Remembering Mahatma gandhi and Shastri ji..

We all are aware with the birth anniversary of mahatma Gandhi ie on 2^nd October may be because we got a national holiday this day. And perhaps doesn’t remember the birth or death anniversary of bhagat singh, subhash Chandra bose, azad, vallabh bhai patel, etc, since they didn’t get the privilege of any holiday or highlighted functions. Lal bahadur shastri was also a leader who got much deserved attention may be due to the fact that his birthday matches with mahatma gandhi’s birth anniversary or may be due to the reason that he was the only prime minister outside the congress dynastic leadership who came from a rural family and showed immense potential as a leader of the nation. At the time when india is facing severe leadership crisis in the midst of 100s of political party, remembering shastri ji is quite worthy and relevant, since we are in a dire need of a leader like shastri ji who got respect and support from length and breadth of the country. Coming to the virtues and philosophies of mahatma Gandhi, we all know that they are considered as practically irrelevant in most of the circles of society and hence is almost forgotten, only discussed and remembered in national holidays like today. Whatever…. Anna hazare recently in his movement against corruption in the favour of strong lokpal , showed the nation that teachings of mahatma are quite viable and useful even these days in arousing spirit of nationalism and brotherhood for a common cause among people. Though finally government and administration proved to be much tougher to concede to their demands as compared to the colonial one, as their clever and shameless attitude far outweigh their british counterpart. This is because of the reason that now parties are governing the country with much more confidence and courage( now people have no other choice but to accept their way of governance) which mass politics and democracy gave to them, as compared to their british counterpart. The verdict is, country is suffering…….. and future is uncertain. Everyday politics is becoming a matter of concern and is discussed much more everywhere, but in vain. Today arvind kejariwal is going to announce his party’s details, and would try to give an alternative in this war of politics. I hope his party get the support of at least politically awared section of society and maintain the integrity and competence, which is the basis of their movement against corruption. And finally we see the realization of swaraj in real sense which was once envisioned and conceived by mahatma Gandhi.

We the people V/S Floods....

Around 2 lakhs people in assam are affected by floods in river Brahmaputra… this make me to write something for their suffering. We all know that rainfall in india is quite uncertain, irregular and unequally distributed. Also we know that majority of total amount of rainfall india got, is concentrated in only 3 months. This makes the condition worse, as some areas remain deficient in rainfall(even famine like conditions) and some have to face the brunt of floods(including flash floods and cloud bursting). Then what should people and governments do on their part to counter such condition which becomes quite common in some parts of the country every year. For this to understand completely we have to analyse the nature of floods in india and its relation with the geographical phenomena. Only after that we could come to the point how much consequences related to floods in india is natural or manmade. Firstly we try to figure out, regionwise the main causes of floods, for instances in the northeast, floods are caused mainly due to incessant rainfall, large amount of discharge, related landslides(in mountainous regions), etc. In northern bihar rivers flooded more due to large volume of water discharged from Nepal, than due to heavy rainfall, that’s why it is a regular phenomena whether condition of rainfall is good or bad. In areas like Punjab, Haryana and rajasthan floods are caused mainly due to sudden or heavy rainfall and lack of proper drainage as the rivers are mostly seasonal. However when we try to analyse the common causes we could understand that mostly its not always the fault of nature but human have a very important role behind this disaster. Firstly, indiscriminate cutting of trees either legal or illegal create conditions of waterlogging (areas along rivers becomes marshy or muddy)as the boundries of rivers couldn’t remain able to contain the flow of river, which ultimately becomes the cause of flood. Similarly reckless infrastructural development many times overlook the natural drainage of stream(since seasonal river mostly remain dry) and becomes the cause of floods when heavy downpour suddenly occurs.Big dams are also considered as one of the reason as when water is suddenly discharged it causes floods downstream. Also it is found that many rivers have the nature of shifting its boundaries or have nature of regular flooding, and settling down in these floodplains(area along the river which is the limit of normal flood ) is dangerous, even then due to various reasons people remain settled their & face the brunt of floods. And importantly it is found that in the case of natural disasters, relief operations are as important as prevention. Since the consequences become multiplied(even more than the disaster itself) when the relief operations are poorly managed and executed. It could be understood properly when we compare disaster situations in developed countries with india. America as well face disastrous cyclones every year but casualities are very less as compared to india, similarly japan faces different kinds of disasters very often, but have the capacity and will to recover very quickly, as we have seen many times. Definitely common people have very little role in these mighty phenomenas either during prevention or mitigation, but they could become more aware about the nature of their geographical peculiarities, and shouldn't try to disturb the balance or order of its agents like rivers and follow the guidelines prepared for its preventions. And governments must work for the people, hence always try to consider various aspect of nature while approving a project, and always show will and sincerity in working upon disaster management operations including proper rehabilitation. Only then its affect could be contained in a limited level.

Poor.........

What happened in these two days, is quite similar to what I said earlier. Film Burfi, is certainly an amazing flick, as it contained the right combination of love, emotions, and one of the finest Indian actor ranbir kapoor. With all these, director has done what should be done with a masterpiece. Considering this it is already announced as india’s entry to the Oscars in the foreign film category. But a masterpiece must be unique in itself. There emerge a controversy that its many characters and scenes were copied from Hollywood movies. Videos of its evidence is running quite popularly in youtube. Though i know the story is awesome, original and expressive, but how could (with huge disappointment), such a film could get an award in Hollywood, when it is found to be copied from their own movies. In an earlier article dated 27 jan'12 I wrote about this tendency of Indian cinema. I am passionate about cinema and want to see bollywood at par in creativity with other nations, but may be I am desiring more. In the second case I am pointing towards team india’s uncertain performance in T-20 worldcup. In one match against  England india performed amazingly well, even its not so good bowlers, unmatched the opponents and got them bowled all out in just 90 runs. But in the very next match of it in super-8 against Australia, india let them win by 9 wickets, showing very poor performance. I must say they have no heart in breaking hearts of millions of its poor fans and viewers in india. As I said in my article dated 27 aug'12 team india’s performance is completely influenced by fate much more then what it should be. I hope people would agree with me keeping their emotions aside that two most loved things in india, cinema and cricket, is not showing the kind of effort and sincerity in fulfilling peoples rising expectations from them. If the things wouldn’t be changed for good, may be one day these fields of entertainment would feel the problem of depression or meltdown and have to search something for their existence.

Health is the real wealth..

We all know about general condition of public health care system in India , low level of cleanliness, general gap between demand and supply, low reliability of quality medical facilities like pathology tests, x-ray machines, etc then what to tell about the availability of ultrasound, ECG, EEG, MRIs, and other advanced facilities, at district hospitals in India. Beside this I think around 50% Indians have to depend totally upon these government hospitals for treatment because they have no other choice due to unaffordable cost of health services in private hospitals. Even then they have to spend around 50% of their average income in health services as even in government hospitals people have to arrange for medicines and others on their own(not to mention things like health insurance as they are very new and even rare for majority of Indian population). Now coming to medicines, pharma chain right from production to retail is making the most profitable business as I don’t think there is any other business with such a huge profit margins(sometimes more than 100%)in India. What to say about governments, they are making huge revenue without doing anything in the form of taxes of varied nature. Striking this phenomena supreme court from long ago directs the governments to provide generic medicines (which are of very low cost with same effectiveness, as they got exemption under intellectual property rights laws) to masses, but they didn’t do anything untill yesterday, when they announced a new pharma policy under which 348 important and most popular medicines  are to be made available in generic form for the people at large. Courts also directs governments to regulate the rates charged at the private hospitals and tests and diagnostics centers for providing services to people, but nothing significant has happened yet. Now cost of private hospitals are regulated in house, according to the commercial principle of demand and supply. Hence even after more than 65 years of independence, fate of Indian population is in the hands of almighty god as in earth even in so called democracies there is no one, who could really bring quick transformation in their lives. Let see what color this initiative of central government spreads to the condition of health services in India.

Justice delayed is justice denied!

It is quite hard to believe that in our country laws related to crime ie. IPC and CrPC, are around 150 years old. Police act was made in 1860, basically to regulate public affairs under colonial environment, but successive governments couldn’t find it important to transform these laws according to present needs and circumstances. Therefore issues related to police-people interface, police highhandedness and peoples overall dissatisfaction is quite common and can be seen on daily basis, in each and every part of country. Since police and criminal laws comes under the state subject list, supreme court many times since quite long gives directives to state governments to change their respective laws, but nothing significant happens. Due to many loopholes and lax system of judiciary perpetrators of crime whether economic or of criminal nature have little deterrent to respect laws in letter and spirit. On the one hand criminals of big repute play with the present system of policing and judiciary, while on the other hand common people don’t want to be part of all this since they have little hope of timely justice and action. Moreover poor have to pay very hard to prove their innocence due to lack of money and influence and have to wait quite long for justice to come over. Today  I saw in a newspaper that supreme court announce life sentence to some criminals alleged of doing murder of 5 people in UP after around 32 years of trials, pathetic!  So we are in a dire need of judicial reforms, reforms which increase the ratio of judges to number of people, which make system of appointments, transfers, promotions etc of judges more fair and transparent, which make overall judiciary more responsible by making it easier for system to investigate against judges of dark repute, which make use of information and communication technology to modernize the judiciary by using its applications in behavioral and practical manner etc. This way prosecution rate would increase and people develop faith and respect for judiciary, which is very important in a successful democracy. Criminals would hesitate in doing crimes due to risk attached and overall crime rate would come down including level of corruption. Hence we can say that these transformations work like an antidote against the present system of disorder and anarchy which is growing in the hearts and minds of more aware and conscious people of India. We hope the governments pay heed to these demands of our democracy which is considered the largest in world over.