When I tried to recollect the last time I was serious about democracy, I was 16 and in a class of English lit. We were asked to guess what a foreigner friend of our teachers liked and was proud to speak about after she left India. I took couple of seconds to shout ‘It’s the Largest Democratic Nation’ without the permission of the teacher. Coincidentally, I was right, which I think saved me a lot of embarrassment. That was me prematurely getting excited about the way our governance is chosen and run.

Couple of events which happened over recent months have got me thinking again on this. Democracy, which translates to ‘rule of the people’, is often perceived as the fairer form of governing a state as it allows the participants i.e. people exercise control over matters of their interest.  Also, in theory, through Democracy the power is decentralised. Leaving no individual entity with too much power. In India, we have the bicameral Parliamentary System, where the members are elected by the people through a fair electoral process.
Sounds alright to me, should work perfectly for a emotional and sentimental nation like ours. So, what are the potential drawbacks of this system ?. Well, for starters, it’s not Direct Democracy, even if it appears that the peoples opinion matters, it stops when they elect a representative. And of course a bunch of practical problems. The larger a democracy, the more difficult voting gets and lead to voting/tallying fraud. In this form of governance, nothing stops the majority from exploiting the minorities. And yeah, this could well result in dictatorship of bourgeois, a government run for and by the bourgeois class. Which makes it a form of Capitalist system, where the govt. running bodies favour the wealthy ‘supporters’ in forming the policies. Corruption, at every level, is inevetiable in this system and it just grows into every sector exponentially with the increase in population.

So how many of these drawbacks have surfaced in the so called world’s largest democracy’s case, everyone of them and we fathomed more. Unbelievable levels of corruption, lobbying, black money holdings, money/caste/community driven politics and the list just goes on and on. And, what are we waiting for exactly ? a Democide ?.  I wonder if we still are a democratic nation. Having elections doesn’t necessarily mean it’s Democracy. It looks to me like a functional form of anarchy disguised as democracy.

Clearly, this is a problem and there can be no simple solution to this. As the number of people who are contributing to this fiasco is huge, we need reforms. Reforms aiming at public awareness, the way the elections are carried out, the way the government functions, e.t.c. Utilisation of one of the powers given by our constitution,  the RTI act. Involving CAG’s office in each and every venture.  Implementing more democracy i.e. Direct Democracy using technology and of course man power. C’mon, every one’s got a mobile, the internet usage has been increased, get public opinions up as polls for all the concerned issues. Increase the involvement of the people as they deserve to be in a Democratic nation.

Without reform and changes in the way things are run in this nation, there is going be absolute exploitation of the powerless, which in our case is the majority.  If I think it over now, the notion of  ‘Largest Democratic Nation’ is just a ridiculous misconception.

To explain the reach and effect of this scheme, I would like to share a story. A guy who used to work as a house painter in a town near Bangalore, gets a usual call from a customer service. He liked her voice and rang her for months. After meeting her in front of here office, they got married with all the family connections cut off as this raged up the family members.  Quite an adventure for the guy, but it all started fading once the back pain he has avoiding grew into something big and diagnosed as a spine problem. Doctors asked for a heft 4 Lakhs in Rupees for the surgery.  He, devastated, finds out about this scheme running up by NH. He got himself operated for mere 65K in Rupees by paying a premium of 450 per annum for the insurance.

There are a lot of success stories if I start digging up on the Doctor or the Hospital or the Micro-Finance scheme. This is grown into something big, with tie-ups of AP, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu state goverments, helping out masses. Andhra Pradesh government has a very interesting health reform under it’s belt, in fact it’s known for . ‘Aarogyasri’,  a community health insurance scheme, to improve access of below poverty line families to quality medical care for treatment of diseases involving hospitalization and surgery through an identified network of health care providers. In the initial phase, the scheme would provide coverage for the following system. The network of hospitals under this umbrella is growing with various new hospitals enrolling with this policy.

Doesn’t this give enough confidence to start a health reform with the Government being the insurance provider. Also pushing all the recognizable Medical Firms to be in accreditation with the International Standards (ISO or NABH). If someone’s asked to list the most three important ministries, there is a good chance the response being home, defense and finance? but in a futuristic sense, a creative way, shouldn’t these be Health, Environment and Education. The state running advisories should re-instate the priorities on which the state should be run. Learning from the acts of NGO’s and other voluntary organizations, appreciating them and make an effort scaling them up for a wider audience would reform the health ministry from where it is now to one of the efficient ministries in the world.

Same time last year in Andhra Pradesh, the state was shocked in vain as the then Chief Minister YSR who came into power to rule the state for a consecutive term. As there were communities, organizations who were pushing out their condolences on one side, just after the tears were rolled out, there were protests to thrown YSJ into power when he barely had any political credentials at the time. The ‘High Command’,  the mostly used word in the newspaper-headlines this year, have managed to evade all these diversions on choosing the next Chief Minister.They didn’t oversee the upcoming series events which made the life in almost 11 districts a little insane and out of ordinary.

Soon after, the Chairman of TRS, Mr. KCR, started a fast until death campaign for the re-formation of the state of Telangana. He broke the 11-day-fast moments after the UPA Spokeperson and the Home Minister in-charge announced that the orders have been passed to initiate the process of separation or rather re-formation of the claimed territory. Those  11 days were sought to be one of the restless, violent and passionate times in the history of Telangana. Well, the people were wrong,. The situation hasn’t improved still as the process was put on hold by the same announcer as he found the majority had a different opinion on this issue, where as the issue being the minorities want a state, how ironic could it get.

This was a just a start of the harsh times which is still not fenced. The white collars in the region of telangana are experiencing very hard times with the Political parties, several communities and organizations call for a non-cooperation highlighting one or many of the issues. The news is full of lewd conversations, discussions and divisive dialogue.

The Past and the Respect

When the rest of the country are rejoicing their independence, the peasants,poor of course, along with a lot of brave-hearted people had to plan their freedom movement with the limited resources and fight a war against the Nizams government until the then formed Indian Government showed up. The peasants fought their way to the freedom with the Razzakar’s of Nizam with of course nothing but the guerrilla warfare and techniques which led around 3000 villages into Peasant rule.And before it’s forgotten any further, let’s just remember the Telangana Liberation Day, September the 17th, marking the victory of the first freedom struggle for Telangana in the year 1948.

I was completely unaware of this day until I hit the bottom of the issue sometime last year when people were getting serious about it. Why can’t a history textbook which has the information about a guy who died for separation of Andhra from Madras presidency speak about a revolution led by peasants through a communist rebellion. However, you can find more info on it here, if you interested to know more about the movement.

Just a walk into the past, remembering the 5 years of liberation (1948-1953).

The ride was exciting and fun because I get to ride to get out of Bangalore as the ‘davidoff’ who was riding along didn’t knew the route. As soon as I showcased some of my riding skills, I had to give it away in order to complete the planning activity. Of course thanks to ‘chiru’ for the fiery Fiero. Essentially, all the 6, 3 of whom who were riding didn’t even take a look at the maps/route to reach the destination. And the excuse was Google Maps based on EDGE which phases out to GPRS once we are out of Bangalore. Somehow, based on chance/luck we figured out the way and reached the place.

@Skandagiri

After reaching a junction on directions of some guy on road, we looked lost and confused and trying to take left or right. Obviously, one who thinks would wait and the other just take right because it’s right, of course it doesn’t make any sense. There was a flash from the left, and shouts that we should stop. It was the kid-guide who was yelling at us to stop. He offered us a deal to take us through a good rather short cut route for a price. We parked our bikes, gave away helmets and stretched our backs after the bike ride.  We started off good, climbing and feeling pain in the shins and heels. It was time for the first stop, here ‘Charan’ started evaluating on the reason why did he choose to come all the way to climb a hill and why didn’t he think of climbing a hill in the night even after he was told that it was a night trek. Still, we went along without flash lights for a while as there were Police, which the guide was afraid off. After a small break, we continued. So, ‘Charan’ thinks he should sleep and dozes off. We had some water and carbs. It took a pain for ‘diesel’ to get everybody up and trek again. Sounded like fun and it started sweating e.t.c. A point to be remembered: ‘Charan’ did doze off when we were taking breaks.

It was time that I realized that I panic if I think of my previous panic attacks while I was on a hill.  Yeah yeah, it is psychological and shit but I couldn’t hold it longer and it came out half way through. I was happy that it was dark and there is not video camera with flash along, else it would have been used to shoot myself crawling on a almost flat surface. With mixed emotions, finally, we reached the top of the hill. We approximately tool around 2 and 1/2 hours for the up hill. There you go, there is a different world out there on top of the hill. Maggi, bread omelette’s and water. Everything came with the extra custom duty though. People there helped us with campfire. The wind was heavy and it was chilling out there, the effect was more for me as I was in my running shorts and a gym t-shirt.  Slowly, the darkness was taken away by the dawn and we decided to start down hill. We took a different route, I would say easier. But, the way was little longer in distance and less of sloped, although there were some turns around the hill with open-ended walls.

Got down! and figured out that we are on the opposite side of the village where we parked our bikes. It was around 8:00 AM when we hit the road. ‘diesel’ got lift to get a bike. Rest of us had some rest and food. Fed some monkeys. It was tiresome, because of the sun until we figured out that ‘davidoff’ lost keys for one of the bikes, it turned into laughter. Luckily, the monkeys were liberal not to misplace the key which was dropped in their jurisdiction. We started our ride back once we got hold of all the bikes. Tiresome and irritating ride because of the sun. It was a real mess when we came into the city. 2 of the 3 bikes lost on their route and the third which I was riding on reached home at around 10:30 AM.  Had lots of water, left over snickers, biscuits and went to bed to get some sleep.

It was fun, might be a little ruined by my panic attack. I hope I get over this by doing more of them. On the whole, awesome place to trek and a lot of fun if done with friends along, nonetheless.

Having or speaking for an opinion need a sort of social confidence of how it or the argument can influence the audience.  The reasoning seems to be simple, Opinions are always through a subjective approach. The perspective in which the thought or emotion of a human is influencing the decision unlike the text booked objectivism, which I would love to exist.

Does opinions needs to be justified or explained?, When the belief is through a particular perspective and direction of thought which is unique or rather a personal choice how can anyone impose it on other thoughts. It’s just not morally correct ain’t it ?.

Again, I have to agree that this is just an Opinion.

Of all the rides I liked the ride from my Office to Whitefield to Jayanagar and to BTM -

I have to say, the roads to and from whitefield are amazing to ride – flyovers, huge roads and lot of trees around. Simply loved the ride.

If you don’t want to just restrict your  ‘News Feed’ to ‘Status Updates’, you can always use a Greasemonkey script for the Firefox browser. Using this script will make your FB news feed clean without any quizzes, app results e.t.c.

First make sure you have Greasemonkey extension and restart Firefox as it says so. Now install the Facebook Purity installation page -  click the Install button, and you’ll be prompted to install the script. I would also suggest you to install Facebook Fixer. It’s an amazing script with a lot of options to customize your FB page. The next time you access your FB news feed, you should see that the idiotic nonsense is blocked, and there’s a link in the upper right that lets you unhide the hidden apps/quizzes/messages if you wanted to.

We reached the Colonia Jose Menino Resorts in South Goa by saturday afternoon. The specialty of the resort was it was affordable and there was  Carmona beach 200m away. The beach was almost a private one, as for the fact that there were not many people showing up there.  After almost 2 1/2 hours of swimming and breezer’s at the pool we left for the Carmona beach. Irresistible waves made me go into the Sea along some other folks who came along with me. Jumping with/along/through was fun. The only problem I was facing was the salt water which went into my head resulting in a heavy  head and mild head ache.  We had a typical goa’n night -  Music/People/Alc.

Next day, was the driving day. Drove around Goa (130 approx- round trip). Roamed around couple of beaches, did Jet-Skiing e.t.c, lost my six syllable tantric mantra locket at one of the beaches, visited Chapora fort. Then comes the night of football & alc. The Derby – Manchester United Vs Manchester City. People were sloshed off.

Lazy morning, awesome lunch and some beach time and we headed back to bangalore on Monday. Totally, it was  a learning experience for me. Tanning/Headaches/Driving/Skiing/Bebinka/Loads of fun.