Devyani Khobragade's Arrest: Are Indians suffering from Animal Farm syndrome?

I am not very clear what our (Indian's) main gripe is. Is it that 'an Indian woman' was subjected to strip search? Or is it that our diplomat who in our view should have enjoyed full diplomatic immunity, was arrested and handcuffed? My confusion is that I do not understand what our stand will be if some other Indian lady is arrested and strip searched as per the law of the US land. Is it a case of Animal Farm's famous line "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".

 

Riots in poor villages and towns

An interview of a young woman who seemed to be in her thirties, by NDTV, on the site where blankets were being distributed, revealed that she had lost 2 of her 6 children.
This probably gave me an insight into possible causes of the real problems which are simmering under the surface. These simmering problems need just an excuse to manifest themselves into such riots.
While it is necessary to apply ointment on the open wounds, unless we identify the root cause, a permanent cure is not possible.
In this case I was appalled to hear that this young woman already had six children. These days even middle class families try to have keep the number under three, if not just one. What's happening in our villages?

Where is the space in Uttar Pradesh to have six children in each family in a village or town or a city? Where are the resources for even passable parenting, forget good parenting, if a couple has six children? Do parents even have time (forget money) to teach their children on how to become a good citizen, if they produce six children (or more - this lady definitely seemed fit enough)? Won't teenagers of such families be simply loitering around? How can families keep producing children and expect the state (tax payers at the end) to provide for them?

There was a time when family planning was a given great push, for many years. "Hum Do, Hamare Do" was the slogan behind every state bus. What is happening now? Should not there be accountability to justify the funds being used under the banner of 'family welfare'?

During emergency Family Planning got a bad name and for good reason as some people in power went overboard and in order to reach the "quota", they became ruthless. But it does not mean that the concept itself is bad. In India we need to perpetually educate the masses about 'Family Planning' for next 100 years.

Popular keywords in Google

I was doing some search on Google for keywords for my software solutions. I didn't find what I was looking for, but encountered a page which claims that following keywords are most costly:

 

The Top 10 costliest Keywords are:

1. Insurance: Most probably it must be for any type of insurance like car insurance or life insurance
2. Loans: Like insurance loans can also be multiple types: car loans, house loans, education loans
3. Mortgage: Loan and mortgages have close relationship. Many a times you mortgage something valuable to secure a loan.
4. Attorney: Nothing surprising as attorneys are likely to be involved at every stage. An attorney may be needed while mortgaging your property for a loan or even later if one is unable to repay a loan as per agreed terms.
5. Credit: Loan and Credit are one and same almost so nothing surprising that credit is searched so much also.
6. Lawyer: obviously lawyer and attorneys are interchangeable words for a common man. Professional lawmen of course differentiate between a lawyer and an attorney.
7. Donate: This seems unconnected to above. May be blood donation is researched. Or may be here donate may be just for sites where a software developer asks for donation for a free software
8. Degree: Not sure whether degree here is used for educational or legal purposes as the word degree is used in both
9. Hosting: Surely hosting is used in connection with web hosting. I can't think what else will make "hosting" a costly keyword.
10. Claim: Claim brings us back to top six keywords. Claims is a word used commonly in insurance, mortgages, court cases (hence attorneys and lawyers).

The next ten most expensive keywords were the following:

11. Conference Call: It shows people are looking for reducing cost of doing business. Conference calls can drastically reduce cost of travel. Conference calls save time and money.
12. Trading Software: Wow! This is interesting. Trading software being searched is a good omen for software developers! It also means that trading companies are actively looking for software to computerize their businesses
14. Recovery: I feel recovery here is more related to the top six keywords above than for recovery used in medicine or recovery word used for taking a broken car to garage.
15. Transfer: Not sure why transfer is so costly. What transfer? Call transfer in PBX? or transfer an officer from one city to another? Or transfer money?
16. Gas/Electricity: Gas and electricity, I guess people must be searching to find out, hot to reduce cost of. Both gas and electricity have become very costly of late.
17. Classes: The search for word classes may either be for education or programming like C+ or other object oriented programming languages
18. Rehab: The unfortunate widespread use of drug may be the reason why rehab is being searched.
19. Treatment: The word rehab above and treatment here definitely point to medical reasons of treatment of drug abuse and then rehab of patient.
20. Cord Blood: I have never heard of this term cord blood. But I guess it could be used in blood transfusion where a cord (tube) is used for blood transfusion.

Government & Corporate Corruption: Are they related?

During a discussion a friend of mine opined that government and corporate corruption is not related. I beg to differ. Here, I am including public sector companies with 'government' and by corporate I am presuming privately owned companies was meant in the discussion.

If we only try to see a little beyond the obvious, we will notice the invisible link. Why would I pay bribe to the accounts department of a privately owned corporation to get my payment? The answer is that I wouldn't if there is a viable alternative. I would stop doing business with such a company. Period. And in most of the cases I would have had an alternative, had the government owned companies, "the Public Sector", worked honestly.  For example, if the now defunct HEC Ranchi was run honestly, it would have given so much business to other companies that they wouldn't go to other privately owned suppliers. When that happened, the purchase department of private company would not have guts to ask for bribe to place an order. BHEL would have diversified and added family car manufacturing to it's portfolio. Vijay Deluxe (do you remember?) would have produced millions of scooters and people in 1960s-80s would not be waiting for 5 years to buy Bajaj Priya or pay Rs 10K premium for a 5k two wheeler. BEL would be dumping market with fingerprint, face recognition and other bio-metric instruments, ECIL (does it even exist now?) would be making big bucks with PC, Tablets and what nots. By honesty I do not mean just bribes. I mean doing the work they were actually supposed to do, honestly.
The word "Reforms" in industry has become almost synonymous with selling off of Public sector companies. Why have we not been able to run these great public sector companies profitably and innovatively? The lack of enthusiasm among public sector employees is because they are disgusted and demoralized with dishonesty at the topmost management level - who are inevitably hand in glove with corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. So yes, in my opinion, there is a strong connection between corruption in government and corporate world. Moreover, honest governance will create an environment where it will be very difficult for corrupt practices to prosper.

My point in the original discussion was this: we need not worry too much about the corruption in privately owned companies - the oxygen for corruption here comes from corruption in government. If the government is run honestly, the ills of corruption in privately owned corporations would go away almost on their own, automatically.

A Lesson In How To Create Favorable Statistics

The anchor at Zee News channel is arguing that by not forming a government in Delhi, the top two parties BJP and AAP are (a) insulting the voters and (b) betraying the public which turned up to vote in huge numbers this time.

Therefore they are asking viewers to vote ZN A if you think that AAP should take the initiative to form a government or ZN B if you think BJP should do that.

Very conveniently they have ignored the NOTA option, where the viewer may actually feel that re-election is a better option. A re-election gives an opportunity to the electorate to come out of it's muddled thinking and give a clear mandate.

It seems for people working in Zee News, the assurance given by AAP before elections that, post elections, they will neither give nor seek support from others, has no meaning. Perhaps they are so much used to the politics of underhand dealings, it is beyond their comprehension that AAP could actually not be seeking power at any cost. In eyes of Zee news, it may actually be foolishness on part of AAP.

There is another possibility though. The Zee News staff may be banking on these political parties to indulge in some horse trading, which would create spicy news for them while sitting in the comforts of the studio. Without this, they will now have to go out and work for their salaries.

In any case, if you want numbers to show only what you want to see, do take lessons from Zee News. They are amazingly good at it.

 

Skand Bhargava
+971 50 6340258

 

Election Results & Mammohan Singh & Mr. India

Spare a thought for our Prime Minister Sri Manmohan Singh. The Congress party has faced devastating defeat in Delhi and two more states. All TV channels are having a great time discussing victories and defeats of BJP, Congress and AAP. They are talking about and to Gahlot, Raje, Anna, Kejriwal, Rahul, Sonia, Raman Singh, Shivraj Singh and many other politicians. I mean so many different names are being thrown up, but the TV channels are not at all interested in bringing up the name of Sri Manmohan Singh, our Prime Minister! 

 

I wonder how the PM is taking it. Is he happy that no one is holding him responsible for the Congress debacle? Or is he feeling totally humiliated for being totally ignored by media and his own party, what to say of other parties and general public.

 

Anil Kapoor played the role Chief Minister in the movie "Nayak". How I wish Sri Manmohan Singh had emulated him in real life. Unfortunately he chose to become Anil Kapoor of Mr. India

Regards,

 

Skand Bhargava
+971 50 6340258