The frightening pace of destruction

What is the real price of the coal allocation scam?

Can it just be measured in monetary terms? What about the destruction that it will lead to -- the destruction of forests, the destruction of habitat, the destruction of indigenous culture, the destruction of wildlife?

Can everything be justified simply in the name of "development"?

And who will really benefit from that? The big companies, their CEOs, the industrial giants, but never the people who will be displaced, never the flora and fauna that will be destroyed and possibly made extinct, never the local simple art and craft that will make way to "made in china" stuff.

The argument that this is the only alternative is just not debated enough.


And this is where as modern humans, we have failed. We just don't realise, we just don't question, we just don't care. We have failed collectively on a basis that is becoming too important to circumscribe, too large to ignore.


Frightening, disturbing, depressing?

Doesn't matter -- we are too happy to kick-start our daily journey with a different type of "colgate".

Violence and SMS curfew

The Indian government's latest move to not allow more than 5 sms per person per day to arrest the violence against North-East Indians is a nuisance at best.

It not only fringes on the citizens' right to communicate, but also squarely puts the blame on to interactions through sms. This is a law-and-order situation and should be treated as such.

Instead of focusing attention on sms and social networks, the government should rather spend its energy on stopping the riots in Assam in the first place and then curbing the violence in the South Indian cities.


As Einstein once pithily remarked, "I've little sympathy for all those who find the thinnest part of the wood and then proceed to make a great many holes in it."

Happy Independence Day

"Happy Independence Day" -- this phrase has been hitting us more and more in recent years. This is more like happy mother's day, happy valentine's day, happy new year, etc. Indeed, consumerism has brought everything down to the same level.However, there is a more important issue about happy independence day.

What is so "happy" about it? Have we forgotten our history completely? Don't we remember anything about the circumstances in which our country gainedher independence? Don't we remember the partition? The breaking up of our country, for the sole benefit of some foreigners and some-worse-than-foreigners-businessmen-and-politicians? The riots that followed? The millions that died? The more-than-millions that were forced to flee their homes overnight without so much as even a paise or a change of clothes?

No, we don't. We only remember a footnote of history that India got its first Indian prime minister? Note that still Mountbatten was in the country. And instead of booting the British out, we welcomed them.
But what is it to us, a generation far removed from the practicalities of hardship and nation building. We have inherited a free country and a more-than-useful holiday. Let it be that.

Jai Hind!

Mahan Maharaj

Mahan Maharaj (Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award winner for Mathematics in 2011) is simply one of the great wonders of this world. A student, so brilliant, with a chance to stay back in foreign countries, not only returns but embraces monkhood! However, his love and sense of duty for what he is good at (i.e., mathematics) leads him to continue doing research at the highest level.

Indeed, I feel one of his comments to be so apt -- when asked why he chose to be a monk, he replies "Perhaps because I wanted to find the peace to work away at mathematical problems!"

With this fast world around, are we giving yourselves enough time and peace to work towards what we are good at?

E-filing of income tax

While the Indian government's effort to get all income taxes over ₹10 lakhs to be filed online compulsorily must be lauded, we are still really myopic about the way to do it.

The website requires one to first create an account (a regulation step), and then submit an XML file as the tax return. The use of XML is a great step as (i) it is really just a text format, (ii) it is free and not under any copyright, etc.

However, as soon as one starts thinking of how to create the XML file, trouble ensues. The website asks one to use a spreadsheet file (that also after unzipping). Note that while spreadsheet is an open (and free) format, the file that the website provides issues macros and ActiveX controls which, unfortunately, cannot be run without Microsoft Excel. I have tried different Openoffice versions and confirmed this.

This is where my real complaint is. Why force an entire population to use a paid (and if I may add, quite heavily so) software? Does the Indian government assume that all users have access to such a pricey software? Or as is the current wisdom, have access to one with such a privilege or worse have access to a pirated version? Is this really promoting piracy?

I must re-emphasize the fact that the final output is just an XML file. Some other software (not a spreadsheet) could have been used to generate it only if the website also provided the document structure for it. But why bother when the open secret is that M$Office is freely pirated.

Suffering

A time comes when you do everything, listen to everyone, attend every detail, find every joy, feel every pain, but yet you feel something missing, something not right. You can't pinpoint, or worse, you can't correct it.
What can you do then? Your ego won't let you apologize to people you have hurt, your selfishness won't let you stop manipulating the world for yourself, your humanity won't let you go evil without remorse, your fellow-feeling pains you when you hurt people -- in a sense, you are the most confused creature. You wish you break a few barriers, take a few bold decisions, blurt out some truth, bleed, cry, run crazy. But alas, there are so many conflicting emotions that you just don't do anything, you just let yourself rot -- rot to the point when there's no coming back, rot in a way where even the most rotten state doesn't seem to matter.
And then? You don't know -- you're not yet there, but as is said, "worse than war is the fear of war" -- you're pretty scared of what to come, you're not even sure it's coming, you just suffer! Mind you, this suffering is not like your daily dose of pains and depressions, this is different. This is rotting of the soul, disintegration of yourself, where there is no sympathy, no reason even -- just the suffering!

Corruption

From childhood, I have been hearing stories of how corrupt our country is -- the police is corrupt, the bureaucrats are corrupt, the businessmen are corrupt, and the politicians are even more corrupt. As I grew up, I started asking myself the question "What about the common people? What about you and ME?" Are we feeding into this?
We surely are. I need a passport for studying abroad -- I happily bribe the local policeman for hurrying it up. I need a driving license -- I pay a middleman for doing it without even knowing where the motor vehicles office is. There is a simple counter-argument to all this. You cannot get your passport if do not bribe, you cannot get your license if do not pay a middleman, and so on and so forth. Fair enough!
I have grown up more (at least in terms of years spent on this earth). I have become an academician, a teacher. In old days, people of our category was held in high regard. Even today, the respect is still there. What is our role in weeding out corruption? Is it enough to be honest yourself and turn a blind eye to the rest of the world? There is a famous quote from Rabindranath Thakur "অন্যায় যে করে আর অন্যায় যে সহে, তব ঘৃণা যেন তারে তৃণসম দহে!" The spirit roughly translates to "tolerating a wrong is equally heinous as committing it".
Here's a situation. Think of an important exam. You are entrusted with organising it. You catch a person impersonating a candidate. The impersonator even accepts that. What do you do? Do you take the easy way, note the candidate's registration number, etc. in a form meant for "doubtful" identities, and let the impersonator walk away? Or, do you hand over the impersonator to the police? The decision is not easy as it seems.
Everyone around you quickly enlightens you about the danger of the second option? There must be a gang operating, you fall in their eyes, you jeopardize the school's security, etc. etc., and anyway, the police is only going to extort money from the candidate's family and let the matter bury. This is social pressure -- this is what it does to a common man too used to corruption. The corruption seeps through your blood and ultimately your genes. Future generations will be born with this sense and will find absolutely nothing wrong in the society-wide corruption.