Finally the women reservation bill was passed by Rajya Sabha. The interesting and ironic fact is - it took 14 years for the bill to reach there. In this marathon journey women reservation bill met with stiff resistance from many parties and groups in and out of parliament. The argument for quota with in the quota, separate quota for SC, ST, OBC, minorities etc stalled the progress of its journey for a long time. It may be marked as success for the women of India. According to the bill 33% of seats will be reserved for women.
But the main question remains. Are we in the right direction? There is no doubt that the problems faced by women have be solved, they should get equal opportunities in governance and in life. After all it’s absolutely wrong to block the legitimate claim of ‘half the population’ to the highest power centers of the nation. But root question is –it this the correct way?
If we are giving 33% reservation to women, along with the already the existing reservations to numerous other groups, the seats available in the general category will come down dramatically. Remember that all the eligible citizens of India can put forward their claim for general category seats (Which also includes the groups which enjoys reservation). Moreover in democracy everyone have the right to participate in elections. Now the opportunity for many people to reach the echelon of power will shrink dramatically.
But surely reservation is not he formula to solve the problems related to gender equality. The sad and ironic thing is that many are asking for reservation with in reservation!!! If seats have to be reserved for every one then what is the need for elections? We can save billions of dollars!!!
How long there quotas will be there? As far as we can see governments didn’t withdrawn any reservation up to now. This one too will be there for a long time. How long we can go in this way? When government will realize that; reservation is not a ready made tablet for everything? Now we have reservation for many things - may be one can fill a complete book by mentioning about the name of reservations available in India.
In present system, in the administrative, law enforcement, politics, medical, education etc saw many highly efficient women, who reached that position by their own efforts, but in the future what will happen? It is sure that many efficient personalities will reach the house; who are otherwise denied the because of the social structures and various prejudices.
May be the introduction of women to the highest echelons of power may encourage many others to come forward and lead a political life, or at least they feel the politicians are more approachable. It is yet to see how far the newly elected women legislators can make progress in the already falling gender ratio, dowry related issues, safety of women in the streets of India, criminalisation and curroption in politics etc.
But certainly this is not the way to do these things. If governments really want to address the issues of public they have to find out genuine solutions. They have to provide a level play ground for everyone - so that each one must get equal opportunity. If one child is lacking books, government has to fund his/her education until they got enough education to secure a job, not giving reservation to him. Of course not free of cost - After getting job he must repay the money with some 2-3% interest back to public exchequer. This money can be used for next generation.
Anyway the bill is passed. To all women of India now you get a ticket to biggest temple of democracy in the world. I wish you may be able to work really well towards the progress and development of our country and the nation. Moreover one more challenge is waiting for you -to change the mindset of common people towards politics. Wish you all the best...
Sajeev
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Challenge to Indian Railway - Expansion and HSR is the requirement of time
[Janshadabdi Express]
For every loss we have a reason. When China showed remarkable progress in the nineties and later; we satisfied ourselves by saying that China opened their economy some two decades before us. So they have an advantage over us. When Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong etc achieved remarkable success even after a moderate beginning, we said they are small countries and India is huge and have to support a huge population. When the regions in and around Gulf of Persia progressed we said that we don’t have enough black gold (Petroleum).
For everything we have reasons. But what reasons we have for the remarkable expansion of railways in China as compared to that of India? The numbers shows that, at the time of independence India had 54,000 km of rail route, but China only had 21,800 km rails in 1950. China reached 78,000 km in 2007 and 86,000 km in 2009. Now they had a target of 1, 20,000 km for 2020. In the same time, that is until 2004 we added an average of 161km/year to our existing network; from 2004-05 to 2008-09 we added 220 km/year (from 2004-05 to 2008-09 China added 1000km/year).
[Shanghai North Railway Station]
Now what is our excuse for these numbers? Of course we may invent many new theories from the lack of capital to the procedural delay. According to the IIFL study, China saw her first experimental HSR (High Speed Rail) in 2003, and they are planning to expand it to 28,000 km by 2014. But we are still in the planning stage to bring the HSR to our country.
Who are responsible for this? Now railway is talking about building hospitals, schools etc, but what is or what should be the primary aim of Railway? Building hospitals and other complexes are good, but that is not railways job; leave it to government and private enterprises. Even now there are a numerous places and even states in India which doesn’t have even one route km.
Instead of focusing more on popular budgets we have to invest heavily on building the infrastructure. If railway doesn’t have the enough capital to do this, go for private partnership, it is not an untouchable thing. But if we are not ready to invest - not merely investing but rapid expansion and the introduction of High Speed Rail Networks, we will leave behind in the new wave of pan Asian Rail Network. The rail track to Bangladesh is a good start in this direction, but for the expansion of it to ASEAN and other East-Asian countries it’s not enough. Railway is one of the rare pan Indian institutions in India but still it doesn’t spread enough.
Sajeev.
Language fun
I said "Antergina won the match". Suddenly my friend who also likes foot ball game exclaimed “Antergina"? I repeated "Antergina". Then he asked me to look to the paper once again. I was surprised too see that its reads ‘Argentina’ not ‘Antergina’. I was more surprised after thinking about the fact that I was reading that word wrongly for a long time, still I didn’t realized it until then.
Some months back I was caught in an argument with one of my friend. I was referring to an amount for which a company got a contract from government. "3000 carore rupees". He looks confused after hearing my statement. I thought ok, if it is difficult to convince a person, its better to confuse him!!! But he exclaimed "Carore" or "crore"!!! Later I checked and find out that the correct word is ‘crore’- (10 million). Needless to say I was in utter disbelief. Countless times I argued with many persons and said 100 carores, 700 carores etc!!!
Once we were discussing about massacres. In between there was reference to "Jalianwala Bhag massare". Suddenly another one shot back, “what is ‘massare’? I was taught it as Massacre”. It was a new thing for me, I used that word numerous times in many conversations but it was all wrong!!!
In my experience there are numerous words and pronunciations which later turned out to be something else. I think I am still using many such words which doesn’t even exist in English vocabulary!!! And for many other words the pronunciation is entirely different.
I think related to pronunciation part the problem is a global one. People often use and popularize there own pronunciation and that vocabulary later accepted as localized English language; like Chinglish, Hinglish, Monglish etc. Today English may be the most popular language in the world, but it is also true that many countries made their own specifications.
What we can do in these situation is, from the beginning itself Educational boards all over the country must make it compulsory for the students to learn phonetics as well. What is the use of learning phonetics after learning the language? So teach it along with the language itself.
Sajeev.
Some months back I was caught in an argument with one of my friend. I was referring to an amount for which a company got a contract from government. "3000 carore rupees". He looks confused after hearing my statement. I thought ok, if it is difficult to convince a person, its better to confuse him!!! But he exclaimed "Carore" or "crore"!!! Later I checked and find out that the correct word is ‘crore’- (10 million). Needless to say I was in utter disbelief. Countless times I argued with many persons and said 100 carores, 700 carores etc!!!
Once we were discussing about massacres. In between there was reference to "Jalianwala Bhag massare". Suddenly another one shot back, “what is ‘massare’? I was taught it as Massacre”. It was a new thing for me, I used that word numerous times in many conversations but it was all wrong!!!
In my experience there are numerous words and pronunciations which later turned out to be something else. I think I am still using many such words which doesn’t even exist in English vocabulary!!! And for many other words the pronunciation is entirely different.
I think related to pronunciation part the problem is a global one. People often use and popularize there own pronunciation and that vocabulary later accepted as localized English language; like Chinglish, Hinglish, Monglish etc. Today English may be the most popular language in the world, but it is also true that many countries made their own specifications.
What we can do in these situation is, from the beginning itself Educational boards all over the country must make it compulsory for the students to learn phonetics as well. What is the use of learning phonetics after learning the language? So teach it along with the language itself.
Sajeev.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
In Mookambika Temple
What you will feel when you go back to a place, which holds some special importance in your life after close to two decades? The journey to Mookambika was a homely experience to me. I wrote the first ever word in my life in this holy shrine. This journey was not at all a preplanned one, the thought of going to Mookambika was popped up in my conversation to Vishnu (One of my close friend). He too wanted to go there and thinking about it for quite a long time. Later Sushant too joined.
As we decided to go in that day itself (Friday), we went to cafe and booked a Karnataka RTC ticket from Bangalore to Mangalore. As there is not much time to search for short routes we decided to go through the easiest way we know. More over train and other KSRTC buses are already filled.
Around 6.30 we reached KSRTC stand in Majestic and comfortably landed in our seats. As usual i took the window seat. After some time the bus started to move and we are on the way to Mangalore. As the metro rail and other flyover works released so much dust to the atmosphere stars are not all visible. After coming to Bangalore i rarely see stars threat to limited. I think instead of never sleeping cities we required sleeping cities. It is said that in a year around 4mn migratory birds are being killed due to light pollution in US alone.
But soon the pollution in Bangalore proved better as compared to the rest of the road we have to travel. This may be one of the worst roads in Karnataka, as we are going far form Bangalore road is becoming more badly. Later Visnu complained that he was unable to sleep as his is hitting front seat, thanks to the road!!!
But it was a wonderful journey at midnight we are moving through some forests, even if the road is bad, sky appeared clean. Around 5 in the morning we reached Mangalore, the city was still sleeping. From there we got a direct bus to Kollur (which was actually coming from Mysore). Roads in Mangalore are very good, but the specialty was the bridges. There were a lot of bridges in the way and the beginning and end of each bridge have a couple Lion capital of Ashoka.
After sometime we reached Uduppi, and then continued our journey to Kollur. Bus started to climb the Western Ghats, and number of passengers was slowly reduced and finally there was only five people in that big bus excluding conductor and driver.
We got a good room in 'Kadinjapalli Satram' - a local lodge. We didn’t find difficulties with language in Mookambika as almost all people know Malayalam very well. In the evening we went to the temple, there was a number of 'arangettam'- performing dance for the first time - in that night. The temple is made up of stone, and the top of the 'Sreekovil' - sanctum Sanctorum is covered with gold. The floor to is paved with stone. After getting 'Kashayam', around 9.30 we came out and went for dinner.
In the next day morning we went ot he temple, and after breakfast we decided to go to Kudajadri - which is the 'Srimoolasthanan' of Mookambika temple. I thought that Kudajadri temple is only some 7 km away from Mookambika temple and we can walk. But people told us that we have to take a jeep as it was more that 20 km away. The cost forgoing in jeep was around 175Rs/head. Due to some unexpected expenses we didn’t had enough hard cash. I went to the syndicate banks atm. But even after entering the value nothing happening, neither cash is coming out nor atm card. Anyway after some time and generating enough sound machines gave my card back. I tried for once again - same result.
At this time Vishnu called us and said that, we can pay the amount later(Next to it there was a Canara bank atm too), which was proved disastrous later. Thus we started to Kudajadri through the zigzag Shimoga route with 8 persons on board - all are from Kerala. After sometime we left the Shimoga route and took right and started to climb all the hair pins. You cant describe this as a road even in the wildest of your imagination. I don’t think that jeep will go for one month with our repairs.
Finally we reached Kudajadri, the idols are Mookambika Devi, Panchamukha Ganapati, Shiva. From here jeep cant move forward. This is believed t be the place where Mokambika Devi gave 'Darshanam' to AdiShankaracharya. The cave in which Shankaracharya performed his ... was only some kilometers away I decided to go in. After walking some distance there is a 'Ganesha Guha'and then AdiShankara Temple. After that there is a steep decent, and after sometime I reached the cave of Chitramoola. It’s a small gap between to big rocks lying horizontally to the mountain.
It was a wonderful place. I am sitting in a place which was used by Adishankaracharya centuries ago. There was a small creek in one side of that cave. I spend there ten minutes, the sight from here is really magnificent, i am not feeling the heat of noon but the coolness of cave. And the opposite is the vast forest and the temple of Mookambika is shining brightly. At this time i got a call from Vishnu(Yes we got signals at this point, but in the way there was no range) as time for going back was approaching. And we started our return journey to Mookambika. It may take some 30 - 40 minutes to reach Chitramoola from Kudajadri temple.
Now its the time to pay the driver - but the Canara Bank(Which is the only one remaining) was empty!!! No way!!! I came back and saw the driver. but as you can imagine, he was not in any good mood, and you know what will happen, people are gathering around and started to advise as - Like why are you not taking enough money? etc etc. But as Vishnu had just enough money which kept in the room, we are all freed from that situation. You can have atm card but it can’t replace hard cash fully.
As we are running out of money we thought to cut short our journey. But later decided to stick to our previous plan (Anyway we already paid the full amount to bus ticket and we already paid the bulk of the rent as advance. Later the room owner proved to be a very good person and even if we stayed half a day more he charged only 50Rs for that time)
.
In the next day, for our delight Syndicate bank's atm started working. In the afternoon we went to the temple and around 8pm we started our jouney to Bangalore through Shimoga route, road was small but in good condition and reached Bangalore at 6 am in the next day.
Sajeev.
As we decided to go in that day itself (Friday), we went to cafe and booked a Karnataka RTC ticket from Bangalore to Mangalore. As there is not much time to search for short routes we decided to go through the easiest way we know. More over train and other KSRTC buses are already filled.
Around 6.30 we reached KSRTC stand in Majestic and comfortably landed in our seats. As usual i took the window seat. After some time the bus started to move and we are on the way to Mangalore. As the metro rail and other flyover works released so much dust to the atmosphere stars are not all visible. After coming to Bangalore i rarely see stars threat to limited. I think instead of never sleeping cities we required sleeping cities. It is said that in a year around 4mn migratory birds are being killed due to light pollution in US alone.
But soon the pollution in Bangalore proved better as compared to the rest of the road we have to travel. This may be one of the worst roads in Karnataka, as we are going far form Bangalore road is becoming more badly. Later Visnu complained that he was unable to sleep as his is hitting front seat, thanks to the road!!!
But it was a wonderful journey at midnight we are moving through some forests, even if the road is bad, sky appeared clean. Around 5 in the morning we reached Mangalore, the city was still sleeping. From there we got a direct bus to Kollur (which was actually coming from Mysore). Roads in Mangalore are very good, but the specialty was the bridges. There were a lot of bridges in the way and the beginning and end of each bridge have a couple Lion capital of Ashoka.
After sometime we reached Uduppi, and then continued our journey to Kollur. Bus started to climb the Western Ghats, and number of passengers was slowly reduced and finally there was only five people in that big bus excluding conductor and driver.
We got a good room in 'Kadinjapalli Satram' - a local lodge. We didn’t find difficulties with language in Mookambika as almost all people know Malayalam very well. In the evening we went to the temple, there was a number of 'arangettam'- performing dance for the first time - in that night. The temple is made up of stone, and the top of the 'Sreekovil' - sanctum Sanctorum is covered with gold. The floor to is paved with stone. After getting 'Kashayam', around 9.30 we came out and went for dinner.
In the next day morning we went ot he temple, and after breakfast we decided to go to Kudajadri - which is the 'Srimoolasthanan' of Mookambika temple. I thought that Kudajadri temple is only some 7 km away from Mookambika temple and we can walk. But people told us that we have to take a jeep as it was more that 20 km away. The cost forgoing in jeep was around 175Rs/head. Due to some unexpected expenses we didn’t had enough hard cash. I went to the syndicate banks atm. But even after entering the value nothing happening, neither cash is coming out nor atm card. Anyway after some time and generating enough sound machines gave my card back. I tried for once again - same result.
At this time Vishnu called us and said that, we can pay the amount later(Next to it there was a Canara bank atm too), which was proved disastrous later. Thus we started to Kudajadri through the zigzag Shimoga route with 8 persons on board - all are from Kerala. After sometime we left the Shimoga route and took right and started to climb all the hair pins. You cant describe this as a road even in the wildest of your imagination. I don’t think that jeep will go for one month with our repairs.
Finally we reached Kudajadri, the idols are Mookambika Devi, Panchamukha Ganapati, Shiva. From here jeep cant move forward. This is believed t be the place where Mokambika Devi gave 'Darshanam' to AdiShankaracharya. The cave in which Shankaracharya performed his ... was only some kilometers away I decided to go in. After walking some distance there is a 'Ganesha Guha'and then AdiShankara Temple. After that there is a steep decent, and after sometime I reached the cave of Chitramoola. It’s a small gap between to big rocks lying horizontally to the mountain.
It was a wonderful place. I am sitting in a place which was used by Adishankaracharya centuries ago. There was a small creek in one side of that cave. I spend there ten minutes, the sight from here is really magnificent, i am not feeling the heat of noon but the coolness of cave. And the opposite is the vast forest and the temple of Mookambika is shining brightly. At this time i got a call from Vishnu(Yes we got signals at this point, but in the way there was no range) as time for going back was approaching. And we started our return journey to Mookambika. It may take some 30 - 40 minutes to reach Chitramoola from Kudajadri temple.
Now its the time to pay the driver - but the Canara Bank(Which is the only one remaining) was empty!!! No way!!! I came back and saw the driver. but as you can imagine, he was not in any good mood, and you know what will happen, people are gathering around and started to advise as - Like why are you not taking enough money? etc etc. But as Vishnu had just enough money which kept in the room, we are all freed from that situation. You can have atm card but it can’t replace hard cash fully.
As we are running out of money we thought to cut short our journey. But later decided to stick to our previous plan (Anyway we already paid the full amount to bus ticket and we already paid the bulk of the rent as advance. Later the room owner proved to be a very good person and even if we stayed half a day more he charged only 50Rs for that time)
.
In the next day, for our delight Syndicate bank's atm started working. In the afternoon we went to the temple and around 8pm we started our jouney to Bangalore through Shimoga route, road was small but in good condition and reached Bangalore at 6 am in the next day.
Sajeev.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Latest Indo-Pak talks, Do we expect anything?
After a short gap India again opened the window of dialogue with Pakistan. For a long time we are on this dialogue process. Some time on and some time off. After the dialogue proceeds for some time there will be some terrorist attacks in some part of India and the dialogue will bounce all the way back to square one.
There is one more dialogue which also suffers the same situation. The marathon Indo - Sino talks, even the people starts to forget the number conferences we had with China.
After so many terrorist attacks people doesn’t have any hope in this process. This time it came in between the Railway budget and Union budget, so people were preoccupied with there balance sheets. But the basic question remain the same - is there any use of this dialogue if we are facing peace process in on side and terrorist attacks on other side?
Government accepts it or not there is a common opinion in India that the current dialogue process started due to the high pressure from Washington - which depends very badly on its long time companion Pakistan for her operations in Af- Pak region and needed Pakistan for a deal with Taliban.
But what we will get after all these dialogues? It's sure that neither India nor Pakistan will do any concessions on Kashmir issue as far as Kashmir Valley is concerned - the status Quo is not going to change anytime soon. Terrorist attacks in India are not going to stop if these groups didn’t become a costly affair for Pakistan or in the absence of highly efficient covert actions.
Americans may want to pull out of Afghan as soon as possible, and for that they are seeking a peace deal with moderate Taliban (I don’t know who coined this term), but what about us? What about the bomb blasts in Indian cities? Anyone in India imagine that Americans will handover the people accused in Mumbai terror strikes to India for trial in India court? After all Mumbai is in India and Indians suffered a lot due to the attacks. Will they pressure Pakistan to hand over the masterminds of those attacks to India? Will they force Pakistan to eliminate the India focused terror groups?
If there is a yes for at least one question then there is a point in talks. At the same time we have to remember what happened in London conference regarding Afghan issue. Even after India was the most popular foreign country in Afghanistan, and her huge development efforts in the country; we didn’t even invited to that conference as Afghanistan is situated not in South Asia but in some remote part of Siberia or South America.
In the end of the day we have to think about our security, we have to play our role in the game. We are not so deprived of options even in Afghanistan. If America can get along with Pakistan, even if the later continue the anti-India policies nothing stop us to build (recover) a friendly relation with Iran. Russia is still there, nothing in the world stops covert operations. So more than mere talks we have to look at what actions (if any) Pakistan is going to take, otherwise these talks will continue for ever and a lot more blood will flow in Indian soil.
Sajeev.
There is one more dialogue which also suffers the same situation. The marathon Indo - Sino talks, even the people starts to forget the number conferences we had with China.
After so many terrorist attacks people doesn’t have any hope in this process. This time it came in between the Railway budget and Union budget, so people were preoccupied with there balance sheets. But the basic question remain the same - is there any use of this dialogue if we are facing peace process in on side and terrorist attacks on other side?
Government accepts it or not there is a common opinion in India that the current dialogue process started due to the high pressure from Washington - which depends very badly on its long time companion Pakistan for her operations in Af- Pak region and needed Pakistan for a deal with Taliban.
But what we will get after all these dialogues? It's sure that neither India nor Pakistan will do any concessions on Kashmir issue as far as Kashmir Valley is concerned - the status Quo is not going to change anytime soon. Terrorist attacks in India are not going to stop if these groups didn’t become a costly affair for Pakistan or in the absence of highly efficient covert actions.
Americans may want to pull out of Afghan as soon as possible, and for that they are seeking a peace deal with moderate Taliban (I don’t know who coined this term), but what about us? What about the bomb blasts in Indian cities? Anyone in India imagine that Americans will handover the people accused in Mumbai terror strikes to India for trial in India court? After all Mumbai is in India and Indians suffered a lot due to the attacks. Will they pressure Pakistan to hand over the masterminds of those attacks to India? Will they force Pakistan to eliminate the India focused terror groups?
If there is a yes for at least one question then there is a point in talks. At the same time we have to remember what happened in London conference regarding Afghan issue. Even after India was the most popular foreign country in Afghanistan, and her huge development efforts in the country; we didn’t even invited to that conference as Afghanistan is situated not in South Asia but in some remote part of Siberia or South America.
In the end of the day we have to think about our security, we have to play our role in the game. We are not so deprived of options even in Afghanistan. If America can get along with Pakistan, even if the later continue the anti-India policies nothing stop us to build (recover) a friendly relation with Iran. Russia is still there, nothing in the world stops covert operations. So more than mere talks we have to look at what actions (if any) Pakistan is going to take, otherwise these talks will continue for ever and a lot more blood will flow in Indian soil.
Sajeev.
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