a bloody brawl for the road-space- the things likely to become a matter of routine in not too distant future. One wonders, why the ever-rising graph of incidences of violent road-rage and fatal or near-fatal road- accidents does not ring alarm bells for the policy-planners and those in authority?

The neighbours fight like sworn enemies for limited parking space within block areas in residential colonies of big cities. Parks within them need to be reconverted into parking ground to meet the hugely increased demand for the parking space.

And now, with the small Nano and other small models, looming large all set to flood the vehicle market in a big way, the crisis will further deepen. Not only the arterial roads of the big cities but even the dirt roads of the countryside small towns and villages will get the taste of congestion, pollution and what not? Of course, the cash-rich farmers of the States in the neighbourhood of Delhi will continue to move in their swanky cars, as hitherto, but others will certainly go for Nano in a big way. Don’t be surprised if, some years from now, going for a morning walk, you are accosted by a beggar driving a second-third hand battered Nano, with his one hand on the steering wheel and the other jutted out of the window, holding a bowl thrust right under your nose: “Pitrool ke vaastey paisa dey dey, Baboo.” (Spare some money for filling the car, please).

The situation right now is very grim indeed. With the Nano and other newer models swarming down on the roads of our cities, like a cloud of locusts, the bad will get to worse in near future.It is estimated that each day Delhi roads are swarmed with around 1500 new automobiles further accentuating the already acute problem of parking and road congestion in Delhi. The story could not be much different in other metropolises and big cities. Less said about the spiraling atmospheric pollution, the better.Western countries have already labelled us as "the bad boy of the climate change talks" and are pressurizing us to cut down our greenhouse gas emissions As J.R.R Tolkien. aptly puts it in his book Lord of the Rings, we should "........uproot the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till". America has decided to take tough measures to tackle vehicular emissions. Those when implemented would reduce polluting emissions from vehicles by more than 1/3rd. And that would be equivalent to removing about 18 crore cars from the U.S. roads by 2016. Alarm bells are already ringing for our country, the world’s fifth largest Green House Gas emitter. Here mere vehicle emission cuts won’t serve the purpose; even though per unit vehicular emission in our country averages substantially more than that of the U.S.A.This certainly, is not the type of growth or development that we should strive for. Action on climate change and global warming should take precedence over the economic growth. While our economic growth caters to the greed and caprice of less than 10% rich and powerful moneybags, the climate change is likely to adversely affect the life and livelihood of around 7.5 million poor of the country every year. We should put a cap on car manufacture to curtail its production . Cancel all the deals on automobile production, manufacturing and sale.

The dictates of the emerging situation are loud and clear: For the present, more than flyovers and roads, we need to create parking lots, not only in and around office-complexes but more so within residential colonies and blocks and that may entail converting many a city parks into parking-lots on priority, besides constructing multi-level parking facilities.

While the alarm bells have been ringing for quite sometime now, one wonders why the government and the policy planners are not hearing? Why are they not seeing the writing on the wall in bold relief and looking the other way when the urban landscape of the country is getting uglier by the day- chocked with mindless unplanned and grotesque development? All the big cities are bursting at their seams; severely straining the extremely fragile infrastructure. This prosperity for less than 10% has robbed the middle-class India off its tranquil, peaceful quality life infesting it instead with perpetual tension-filled days (and nights) with no respite in sight. The quality of life of middle-class India should not be sacrificed at the altar of higher and higher standard of living which unplanned development as ours ensures for the 10% rich of the country, who corner its 90% wealth while the teeming millions live below the poverty line. Thus broadly speaking, the quality of life of the nation as a whole deteriorates if the development is not tempered with equitable distribution on the national wealth as has been the case with our country ever since independence. Presently the more challenging problems which call for urgent action are: Global warming, climate change, scarcity of essential natural resources and as such we should put the issue of economic growth on back-burner and concentrate on them. Consumerism and diabolical materialism are the bane of the society and we should be wary of promoting them in the name of economic growth. If the ancient Indian wisdom and the accumulated experience of millennium is to be believed, happiness lies in minimizing the wants and, not in multiplying them.

Population explosion in a country as mismanaged and as misgoverned as India is akin to extending an open invitation to the ghost of Malthus which, even otherwise, resurrects here, off and on, in the form of deaths and devastation in terror attacks, endemics, epidemics, wars, pestilence, diseases, floods, accidents, poverty and starvation driven suicides, murders, pre-mature deaths ( our maternal and infant mortality rate is just about the highest in the world and the average life expectancy little over 60), increasing Naxalite- and now sitting at the doorstep the “Taliban” -insurgency and violence and endless such maladies so much so that human life has become the cheapest commodity in our country.

Only the rich and the politicians are benefited by the growth of human capital which they gleefully welcome. To the former it guarantees cheap labour-force and an inflated number of gullible consumers and to the latter a swelled minority (read Muslim) vote-bank. And all that at the cost of the poor and the middle-class whose poverty and miseries get compounded with each addition of an Australia every year to our population. No wonder, the rich and the politicians incessantly sing virtues of being “many” through their handsomely paid writers, ghost-writers and ever-obliging press and electronic media, caring a hoot for the miseries and depravities caused thereby to the remaining teeming millions.

Sadly, in the big cities and the Metropolises, the car has left the domain of being a luxury to become a necessity - a commodity needed for the very survival in an extremely busy city life. No more are they needed just for convenience and comfort, as used to be only a couple of decades back. No wonder, if the phenomenon of rear to rear driven cars in a lengthy beetle-like formation crawling their way on the busy city roads, all the time blenching volumes of carbon-dioxide and other poisonous gases in the atmosphere, honking and competing for every inch of the road space, soon becomes an unalterable part of the busy city life. Long traffic-jams and snarl-ups at every next turn of a road, are right now here to stay. Sad and lamentable; they call this horrible phenomenon:-“development” and every politician and political party swear by it.

While the government and all those policy-planners know it fully well that the root cause of all maladies is the unbridled growth of population, they seldom talk about it, let alone taking necessary measures to control it. Why the successive governments have been shying away from taking the most stringent measures that are urgently called for in order to contain and control the burgeoning population? Why are they not enforcing small family norms by meting out extremely harsh and deterrent punishments, disincentives and penalties to the defaulters, just as in China? Is not the politics of minority (read Muslim) vote bank also, directly or indirectly, responsible for it?

Do extra-ordinary maladies not require extra-ordinary solutions?

-SANJOG MAHESHWARI

POPULATION EXPLOSION

SANJOG MAHESHWARI

PEOPLE, POLITICS & POPULATION

India has a meager 2.4% of the world surface area of 135.8 million Sq. meters. Yet, it has to support and sustain a whopping 16.8% of the world population. The population rise in India is so rapid and fast that from 238.4 million at the turn of the century, it scaled 1028 million mark in March 2001 and stands at staggering figure of around 1200 million now. As it hugely outstrips the severely limited natural resources, with an ever increasing margin, it has been entailing unbearable burden on the society. While, for the obvious reasons, the elite in the society enjoys immunity from the burden, the middle-class and the poor, both of urban and rural India, bear the burnt and continue to suffer in silence the miseries it entails in the form of severe scarcity of the limited natural resources and huge scramble for the scarce resources, uncontrolled spread of pandemic and epidemic diseases, malnutrition, starvation deaths, abject poverty, frequent visitations of natural calamities-droughts, floods etc. , unhygienic living conditions in slums and pigeon-hole flats, near absence of health and medical care, and such other maladies as are offshoots of environmental pollution, vagaries of weather, climate change, global warming and destruction of ecological balance.

Despite the fact that India was the first country to adopt a population policy, practically nothing has been done in terms of population control. As a result India is facing major crisis in the form of rapid depletion of its natural resources such as water, minerals, flora and fauna, fisheries etc. There is a fierce competition among the communities and sections of the population for the severely limited national resources such as land, forest and water which are being exploited to the hilt. Density of population is also responsible for the quick and uncontrolled spread of the recent scourge: pandemic H1N1 flue-the "swine-flue."

Population explosion in a country as mismanaged and as misgoverned as India is a sure recipe for disaster - akin to extending an open invitation to the ghost of Malthus- who, even otherwise, resurrects here, off and on, in the form of deaths and devastation in terror attacks, endemics, epidemic, wars, pestilence, diseases, floods, accidents, poverty and starvation driven suicides, murders, pre-mature deaths ( our maternal and infant mortality rate is just about the highest in the world) and many such other maladies. Already the human life seems to have become the cheapest commodity in our country.

( As early as in 18th century, the priest and philosopher Malthus enunciated a theory known as "Malthusian theory of Population." According to Malthus while the population increases by Geometric progression, the food-supply increases by Arithmetical progression which over the years, leaves the food-supply far short of the requirement of increased population, This phenomenon leads to leveling of the increased population to equate with the available food-supply through the inter-play of what he termed as " positive checks" in the form of natural calamities such as wars, pestilence, floods, draughts, epidemics, endemics, earthquakes etc. He, therefore, exhorted all the Christians and non-Christians to practice moral self-restrained to keep the population in check and termed it "Preventive Checks." He theorized that if the preventive checks are not exercised, the positive checks will automatically bring down the population by destroying the excess number. While the Industrial Revolution which brought about prosperity in the European nations in the subsequent years proved Malthus wrong in those countries and they out rightly rejected his theory branding it as predictions of the Prophet of Gloom, India incessantly suffered natural calamities in the form of drought, floods, earthquakes, epidemics etc that visited the country with alarming frequency. Poverty, hunger and starvation, the legacies of the past still persist refusing to leave the land; underlying the relevancy of Malthus so far as our country is concerned)

While the tycoons and the politicians are benefited by the growth of human capital, they welcome this non-depleting and ever-increasing human resource. To the former it guarantees cheap labour-force and an inflated number of gullible consumers and to the latter a swelled vote-bank comprising of certain sections of the society which specialize in multiplying their number for strengthening their political clout, promoting their community interests and political ambitions ,and power their vote-bank; as our democracy is all about number. And all that at the cost of the poor and the middle-class whose poverty and miseries get compounded with each addition of an Australia every year to our population.

The government sometimes shows-off that they are really concerned by occasionally distributing some low-key publicity material on family planning whereas the need of the hour is to formulate a firm, no-nonsense policy to enforce all sorts of conceivable deterring disincentives and penalties on the individuals and the families who do not observe small family norms preferably of “One-Child-One-Family” variety. While this is required to be done urgently and immediately, our ruling political class, in its anxiety to remain politically correct always with its vote-bank, feels shy of tackling the problem in any effective manner. Wary of offending the religious sensibilities of their minority (read Muslim) voters, the ruling class wants us to believe that a thing as simple as increased viewing of T.V. can do the trick and the Chinese are fools to resort to the harsh methods to control population. They want us to believe that better results can be achieved by a simple method- providing idiot-box to every home in the rural India!

This human liability- sadly regarded as asset- is, directly and indirectly, responsible for more than 60% of our total greenhouse gas emissions, for which world over we are being castigated as “the bad boy of climate change talks.”

Small family norms need to be enforced by meting out extremely harsh and deterring punishments, disincentives and penalties to the defaulters, just as in China. But are the ruling class politicians, who thrive and survive on the vote-bank politics and populist measures willing to do the needful in the larger national interests? While extra-ordinary maladies do require extra-ordinary measures, the politicians across the board can hardly be expected to put larger national interests on top of their own entrenched self interests that lie in fostering their vote-banks. .