The case for privatising sports

So India has won the cricket match against Pakistan! Now that this objective is achieved can the powerful elite go back to the business of doing their job. They did have a day’s “Paid” vacation. We saw top political leaders enjoying a cricket match on what was a working day for all Indians. We hope that our beloved leaders have now gone back to their offices and are now doing their real job. The elected political leaders are not just “Servants” of the people; they are “Paid Servants.” They get salaries, they get perks, so if they take a day’s vacation to watch a cricket match, it is only fair that they should forgo that day’s salary. Then there is the issue of private planes that were used to ferry VIPs. Who pays for these joyrides?

It is not as if, I didn’t enjoy the cricket match. I did. But unlike the powerful elite, I have to actually work for a living. So I could not afford to spend 5 or 6 hours before the TV. I saw the match for less than 20 minutes, which is all I could spare from my busy schedule, and I liked what I saw. I would have liked the contest between the Indian and Pakistani teams even more, if the tournament had been a wholly private effort. In the present scenario, millions of dollars of taxpayer’s money must have been spent to organise this extravaganza. The country is currently facing a massive cash crunch, there is unimaginable amount of poverty, so why is the government spending money on sporting events that only a small minority in the country is able to watch.

Sports needs to be privatised, not just in India but around the world. Governments around the world blatantly misuse the sporting events for their own propaganda purposes. We only need to look at how the institution of Olympics has been misused by myriad governments. Instead of participating as quintessential sportsmen, the athletes in the Olympics are expected to act as diplomats; they are expected to bring “prestige” to the country, which basically means the regime that is in power. Why should an athlete be tasked with bringing prestige to the regime! An athlete’s loyalty should be only to the sport that he plays. At the time of any Olympic event, the world is awash with feelings of xenophobia and false sense of cultural pride.

Instead of being treated with sports at its best, the hapless people in the world get struck with a surfeit of politics at its worst, during these so called sporting events. Sports is serious business, we can’t afford to leave it into the hands of irresponsible governments. I completely fail to understand, why did the Indian government decided to use the World Cup semi finals at Mohali to make a diplomatic overture to Pakistan. If they are so serious about improving relations with our neighbouring country, then they could have taken many initiatives in the past. Why wait till the World Cup! The relations between the two countries can only improve when there is more people to people contact. For that trade barriers between India and Pakistan have to be removed completely. Traders and professionals from both countries should be allowed to move around freely.

Few months ago, we witnessed the ugly spectacle of the Commonwealth Games getting completely hijacked by the political party that is in power. I don’t think they will ever be able to find who stole how much money in the organisation of the CWG games. Everyone got a cut, so no one is interested in catching the crooks. And now even the Cricket World cup is also being used for propaganda purposes. Such blatant misuse of sporting events can only stop if the sports industry is privatised. Shut down the sports ministry, take out the politics, let private players in the country handle sporting events. 

Cricket is the opium of the masses

When the oppressed people of third world countries like India and Pakistan want to escape from the grim realities of their life, they turn their focus on cricket. What else can explain the crazy devotion that some fans have for this game! In the match at Mohali the entire group of the usual suspects – top politicians, bureaucrats, film stars, business tycoons – are going to be in attendance. It is almost as if the entire country is on vacation. How much is this massive extravaganza going to cost? Someone has to foot the bill for that glitzy event that has been organised. Ultimately it is the ordinary people of this country, who will be forced to pay through higher inflation.

The book called “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” by Edward Gibbons automatically comes to my mind. The Roman Empire fell because the Roman rulers were too devoted to spending their nation’s wealth on enacting gladiatorial games. The idea behind these games was to delude the public with unending shows of thrilling action. The cost of these games was too high, but no Roman emperor could dare to plug the leak, as that would have led to thousands of unemployed youngsters becoming bored and rioting in the streets. The Roman youth had to been kept amused in order to save the regime and so the spectacular gladiatorial games went on.

Eventually the state went bankrupt. There was massive inflation and the hapless “aam admis” of the Roman Empire realised that the Roman Empire was offering them nothing. The gladiatorial games were mere a delusion that the corrupt ruling class created to divert the attention of the people from the grim realities of Roman society. After that the empire simply faded out of existence. The condition in India is not too different. Our ruling class is also riddled with people like Nero, Tiberius, Caligula, Commodus and others. Food inflation is more than 10%. General inflation is hovering around 15-20%. And we are wasting so much time, energy and resources on one game! Does this make any sense?

The other day I saw on Times Of India the picture of someone who was holding a placard out side the stadium at Mohali. The placard said, “Take one of my kidneys but give me a ticket to the match.” This is crazy. Do these people have nothing better to do? The number of “cricket fundamentalists” in the country could number less than one crore, but they seem to be taking the entire country of more than 100 crore to ransom. Personally, I like football, but I am completely against holding any football tournament in the country at government expense. Government has no right to waste our money on sporting events. All sporting activity in the country should be privatised.

Cricket leads to verbal diarrhoea on TV

How much cricket can one digest without having a severe bout of “mental diarrhoea?” This is the crucial question that has been racking my mind for the past few days. Indian TV channels have clearly gone gaga over the upcoming match between India and Pakistan. Day after day we are being forced to watch the same set of analysts who are capable of extending a simple game of cricket to almost mythical dimensions. Cricket can entertain, it can increase the blood pressure of the fans, the game can also cure poverty, bring two warring nations India-Pakistan together, it can improve the educational infrastructure and give a fillip to the stock markets, and blah, blah, blah…

These TV studio artists are determined to prove it to everyone that every imaginable problem plaguing the Indian subcontinent can be solved on that small patch of ground where the India-Pakistan match will be played. Why can’t we take it as another simple and stupid game that will be played between two sides, one of which will win and the other will loose. What’s the big deal? Why extend cricket to diplomacy! To all kinds of other things that don’t have any connection at all to sports. By our extreme reaction to this match, we are only proving to everyone that we are an extremely immature nation and we don’t know how to keep cricket out of politics and foreign affairs.

If our country wants to develop good neighbourly relations with Pakistan, then we should use proper channels of diplomacy for that purpose. There is no way the relations between the two nations can be improved by the mere act of inviting the Pakistani PM to Mohali for watching the cricket match. The cricket players are not diplomats or ideologues; they have no role to play in bringing two nations together or further apart. They are not demigods; they are there only to play their game. The game will be over in a matter of few hours and then the relationship between Indian and Pakistan will be back to being where it always was.

There is no doubt that the “Private TV channels” in India have done a GREAT job during the past few years. India has become a much more liberal country, politically and culturally, thanks to the work done by the Private TV Channels. But during the last 3 or 4 years, there have been many instances where our TV channels have become the mouthpiece for baseless exaggerations, scandals and salacious views. Such programming might win new viewers in the short run, but in the long run it will only lead to loss of credibility. A degree of sobriety needs to come into the news content that gets telecast. We must have some respect for viewers who have mind of their own.

TV channels should stop making ridiculous claims that the cricket match between India and Pakistan is going to be a panacea for each and every ill that has ever plagued both these nations. Recently I watched on one of the new channels a bunch of politicians and ex-diplomats discussing how this match could lead to peace the two nations. For God’s sake, why can’t these people just keep quiet, if they have nothing sensible to say!

Atlas Shrugged Trailer

WikiLeaks has a taste of its own medicine

Title: Inside WikiLeaks

Author: Daniel Domscheit-Berg

Publisher: Random House

Pages: 288

Price: Rupees 499

During the last few days, info from documents leaked by WikiLeaks has given a severe jolt to the Indian political system. But that is only because, our socialist political system is so corrupt, venal, incompetent and weak that even the most gentle breeze of transparency can rock it to the core. That this gentle breeze of transparency should be the handiwork of a man of doubtful integrity, someone like Julian Assange, is by itself a big joke on Indian socialist establishment. Even though Julian Assange preaches transparency for everyone, he runs a super-secret organization. His words make it seems as if he is closer ideologically to the leftist dictatorships in the world than to liberal democracies.

In this eye-popping account by the former spokesperson of WikiLeaks, there are allegations of rape, corruption, political conspiracy, financial misdemeanour and there are the aspects of jealousy, recrimination and violent threats. The WikiLeaks saga has turned murkier than what anyone could have ever imagined. What we have here is drama that is more compelling than any Hollywood thriller. Since 2010 WikiLeaks has remained virtually impotent, as many of the top programmers have defected.

Before he was removed from his post, under the pseudonym Daniel Schmitt, Domscheit-Berg used to be the effective number two at WikiLeaks. He was the organization’s most public face, after Julian Assange. Once they were so close and now they hate each other bitterly. “And our friendship began to fall apart the moment that Julian no longer felt that I was kowtowing to him. When I began to bring up concrete problems, simply because problems existed and not because I saw our relationship differently, he started to describe me as someone who needed to be “contained.” In early 2010 his tone toward me changed radically. “If you fuck up, I’ll hunt you down and kill you,” he once told me.”

According to Domscheit-Berg, Julian is extremely paranoid. On one occasion Julian became convinced that someone was watching Domscheit-Berg’s house. So he decided that they should avoid ever being seen leaving or returning to the apartment together. In the book, Domscheit-Berg says, “I used to wonder what difference that made. If someone had gone to the trouble of shadowing my apartment, he would have known we lived together.” The book is full of such searing reminiscences. Assange is portrayed as a driven, technologically gifted former hacker and idealist, who also harbours dictatorial and anarchic tendencies. According to Domscheit-Berg, Assange’s flawed leadership has impaired the viability of WikiLeaks as a secure outlet for whistleblowers.

The story begins with passages that showcase Domscheit-Berg’s journey from his initial reverence for Assange, but the bonhomie lasts only for a few pages, and soon we get the chance to read the really juicy part, where the writer describes his disillusionment with the organisation and its founder. In one place Assange is described as a highly secretive nomadic Australian whose only address is of the e-mail variety. It is amazing that the leader of the organisation, whose sole purpose for existence is to leak others secrets, should be so secretive about his own life. Domscheit-Berg seems to take great delight in talking about Assange’s paranoia, which led him to contemplate bulletproof vests and an air-raid shelter for the protection of WikiLeaks personnel.

In context of the lakhs of documents related to the Afghan war, the group had initially decided to edit sensitive information before releasing them to protect the identity of the people who were working in the danger zone. Initially Assange backed the practice, but he failed to develop coherently policies to implement the strategy. In any case, there were just too many documents passing through the WikiLeaks pipeline and that made it very difficult for them to edit anything. Domscheit-Berg is of the opinion that WikiLeaks’s downfall started when it metamorphosed into some kind of a religious cult, in which no one could dare to question the guru.

There are also details of huge cash payments that WikiLeaks has received from various international organisations. Despite the gush of money, Assange remained tight-fisted to the very end.

13 things to learn from Japan

On 18 March I had written on the highly commendable way in which the Japanese were conducting themselves in face of the natural disaster (The values that Japan can teach India). Today I got this list of 10 points in an email.

10 things to learn from Japan:

1. THE CALMNESS: Not a single visual of chest-beating or wild grief. Sorrow itself has been elevated.

2. THE DIGNITY: Disciplined queues for water and groceries. Not a rough word or a crude gesture.

3. THE ABILITY: The incredible architects, for instance. Buildings swayed but didn’t fall.

4. THE GRACE: People bought only what they needed for the present, so everybody could get something.

5. THE ORDER: No looting in shops. No honking and no overtaking on the roads. Just understanding.

6. THE SACRIFICE: Fifty workers stayed back to pump sea water in the N-reactors. How will they ever be repaid ?

7. THE TENDERNESS: Restaurants cut prices. An unguarded ATM is left alone. The strong cared for the weak.

8. THE TRAINING: The old and the children, everyone knew exactly what to do. And they did just that.

9. THE MEDIA: They showed magnificent restraint in the bulletins. No silly reporters. Only calm reportage.

10. THE CONSCIENCE: When the power went off in a store, people put things back on the shelves and left quietly.

To those ten things quoted above, I would like to add just three more:

11. THE POLITICIANS: I have been keeping track of Japanese papers and all I can is politicians behaving in a very sober and mature manner.

12. THE HONESTY: As of now I have not been able to come across any instance of Japanese politicians or bureaucrats cornering the funds meant for victims of the natural disaster.

13. EVERYONE IS A COMMONER: Even Japan has film stars, sports stars and other celebrities, but they don't seem to be using the natural disaster to gain publicity for themselves.

The Car From Atlas Shrugged Motors

The Chevrolet Volt is beginning to look like it was manufactured by Atlas Shrugged Motors, where the government mandates everything politically correct, rewards its cronies and produces junk steel.

This is the car that subsidies built. General Motors lobbied for a $7,500 tax refund for all buyers, under the shaky (if not false) promise that it was producing the first all-electric mass-production vehicle.

Click here to read more of this very interesting article...

The Luddite fear mongering over nuclear radiation

One thing is sure – the community of Luddites will never give up preaching falsehoods. You expose their junk science today, and tomorrow they will be back with even more junk science. Now they are using the natural disaster in Japan to spread even more falsehoods about nuclear radiation. Recently I saw on CNN, the talk about how agricultural produce in Japan had been contaminated by radiation from the damaged reactor. It seemed like a usual news report, until the CNN reporter blurted out the truth that if anyone were to eat this agricultural produce for one FULL YEAR, he would get radiation that is equivalent to having a normal CT Scan.

Such minimal amount of nuclear radiation poses no risk at all to human health. In fact, many scientists have come up with the theory that low levels of radiation can be easily tolerated by the human body, and in most cases are actually good for our health. The long-term data on the health of survivors of the atomic bombs clearly demonstrates that human body is capable of protecting itself from radiological exposure. Today the forests around Chernobyl have become full of wildlife; all kinds of plants, birds and animals are thriving in that area. So much for the Luddite prediction in wake of the Chernobyl disaster that the area would be a nuclear wasteland for the next 150 years!

Tom Bethell, the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, has been arguing for a long time that the impact of nuclear radiation on human body depends on the magnitude of the radiation. In smaller doses nuclear radiation might actually be good for human health. The English news channels in India and abroad don’t care for real science. They would rather earn their viewers by frightening them through the propagation of junk science. Frankly I am tired of witnessing this false propaganda from these grim faced reporters of TV’s cloud cuckoo land. In fact, the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts.

In 1983, a series of apartment blocks got accidentally infected with massive amounts of highly radioactive material Cobalt 60. The Taiwanese did not act like some kind of Chicken Little, and people were allowed to live in the buildings. After 16 years there were only 16 cases of cancer in the 10,000 residents of the block. The rate of cancer for the same age group in general Taiwanese population is 170 for every 10,000. The truth is that radiation in smaller quantities can be good for human body, as these small doses can protect us against cancer by activating the cells’ natural defence mechanisms. In scientific parlance, the beneficial effect of radiation is known as hormesis.

So even if the people in Japan are being infected by infinitesimally small doses of radiation, they don’t have anything to worry about. In the long run, they will only end up developing immunity from cancer. India should go ahead with installing nuclear reactors without any fear. The power needs of more than one billion Indians can only be met through nuclear energy. We have to do everything we can to disprove and discredit the Luddite propaganda against nuclear power and nuclear radiation.

Secularism is possible only in a free economy

Times of India Report: Bengal worse than Gujarat for Muslims?

Almost every modern political concept in this country has been distorted. We are having a George Orwell’s 1984 kind of situation, where Big Brother’s propaganda was focussed on proving that 2+2 = 5. What does secularism mean in this country? In some so-called secular states, secularism is the name of a notorious political strategy of keeping the minority communities in a state of eternal poverty and ignorance, so that these communities can perform the job of vote banks.

Why is the condition of minorities be so bad in West Bengal, when the leftists never tire of singing paeans to secularism? This article in Times of India quotes chief economist of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, Abu Saleh Sheriff as saying, "The worst are the state government employment figures where even Gujarat with its 9.1% Muslim population and with a 5.4% share in jobs is way ahead of West Bengal which is by far the worst in the country. We had to try very hard to get these figures out from the state government because, for obvious reasons, they are very secretive about this."

The concept of secularism has become totally politicised in the country. We can't have a secular society until the government is completely pushed out of the economic space. When government enters the economic space it creates shortages and that forces it to cater to the needs of one community at the cost of other. This in turn leads to several distortions in the fabric of society and there is rise in communal feelings. One community gets pitted against the other as rival groups of politicians try to cash in on the shortage economy. Hence a government run economy can never be secular.

The Story of Gurcharan Das's "Experiments with the truth"

Title: India Unbound
Author: Gurcharan Das
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 419
Price: Rupees 399

Perhaps one can compare Gurcharan Das’s book, India Unbound, with Mahatma Gandhi’s My Experiments with Truth. The political and social ideas expressed in both the books are entirely different, and yet the books evoke similar feeling in the reader’s mind. These works are the result of ideological integrity, which is an extremely rare phenomenon. They are the repositories of ideas that are tremendous in scope and timeless in appeal. India Unbound is written for the post-independence generation, the generation born during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, when the dream of independence had already turned stale. This generation, separated from so-called British imperialism by more than two decades, has no reason to be obsessed with the idea of independence; they can take independence as a mundane fact of life.

This post-independence generation of Indians has been forced to grow up in a society where patriotism is family business; corruption is a way of life; law and order problems are omnipresent; infrastructure is either rotting or non-existent; abysmal poverty and ignorance is part of national culture; politics is synonymous with looting the nation’s wealth. Why has the dream of Indian independence soured! What stops majority of Indians from having their “tryst with destiny” that Jawaharlal Nehru promised in his famous speech? Gurcharan Das’s India Unbound offers an emphatic overview of how the fruits of independence were frittered away by leaders whose minds were in the grip of false ideologies. He takes us on a tour of different segments of Indian society – from corporate boardrooms to political jamborees; from remote villages to middle class homes.

In his introduction to the book, he writes, “When I was young, we passionately believed in Jawaharlal Nehru’s dream of modern and just India. But as the years went by we discovered that Nehru’s economic path was taking us to a dead end, and the dream soured. Having set out to create socialism, we found that we had instead created statism.” We learn about his encounters with “Kafkaesque bureaucratic controls” while he was a young executive trying to build up the Vicks brand in the Indian heartland; he offers scathing commentary on the socialist policies that only serve the purpose of stifling the natural spirit of enterprise that this young country is awash with. There is no doubt that Gurcharan Das is a great storyteller; he picks up many different themes, and uses them to weave a remarkably accurate picture of India’s past, present and future.

As he tells the story of India, he also manages to divulge some interesting information about himself. Ultimately in the mind of the reader, the two stories, the story of the writer and that of the country, become inseparable. The feeling is lot similar to what you have in Mahatma Gandhi’s My Experiments with Truth, which is a story of the Mahatma’s personal journey of self-discovery, as well as of the nation that he went on to found. So along with being the story of the evolution of modern India, India Unbound can be seen as a sort of personal history of Gurcharan Das and his family. The India that he envisages can only be built by the enterprise of competent businessmen and not by politicians. That is why the biographies that he peppers his book with are those of some of the leading stalwarts of Indian industry- men like Dhirubhai Ambani.

Gurcharan Das is an eternal optimist, the conclusion of his book is that India’s middle class will keep growing in number and by the year 2020 poverty will be under control and majority of the country will look at themselves as middle class. Well, one certainly hopes that this prediction will come true and by 2020 majority of Indians will finally have the “tryst with destiny” that they had been promised in 1947. However, the scams that are rocking the political landscape do make one feel that perhaps our optimism is misplaced. There are too many things that can still go wrong and send the country reeling back into the Kafkaesque nightmare of Nehruvian socialism.

The Secret Lives of the Dalai Lama

Title: The Secret Lives of the Dalai Lama
Author: Alexander Norman
Publisher: Abacus
Pages: 446
Price: Rupees 495

The word “secret” in the title would make it seem as if this is one of those “kiss and tell” kinds of books, but that is not the case, even though Alexander Norman does seem to revel in exposing the instances of womanising, the power games and the assassination attempts.  There is no doubt that he has access to all the information that is needed for an accurate historical analysis; after all, he is a close friend of the current Dalai Lama on whom he has written several books in the past. It is also worth noting that the current Dalai Lama has lent his support to the book under review, even though he does not agree with everything that has been said; he has even written the foreword. Alexander Norman’s style is rather scholarly, which makes it somewhat cumbersome to read. The first Dalai Lama does not appear, before you have read almost half way through the more than 400 pages. All this leads to a feeling of dryness to the narrative.

The story begins with a statement of the first principle, which is that the Dalai Lama is a series of reincarnations of the Bodhisattva Chenrezig. From here, there is an attempt to leap into the mists of history and examine the historical roots of the lineage. What you learn is not always pretty. We are told about the myriad Dalai Lamas who were murdered at a young age; one of the Dalai Lamas turned out to be a notorious seducer who drank hard, wore his hair long and refused to take monastic vows. As you read, you almost get the feeling that the author himself is feeling shocked about the unsavoury facts that his research has unearthed. There is a complex interplay of sorcery, reincarnation, divination and the assertion of worldly power that he must examine. We learn that the institution of Dalai Lamas got established in 1578, which was an era of intense rivalry between monasteries, regional warlords and the Mongolian descendants of Genghis Khan, all of whom were in the need of spiritual sanction for their actions.

Slowly the institution took root and the idea of a spiritual Dalai Lama percolated into every nook and cranny of Tibetan society. So much so that at the time when the communist forces from China invaded Tibet in 1950, the Buddhist monks, “made mystical bombs, in the form of dough pellets charged with spells and incantations, and tossed them in the direction of the advancing troops.” These mystical efforts utterly failed to stop the Chinese advance and today Tibet is part of China. Along with the lesson in history, the book also gives us a glimpse into the life and mind of the current Dalai Lama. We come to the curious realisation that he is sceptical about his faith and cultural background. He is fascinated by modern science, and over the years he has been responsible for sweeping aside many arcane traditions of old Tibet. Yet, while taking many crucial decisions, he seemingly relies heavily on the system of oracles. At five hours every day, he spends in prayer and meditation and he never eats meals after midday because of his monastic vows.

It also needs to be said that the footnotes that appear along with text must be read carefully as they turn out to be the repositories of lot of interesting information. If you are looking for a readable, engaging political history of Tibet, you should have no reservations about purchasing this book.

Off with his head

Read Tavleen Singh's article here: Off with his head

What is going on in India! If foreign investment stops coming into the country, it is the “aam admi” who loses the most. But some powerful politicians seem to have decided that the “aam admi’s” loss is their gain. The powerful elite of this country needs to have a modicum of reality check.

Gujarat is the best performing state in the country. If the entire country had been developing at the same rate at which Gujarat is developing, then we would actually be having a labour shortage in the country. Then there would not be any need for wasteful ‘sarkari schemes’ like the NREGA.

For God’s sake just give this country some reform. The “aam admi” in this country is crying for economic and political reform, but the leaders in New Delhi are refusing to listen.

Holi Aayee Re Kanhai ... Mother India

A little bit of Nostalgia.

The values that Japan can teach India

The Japanese people must be the most disciplined and well-mannered people in the world. It is amazing that despite suffering such devastations during the last few days, they have managed to keep their composure. They deserve to be saluted by the entire world. We don’t hear any reports of rampaging mobs or gangs of looters operating out of the areas that have been hit by the earthquake and the Tsunami. We don’t see visuals of cops trying desperately to control huge crowds of survivors, who might be rampaging for food, shelter, etc. The Japanese people have taken the devastation in their stride, and now they are slowly and steadily working towards rebuilding their lives. I have no doubt in my mind that they are best people on earth.

If devastation on this scale had happened in India, we would have had an insurmountable law and order problem. Politicians and demagogues would have descended on the site of the devastation to spew incendiary speeches. A natural disaster can turn into a social or communal problem in India within no time. The area would be awash with gangs of looters, rapists, all kinds of vested interests, whose only intention would be to make a quick buck out of someone else’s misfortune. The government would have announced some kind of doles for the survivors, but corrupt establishment would have cornered much of that money. Bulk of the foreign aid arriving from Western countries would have ended up in the Swiss bank accounts of top ranking politicians and bureaucrats. Hardly anything would go to the families of the dead or to the survivors.

India can learn so much just by watching the decent, sober and disciplined way by which Japan is conducting itself in face of such crisis. I mean, few years ago when we had the Tsunami in the southern parts of the India, we made complete fools of ourselves in the way we handled the crisis. From Japan we are having stories of vending machine operators opening up the contents of their machines and stores dropping their prices for their customers. There is no price gauging at all. We don’t see Japanese politicians giving banal and stupid speeches about how much freebies they were distributing to the survivors of the devastation. It is only the Indian politicians who rejoice in using every natural disaster as a means of getting more votes in future elections.

This evil system of socialism that we have in India has destroyed the culture and the social life of our country. In socialism there is shortage of everything – food, water, electricity, potable water, residences, jobs, colleges, etc. Even decency, compassion, proper behaviour, integrity are in short supply under a socialist dispensation. The Indian government has become so powerful that is capable of not just destroying our economy, but also our culture. We can’t become a well-behaved and modern nation like Japan in a million years as long as we continue to be ruled by this corrupt and decrepit system of Indian socialism. After watching the magnificent way by which the Japanese are conducting themselves in face of such disaster, I also feel very depressed about the present situation in India.

We should build a temple to the brave and cultured people Japan in India. Perhaps, once we start praying at such a temple, we will be able to imbibe some GREAT Japanese values.

Agatha Christie’s new novel: Murder on the 2G Scam Express

Too bad that Agatha Christie died in 1976. These are very interesting times and if she had been around she could have written a new mystery, whose title could be – “Murder on the 2G Scam Express.” Only her favourite detective Hercule Poirot can unravel the truth behind the mysterious death of Sadiq Batcha. Was it really a suicide, as authorities would like us to believe! Sadiq Batcha was not a poor debt ridden cotton farmer; why should he resort to taking his own life? Almost everyone you speak to has a theory on this death. Sadiq Batcha led a low profile life, but on 16th of March he became a rather high-profile dead body. Who knows what the truth is!

Agatha Christie could have worked wonders with this kind of inspiration. On a metaphorical level the drama surrounding the 2G scam is not too different from the scenario she described in her best-selling book - Murder on the Orient Express. The novel takes off with Hercule Poirot boarding the Orient Express in Istanbul. At night, while the train is still rushing ahead to its destination, Poirot wakes up to the sound of a loud noise, which seems to come from the compartment next to his that was occupied by one Mr. Ratchett. He gets up and peeks out of the door, and sees the conductor knock on Mr. Ratchett’s door and ask if he is all right. It seems that everything is fine, and Poirot returns to his bed.

Later in the same night another passenger in the same train, Mrs. Hubbard claims that someone had been in her compartment. No one gives much importance to her words, but while Poirot is trying to go back to sleep, he is once again awakened by the sound of loud thump on his door. He gets up urgently and peeps out of his door to see the passage completely silent, and he sees nothing except the back of a woman in a scarlet kimono retreating down the narrow corridor. Next day he awakens to find that Mr. Ratchett has been stabbed to death. The clues and circumstances are very mysterious. Some stab wounds are deep, only three are lethal, and some are glancing blows. Moreover, some of them seem to be inflicted by a right-handed person, others by a left-handed person.

Naturally Poirot takes up the task of investigating the murder. The realisation soon dawns on him that Mr. Ratchett a notorious fugitive from the U.S. named Casset. As many as 12 passengers in the train had suffered personal losses due to Mr. Ratchett and they could have committed the murder. The story is really thrilling. Now coming back to Mr. Sadiq Batcha, may God rest his soul; it is obvious that during his fast rise in the world of politics and business, he must have made lot of powerful politically connected enemies. He was certainly privy to secrets regarding the 2G scam! We already have the likes of Cho Ramaswami and Subramanium Swami making allusions that sound really valid. The thing is that now the 2G scam has become as murky and as deadly as a typical novel by Agatha Christie.

Environmentalists never let a crisis go waste

The international environmentalist brigade doesn’t want to let any natural crisis go waste. Now they are bent on using the natural disaster in Japan to send out the message that nuclear energy is unsafe for human beings. During the last few years, there had been lot of talk about India using nuclear energy to fulfil its electricity needs, but now all that is in question. Go to any English language TV channel and chances are you will find busybody environmentalist types pointing towards the Japanese disaster with a rather complacent I told you so attitude and hectoring gullible Indians to not even think about building nuclear power plants in future. 

There is no doubt that Mother Nature has hit Japan very hard. First there was the earthquake of more than 9 magnitude and then the Tsunami. One of the nuclear power installations has also been damaged. But look at the brighter picture - the number of fatalities in Japan is only a fraction of the number of people who died in the case of the Tsunami that struck Indonesia, India and few other countries of this region. The high technology that Japan uses actually saves lives. If the earthquake of the same magnitude were to hit India, then the casualties would run into millions.

The problem with the modern day elite environmentalists is that they are ideological inclined towards the left and are completely anti-development. Many of the newspapers, TV channels, magazines and blogs are full or the usual leftist spiel about nuclear energy being too dangerous for mankind and that we should start using alternative green energy sources. What alternative green energy sources are they talking about! Why don’t they run their own newspapers and homes on green energy! Right now the only viable source of energy for 6 billion humans is either fossil fuels or nuclear energy.

With the present state of technology, solar panels and wind mills can’t even supply enough energy to meet the needs of a normal middle class home, then what use will they be in powering an entire city? The thing is that the leftist environmentalists are not serious about exploring new energy sources; they just want us to give up on modernity and go back to the Stone Age way of life. It is utterly shameful of them to use the debris from mega natural disaster like the one in Japan as a platform for delivering harsh lectures on so-called environmental damage and risk. 

They don’t care about thousands of dead bodies, as long as they get time on prime time TV. India needs to build 100s of new nuclear plants in order to fulfil the energy needs of its people. We should not let our plans for development get derailed by the false propaganda from these elitists groups, who try to camouflage their leftist agenda under the guise of environmentalism. The real lesson from the Japanese tragedy is that modern technology saves lives. Lets not forget that a Tsunami of a much smaller scale clamed lakhs of lives in Indonesia and India.

For the moment, however, lets just pray for Japan, and do everything we can to help that brave country.

Dead Like You

Title: Dead Like You
Author: Peter James
Publisher: Pan
Page: 643
Price: Rupees 299

Dead Like You is bleaker, deeper and a lot more thrilling as compared to most previous novel by Peter James. If anyone deserves to be admitted into the exclusive club of writers who have penned high-octane crime thrillers, then it is him. In the present instance, he has crafted a remarkably inventive story of sexual obsession. The hero of many of Peter James’s past novels, the police detective Roy Grace, is back and is tasked with investigating the series of attacks on women in and around Brighton, England. As the narrative progresses, the scenarios keep alternating between the past and the present. Roy Grace believes that the recent attacks might be the work of a criminal who was involved in rape and murder cases, which happened more than a dozen years ago. In that case too a younger Roy Grace had headed the investigation, but the perpetrator had never been caught. Soon he finds himself in race against time to identify and save the life of the sixth victim.

The book begins with these words, “We all make mistakes, all of the time. Mostly trivial stuff, like forgetting to return a phone call, or to put money in a parking meter, or to pick up milk at the supermarket. But sometimes – luckily very rarely – we make the big one.” This is the initial introduction to the mistake that Rachel Ryan has made. Few minutes later she would end up in the hands of the mysterious stalker who would make her pay dearly. All the victims of the attacks turn out to be particularly poignant as Peter James makes it a point to come up with situations where we see them working, shopping, joking with friends. They are blissfully unaware that a madman was closing in, until it is too late for them to do anything. There is the case of one stylish woman who makes the mistake of posting her social schedule on Facebook, and that only serves the purpose of making it easier for the man to plan her abduction.

Roy Grace decides that the focus of his investigation should lie in the fact that all the victims had been wearing expensive leather shoes. In every case, the criminal had taken the shoes. This was also eerily similar to the series of unsolved crimes committed more than a dozen years ago. Then the criminal had been dubbed as the Shoe Man by the media. Grace strongly believes that either the Shoe Man was back or some other psychopathic fetishist has taken over. The novel is said to be loosely inspired from a real-life case that became known as “The Rotherham Shoe Man.”   Between 1983-1986 over twenty women reported that they had been violently raped and their shoes taken. Peter James shows the self-confidence of an accomplished raconteur, as he goes to the extent of slowing down the pace of the narrative at times in order to fully develop his characters. This turns out to be in the interests of the story, as it leads to vividly real characters.

This is one of Peter James’s longest books, weighing in at nearly 600 pages. What sustains the narrative over all these pages filled with closely typed text is the complexity of the plot; only occasionally we have some fun and games creeping in to provide the much needed respite from the mystery and the tension.

What is the meaning of “impeccable integrity”?

These days “impeccable integrity” has become the most hackneyed phrase being bandied about by sections of Indian politics and media. The larger the number of scandals related to corruption and bad governance comes to light, the more eagerly the idea of “impeccable integrity” gets invoked. But what is the meaning of “impeccable integrity?” Is a politician or officer with “impeccable integrity” supposed to be more honest and efficient as compared to the one who is merely a man of “integrity?”

It is obvious that our political and bureaucratic system has become so corrupt that it needs lofty phrases like “impeccable integrity” to delude the public. In an honest system, a man of integrity would have been enough to perform well in office, but if a system is corrupt and decrepit then it needs lofty phrases to conceal its true nature from the public. People are now tired of hearing about “impeccable integrity.” For God’s sake just give us one man of “ordinary integrity” and we are going to be satisfied with him or her.

Either someone has integrity or he doesn’t. There is no third description. The phrase “impeccable integrity” makes no sense. The world “impeccable” is totally superfluous and it is unnecessary to use it. In fact, the word “impeccable” in this case, only seeks to devalue and distort the meaning of “integrity.” I am convinced that this phrase is being used with the malicious intent of devaluing the idea of “integrity.” Our corrupt political system has now started corrupting the English language...

John Locke

Here is a brief intro to John Locke - YouTube style:

Science Fiction: The Conjoined Robotic Maids

She had two heads. That is the impression that Ruby got as soon as she opened the door. The shoulder was rather wide and on it the two heads, one of which was brunette and the second was blonde, were affixed. Despite the fact that both the heads carried frozen smiles on their faces, the overall entity looked quite strange. After all, this was year 2070 AD and robots, especially household robots, were turning out to be more and more like humans. Maybe this was an older model, a real antique piece from the 2025 era when the robot revolution actually took off.
 “Are you my new maid?” Ruby asked tentatively, praying that the answer would be in the negative, but deep inside she had a feeling that this freak from robotic world was indeed her new maid. Now she realized why this robotic maid was coming so cheap. Two heads in one body! Ruby was in between jobs, her finances were in a real mess and that is why she had decided to go in for a household robot being sold at the online portal ebay at rock bottom price. In fact, the short advertisement on ebay did mention that the robot was different, but it didn’t care to explain how different.

De-print and print your house

Here comes a science fiction story that I recently wrote.

The car flew through the cloud-laden sky. Manjula Sharma, perched on the front seat, was returning home after picking up her 4-year-old girl, Sita, from her school. Raindrops were pitter-pattering on the windshield and hood of the flying car, creating a sound that felt quite pleasing to the ears. A LCD screen fixed to the dashboard was showing a new Disney movie that had been released. The car was fully automatic, as all flying cars in the year AD 2050 were, and Manjula was free to watch the movie with her daughter. Sita laughed incessantly at the antics of the cartoon characters on the screen. Her mother laughed with her.
They were still in air when the movie was over. “This movie was so cool,” Sita smiled at her mother.
“Sure, it was,” Manjula smiled back. “Would you like to watch it again?”

Are cartels delaying the move towards Thorium?

It is establishment prejudice that seems to be hindering the development of thorium fuelled reactors. As the entire world’s nuclear infrastructure is built around uranium, many large corporates could loose out on their huge investments, if thorium based reactors became popular. The international trade in uranium reactors and in enriched fuel runs into hundreds of billions of dollars; thorium could prove to be a game changer and pave way for the rise of a new kind of reactors, as well a fuel that is much cheaper and is easily available. Purely financial motives could be motivating powerful international uranium cartels to use their clout for hindering research into thorium. Some countries have taken a few initiatives but nothing concrete is being done to harness the power of Thorium. This is unfortunate.

Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering, considers Thorium to be the next big thing. He says, “Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels.” Some scientists have suggested that one way of tackling the lack of funds could be to start using thorium in uranium based reactors. But Kirk Sorensen is against the idea. He says, “You have to use the right machine. You don’t use diesel in a petrol car: you build a diesel engine.” Once unique plants for using thorium as fuel become operational, nuclear power could become much more routine and unthreatening. Thorium could be the elusive material that will one day allow emerging economies like India and China to provide energy to their massive populations over their creaking infrastructures.

Published in Digit

Is Thorium key to having unlimited energy?

Between 1964 and 1969 United States had done major experiments for using Thorium for producing energy. The results were positive, but after the initial tests were completed the Thorium reactors were shut down and the focus returned solely on Uranium based reactors. This was the cold war era and USA needed sufficient amount of nuclear weapons, which could only be had from a uranium fuel cycle. Once again the attention is returning to Thorium. India is in the forefront of the countries, which are currently engaged in developing new technologies that can use thorium fuel cycle to produce electricity. According to some estimates, about 25% of the world’s known reserves of thorium are located in India. Only Australia has more known reserves of the element. In fact, Thorium is available in earth’s crust in such large quantities that it poses as a virtually inexhaustible source of energy. Almost all the Thorium that is mined can be used as a fuel, whereas in case of Uranium, the ratio stands at around 1%.

Thorium occurs naturally as Th-232 and it has a half life of over 14 billion years, or about three times the age of earth. The best thing about thorium fuel cycles is that they produce much less radioactive waste, including the weapon grade plutonium, as compared to uranium and hence are easier on the environment. The fact that it is impossible for a terrorist group or a rogue state to use thorium reactor to make nuclear weapons does have the effect of making this technology extremely appealing to peace loving citizens. After all, the idea of having nuclear power without the inherent risks of radioactive pollution and threats of proliferation has some kind of a political appeal all over the world. During the last two decades scientists from India and few other countries have been playing a major role in developing thorium based reactors. The Indian government is expecting that by 2050, almost 25% of India’s energy needs will come from nuclear sources, a part of which will be fuelled by thorium.

Carlo Rubbia, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1984, has been working on developing the use of thorium as a cheap, clean and safe fuel. Recently Carlo Rubbia has said, “A tonne of the silvery metal could be used to produce as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week.”  According to scientists, the biggest challenge in building a thorium reactor comes from its legendary efficiency. Thorium is so efficient as a fuel that its reactions can be sustained for a very long time. So the fuel needs to be enclosed in special containers that are durable enough to withstand the corrosive salts. Numerous ideas for how such special containers could be built by using corrosion-resistant alloys and graphite have been put forward, but such systems are yet to be tested.

Excerpt from article in January issue of Digit

Powering Human Civilization

There is lot of buzz about generating electricity by nuclear fusion, a process in which two atomic nuclei fuse together to make a heavier metal, and in the process a large amount of energy gets released. Maybe someday we will be able to harness the power of nuclear fusion, but till that happens, we have to keep utilizing the options that we have. Much of the power in the world is generated from coal and petroleum based plants, but these methodologies lead to the creation of immense amount of greenhouse gases. Hydro-electricity, wind, tidal and solar power are also being explored, but as of now we have been unable to find ways of deriving sufficient energy from such resources. The least polluting and cheapest way of deriving energy is through nuclear fission, during which atoms split into smaller pieces, releasing tremendous burst of energy. At this point of time, less than 15% of world’s electricity is being generated from nuclear power. France is currently generating a maximum amount of its energy needs through nuclear reactors.

When Einstein derived his iconic formula E = MC2, he had envisioned a technology capable of producing abundant energy at low price. So the notion that he was the Father of the Atomic Bomb, which obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, is not based on complete truth. If anything, he is the Father of the Nuclear Power that meets about 15% of world’s energy needs. The first nuclear reactor in the world was built in 1942, by an American group of researchers, who were being led by the Italian born, scientist Enrico Fermi. Today much of our nuclear power is generated through the use of Uranium. Even though Uranium is a heavy metal, it does not sink to the centre of the earth, and can be found in the continental crust. However, it is never found in natural state; it is mostly found in the form of oxides, such as Uraninite (UO2) or Pitchblende (U3O8). In its natural form, uranium comes in a mixture of two isotopes - U-235 and U-238. The mixture will contain 99.3 percent of U-238 and only 0.7 percent of U-235.

Both U-238 and U-235 are unstable and radioactive, which means that they release nuclear particles in a steady stream till they get turned into lead. However, the half life of U-238 is very large, it stands at around 4.47 billion years. Half life is scientific term for the period of time that it takes for a radioactive material undergoing decay to decrease by half. The half life of U-235 is around 700 million years. That is the prime reason why U-238 occurs in much higher quantities as compared to U-235. Scientists have concluded that around 1.7 billion years ago, the uranium existing on earth must have been naturally enriched, and through the process of nuclear fission, it could have generated lot of heat for around a million years. For use in a nuclear reactor, the uranium needs to be enriched, so that the concentration of U-235 is increased from 0.7 percent to around 4 to 5 percent. Even if you have a tonne of U-238, nuclear fission will not take place, and so the process of enrichment is necessary.

During fission an atom of uranium-235 releases an alpha particle, which consists of two neutrons and two protons bound together. As this alpha particle travels it gets absorbed by the nucleus of another atom, which also becomes unstable and splits into two lighter atoms and two or three new neutrons. The process of capturing of alpha particles and splitting of atoms happens at extremely fast pace and this results in generation of a huge amount of energy. The decay of a single U-235 atom releases approximately 200 MeV (million electron volts). This might not seem like much, but theoretically speaking, a kilogram of uranium-235 can produce energy, which is equivalent to the energy that can come from 3000 tonnes of coal. However, the waste product of the reactors using U-235 is plutonium-239, which is itself radioactive and can be used to make a nuclear weapon. The disposal of plutonium-239 is difficult, as the material can remain radioactive for thousands of years; it has to be buried in deep underground bunkers, which must be leak proof to ensure that there is no seepage into the soil.

It has often been claimed that many governments have focussed on developing Uranium reactors, because they were more interested in the waste by products generated by the uranium fuel cycle that can be used for making nuclear weapons. In fact there is an alternative fuels for a different type of nuclear reactor, but as this fuel does not lead to the creation of weapon making material as a waste product, the governments are not interested in using it. The name of this fuel is Thorium, which is a radioactive material, named after Thor, the Norse God of thunder.

Three Minute Philosophy

This YouTube video on Aristotelian philosophy is really good. It would tell almost nothing about Aristotle’s, but it will surely make you laugh.



Here is a similiar video on Immanuel Kant:



Here comes Rene Descartes

The John Galt Oath

A Great Crusader Against Corruption

Justice Sarosh Homi Kapadia is now the biggest national icon. He is bigger than Sachin Tendulkar or Amitabh Bachchan. His landmark verdict delivered on 3 March 2011 should go a long way in rekindling people’s faith in system of Indian institutions. This is an almost magical set of words that Justice Kapadia spoke in the court, “It is declared that the recommendation dated September 3, 2010, of the High Powered Committee of P J Thomas as Central Vigilance Commissioner is non-est (non-existent) in law and, consequently, the appointment is quashed…” There is no doubt that these words will reverberate in the corridors of power for a long time to come.

For the past few years, the powerful ruling elite had been under the impression that they can get away with anything. It is amazing how outrageously the 2G scam was engineered! After all, this is India of year 2011, but our government had been behaving as if we were living in the medieval era where depots could get away with anything. Their justification for every misdeed committed by every minister was that such acts were necessitated by political compulsions. What political compulsions? Why should country remain beholden to vested interests? If we continue to remain beholden to vested interests then how come we proclaim ourselves to be a free nation?

The more corruption scandals come into the public domain, the more our leaders raise the issue of “impeccable integrity.” The thing is that there is no integrity left in our political system. It seems outrageous to hear the leaders of this UPA talk about “impeccable integrity,” as if they were concerned about integrity. Who cares about the integrity of individuals, the people of this country only care about the fact that all the institutions under the government should do the job that they are supposed to do. If a man is personally honest, but he allows all kinds of crimes to be committed, then he is of no use to the country.

Justice Sarosh Homi Kapadia has done a great service for the country by upholding the primacy of institutions. I have no idea for how long he is going to remain the Chief Justice, but we surely hope that he will be around for a long time to come. Under the UPA II government, even the institution of Prime Minister has got devalued. We have no idea who is running the country. This is an extremely sad state of affairs, because we had high hopes from the current Prime Minister. All these hopes have been belied. Now the one and only hope for the country is from the Supreme Court under Justice Sarosh Homi Kapadia. The hopes of a billion Indians are with him.

Reminiscing P. V. Narasimha Rao

As far as modern India is concerned, P. V. Narasimha Rao deserves be eulogised as our greatest Prime Minister. He is man who started the reforms that have led to the massive amount of growth, which has benefited all sections of Indian society. There was no clamour for reforms when he came to power, no one even realised that reforms were a possibility in this country, and yet he had the vision to take the initiative on his own and come up with all kinds of path breaking policies.

When he the prime minister of the country in 1991, India was trundling along at the speed of a bullock cart and by the time he left his post in 1996, the country was completely changed. In just five years, he changed the political and economic landscape of the country. He was a real genius and a visionary. It is a tragedy that we know so little about the man who in every sense of the term is the “Father of Modern India.” In a country that is obsessed with creating statues of dead and living politicians, P. V. Narasimha Rao’s statues are conspicuous by their absence.

I have written in my last post that we don’t even have good biography of Narasimha Rao. I tried to find some books on him in neighbourhood bookshops, but nothing worthwhile is available. Narasimha Rao had written a book called The Insider, which many reviewers have said was like a semi-autobiography. But that book is unavailable in many online book vendors and in the brick or mortar shops in Delhi. This is a disgusting state of affairs. The book written by one of India’s greatest prime minister’s is not available!

According to the Wikipedia page, the major reforms that P. V. Narasimha Rao adopted include:

* Abolishing in 1992 the Controller of Capital Issues, which decided the prices and number of shares that firms could issue.

* Introducing the SEBI Act of 1992 and the Security Laws (Amendment) which gave SEBI the legal authority to register and regulate all security market intermediaries.

* Opening up in 1992 of India's equity markets to investment by foreign institutional investors and permitting Indian firms to raise capital on international markets by issuing Global Depository Receipts (GDRs).

* Starting in 1994 of the National Stock Exchange as a computer-based trading system which served as an instrument to leverage reforms of India's other stock exchanges. The NSE emerged as India's largest exchange by 1996.

* Reducing tariffs from an average of 85 percent to 25 percent, and rolling back quantitative controls. (The rupee was made convertible on trade account.)

* Encouraging foreign direct investment by increasing the maximum limit on share of foreign capital in joint ventures from 40 to 51 percent with 100 percent foreign equity permitted in priority sectors.

* Streamlining procedures for FDI approvals, and in at least 35 industries, automatically approving projects within the limits for foreign participation.

Today when our government is mired by so much corruption, inefficiency, lack of vision or reforms, it makes sense for us to remember P. V. Narasimha Rao. If he had remained in power for five more years, he could have completely transformed our country.

Crude prices will set market trend

With Middle Eastern "petro" dictatorships in freefall, the price of crude is bound to go up. Some analysts are predicting that crude would go up to $200 a barrel. So why is our stock markets shooting up so suddenly? There was nothing in the Finance Minister's budget speech to justify this kind of reckless optimism.

In fact, there is every reason for us to be pessimistic. The so-called India story has already become mired by lack of reforms and corruption, any further rise in the price of petroleum could derail us completely. The only way to fuel the economy is to cut down the size of the government by 99%. Let private sector manage the entire economy.

But for implementing that kind of visionary policy we would need a Prime Minister like Shri Narshima Rao. Sadly he is no longer around. Someone should write Narshima Rao's biography. It is too bad that we know so little about the man who has done so much for the country.

Yet another budget

When the British enslaved in India, Indians were compelled to live lives shaped by their masters. Uniformity was required, and disobedience was punished. As a result of this ongoing powerlessness, slaves developed what has can be aptly described as "the mentality of depending on the government for everything." So what's changed since independence?

For an overwhelming majority of Indians, nothing has changed at all. We still embrace the mentality of a slave, only thing that has changed is the skin colour of our "masters:" Instead of British being our masters, it is the democratically elected brown skinned governments that hold us on a leash. We still depend on doles from our government in order to survive.

Case in point is the finance minister’s latest budget, which dwelled more on doles and subsidies than on creating a climate in which people could earn a living on their own. This is an absurd state of affairs. The elections that we hold after every five years always bring to power the governments that are eerily similar in their outlook.

If we have hitched ourselves to the same set of socialist politicians for more than 60 years and the country still remains one of the poorest in the world, then we must hold the voters responsible. We always fail to learn from our past experience. I find these budget speeches extremely boring and frustrating.